WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Nelly believes Catherine is overly dramatic and uses emotional responses to get her own way. While Edgar knows Catherine can use her intellect as well as her emotions to prove her point, her emotional displays alarm him. Write a descriptive essay to contrast Nelly and Edgar’s beliefs about Catherine. Include examples that support your views.
PLEASE MAKE ADJUSTMENT ACCORDING TO THE FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS:write at least 5 paragraphs.
First you need an intro with a clear answer to the prompt. Always mention title and author. Then, you need a thesis statement that details how Nelly views Catherine vs how Edgar views Catherine. Those points will each become a body paragraph.
Then, you will have 3 body paragraphs, each containing examples from the text supporting how Nelly and Edgar’s views of Catherine are different.
Finally, you will conclude.
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Catherine As Seen by Ellen Dean and Edgar Linton: A Comparative Analysis
Catherine Earnshaw-Linton, the most controversial character of the famous Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, has always attracted the attention of both the reader and the critic with her extraordinary personality and tragic circumstances of her life. Being arrogant and passionate at the same time, Catherine is one of those characters that cannot be merely reduced to the sum of their characteristics since Brontë shows her as a live personality, as a character that is developing, cannot be predicted and is perceived differently by different characters with whom she interacts. Being impossible to be categorized as either a positive or a negative character, Catherine can act like both in different passages of the novel and is certainly perceived in a drastically different way by Nelly, the storyteller, and her husband Edgar. While Nelly thinks that Catherine uses excessive drama to get her way, Edgar knows that his wife possesses a powerful intellect too, although he is alarmed about her emotional display.
In the very beginning of the novel, Nelly confesses that she does not like Catherine “after infancy was past” as she grows up to be “a haughty, headstrong creature” having “wondrous constancy to old attachments” (Brontë 103). Nelly sees Cathy as a spoiled wayward girl who is constantly provoked to show her “rough side” at Wuthering Heights, where she “had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit nor praise” (Brontë 103-104). Thus, Nelly regards Cathy’s explosive temper as being partly caused by the unfavorable conditions the girl was growing up in, the tense relationship with her abusive sibling and suppressed feelings for her foster brother Heathcliff. Throughout the novel, Nelly strongly disapproves of Cathy’s behavior, especially after Catherine starts to accept Heathcliff’s signs of attention in the house of her meek husband: “she seemed to allow herself such wide latitude, that I had little faith in her principles, and still less sympathy for her feelings” (Brontë 171). Nelly often suffers from Catherine’s emotional response to situations where everything goes not as she planned. For instance, when Edgar comes to visit Cathy during Hindley’s absence, Cathy is so irritated by Nelly’s unwillingness to leave the two enamored young people alone that she pinches and insults the maid just to get rid of her.
However, Catherine must be seen as an entirely different person by Edgar Linton, whose infatuation with her is so strong that he ends up marrying her despite all Nelly’s warnings. Edgar meets Catherine in his own house where she has to stay because of having been badly bitten by the Lintons’ dog. In the house of the Lintons, Cathy develops a double character as she “had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman by her ingenious cordiality” (Brontë 104). Cathy is a lovely angel in Edgar’s eyes until the pinching incident with Nelly and general Cathy’s outburst of rough untamed temper. This incident alarms and confuses Edgar but does not repulse him from Catherine entirely. On the contrary, the brutal trick becomes a turning point in his relationship with Catherine. Edgar surely understands that she chooses him over Heathcliff because of his name, upbringing, exquisite looks and gentle personality. Nevertheless, all of Edgar’s virtues fade with time in Catherine’s heart where she carefully preserves her love for Heathcliff. Edgar, however, behaves gentlemanly throughout Catherine’s prolonged illness; he idolizes her and cares for her until the day she dies.
Works Cited
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1st ed. 2016. Web. 28 June 2016.