Catherine As A Foil

Abstract

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a novel that, despite being the focus of abundant critical feminist analysis, largely ignores the character of Isabella Linton. Academics have been appallingly neglectful and even disdainful of furthering the discourse about the character of Isabella Linton.

In 1851 the Eclectic Review called her, "one of the most silly and credulous girls that fancy ever painted," and this perception of her is still the prevailing attitude towards her character, despite this review being written a hundred and sixty years ago.

There are a few critics who have been willing to acknowledge her role as a foil to Catherine Earnshaw, but only in a dismissive way that serves to emphasize her inferiority to Catherine.

Critic Judith Pike, who writes a stunning defense of Isabella Linton's character, laments the fact that Isabella is often misrepresented in academia as merely, "a foil to Catherine and an instrument of revenge for Heathcliff" (352). Essential Literary Terms describes a foil as, "a character who contrasts with the protagonist in ways that bring out certain of his or her moral, emotional, or intellectual qualities" (131). By this definition one could argue that Isabella is a foil to Catherine; however, instead of highlighting Catherine's positive character traits, Isabella emphasizes the ways that Catherine languishes in arrested development, falls short of achieving character growth and never becomes an admirable heroine. In contrast, Isabella is representative of daring feminist rebellion: an abused wife who flees from her husband, during her pregnancy, in the early nineteenth-century: a time so dominated by patriarchal control that the law would have been on the side of her abuser. Had Heathcliff chosen to follow her she would likely have been subjected to disgrace and public censor for her act, and she would have been returned directly to his control or even have been denied contact with her child. It is ironic that is commonly Catherine who is lauded for her daring and bravery when the bravest act of the novel is, undoubtedly, the escape of

She explains to Nelly Dean her motives for marrying him are because, "he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves [her]" (Bronte 95). Catherine wrongly assumes that Edgar will be pliant to her whims. She desires Edgar Linton and Thrushcross Grange because it is seemingly a seat of empowerment for her, everything that Wuthering Heights is not. This hope, however, soon proves itself to be false. Catherine finds that behaving properly is too difficult a task for her to maintain. Accustomed to fighting against the forces of overt and harsh male control, she finds that she is ineffectual in dealing with the seemingly polite but icy ideology that is so entrenched in Edgar Linton and Thrushcross Grange. Her attempts at rebellion are patronizingly humored at best and ignored at worst. In fact, it is her inability to deal with this form of "civilized" patriarchy that leads to her death. She refuses to eat, but her rebellion goes unnoticed by Edgar, its intended target. This hunger strike results in her falling into delirium and derangement of the mind that weakens her. Critic Abbie Cory states that Cathy dies, "because she is unable to exist in a world which will not allow her to live according to her rebellious impulses" (21). Joseph Carroll, too, notes that, "Catherine is torn apart by the irresolvable