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Catherine Earnshaw: Weak Or Manipulative?

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Catherine Earnshaw: Weak or Manipulative Catherine’s selfishness is a tragic flaw and the source of all the pain and sufferings in Wuthering heights. The villain in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, to critics had always been Heathcliff or Ellen dean(Nelly) but nobody pays attention or rather ignores the fact that it is Catherine’s selfishness to have it all, which brings misery and misfortunes to everybody around her, and it is not limited to just Heathcliff, Edgar and Isabella but even the next generation of Hareton, Linton and Catherine. How one may ask, when she dies before she even gets know the next generation? Well, she is responsible for Heathcliff being cruel to the children as he tries to take revenge on the people Catherine had manipulated in her selfishness to gain the best of both worlds. In this paper, I will demonstrate how Heathcliff’s cruelty is a direct reaction to Catherine’s selfishness. Catherine have been called selfish numerous by Nelly, while narrating the story and even her words and actions strike the reader as being so saturated with selfishness and pride that there is no need to even …show more content…

Heathcliff subjects Hareton Earnshaw, Catherine Linton and Linton Heathcliff to numerous hardships all to get revenge on Edgar Linton and Hindley Earnshaw but readers fail to see that Catherine had triggered the feeling of revenge in Heathcliff. Catherine plans to marry Edgar Linton not because she loved him but because she wanted to raise Heathcliff’s social standing, with Edgar’s money. This action of her is impractical and foolish, for she forgets the fact that, though she has power over Edgar she does not have it over Heathcliff. Even if, Heathcliff had heard her intention to Marry Edgar, instead of walking away in the middle of her conversation with Nelly Heathcliff would never have consented to such an arrangement, he was too proud for that and considering the fact that Catherine had been his best friend it was silly of her to forget that

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