Changing The Names: The Two Catherines Summary

In her essay, “Changing the Names: The Two Catherines,” Lyn Pykett argues that while Catherine is destroyed by her inability to handle the conflicting images of herself and femininity imposed upon her, her daughter, Cathy, negotiates these contradictions and ultimately uses them to carve herself out a powerful, successful role, even within the deeply patriarchic confines of nineteenth-century England. Pykett argues that Wuthering Heights charts the process of Catherine learning femininity as defined by her society and traces the difficulties she experiences as she enacts her role as an upper class woman and wife. Catherine is ultimately broken by the pressure of these contradictions and she goes mad, enacting her own self alienation right before …show more content…
She succeeds in her second escape attempt, and arrives, bleeding and breathless, at the Grange. She tells Nelly that she had “run the whole way from Wuthering Heights… except where [she had] flown,” (157). When Hindley and Heathcliff were fighting, the former told Isabella that “[Heathcliff]’ll be [her] death, unless [she] can over reach him,” (161). Her ability to find strength and escape from Heathcliff shows bravery and self empowerment. She leaves a dangerous and oppressive situation, only stopping at the Grange for first aid and dry clothes before continuing her solo journey, first to Gimmerton and then eventually to …show more content…
By abandoning the moors, houses, and and spaces of her previous life, Isabella rejects expectations these spaces contain. While Wuthering Heights is blatently oppressive, Thrushcross Grange and the moors also act as oppressive spaces because within them, cycles of male dominance flourish. In any of these spaces, men control the land and women. Isabella was governed by Edgar until her marriage to Heathcliff, when she became his instead. Her decision to leave the moors altogether allows her to finally gain autonomy and live independent of any male authoritarian. Unlike Isabella, Catherine tries to enact the idealized genteel woman of their time. Even though she began her life as “a wild, hatless little savage,” (63) as soon as she was given the opportunity, Catherine quickly learned how to enact her gender and social class. Upon Catherine’s return from Thrushcross Grange, Nelly describes her as “a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit,” (63). After seeing their daughter’s transformation, the Earnshaws comment on Catherine’s beauty, remarking that “Isabella has not her natural advantages,”