Each person must find the society which suits them individually, or, Blake adds, risk being forced into someone else’s. Catherine, on the veil between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, is forced into Thrushcross Grange before she has a chance to find her true place. The minute that the Lintons hear Catherine and Heathcliff outside, they “[shoot]” to the door like “arrows”, symbolizing their hunt of Catherine which will eventually result in her death (Brontë 38). They then set the bulldog, an animal originally bred to help herd and control livestock, to chase after her, believing she is a thief of some kind, perhaps robbing them of herself. The bulldog grabs Catherine by the ankle and starts to drag her back to the house and into a society that will murder her spirit. Brontë has Heathcliff call the bulldog “the devil” because the bulldog is like Blake’s true devil: not what most people claim is the devil, but the one who cajoles people into denying their energies. Blake’s definition of evil is that which prevents people from realizing their identities and making themselves happy, and thus the devil bulldog seizes Catherine and forces her into a unsuitable life that will destroy her. An unspecified Linton, presumably Edgar, asks what “prey” the bulldog has “caught” (Brontë 39), and from that moment, Catherine is stuck in the trap of Thrushcross Grange where she does not
Each person must find the society which suits them individually, or, Blake adds, risk being forced into someone else’s. Catherine, on the veil between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, is forced into Thrushcross Grange before she has a chance to find her true place. The minute that the Lintons hear Catherine and Heathcliff outside, they “[shoot]” to the door like “arrows”, symbolizing their hunt of Catherine which will eventually result in her death (Brontë 38). They then set the bulldog, an animal originally bred to help herd and control livestock, to chase after her, believing she is a thief of some kind, perhaps robbing them of herself. The bulldog grabs Catherine by the ankle and starts to drag her back to the house and into a society that will murder her spirit. Brontë has Heathcliff call the bulldog “the devil” because the bulldog is like Blake’s true devil: not what most people claim is the devil, but the one who cajoles people into denying their energies. Blake’s definition of evil is that which prevents people from realizing their identities and making themselves happy, and thus the devil bulldog seizes Catherine and forces her into a unsuitable life that will destroy her. An unspecified Linton, presumably Edgar, asks what “prey” the bulldog has “caught” (Brontë 39), and from that moment, Catherine is stuck in the trap of Thrushcross Grange where she does not