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Wuthering Heights (Short Character Outline - The Young Generation)
According to David Cecil, the characters in Wuthering Heights are divided into two categories – children of the storm
and children of the calm. He states that “The storm is as much a part of her Emily Brontë’s universe as the calm. … she is peculiarly aware of the storm; her characters set no bridle on their destructive passions; nor do they repent their destructive deeds.” With this distinction, David Cecil is not labelling them good or bad, as he further explains “The conflict in her book is not between right and wrong, but between like and unlike”.
Emily Brontë delivers no judgement on her characters. Catherine Earnshaw, like Heathcliff, is a child of storm and Edgar and Isabella Linton are children of calm. The norm would be for the author to moralize on the characters of storm, but Emily Brontë is far from doing that: Catherine Earnshaw’s (storm) behaviour is not correct towards any character, whether it be her beloved Heathcliff or her husband Edgar, nonetheless, she ends buried between both; just as Catherine Linton’s (neither storm nor calm) behaviour in the first few chapters of the novel towards Hareton is obviously condemnable, but when in the very end they become friends, there is no judging from the part of the author, it simply happens.
However, it does not seem appropriate to tag the characters of this novel so wantonly. It is true that the first generation of characters remain storm or calm throughout but it is also true that the younger generation mutates; Catherine Linton – an offspring of calm and storm – in the example above and her cousins Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw demonstrate this.
Published: November 05, 2009
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