Yeah, that's the film in a nutshell, and half the book!
And yeah, Cathy was kind of an asshole, but people who don't have any good options generally become assholes.
Modern people have no idea how limited life was for country people circa 1800. Only the wealthy had the option of visiting the city in easy circumstances or moving to a comfortable life elsewhere, for everyone else the options were limited to: Stay or go. Stay in the stifling little village where you were born, or take off for the city and hope you found work and not starvation or a life of crime. And for women, of course, they options were: Marry someone you knew, or take off for the city and go straight for the life of crime, because no woman could go to the city and find honest work.
So Cathy's options were: Stay unmarried, and live in that horrible little house with her asshole brother. Run away with Heathcliff, know she can never come back, and face a 99% chance of living the desperate life of a prostitute or street criminal. Or... marry Edward, who is nice and who'll give her a comfortable life, it was the only rational option. Of course it wasn't a perfect option, she's not in love with her husband and will still life a stifling life in the country, but she would have been as happy as most people if Heathcliff had just let her be.
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