What a fool. I love you heathcliff. i can't stand you and your dirty hands heathcliff. the world could end and i will still be yours heathcliff. it would degrade me to marry you heathcliff. i love you heathcliff. i hate you heathcliff. go make money and buy me stuff.
why anyone would want to marry such a simpleton is amazing
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I also found her to be a bitch. She was bossy, materialistic, petulant, self-absorbed and demanding. Even on her death bed, she was demanding heather from the moors, only to be duplicious from the moment that Heathcliff walked into the room. She knew how to play both Heathcliff and Edgar like a seasoned Sociopath.
From the point earlier in the film, when she returns with a dress Isabella lent her only to rip it to shreds, I hated her. No consideration for anybody else (or their belongings) but herself.
In Kidman's case, it's nice to see her lately immovable forehead participating in her performance - Rabbit Hole Review, Variety.
<They were victimized by their mental health, the time and place they lived, and their humane inability to control any of it!!!!!!>
Yeah, they didn't have Prozac or Lithium in those days.
It's a wonder anyone, other than the moody & morose Heathcliff, mourned her passing.
Cathy had that gaslighting on point!
shareThose who go into films or novels looking for black and white morals and character types (good/evil, hero/villain) often seem to find this story and the characters disappointing and unbearable. Cathy seems to be an object of particular hatred. I personally always felt that while neither of them were exactly nominees for person of the year, Heathcliff was by far the more culpable of them. But in Cathy's defense, people are too quick to attribute her motivations to materialism and avarice. That is certainly there in the book and the film adaptation, but it is not exclusively a question of wealth versus poverty. I always got the sense that Cathy was unable to reconcile her passion for Heathcliff and impulse toward self-destruction with her desire for a comfortable life. When I say comfortable, I am not referring to worldly things, but to the emotionally stable home she found with Linton. She grew up in an environment of abuse, and sought peace, contentment, and a chance for normalcy with Linton's family. Did she love him with the intensity with which she loved Heathcliff, certainly not, but she found quiet steadiness and a happiness of sorts with him until Heathcliff's return. But, as people with traumatic upbringings are want to do, she compulsively seeks out abusive situations and unhealthy relationships. For her, these are the most intense, the most passionate if you will, but not the most beneficial to her physical or mental well-being. In the terms of the story, She reaches out to Linton in a desperate attempt to survive in this world, but is unable to avoid her instinctive draw to the next. Her inability to reconcile spiritual self with physical self causes her to destroy herself.
sharewow excellent analysis!Youre not a pschycologist are you?
shareWas that directed toward me? If so, no I'm not a psychologist. I was introduced to the story at an impressionable age and have revisited it throughout the years, so I've spent a lot of time with these characters.
shareDid I miss something? What abuse did Cathy suffer in her childhood? It’s been awhile since I read the book.
shareWell said! I've found too that the older I get (I've been watching this film several times a year for, oh, at least 25 years) the clearer it becomes to me that Cathy didn't have many choices as a woman of that time. What was she to do, marry the stable boy and be stuck living with her abusive brother for the rest of her life? A brother who would have drank and gambled away all of their money until they lost their home entirely? Had it not been for Heathcliff going away because Cathy spurned him (so he thought) he would never have made the money to buy Wuthering Heights after Hindley destroyed himself.
We see that even though Heathcliff made a mint he was never taken seriously by Edgar and the other upper class folk. It was a pretty bleak prospect to tie herself to him, as much as she loved him.
I agree. She was a whiny, spoiled, fickle little bitch. I can't see why anyone would fall in love with her. And she's not even that great looking. I think Isabella is prettier.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, or doesn't.
I love you heathcliff. i can't stand you and your dirty hands heathcliff. the world could end and i will still be yours heathcliff. it would degrade me to marry you heathcliff. i love you heathcliff. i hate you heathcliff.
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.