Six years since your post, but I'd still like to reply...
...just to say thank you, thank you, thank you! I find it so frustrating how latter-day readers and movie lovers forget that the original stories were written in another era altogether, and social conventions were markedly different from today. Judging characters' actions using modern values is just off, and will lead to a very murky understanding of the novel (or movie).
It is indeed true that in the early 19th century, a wife's fate was largely dependent on the wealth (not necessarily status) of her husband. Status didn't necessarily mean wealth. Anyway, if one has learnt a bit about the historical conventions of the era, then Cathy is indeed not (necessarily) a shallow person, but is only doing what almost every other young woman in her situation would have done. Women did not receive the same level of education, and had very few (if any) prospects of generating their own income and taking care of their own lives. Spinsters had it tough. It was therefore impossible for young women like Cathy to ignore those realities of her life. All of this do not excuse her actions, but rather explains it.
But as you said, from our perspective today, the circumstances portrayed in the Brontë sisters' books, Jane Austen, Henry James, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, etcetera, indict the conventions of their eras.
Please click on "reply" at the post you're responding to. Thanks.
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