Catherine's grand and unforgettable pronouncement, "I am Heathcliff," strikes us initially as the epitome of romantic desire; it comes early in the novel, and few readers expect things to go as badly as they do. We increasingly understand what it means to be another, as well as oneself. With Heathcliff gone, Catherine marries the likable Edgar Linton, who is smitten with her. She moves into Thrushcross Grange. A few years later, Heathcliff, utterly altered, returns. Handsome, rich exuding a sense of power, he pronounces an implacable judgement on the events that have taken place. First, He indicts Edgar as an impossible love-object for someone of Catherine's vital and generous nature. Hs most withering and tragic indictment, however, is of Catherine. In betraying him, she has betrayed herself. This is not mere rhetoric: Catherine, faced with the return of Heathcliff and his insistence on the wreckage her marriage has wrought, becomes ill. The novel is merciless in its almost clinical account of Heathcliff bearing down on Catherine to remind her of the criminality of her actions. This isn't a simple argument in which one person tells another that he thinks she has done something wrong; here, everything Catherine has done, she has done to Heathcliff, as well.
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