Deciphering the women of Wuthering Heights

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom. 

~Maya Angelou "I know why the caged bird sings"

I feel like all the women in Wuthering Heights could be described as caged birds because of their social constructed gender restraints. They all have this beating passion to free themselves, but do not seem to know the means of obtaining that freedom. To me the greatest tragedy of the entire story is how stuck everyone seems to be their own social constraints, no matter how hard they try to escape they cannot.

The only people that seem to really make a lasting change for themselves in Hareton and young Catherine. What had me puzzled is the thought that both Catherines seem so similar yet only young Cathy was able to really assert herself, and in the end free herself more so than her mother. Lyn Pykett, the author of the essay, "Changing the Names: The Two Catherines," makes an interesting claim at the end when she says, "Cathy exercises one of the few forms of power available to the powerless--resistance" (476). It is through her resistance of all the negativity and cruelty around her that keeps her strong, and it is her mother's lack of resistance that turns out to be her downfall.

However, I feel that Catherine the elder gets a bad wrap in this essay. She went from being somewhat wild, free, and "un-gendered" to suddenly realizing her need to conform.  Pykett says this is exemplified when Catherine says "Heathcliff is more myself than I am " (86). Pykett continues by trying to explain what Catherine may have meant, "[This,] is perhaps as much a statement of her identification with an earlier, pre-gendered version of herself, as it is a declaration of elemental passion" (471). This is to say that Catherine identifies more of her "free" self with Heathcliff. This idea that Catherine was once wild and free and now having to be tamed is what I think turns out to be her undoing within the book. It is much harder to take a free bird and turn them into a caged one, than say freeing a caged bird.

The bird born in her cage is young Catherine. She was born into a stricter social structure and I does not experiences the freedom that her mother had as a child. In many ways I would argue that this structure has helped young Cathy become more experienced at what it means to be a woman within her time than her mother. While Cathy was naive in the world and thus easily tricked by Heathcliff and Linton she has a greater understanding of how a woman can exert her influences and power successfully. She is therefore able to find peace and a balance with her "true" self and the self that society has created for her, and that is what makes young Cathy a free bird.