Same names

[Tanvi]

Confusing or beautifully symbolic with a motive to point out the similarities/dissimilarities?

[Sheila]

It's been a long time since I've read Wuthering Heights, but I saw the motive behind the book's repeating names being as a curse of sorts; children doomed to be caught up in the cycle of ancestral history by virtue of their names. They either succumb to that history or are challenged to break with the past and create their own story.

I recently read The Sound and The Fury which also featured names passed down from one generation to the next with apparently (to me) similar intent.

[Tanvi]

Well, a curse can be an interpretation but I doubt if it was the motive... For me, it was an attempt to simply point out how far the namesakes have come.

[Sheila]

It's all just personal interpretation, isn't it? :)

For me, it was an attempt to simply point out how far the namesakes have come.

Come from what, though?

You don't think the characters faced, and eventually triumphed over (or not) any kind of challenges whatsoever in carrying the names of their tumultuous ancestors? That it may have been done on purpose by the author to more fully illustrate that triumph over their familial histories?

[Robin]

I think it was confusing, but the old Cathy and the younger Cathy were nothing alike. I agree with the above that the younger versions did triumph despite having similar first names. The book was brutal in the depiction of Heathcliff being abusive to his dogs, maybe because he was seen as an animal until Cathy, the older tamed him.

[Tanvi]

I mean that this could have been an attempt by the author to point out how far the namesakes have come from the others. So in naming the daughter Catherine as well, Bronte could have wanted to depict how similar/different she is to/from her mother.

[Jettcatt]

Perhaps it is a reminder that what we do in this life may just impact on the next life. Or is it simply A name is a name is a name. Or perhaps back then it was maybe a tradition to carry on names? Who knows I still love the book and understood by their personalities who was who.

[Phyllis]

You might want to look at a famous book called the madwoman in the attic by Gilbert and Gubar. They have a brilliant chapter on Wuthering heights where they analyze scenes such as the moment when Cathy os bitten by a raging dog and carried into thrushcross grange to recover. To these writers the bulldog scene is a kind of rape (note tongue of dog hanging out). And afterwards she is brought into civilized repressive world...