Cathy Earnshaw from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s eponymous novel are two spirited, rebellious women, both of them passionately in love with difficult, unsuitable men, are high on our list of inspiring heroines.

In teenage years, it was Cathy from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights who fired the imagination. How we identified with brave, fiery Cathy, roaming the moors with her soulmate, driven to distraction when they parted, a wild-eyed victim of love.

Cathy tapped into our romantic souls, enhanced by a gothic horror vibe and Kate Bush’s interpretation of her in that remarkable song from 1978, Wuthering Heights.

Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s novel evoked a less emotional response. She appeared to be a duller character, worthy and principled, one to admire rather than love.

Wretched of Rochester

However, Jane’s anguish at having to reject the man she loves is as real as anything Cathy suffers. When Rochester reveals the truth about his wife, and asks Jane to go away with him and live as husband and wife, she is utterly wretched.

Unable to agree, she is devastated not just by her own loss but by the thought of what her abandonment will do to him – she sheds ‘stormy, scalding heart-wrung tears’ for Rochester as well as for herself.

Her decision is governed by principle and a sense of duty, which override emotion and desire. She hangs on to her self-respect, although every fibre of her being longs for him.

The Lady in Wed

Cathy makes a decision too. She decides to marry Edgar Linton, although she loves Heathcliff.

To a certain extent, it’s hard to blame her.

She is drawn into the comfort and orderliness and security of Thrushcross Grange, so different from the grimness of Wuthering Heights. She is seduced by the trappings of becoming a lady.

Cathy admits she wants to be married to a rich man and hold a prominent social position in the neighbourhood. And Heathcliff, to say the least, is not good husband material – and he disappears for three years, so he isn’t available anyway. (In a different context, in a different book, Jane Eyre too makes a decision to marry a man who does not have her heart, although for more altruistic reasons. So perhaps we should not be too quick to judge.)

Cathy the Prima Donna

But Cathy can’t let go. She marries Edgar and is thrown into turmoil when Heathcliff returns. She wants Edgar to accept their friendship and their bond – as if. She believes she can use the Linton money to help Heathcliff, while Heathcliff knows her marriage has altered her status and their relationship forever.

Viewed from a later perspective, Cathy’s faults seem less forgiveable, while Jane increases in stature and interest.

Cathy appears a little bit tiresome. You want to tell her to get a warm coat, eat some proper food and stop being a prima donna. You itch to give her a metaphorical slap.

Her off-the-wallness seems less quirky than self-indulgent. Her remorseless haunting of Heathcliff is reminiscent of a modern-day stalker, a deranged woman out of a domestic psychological thriller, perhaps, or the first wife who still has a hold over her ex’s heart… Cathy is a dangerous woman, fascinating, self-obsessed, whose belief that she can have it all ruins three lives.

Thoroughly Modern Jane

Both heroines are timeless, but Jane Eyre is the more modern woman. As an orphan and a single woman in Victorian times, she took responsibility for her own life, making her way in the world as a teacher and governess.

Nowadays, you could see her heading a major charity, negotiating with passion and good sense for causes she believes in. She would be elegantly dressed in an understated way, in her trademark muted colours of course. I’m thinking something like Cos perhaps, or Jil Sander.

She understands conflicting demands, she knows what it’s like to be a woman balancing duty and desire. And underneath her contained exterior runs that seam of elfishness, that touch of weirdness which Rochester identified right from the beginning. An intriguing combination.

So hats (or bonnets) off to you, Jane (as long as it’s not the square piece of unembroidered linen you chose as your wedding veil).

My new novel, Charlotte’s Wedding, explores the issue of marrying for love or money and is  a modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It explores the compromises and choices made by women on independence and security in their complicated 21st Century lives.

It’s available at Amazon worldwide.