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What is your judgement of Catherine Earnshaw in the novel Wuthering Heights? Do you agree with the view that she is utterly unprincipled?

Catherine Earnshaw’s body is not buried in the chapel with the Linton family. Nor is her coffin placed among the tombs of the Earnshaws. Instead she lies, according to Nelly Dean in Chapter XVI “...in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that the heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor...” Where she rests is forever a reminder of her subsequent downfall; desire forcing her to conform and live-out her social ambitions, with secret jealousies, misinterpretations and revenge preventing her selfish compromise between two very different worlds and loves, in order to find contentment in her fiery heart. But among the climbing heath and bilberry plants lies a bittersweet hint of satire in her death she had longed for – to be engulfed by the earth, the moors and time itself, and in turn finding her Heaven.
Margaret Willy states in her characterization of Cathy that she is completely unprincipled and is “...prepared to use any means and sacrifice any person who stands in her way.” The critic supports this judgement by commenting on Cathy’s behaviour in Chapter VIII, when she spitefully pinches Nelly for obeying Hindley’s instructions not to leave her alone with Edgar, denies it, and then deals her a stinging slap. You could describe Cathy’s actions like these as utterly unprincipled, but a naive and comical resonance seems to take hold in each word and act she does. Throughout the novel, we see a notion of maturity - not in a morally-correct sense, but in language never the less - in each character’s dialogue and undertakings by Emily Brontë (we see this after Heathcliff disappears for three years and returns a more cultivated and wealthier gentleman). However, the author seems to emotionally and literally starve Cathy of this development; from her childhood to her death, she...