Helen: The Modern Cathy?

I usually try and spread out my posts on Primeval, but I don't have another topic I really want to focus on right now and my Primeval posts have been getting a decent amount of views, so here I go with more rambling about the show.

Cathy, assiduous readers will recall, is from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (and it is Cathy senior I am discussing). Cathy is, of course, at the center of a love triangle with Heathcliff and Linton--she chooses Linton, but really loves Heathcliff. She is also, at certain points, sort of like the unrestrained feminine force. She even seems on the psycho side at times. (It's things like this that make the novel so entertaining to read and analyze . . . )

Like Cathy, Primeval's Helen sets up her own triangle. Back when she was married to Nick, she had an affair with Stephen. In Seasons 1 and 2, Helen seems to go back and forth between the two, trying to gain the trust of whichever one she thinks will listen to her. It doesn't take long for Cutter to dismiss her, so it is Stephen who ends up trusting her (essentially to his doom, you could melodramatically say). Would that make Cutter Helen's Linton and Stephen her Heathcliff? Maybe. But you could also argue for the opposite. Cutter also becomes the man Helen can't have (since he keeps rejecting her), like Heathcliff (although Cathy could have chosen Heathcliff--sort of).

Let me return to the "unrestrained feminine force" idea. Helen is completely mad. And completely smart and driven. She's disturbing because she always lies and we hardly ever know everything she knows or what exactly her plan is. She says things against humanity, but always comes back to humanity--back to the ARC, to Cutter, to Stephen. I suppose you could say that she's disturbing to Stephen because she's desirable, even though he knows what her personality is like. Is she femininity gone completely off? Sort of. Although this isn't because she has been, like a nineteenth century character, suppressed--it's just because she's Helen.

I wonder what Cathy would think about Helen. She might think Helen has some good ideas, but I think Cathy would be very unlike Helen if she were born today. If that were the case, would she have had any reason to ever pick Linton over Heathcliff? The two of them could have just lived their life together, not like Helen who had to constantly be discovering new things and feeling in power essentially over existence. Since Helen's character isn't responding to repressed Victorian women's ideals, she has to respond to other things. Technology, science, ethics, knowledge, awareness, privacy and publicity, that sort of thing.

The Phantom is Also a Rochester

Click here for my introduction to "The Rochester Character" and here for the second addition to it.

I have a fourth character to add to the jumble of Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre, Henry Higgins from Pygmalion, and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. The newbie is the title character of The Phantom of the Opera. I mean him no offense by calling him "the phantom" instead of his name, Eric; it's just that most people don't know his name. Even less people than know that Sleeping Beauty's name is Aurora, I'd say.

The most obvious similarity here is the controlling characteristic. Out of the four, the phantom seems the one who has the most control. The entire opera is under his control. Heathcliff only controls a couple of houses out in the country, Higgins only controls his work and everything relating to it, and Rochester acts like he's in control, but really isn't. He has a past and present with Bertha that he can't escape and Jane chooses to leave him.

With the exception of self-centered Higgins, they're all exerting this control, to a degree, for a woman. The phantom sets up his elaborate scene to gain Christine, like Heathcliff wants revenge for Cathy and Rochester wants to be able to have a future with Jane.

The phantom is very similar in my eyes to Heathcliff with the buried-deep good core beneath so much evil from the pain of the past. (That's a nice, wordy description, isn't it?) He, like Heathcliff, couldn't be accepted by the world, because of his appearance versus his lack of social standing. He used the excuse to cause torment to others. Christine isn't much like Cathy, though, except that they both choose another man. Christine is a better person, which is why she doesn't love the phantom back, even if she can and does pity him.

Heathcliff is a Rochester

To continue with "The Rochester Character," here's the next character to add to the bunch: Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Although I don't have too many particular feelings for Mr. Heathcliff besides a little pity, I do love his name. It's short to say, long to spell, a stand out among other characters, and it has a nice natural influence. But on to our comparison.

Heathcliff, like Rochester and Higgins, is also changeable and moody. But he's darkly so. He's always sinister, even when acting kind. Most of the time, his quick changes in mood are when he figures out how he can manipulate the people around him to suit his plans for revenge and ruining everyone's life. Happy person. That pessimism links him closely to Rochester, who broods over his past, then broods over losing his only hope in Jane. But Rochester only broods, Heathcliff acts with vehemence.

Though it's odd: I think of Heathcliff as having a naturally good center hidden somewhere inside of all his evil and Rochester as having a naturally hard and dark center inside his attempts to overshadow it. Which in the end, he does manage to do, thanks to Jane for "showing him the light." Going back to that pity I have for Heathcliff, I don't think he ever really wanted to do wrong. But he had no one. He had an adopted family that didn't like him much. He had a friend that he loved who was forsaking him for a passing (and rich) fancy of hers. It killed the good in him. It makes me wonder what Heathcliff would've been like if he had chosen differently. He threw himself so entirely into his evil purpose that I'd like to see that force put into a good purpose.

I said that the good in him was killed, but it wasn't entirely taken away, all the same. This is why I see him with a good center: even in all his darkness, he still remembers Cathy so tenderly. He tries to gouge out his heart, but it's still there. Which is similar to how Rochester simply despairs without Jane, but still loves her and is able to continue on with her so easily when she does come back.

Fish Names

My brother has a tank of five goldfish, so I decided that I would do him the service of naming them for him. I don't think he actually knows all the names I've come up with, but let's not talk about that. I just have to remind him some more.

I started off naming one "Phantom" because it has an orange cape on its back, like what the Phantom of the Opera wears in the movie. Then I named the runt with funny colors Mortimer, after Mortimer Mouse, who is also a little odd looking. But it's turned out that Mortimer is the biggest fish now and a the only solid, shining orange, so his name doesn't fit very well anymore.

I decided to go ahead and name the rest after characters, also. The one that used to be the biggest is Grendel, as the threatening one of the bunch. Then I decided to go along with the villain theme and name the other one Heathcliff, just because that's such a cool name.

What of the last? It didn't have a name for the longest time, but last night I thought I should do something my brother would appreciate. I thought, maybe something from Star Trek. He'd like "Picard," but that didn't seem right. So I thought about who the villain is on the Enterprise. Q. Yes, Q is the name for the last fish. Not literary or even booky, but it fits.