While both women recognize their suffering and act to defend themselves from their abusers, Catherine is more aggressive than Cleofilás. Catherine has an abusive personality and manipulates both Heathcliff and his wife Isabella throughout the novel. For instance, Cleofilás fears her husband’s reaction if he finds her escaping him, but still leaves him despite her anxiety. On the day that she escapes her husband, she notices:
This quote shows Cleofilás’ passivity in combatting her husband’s abuse, and her intense fear of her husband as a result of her passivity. Cleofilás defends herself from her husband’s physical and verbal violence by returning to Mexico, although she fears her husband’s reaction if they ever meet again. Like Cleofilás is…show more content… Yet, Heathcliff abuses Catherine via emotional manipulation, not physical harm, so she sees no danger to her personal safety. To contrast, Cleofilás’ husband uses both physical and verbal abuse which causes her to fear for her safety and leave her relationship. Cleofilás is aware that her husband’s behaviour is a risk to her physical safety, which urges her to seek help and leave her situation. When contemplating her relationship while washing the dishes, she thinks about This woman found on the side of the inter-state. This one [pushed] from a moving car. This one’s cadaver, this one unconscious, this one beaten blue … The same grisly news in the page of the dailies. She [dunked] a glass under the soapy water for a moment - shivered” (Cisneros 225). After her husband hits and throws objects at her, she fears for her physical safety and does not want the same fate as the women in the “grisly news”. Thus, she sees no choice other than leaving her husband. Unlike Cleofilás, Catherine is not married to Heathcliff, so does not take his abuse seriously as she is not legally or religiously bound to him, and it is emotional abuse, not physical. Heathcliff chides Catherine for marrying Edgar,
