The C[K]atherine Paradox

Note: Readers should be aware that this article analyses, though does not explicitly detail, the events of The Vampire Diaries series, which is rated 15.

Though perhaps polarised in two very different cultural spheres, 2009's The Vampire Diairies produced a manipulative, sychophantic Katherine Pierce that eerily echoed Emily Brontë's gothic heroine Catherine Earnshaw of her 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. Each of these strong, wild women possesses shared and individual characteristics which make them an empowering vampiric icon and a rebellion against victorian gender expectations respectively; however, perhaps the strongest link between these two historically seperated women is their ability to drive men to an insanity that transcends mortal existence. 

Katherine Pierce - The Vampire Diaries

"Life is too cruel, if we cease to believe in love, why would we want to live?" - Katherine Pierce

Interweaved into the origin stories of both love interests of the 2009 teen drama, Katherine Pierce is one of the primary antagonists in The Vampire Diaries series. Praying on the hearts of two extremely close and entirely ignorant 19th Century brothers, Katherine seems to embody the literary stereotype of 'dangerous seductress', driving Stefan and Damon Salvatore to vampirism. Their 'descent' into immortality is shadowed by their respective transcendent love for the anti-heroine, and Damon particularly holds an almost Petrarchan idolisation of Katherine. When both brothers face the aftermath of Katherine's supposed death, Damon is further divided from his brother, as his deeper love for Katherine chases him into an existential depression and meaningless vampiric existence.

"There's no world without her." - Damon Salvatore

Damon Salvatore is left abandoned, bereft of his love, and estranged from his brother; the point at which we are introduced to him in the TV series entirely mirrors the isolated, crazed, and misanthropic condition in which we find Heathcliff in Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Forced into a vampiric existence without Katherine by his brother Stefan, Damon begins a centuries long revenge rampage, which, unlike Heathcliff, is not limited to the bounds of Yorkshire moors. Katherine's ability to entirely capture and control the existence of another in such a way is entirely characteristic of her predecessor, Catherine Earnshaw, stamping the 'C[K]atherine' brand with an ability to remove a persons will, captivate their heart and, ultimately, dominate their reality.

"I've been in love. It's painful, pointless, and overrated." - Damon Salvatore 

Catherine Earnshaw - Wutherine Heights

"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you-haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!" - Heathcliff

The Catherine of Brontë's Wuthering Heights is similarly the focus of an almost addictive love, and she too captures the hearts of two very different men - the refined Edgar Linton and the wild Heathcliff. Catherine's love also acts as a derisive tool in the plot of Brontë's gothic novel, further dividing the two families inhabiting the Yorkshire moors, and establishing a life-long feud that transcends her relatively short lifetime; this is very explicitly echoed in The Vampire Diaries, in which too, Katherine's 'death' leaves the polarised Salvatore brothers in conflict.

"It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest . . . I'll do both, as soon as I possibly can. But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water rest within arms' length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest . . . I've done no injustice, and I repent nothing. I'm too happy; and yet I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body but does not satisfy itself." - Heathcliff

The condition in which Catherine leaves Heathcliff is one almost vampiric - his insanity over the loss of Catherine drives him to forgo food and sleep, seemingly surviving on the promise of vengeance alone. This lack of basic human functions, in conjunction with his almost ghostly presence and omniscience, leaves Heathcliff reduced to an empty shell of humanity, so exactly paralleled to Damon's existence within The Vampire Diaries, and further evidences the commonality of a haunting love in both renditions of C[K]atherine.

"I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being." - Catherine Earnshaw

The chiefest difference, however, which distinguishes Brontë's Catherine from the Katherine of The Vampire Diaries is her willingness and capacity to love in return. Unlike the aloof Katherine of the teen drama series, Catherine Earnshaw shares a soul deep connection with the anti-hero Heathcliff, and their requited love arguably diminishes all infatuations of most modern media, including the 2009 show. Catherine Earnshaw's love for Heathcliff completely dominates her soul and existence, and though she is a very vindictive partner, she undoubtably would have succumbed to the same insanity as Heathcliff, had he died first; unlike Katherine Pierce, who heartlessly leaves Damon in his state of heartbreak, allowing him to believe her dead.