[17] ISABELLA LINTON’S COURAGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS: A STUDY Salma Haque Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh Email: haque_salma@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories of all time. The novel published a year before her death in 1848, is a complex piece of work. The book contains so many troubled , tumultuous, and rebellious elements of romanticism. It is the story of two opposing families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons and an outsider called Heathcliff. The Earnshaw family consists of Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw and their children, Catherine and Hindley, and the Linton family consists of Mr, and Mrs. Linton and their two children Isabella and Edgar. In the course of the novel Heathcliff elopes with Isabella and later on marries her. She is a naïve girl when she first comes in contact with Heathcliff. After the elopement she undergoes a radical change. Heathcliff’s brutality and mockery of love for her transform her into a brave woman. Though she is not a major character, she is a recognizable individual. Despite her appearance in eight chapters in a novel of thirty-four chapters, her presence is enough to get a better understanding of Heathcliff’s true character. This paper aims to show Isabella as a courageous woman. Wuthering Heights is a novel of revenge, with Heathcliff the revenger. The subsidiary themes of passion, social status, adultery and violence have been intertwined with the main theme of revenge. When the novel first appeared it was called ‘devillish’ as the passions involved in it are exceptionally violent. In the words of David Dichess: “There is nothing quite like Wuthering Heights anywhere else in English literature” (Daichess, 1066). When the second stage of the story begins we see Heathcliff becoming a villain who “… wreaks his vengeance on Hindley, Edgar and Isabella” (Watson, 91). Heathcliff’s arrival to Thrushcross Grange disturbs the happiness of Catherine, Edgar and Isabella. Upon his return he acquires power by taking control of the Heights. Soon after he reappears, Nelly, one of the narrators of the novel, compares him “ to a bird of bad omen” and “ … an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy” (146). Heathcliff hates Edgar as he has robbed him of Catherine who was the bliss of his life. When Edgar refused to treat him as a social equal his hatred intensifies. Hence: “He not only acts and suffers, but causes others to act and suffer” (Watson, 88). During his regular visit to the Grange, Heathcliff attempts to win Edgar’s sister Isabella. He encourages her foolish infatuation for him to take revenge on Edgar whom he hates. Heathcliff’s pretended love tempts Isabella to marry him. Despite being conscious of her breeding and social class, she