"Cathy’s appearance in the novel serves as the second half of the story—the part of the story often forgotten in public memory and eulogization of Brontë’s great novel. Cathy is not only the fulfillment of Heathcliff’s dark desire to be haunted, she is also the antidote to the original sin of Wuthering Heights: the lack of compassion and forgiveness exhibited between Catherine and Heathcliff, between Heathcliff and Hindley, between all the individuals who couldn’t manifest that compassion and forgiveness when most needed.
But Cathy is no saint at the beginning of her storyline (and rightly so, for it makes her transfiguration all the more potent and memorable, indeed, admirable). Again, Emily Brontë’s genius is in Cathy’s free choice to...embrace the feminine mystique of compassion, mercy, and love that has been absent in the dark toxic world of Wuthering Heights since Heathcliff’s presence.
[...] Cathy becomes a teacher for Hareton. She helps him in his education. The two do fall in love with each other—a love that was the outgrowth of Cathy’s feminine compassion and mercy which breaks Heathcliff’s heart of stone.
Under the vindicative gaze of Heathcliff, Cathy exhibits her love in a world bereft of love, Heathcliff’s gaze over the love between Cathy and Hareton makes him realize of the love he missed with Catherine because of his inability to forgive. Heathcliff still can’t forgive. So he dies. But his death ends the dark curse that had ensnared Wuthering Heights which allows Cathy to escape the miserable shadow of Heathcliff which inhibited her total transfiguration."
--Libidinal Heights: Love, Lust, and Redemption in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
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