Eddie and Catherine are two main characters in Arthur Miller’s 1955 play, ‘A View from the Bridge.’ It is set in 1950’s America in an Italian-American neighbourhood near Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Catherine is an orphan who grew up with her aunt and her aunt’s husband. She sees them as her parents. Eddie who is her aunt’s husband is like a real father to Catherine. Eddie and Catherine’s relationship changes from father and daughter to woman and man throughout the play. This change affects everybody around them and causes problems which ends tragically.
In the play there are several main stages that show us the changes in Eddie and Catherine’s relationship. They are minor things but each one changes their relationship noticeably. The first incident is when Eddie starts commenting on Catherine’s new clothes and the way she walks down the street, claiming she gives him the “willies” the way she does and that she’s walking “wavy”. Through their conversation you get the idea that he is very overprotective of her when she says, “Eddie, I wish there was one guy you couldn’t tell me things about!” and that she has realised. It is also clear that Eddie has a lot of control over Catherine and seems to emotionally blackmail her when he says, “I promised your mother on her deathbed.” This dialogue is an indirect form of controlling her by playing with her emotions. He knows how to play with her heart. This shocks the audience because it is not something a real father figure would do.
Marco and Rodolpho arriving from Italy creates tension because Catherine instantly takes a liking to Rudolpho and she starts to flirt with him. Eddie doesn’t like this and so when they all have a conversation he usually addresses Marco only and in some cases ignores Rodolpho or cuts through his sentences.
When Rodolpho is singing, Catherine is mesmerised which Eddie isn’t happy about so he tells Rodolpho to stop and asks him if he wants to be “picked up” because if he carries on...