The View from a Bridge. How does Eddies and Catherines relationship development throughout the play?

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How does Eddies’ and Catherine’s relationship development throughout the play?

Eddie’s and Catherine’s relationship is the most important relationship in the play. It starts off as a harmless father-daughter relationship, but ends up sending Eddie crazy and leads to his death.

The relationship starts off like any father-daughter relationship, even though Catherine isn’t actually Eddie’s daughter. Eddie is protective towards Catherine like any father and Catherine thrives on Eddie’s approval like any daughter; this can be seen in the first scene when Catherine wears a new skirt she bought for her new job. This is when you first see Eddie’s suppressed sexual feelings towards her as he acts with anger and anxiety to the skirt and job, saying ‘I think it’s too short, ain’t it?’ And then says in reaction to the job ‘that ain’t what I wanted, though’. He says that because she hasn’t finished school yet, but also because he is being protective of her because he is worried about the working conditions at the navy yard, since there are a lot of men working there and he doesn’t want her catching the eye of any young men.

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When Rodolfo arrives in the Carbone home, Catherine is instantly drawn to him, which takes her attention away from Eddie, and then results a rivalry between Eddie and Rodolfo to win over Catherine. Catherine’s attraction towards Rodolfo makes Eddie jealous which then leads him to disapprove of Rodolfo. This is shown when Eddie says ‘hat’s a nice kid? He gives me the heebie-jeebies’ This illustrates that Eddie doesn’t like Rodolfo, because Rodolfo is putting himself towards Catherine, and is threaten by Rodolfo. Since Eddie is threaten he tries to make Rodolfo look bad in Catherine’s eyes, by saying to ...

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