Heathcliff, in Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights is often referred to in derogatory terms by the other characters, as being ‘the evil beast’, ‘uncivilised’, ‘without refinement’ and so on. Do you agree with such a judgement of Heathcliff?

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's foster son, Heathcliff. Heathcliff is the most significant character in Emily Bronte’s only novel Wuthering Heights. He bestrides the novel which is a story of his love, frustration, hatred, revengeful passion and his reconciliation with life. In a word, Heathcliff is the soul of the novel. He not only acts and suffers, but causes others to act and suffer. His strength permeates the story. His power for good and for evil shocks and surprises us. He is as powerful and amoral as the forces of nature with which he is often compared. He is both worldly and profoundly romantic. Love and hatred merge in him and both are extreme.

“But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman, that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire.”

Wuthering Heights is the place of storm, whereas Thrushcross Grange is the appropriate home of the calm, the gentle Lintons. Heathcliff, a child of the storm, is brought to Wuthering Heights. He falls in love with Catherine, herself a child of storm, but the later developments in the novel arouse his ire and hatred against the Earnshaws and the Lintons. He is embittered by the harsh treatment of Hindley and disillusioned by what he considers the treachery of Catherine. The shock of her infidelity and Hindley’s ill-treatment of him disturb his nature and then he resolves to settle scores by crushing everyone who has stood in his way, everyone who has played to thwart his happiness.

Heathcliff’s origins are unknown. This gives him not only the pathos orphan but an air of mystery that deepens into the suspicion that he is connected with the devil. He is brought to the Earnshaw family as an orphan by Mr. Earnshaw from Liverpool on his business-trip to that town.

At that time Heathcliff was able to talk and walk. Although he is quite helpless, he strikes one as having a sharp understanding and keen sense of dignity as a human being. He does not consider himself inferior to anybody on the basis of material possessions or property.

He considers it infra dig to raise himself up to the level of Edgar Linton and asserts before Cathy, Being brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw and lodged with his family, Heathcliff is regarded by everyone in the house with abhorrence chiefly because of his colour. But the master, Mr. Earnshaw, is very fond of him and likes him even more than his son, Hindley. The result is that Hindley’s dislike of him is deepened. He ill-treats Heathcliff and thrashes him frequently. However, Heathcliff bears the ill-treatment with patience. His fortitude is boundless which enables him to endure suffering to any extent. He always keeps calm and uncomplaining. True to his name he is hard as ‘cliff’ all along. This habit endears him both to Mr. Earnshaw and his daughter Catherine.

The skill with which he wrecks vengeance and the way he succeeds brings us into the dilemma as to whether he is a normal man or a monster. The question that Isabella put to Nelly is pertinent. Even Nelly Dean remains undecided if he was wholly a man or ‘a ghoul, or a vampire.’ As a matter of fact, Heathcliff was himself conscious that he would be considered a demon in human form. “I believe you think me a friend,” he said. He was inwardly wrestling with a bitter situation and was cruelly tortured, but he acted fiend-like in order to show that he had been wronged and that such wrongs are in human nature. He says to Ellen Dean:

“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails ! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain.”

Heathcliff’s Vindictive, Destructive Nature

Throughout the novel, Heathcliff is marked by his evil nature. It is clear in his face as a boy and it is stressed when he returns a rich man. Money and the trappings of a gentleman can do nothing to remove what nature has given him. Emily Bronte is wonderfully subtle in her presentation of Heathcliff. Heathcliff is a thoroughly ambiguous and enigmatic character: as a child he has a wonderful sense of love and freedom but as a man he is a destroyer. If he is a destroyer, he is also a pain-racked soul. He becomes hideously worldly yet he has a poet’s vision of Catherine’s ghost. We are shown by his treatment of Isabella that he can abuse love in the most heartless fashion. But we cannot say that Heathcliff has no heart.

Emily Bronte is careful to present the evil and destructive side of Heathcliff. We see him getting the hopelessly alcoholic Hindley into his power and, far worse, his corruption of Hareton into little more than an animal. He is also preparing emotional torture for Isabella. The Heathcliff who holds the fading Catherine in his arms is profoundly evil for all that he inspires our compassion. We cannot measure Heathcliff by conventional standards. He is too awe-inspiring and too ambiguous.

Throughout Wuthering Heights two distinct yet related obsessions drive Heathcliff's character: his desire for Catherine's love and his need for revenge. Catherine, the object of his obsession, becomes the essence of his life, yet, in a sense, he ends up murdering his love. Ironically, after her death, Heathcliff's obsession only intensifies.

Heathcliff's love for Catherine enables him to endure Hindley's maltreatment after Mr. Earnshaw's death. But after overhearing Catherine admit that she could not marry him, Heathcliff leaves. Nothing is known of his life away from her, but he returns with money. Heathcliff makes an attempt to join the society to which Catherine is drawn. Upon his return, she favors him to Edgar but still he cannot have her. He is constantly present, lurking around Thrushcross Grange, visiting after hours, and longing to be buried in a connected grave with her so their bodies would disintegrate into one. Ironically, his obsession with revenge seemingly outweighs his obsession with his love, and that is why he does not fully forgive Catherine for marrying Edgar.

After Catherine's death, he must continue his revenge — a revenge that starts as Heathcliff assumes control of Hindley's house and his son — and continues with Heathcliff taking everything that is Edgar's. Although Heathcliff constantly professes his love for Catherine, he has no problem attempting to ruin the life of her daughter. He views an ambiguous world as black and white: a world of haves and have-nots. And for too long, he has been the outsider. That is why he is determined to take everything away from those at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange who did not accept him. For Heathcliff, revenge is a more powerful emotion than love.

Emily’s description of this woman as delicate is similar to the ways in which she later describes the Linton family in Wuthering Heights. This delicate description is her way of saying a person is proper on the surface, and ignorant of their own animality within. The fact that this woman has killed small dogs through smothering affection proves the woman excused the deaths as unfortunate incidents instead of actual murder. Her inability to see her own likeness to the cat that ‘torments’ its prey is a result of her denial of her own tormenting of animals. Emily then explains how the husband’s love for hunting proves that humans also torment their kill before death. In this gruesome image, a fox is being gnawed at by hounds, causing it to bleed and suffer. The delicate lady avoids such spectacles because the blood is an indication that the act is violent and harmful. By avoiding it, she does not have to acknowledge her husband’s wrongdoings. As for her lapdogs, if she killed them through affection, there most likely was no blood present, making it easier for her to feign ignorance. Similarly, her son who crushes a butterfly in his hand, can be shown sympathy and affection by her because blood is not present in his hand. The lifeless creature is small and seemingly insignificant. In order to show the mirror image of the boy in the form of a cat, Emily wishes she could have a cat with a rat in its mouth, most likely bleeding from the attack. The presence of blood is the delicate lady’s argument about torment, however in all four cases, the end result is still death. The only difference is that, in the deaths that are more violent, the blood makes a more poignant statement.

Read Also - Heathcliff as Dark Evil

Emily ends the devoir by blaming humankind for the evil traits of the cat by writing, “They know how to value our favors at their true price, because they guess the motives that prompt us to grant them, and if those motives might sometimes be good, undoubtedly they remember always that they owe all their misery and all their evil qualities to the great ancestor of humankind.

Through childhood, Heathcliff is treated most harshly by Hindley, who feels threatened by the affection and attention given to Heathcliff by his father, Earnshaw. At one point, Hindley directly refers to Heathcliff as a dog, threatening him with an iron weight and crying “Off, dog!” (39). Another time, Hindley knocked Heathcliff to the ground, and in order to regain composure prior to entering the home again, Heathcliff chose to sit down on a bundle of hay to collect himself, acting like a barn animal. Despite Hindley’s blows, Heathcliff still had the affections of Earnshaw and Catherine, until the death of the former.

Heathcliff’s bodily position as Earnshaw is dying shows his dog-like characteristics. Heathcliff, Catherine, and Earnshaw are together: “Miss Cathy has been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap” (43). This is the last instance where Heathcliff acts as a domesticated dog, peacefully lying down with the only ones who show him any respect. As Terry Eagleton notes in Myths of Power, “Earnshaw pets and favours [Heathcliff], and in doing so creates fresh inequalities in the family hierarchy which becomes the source of Hindley’s hatred” (103).

Once Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff loses any chance of fitting into the home. Since Hindley views Heathcliff as an interloper, he never feels it necessary to respect him. What he does not care to realize is the detrimental effect this will have as time goes on. Eagleton writes, “Heathcliff disturbs the Heights because he is simply superfluous…The 21 superfluity he embodies is that of a sheerly human demand for recognition; but since there is no space for such…it proves destructive rather than creative” (106). Hindley’s treatment of Heathcliff, stemming directly from insecurity and selfishness, creates this monster of a character who simply wanted to be recognized and seen as an equal.

Question - 1 “Fielding is one of the most pro-woman writers in English.” Do youagree with this view? Justify your answer with illustrations from the text of Tom Jones.

Question - 2 Discuss how Pride and Prejudice engages with the theme of love and marriage.

NEXT QUESTION

FOR PDF & Handwritten

WhatsApp - 8130208920