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Examine the theme of revenge in Wuthering Heights
Examine the theme of revenge in Wuthering Heights
Personality of heathcliff
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Recommended: Examine the theme of revenge in Wuthering Heights
In the book Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Heathcliff has taken it upon himself to seek revenge against anyone who mistreated him. While doing so, his cruel acts lead to the demise of the first generations of Earnshaws, the family who adopts him. Although his animosity is aimed to one it becomes out of control, it spreads to everyone like a disease of cruelty and heartbreak. Unfortunately a bitter childhood and betrayal of the heart turns a kind soul into an evil sour man searching for vengeance. The avengement of Heathcliff brings on the rage and corruption to the Earnshaw – Linton families tearing through the first generation.
The anger Heathcliff has for Hindley stems the deepest because of the abuse Heathcliff endured as a child. Heathcliff’s childhood was swept away by Hindley; this is the cause of his revenge. Mr. Earnshaw adopted Heathcliff into the Earnshaw family, making him an outsider. He had much love for Heathcliff, which infuriated Hindley, who became envious. Because of Hindley’s feelings towards Heathcliff, the reader feels that “he is almost like a stray dog brought home to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw.”(McClinton –Temple 1). These feelings caused him to mistreat Heathcliff. After Mr. Earnshaw died, Hindley had complete control over the estate. Heathcliff was deprived of education and was “treated more as an animal than a human.” (McClnton-Temple 1) This ill treatment enforced by Hindley, made it Heathcliff’s goal to bring reprisal and annihilate Hindley. Hindley’s trouble with drinking, which is his ultimate downfall, allowed the revenge be easygoing. Heathcliff involving Hindley in gambling overloads him in debt. In order to pay it off Hindley must mortgage the estate making Heathcliff the new own...
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...ldhood and his love and this brought on the vengeance. The outcome of his retaliation took a massive toll on the first generation and part of the second. Hindley died from drinking, and Catherine dies in childbirth. Isabella, Heathcliff’s first wife, couldn’t take his cruelty and ran away. All of the first generation Earnshaws has died from this tyrannical orphan. But too much anger can also give a person a visit with fate and Heathcliff dies putting the estate back into order once again.
Works Cited
Brontë, Emily, Virginia Woolf, David Cecil, and Charlotte Bronte. Wuthering Heights. Philadelphia: Running, 1991. Print.
"Wuthering Heights." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 308-327. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 9 Feb. 2014.
McClinton-Temple, Jennifer. "cruelty." Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb. 2014
Wuthering Heights went through its own transformation throughout the novel. Wuthering Heights is a good novel to show that everyone and everything has the ability to change. Almost every character’s appearance or personality is altered in some way.
From the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of Heathcliff's life, he has suffered pain and rejection. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is viewed as a thing rather than a child. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out the doors, while Nelly put it on the landing of the stairs hoping that it would be gone the next day. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider. Following the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff suffers cruel mistreatment at the hands of Hindley. In these tender years, he is deprived of love, friendship, and education, while the treatment from jealous Hindley is barbaric and disrupts his mental balance. He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, undergoes regular beatings and forcibly separated from his soul mate, Catherine. The personality that Heathcliff develops in his adulthood has been formed in response to these hardships of his childhood.
Shapiro, Arnold. “‘Wuthering Heights’ as a Victorian Novel.” Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 16. Eds. Joann Cerrito and Paul Kepos. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 108-110.
Heathcliff is a character who was abused in his childhood by Catherine’s brother, Hindley, because of his heritage as a “gypsy”, and Hindley was jealous of the love that Heathcliff got from Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley’s father. This is also selfishness upon Hindley’s part since he only wanted his father’s love for his sister and himself. So to reprimand Heathcl...
Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights impacted him both positively and negatively. Catherine Earnshaw was highly welcoming of him, but her brother Hindley
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a novel about lives that cross paths and are intertwined with one another. Healthcliff, an orphan, is taken in by Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw has two children named Catherine and Hindley. Jealousy between Hindley and Healthcliff was always a problem. Catherine loves Healthcliff, but Hindley hates the stranger for stealing his fathers affection away. Catherine meets Edgar Linton, a young gentleman who lives at Thrushcross Grange. Despite being in love with Healthcliff she marries Edgar elevating her social standing. The characters in this novel are commingled in their relationships with Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
To sum up, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a classic that portrays a love, even though confined by social classes, trespasses boundaries of life and death. The Gothic elements incorporated in this novel such as extreme landscape and weather, supernatural events and death brings about a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere suitable for a revenge plot with heightened emotions.
“Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story”(Atlas, WH p. 299). “Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book” (Douglas, WH p.301). “This is a strange book” (Examiner, WH p.302). “His work [Wuthering Heights] is strangely original” (Britannia, WH p.305). These brief quotes show that early critics of Emily Bronte’s first edition of Wuthering Heights, found the novel baffling in its meaning - they each agreed separately, that no moral existed within the story therefore it was deemed to have no real literary value. The original critical reviews had very little in the way of praise for the unknown author or the novel. The critics begrudgingly acknowledged elements of Wuthering Heights that could be considered strengths – such as, “rugged power” and “unconscious strength” (Atlas, WH p.299), “purposeless power” (Douglas, WH p.301), “evidences of considerable power” (Examiner), “power and originality” (Britannia, WH p.305). Strange and Powerful are two recurring critical interpretations of the novel. The critics did not attempt to provide in depth analysis of the work, simply because they felt that the meaning or moral of the story was either entirely absent or seriously confused.
Heathcliff's many-faceted existence is marked by wickedness, love, and strength. His dark actions are produced by the distortion of his natural personality. Although Heathcliff was once subjected to vicious racism due to his dark skin color and experienced wearisome orphan years in Liverpool, this distortion had already begun when Mr. Earnshaw brought him into Wuthering Heights, a "dirty, ragged, black-haired child"(45; ch.7). Already he was inured to hardship and uncomplainingly accepted suffering. Heathcliff displays his strength and steadfastness when he had the measles, and when Hindley treated him cruelly if he got what he wanted. From the very beginning he showed great co...
Web. 8 Dec. 2010. . Mitchell, Hayley R., ed. Readings on Wuthering Heights.
Isolation is a powerful force. Human beings live, work, and play in groups, and to be separate from the whole of humanity can disorient us, debilitate us, and even make us question our place in the world. Isolation is easily confused with other forms of aloneness such as loneliness and alienation, but the condition of being isolated requires that one be detached from others through reasons not in one’s control. This can be taken into context as to why Heathcliff’s feelings of revenge for basically everyone at Wuthering Heights. His feelings overshadowed and clouded his judgement and made him a bitter man, isolating him from those who he once held dear. Heathcliff’s great natural abilities, strength of character, and love for Catherine Earnshaw all enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings to the status of a wealthy gentleman, but his need to revenge himself for Hindley’s abuse and Catherine’s betrayal leads him into a twisted life of cruelty and hatred.
"Emily Jane Brontë." Alll about the Author of Wuthering Heights. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
Wuthering Heights is a reflection of Emily Bronte's life in many ways. Through fictional setting, characters, and story line she mirrors her own and her family's real life. It is too bad that Emily Bronte died at the young age of thirty-one. She produced this great novel in a short life span and the world will never know what other great works could have come from her life and her pen.
Wuthering Heights. 1847. The. Ed. Richard J. Dunn, Ph.D. 4th ed.
Seichepine, Marielle. "Childhood And Innocence In Wuthering Heights." Bronte Studies 29.3 (2004): 209-215. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.