In the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Heathcliff is an orphan boy brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, who has two children of his own already - Catherine and Hindley. Heathcliff changes over the course of his life by the following; Heathcliff begins by getting along well with Catherine Earnshaw, however, Catherine Earnshaw is introduced to Edgar Linton and Heathcliff becomes jealous of their forming relationship, and once Catherine has passed away after delivering Edgar’s child, Heathcliff becomes haunted by her ghost, and wishes to only be united with her in death. Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights impacted him both positively and negatively. Catherine Earnshaw was highly welcoming of him, but her brother Hindley …show more content…
The sympathetic part of Heathcliff shows through when he sees Catherine in the beginning stages of her sickness after childbirth. “He neither spoke, nor loosed his hold, for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I dare say…” (159). The sympathetic part of Heathcliff kicks in when he sees the woman he loves dying right before him. Heathcliff began to ask Catherine the questions he had not been able to ask her before, whether it had been due to his pride or to his absence - was insignificant., “‘...You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?” (162). When the novel begins, it is mentioned that Heathcliff is shouting, “‘Come in! Come in!’ he sobbed. ‘Cathy, do come. Oh do - once more! Oh! My heart’s darling, hear me this time - Catherine, at last!’” (28). Heathcliff attempts to get Catherine’s ghost to speak to him, because his main goal is to be united with her in death. Heathcliff’s character changes relatively fast when he sees Catherine dying in her bed. There is a sympathetic side shown that has not been quite expressed before, and also the feelings that Heathcliff kept bottled
Heathcliff's love for Catherine transcends the normal physical "true love" into spiritual love. He can withstand anything against him to be with her. After Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights, he flogged Heathcliff like a slave. Although Heathcliff could have simply run away, his decision to endure the physical pains shows his unrelenting devotion to Catherine. Fortunately, Catherine feels as deeply for Heathcliff as he does for her, explaining to Nelly that "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…" Their love for each other is so passionate that they can not possibly live apart. At Catherine's death, Heathcliff hopes that she will not rest, but will haunt him until he dies. This absurdity contradicts the traditional norm that one should pray that the dead rest in peace. Near the end of the novel, we learn that Catherine has haunted Heathcliff, allowing him only fleeting glances of her. This shows that despite their physical separation, nothing can part them spiritually. When Heathcliff dies and unites with Catherine once again, the neighbors see them haunt the moors. We finally see the power of their love; Not only does this love transcend physical barriers, it transcends time as well...
The initial downward spiral of Heathcliff’s life was predominantly caused by harsh influences in the environment in which he was raised. Heathcliff, an adopted child, grew up in Wuthering Heights, a desolate and dystopian estate when compared to the beauty of the neighboring Thrushcross Grange. In childhood, Heathcliff displayed evidence of a sympathetic personality through his emotional attachment to Catherine and kind attitude towards Nelly. At the time of Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Nelly describes a scene where, “Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she
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.
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 and Cathy have a sadistic relationship. They are only truly in love when they are hurting each other. As Catherine lay dying, she wants Heathcliff, her love, to join her in death. She pleads to him:
On the face of it, it would seem that the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is self-destructive to an extreme. Due to the lovers’ precarious circumstances, passionate personalities and class divisions, it seems that fate transpires to keep them apart and therefore the hopelessness of their situation drives them to self destruction. However, although the relationship is undeniably self-destructive, there are elements within it that suggest the pain Heathcliff and Catherine put each other through is atoned for to an extent when they share their brief moments of harmony.
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.
Catherine is free-spirited, wild, impetuous, and arrogant as a child, she grows up getting everything she wants as Nelly describes in chapter 5, ‘A wild, wicked slip she was’. She is given to fits of temper, and she is torn between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to both of the men who love her, ultimately; Catherine’s selfishness ends up hurting everyone she loves, including herself.
Heathcliff and Catherine have loved each other since their childhood. Initially, Catherine scorned the little gypsy boy; she showed her distaste by “spitting” at him (Brontë 27). However, it was not long before Heathcliff and Catherine became “very think” (Brontë 27). They became very close friends; they were practically brother and sister (Mitchell 122). Heathcliff is intent upon pleasing Catherine. He would “do her bidding in anything” (Brontë 30). He is afraid of “grieving” her (Brontë 40). Heathcliff finds solace and comfort in Catherine’s company. When Catherine is compelled to stay at Thrushcross Grange to recover from her injury, she returns as “a very dignified person” (Brontë 37). Her association with the gente...
The basic conflict of the novel that drives Heathcliff and Catherine apart is social. Written after the Industrial Revolution, Wuthering Heights is influenced by the rise of new fortunes and the middle class in England. Money becomes a new criterion to challenge the traditional criterias of class and family in judging a gentleman’s background. Just as Walpole who portrays the tyrannies of the father figure Manfred and the struggles of the Matilda who wants to marry the peasant Theodore, as depicted in the quote “(…) improbability that either father would consent to bestow his heiress on so poor a man, though nobly born”(p. 89), Brontë depicts a brutal bully Hindley who torments Heathcliff and separates Catherine from him. Heathcliff, a gypsy outcast picked u...
In Wuthering Heights, it is almost as if the story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is repeated through Cathy Linton and Hareton Earnshaw. There are some discernible differences between these two relationships, but the general outline of the stories share some striking similarities. For example, Heathcliff could not be with Catherine Earnshaw because her brother, Hindley, had reduced him to the status of a brute. After Mr. Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff was treated like a servant instead of a member of the family. Later in the story, Heathcliff does the same thing to Hareton, Hindley's son, but in a subtle way that prevents any animosity on Hareton's part. Hindley loses everything that would have been Hareton's inheritance, leaving Hareton with nothing. Heathcliff takes advantage of the situation and Hindley's wealth is inevitably turned over to Heathcliff. Heathcliff sees p...
During the first half of the book, Catherine showed different types of love for two different people. Her love for Heathcliff was her everything, it was her identity to love and live for Heathcliff but as soon as she found out how society views Heathcliff, she sacrificed their love and married Edgar Linton in the hopes of saving Heathcliff from Hindley and protecting him from the eyes of society. In her conversation with Nelly, Cathy who professed her love for Heathcliff quoted “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself.” Catherine proved Nelly Dean that the only person who can make her feel pain and sorrow is Heathcliff. The extent of her love was uncovered when she sang her praise of “I am Heathcliff” because this was the turning point in the book that allowed the readers to truly understand and see the depth of Cathy's love for Heathcliff. On the other hand, Catherine's love for Edgar wasn't natural because it was a love that she taught herself to feel. It might have come unknowingly to Cathy but she did love Edgar as she said “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees.” Cathy knew that it was not impossible to love Edgar for he was a sweet and kind gentleman who showed her the world but unlike ...
Although, Mr. Earnshaw tried to make Heathcliff an equal part of the family, Heathcliff never truly fits in. Heathcliff is from a completely different social class than the rest of his “family”. This led to the hatred that Hindley felt towards Heathcliff. Hindley robs Heathcliff of his education, forces him to work as a servant at Wuthering Heights and frequently beats him. Throughout this all, Heathcliff never complains.
In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the Earnshaws, a middle class family, live at the estate, Wuthering Heights. When Mr. Earnshaw takes a trip to Liverpool, he returns with an orphan whom he christens “Heathcliff”. During their formative years, Catherine, Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter, plays with Heathcliff on the moors and becomes close with him. As a result, they form a special bond and Heathcliff and Catherine fall in love, unlike Hindley, Mr. Earnshaw’s son, who does not get along with Heathcliff. While Heathcliff benefits from his relationships, his connections are disadvantaged in terms of status, reputation, financial stability, and happiness.
In the novel Wuthering Heights, the dark and mysterious Heathcliff once began his life with an open heart, but after mistreatment from Edgar and Hindley he turns to revenge. Heathcliff's actions are reasonable; he has been hurt from the unfair reason of discrimination. Heathcliff slowly becomes sickly obsessed with planning an elaborate revenge after eavesdropping a conversation between his beloved Catherine to Nelly. He hears his young beautiful and idolized Catherine say, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff” (77). Heathcliff, heartbroken and hopeless, abruptly leaves Wuthering Height for two years. Catherine is left wondering where he is. Heathcliff leaves in search of revenge.