Wuthering Heights: Heathcliff As A Villain

Everyone loves a good story villain. Characters who commit demonic deeds, go against the story protagonists and conventional ways of thought, driven to complete a goal they have set. The way villains think and act have a monumental impact on the story plots. The genre of Gothic literature is filled with these types of characters, often described as being dark, brooding, and tortured. However, in Emily Brönte’s novel Wuthering Heights, she casts a character with traditionally villainous qualities as the protagonist, an antihero of sorts. Described as a Byronic Don Juan, her story hero Heathcliff has all the makings of a bad guy; from his swarthy complexion and vengeful motivations to his violent nature that stems from his tortured childhood.

Heathcliff’s wrathfulness towards others is often said to have stemmed from his tortured upbringing. Throughout the novel, Heathcliff is not only tormented, but goes on to torture others like Isabella and Edgar, as well as the children.
To begin, Heathcliff throughout his life is often mistreated and isolated. Even before his introduction into Wuthering Heights, it can be surmised that Heathcliff does not have the best start in life. He is described as being “a dirty, ragged, black-haired child… starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool” (Brönte 36). He first appears in the novel when Mr. Earnshaw brings him back to Wuthering Heights and “from the very beginning, he bred bad feelings in the house” (Brönte 37). He is not even referred to as a he, but as an “it.” When he is finally given a name, they give him only one, Heathcliff, because they do not want him to inherit the wealth of the Earnshaw family, which makes him feel like an outsider. The other children in the family, Hindley and Catherine, do not help to make him feel any more welcome; Catherine begins her introduction to him by “spitting at the stupid little thing” while Hindley resents him because he views “Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections and his privileges (Brönte 36-37). Mrs. Earnshaw herself never accepts Heathcliff into the family, probably due to his gypsy background. After Mr. Earnshaw’s death, without his father to stop him, the abuses performed by Hindley begin to get worse. Heathcliff is forced to labor outdoors and to do so as hard as any other farmhand (Brönte 45). After Hindley’s is married, he and his wife would beat and torture Heathcliff. Later in the novel, Heathcliff falls violently in love with Catherine, but then she goes on to marry another man. When Catherine dies during childbirth, Heathcliff slowly descends into madness. Throughout his life, Heathcliff steadily grows more violent, wrathful, and vengeful; willing to take out his anger and resentment on those around him.
Heathcliff’s wrathful and vengefulness is translated his violent and torturous relationships with Edgar and Isabella Linton.

To start, Heathcliff is resentful and aggressive towards Edgar. This most likely stems from the fact that Edgar marries Catherine, a woman he himself fell violently in love with. Heathcliff’s very existence is probably torturous to Edgar because he knows that no matter how kind and faithful he is to Catherine, she will never truly be in love with him like he is because not only is her only true love Heathcliff, but also because she mainly married him for his wealth and an elevated status (Brönte 79-83). As Catherine says herself, “’My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks…I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind’” (Brönte 84). Heathcliff’s very presence undermines the life Edgar makes for himself and Catherine. However, Heathcliff is still angered by the union of the two, and when he comes back from his three year absence, he gets his revenge by running away with and marrying Edgar’s only sister Isabella. Also, several years after Catherine’s death, Heathcliff takes away Edgar’s only living remembrance of his wife, their daughter Cathy. He detains her in his house, abuses her, forces her to marry his son so he can inherit Edgar’s wealth and become “’master of the Grange after him’”, and attempts to keep her prisoner until Edgar’s death (Brönte 286-297). Heathcliff succeeds in his endeavor to torture Edgar, however in his effort to do

so, he also pulls Edgar’s sister into his violent life. Because she runs off and marries her brother’s greatest enemy, Edgar becomes somewhat cold when speaking of her and refuses to rescue her despite the fact that he knows she will never be happy with Heathcliff (Brönte 152). As a consequence of this, Isabella is further isolated when she lives in Wuthering Heights. As a warning of what is to come in their marriage, Heathcliff hanged “’her little dog’” (Brönte 157). Isabella travels through the snow to Thrushcross Grange to get away from Heathcliff after he “’snatched a dinner-knife from the table and flung it at my [Isabella’s] head’” (Brönte 189). Heathcliff shows immense cruelty to his wife and romantic rival, however, his cruelty and revenge extends to the children of the novel.
As Heathcliff grows older, readers are able to see how his troubled childhood has affects his personality and how he interacts with others, primarily Hareton and Cathy.

Hareton is the child of Hindley and Frances, two of his tormentors. Because of this fact, when Frances and Hindley die, Heathcliff treats Hareton rather poorly. Heathcliff reduces Hareton to a state of almost complete dependence on him, treats his as if he were a servant in his own household, and isolates him from others so he remains friendless and ignorant that he has ever been wronged (Brönte 195). Heathcliff, in almost everyway he could, makes Hareton feel as inferior and alone as he does. Nevertheless, his treatment of Cathy is no better. Heathcliff appears to view Cathy, not as the child of his only love, but as the living symbol of the fact he will never get to be with her because she chose another man over him. He instead tries to accumulate all the ownership of Thrushcross Grange. He does this by kidnapping and forcing Cathy to marry his son Linton, threatening that “’she must either accept him or remain prisoner…till your master [Edgar] dies’” (Brönte 287). And during Cathy’s captivity in Wuthering Heights, he continues to physically beat her on numerous different occasions (Brönte 282-293). After she and his son are married, and his son dies, he retains ownership of Thrushcross Grange and refuses to let Cathy leave. Heathcliff’s vengefulness and wrath affects not only his entire life, but also

almost every character he encounters.
Heathcliff’s tortured and isolated background makes him a bitter and angry man who cannot help, but to share his experiences with others in his life. With his troubled background and unyielding vengeance, as well as his dark and brooding appearance, Heathcliff is the embodiment of a Gothic villain, without actually being the villain. Brönte takes him several steps further by giving his character a muddled heritage and an inherent inferiority complex caused by it. Through her storytelling, she is able to humanize and add depth to Heathcliff as a victim of circumstance who attempts to get other characters to accept him as an equal through his accumulation of wealth. However, because of his heritage and ethnicity as a gypsy, no matter what he does, others will always look upon him as an outsider of lesser breeding. As a result of his circumstance, readers are able to see what motivates Heathcliff and, at times, sympathize with him. By the end of the novel, readers are left with the thought; is Heathcliff completely at fault or is it the fault of the society he lives in?