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The role of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
Revenge as a theme of gathering heights
Revenge as a theme of gathering heights
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Recommended: The role of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Brontë, is a passionate love story, but is also a story fueled by revenge and hatred. This is especially true for one of the main characters, Heathcliff, who lives a life full of bitterness and contempt. The last straw that turns Heathcliff into a vengeful man is when his childhood friend marries someone else. He ends up making a decision that impacts the life of his childhood friend's daughter, Cathy, all out of revenge against her father. These terrible events that plagued Heathcliff are what drive him to take revenge on those who wronged him, and make this a story of good and evil, and of hate and love. From the moment that Heathcliff arrived at Wuthering Heights, he was surrounded my bitterness and hate. Heathcliff was brought into Wuthering Heights to live by Catherine and Hindley’s father, while he was a poor, dirty, and fatherless young boy. This made the children who already lived in Wuthering Heights apprehensive to the young boy, but one of the children, Catherine, eventually learned to accept him. Her brother, Hindley, however, treated Heathcliff as a slave. This fueled a bitter hate towards him deep in Heathcliff. …show more content…
He runs away from the life where he is a stable boy, only to come back to be with her, but she has moved on to a man named Edgar Linton. “The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in the corner, and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small- Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton,” (19). Her true love was Heathcliff, but she ended up becoming Catherine
Heathcliff cried vehemently, "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" Emily Brontë distorts many common elements in Wuthering Heights to enhance the quality of her book. One of the distortions is Heathcliff's undying love for Catherine Earnshaw. Also, Brontë perverts the vindictive hatred that fills and runs Heathcliff's life after he loses Catherine. Finally, she prolongs death, making it even more distressing and insufferable.
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
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...
Hindley Earnshaw, the son and heir, reacts badly to his father’s bringing home a stray gypsy boy from the streets of Liverpool and to demands that Heathcliff be treated like his own brother. Both Catherine, his sister, and Hindley refuse “to have it in bed with them, or even their own room” at night so that Heathcliff has to sleep on the landing outside (Bronte 41). While Catherine learns to love Heathcliff, Hindley spends his days in revenge toward the intruder, especially after Heathcliff becomes Mr. Earnshaw’s “favorite” (42). Hindley’s beatings of Heathcliff further alienate Mr. Earnshaw, who is infuriated “when he discovered his son persecuting the poor, fatherless child, as he called him” (42). Hindley regularly beats Heathcliff and threatens to turn Heathcliff out in the cold when Mr. Earnshaw dies (43). When Heathcliff blackmails Hindley into swapping colts for the secret beatings, Hindley shows reasons for his jealousy toward Heathcliff, “Take my colt, gipsy, then, and I pray that he may break your neck, you beggarly interloper! And wheedle my father out of all he has” (43). When Mr. Earnshaw dies and Hindley returns from college to claim his inheritance, he takes his revenge unchecked. “He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of door instead, compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (49). He also orders floggings for Heathcliff and deprives him of even speaking to Catherine, whom he loves dearly, after an adventure at the Lintons. All these punishments Heathcliff could have stood except when he finally realizes that Hindley has made it impossible for Catherine to marry him. He overhears Catherine explain to Nelly, “If the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I wouldn’t have thought of it [marriage to Edgar Lindley].
Catherine is trapped between her love of Heathcliff and her love for Edgar, setting the two men down a path of destruction, a whirlwind of anger and resentment that Catherine gets caught in the middle of. Catherine is drawn to Heathcliff because of his fiery personality, their raw attraction and one certainly gets the sense that they are drawn together on a deeper level, that perhaps they are soulmates. C. Day Lewis thought so, when he declared that Heathcliff and Catherine "represent the essential isolation of the soul...two halves of a single soul–forever sundered and struggling to unite." This certainly seems to be backed up in the novel when Catherine exclaims “Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being...” This shows clearly the struggle Catherine feels as she is drawn spiritually to Heathcliff, but also to Edgar for very different reasons. Edgar attracts Catherine predominantly because he is of the right social class. Catherine finds him "handsome, and pleasant to be with," but her feelings for him seem petty when compared to the ones she harbours...
Hindley, being the only biological son of Mr Earnshaw was envious of the relationship shared between Mr Earnshaw and Heathcliff and burned with fury. He made no effort to hide his resentment toward Heathcliff. Hindley despised Heathcliff to such an extent that when Mr Earnshaw died, he treated Heathcliff more like a servant and for bided him to talk to Catherine. Life then became miserable for Heathcliff and then became revenge driven. Hindley’s abusive and arrogant attitude toward Heathcliff, resulted in the chain of revengeful events that occurred in the novel. Hindley was instrumental in moulding Heathcliff into the destructive character he became.
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 Earnshaw is the daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife; Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. She was born at Wuthering Heights and was raised with her brother Hindley. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she claims they are the same person but does not marry him because Hindley has degraded him after their father's death so her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead, a neighbour from Thrushcross Grange and he is handsome and rich, another reason for Catherine marrying him. She is quite passionate about Heathcliff though, and does not want to give him up. She becomes ill when Heathcliff and Edgar fight, and dies in childbirth.
Wuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë does not idealize love; she presents it realistically, with all its faults and merits. She shows that love is a powerful force which can be destructive or redemptive. Heathcliff has an all-consuming passion for Catherine. When she chooses to marry Edgar, his spurned love turns into a destructive force, motivating him to enact revenge and wreak misery. The power of Heathcliff’s destructive love is conquered by the influence of another kind of love. Young Cathy’s love for Hareton is a redemptive force. It is her love that brings an end to the reign of Heathcliff.
When reading Wuthering Heights one is naturally drawn to the love story, as sad and perverse as it may appear on its face, the torrid affairs and events which came about through primarily through the very selfish, self-centered, and sadistic individuals Catherine and Heathcliff, as the two of them destroyed lives of the people that were involved with them. What started out innocently with Mr. Earnshaw loving an orphan boy, whom he named Heathcliff, and taking him into his family as a son, soon turned into jealousy and conflict between his natural born children and Heathcliff. Hindley, natural born son of Earnshaw and the brother of Catherine, hated Heathcliff from the day he arrived the manor at Wuthering Heights. At every opportunity Hindley scoffed at the love his father felt for the “dark skinned” boy and shamed his father at ...
(2) Emily Bronte’s purpose in writing Wuthering Heights is to depict unfulfilled love in a tragic romance novel and hence the theme of Wuthering Heights is love is pain. Emily Bronte reveals an important life lesson that love is not sufficient for happiness and if anything, stirs up more agony. This message is important because, although it is difficult to accept, the message is devastatingly honest. In Wuthering Heights, two characters named Heathcliff and Catherine loved each other immensely. However, their pride and adamance disabled them from making any progress on their romantic relationship. In fact, Heathcliff and Catherine purposely hurt each another through reckless and cruel actions. The author is exemplifying a recurring theme in history that love is associated with pain. The message allows readers to be aware that love is not constant perfection and happiness.
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...
Throughout the dark, romantic novel, Wuthering Heights, Brontë explores the false realities of high social status and wealth in Victorian society and its damaging consequences by outlining the loving, yet dysfunctional relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff. In the beginning of the novel, the orphan, Heathcliff, and Catherine, the daughter of Mr. Earnshaw grow up with each other in the mysterious complex of Wuthering Heights, and over time learn to deeply love one another. Catherine even goes on to articulate that, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (Brontë 70). Although for many years Heathcliff and Catherine had adored each other, Catherine’s new found love for gaining social status and wealth triggers her to marry Edgar, an individual whom she is not emotionally
Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights impacted him both positively and negatively. Catherine Earnshaw was highly welcoming of him, but her brother Hindley
When Hindley is drunk, Heathcliff “cheat[s] Mr. Hindley”(63) at cards. This is part of Heathcliff’s revenge on Hindley. Eventually, Hindley has to mortgage Wuthering Heights in order to pay his debts, and Heathcliff is able to gain possession of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff tells Cathy, Catherine and Edgar’s daughter, that Linton, his son, “is on his deathbed”(255) and that she should come visit him. Cathy feels obligated to go help Linton, so she and Nelly go to Wuthering Heights. Once they arrive, Heathcliff locks them in and tells them “you shall not quit this place till it is fulfilled”(261); implying that they will not be able to leave until Cathy marries Linton. Heathcliff wants them to marry so that he can get the inheritance. While Heathcliff gains money from his connections, d Cathy and Hindley loses their inheritance, money, and