Heathcliff's Cruelty

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Heathcliff’s strong love for Catherine guides his transformation as a character. While Heathcliff enters the story as an innocent child, the abuse he receives at a young age and his heartbreak at Catherine’s choice to marry Edgar Linton bring about a change within him. Heathcliff’s adulthood is consequently marked by jealousy and greed due to his separation from Catherine, along with manipulation and a deep desire to seek revenge on Edgar. Although Heathcliff uses deceit and manipulation to his advantage throughout the novel, he is never entirely content in his current situation. As Heathcliff attempts to revenge Edgar Linton, he does not gain true fulfillment. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Brontë uses Heathcliff’s vengeful actions to convey the message that manipulative and revenge-seeking behaviors will not bring a person satisfaction.

This cold treatment only progressed and became abusive when Mr. Earnshaw, one of the few people to ever care about Heathcliff, dies and his son who loathes the protagonist becomes the master of Wuthering Heights. “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 doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (Bronte 71).

Cruelty compels one to inflict cruelty upon others. In her novel, Wuthering Heights, Brontë illustrates the rough life of Heathcliff, conflicted with whether he should focus his life on loving Catherine Earnshaw or inflicting revenge on those who tortured him as a child. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff into the Earnshaw family as an orphan gypsy, a social class that most of the Earnshaw did not care for. The eldest child of Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley, abuses Heathcliff horribly, shaping the way Heathcliff perceives the world around him. Catherine Earnshaw, Hindley’s younger sister, motivates Heathcliff to endure this pain through their affectionate relationship. With his heart focused on revenge, Heathcliff devises a cruel plan to retaliate those who hurt him; he returns to Wuthering Heights as a refined, powerful man. He takes some of his anger out on Hareton Earnshaw, Hindley’s son; this parallels Hindley’s abuse towards Heathcliff. Through Hindley’s and Heathcliff’s abusiveness in Wuthering Heights, Brontë asserts that cruelty cycles from its perpetrators to its victims.

This parallel is ironic – the reader is not inclined to view Lockwood as a ‘hero’, yet the novel is seemingly framing him as if he invariably is one. This distorts our reading of the novel, as Lockwood’s cowardice and pomposity renders this reading nigh improbable. Therefore, the ironies present in this implied portrayal of our central narrator tends to bend our reading of Wuthering Heights more as a pastiche, rather than a direct addition to the pantheon of Gothic fiction. This is supported when other characters from the novel are scrutinised: the younger Cathy is interpreted by Lockwood as the typically virginal maid present in Gothic literature, and – adhering to the literary tradition – feels compelled to rescue her from the Heights and

As a young orphan who is brought to Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is thrown into abuse as Hindley begins to treat Heathcliff as a servant in reaction to Mr. Earnshaw’s death. As a reaction to both this and Catherine discarding Heathcliff for Edgar, Heathcliff’s sense of misery and embarrassment causes him to change and spend the rest of his time seeking for justice. Throughout this time, Heathcliff leans on violence to express the revenge that he so seeks by threatening people and displaying villainous traits. However, Heathcliff’s first symptom of change in personality is when Heathcliff runs into Hareton after Cathy “tormented

Vivien Zheng Carvalho English Ⅱ K-1 01 May 2018 Wuthering Heights Motif Essay: Gates, Doors, Locks & Keys The ominous history of a petulant landlord, Heathcliff, unravels to the keen curiosity of the new tenant, Mr. Lockwood. Narrated by Nelly Dean, a servant of the household, an unpleasant love triangle between Heathcliff, Catherine Earnshaw, and Edgar Linton presents itself as the force that intertwines the two families through love, betrayal, and revenge. Heathcliff’s unrequited love with Catherine prompts his intention for vengeance at his rival, Edgar, even until the last seconds of their lives.

Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, introduces many different characters throughout the story. The two main characters that show the most change by the end of the book are Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Brontë introduces Heathcliff as a broken and twisted character because he was an orphan. Heathcliff is not well educated at the beginning of the novel, but by the end goes through a revengeful transformation. Heathcliff can be seen as such a tragic character because Mr. Earnshaw says that Heathcliff is dark “almost as if [he] came from the devil” (Brontë 45).

Martha Nussbaum describes the romantic ascent of various characters in Wuthering Heights through a philosophical Christian view. She begins by describing Catherine as a lost soul searching for heaven, while in reality she longs for the love of Heathcliff. Nussbaum continues by comparing Heathcliff as the opposition of the ascent from which the Linton’s hold sacred within their Christian beliefs. Nussbaum makes use of the notion that the Christian belief in Wuthering Heights is both degenerate and way to exclude social classes.

In "Wuthering Heights," we see tragedies follow one by one, most of which are focused around Heathcliff, the antihero of the novel. After the troubled childhood Heathcliff goes through, he becomes embittered towards the world and loses interest in everything but Catherine Earnshaw –his childhood sweetheart whom he had instantly fallen in love with.—and revenge upon anyone who had tried to keep them apart.

The theme that will take the limelight in this paper will the concepts of injustice and justice, concentrating around the character of Heathcliff. This interesting individual is quite unique, coming into this tale, or reintroduced by Nelly as a young dark skinned lad from the streets. As soon as he comes to his new stay at Wuthering Heights, he is faced with a certain type of injustice from the blood son of Heathcliff’s adoptive father, Hindley. Taking a dislike to Heathcliff and treats him so. This is the first form of injustice, bringing him into a hard shell of sorts that makes him blunt against his adoptive sibling’s lashes at him. Here we see him slowly gather the emotions that will cause him to seek out justice against his abuser in a large mastermind plot against him and many others as time goes by, The term justice here is unique to Heathcliff,

The novel of Wuthering Heights involves passion, romance, and turmoil but most significantly carries cruelty as an overarching theme. Cruelty is apparent throughout the work most importantly when dealing with relationships between Heathcliff and Hindley, Heathcliff and Hareton, and even the emotional cruelty between Heathcliff and Catherine.

In some ways the three settings in which the novel is set show the disruption of normal behaviour in the world of Wuthering Heights. This is illustrated through Heathcliff’s home which is ‘descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed to in stormy weather’, emphasising in some ways pathetic fallacy, because it suggests that Heathcliff is mentally disturbed like the stormy weather of his home. This would advocate the idea that domestication which is usually associated with a more civilised behaviour, and due to the fact that this is degraded, it means that extreme behaviour is the only normal one now. To some extent a psychoanalytical reading of Heathcliff’s emotional disarray would suggest it is based on the Freudian concept of life and death instincts. It is an important concept because life instincts are those that deal with basic survival, pleasure, and reproduction. While death instincts are based around a person’s self-conscious ability to want to die. Therefore, self-destructive behaviour is an expression of the energy created by the death instincts. When this energy is directed outward onto others, it is expressed as aggression and violence. Furthermore, it could

The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic

“I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me,” admits bedridden Catherine Linton, desperate for company in her cooped-up chamber at Thrushcross Grange (Brontë 173-174). Characterized by her wild childhood excursions and rude, unladylike comportment, Catherine reigns as the most impetuous and attention-seeking female figure in the love story of Wuthering Heights. Chronicled from the perspective of her maid, Nelly, this complex novel radiates around Catherine’s affection for her adopted brother, Heathcliff, and unfavorable marriage to Edgar Linton. While individually, Catherine’s insolent behaviors throughout the story (which include pinching Nelly, ear-boxing her Edgar, and vilifying her sister-in-law, Isabella) warrant no sympathy from the reader, Catherine-in-full evokes a degree of compassion because of her eternal heartbreak. By showing that even the fieriest façade can conceal

The novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) by Emily Brontë and the film adaptation ‘Wuthering Heights’ (2011) by Andrea Arnold each convey respective values and perspectives reflective of the contrasting contexts and forms of each text. The novel, set in the Romantic period, is centred around two families living on the isolated, Yorkshire moors, and the explosive interactions between them. The concept of confinement contrasts against the freedom of nature throughout the novel. Nature is another key theme and a fundamental aspect of the Romantic period, used to present ideas such as rebellion and freedom. Finally, passion within human relationships is thoroughly explored through Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship within the novel. However, as the film adaptation is a product of a contemporary post-feminist, post-colonial time period, these themes can now be explored through lenses such as racial discrimination, feminism, and human connection.