Heathcliff's Diary

Heathcliff is a character with a bad past, which shapes him to be the person he is; his history also affects his relationship with those around him. I felt that Heathcliff is a very important character who has a special antiquity, which points Withering Heights in the direction that Brontë intended it to be.

“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he is handsome, Nelly, but because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our

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.

Heathcliff is a character defined by his sympathetic past. Growing up as an orphan from a tender age, deprived of a structured family and family support system, exposed to the negative influences life offered, it is almost a certainty that his behaviour will not be that of an ideal gentleman.

13. Mr. Earnshaw returned home from Liverpool with an orphan (Heathcliff). His daughter Catherine took to Heathcliff, as did Mr. Earnshaw, but Hindley hated the boy and tortured him. Heathcliff had to be hard and insensible in order to cope with Hindley’s abuses. Nelly Dean repeatedly describes Heathcliff as “sullen.”

When Heathcliff returns three years later, his love for Catherine motivates him to enact revenge upon all those who separated him from her. Since he last saw Catherine, he has “fought through a bitter life”; he “struggled only for [her]” (Brontë 71). Nelly observes a “half-civilized ferocity” in Heathcliff’s brows (Brontë 70); she views him as “an evil beast…waiting his time to spring and destroy” (Brontë 79). Heathcliff’s obsessive love for Catherine becomes a menacing threat. Heathcliff reproaches Catherine because she “treated [him]

‘That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he’s in my soul.’ (Page 137)

A crucial difference between Heathcliff and the speaker in “Remembrance” is that the two characters have very different perspectives on love, death, and loss. In the final chapter of Wuthering Heights, when Heathcliff is aware that he is dying, he is joyful for the first time since Catherine’s death. Furthermore, as Nelly notes, he constantly seems to be staring at something two feet away from him with a mixture of pleasure and pain—almost as if he is seeing an

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

Heathcliff is introduced in Nelly's narration as a seven-year-old Liverpool foundling (probably an Irish famine immigrant) brought back to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw. His presence in Wuthering Heights overthrows the prevailing habits of the Earnshaw family, members of the family soon become involved in turmoil and fighting and family relationships become spiteful and hateful. Even on his first night, he is the reason Mr. Earnshaw breaks the toys he had bought for his children. "From the very beginning he bred bad feelings in the house". Heathcliff usurps the affections of Mr. Earnshaw to the exclusion of young Hindley-: "The young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a

“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!” (Brontë, 82)

This later Heathcliff is characterized by a coldness, by an incapacity to love and ultimately by consuming passion for revenge against those who have abused him. Just as he begins life, he ends life as an unloved, lonely outsider.

Emily Bronte’s portrayal of Heathcliff presents him to readers “as dark almost as if it came from the devil’ and a ‘dirty, ragged, black-haired child.” (Emily Bronte) Although her suggestive description indicates Heathcliff is black, the author’s lack of a definitive depiction evokes ambiguity. Bronte purposefully intrigues readers with her absence of certainty by selecting specific language and creating a semantic field of the colour black. Bronte resurfaces the reader’s assumptions

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

It is the opinion of this essay that the character of Heathcliff evolves a lot more than the character of Catherine. When we first meet Heathcliff, he was found on the streets of Liverpool by Catherine’s father who then adopts him into the family as one of his own. This would have been a dramatic change for Heathcliff. Then after experiencing this quality of life until the death of the father he is then cast into the role of a servant/labourer by Catherine’s brother who despises him. Finally, when Heathcliff hears part of the conversation between Catherine and Nelly, he hears Catherine plans to marry Edgar Linton as she could never marry Heathcliff. “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now”. (82) It is here Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights and returns three years later, a gentleman of means and of polite demeanour, not what you would expect from him. Here we can bring back the point that one’s environment dramatically affects one’s behaviour. Like Catherine, Heathcliff defies social norms expected of his gender. After he returns back from travelling having acquired great wealth and on the surface seems a changed man, he would be accepted into middle class society as he displays the characteristics expected of him. It is well described in the book to enforce the dramatic change in him for readers to understand how far he has come from