Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights :: Free Essay Writer

Wuthering Heights centers around the story of Heathcliff. The firstparagraph of the wise provides a vivid physical picture of him, asLockwood describes how his black eyes withdraw suspiciously underhis brows at Lockwoods approach. Nellys story begins with his unveiling into the Earnshaw family, his vengeful machinations drivethe entire plot, and his death ends the book. The desire to understandhim and his motivations has kept countless readers engaged in thenovel.Heathcliff, however, defies being understood, and it is difficult forreaders to resist seeing what they inadequacy or expect to see in him. Thenovel teases the reader with the possibility that Heathcliff issomething other than what he seemsthat his cruelty is merely anexpression of his frustrated love for Catherine, or that his sinisterbehaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romantic hero. We expectHeathcliffs character to contain such a hidden virtue because heresembles a hero in a romanticism novel. Traditionally, rom ance novelheroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only later toemerge as ferociously devoted and loving. One hundred years before EmilyBront wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that a reformed rake makesthe best husband was already a clich of romantic literature, andromance novels center around the same clich to this day.However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves sogreat and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even asa desire for retaliate against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc. As hehimself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely sadistic, as heamuses himself by seeing how much abuse she can take and still sleep withcringing back for more. Critic Joyce Carol Oates argues that EmilyBront does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does toIsabella, testing to see how many times the reader can be blow out of the water byHeathcliffs gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist onseeing him as a romantic hero.It i s significant that Heathcliff begins his life as a homeless person orphanon the streets of Liverpool. When Bront composed her book, in the1840s, the English economy was severely depressed, and the conditionsof the factory workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were soappalling that the upper and center field classes feared violent revolt.Thus, many of the more affluent members of society beheld theseworkers with a mixture of sympathy and fear. In literature, the smoky,threatening, miserable factory-towns were often represented inreligious terms, and compared to hell. The poet William Blake, pennear the turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of Englands darkSatanic Mills. Heathcliff, of course, is frequently compared to ademon by the other characters in the book.