Heathcliff Characteristics

Emily Brontë, in her novel, Wuthering Heights, suggests that children, in their very nature, exhibit traits from their parental influences. However, these traits are not always represented at the same time and can come out in different situations. For instance, as Cathy Linton grows up, her personality is a mixture of her calmer father, Edgar, and her more fiery mother, Catherine. She shows both these personalities, but she limits each to the correct time and circumstance. Also, the same goes for Linton Heathcliff, who has become a mixture of both his mother, Isabella, and his father, Heathcliff. Lastly, this is shown in Hareton Earnshaw, who, because he has little to no relationship with his biological parents, has turned into a man more

One big turning point marked by stormy weather in the book is the day Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights for the first time. After hearing Catherine say that she could never marry him, Heathcliff’s heart is broken and he creeps out of the house. When Catherine realizes his absence, she gets extremely agitated, pacing from the gate to the door of the house and wondering where he could be.

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.

This very well could symbolize the storm that has been brewing in Heathcliff who is not the happiest man. The next day when Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights he is met with a light snow which eventually turns into a blizzard. This blizzard forces him to spend time with Heathcliff because he cannot leave in the storm. The snow fall in the novel can represent unification. Because snow falls on everything equally it can represent the unifying of Lockwood and Heathcliff even if it is against their wills. Due to this they are brought together and we are able to hear the story of Heathcliff and Catherine. A few other times that snow falls in the novel are when Mr. Earnshaw and Heathcliff both die. This could

With the coming of age of Catherine and Heathcliff, the hapless families of Earnshaw and Linton brave the storms that brew between them and realize that they must rise up to meet what they have forced upon themselves. Foremost, the main characters, Catherine, Heathcliff, and Edgar are never quite as they appear to be, and are constantly changing in both dynamic and static ways. For example, Catherine is the one who changes the most. As she states, “In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong … I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind,” (p. 79). This expresses how she feels as if she has been

The metaphors drawn from nature in Wuthering Heights drive the plot primarily through characterization. Rarely does the story venture outside, containing almost exclusively scenes leading up to a character’s departure and the response to his/her journey. The absence of tangible nature in a book so driven by its symbolism seems peculiar at first. Why does the author not provide the reader any detail of Heathcliff’s struggle against the storm after he departs in heartbreak? By narrating the storm in terms of how it is observed from inside, the reader loses the expected description of the storm’s intensity. Even Catherine’s diary, the most

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

The behavior of Heathcliff is really bad at times and it can be judged reasonably because he was kind of adopted by Mr.Earnshaw and his kids didn’t get their presents they asked for because he picked up Heathcliff. Heathcliff was treated as Mr.Earnshaw’s favorite of the three children. The behavior that is showed at the first part of the book by Heathcliff before Nelly starts telling Lockwood Heathcliff’s past. At the start of the book Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, it shows Lockwood going to meet Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights and give him a tour. Heathcliff shows a very poor attitude that shows how his behavior is bad but has some history that could lead up to why he is always in a bad mood.

The struggle between social classes illustrates a real life conflict during this time. The reader sympathises with Heathcliff, the

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.

He’s a dark-skinned boy of fourteen, whose origins we don’t know, who is picked up by Mr.Earnshaw on the streets of Liverpool and brought up in Wuthering Heights. In spite of the conception of his benefactor that the child, introduced by Mr. Earnshaw to the family as an “it”, must be taken “as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil ” (Chapter 4), Heathcliff is bad treated, soon after Mrs. and Mr. Earnshaw die. During the entire novel, Heathcliff is depicted as a manipulator, a destructive force, a demonic character seeking revenge: Nelly, Hindley and Isabella are frequently calling him “devil”, “ghoulish”, “goblin”, “judas”, “hellish” or “fiend”. Heathcliff uses every tool to take his revenge on those who have maltreated him during his childhood and little Cathy, Hareton and Linton, they all become the victims of his cruel revenge. Throughout the novel, Heathcliff becomes more cruel and violent in words, facts and looks: “His forehead, that I once thought so manly, and that I now think so diabolical, was shaded with a heavy cloud; his basilisk eye were nearly quenched by sleeplessness – and weeping, perhaps, for the lashes were wet then: his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer, and sealed in an expression of unspeakable sadness.” (Chapter 17).Heathcliff’s rage shows off after his depart of three years, when he returns and becomes the landlord of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross

The confinement that characters within the texts experience can be translated into modern values based on equality. In the novel, Catherine Earnshaw is constantly controlled by the circumstances that control her; she’s ruled by her father and Hindley throughout her childhood, restricted by her injury at Thrushcross Grange, and forced to marry Edgar because of her isolation from the rest of the world. Even in her passionate relationship with Heathcliff, which reflects the spontaneous, exciting nature of the Romantic period, Heathcliff

In addition, Mr. Lockwood expresses his fear of travelling the moors in a stormy and wild weather. The shift of the weather in the moorland suggests the occurrence of a serious and dangerous disaster. For example, a second violent storm occurs when Heathcliff departs from Wuthering Heights. Bronte states that the weather “ was a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appeared inclined to thunder, and I said we had better all sit down; the approaching rain would be certain to bring him home without further trouble...” and that the “storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury”(54). The surrounding environment and stormy weather create a truly Gothic setting.

When Heathcliff ran off, Bronte describes that evening as “a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appear[ing] inclined to thunder” (Bronte, 84). The impending thunderstorm introduces that chaos that is about to ensue when Heathcliff cannot be found that evening. The storm finally arrives and all hell is about to break loose. The “violent wind, as well as thunder,…split a tree off” of a building just as Catherine was getting more and more anxious about her split from Heathcliff (Bronte, 85). The symbolism that weather represents in Wuthering Heights carries on throughout the first volume of the

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