Heathcliff Characterization Quotes

"What is it to you?" he growled. "I have a right to kiss her, if she chooses, and you have no right to object. I am not your husband: you needn't be jealous of me!"( Bronte’s Chapter 11). In this quote, Heathcliff has sought his revenge on Catherine, for snubbing him, and Edgar, for always dismissing him, by marrying Isabella. This act of revenge paves the way for future divisions between Heathcliff and the Lintons. It also further damages Catherine and Heathcliff as they adjust to life without each other. The deepening pain they experience adds intensity to their passionate fall out later in the

Heathcliff resents her scorn. He desires to regain her approval. He attempts to be “decent” and “good” for her sake (Brontë 40). However, his attempt to be decent fails miserably. He resents the attentions that Catherine gives to Edgar. Catherine would rather wear a “silly frock” and have dinner with “silly friends” than ramble about the moors with him (Brontë 50). Heathcliff keeps track of the evenings Catherine spends with Edgar and those that she spends with him. He desperately wants to be with Catherine. When Catherine announces to Nelly her engagement to Edgar, Heathcliff eavesdrops, but leaves the room when he “heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him” (Brontë 59). Catherine has spurned his love, choosing Edgar over him. Heathcliff cannot bear this rejection. The love he possesses for her transcends romantic and filial love (Mitchell 124). He feels that he is one with her (Mitchell 123).

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.

   "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff" (81)" These words, uttered by Catherine, in the novel Wuthering Heights are for me the starting point in my investigation into the themes of love and obsession in the novel. Catherine has just told her housekeeper that she has made up her mind to marry Edgar Linton, although she is well aware that her love for him is bound to change as time passes. That she is obsessed by her love for Heathcliff she confirms in the above quotation and by saying that she will never, ever be separated from him. Why does she not marry him then? Well, she has

Surprisingly, Heathcliff is absent for three years from Wuthering Heights. During that time he mysteriously obtains wealth and returns triumphantly. However, at the time of his return Catherine is already married to Edgar Linton. Heathcliff would spend the rest of his life tortured by his separation from Catherine. He becomes so obsessed that he would roam around Thrushcross Grange for days hoping to take her back or take revenge for what she has done to him. Even the day she dies, he is already so mentally deranged that he tries to unearth her body. At that moment, he feels for the first time a "sigh" that he believes to be Catherine's spirit, a presence that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Years later, he reveals to Nelly the terrible situation in which he has been living ever since. He says "she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years - incessantly -remorselessly" (Bronte 211).  It seems that the spell is set on her deathbed when she tells him that she would haunt him for the rest of his life. At that moment Heathcliff forecasts his fate when he says:

Through her family’s wealth, she has a very high social status. She is childhood friends with Heathcliff as they both enjoy being with each other. Her relationship with Heathcliff comes to an abruptly halt when she stays with the Linton’s for her heel to heal. While she is there, she underwent training to be lady like for the era she is in. Her love grows for Edgar while she is at the Earnshaw’s. Catherine comes to grasp she couldn’t marry Heathcliff as it would be degrading herself. “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am” (81). Even though she feels like Heathcliff is her star crossed lover, her pride stops her from loving Heathcliff so she has to marry

In chapter 27, Edgar’s health continues to deteriorate and he lay on his deathbed leading Cathy and Mrs. Dean to pay a visit to Linton at Wuthering Heights. This quote is said in response to Cathy, who fights with Heathcliff after she realizes that he has the imprisoned her and Nelly both inside his home, with a plan to not release her until after she and Linton are married. After Cathy is locked inside, Linton reveals to her Heathcliff's plans, and the readers feel a sense of inescapable doom start to exist. This quote is emblematic to the action within this novel because it reveals Heathcliff’s master plan to the readers: to marry off Linton and Cathy so that he may lay claim to Thrushcross Grange. The kidnapping of Cathy and Mrs. Dean is

He refuses to eat, absents himself from the company of Cathy, Hareton, or Nelly, disappears inexplicably for long intervals of time and refuses to explain his absences. Most disturbing, his strange excitement continues, causing discomfort to all those around him, especially Nelly. When Nelly asks him where he was the night before his he began to exhibit this odd elation, he tells her, "Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven -- I have my eyes on it -- hardly three feet to sever me (278)!" His statement is ambiguous--it does little to explain his sudden change of humor and little to satisfy Nelly's curiosity and wonder at his state. Joy in most characters in Wuthering Heights is an uplifting state associated with happiness and delighted exhilaration. However in Heathcliff, as Nelly observes, it is a horrible, frightening thing. In Heathcliff, the mood arouses wariness and fear in others and indicates some inner change so dramatic that its cause is almost unthinkable.

Heathcliff’s proud commendation of spirits and the dead returning to walk the earth acts as a distressing reminder, a haunting that carries with it all the unfortunate history many would rather keep buried. It is yet another one of Heathcliff’s many Uncanny evocations. Nelly is appalled and condemned him, “You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff. Were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?” In this scene, Nelly is the voice of the Western perspective—logical and morally upright in the face of Heathcliff’s abject and strange actions which pay no regard to Victorian values or the desecration of a human corpse. To Heathcliff, his passion and love for Catherine is a spiritual force far more powerful than the accepted Western social rules he rebels against

Instead, he ends up marrying Isabella and treats her miserable because of that fact that he cannot be happy without Catherine, and now she is gone forever. The only thing Heathcliff has left of Catherine is the sounds of her ghost that haunts the grounds of Wuthering Heights. Mr. Lockwood discovers Catherine's ghost when he comes to Wuthering Heights and realizes everything is not right there. “ knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand. The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, "Let me in—let me in!"(Bronet

"He [Heathcliff] is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees-my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath-a source of little visible delight, but necessary. 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."

Throughtout Wuthering Heights, Healthcliff is destroyed by his love for Catherine Earnshaw. Heathliff never marries Catherine because they become stuck in a poisned love triangle which destroys their relationship. Catherine was married to Edgar Linton despite that her and Heathcliff were in love which immensely destroyed Heathcliff. Heathcliff asserts that “Two words would comprehend my future –death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton 's attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn 't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.” This quote describes that Life without Catherine is not worth living for Heathcliff. The only emotion that begins to compensate for Heathcliff 's loss is bitterness. Despite her unfortunate choice for a husband, Heathcliff knows that Edgar is incapable of loving her the way he does.When

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

Catherine’s love for Heathcliff is deeply passionate, but ultimately all-consuming and destructive. Even as a child, Catherine is “much too fond of

Heathcliff does not show love for Hareton, nor is he sympathetic to young Cathy’s fear in her arranged marriage. He hates himself and takes it out on those around him. Even after Catherine’s death, Heathcliff continues to search for affirmation from Catherine. He begs, “Cathy, do come. Oh do- once more. Oh! My heart’s darling! Hear me this time” (Brontë 20). Heathcliff’s unquenched longing for affirmation only ends in his death.