What Is Heathcliff's True Nature

"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

To begin, Heathcliff uses Isabella as a means of exacting revenge on Edgar Linton, whom he despises. When Heathcliff finds out Isabella is in love with him, he is delighted. His pleasure comes not from a mutual like for Isabella, but rather a vision for revenging Edgar. After Catherine lets slip that Isabella is in love with him, Heathcliff says to her, “...and if you fancy I’ll suffer unrevenged, I’ll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while! Meantime, thank you for telling me your sister-in-law’s secret: I swear I’ll make the most of it. And stand you aside!”(112). Heathcliff’s comment

As emotions run high after Catherine’s funeral, Nelly gets a visit from an unexpected visitor; Isabella. As Catherine enters the ground and gone from Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff emerges back into the property with an axe to grind. Isabella seeks Nelly for refuge from her soon to be ex-husband’s antics and reveals how truly evil he is. The setting of the environment foreshadows the terrible actions Heathcliff committed in Isabella’s story. The abnormal weather and its effect on the surrounding environment express the transition of Heathcliff's destruction:

This has an emotional toll on Catherine that contributed to her death. Heathcliff is repetitively described as “black” in Nelly’s description of him when he was initially brought home by Catherine’s father and taken into the family, symbolically foreshadowing his cunning, wicked personality and the arrival of tragedy to Catherine’s family and her life. Another film technique

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]

I assure you, a tiger, or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens… I do hate him - I am wretched - I have been a fool!” (Brontë 173-182). It turns out that Heathcliff is not a good man after all, or the type of man Isabella thought he was, and believed she loved. After she realizes her mistake, she again defies the norms by running away.

    Throughout Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's personality could be defined as dark, menacing, and brooding. He is a dangerous character, with rapidly changing moods, capable of deep-seeded hatred, and incapable, it seems, of any kind of forgiveness or compromise. In the first 33 chapters, the text clearly establishes Heathcliff as an untamed, volatile, wild man and establishes his great love of Catherine and her usage of him as the source of his ill humor and resentment towards many other characters. However, there are certain tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities present in Chapter 34 that establish the true intensity Heathcliff's feelings towards Catherine; feelings so

AP English IV Research Paper Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare share similar all consuming, infatuous relationships that negatively impact their lives. Both couples are used by the authors to express the destructive nature of obsessive relationships and how they can determine one's fate. In both stories, love drives the characters into madness and death. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo’s obsession with Juliet ultimately leads to his demise when he believes he will be separated from her.

This begins with his childhood. As the character Nellie details what life was like for the children of Wuthering Heights, we quickly understand that Heathcliff especially lived as a target for abuse. This abuse namely came from Hindley Earnshaw, who viewed Heathcliff as a usurper of his father’s affections, and grew jealous of the way Mr. Earnshaw doted on the boy. In return, Heathcliff was subjected to frequent beatings and harsh treatment, all of which he took without complaint. His only true friend at the house was wild child Catherine Earnshaw- later Catherine Linton- who granted him a reprieve from Hindley’s cruelty, and showed him love. By showing the reader this kind of brutality, we understand the potency of Heathcliff’s hatred toward Hindley, and subsequently his urge to seek retribution in adulthood. In addition, the author establishes this strong connection with Catherine early on so the reader understands Heathcliff’s

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

Heathcliff's role as an avenger is helped by his intelligence and understanding, not just of his own motivations, but of the motivations of others. He recognizes the source of Isabella's infatuation that-: "she abandoned this under a delusion" - "picturing in me a hero of romance". He also capitalizes on Linton's poor health by inviting the pity of Cathy so that her affection and sympathy would facilitate a marriage that would leave he, Heathcliff, as master of the Grange.

Catherine marries Edgar Linton and moves to Thrushcross Grange and is separated from Heathcliff. Heathcliff begins to lead Hindley to destruction, and courts Isabella in order to hurt Edgar. When he finds out that Catherine married Edgar in his absence.

Heathcliff and Isabella secretly marry and Isabella then becomes a victim of Heathcliff’s abuse. Isabella (as described by Nelly) “has capacity for strong attachments,” and Heathcliff takes advantage of her blind affections to trap her in an agonizing marriage. Isabella is further victimized by Heathcliff when he uses her and their marriage in order to gain

Heathcliff and Catherine’s feelings towards each other influence their minds to the point of obsession, as their childhood affiliation advances into something neither one of them can handle and is something both of them fail to escape. Throughout the novel, Brontë reminds the reader of how their tribulations, rashness and destructive lust are all centred around their fixation for one another. Catherine had a very strong hold over Heathcliff as he would willingly do anything she wanted him to: ‘how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his [Mr Earnshaw’s] only when it suited his own inclination’ . They seemed to have found consolation in each other as Heathcliff was being treated

Living in a permanent state of childhood with Heathcliff, she displays ridiculous amounts of immaturity for her age, including temper tantrums, crying fits, and self-induced illness (Apter 178). She is overcome with intense jealousy, such as displayed in declaring Isabella’s affection for Heathcliff to everyone shortly after finding it out. Catherine’s immaturity eventually manifests into prolonged symptoms that affect her mental and physical health. “Once she has passed childhood, and her inability to integrate her emotions into her behavior shows its poisoning effects, she actually longs for her own death. The desire to return to childhood, the wish for regression and stagnation…” (Apter 179). These childlike attributes are what fuel her deviousness and natural tendency towards manipulation for the men in her life, for in the corrupted immaturity that inhabits her as a grown woman, she sadistically finds joy in the suffering of others. Catherine taunts Heathcliff with images of himself visiting her grave with wife and children, blames Heathcliff and Edgar for her death, and continues to see Heathcliff even though her husband Edgar explicitly tells her not to. She lives halfway between two romances with an “incapacity for significant action”, refraining from complete commitment to either man, and revels in their suffering at not having her entirely (Beversluis 71). It was