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Wuthering Heights And Mary Shelly's Frankenstein

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Upon hindsight following the two novels, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, one would label the monster and Heathcliff to be nothing short of villainous characters. Throughout each individual novel the two leads perform heinous actions that should leave readers feeling repulsed, and with no ounce of sympathy towards the principal characters; nonetheless, it is impossible not to. Heathcliff and the monster are not evil but rather characters to sympathize, both are the products of their environment and correspondingly, although for divergent reasons, are motivated by the supereminent emotions—love and hate.
Through the actions Heathcliff pursues throughout the entirety of the novel, it is furtively easy to only see him as a malicious brute. In retrospect, the further along one continues throughout the novel, the more it feels as if Bronte is encouraging readers to hate the protagonist; this, however, is not the case. This is evident from the commencement of the novel, through the author’s vivid depictions of the ways in which Heathcliff was brought upon society, starting from his introduction to the Earnshaws. “They entirely refused to have it (Heathcliff) in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might he gone on the morrow------This was Heathcliff's first introduction to the family” (Bronte 59).
This cold treatment only progressed and became abusive when Mr. Earnshaw, one of the few people to ever care about Heathcliff, dies and his son who loathes the protagonist becomes the master of Wuthering Heights. “He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (Bronte 71).
Heathcliff is abused; his only source of love is his dearest Catherine, yet even that love cannot thrive in Heathcliff’s environment. The problem is not that his love is unrequited, but rather that Catherine believes she would fall to ruin if she were to be with Heathcliff “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him---because he's more

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