Is Heathclifff Evil???

[jay canto]

I have a big debate with a few of my friends. Do you think Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights is evil?

Support your arguments with quotes.

I will post my views later.

[papayahed]

I'd say so, Heathcliff is always so mean to that cute little Odie.

[samah]

yes I think he is mostly evil . I mean he loved Katherine very much and thats a good thing but she was the only one he loved ,he didnt even like his own son beside he did a lot of bad things to everyone .




I've Never Seen A wild Thing Feeling Sorry For Itself

[kathycf]

I can't give a specific quote until I unearth my copy of Wuthering Heights, but to me, Heathcliff was not an evil person, but a very flawed one. His background, the way he was treated as a child shaped him into the man he became. Sadly, he was not able to move beyond that. I think he spent way too much time feeling sorry for himself.

Yes, he loves Catherine, but I always thought that love was of a particulary selfish and obsessive nature. Heathcliff wastes his life and talents (in my opinion) by being far too occupied by seeking revenge on those who hurt him in the past. Not a man who believes in moderation, nor apparently one who ever heard of the saying "let the punishment fit the crime" .

I think of Heathcliff as a bad man, and deeply, deeply flawed, but truly "evil"? Like flat out, truly evil? No.

[Bysshe]

I think of Heathcliff as a bad man, and deeply, deeply flawed, but truly "evil"? Like flat out, truly evil? No.

I agree. Although he is not a nice person, or even a good person by any means, it's a bit harsh to call him evil. He's not meant to be likeable, but I don't think the reader is meant to hate him, either.

As kathycf pointed out, he obviously had a difficult childhood, which would explain why he's not exactly well-balanced.

[13blackroses]

I don't think he's evil. I can't believe that anyone is really evil. I think his life experiences made him into, perhaps not the nicest person, but not evil. He loved Catherine with evereything he had, I feel sorry for him.

[Lumen]

I don't think his born to be evil. He´s just bitter and wants to revenge.

Ive never hated his charecter, even though I think Emily tried to create him to be some kind of human-monster. I just feel sorry for him, and Catherine too.

[chelley]

I have to agree- Heathcliff isn't "evil". Heathcliff is disturbed, unfairly treated and in a lot of pain- first for losing Catherine, but imagine his original background- we know nothing of Heathcliff before he comes to the Earnshaw's. He could have little brothers/sisters family... we simply don't know. In order to judge Heathcliff's "evil" factor, we first need to know where he is coming from.

Heathcliff is not evil, he simply has some issues to resolve.

[vili]

we know nothing of Heathcliff before he comes to the Earnshaw's.
Actually, I think one can make a fairly good argument that Heathcliff is of Irish origin (and Terry Eagelton has actually done exactly that in his Heathcluff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture). Which might also work to at least partially explain his composure, personality and relationship with the people around him. It would also make the novel interestingly relevant to the time Bronte was working on it.

[Evi]

I dont think that Heathcliff was evil. He is an orphan , we dont know anything about his origins an dhow bad ( or not ??) were his first years. He had to face Kathys cruel brother at a very early age in his life. He had to face kathys marriage with another man , who didnt love him. As Kathy marrie her husbnad only because he was rich and noble enough. He had to face her lost - for ever- with her death. He had to face the whole world agaisnt him in order to survive. And when you are receiving only hate it is normal that you will give only hate.

Vili,
Why do you believe that Heathcliff was Irish? I cant see anything in the book that shows a nationality for him. Just curious.

Evi

[vili]

Vili,
Why do you believe that Heathcliff was Irish? I cant see anything in the book that shows a nationality for him. Just curious. Evi
Well, of course I cannot be absolutely certain about it (and neither do I want to), but there are certain factors that would seem to indicate that this might be the case.

Heathcliff was brought from Liverpool, which is where most Irish immigrants landed at the time, and where thus many orphaned Irish children could be found. His description as being dark-skinned is also a rather perfect fit with the common description of Irish peasants, which would certainly not have been unfamiliar to the Brontës, as the family itself had come from Ireland (Emily's father, Patrick Bronty/Brontë, was born in Ireland).

It would also put the novel into an interesting perspective, considering that while it was written the Great Potato Famine was killing up to a million Irishmen, and causing another million to leave the country. How aware Emily was of all this, and how much she knew about the alleged role the English aristocracy played in all that, is not known to me. So I wouldn't necessarily jump into political allegory even if Heathcliff was Irish.

I also seem to remember reading that Emily visited Liverpool at some point when starting to work on the novel, and that the flood of Irish immigrants had left a mark on her. But I cannot give you any references for that, except for the Terry Eagelton book that I mentioned before -- it might be there, somewhere.

[Evi]

Vili,

Thank you for answering . It is an interesting thought, i havent thought of something like that. You could be right.

Evi

[kate.ernshaw]

I dont agree at all. I really dont think that he was an evil man....you know we shouldnt judge other people and I believe that tehre is always something good in every person.
I thing that Heathcliff wasnt a lucky man. He didnt know his real parents and most of the people he met didnt like him. He was poor and a gipsy. And the woman he loved married another man...so life wasnt easy for him.
Heathcliff is my favourite character because he isnt "white and black"

[adrheanas]

i think, the love that heathcliff had for cathy is not a type we can imagine by the standarts we're living in.. grieving, suffering, longing and the word already forgatten in the dictionary of love... he was living and slowly dying with this love.. so eveything he has done shouldn't be critisized in the borders of logic...
PS:my english is not enough to explain my whole ideas completely, sorry if there will be any misunderstandings...

[godhelpme2]

I would say heathcliff is both the creator and victim of this revenge.
He is evil to do such savage torture to those innocent people, which also shows his arrogance, and meanwhile he is so pitiful to suffer the loss of his most cherished lover.
So he is a person we hate and pity.

[bricks_x]

I wouldn't say Heathcliff is /evil/ as such, more protective of his feelings.
We know that Heathcliff loved Cathy, and I don't believe, personally, that this is a feeling that an evil man could possess. He also seems to shrink away into himself once he returns from his travels, realising he lost the one thing he thought he had. He doesn't seem to become a 'tyrannical monster' until Cathy is definately Edgar's, and he is pretty much devoid of much positive attention.
I think he is lost without Cathy, and the only way to help his internal pain, is to deal physical, and also mental, pain to the other characters we meet.
Meh. Everyone's view of this novel and it's characters are different. Personally, I hate it =]
.x.

[bricks_x]

Sorry if anyone loves the novel, it's driving me insane atm. =] x

[ennison]

Heathcliffe (symbolic name) is madly in love.

[bricks_x]

Also, if Heathcliff was well and truly evil, he would show this in every aspect of his disposition, and there is no way he would even consider having Lockwood within his home [at the beginning and at the end of the novel.]
And evil person is usually evil just for the sake of it, and does it for their own personal enjoyment. Heathlcliff seems only evil to seek revenge for the pain others have caused him. Just a little bit extra that I think means he isn't purely 'satans off-spring'
=]
xxx

[Vodac]

Heathcliff is not a evil person, he doesn't think himself as human! He is very close to Byron's Manfred, he is a romantic (or byronic) hero. For him he is not evil, he creates his own moral.

[Domer121]

I would not say that Heathcliff is evil, on the contrary, I think that since he was treated badly his whole life and then after the only person who was nice or loved him left him...he snapped....His only knowledge of good in man is Cathy, don't forget that Wuthering Heights was miles from any town, there is no other interaction to the outside world...Wuthering Heights is it..and after Cathy leaves him he has nothing to lose....

[PaulT]

Heathcliff had a poor childhood, probably abandoned by his parents and living on the streets of Liverpool. He is hated and ill-treated by Hindley and his soul mate, Catherine, leaves him for another man that he despises. It is easy to imagine that that the idea of vengeance would eat away at him until it became an obsession. I don't believe that he is evil per se, rather somebody whose character was altered by circumstances.

[Chell53]

I can't give quotes because I don't have the book on me, but I did here an argument a while back about Heathcliff maybe being Cathy's illegitimate brother; he's brought into the family from relative poverty by the father and nobody knows where he comes from and that might suggest that he's the son of the father and has been recognised as a part of the family. I was just thinking, it's not that he's evil exactly, but maybe he feels frustrated by feelings for Cathy that he knows, deep down, aren't quite healthy. (Bit of a tenuous argument, if I had quotes to back it up I could support it more)

[Logos]

Support your arguments with quotes.

The entire novel is available on this site, and can be searched by word or phrase:
http://www.online-literature.com/bronte/wuthering/

[Virgil]

I can't give quotes because I don't have the book on me, but I did here an argument a while back about Heathcliff maybe being Cathy's illegitimate brother; he's brought into the family from relative poverty by the father and nobody knows where he comes from and that might suggest that he's the son of the father and has been recognised as a part of the family. I was just thinking, it's not that he's evil exactly, but maybe he feels frustrated by feelings for Cathy that he knows, deep down, aren't quite healthy. (Bit of a tenuous argument, if I had quotes to back it up I could support it more)

"Tenuous" is an understatement. ;) I would like to see those quotes.

[NotWoodhouse]

He wasn't evil he was hurt and Catherine marrying Edgar destroyed him.

“The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me – Do you see, I’ve marked every day,” (Brontë 69).

If you remember he didn't hear Cathy say that she loved him when Cathy was talking to Nelly. He ran out when she said she was marrying Edgar.

It wasn't that he was evil it was that love tortured him.

[Silvia]

Personally, I loved both the novel and its characters. As many of you have said, I don't consider Heathcliff as an evil man. I liked him and sympathised with him so much at the beginning that I could't help justifying all the cruelties he ended up doing to other people in the light of his previous sufferings..

[Ahmed_Kaid]

for sure he is a big evil...
first and foremost, i dare to say that he is not a sage man for he treated all his surrounded viciously... even his innocent son who is most of the his life not-well..

just because one treated him in a cruel way doesn't mean he ought to take revange on all or to the one closely related to the object who dealt him badly.. that is my point on him, but unfortunately i can't give some quotes cuz i didn't read the whole story, i just dip into it..

Yours Ahmed

[Undomiel]

Children learn empathy, social graces, right and wrong and how to curb their feelings by the example of the adults around them. If Heathcliff never saw this and didn't understand it it isn't all his fault. He acts more like an animal- moved only by his own desires, needs, fears and anger. He doesn't, I think (though it is a long time since I read it) indulge in sadistic tendencies as a sociopath would.

[wtwt5237]

IMO Heathcliff is a character to be both sympathised with and hated. Evil is only part of his nature, for the rest it should be justified with his previous sufferings. Kind of hard to define.

[Vash]

Negative reinforcement would have played a BIG part in how Heathcliff turned out later in life. I know I would have been mighty cheesed off had I been kicked out of the Grange while Catherine stayed behind simply because she was an Earnshaw. That class distinction, and the role of master/slave would have been a consistent theme throughout his life.

And that's where the heart of the matter is, IMO. Heathcliff never really learned any other form of relationship other than a master has toward his slave, and he treated people as such. Let's rattle a few off - Heathcliff/Catherine (not being able to live without another person is a form of slavery), Hindley/Heathcliff, Heathcliff/Hindley (through gambling), Heathcliff/Linton, Heathcliff/Cathy, Heathcliff/Isabella, Heathcliff/Hareton...every single one of his relationships was twisted by either him being used, or using other people.

I guess it would be like trying to explain color to a person who has been blind there entire life.

[saperelli]

He's a human who has endured a lot of pressures over the years and has resulted in the individual by the end of the novel. I think Heathcliff is merely an exaggeration of most people's faults and annoyances. Whether that incriminates all of us, I don't know. Nelly Dean, as the main narrator, indicates we should perceive him as evil, being a relatively trustworthy narrator, but even then we come to realised Nelly has faults too and so perhaps shouldn't trust her views entirely. Possibly a Victorian audience would perceive Heathcliff as having been more naturally evil, due to his race, but as a modern critic, I am more torn. Certainly what he's become isn't very amiable, but whether he's to blame and whether that makes him evil I have no idea, to be honest. It's an interesting debate :)

[Vash]

It is obvious that the author chose to use Elly Dean as the narrator in order to hide the true motives of the main characters - if we were able to see inside Heathcliff's head, or any one of the other characters, I'm sure we would have a very different take on matters. Instead, it's like we are basing our opinions on hearsay...and clouded hearsay at that. It would be entirely possible that Elly has clouded her judgement of others based on her own prejudices, as you say - certainly it was clear that she favoured her position at the Grange, and therefore her master there, rather than the one she previously held at Wuthering Heights.

It's like hearing the tale of Robin Hood told entirely from the perspective of the Sherrif of Nottingham - you get the story, but not the real motive as to why. Perhaps that was what Bronte wanted...for you to make up your own mind as to why Heathcliff acted the way he did.

[saperelli]

Nicely put, I like that :)

[Pamina]

I would say that Heathcliff is not evil per se, though he is really trying to be. All the suffering he went trough drives him into revenge. But in the end he simply lacks the energy to fulfill it. He could have destroyed the happiness of Catherine and Hareton and yet he didn't. Hareton even loves him in a way. Heathcliff's revenge simply wasn't as bad as it could have been (and as he wanted it to be). He finally died because he had nothing else to live for when he grew weary of his revenge. This is not something that would have happened to a truly evil person. If he was truly evil, he would probably have expanded his revenge and put the whole population of Liverpool into misery. :)

[natasssha]

I do not think that heathcliff is an evil , I liked his personality in this wonderful English Novel , i don't deny that he did vast mistakes, but as anyone other can do , he took revenge _ _ I think that he is a victim as Catherine , as Edgar , as Cathy as others ...

[Soley101]

your friends ask you to support with quotes...sounds like a very suspicious argument

[LadyTang]

I don't believe that Heathcliff's childhood is any excuse for his behaviour and for this reason, no matter how many times I read WH, I still can't feel any pity or sympathy towards him.

Some may disagree with me and state that, after being treated so badly as a child, he was perhaps destined to end up so cruel and heartless but he had a choice, and his own sad end and heartbreak is of entirely his own doing.

The character of Hareton is proof of this, in my opinion. He also had a childhood full of abuse and torment. He was also, at first, spurned by the woman he loved (young Cathy) but he managed to retain his capacity for love and affection despite never knowing anything but pain and hardship.

Having said this, I don't think Heathcliff was evil. I don't think any human being can be completely evil or completely good. He was a bitter, twisted man, perhaps he was even a psychopath, but he wasn't entirely devoid of emotion or compassion, especially towards Catherine.

[Wilde woman]

I think an interesting way to answer this question is to ask: Is Heathcliff the PROTAGONIST of the story? I mean, did Bronte mean for us to sympathize with him or to demonize him? A related question is to ask whether or not Nelly's portrayal of him reliable? Or is Lockwood's?

To argue for his evil side, there's all that overt devil imagery surrounding him. Everyone calls him a fiend or a demon or a goblin. He's also haunted by Cathy's ghost...or is that his own guilt? And, to me this is the nail in the coffin, he actually raped Isabella...completely out of spite, not only impregnating her in hate (possibly contributing to Linton's poor health), but also degrading the memory of Cathy. I think he deliberately makes the choices to commit those evil acts; he cannot go on blaming Cathy or Hindley or Edgar. He must take responsibility for the fact that he's taking pure revenge.

But to play devil's advocate, there's all the mysterious circumstances of his childhood...orphanage, poverty, racism, blah blah blah. And there are a few times he shows mercy...like when he allows Cathy to stay in bed for a fortnight after her father dies. And he even develops an almost-love for Hareton.

Also, I wish we could find out what happened in those three years when he left Wuthering Heights. What happened then? How did he get so rich? Why did he stay away so long? What did he think of the outside world? Did he make friends? Did it change his worldview? What convinced him to come back? I think that would shed some much-needed light on his character.

[Oread]

I don't think evil can be defined- its nature is different for everyone, and tomorrow it may even change in your own eyes. To me, Heathcliff is not purely evil because he has the capacity to love. True his acts are at times evil, but they are all a result of his knawing love for Catherine. I admire his love.

[riteofwriters]

He is NOT EVIL! Sure, he's a butt, but he is not evil. He has some terrible qualities, but his love for Cathy blows all of those away. Even though both of them are terrible people in general, their love is what keeps them out of that area. Anybody who cannot love is evil.
----- "I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his."
-Heathcliff

[simplicity]

Is Heathcliff evil?
I must answer with an outright No.

Many people's posts in this thread are discussing Heathcliff's actions and why he, as a person whose morals ought to be similar to our own, might act as he did in the book. However, in my opinion, Bronte can make him represent whatever she wants and I don't think that means we have to describe him as these things because he's not a person: he's an idea.

I take, for example, his 'being evil'. I imagine him, not as a person who carries out the actions that he does, but as a part of my own thoughts and emotions: a representation.
As humans, we have such powerful ability to love and hate with passion. Those most dear to us can instill in us the greatest emotion, just as Cathy does Heathcliff. Our loved ones have that ability to blur for us the fine line between love and hate, to fill us with passion and rage and the strongest feelings we experience.
But we do not act on these.

We strive to appear calm and moderate in our emotions, because it's what we're taught is acceptable. But, unless we are cold and without emotion, this emptiness and moderation of feelings does not reflect how we feel, the emotions we are restraining.
I feel that Heathcliff is the personification of this deep passion, the extremes of our being. He represents our inner selves, the ones we restrain and whose will we do not act upon.

Therefore, I cannot possibly say that Heathcliff is evil, merely the manifestation of our own hidden feelings.

[kiki1982]

Was Heathcliff evil?

It is a difficult question to answer. All through the book, from the start, Heathcliff has no history, no parentage and is essentially this strange black figure who creeps up on old Earnshaw and enjoys his kindness. This, in the contemporary readers’ minds would certainly have aroused superstitious thoughts of goblins, fairies and devils: they would secretly replace their own infants with human infants or would make a child with a woman and pass it off as the (earthly) father’s. They could also be found at the side of the road. The mysterious entry of Heathcliff into the Earnshaws’ life is at least to be called goblinish and fairy-like.

Repeatedly he is called ‘devil’, ‘fiend’ and ‘goblin’. It is worth to note that Isabella in her first letter asks Ellen a pertinent question: ‘Is he a man?’ Later, towards the end, Ellen muses on him being an unearthly creature, compares him to a goblin and calls his behaviour unnatural. She also starts to become superstitious about him. More to the point however, is that Ellen calls Linton at some point ‘a changeling’. Changelings were fairies raised by humans. In that, Isabella and Heathcliff could have made a changeling together, if Heathcliff were a fairy (here to be seen as a kind of unnatural being that can be both bad and good).

There are definite indications that Brontë decided on an unnatural being.
Robert Stowell has noted a similarity between Wuthering Heights and Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Although I find that Monte Cristo is more human as Dantès has a history, and returns to his old self after his revenge, there is a definite change discernable in Heathcliff too towards his end. Both heroes return to society for revenge, only to Dumas’s readers the hero is clear to have come by his money because of the treasure. Heathcliff turns up out of the blue with money, ready to torment the rest. Where that money comes from? It is a mystery. Stowell equally noted that that has something of a pact with the devil that allows Heathcliff to have come mysteriously to a lot of money and eternal youth (as Ellen in the end notes that he looks as young as ever) and that reduces him to a robotic-like creature without feeling. Where we feel still a little sad for Heathcliff in the beginning, when Hindley decides to deprive him of any respect whatsoever, we cease to feel that way when he takes Isabella as his wife despite hating her. The impression we get of him will only get worse. Although the positive impression is not really ever there as the book,is started with a Heathcliff who threatens Cathy with striking her, we could still understand why he becomes begrudged when we have read the first few chapters. His violence, though, outweighs any legitimacy whatsoever.

So, was he evil?

I certainly think he was evil without having any reason in the end. Why did he go off in a huff? Because Catherine called it a degradation to marry him. He had a right to be angry. It is sad that she was convinced about ‘helping him’ by marrying Linton. It is sad that she deceived herself and was then reasonably unhappy, though not totally (who could be that with a man like Edgar Linton?). Although he had a right to be angry at her condescending manner, he also did his best at repelling her by no longer giving words to his feelings for her. What did she have to think of that? The same obviously as her daughter will think about Hareton… Anyway, Heathcliff walks off, angry, and returns after three years to be the ruin of them who once scorned him. Yet, he starts to have pleasure in the misfortune of others and makes it his greatest goal in life. He did not have a reason to be cruel to Catherine’s daughter. Certainly Catherine married Linton, but what has little Catherine to do with it?. And Linton? It is even sadder that he involves young Isabella in it. She did not have to do anything with Edgar and Catherine’s marriage and certainly not with Catherine’s attitude before her marriage towards Heathcliff. Heathcliff becomes consumed by this cold (as in Charlotte’s work a synonym for desolation and hell). He does not only carry it inside himself, he also spreads it. When he comes to get little Catherine after the death of her father, she has already started to turn to ice as her lips indicate when she kisses Ellen. Indeed, his house, from the time he returns is a gloomy house without love, full of selfishness and snappy people. They will not do anything for one another because kindness does not exist. The only one who keeps giving it is Cathy, but she will only do that until Linton dies. After that, she calls it a day. Her kindness will only return when Ellen returns… When Heathcliff can finish his revenge and demolish the two houses, the scenes of his sorrow, he relinquishes it for Catherine. However, how come that he has found her back?

I think Ellen Dean is crucial in this. She continuously keeps trying to soften Heathcliff. If he has turned evil, she keeps trying kindness as the ultimate weapon against harshness. It is striking that she is not affected by any of his evilness. Unlike the rest she is not reduced to harshness, crudeness and sulkiness like the rest at Wuthering Heights. Catherine turns to ice, yet when Ellen returns, she endeavours to make up with Hareton and sees the errors of her ways. Even so much that they will marry soon. She, in my mind, is a Christian as Emily saw that.

Emily Brontë is often confused for being a-religious. She disgraces the Bible-reading and preaching Joseph and obviously he is a devout man on the surface. Yet, it is puzzling why he is then so judgemental and unkind (to Linton and Cathy). That is not devout, that is hypocritical. Ellen is more Christian in her behaviour. She, untiringly, tries to make people behave better, is not judgemental and is actually the means of re-uniting Cathy and Hareton. She lifts Wuthering Heights as it were out of its icy waters and returns it to sunshine. Heathcliff is powerless. He can strike and threaten, but ultimately he is powerless against kindness itself. That, in my opinion, is why he does not want Ellen near Wuthering Heights. Why then does he allow her to come back after Lockwood gave the letter to Cathy? In my opinion because the first act of kindness already had its effect: Hareton did not give the letter to Heathcliff for censure, but gave it straight to Cathy instead. It was a first act of rebellion.

As in The Count of Monte Cristo, Heathcliff like Dantès is now ready to fully take revenge: everything is his, he is free to do what he likes, but one thing fails him. It is the approval of the love of his life Catherine. Dantès too has a problem with this. His Mercédès is not hoping for revenge, she is hoping for being forgiven and hopes to find peace in her mind for leaving Edmond to himself. Dantès does not want to do so, but he has no peace. Heathcliff has no peace either. He wants to see his Catherine again, but she refuses to come to him. Why? Mercédès has grieved for Edmond because she says: ‘He died long ago.’ Similarly, Heathcliff has lost the humanity instilled in him by Ellen in his youth in making misery the only goal in his life. Catherine cannot, as his soul, come back to him before he shows a speck of humanity. As he is slowly having trouble, he admits it to Ellen (of all people) and behold:
Catherine returns in the eyes of Cathy and Hareton together. And from then, he will be able to find peace. His revenge is relinquished and he grows strangely calm. And he dies, with a smile, with the window of Catherine’s bedroom open (obviously she has come to get him as she tried with Lockwood in one of the first chapters). Where Catherine’s ghost was calling ‘Let me in’ at the start, she has been let in…

I do believe that Heathcliff came into the Earnshaw-family as a possible evil force. As a kind of bad fairy or changeling. From then, certainly, Earnshaw put a preference over his own son onto Heathcliff, something that induced Hindley to severe jealousy. Catherine grows into this narcissist girl who sees only implications to herself. She even makes her marriage to Linton sound like a sacrifice. He certainly seems like the force of evil in the beginning. It is only when he comes back that he really turns truly evil.

However, having fairy-propensities enables him to be really malicious. Only, though, against the people that have been bad to him. In that sense, Hindey’s wife dying, Hindley starting to drink and waste money, Catherine dying, Linton wasting away, Isabella (Linton’s sister) dying early, Hareton wasting away intellectually too, little Catherine being implicated in the whole thing, Linton Heathcliff left to rot from sickness… It is all connected with his fairy-revenge for Hindley and Catherine’s appalling conduct towards fairy Heathcliff. It is worth to note that the only one who has not done anything against him, Ellen, is left alone from all harm. Entreating from her indeed does not help the others, but she herself will never have to fear for a beating.
Stories tell of people carried away by the fairies and being replaced with a block of wood covered with the outside of the person. That would seem what happened with the rest in Wuthering Heights: until the end they don’t seem to be people at all; they have no feelings, they do not engage, they only live for themselves in an eerie atmosphere, seemingly ‘empty’. But, fairies can bring their human children back and that seems t be what happens through Ellen.

The fact that he is called a ‘demon’ could be down to the conflicting stories about fairies: that they were in fact fallen angels, that they were the spirits of dead people, that they were a conquered people,… When Christian belief came they changed names, but not nature.

Heathcliff is a strange mix of human nature and fairy-nature. Being a fairy made him excessively bad towards his wrong-doers, but clement towards people who had been good to him.

[MsSilentia]

Yes I think Heathcliff seems to be more of a kind of goblin or demon than a man of flesh and bone. Almost from the beginning he endures pain and ill-treatment in an unchildly way and in his death he looks like something uncanny.

He is picked up from the roadside, brings out the worst aspects of the family members and causes the destruction of two houses. The child uses his own ill-treatment to manipulate the family and then he leaves and comes back to fulfill his revenge. The members of the other house have not even been deliberately cruel to him, only prejudiced and insensible. When Isabella falls in love with him and he rewards her with cruelty is it then because he remembers this or is it because she is nothing to him except a tool for revenge?

The order is restored in the next generation and after his own son is dead. The last thing is very disturbing to me because it indicates that his seed is polluted. To me this does not make him a real man, responding to child abuse and humiliation, but something not human. In Swedish I should call him a “troll” but I do not know if the English “goblin” is as accurate.

And then he does not join his beloved in heaven but haunts the grounds and maybe later the house together with her, just like the old pre-Christian ideas about the dead. At least up here the dead ancestors were not so very far away in pre-Christian time.

Another sign is that although he tries to put the old farmer’s son in the same position as he has experienced himself, that young man never loses his capacity for compassion while Heathcliff’s own son seems to lack it.
None of them spent their early years under his influence and still his own son has no willpower of his own while the farmer’s son, who loves him as a father, is never totally subdued. Catherine’s daughter isn’t really subdued either.

So to me it seems to be a story about a family that gets something “uncanny” in the house which destroys one generation but is defeated in the next.

But I am not sure Heathcliff and Nelly are the only possible antitheses in the story. What do you think about Joseph? What is his role? To me he seems as gruffy and as vindictive as an old Swedish brownie. They were also considered very severe and self-righteous and you had better humour them:smile5:

And what about Lockwood himself? Is it really Nelly who brings the change and Lockwood's part is just to see it happen? Or is it Lockwood, the stranger who has nothing to do with the entangled relations, that really brings the daylight into the pit? Nelly has been there all the time and not been able to prevent anything so far.

Just my thoughts:smile5: I just read it recently and I must admit it was very different from what I expected. I know Jane Eyre caused a scandal in her own time, especially after the critics begun to expect Currer Bell to be a woman, but how was this recieved?

[Wozo]

I personally am of the view that Heathcliff is a very very bad man, maybe, as some people have pointed out, calling him 'evil' might be too strong...but I'm not sure! Some have argued that Heathcliff's troubled past caused him to grow up and behave in the ways that he does...but Bronte shows us early on that Heathcliff has a bad character even when he is being treated well by Mr Earnshaw. When he finds out that the horse he has chosen is lame, for example, he blackmails Hindley into giving him HIS horse instead, thus showing the manipulative elements that are present in his personality. He never shows gratitude to Earnshaw, even though he is the person who took him off the streets, and though he shows love for Cathy, this seems to be the only positive emotion he shows throughout the book. And even though he loves her, he still shows selfishness towards her, and eventually basically ruins not only her life, but the life of her brother, nephews, husband and daughter! All she actually did was marry someone else! I have very little sympathy for Heathcliff, I think his intentions on returning to Wuthering Heights were pretty unforgiveable, and even after he had exacted his revenge on all those that had 'wronged' him (I'm sorry but what did Cathy 2 and Hareton ever do to him??), he still wasn't happy.

I agree that after the second time reading WH I did feel a little bit of pity towards HC, but the anger and dislike I felt towards him in the first reading is too overpowering for me.

(Also, there are suggestions in the book that HC is in fact some form of monster? See after Cathy dies and he is standing in the garden, Isabella's account of him etc. Was this Bronte's intention and i she trying to show that he IS evil, maybe a demon?)

[Lanteri]

I don't understand how can you write that Heathcliff wasn't evil. After everything he'd done...

He abused and beat Cathy, it wasn't normal! She hadn't done anything wrong to be threated like that. He was bad, cruel and mean. Not every orphan is bad to the bone, it's not the rule. He was adopted, he should have felt graceful.
His love for Cathrine destroyed everything, whatever it touched. If you really love somebody, you'll give him freedom.