Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights :: Free Essay Writer

Wuthering high school centers around the story of Heathcliff. The firstparagraph of the novel provides a promising physical picture of him, asLockwood describes how his black eyes withdraw suspiciously underhis brows at Lockwoods approach. Nellys story begins with hisintroduction into the Earnshaw family, his spiteful machinations drivethe entire plot, and his death ends the book. The desire to understandhim and his motivations has kept illimitable readers engaged in thenovel.Heathcliff, however, defies being understood, and it is difficult forreaders to resist eyesight what they extremity or expect to see in him. Thenovel teases the reader with the accident that Heathcliff issomething new(prenominal) than what he seemsthat his cruelty is merely anexpression of his frustrated screw for Catherine, or that his sinisterbehaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romanticist hero. We expectHeathcliffs character to contain such a unavowed virtue because heresembles a hero in a da wdle novel. Traditionally, romance novelheroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only subsequent toemerge as fiercely devoted and loving. One hundred eld before EmilyBront wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that a reformed rake makesthe best conserve was already a clich of romantic literature, andromance novels center around the same clich to this day.However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves sogreat and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even asa desire for revenge against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc. As hehimself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely sadistic, as heamuses himself by eyesight how much abuse she can take and still come recoil back for more. Critic Joyce Carol Oates argues that EmilyBront does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does toIsabella, interrogation to see how many times the reader can be shock byHeathcliffs gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist onseeing him as a r omantic hero.It is significant that Heathcliff begins his life as a homeless orphanon the streets of Liverpool. When Bront composed her book, in the1840s, the English saving was severely depressed, and the conditionsof the factory workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were so solemn that the upper and middle classes feared violent revolt.Thus, many of the more affluent members of social club beheld theseworkers with a mixture of sympathy and fear. In literature, the smoky,threatening, miserable factory-towns were often correspond inreligious terms, and compared to hell. The poet William Blake, writingnear the turn of the nineteenth century, speaks of Englands darkSatanic Mills. Heathcliff, of course, is frequently compared to ademon by the other characters in the book.