page_title: Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)
section_title: Character
hierarchical_section_title: Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) / Character
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Richard Burton and Yvonne Furneaux from a Dupont Show of the Month presentation of "Wuthering Heights".
context_page_description: Heathcliff is a fictional character in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. Owing to the novel's enduring fame and popularity, he is often regarded as an archetype of the tortured antihero whose all-consuming rage, jealousy and anger destroy both him and those around him.
  He is better known for being a romantic hero due to his youthful love for Catherine Earnshaw, than for his final years of vengeance in the second half of the novel, during which he grows into a bitter, haunted man, and for a number of incidents in his early life that suggest that he was an upset and sometimes malicious individual from the beginning. His complicated, mesmerizing, consumable, and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain.
context_section_description: You teach me now how cruel you've been — cruel and false!  Why did you despise me?  Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy?  I have not one word of comfort.  You deserve this.  You have killed yourself.  Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you — they'll damn you.  You loved me — then what right had you to leave me?  What right — answer me — for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?  Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it.  I have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.  So much the worse for me, that I am strong.  Do I want to live?  What kind of living will it be when you——oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?
  A foundling discovered on the streets of Liverpool and raised by the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights in Yorkshire, Heathcliff's past and early childhood before his mysterious adoption are only hinted at by Brontë. In keeping with the supernatural themes present in the novel, it is speculated that Heathcliff might be a demon or a hellish soul. His appearance would be faithfully interpreted as resembling a Roma, or Gypsy, as he is described with dark hair, dark eyes, and dark skin. Later in life he becomes a gentleman "in dress and aspect." Nelly Dean states that he could be an "American castaway." Heathcliff may have been of mixed race, because he is described in the original book as a "dark-skinned gypsy" and "a little Lascar" – a 19th-century term for Indian sailors. In Chapter Four, Heathcliff is described by Mr Earnshaw to be "as dark almost as if it came from the devil." In Chapter Seven, Nelly Dean asks of him “Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen?”
  A silent and at first solitary child, Heathcliff is initially resented by both Catherine Earnshaw and her elder brother, Hindley; whilst Catherine later befriends and loves Heathcliff, Hindley continues to resent him, seeing him as an interloper who has stolen his father's affection. Upon Mr. Earnshaw's death and his inheritance of the estate, the spiteful Hindley proceeds to treat Heathcliff as little more than a servant boy and makes him work the fields, which compounds Heathcliff's lifelong anger and resentment. Catherine, however, remains close to her foster brother throughout her early years.
  As she matures into her young teens, however, Catherine grows close to Edgar Linton, a timid and well-bred young man from the neighbouring estate, Thrushcross Grange, and accepts his proposal of marriage; but, she insists that her true and only love is Heathcliff. She claims that she cannot marry him because it "would degrade her" and that the two would be beggars were such a union to take place. Nevertheless, she also declares her passion for him in such ways as "whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same", and the famous quote "I am Heathcliff." Aware only of Catherine's decision to marry Edgar, rather than her proclamation of true love for him, a bitter Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights upon overhearing her saying that it would degrade her and while away, by means unknown, makes his fortune.
  Nelly Dean describes him as "lazy" when he returns and that his "upright carriage suggested his being in the army." No other hints are given about where Heathcliff was and how he made his fortune over the course of his three-year absence. On returning, he is ruthlessly determined to destroy those who degraded him and prevented him from being with Catherine, cementing his status as an anti-hero, rather than a romantic hero. Not only does he swindle Hindley, who has fallen into alcoholism and gambling after the death of his wife, Frances, out of his ownership of Wuthering Heights and Hindley's son's inheritance; he heartlessly takes advantage of Edgar Linton's sister Isabella and marries her, before treating her in a cruel and contemptuous fashion. Although he tells Catherine that he despises Isabella and would "
caption: Heathcliff (played by Richard Burton) with Catherine, in a 1958 adaption of Wuthering Heights
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