Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights-Reevaluation Of Heathcliff

A Reevaluation of Heathcliff Much of the story in Wuthering Heights is built around Heathcliff’s desire for revenge. His deep-seated anger and frustration over his conditions are created early in the novel and stay with him through every single page. By the closing chapters, Heathcliff has used his condition as an excuse to bring misery to countless others, which eventually propagates through nearly every character in the book. This same pattern of revenge and hatred could quite possibly have existed indefinitely if there was no character that reassessed his or her moral priorities. Fortunately, Heathcliff is able to serve as this character; he overcomes his anger in a powerful closing to the novel, and it is this ability for him

Without a very specific set of circumstances, it is unlikely that Heathcliff would have ever become the character that he was. This set of circumstances involved Mr. Earnshaw’s favorable treatment of Heathcliff and neglect of his own son Hindley. Such imbalance of treatment leads to an early anger found not in Heathcliff, but in Hindley. Once Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley takes over the house and is put in a position where he is in control of Heathcliff’s future. Hindley takes a road not of forgiveness, but of revenge, and quickly takes to treating Heathcliff as a lowly servant, not as the moral and educated equal that Mr. Earnshaw considered him. Despite all of this degradation, Heathcliff retains a somewhat positive attitude – for a short time – because he still has a personal connection with Catherine, the only person that truly matters to him. Unfortunately, although Heathcliff considers his degradation to be insignificant, Catherine soon realizes that she can never commit herself to marrying what Heathcliff has become. This single change causes an uprising of anger inside of Heathcliff, and soon the same hatred and desire for revenge that existed inside of Hindley exists inside of Heathcliff. The young man now wants not only revenge on Hindley, but on Catherine for thinking him not good enough. Although a time of many years elapses, Heathcliff seems to never be able

So long as Heathcliff holds on to his anger, no character in the book can be at peace. Heathcliff is haunted by Catherine’s memory and other characters are tortured by Heathcliff himself. As discussed previously, this anger of Heathcliff’s drives an indefinite cycle; just as Heathcliff’s desire for revenge was spawned by Hindley’s misconduct, Heathcliff has the potential to create anger inside of Hareton that could lead to the continuation of hatred and revenge. Only once Heathcliff undergoes his “spiritual reassessment” can this cycle end and all characters in the book can find happiness. Although Heathcliff does not fully forgive Hindley for his misconduct, he is slowly able to realize that it is better for him to leave past events in the past and seek a better future for himself and others. Such an occurrence stresses the importance of letting go of one’s anger, which is deemed to be a positive character trait both now and in Brontë’s time. The stressing of this idea in the later parts of the book is Brontë’s focus for the work. By using Heathcliff’s inability to forgive, she hopes to show that anger will only bring more anger, but kindness will only bring more