Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights is a story about love that transcends both death and revenge. The protagonist of the novel, Heathcliff, spends his childhood with Catherine Earnshaw and eventually falls in love with her, which becomes the key focus of the story. However, their involvement brings forth more hatred and revenge than it does love. Catherine and Heathcliff declare themselves lovers in the beginning of the novel, but both end up marrying different people by the end. The effect of Catherine and Heathcliff’s estrangement results in numerous accounts of hostility and a thirst for revenge within Heathcliff. He manipulates other characters and uses the children to gain a perverse vengence against those who wronged him. Even after …show more content…
The Linton family has fine manners and superior social status that presents a new perspective for Catherine when she stays with the family after her injury. She becomes infatuated with Edgar and decides to marry him simply because he can provide for her what Heathcliff cannot. Heathcliff overhears Catherine’s discussion with Nellie Dean and takes off for three years to an unknown place where he undergoes his own form of metamorphosis. Much like a butterfly, Heathcliff wraps himself in a cacoon and hides away for a long period of time in hopes of returning back more beautiful (or wealthier) than ever (Verden). Time is a neccessary component in the transformation of Heathcliff because it allows for hatred to drain from soul and for love to reassert itself; additionally, time allows for Heathcliff to gain the class and wealth that he prviously did not have which, in his mind, led Catherine to choose Edgar over him. Now he knows that in order to make up for this loss, Heathcliff must come into possession of not only Wuthering Heights but also Thrushcross Grange as part of his revenge (Watson). Still, Catherine marries Edgar and their marriage becomes the greatest injustice bestowed upon Heathcliff, consequently leading to Heathcliff’s period of insanity. Melvin Watson, a victorian literature specialist, attests to this theory stating how Heathcliff is a man who is set in his ways and he will do anything to get Catherine, treating wealth and class as mere obstacles, but if his only source of happiness is taken away from him, then he turns to hate and Edgar along with every related person to Edgar is added to his “hit list” right under Hindley (Watson