Heathcliff: Victim Or Hellish Fiend?

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In the light of the events within the book, is Heathcliff a fiend from Hell or a victim or social prejudice? The question in this essay concerns the important character of Heathcliff, the rogue of Wuthering Heights that we have all come to know and love. As the question points out, without reading the book, we can see that the character Heathcliff has done some bad things, so, we are asked, is it all due to his character and inherited personality from birth or perhaps, is it due to Heathcliff’s own upbringing and abuses suffered during his life which have caused his malevolence? My answer in brief incorporates both the points in the question, as so to say that he is a fiend from Hell because he is a victim of social prejudice. A ‘fiend from Hell’ is a metaphor, and a highly hyperbolic one at that. As once, when the Bible was interpreted very literally, it would have been most possible for a fiend or demon to exist (this was so in Emily Brontë’s time) but for someone human to be one was still treated as a metaphor and as non-realistic abuse back then. Nowadays, as the Church (mostly) comes to teach the existence of Hell and Satan as metaphorical, such insults as ‘a fiend from Hell’ would be thought simply a figure of speech. From the first time Heathcliff arrives at Wuthering Heights, he is not liked. Chapter 4 depicts his arrival and the instant grief he receives. Mr. Earnshaw, the patriarch of the family and the owner of Wuthering Heights, arrives back late from a stay in Liverpool, not with the promised gifts for his children but with an abandoned orphan that he found on the dingy streets of Liverpool. From this act, all members of the household have a reason to hate the grubby “gypsy boy” whom they later christen ‘Heathcliff’. * Mrs. Heathcliff hates him for being another burden as “we have our own bairns to feed”. * Cathy, out of pure

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