Heathcliff's Character Profile - Wuthering Heights

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Heathcliff Character Analysis Heathcliff and His Reputation Forget most of the romantic nonsense you have heard about Heathcliff. Sure he's in love with Catherine, and you can't question his loyalty, but he has a serious mean streak. Brontë is at her best when she is describing him, and his looks garner a lot of attention from her and the other characters. Numerous polls have voted him literature's most romantic hero, which says a lot about the kind of men we like – tortured, brooding, and obsessive. Heathcliff is the embodiment of what is known by literary types as the Byronic hero – a dark, outsider antihero (kind of like Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre or Edward Cullen fromTwilight). He is swarthy, lonerish, and little demonic, but definitely sexy. Heathcliff's Childhood Heathcliff enters the Earnshaw home as a poor orphan and is immediately stigmatized by questions of parentage. He is characterized as devilish and cruelly referred to as "it" in the Earnshaw household. His language is "gibberish" and his dark otherness provokes the labels "gipsy," "wicked boy," "villain," and "imp of Satan." This poor treatment is not much of an improvement on his "starving and houseless" childhood, and he quickly becomes a product of all of the abuse and neglect. Racially different, he can and will never be accepted by his adoptive family or the villagers of Gimmerton. That Heathcliff should be given the name of an Earnshaw son who died in childhood confirms the impression of his being a fairy changeling – an otherworldly being that takes the place of a human child. Plus, he is never given the last name Earnshaw. Heathcliff's arrival is seen as a direct threat to just about everyone, but mostly to Hindley. As Nelly Dean tells it, "from the very beginning, [Heathcliff] bred bad feeling in the house" (5.55). Her choice of words is suggestive, since there is so much
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