The figure of the VILLAIN in Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS (original) (raw)

Heathcliff; a Charming Anti-Hero in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

2017

This paper seeks to examine how Heathcliff is portrayed as a Charming Anti-hero in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The focus on the Anti-hero is a departure from the prominence given to the hero in literature. This article explores the concept of the Anti-hero and how the character has been handled in works of literature. It also examines the evolution of the Anti-hero in works of literature and offers an explanation as to why he should be a significant literary figure to study.

The Portrayal of Heathcliff's Character in "Wuthering Heights"

Heathcliff is a fictional character in Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights. Owing to the novel's enduring fame and popularity, he is often regarded as an archetype of the tortured romantic hero whose allconsuming passions destroy both him and those around him.His complicated, mesmerizing, consumable, and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain. Thus, this paper attempts to delineate the ''ThePortrayalofHeathcliff'sCharacter in "Wuthering Heights". The significance of this paper lieson the ThePortrayalofHeathcliff'sCharacter .The study follows the Descriptive Analytical Method. It begins by an introduction forming a background to the study; followed by a summary of the plot, a literature review, a discussion and a conclusion. The findings of this paper revealed that, both Heathcliff and Edgar eventually die of broken hearts, unable to reconcile themselves to Catherine's death. As if to bring the story full circle, Brontë presents us finally with the possibility of true love and happiness within a relationship that between the two cousins, Cathy and Hareton "one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed." There is no grand passion here, but no violence, either. The novel is a stark warning against the former, and, in Hareton and Cathy's reasoned and gentle love, it promotes the latter as the only sane way to live. In this way, the study recommend that, Wuthering Heights can be seen to be not so much a "love story" but, rather, an investigation into romantic love, comprising a discourse on social conventions, blind passion, violence, jealousy, and revenge, together with the notion of good versus evil.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: An Unconventional Victorian Masterpiece

2014

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1818-1848) is a novel which is windswept and weatherbeaten both in the world outside and in the world inside of human emotion. The total book leaves a deep impression of an intense but dreary romantic view of life and of an unusual mystery and conflict. None of the Victorian novelists has been able to create these traits. Some of Emily's characters appear like creatures of their autonomous, unreal world. This paper shows that the novel is an expression of Emily's rare sense of imagination that is absent in many other contemporary novelists. It also shows that Emily paints an unusual love before which the demonic passion melts. So, this novel stands far apart from other Victorian masterpieces. Not only this, Wuthering Heights does not portray Victorian realism which is the focal point of most of the Victorian great novels.

Heathcliff's Cruelty in _Wuthering Heights_: A Complex Character Analysis

2021

Heathcliff, the Byronic hero portrayed in Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights, attributes such a cruel and dark personality. However, his cruelty seems to derive from a feeling of damage and sensitivity to the damage he has suffered as opposed to being a psychopath. Heathcliff is a hero due to his endless love for Catherine, and the passionate care he has for her. Heathcliff is a villain because of the cruel revenge he tries to get on the Lintons and Hindley. But the brutality of Heathcliff cannot be denied. Bronte’s skillful writing makes it pretty apparent how he became bitter and resentful toward life and people. His abuse of Isabella Linton whom he marries as part of his ploy for retribution highlights his sadistic side repetitively in the novel. He scoffs and torments Isabella simply to see how commonly she might come returned to him. Critics argue that Bronte takes her readers alongside for the same ride, checking out to see how an awful lot of violence they could justify to be able to deal with Heathcliff as a romantic hero. Contemplating Bronte’s personation, this paper simultaneously aims to identify and justify the cruelty of Heathcliff in _Wuthering Heights_.

The Most Revolutionary Aspect of "Otherness" in Wuthering Heights

Edward Said states in his book Orientalism : "The development and maintenance of every culture requires the existence of another different and competing alter ego. The construction of identity… whether Orient or Occident, France or Britain… involves establishing opposites and otherness whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and reinterpretation of their differences from us." (1978: 202) This paper attempts to explore the four dimensions of 'Othering' by depicting the geographical, racial, ethnical and religious oppression in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. This exploration begins with how the novel should be considered and interpreted within a postcolonial context to depict how characters suffer ;because they are the other, psychologically and socially due to their gender, race and class. Specifically, this paper examines how the use of 'Othering' breaks with the conventions of the content to determine an unconventional form of this novel. In other words, 'Othering' is found in the language and also in the social, financial and religious incidents of the novel and all are manifested through an unconventional method of narration(a narrative within a narrative).Therefore this novel has been considered puzzling to be classified as a gothic story, a novel of manners, a Romantic or a metaphysical novel. To put it differently Wuthering Heights presents these genres unconventionally as Emile Bronte uses the gothic element of "Heathcliff" as a Byronic hero who rebels and seeks for revenge because of being betrayed and he acts unconventionally contrasted with the cuckold man of England culture who is known as the poor and the coward man because of the unfaithful wives portraying how the other Heathcliff revenged unexpectedly and differently from the normal cuckold man. Furthermore, the novel is classified as a novel of manners despite the full absence of moral scheme by which the novel is considered revolutionary regarding to how the characters "Catherine and Heathcliff" other and neglect society, religion and morality and follow their Id and marginalize their Ego. Also how Heathcliff seeks for revenge immorally to create the "self". In addition, Wuthering Heights is being revolutionary by not following the traditional characteristics of a Romantic novel that focuses on the relationship between the lover and the beloved who are emotionally satisfied and eventually who have an optimistic ending. Emile Bronte portrays the satisfying relationship between "Cathrine and Heathcliff" until they visited Trushcross when Cathrine marginalizes her lover to build her "self" financially by marrying Edgar for his social class. Moreover Emile Bronte revolutionizes the method of narration in Wuthering Heights by choosing two narrators , one is a governess " NellyDean" who doesn't have a stable attitude towards the lovers, once with and once against. The other narrator is a foreigner ''Lockwood" who marginalizes the characters' direct affection and emotions while narrating the story from his point of view. This narrative method offers obscure and unreliable source of reality and therefore othering the true perspective is clear in the novel which is considered a

Sublime of horrific passion in Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'

Langlit: An international peer reviewed open access journal (ISSN-2349-5189, Impact factor-5.61) UGC APPROVED, 2022

The passion in life is both delightful and destructive. In passionate love men and women unconsciously desire their own demise but this is the sublime. Here sublime is a vision of infinity which dissolves our identity in an agreeable kind of way. The fiction Wuthering Heights though with the use of Gothic elements evoked terror, it, nonetheless conveyed strong sublime effect with a destructive romance. Destructive passion, reflecting irrational and the grotesque associated with Gothicism. The passion of Heathcliff and Catherine is a kind of sublimation which is destructive, dangerous, and awe-inspiring and at the same time presents death, abuse, vengeance, and self-loathing, embody grotesque. Edmund Bruke's description of sublime as ''delightful horror'' that has the implication of raising up to or beyond the limit. Through self-destructive limitless passion their souls lifted up by sublime. This paper explores the sublime of this fiction; especially the destructive passion between two protagonists Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff's love for Catherine which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman; a passion that tormented Catherine by its quenchless and ceaseless ravaging effect. But they elevate the soul to its highest pitch being oneness with each other. It is the life of Eros which is the painful travelling in its provocation for the bliss of extinction.

The Othered Half: Monstrosity, Identity, and Romance in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Using various theories of monstrosity, degeneration, and the morphic figure in Gothic studies, this essay explores explicitly the manifestation of Gothic archetypes and tropes in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The essay further explores figures of the werewolf, the vampire, and the revenant in the general sense, deconstructing the romance of Heathcliff and Cathy, and the interplay of masculinity and femininity, along with a 'natural', atavistic horror, at work in the text.

The Society of Villains in Wuthering Heights: A New Perspective on the Element of Villainy

International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 2021

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is so fraught with real-life experiences that the reader is unsure about recognizing any single character as the villain. Since the events in the novel take place in the Victorian era, and the attitude of the Victorian English towards the racial "other" was that of a vindictive better towards their slaves, this paper attempts to examine the role of villainy in the novel. Despite the general viewpoint that considers Heathcliff as the sole source of malice in the novel, this paper looks to build on a social approach in identifying the villain(s) of the novel. Drawing on Bhabha's (2012) theories, such as "hybridity", "mimicry" and "third-space", which will serve as the main source of investigation, we will organize the argument so as to identify the villain(s) in Wuthering Heights. The purpose of such an investigation, therefore, will be to explain why and how a colonial "other", that is Heathcliff, becomes a villain in a society whose practitioners consider themselves righteous.

Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel

Wuthering Heights "is an English genre of fiction popular in the 18th century. It is characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and horror and having a pseudo-medieval setting. It is a multi-generational Gothic and romantic novel. It revolves around the doomed love between Heathcliff and Catherine .Wuthering Heights sheds the lights with Lockwood, an owner of Heathcliff's, coming the home of his landlord Mr. Earnshaw, a Yorkshire Farmer and owner of Wuthering Heights, brings home an orphan from Liverpool. The baby is called Heathcliff and lives with the Earnshaw children, Hindley and Catherine.It is a movement that refers to ruin, decay, love, romance death, terror, and chaos, and unusual irrationality and compassion over rationality and sense.