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

Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her narrative skills to make the reader play an active role in the reading and interpretation of the novel. The figure of the villain in this intense and complicated love story has become a polemic topic discussed by many different critics, whose final conclusions are not always the same. The violent, unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible actions carried out by the mysterious Heathcliff have led many readers and critics to consider him to be the villain par excellence of the novel. However, it should be noted that, despite all his evil actions, there is something that on the other hand turns him into the hero and sufferer of the story: his impossible love for Catherine Earnshaw. The narrator, Ellen Dean, has also been regarded by some critics as the devilish villain of the story, due to her capacity to control the other characters and most of the situations that take place over the cours...