Selfness in Wuthering Heights

!
Selfness in Wuthering Heights
Human nature is inherent in the natural attribute of human. The most important way to study humanity is to gain self-awareness. Wuthering Heights expresses Emily’s deep understanding of human nature that the essence of human nature is selfish.
This thesis aims to have a look at the selfness of the hero and heroine in Wuthering
Heights and to draw a conclusion that there should be a balance between the reasonable selfishness and respect and tolerance to others.
Since the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1848, it has been denounced as an appalling, ridiculous, disgusting and meaningless work. Heathcliff, the hero in the novel, has the character filled with the spirit of wildness and violence, which let people to feel repressed at any moment with him. However, one would also be moved by his gentleness and kindness when he saw his love towards the heroine Catherine.
Throughout Wuthering Heights two distinct yet, related obsessions drive Heathcliff’s character: his desire for Catherine’s love and his need for revenge. As a literary critic,
Heathcliff could be identified as a manifestation of pure evil, an avatar of the Devil and so on and so forth. Several childhood experiences such as racial discrimination, hatred, neglect, etc. must have forged him into a complex character.（Mosir Khan,
2014）The extreme love and extreme aversion shown from Heathcliff makes Wuthering Heights different. The selfish characters of the hero and heroine, Heathcliff and
Catherine, not only lead to their tragic fates, but also cause the tragedy of others.
The brutal abuse and insult to Heathcliff by Hindley - the son of old Mr. Earnshaw, is the main cause of Heathcliff’s complete lattice distortion. The way he treats

Heathcliff is enough to make a saint monster. To Hindley, Heathcliff is the worst thing in the world for he usurps his father's love and his privilege, therefore Hindley has grasped every opportunity to discriminate against him and abuse him ruthlessly.
Heathcliff is not treated primarily because of his social class nor his race, but a mixture of both. The issues of race and social class in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights are main focuses for how Heathcliff is perceived and how they influence his actions.
(M, Larsson, 2013). He could stand Hindley’s violent fist and horsewhip without dropping any tears. To some extent, he is like the stones in Wuthering Heights, which could endure pain brought by the snow, the heating sun, living his life with enduring humiliation. Being abused and tortured for years, he formed a unique tenacious, to be more accurate, a stubborn kind of character and planted seeds to practice his belief that if revenge is not successful when alive, he does not feel at ease when dead.
At first, his aversion to Hindley is reasonable for he is a victim that his personal freedom is threatened, his emotion is suppressed, and his personality was insulted.
After the old Enshaw died, Hindley has become the master of the Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff has been kicked out of the living room and reduced to be a slave. He has not only done the manual labour, but also suffered the mental torture and personality insult. So this kind of hatred is a rational, understandable one and is worthy of sympathy. One should have psychological balance after the threat was released. Yet his hatred to one person shifted to the emotion to hate all people so as to heal his psychological trauma and gain happiness by revenge. Heathcliff only cares about the pain he has suffered. In order to balance his narrow and selfish heart, he is crazy for the revenge work. Firstly, his target is Hindley. He has tempted him with gambling and made him go downhill. With time by, Hindley has lost both fame and money due to gambling.

For Hindley, both the noble status and large amount of property has gone. What’s more, Heathcliff even transmit his hatred to Hindley’s son, Hareton. As the new master of the wuthering heights, he has not given any chance to Hareton to receive education, instead has indulged his vices and made Hareton become what he was in the childhood. In order to gain the Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff has married with Linton’s sister, Isabella. After the marriage, he has cruelly tortured his wife to take vengeance on Linton and Cathrine. Even Cathy, the daughter of Linton and Cathrine fail to escape the clutches of Heathcliff. She has been forced to Heathcliff’s dying son. In this way, Heathcliff can observe the Thrushcross Grange after Linton dies. At last, all the people have been hurt by Heathcliff. This kind of hatred is irrational and not worthy of sympathy. On the way to revenge, Heathcliff has hurt everyone, among which, Isabella, Cathy and Hareton are innocent. Heathcliff is a selfish man who does not know self-love, self-respect and don't know how to respect others, also don't really love others.
In this world, the love of Catherine is the only thing Heathcliff has. Even if everything is lost, Heathcliff has Catherine’s love for him so that he was able to continue to live. Without Catherine’s love, Heathcliff really has nothing at all. However,
Catherine chose Linton eventually. She abandoned him and Heathcliff lost the power to survive. He was frustrated deeply because of not getting Catherine's love. His selfish nature caused his desire for revenge. This kind of behavior that hate other people because of one person who hurts him full displays in Heathcliff’s folded, selfish, narrow loathed character.
In addition to Heathcliff's obvious selfish character in the novel, Catherine's selfish character also has a good performance in the novel. “My love for Heathcliff re-

sembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than
I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. ” “Mr. Heathcliff, let ME go home! I promise to marry Linton: papa would like me to: and I love him. Why should you wish to force me to do what I'll willingly do of myself?" (Emily, Bronte,
1847).She is self-deception. She wants to possess two men at the same time and to live a life with both Linton's rich life and the need to have a comforting life of the soul freedom. (PS,Hernández, 2004). She chose Linton as her husband for many vulgar practical purposes. When Catherine marries the symbol of cultivation—Edgar
Linton—she, in effect, separates herself from Heathcliff and thereby causes the suppression and imprisonment of her own nature. When Catherine comes to realize that
Heathcliff can never be hers again in life while she remains the cultivated wife of
Edgar Linton, she imprisons herself in her room for three days without food or water.
Though separated from her true nature in life, she may hopes to achieve oneness with
Heathcliff by causing the extinction of the symbol of her cultivated identity --her physical body. (JL, Muller, 2012) She doesn’t want to make a choice between two men. And because of this kind of extremely selfish idea, it not only triggers her own pain, but also brings Heathcliff and Linton into the painful abyss.
Selfishness of human nature is the invisible framework Emily uses to describe characters and show all events. The twisted mind of Heathcliff is fuelled by the selfish choice of Catherine, and Heathcliff plans a series of retaliatory action leading to the tragic fate of others. Through them, Emily describes the inner selfish characters and the weakness of human nature. Selfishness is the essence of human nature, and this essence itself is not good or evil. If a person's selfishness interferes with the interests

of other, even hurt he, this kind of behavior could be called vice. If people can meet the reasonable selfishness as well as respect and tolerate others, our world will be better.

!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!

!
Reference
Emily, Bronte. (1847). Wuthering Heights. London : Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford
University Press.

!
JL,Muller. (2012). Human Nature and Confinement in Emily Bronte's Wuthering
Heights. Journal of Student Research, 1(2). Retrieved from http://bluetangi.com/ jofsr.com/index.php/path/article/view/77/0. !
Khan, Mosir. (2014). Defining Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights in Psychological
Te r m s . R e t r i e v e d f r o m h t t p : / / p a p e r s . s s r n . c o m / s o l 3 / p a p e r s . c f m ? abstract_id=2413155. !
M, Larsson. (2013). Heathcliff:The Black Dog that Became a Bourgeois Gentlemanthe Combined Issue of Race and Social Class in Wuthering Heights. Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:637392. !
PS,Hernández. (2004). What kind of love is at work in" Pride and Prejudice" and"
Wuthering Heights"?. Journal of English Studies, volume 4, 185-196. Retrieved from http://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs-2.4.2/index.php/jes/article/view/95/75.