Wuthering Heights: Analysis

tWuthering Heights

In the Victorian era, men were believed to be inherently superior to women by natural design. We see that in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff appears to impose dominance over many of the characters in the novel as the story progresses. His quest for vengeance and his inability to deal with the death of Catherine eventually reveal his true nature as a maudlin sociopath
In chapter 10, upon Heathcliff's return to Wuthering Heights, Nelly recounts when she beheld "the transformation of Heathcliff" that "A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in [his] depressed brows, and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified, quite divested of roughness though too stern for grace". He is indeed at this point too stern for grace and has become vengeful, tormented by his lost love, and reduced to a shadow of his former self. As he begins to seek what he conceives as justice, any sympathy felt before for him begins to melt away.
When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights, he is no longer the impoverished boy as before. He is wealthy now and has lost all compassion for others. The first person he seeks revenge on is Hindley, who was responsible for the time that Heathcliff spent as a laborer. Hindley is impressionable due to a drinking problem and Heathcliff draws him into a debt which allows him to inherit the manor after Hindley's death. By seeking revenge on the brother of his former love, Heathcliff begins his acquisition of the things which he believes are rightfully his. As Hindley was abusive as a youth, the reader doesn't necessarily feel bad for the revenge Heathcliff so deeply desires. However, these actions are what will ultimately lead to Heathcliff's death, as he will realize that all he has wrought on those who've made his life miserable can't return the love he felt with Catherine or cease his haunting by her memory.
At this point in the novel, Heathcliff has taken the deceased Hindley's son as his own. When it becomes clear that Heathcliff has forgotten his own roots as an orphan and sees the abuse of the boy as further punishment for Hindley's misdeeds, Heathcliff is lost to his rage. By keeping Hareton ignorant and allowing the boy to love him, Heathcliff's actions are truly damning. It seems unlikely at this point that he will be able to redeem himself in the eyes of the reader, and has compounded his own guilt and wrathful feelings. When Catherine dies and Heathcliff begs her spirit to remain on Earth, we are truly seeing the desperate pleas of a pitiful man. He has secured his own destruction by tormenting himself with Catherine and by terrorizing Hareton.
In the final chapters of the novel, Heathcliff has gained control of both Wuthering Heights and its sister manor, Thrushcross Grange. He forces Catherine, the younger daughter of the woman whom he has been in love with his whole life, to work as a servant.
By forcing this girl, who is in many ways the embodiment of her deceased mother to work in the same ways he was forced as a child, Heathcliff is no longer a feeling man but a vessel for his anger. By forcing a marriage between Catherine and Linton, Heathcliff has lost all of his humanity.
The scene in chapter 27 when his anger turns to violence is probably the point of no return for Heathcliff, as he delivers a "shower of terrific slaps on both sides of the head" to Catherine and at this "diabolical violence", the narrator declares with the vocative "You villain!". It is here where our character is gone forever from the boy we once felt sorry for and his vengeance and self-destructive decisions have done him in. When Hareton and the young Catherine ultimately fall in love, Hareton is shown to have endured a predicament similar to the one Heathcliff faced as a child without the violent anger that has dominated his surrogate father's life. Heathcliff descends into madness and starves himself to death, ending not only his life but the action of the novel. The decisions made by him throughout the course of the story have damned him, destroyed the reader's opinion of his humanity and ultimately caused his death. He has truly made his bed, and in it he lays.
It is through these self-destructive tendencies and the unethical decisions made by Heathcliff and Rochester that these novels are driven. By living a life maintained by withholding information, Rochester loses his chance to have a perfect marriage with a woman who loves him. While we're told he is happy at the end of the novel, he is a shadow of his former self and barely able to see the son he has with Jane. He becomes a ward of his wife and the servants, and he has lost all of his power in the process. The tragedy of Heathcliff mirrors this self-destructive descent. Because of his inability to deal with the unfortunate events of his childhood, he becomes a monster who shows no compassion for others. Even when he sees the love of his life's daughter, who represents his lost chance to be with his Catherine; instead of preserving her, he attempts to imprison and enslave her. In attempting to destroy the lives of those around him, he ultimately destroys himself. Charlotte and Emily Bronte have constructed tragic and beautiful love stories in Jane Eyre and WutheringHeights. Both tales pivot on the weaknesses of the male leads, which amounts to self-destructive tendencies and the inability to respect themselves or others.