When society speaks of “otherness” there is a general ambiguity in understanding. What characteristics define it? What limitations provide to it? The consensus seems to be that otherness is “the quality or fact of being different.” If this definition upholds the test of time, “otherness” as portrayed in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights expands itself beyond the inflicted outcasting of title character Heathcliff to include an examination of “otherness” in both love and creation.
Found on the streets of Liverpool and brought back to live at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff’s outsider status is determined before it begins. The slurs that society deems fit to label him with are not deserved through Heathcliff’s character, but that of preconceived
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After Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Hindley must take over as head of the estate and uses his newfound power to diminish Heathcliff’s place in the house to that of a lowly servant. He treats him with apathy and disdain, effectively taking all dignity he once possessed and turning him into a “brute.” In an excerpt from The Fact of Blackness, Fanon wrote, “the [foreign] man among his own… does not know at what moment his inferiority comes into being through the other.” However, when presented with the situation Heathcliff faces, there are none of his “own” among him. And in the absence of this does “know the moment his inferiority comes into being.” Heathcliff lived up to the expected stereotypes of his race (becoming violent and dark-hearted), his “otherness” is now a product of his own actions–– actions at a forced hand. Heathcliff even recognizes his unlikeness and takes ownership of it to salvage his pride after being rebuffed by his so-called beloved, “I shall be as dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty” (90). Readers understand that the word “dirty” is interchangeable with other, more poignant words such as: foreign, dark, and other. Heathcliff’s understanding of his reality is pushed farther when in a private moment with Nelly claims, “Nelly, make me decent, I’m going to be good… I wish I had light hair and a fair skin” (93). He is aware of his station, …show more content…
In turn, Catherine’s “memoranda,” has Heathcliff recalling her presence and therefore mourning her absence––so much so that he calls on Catherine to haunt him, as a love unfulfilled and forever lost. In contrast to the other relationships present throughout the text, Catherine and Heathcliff’s is that of an unmanageable forest fire, terrorizing everything in its wake, including the trees that started it. Catherine’s love of Edgar self-described as, “foliage in the woods: time will change it…” (137), is calmer, gradual, and able to grow and build. Even Heathcliff’s unconventional relationship with Isabella Linton, filled with contempt and mistrust, fueled by revenge, is a more acceptable romance to readers. It is in the midst of all the chaos that one notices: Catherine and Heathcliff’s love isn’t a classic tale of a fatal love or even that of doomed love, but a love of “otherness”––nameless
Identity is how we define ourselves, how we see ourselves within our communities and it is what we portray to others. In the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë the eloquent use of language allows for the true portrayal of the identities of all the characters in the story. Emily uses anecdotes and metaphors to portray her characters in all their glory. Wuthering Heights is about the consecutive search for one’s true identity by two primary characters. This essay will specifically focus on Catherine and Heathcliff’s search for their identities. Heathcliff and Catherine both vary in social status as the book progresses, each of their respective sexes play a large role in their identities and the choices they make also influence their final identities; these three main factors are what create the identity problem for both Catherine and Heathcliff.
The relation between Hindley and Heathcliff plays a major role in Heathcliff’s social status. Hindley happens to despise Heathcliff because he was adopted by his father and received special treatment which Hindley longed to receive. Perhaps, this triggers Hindley jealousy and hatred towards and ...
To begin with, when young Heathcliff was brought back from Liverpool to live with Mr. Earnshaw at Wuthering Heights, the family members despise and show hostility toward the inferior child presumably because Heathcliff is lower class. Certainly, the landscape Heathcliff enters into is “exposed in stormy weather…power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun” (4). The detailed description of the dismal landscape demonstrates that the society is twisting and destroying humanity through a violent ravage. After Mr. Earnshaw’s death Hindley “[drives] Heathcliff from
A parallel description is given to Heathcliff when he is called, in one instance of the Brontean text «dark almost as if [he] came from the devil” (Emily Bronte: 36)
In the gothic novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the author hides motifs within the story.The novel contains two major love stories;The wild love of Catherine, and Heathcliff juxtaposing the serene love of Cathy,and Hareton. Catherine’s and Heathcliff's love is the center of Emily Bronte’s novel ,which readers still to this day seem to remember.The characters passion, and obsession for each other seems to not have been enough ,since their love didn't get to thrive. Hareton and Cathy’s love is what got to develop. Hareton’s and Cathy’s love got to workout ,because both characters contained a characteristic that both characters from the first generation lacked: The ability to change .Bronte employs literary devices such as antithesis of ideas, and the motif of repetition to reveal the destructiveness of wild love versus a domestic love.
From the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of Heathcliff's life, he has suffered pain and rejection. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is viewed as a thing rather than a child. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out the doors, while Nelly put it on the landing of the stairs hoping that it would be gone the next day. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider. Following the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff suffers cruel mistreatment at the hands of Hindley. In these tender years, he is deprived of love, friendship, and education, while the treatment from jealous Hindley is barbaric and disrupts his mental balance. He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, undergoes regular beatings and forcibly separated from his soul mate, Catherine. The personality that Heathcliff develops in his adulthood has been formed in response to these hardships of his childhood.
Hindley’s obstructive actions, imposed on Heathcliff’s life, expand an internal anger that arouses as Heathcliff’s time at Wuthering Heights draws to a close. The negligent and condemnatory conditions advanced by Hindley transform Heathcliff’s futuristic outcome and supply him with motives to carry out vengeance on multiple personalities involved in the plot. Heathcliff’s troubled social environment renders it difficult to determine the ethical legitimacy behind his decisions, contributing to the moral ambiguity of his
Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, set in the countryside of England’s 1700’s, features a character named Heathcliff, who is brought into the Earnshaw family as a young boy and quickly falls into a passionate, blinding romance with the Earnshaw’s daughter, Catherine. However, Heathcliff is soon crushed by this affection when his beloved chooses the company of another man rather than his own. For the remainder of the novel he exudes a harsh, aversive attitude that remains perduring until his demise that is induced by the loss of his soulmate, and in turn the bereavement of the person to whom the entirety of his being and his very own self were bound.
Heathcliff is a character who was abused in his childhood by Catherine’s brother, Hindley, because of his heritage as a “gypsy”, and Hindley was jealous of the love that Heathcliff got from Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley’s father. This is also selfishness upon Hindley’s part since he only wanted his father’s love for his sister and himself. So to reprimand Heathcl...
Inwardness is also the key to the structure of the novel. The book begins in the year 1801, on the very rim of the tale, long after the principal incidents of the story have taken place. Mr. Lockwood, our guide, is very far removed from the central experiences of the narrative. Under Lockwood’s sadly unperceptive direction, the reader slowly begins to understand what is happening at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Gradually we move toward the center of the novel. In a few chapters, Nelly Dean, takes over from Lockwood, and the reader is a little closer to the truth. Still Nelly is herself unperceptive and the reader must struggle hard till reaching the center of the novel; the passionate last meeting of Heathcliff and Cathy in Chapter 15.
The calamities between the Lintons and the Earnshaws provide the readers with the bleak and austere aura of the Gothic era and, thus, explain the various themes expressed in the novel Wuthering Heights written by Emily Brontë. The two families are similar by their aristocracy, but the conflicts between the characters provide insight into many underlying meanings throughout the novel. Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights carries on the plot of the story, allowing the readers to interpret the themes about social class, love, and suffering.
“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” These words are spoken by Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights. The complicated love triangle that exists between Catherine Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff is central to the plot of Wuthering Heights. This, and other subplots about love between other characters make love the main theme of this novel.
Heathcliff's many-faceted existence is marked by wickedness, love, and strength. His dark actions are produced by the distortion of his natural personality. Although Heathcliff was once subjected to vicious racism due to his dark skin color and experienced wearisome orphan years in Liverpool, this distortion had already begun when Mr. Earnshaw brought him into Wuthering Heights, a "dirty, ragged, black-haired child"(45; ch.7). Already he was inured to hardship and uncomplainingly accepted suffering. Heathcliff displays his strength and steadfastness when he had the measles, and when Hindley treated him cruelly if he got what he wanted. From the very beginning he showed great co...
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights raises a question about the defensibility of personality: can wrongdoings be explained and forgiven by backstory? Do the choices one makes define how “evil” one is, and are they destined to happen? Can anyone’s identity be seen as solely malevolent? If so, why is Heathcliff a prime example? When questioning the effects of one’s inherent personality and past on their current choices, the answer clears: although Heathcliff was raised in a household that did not treat him well nor teach him how to act appropriately in social situations, he makes no effort to better himself and revels in torturous activities, establishing his irrevocably evil disposition. Thus, Brontë’s opinion shines through in that a person’s
A well written and analytical inquiry, the essay is effective in highlighting the ways in which Wuthering Heights is an exploration of race in the nineteenth century. Turki Althubaiti uses many secondary sources in order to effectively consider how race and racial prejudice is reflected through the character Heathcliff. Althubaiti beautifully describes Emily Bronte’s authentic novel as an ‘imaginative art’ that ‘embodies the tensions and conflicts- racial, social, personal and spiritual - of nineteenth century capitalist society’ (p222). He also concludes Wuthering Heights proves to be a place where racial and societal norms were displaced and the dark skinned man with deep black eyes, is not a goblin or a ghoul, rather, ‘a human being, and free, like everyone else’