Heathcliff's Uncontrollable Desire

Improved Essays
Passion can drive a person insane. For most people, passionate love is a strong emotion and desire. Emily Bronte turns this desire into a dark aspect of human nature. This uncontrollable desire is shown between the main characters, Heathcliff and Catherine. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff befriends his step sister, Catherine, and they inevitably fall for each other. Heathcliff struggles to control his desire for Catherine making him vulnerable to self-destruction. Heathcliff’s passion consumes him and lives a miserable life. In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte shows that passion can lead to jealousy, hatred, and madness as illustrated in the downfall of Heathcliff.
Bronte demonstrates how jealousy can derive from a feeling of threat. An example

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Her passion, described as "gunpowder which lay[s] as harmless as sand because no fire [comes] near to explode it", is subdued as the materialistic side to her personality begins to assert itself. For example, Catherine aspires to be “the greatest lady in the neighbourhood.” For the first time in the novel, Catherine worries about how others see her and confesses to Nelly that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff. The duality of Catherine's character is thus a result of a crisis point in her marriage to Edgar. She not only physically removes herself from her soulmate, Heathcliff, but she also emotionally removes herself from the wildness and freedom of the Heights and the crags.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the novel Wuthering Heights, there is an abundance of injustice as well as the search for justice. Even though the search for justice was not done with good intentions in this situation, revenge and betrayal were used to search by Heathcliff to receive justice. Heathcliff had a great deal of abuse and isolation forthe majority of his life due to his angry step-brother Hindley and his step-sister Catherine. They would insult him, and Hindley would physically hurt him. Once they all got older, Catherine grew less abusive and more caring while Hindley grew more hateful.…

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    His cruelty stems from jealousy of Mr. Earnshaw’s attention to Heathcliff, showing that his revenge is driven by his desire for his father’s lov3e: “Hindley hated him… [he] had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent 's affections and his privileges; and he grew bitter” (38). With regards to human nature, Brontë hints that the desire for love can drive people to turn against those they used to or should have cared for. Hindley turns against his father, whom he previously loved, and Heathcliff, who he ought to have loved as a brother. Hindley’s cruelty hurts Heathcliff but also his son, whom he almost kills by accident.…

    • 1611 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Through this imagery Bronte pontificates the annihilative consequences of vengeance and how it not only destroys one physically but how it also destroys one’s soul. Heathcliff is used to develop the theme through his characterization. A significant characterization of Heathcliff is when Catherine declares that “Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation: an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him!” (Bronte 89) This extensive insight into Heathcliff’s cruel and heartless nature truly cultivates an image of devil like cruelty and guile that…

    • 1859 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A combination of this “threatened masculinity” and the also mentioned “anxiety of dispossession” is what causes, in my opinion, jealousy among the male characters. Heathcliff’s first sign of jealousy manifested when he feared losing Catherine to Edgar and he realized that he did not have any power over her. Also, Graham is jealous of Alfred because Ginevra prefers de Hamal instead of him. This shows how the fear of losing something that was considered owned causes jealousy, anger and deep emotions.…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    For Catherine, her consequence is that, in choosing Edgar, she loses Heathcliff. During her fit, Catherine exclaimed that she “shall not be at peace,” without “[her] Heathcliff (Bronte 125). This is a “declaration of identity,” and exemplifies the unavoidable bond that Heathcliff and Catherine share despite her choice of Edgar (Vine 347). Her decision ultimately drives her into madness and although she stays by Edgar, she laments over the love that she gave up. The pain and sorrow that she feels transfers fully admonishes the notion of innocence.…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Revenge In Frankenstein

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Heathcliff’s sister/soulmate, Catherine, married Edgar Linton due to his better social standard. Even though Catherine was only deeply in love with Heathcliff, she did not want to move down in the social ladder. Agitated by her choice and eventually depressed due to Catherine’s death , Heathcliff sets out another plot of revenge. Edgar shows his fear of Heathcliff and his manipulative actions by keeping his daughter, Cathy, limited to their property, the Thrushcross Grange. Eventually Cathy comes of age as does Heathcliff’s son, Linton, in which Heathcliff “desire(s) their union, and am resolved to bring it about”(235).…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In " Wuthering Heights", by Emily Bronte the whole novel revolves around the cruelty that each character has toward another. Every character in this novel exhibits some type of cruelty to another in some type of way or form whether it may be voluntary or not, with the exception of the narrator being Mr. Lockwood. The cruelty in the story creates the downfall and eventually leads to the death of most of the major characters. Cruelty takes many forms in the novel and has a major influence in the outcome of the theme being, one act of cruelty can lead to an everlasting chain that never stops infill one person decides to portray love instead of cruel affections. The cruelty in the story commences with the welcoming of Heathcliff and with his welcoming…

    • 1305 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor and Wuthering Heights It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow Weather can be used for foreshadowing and to create emotional atmosphere. In the story, Bronte uses bad weather to underscore the troubling times the characters experience. Even the eponymous Wuthering Heights has significance, it is explained in the book that “ ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (6).…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It is with this that the Bronte sisters display that it is better to act knowledgeably rather than emotionally when faced with the insanity that is falling in love. The repercussions from acting solely on emotion due to love are presented constantly in both books, with negative portrayal. Through Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, the Bronte sisters…

    • 1690 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout history, revenge has stood out as an instinctual action that persuades a corrupt mind, often leading to a person committing criminal acts. Commonly seen in literature, revenge has driven an abundance of stories such as Hamlet, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Wuthering Heights. In the case of Wuthering Heights, there are a myriad of major themes, but revenge seems to be preeminent in leading the characters to their fates. Bronte shows us through the character, Heathcliff, that the ending self-injury of revenge may be worse than the original cause. For instance, Heathcliff never finds happiness through his revenge.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, social class is not the bane of relationships. Obsession, however, does play a major role in the downfall of the relationships in this story. Obsession portrayed a large part in Catherine’s love for Heathcliff. From Chapter 9 of Wuthering Heights, “The others were the satisfaction of my whims; and for Edgar's sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Bronte expresses a critical view that society’s idea of marriage, restricts true love, through the deep passion expressed between Catherine and Heathcliff. Bronte conveys the idea that Catherine and Heathcliff are almost separated…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This Heathcliff does not love her but instead married her sister-in-law to hurt her. In this moment, she finalizes her character, before her death, as the source and reason for all pain that she, Heathcliff, and Mr. Linton endured. And after all that she want to be with both Heathcliff and Mr. Linton for two different reasons. And that is her character, a harmful drug, that keeps drawing people…

    • 1136 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The words Catherine and Heathcliff say to each other are often very harsh and critical: ‘Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace, I shall still writhe in the torments of hell.’ This idea highlights the Gothic element within the novel because Fred Botting says Gothic attitudes are “untamed by reason and unrestrained by conventional eighteenth century demands;” this is immediately linked to Heathcliff because he has no boundaries when his love for Catherine is concerned. The language he displays towards Catherine is harsh because his emotions are so intense towards her that he has “an uncontrollable and overwhelming power which threatens the loss of sanity;” this can be seen as an accurate evaluation of Wuthering Heights as a novel because in the end Heathcliff and Catherine both lose their sanity due to their connection between each other. Heathcliff’s love for Catherine can be viewed as conventional because he cares for and loves her even though their love is forbidden due to their conflicting social…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays