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Heathcliff As an Anti-Hero in Wuthering Heights

Should Joe average people our highest works of art, or should art be an Olympus in which we probe the souls of heroes? Aristotle argued for the latter: art should reflect life, not necessarily as it is, but as it might be and ought be. On this view, a novel’s characters—namely, its heroes—determine its aesthetic worth.

But what is a hero? Since a hero’s moral stature is unquestionably his most fundamental characteristic, a hero must above all be a moral giant. He must exhibit an uncompromising devotion to the good, that is, to life-promoting values. Failing this devotion, a character is a nonhero or an anti-hero. An anti-hero, like Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, surrenders his life to life-destroying values. Indeed, Wuthering Heights, which promotes themes such as necrophilia, angst, heinousness, vindictiveness, saturninity, and desperation, stresses the dominance of the evil. Accordingly, as one early reviewer wrote, “[T]he reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance.”[1] Another scholar concurs: the novel’s “most memorable scenes are . . . scenes of violence, and . . . its most memorable character is the” demonic Heathcliff.[2]

To be sure, Heathcliff, the sociopathic protagonist, defies rational empathy; as Nelly affirms, “It is preferable to be hated than loved by him” (180). And yet we expect him, at last, to possess some sort of dormant virtue, since the text presents him, as the protagonist, with at least the trappings of a hero. But to his death Heathcliff remains mulishly immoral. In fact, on several occasions, he confesses to Nelly that he is hell-bent on revenge toward those who have wronged him—even at the expense of wronging those who have never wronged him: his wife Isabella, his son Linton, his niece Cathy, and Cathy’s cousin Hareton. Indeed, his very features—dark, brooding, and menacing—bespeak a pathology that lies beneath.

In the end, Heathcliff himself realizes that his engrossing hostility has set the terms for his existence; he tells young Cathy that she “must learn to avoid putting [him] in a passion, or [he] shall really murder [her], some time!” (321). Thus, the text allows this gratuitous nihilism to drive the story all the along. Vengeance gradually erodes love as the novel’s central theme and so grants the evil crucial metaphysical power. And, of all characters, a villain dominates the text, thereby manifesting Brontë’s malevolent weltanschauung and rendering Wuthering Heights anti-heroic.

Of course, the text tempts us with the possibility that Heathcliff acts nobly—even heroically—out of an undying love for Catherine, his deceased soul mate. Accordingly, Heathcliff’s abnormalities merely express his obvious affliction with a bond he views as once and future; the consecration with which he exacts his revenge reveals, deep down, the heart of a hopeless romantic. But how many times must Heathcliff’s rancor shock us—kidnapping his future daughter-in-law and her maid until Catherine consents to marry Linton; nearly beating Hindley to death—“dashin[ing] his head repeatedly against the flags” [stones] (177); calling his wife a “wicked slut” to his son (208)—before we realize that his are the machinations of a sadist?

As evidence, consider the circumstances of Heathcliff’s death. His eerie behavior—rambling incoherently, shunning sustenance, beholding ghosts—seems conjoined to his mad obsession with Catherine, and his ever-increasing inability to function rationally in a world without her corporeal presence. But if it “sounds as if [he] had been laboring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity” (323), Heathcliff assures us that he has only “lost the faculty of enjoying [people’s] destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing” (323).

Indeed, that love obliges Heathcliff to suicide suggests that so entrenched in emotionalism was the first-love relationship of this foundling, that instead of experiencing it properly—on the basis of self-esteem—he sought in it escape and refuge from an inexplicable, increasingly tough-and-rough world. Fueled then by acute envy and jealousy, namely, toward the Lintons, Heathcliff perceived Edgar, who dared to encroach on his Catherine—his possession—as a sworn enemy. To Heathcliff, life lacking Catherine meant war, a war waged in the name of supernatural consummation (which, interestingly, contradicts Heathcliff’s lack of religion, as when he refuses to have a priest Christianize his death).

And yet—supposing Heathcliff’s means were to justify this Shakespearean end—what of Heathcliff’s happiness (here and now)? In short, Heathcliff leads a wretched life—“I take so little interest in my . . . life” he confesses to Nelly (323)—which causes him to find (supernatural) happiness in the renunciation of his (worldly) happiness. On those rare occasions when a modicum of joy escapes him, the epiphany mystifies his peers (326). Indeed, his countenance shortly after his death forms a sneer.

Thus, Wuthering Heights leaves one to conclude that a freak—not a hero—represents mankind. But why are the problems of a madman, like Heathcliff, of greater universal significance than the problems of a genius? Surely, man needs a vision of himself at his highest and best—to uplift and inspire him that he can—and should—do the same in his own life. “The sight of an achievement,” Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, “is the greatest gift that a human being could offer to others.” Thus, if an artist’s vision upholds the triumph of the good, then its necessary literary form is a hero’s story.

Yet by regarding Heathcliff as worthy of primary artistic composition, Brontë neglects the fundamental artistic principle to enhance heroism, that is, to raise the culture by portraying its supreme inhabitants as, say, working toward a goal, fighting to succeed, and enjoying the victory. Instead, Bronte frames her plot around an antagonist who revolts against the very concept of heroism, a villain who never proffers a pretext or evinces any remorse for his depravity. This—for an artist to apply beauty’s celebratory power via a vile protagonist—degrades man and therefore marks the essence of anti-heroism.

Merciless and methodical in executing his spiteful plan—as his ultimate revenge, he compels a blameless Hareton to suffer as Hareton’s father made Heathcliff suffer—Heathcliff exceeds what is rational in his love for Catherine. In fact, no love on terms such as those between Catherine and Heathcliff—“I am Heathcliff” Catherine tells Nelly (82)—can sustain itself; it predictably burns too wild. Indeed, for all his violence, hatred, and vindictiveness, Heathcliff never even spiritually attains his goals, let alone practical triumph. He succeeds only in bringing Hindley to financial ruin, capturing Edgar Linton’s fortune, and creating in young Hareton an ignorant, petulant brute. For one cannot attain happiness by way of emotional, immoral whims. Rather, happiness—the happiness of a hero—as Rand puts it, is “a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not . . . work for your own destruction.”

[1] [Unsigned], [Title?], Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, January 15, 1848, 77, in Miriam Allott (ed.), The Brontës: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1974), p. 228.

[2] Patsy Stoneman, “Introduction,” in Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Great Britain: Oxford, 1998), p. vii.

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