Wuthering Heights

In what ways do individuals derive strength from struggle, or alternatively, allow struggle to overcome them?

From the beginning of his miserable, disgusting existence, Heathcliffe of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is depicted as an unfavorable mess of a man. Starting out as a homeless orphan is, of course, not an ideal situation. However, it is from his very beginnings as a scapegoated child in ominous England that he is shaped into yet another individual that succumbs to the struggle they face.

It is at the mere age of six that Heathcliff is brought from the streets to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, father of Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw. It is here where struggle begins to permeate the boy’s life further in the form of torment at the hands of Hindley. Heathcliff is raised in this environment with fewer opportunities than his adopted brother, yet he finds solace in Catherine’s friendship. It is this friendship that spawns his unhealthy love for her. Extenuating circumstances take place over the following decade, leaving Catherine dead of brain fever, only after marrying and giving birth to young Catherine with Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange, and Heathcliff with a child by the name of Linton. He soon inherits the estate upon Hindley’s death.

In fits of desperation over the fact that he never won Catherine’s love, Heathcliff begins to torment the children of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Struggling to vicariously live out what could have been, Heathcliff forces a marriage between his son and Catherine’s daughter, going so far as to imprison her.

Unlike Oedipus, Heathcliff’s failure to overcome his struggles primarily affect those around him rather than himself as an individual. While the blinded Oedipus shows no aggression towards those around him, for his doom was largely his fault, Heathcliff becomes warped by his loss of Catherine, causing him to act abusively and ambivalently towards the only people connecting him to her. The unfathomable pain he experiences in drawn-out mourning acts not as encouragement for the fact that he needs to change his frame of mind but rather as a reason he feels justifies his cruelty.