The document discusses the connection between love and revenge in Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights. It argues that love and revenge are interconnected because they stem from the characters' passionate temperaments. Heathcliff is driven by his intense love for Catherine and hatred for Hindley, who humiliated him. Hindley seeks revenge on Heathcliff for intervening between him and his father. Heathcliff vows revenge against Hindley and later Edgar, who married Catherine. This cycle of passionate love and revenge spans generations and motivates the relationships and conflicts throughout the novel.

1. Running Head: LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Discuss revenge in Emily Brontë’s "Wuthering Heights". In what way is the love connected?
What is the nature of love in the novel, that it can be so closely connected to vengeance?
KlimentSerafimov
Course: English Literature
School: Maximilian Berlitz
Date: 06.05.2013

2. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2
Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” (1847) is a book about love that transcends death and
revenge that spans over generations. In the book, the protagonist, the character on which the
entire plot centers, and the man from which all the conflicts arise, namely Heathcliff, is
consumed by his love for Catherine and by his hate for Hindley, who humiliated him all his life.
These two main feelings give rise to all the other relationships in the novel and determine how
they will evolve. Emily Brontë’s mastery of the tensions and conflicts in the novel and her ability
to construct complex and believable characters made her novel famous. However, what her only
novel is best known for, is the intense and consuming passion that characterizes many of the
characters, and Heathcliff in particular. This incurable passion is the source of both desire and
aggressiveness in “Wuthering Heights”, and the reason for which revenge and love are sought
with the same restlessness. The present paper thus argues that revenge and love are
interconnected in the novel because they have the same source, namely the characters’ passionate
temperaments.
The first intense feelings in the novel, besides the strong attachment between Heathcliff
and Catherine, are those felt by HindleyEearnshaw ever since the arrival of Heathcliff at
Wuthering Heights. Hindley’s feelings of hatred towards Heathcliff are determined by his
jealousy, since he feels that his father favored the orphan Heathcliff and disregarded him, his
natural son. As a result, his jealousy governed his actions and made him want to humiliate
Heathcliff as much as possible. Even after many years since his father’s death,
“He [Hindley] has been blaming our father (how dared he?)for treating H. [Heathcliff]
too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place” (p. 22).

3. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 3
This attitude suggests that Hindley’s jealousy did not cease and that it consumes the character.
Hindley will try to revenge on Heathcliff for having intervened between himself and his father
by treating Heathcliff as poorly as he can.
Heathcliff does not remain passive to this flow of hatred and he swears to revenge all the
humiliations and suffering Hindley put him through. Even if he is just a boy, he confesses that:
“I’m trying to settle down how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I
can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do” (p. 65).
This refers to an incident when Heathcliff is humiliated in public and even more, in front of his
rival Edgar Linton. It shows Heathcliff’s determination and has a prophetic value, particularly if
one thinks of the outcome of this early conflict. Therefore, even in this, one can perceive how the
competition for the love of a father, continues even after death and destroys the relationship of
these two men. Likewise, the love for Catherine that both Edgar and Heathcliff feel, and their
rivalry, will dominate the greatest part of the novel, and will continue even after her death.
In the Heathcliff-Catherine-Edgar trio, Edgar becomes the intruder. Heathcliff and
Catherine are best friends since childhood and are very fond of each other. Their relationship
only breaks when Edgar enters into their world. Edgar, with his fine manners and his superior
social statute, represents a better choice for Catherine, who begins to love him too. Theirs is a
passionate love, no less intense than that which slowly grew between her and Heathcliff. Thus, as
they became more and more attracted to each other, they come to confess their love:
“Ah, I thought, there will be no saving him: he's doomed, and flies to his fate! . . . I saw
the quarrel had merely effected a closer intimacy – had broken the outworks of youthful

4. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 4
timidity, and enabled them to forsake the disguise of friendship, and confess themselves
lovers” (p.78).
This love is a combination of desire and of illusion, because Catherine loves Edgar for all the
things she could become next to him, whereas for Edgar’s love for Catherine is born of her
domineering character and her imposing personality.
Catherine does feel attracted to Edgar, although it is more a love much inferior to the one
she feels for Heathcliff, for whom she has a spiritual type of bond that goes far beyond the mere
physical attraction. This is proved when Catherine confesses her feelings to Nelly. She says that:
“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change It, I am well aware,
as winter changes the trees. Nelly, I amHeathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not
as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being”
(p.89).
Catherine’s relationship with Heathcliff is so profound that she feels she is part of him. She
cannot choose not to love him, as he is so much a part of herself that giving this feeling up would
be like giving up a part of herself.
Nevertheless, despite feeling an intense love for Heathcliff, and of knowing that he too
loves her passionately, Catherine chooses not to marry him but to accept Edgar’s proposition
instead. She also explains this decision to Nelly:
“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.

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Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as
a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire”(p. 87).
Therefore, her decision is made with her brain, not with her heart, choosing social status and
financial security instead of following her heart. This is not uncommon for the eighteenth
century, when the action takes place. This was, in fact, expected for young girls, and it was the
way that most marriages were arranged. However, in this novel, this decision is shown by the
author to be a wrong one, as it will cause much suffering for all the characters involved.
Heathcliff’s existence after Catherine’s abandonment was only driven by his thirst to
revenge against Edgar for the loss of Catherine. Heatchcliff could never get his life back on
track, although he did marry and had a son. He explains that:
“Two words would comprehend my future – death and hell: existence, after losing her,
would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's
attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't
love as much in eighty years as I could in a day” (p. 163).
Such passionate love could only lead to passionate hatred, and desire to revenge on the one who
caused Catherine’s betrayal. Heathciff does not try to revenge on Catherine, who betrayed him,
so his love for her does not transform into hatred, it remains steady and does not change. He
however will attempt all his life to revenge on Edgar.
For this reason, he marries Isabella, in order to punish Edgar for what he had done. Edgar
is indeed in deep distress over his sister’s crush and does not accept this love. Isabella, who had
despised Heathcliff as a young girl, now sees him as a romantic figure and idealizes him.

6. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 6
Heathcliff’s feelings for her are nevertheless inexistent, even though they do have a son, Linton,
whom Heathcliff will meet years later. Heatchliff does not ignore Hindley either and makes use
of his alcoholism to acquire Wuthering Heights for himself. Therefore, in both cases,
Heathcliff’s revenge is caused by feelings of jealousy, even though in Hindley’s case, he was the
one who had been jealous of Heatchcliff, and mistreated him as a result.
The couple Heathcliff - Catherine will not be able to demonstrate their everlasting,
obsessive love for each other until her last moments. In their last encounter, Heatchcliff
demonstrates not only that he did not forget her, but also, that he did not try to revenge on her for
his sufferings, although she is the main culpable. Thus, he asks her:
“Kiss me again, but don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I
love my murderer-but yours! How can I?" (p. 177).
He calls her his murderer because his devouring love for her left him empty inside. Catherine’s
murderer is Edgar, in Heathcliff’s view. Thus, by accusing him of Catherine’s death, he has
another reason to hate him and try to revenge against him, apart from jealousy. This added
reason also has to do with his love for Catherine, and with his passionate temperament.
Heathcliff never gives up, either loving or seeking revenge against he who separated him from
his lover, first spiritually and then, physically.
Heathcliff’s thirst for revenge will therefore live on and affect the new generation,
whereas his love for Catherine takes on a new dimension, when he begins to communicate with
her ghost. Heathcliff’s plans of revenge come to include the new generation, Cathy, Catherine’s
daughter, Linton, Heathcliff’s son, and Hareton, Hindley’s son. Here is therefore a new trio that,
should they make the same mistakes as their parents, may come to repeat their destinies.

7. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 7
Heatchcliff’s revenge plan on Edgar is that of making Linton marry his cousin, Catherine. At the
same time, he has very specific plans with Hareton too. Thus,
“He lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto. Now,
my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another,
with the same wind to twist it!” (p. 205).
He therefore will try to apply to the child the same treatment as was applied to him when he was
a boy.
His plans of revenge are somewhat spoiled when he saves Hareton, Hindley’s son from
death. In these circumstances,
“It expressed, plainer than words could do the intensest anguish at having made himself
the instrument of thwarting his own revenge” (p. 81).
However, this failure that can only be attributed to a trace of humanity that lives on in him makes
him try even harder to create the perfect revenge. He makes Hareton his servant, and raises him
as an uneducated brute, as he was under Hindley’s rule of Wuthering Heights. Hareton therefore
becomes a copy of himself, which, even though was his plan from the beginning, it is in the end
ironical, because Hareton too, wins Cathy’s heart.
Therefore, Cathy, as a copy of her mother, and Hareton, ironically, as a copy of
Heathcliff, fall in love with each other and reiterate their parents’ story. Heathcliff fulfills his
plan of revenge when he manages to have Linton and Cathy married. However, even though it
seems that destiny repeats itself, Linton does not live long after his marriage. In addition, both
Cathy and Hareton resemble Catherine so much that Heathcliff gradually loses his desire to

8. LOVE AND REVENGE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 8
revenge. Eventually, consumed by his love more and more, and obsessed with Catherine’s
ghost, he will finally cross to the other side to be with her, therefore living young Catherine and
Hareton, to fulfill their parents’ destinies, and their own.
As it was shown throughout this paper, the characters’ passion, and most importantly,
Heathcliff’s, determines them to love and hate so intensely. The revenge is born out of love, of
the feeling of betraying love, or is a consequence of it. As the love for Catherine goes on even
after her death, similarly, the desire to revenge continues after Hindley’s death, and after Edgar is
no longer Catherine’s husband. This desire to revenge will only be appeased by love, because
Heathcliff’s begins to see Catherine in both Cathy and Hareton. Having nothing else to live for,
Heathcliff will die to join his lover.