Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to compare Heathcliff, the

main character in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847)

with the ‘Byronic Hero’, a prototype created by Lord Byron. The

study is based on the common traces that both characters share,

i.e.; an outcast with a troubled past, emotionally conflicted, with a

high level of intelligence and a strong power of attraction, an

idealist with self-destructive behaviour and a mysterious,

enigmatic and charismatic but rebellious and arrogant nature.

Keywords: Byronic Hero, Lord Byron, Heathcliff, Emily Brontë,

Wuthering Heights, love, passion, Catherine, revenge, death.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 5
2. The Origin of the Byronic Hero 6
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3. Heathcliff as a Byronic Hero 7

4. Conclusion 14
5. Works Cited 16

1. Introduction

Along with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, Emily Brontë has

been captivating and inspiring readers from all over the world

since the early nineteenth century. Although she only wrote one

novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), it became a pivotal writing in

the history of literature. It was the break with the kind of literature

produced in the Victorian Period. When Wuthering Heights was

first scrutinized by the critical opinion, it was branded as immoral

and sinful because of the numerous polemical issues treated in the

novel. Emily Brontë was considered the independent soul in the

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Brontë family. There were several people who helped her shape

her brilliance and genius, among them, one of her most important

literary influences, Lord Byron, who was a highly significant

figure in the

Romantic Movement and creator of the so-called “Byronic Hero”.

After 1824, the year of Byron’s death, the Byronic Hero

became very popular in the literary world. Over the years, he has

been altered and adapted to the new times but he has always

conserved his definitive characteristics: insubordination and

resistance. It is possible to find examples of the Byronic hero

either in a literary, film or television production such as Mr

Rochester from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Erik from Gaston

Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, Severus Snape from J.

K. Rowling’s Harry

Potter series or James Dean from ‘Rebel without a Cause’.

The archetypal hero created by Byron provided a model for

Heathcliff, the protagonist of Wuthering Heights. He, who is

arguably the most decisive characters of the story, is depicted as a

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dark, complex and authentic individual. This contrasts with the

unreal but pleasant characters that tended to appear in the great

majority of works at the time. His troubled past, emotional

conflict and self-destructive behaviour make the perfect

embodiment of the Byronic Hero. Heathcliff proves himself to be

a perfect example, since he is deceitful, malicious and scheming

but at the same time he demonstrates a high level of intelligence,

sensitivity and capacity to adapt to changes. The aim of this essay

is to analyse the main characteristics and traces that Heathcliff

and the Byronic hero have in common.

2. The Origin of the Byronic Hero

The literary predecessors of the Byronic Hero can be tracked

back to Milton’s Satan or the villains in the Gothic classics. The

Gothic Villain appeared for the first time in 1791 with the novel

Castle of Otranto written by Walpole. The pre-Byronic

sentimentalizing of the Gothic Villain shows the transformation

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from villain to hero especially with the figures of Cain, Satan or

Prometheus. These heroes became true

Romantic rebels. The Gothic Villain shares his major

characteristics with the Noble Outlaw of Byron. Cain, Faust,

Prometheus or Satan are categorized by Peter L. Thorslev as “The

Noble Outlaw [who] is, roughly speaking, the first of the

Romantic heroes in point of time.” (66) They are willingly lonely,

isolated and antisocial people who rebel against civilization,

themselves, Nature or even a divine being. Cain, the Biblical

character who murders his brother Abel out of rage and envy, is

punished with becoming an eternal and restless wanderer on the

Earth. By being “too coward to admit his crime” he demonstrates

“the transformation a typical hero undergoes when he is caught up

by the spirit of Romanticism” He becomes more sinister and

therefore, more Gothic. (Thorslev, 107)

With the intention of giving fire to the human race,

Prometheus stole it from the sky and thunder god, Zeus. The

Greek Titan condemned the precursor of the Byronic hero to

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eternal punishment, a fate shared with Cain. Nevertheless, unlike

the latter, Prometheus “is pure allegory; there is nothing in him of

the Gothic, nothing of the dark mystery or taint of sin of the other

Romantic heroes.” (Thorslev, 112) The admiration and attraction

that Lord Byron felt for Prometheus and Cain was widely

acknowledged. He wrote poems on each of them in 1816 and

1821 respectively. In these poems he exhibits his profound

fascination with these myths and admits the insufficiency of

human knowledge vis-à-vis the power and supremacy of the

divinities.

The Byronic hero as it is known nowadays was conceived

by the brilliant Romantic poet Lord Byron, from whom it takes its

name. Emily Brontë along with her two sisters was an enthusiastic

admirer of his work and it is no wonder that she decided to

emulate him in her novel Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff presents

similar characteristics to the protagonist of Childe Harold’s

Pilgrimage. In this semi-autobiographic epic, Byron relates the

adventures of a young man who, being sick of society, decides to

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embark on a series of journeys across Europe. The poem is

divided into four cantos published on different dates. The first two

cantos, thanks to which Byron gained his first poetic fame, were

published in 1812, while the third and the fourth, respectively

appeared in 1816 and 1818.

3. Heathcliff as a Byronic Hero

A traditional hero is expected to possess several virtues in

order to prove his heroicity, such as courage, justice or prudence.

This does not apply to the Byronic hero since his characteristic

traits are dark qualities similar to the figure of the Romantic hero.

Both usually behave as rebels who defy standard modes of

behaviour and thought.
Nevertheless, the hero created by Lord Byron possesses a higher

stage of psychological and emotional complexity. Byronic heroes

tend to isolate themselves from civilization either because of

external forces or because of their own volition. They are socially

maladjusted individuals who feel they do not fit in or belong

anywhere.
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Similarly, Heathcliff also alienates himself from social life.

Emily Brontë thoughtfully chose an environment “completely

removed from the stir of society.” (Brontë, 1) The novel takes

place in two different settings, Wuthering Heights and

Thrushcross Grange, both situated in the moors of Yorkshire, in

the north of England. They are symbolic of the temperament and

attitude of the characters in that the two residences represent

opposite panoramas. While Wuthering Heights is cold, dull and

enigmatic, Thrushcross Grange is placid, bright and friendly and

so are the people who dwell there. Therefore, we also find a

dichotomy between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton.

The first is described as “the solitary neighbour” (Brontë, 1) who

tends to get irritated by the presence of someone else. As Mr

Lockwood says: “It is astonishing how sociable I feel myself

compared with him” (5). These words are pronounced by a

character who considered Heathcliff to be “a capital fellow” (1)

when he first arrived at Wuthering Heights. On the other hand,

Edgar Linton and the rest of the people who live in Thrushcross
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Grange are portrayed as the perfect hosts who know how to treat

their guests with kindness and respect. Consequently, as can be

seen, the distance between the two houses is not just physical; it

also represents the separation between both families.

In The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M Gilbert and Susan

Gubar state that the archetypical Byronic hero, Satan, features in

the bildungsroman Wuthering Heights:

Satan too, however – at least Satan as Milton’s

prototypical Byronic hero – has long been considered a participant

in Wuthering Heights, for ‘that devil Heathcliff’, as both demon

lover and ferocious natural force. (253) The main character,

Heathcliff, is described throughout Brontë’s novel as a “dark-

skinned gipsy” (3), “vagabond” (15), “dirty, ragged, black-haired

child” (25) or “imp of Satan” (27) among other titles. Heathcliff is

an orphan child who is brought by Mr Earnshaw into his home.

His past remains secret because it is never explicitly told, which

helps to reinforce the mysterious aura that surrounds him.

Heathcliff is accepted and loved by his new father and Catherine,

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his new sister. However, this would be not the case of Hindley,

Catherine’s brother. Hindley feels threatened by Heathcliff’s

presence because he sees him “as a usurper of his father’s

affections and his privileges.” (Brontë, 26) When Heathcliff

discovers that Hindley’s beloved sister plans to marry Edgar

Linton because of his economic and social position, he decides to

leave Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff, therefore, is not only

mistreated by his brother but by the society of the time. As Stein

points out in The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction and Television:

“[Heathcliff] is a victim of society who returns to take revenge, by

using the very institutional powers that originally failed him”

(44). According to this reading, Heathcliff returns with a clear

thirst for revenge and he is going to take it slowly and in a savage

way.

Heathcliff’s nature is “simultaneously attractive and horrifying”

(Stein 4), deliberate features given by Emily Brontë in order to

depict him as a dominant person who challenges power.

Heathcliff is the master of his own destiny but the readers are
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informed that he is everything but a good example to be followed.

When Heathcliff returns, his appearance seems to be completely

transformed. He is no longer a servant but the master of the house,

owing to the money earned while exiled and he plans to take his
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revenge. With this unexpected reappearance, Heathcliff surprises

the rest of the characters. Nelly Dean is the first to be bewildered

when she finds him at the entrance

hall:

“What! I cried, uncertain whether to regard him as a

worldly visitor, and I raised my hands in amazement.

What! You come back? Is it really you? Is it?” (Brontë

67).

Nelly is confused and barely able to recognize Heathcliff even

though she had practically raised him from a very early age. It is

at this point that we notice a change in the way Heathcliff is

addressed. He is no longer a dirty gipsy or a demonic creature but

“a tall, athletic, well-formed man” (Brontë 69). Moreover, he is

given a title of respect:

“Heathcliff – Mr Heathcliff I should say in future” (72). This

would have been inconceivable three years before. However, in

spite of his successful metamorphosis and the consequent

climbing of the social ladder, it is still possible to find some traces

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of his former personality, which has now softened but has not

been completely removed: Looked intelligent, and retained no

marks of former degradation. A Halfcivilised ferocity lurked yet

in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was

subdued; and his manner was even dignified: quite divested of

roughness, though too stern for grace. (Brontë 69)

Heathcliff is aware that the only way of achieving his

vengeful purpose is by following the already established rules of

the privileged class. Heathcliff deceives people and plays

dishonest mind games. He manipulates everyone without making

any kind of distinction between the innocent and the betrayers.

His intention is to individually destroy them on a personal and/-or

economic level. Nevertheless, once he has achieved this he rejects

it because his only aim is to get Catherine’s love. Heathcliff is an

idealist who gives preference to love rather than material goods.

Stein points out that Heathcliff embodies the type of “satanic

Byronic hero [who] has been modified into an avenging angel

who achieves justice with purgative violence.” (45) Therefore,

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there is a reversal of position and the oppressor becomes the

oppressive.

This behaviour is evident in his relationships with Hindley and

Isabella. She is Edgar Linton’s spoiled little sister. Like her

brother she was raised at Thrushcross Grange. Isabella starts to

feel attracted to Heathcliff when he comes back a gentleman

whereas previously, he was essentially treated as a servant. She

feels a girlish infatuation for him and she eventually marries him

in spite of the warnings given by her sister in law: “he’s not a

rough diamond, […] he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. […] I

should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into his

trap” (74). She finds herself involved in a possessive, oppressive

and manipulative relationship where each is cruel to the other.

Isabella does not feel any sympathy for her husband when

Catherine dies, rather she is pleased by his suffering:

I’ve recovered from my first desire to be killed by him:

I’d rather he’d kill himself! He has extinguished my

love effectually, and so I’m at my ease. I can recollect

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yet how I loved him; and can dimly imagine that I

could still be loving him, if – no, no! Even if he had

doted on me, the devilish nature would have revealed

its existence somehow. Catherine had an awfully

perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him

so well.

Monster! (Brontë, 125)

Isabella considers the idea of him not being human but a devilish
creature: “Is Mr

Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?” (99)

.She deeply regrets her

choice of having married him because, among other reasons, it

has cost her -her relationship with her brother. In the words of

Edgar Linton himself: “hereafter she is only my sister in name:

not because I disown her but because she has disowned me” (97).

This is the main reason why Heathcliff weds Isabella, through his

determination to wreak his revenge on Linton for taking away

from him the love of his life, Catherine. His only target was Mr
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Linton and not Isabella nor even Catherine: “I seek no revenge on

you […] that’s not the plan” (Brontë, 81).

On the other hand, Heathcliff not only arouses hatred but

sympathy among the readers and even a certain tenderness.

Brontë wisely portrays him as both despicable but charming and

seductive at the same time. His rebel spirit, along with his

exceptional attachment to Catherine, make the readers feel

sympathy for him in spite of his violent nature. Moreover, the

readers feel compassion for the unfortunate events in his life. First

of all, he is an orphan who was brought into an unfamiliar home

and besides he was intimidated and tormented by his foster

brother during his childhood. Nonetheless, as happens with

Isabella, roles are reversed and the bully becomes the bullied, the

abused the abuser. After his wife passes out giving birth to their

child, Hindley develops an alcohol addiction which has a negative

impact on his ability to reason and socialize:

For himself, he grew desperate: his sorrow was of that

kind that will not lament. He neither wept nor prayed;

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he cursed and defied: execrated God and man, and

gave himself up to reckless dissipation. The servants

could not bear his tyrannical and evil conduct long:

Joseph and I were the only two that would stay. (46)

Heathcliff takes advantage of his delicate and critical situation and

carries out his vengeance by involving him in gambling, with the

sole objective of taking all his assets. Eventually, Heathcliff

achieves his intended aim and becomes the only owner of

Wuthering Heights.

Although his revenge is remorseless he is still able to feel

intense and sincere affection. In the novel, the only two characters

he truly cares about are Mr Earnshaw and Catherine, they are also

the only ones who care about him. The former dies shortly after

adopting Heathcliff, leaving him vulnerable and unprotected. This

will not be the only loss that Heathcliff will suffer: he also loses

Catherine, twice. The first time, he loses her to another man,

Edgar Linton, and then to death. Catherine and Heathcliff’s

special and unusual love story is very destructive but Platonic.

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They rarely touch each other so it is not something physical but is

strictly emotional. They are so madly in love that “they forgot

everything the minute they were together again.” (Brontë, 32)

Theirs is a very powerful love that goes beyond the essence of the

being. They do not conceive life without the other, as Heathcliff

begs:

May you [Catherine] not rest as long as I am living! You said I

killed you

– haunt me, then!” […] Be with me always – take any

form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this

abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! It is

unutterable!” (122)

They even lose their own being when they lose their significant

other, “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my

soul!” (Brontë, 122). Their union goes beyond human

understanding, and beyond death or life. Here is where we find

another major difference between Heathcliff and Linton.

Catherine loves both of them but in extremely different ways.

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What she feels for Linton is categorized as an ordinary and

common human attachment, while what she feels for Heathcliff is

a kind of supernatural and eternal passion. As Catherine herself

claims:

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will
change it,

I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for

Heathcliff

resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little

visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!

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. (59)

Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is oddly overwhelming to the

extent that they complete each other. They do not know how to

survive without the other because it seems they are made of the

same substance. It is as if they both formed a single being

“because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are

made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as
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a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire” (Brontë, 57). It is

an amoral and generous love that cannot be understood by the

human mind.

4. Conclusion

What is fascinating about the Byronic hero are his

imperfections, which make him human. Not being flawless as the

traditional heroes were, helps the readers to connect with him and

even, somehow, feel empathy. It is a character of a very complex

nature and with a beautiful but damned soul. His mysterious but

magnetic and charismatic personality has “all the perverse charm

of a Byronic hero” (Praz, 77). Moreover, Byron created a hero

that represented the type of individual people desired to be

because he was brave enough to defy social rules and choose his

own path.

Nevertheless, the Byronic hero does not achieve his

aspirations but rather, he is devastated by his own emotions. In

The Romantic Agony, Mario Praz claims that this archetype “is a
 Villar 21

hero fatal to himself and to those around him; his love is accursed;

he drags to destruction the woman to whom he becomes attached”

(77). This idea is clearly reflected in Wuthering Heights, where

Heathcliff’s love for Catherine and vice versa is so strong that it

has the power of destruction. Indeed, it is the main trigger for the

drama in which the whole story is based. Catherine loses her

being when she loses Heathcliff, leading her to death. However,

their union goes beyond understanding, beyond death and life

because each is the other’s essence. Heathcliff is haunted by

Catherine’s ghost and neither of them will rest in peace until they

can be reunited in the afterlife.

The strong influence of the Byronic hero is noticeable in the

creation of Heathcliff. Emily Brontë was a great admirer of

Byron’s work and she honours him by emulating perhaps his

greatest legacy. Nevertheless, Heathcliff is not just a simple copy

of Byron’s creation. Brontë was able to brilliantly develop her

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character in a moral and psychological way that Heathcliff, as

Peter L. Thorslev wisely asserts in The Byronic Hero: Types and

Prototypes, “is not only Byronic, but a great literary

achievement.” (192)

5. Works Cited

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth

Editions Limited. 1992. Print.

Gilbert, Sandra M. And Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the

Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century

Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press,

1984. Web.
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<https://archive.org/stream/TheMadwomanInTheAttic/The

%20Madwoman%20i

n%20the%20Attic#page/n0/mode/2up>

Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony. Great Britain: Oxford

University Press. 1951. Print.

Stein, Atara. The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction and Television.

Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press, 2009. Google Books. Web.

<https://books.google.com.au/books?

id=xV616xTewWMC&printsec=frontcove

r&hl=es&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&

q&f=false>

Thorslev, Peter L. The Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes.

Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press. 1999. Print.