[Music] do welcome back to another episode of wuthering heights a reader's guide in this video we're going to be trying to understand heathcliff one of the most abrasive multifaceted and in my view misunderstood characters in literature as with my catherine analysis i'll not be focusing on the things that heathcliff represents like nature instead i want to look at heathcliff the character i want to try and understand what motivates him whether he's a hero or a villain and how should we as readers relate to him part one hero or villain if heathcliff is a hero then he's certainly not going to be your traditional pure justice seeking hero he's often described by literary types as a byronic hero the archetype of the baronic hero was popularized and named after lord byron who was just as famous for his character and personality as his poetry the baronic hero is a kind of hero but it's very different from the traditional idea of a hero that's motivated by justice and morals he or she can do good things but generally speaking they're only going to do good or bad things if it's in their interest they're not motivated by abstract principles of justice or anything like that so superman probably not going to count as bionic hero but maybe something like batman would now i certainly think that heathcliff has many of the hallmarks of the byronic hero he's certainly mysterious he comes out of nowhere he's morally ambiguous to say the least but bronte also seems to be making fun of a reader that might try and interpret heathcliff as a hero at all at one point in the novel heathcliff takes the mick out of isabella for fancying him he openly mocks her for picturing me as a hero of a romance and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion i can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature in the last video we also looked at how catherine takes the mecca out of isabella for thinking that heathcliff is some kind of romantic hero and so given that heathcliff openly mocks someone in the story who is interpreting him as a hero and given that catherine does it as well you can sort of see this maybe as bronte herself kind of casting doubt on that interpretation of heathcliff she seems to be making fun of a reader who would share isabella's ideas about who heathcliff is so it seems like bronte is trying to encourage us not to interpret heathcliff as a byronic hero or any kind of hero in fact now for many readers and arguably for modern readers or at least in terms of the videos that i've seen on heathcliff's character there's a tendency to interpret him as a villain and there's certainly good evidence for this the entire second volume of the story is just loaded with the various things that heathcliff is doing to get revenge on people and he does some pretty terrible things and even before the second volume he does some pretty terrible things so there is loads of evidence to suggest that heathcliff is a villain and is also his presence that stops the happy ending from occurring between kathy and herton it's only when heathcliff dies that they can have their happy ending and so that seems to be a sort of villain role because if you're stopping two characters from having that happy ending that's usually the role of a villain now bronte also doesn't poke fun at the idea of heathcliff being a villain in the way that she does about him being a hero but to say that heathcliff is just a through and through villain that isn't going to wash with me i don't think that that is the case either the reason why i think this is because i don't think that anyone in the whole story of wuthering heights can be classed as a true villain or a true hero nearly all of bronte's characters maybe bar a couple have moments of doing good things of showing compassion and they have moments of doing some pretty terrible things wuthering heights is a story not just about heathcliff being broken and ruining everyone's life but it's a story about a load of broken people who together ruin each other's lives heathcliff just happens to be one of the strongest of the bunch to call anyone a villain in the traditional sense in this story to me seems wrong and to call heathcliff the main villain seems to downplay some of the things that the other characters do which even if they're not as extreme as the things heathcliff does are arguably just as destructive if not more so we've got catherine who physically assaults her husband-to-be and manipulates people when they don't do what she wants we've got hindley and francis who beat up children for fun and then make out afterwards as if it kind of you know turns them on to do that you've got joseph who beats children for fun as well you've got edgar linton who he might not be violent but does some pretty cruel things like allowing his sister and then his nephew to be in an environment with an abuser and thinking that his sister deserves to be with an abuser because she didn't do what he wanted her to do and these are just the tip of the iceberg there is so much violence in wuthering heights there's so many people doing so many terrible things in wuthering heights that to say that the story has a central villain just seems completely off base for me then wuthering heights is a story of complex characters who have been abused and many of them have turned into abusers and they're all tragic they're all somewhat heroic in some situations and in other situations they're quite villainous but none of them fully fit into either of the categories and so for heathcliff being a hero or a villain he's neither he's a human being with significant flaws but he's still a human being he's not just a one-note villain or a one-night hero part two humanizing heathcliff like catherine heathcliff gets a lot of flack in fact i would say again in terms of modern readers there seems to be a stronger tendency to empathize with catherine and see her as a victim and to just kind of put most of the blame on to heathcliff and to not forgive him for the things that he does but just as in the last video i argued that it's important to recognize that catherine's character is more complex than the story of her character that we get from nelly the same thing applies to heathcliff one thing to always remember about wuthering heights is that it's being told from a subjective point of view and it's being told a long time after a lot of these events have occurred in fact by the end of the novel catherine and heathcliff seem to have become parts of the folklore of gimmerton you've got these stories of two ghosts wandering the malls and children being scared of them they've certainly become way more than they ever were in life now they're part of a mythology and so you really have to be careful when interpreting these characters because if they've become mythologized that means that their worst attributes or their strongest attributes are going to be massively exaggerated and that's why it's really important when you're reading the book to focus on those moments that kind of debunk the mythology around these two characters catherine's diary entry is arguably one of the keys to this because it's something that was written at the time and it shows you just how horrible the situation was for these two kids growing up unfortunately though we don't get a diary entry from heathcliff so we don't really have a moment where we get any of the story that's told from his perspective in his own words we obviously do get bits where he's speaking but then he's speaking to nelly and so nelly is remembering the speech so even that you can't fully trust heathcliff's childhood is one that's basically devoid of compassion as a foundling he doesn't have anyone there for him when he's at his most vulnerable part of life he does have a brief moment of kindness when mr earnshaw makes him the favorite but that doesn't last very long and once that goes he's put back into hindley's care and things just go from bad to worse he's eventually cast out he has no education he has no one to love him no one to care for him and no one to teach him the difference between right and wrong and when he and catherine meet the linton's catherine gets taken in by the lyntons you know they're both savages but they choose to do on catherine but they're quite happy just to abandon heathcliff to his fit so he never has any moment of redemption as a kid he never has a moment where someone tries to help him or at least not in a substantial way i think it's really important to remember heathcliff's childhood when we're making judgments about the man that he turns into i think it's very easy to pass judgment on heathcliff from the perspective of someone who's had an education who's had been in an environment where you've had parents to teach you the difference from right and wrong it's very easy to then judge someone who is very immoral and very cruel like heathcliff but the important thing to remember is that heathcliff has just never had any of that guidance and so he's basically in terms of his mental development the same as a child he doesn't grow up he doesn't mature because there's no one to guide him through that process and so that's why he remains wild and untamable and that's why even catherine eventually turns against him because she does get at least for a bit of time some care some attention and some education in the world that bronte creates it's very important for children to have love and care when they're young if they have that then they tend to grow into good characters at least to some extent but if they don't have that then they tend to turn into quite savage characters or quite cruel characters and heathcliff is the epitome of this a final reason why i think it's important to empathize with heathcliff and i think this applies to catherine as well is that these two characters do represent something that i think is inside most people catherine and heathcliff especially are untameable they are these primitive be steel type people and they kind of represent that in all of us we all have our urges our kind of cool desires to do things but we're quite good at repressing them and controlling them heathcliff is just terrible at this and so sometimes i wonder if the reason why these characters are generally not liked is because people don't really want to think about that aspect of their characters and they want to kind of dissociate themselves from that side of themselves but i think heathcliff and catherine too are important to empathize with because i think they do represent something that is inside most people a primitive side a violent side and a cruel side so it's always important then with wuthering heights to remember that it's being told from a subjective point of view nelly is biased and heathcliff and catherine in their story has sort of been mythologized and so it's really hard to know 100 what heathcliff and what catherine were really like my tendency then is to kind of interpret them from a more human perspective and to think about where they've come from and why and when i do that i see two people that were abused never had any love and in heathcliff's case never had any education and so it's no wonder that he turns into the person that he becomes part three the sad irony of heathcliff when i was reading wuthering heights for this series i realized something for the first time about heathcliff's character arc and that it has a really tragic irony in it at the start of the novel i think this is in catherine's diary entry catherine and heathcliff are sick of being abused by joseph and they're sick of his religious sermonizing and so heathcliff and then catherine throw their bibles across the floor kind of rejecting religion in that moment because at this point they clearly see christianity or at least the christianity that joseph preaches as hypocritical he preaches love compassion but is violent and cruel in a previous episode i argued that joseph represents the old testament style of christianity which means lots of revenge instead of forgiveness when people do wrong things and i argued that wuthering heights can be interpreted as bronte trying to convince us to move to the new testament forgiving sense of morality and away from that old testament eye for an eye sense of morality when heathcliff throws that bible away it seems like he's rejecting this old testament way of christianity it seems like he doesn't want to be part of this violent vengeful punishment-driven system but the irony is for heathcliff and catherine too heathcliff will eventually become just that he will become the embodiment of revenge in the second volume of the book when his whole arc is completely consumed with carrying out revenge not just on the people that wronged him but the second generations who've done nothing wrong to him and this really is the epitome of that old testament eye for an eye vengeful god stuff it's not just you that gets punished it's the generations and generations that come after too ultimately then the irony of heathcliff is that he becomes the very thing that he tries to reject at the beginning of the story in the end he doesn't reject that vengeful way of thinking he rejects the god stuff but he doesn't reject the essence of what joseph is as a person which is being vengeful cruel and sadistic through this i think bronte shows us how generations are somewhat predetermined by their upbringings and that sometimes they are condemned to the same fates as the people that raised them heathcliff is unable to escape the cruel upbringing that he has instead of truly rejecting it and becoming a good person he becomes the abuser in the end because he has no compassion and no love he finds it very hard to have these emotions for other people even catherine who he professes to love at times and because he's raised in this environment where punishment and revenge is par for the course that's what he'll end up doing in a way that will ultimately destroy both him and catherine part 6 conclusion heathcliff is a really complex character and there's certainly a lot more to say about him however in this video i think i focused on the things that i think are important when interpreting heathcliff as a character for me heathcliff is neither a hero or a villain he represents the story of a victim of abuse who eventually turns tragically into an abuser himself he also exists in an environment of terrible people who also do terrible things and so to single him out as the only villain in the story seems to me to be wrong instead he's just very complex very flawed human being like catherine his story is somewhat tainted his story is filtered by nelly's biases and her memory and he has become mythologized by the end of the story finally heathcliff is a really ironic character because he becomes the very thing that he hates as a child again he starts life abused and eventually becomes an abuser himself but just because he ends up being a terrible person it doesn't mean that there aren't reasons to empathize with him and try and understand him as a character all right that's it for this video let me know what you think of heathcliff the character do you think he's a hero or a villain or do you agree with me that his character is a bit more complex than that what other things do you find interesting about heathcliff and his character what do you think about his relationship to catherine i look forward to talking with you about these things and anything else you want to talk about in the comments but that is it for this video though so take care everyone [Music] ta-rah