Wuthering Heights: Why Heathcliff Remains Literature’s Most Divisive Romantic Anti-Hero

As the teaser trailer of Wuthering Heights, an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel on the intoxicating love story of all time, is out and the movie hit theatres (today), February 13, this puts the novel in the spotlight again, exploring love, revenge and longing.

The original narrative talks about the Earnshaws and the Lintons, two families, and their tumultuous connection with Heathcliff, the foster son of the Earnshaws.

Heathcliff and Catherine: Imperfect and real

Two of the most imperfect and achingly real characters are Heathcliff and Catherine. With the ending, which shows the death of Heathcliff, haunted by visions of Catherine Earnshaw, and his subsequent burial beside her grave, I relate it to the circumstances faced in their day-to-day life.

During an intense narrative, you may become so absorbed that you subconsciously adopt the thoughts, behaviours and beliefs of a fictional character as your own. This is more than just liking a character; it is a temporary blurring of your own identity with theirs. With Heathcliff gone, the remaining generation, Cathy Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw, are free to marry, and the violence and cruelty that pervades their lives begin to fade, which somehow offers a hopeful, albeit fragile, glimpse of peace.

The final scene shows Mr Lockwood visiting the graves and finding it impossible to believe the two are not reunited in some form, whether in peace or as spectral wanderers on the moors. These are one-sided emotional bonds that develop when you feel a strong sense of intimacy or connection with a known figure, whether they are fictional or real. Through repeated exposure, you may feel you know them, which can influence your behaviour and attitudes.

Heathcliff as outsider and victim

Heathcliff was found as a child, cast out by his foster brother, and tormented by his low social status. If you have experienced feelings of being unwanted, rejected or unfairly treated, his history of victimhood may resonate with you.

As an orphan, Heathcliff spent his life seeking acceptance, a home and a true family. If you have unmet needs for intimacy and connection from your own past, you might feel a powerful pull toward his yearning for a place where he truly belongs. Some readers identify with Heathcliff because he is rough, raw and real, in contrast to a more conventional, perfect hero. If you feel that you are not always clever, always nice to everyone, you may find his authentic, flawed nature more relatable.

The characters are realistic, the morals are a little more ambiguous, and it often feels like this book is simultaneously critiquing and exemplifying the ideals of romanticism, which, while that’s a tough line for an author to ride, I feel Brontë does excellently.

So this gets into Heathcliff. I’m aware that there are problematic elements to the man, but I still felt he was a sympathetic figure on the whole, albeit one you feel guilty for siding with. Why? He feels like a perpetual outsider and knows he will never gain the same acceptance as men like Edgar Linton on account of his origins and race. I think he ultimately feels Cathy was stolen from him by a class that he can never really belong to, regardless of how much money he makes, and most of the novel is him trying less to exact revenge on people, rather than him trying to destroy a family that, to him, is synonymous with that elite.

On Isabella and Hindley

Also, it doesn’t help how whiny and naive Isabella is. I don’t condone Heathcliff’s actions towards her whatsoever, but he did literally say to her face before they were married that he would never love her and she shouldn’t be with him. Nothing forced her to run away with him, and if his words and demeanour weren’t enough, he injured her dog in a fit of rage before the marriage.

Like, come on. Even the most delusional ‘I can change him’ type girl should have seen he was beyond redemption. Isabella also constantly comes across as incredibly entitled in her complaining about the lack of maids and servants at Wuthering Heights as well as the poor upkeep. Speaking of entitled wrecks, let’s talk about Hindley. He abused Heathcliff for years, was an alcoholic and gambling addict, dropped his son off a ledge (who would have died if it weren’t for Heathcliff), and was literally on the verge of murdering Heathcliff at one point. Should I despair that Heathcliff beat him and took advantage of him financially?

Now, don’t get me wrong, Heathcliff is not what you would call an emotionally mature (or even good) person, but honestly, it’s hard to realistically see a scenario in which he ends up well-adjusted. He’s left on the street as a young child, grows up in an abusive home, and is constantly made to feel defective and different. No wonder he has abandonment issues. No wonder he has outbursts. I mean, how is a person in his situation going to get it together? It’s not like he can see a therapist in Victorian England.

Generational trauma and social constraints

I think something that Wuthering Heights portrays so well, which is now becoming a very common theme in the media, is generational trauma. Catherine also has a distinct response to the dysfunctional home she grew up in, and yes, she also comes across as unlikable a lot of the time because of it. The most common criticism I hear of Wuthering Heights is that everyone is so insufferable. But isn’t that the point? That’s kind of what a generation of untreated emotional trauma does to you.

So do I defend everything Heathcliff does? Absolutely not. But do I feel for him? Yes. He was clearly a victim of abuse who lived in a world that constantly belittled him on account of his birth and race, and I wish he’d been able to get some sort of help.

Catherine is also dealing with societal expectations in regard to her gender and class. Her motivation was to aid Heathcliff. I believe people forget how absolutely powerless women were for a long time. Catherine wanted to help Heathcliff, but she had neither money nor power to do so. The only way she would be able to was to marry Linton. I think the sentiment was expressed well by Amy March in Greta Gerwig’s version of Little Women. Even if women, then and now, have money, it, in a way, belongs to their husbands the minute they get married. Children would belong to men, not women. They would be his property. So, it would be inappropriate to say that marriage is not an economic proposition. It may not be for everyone, but certainly for the majority.

It’s hard for readers to comprehend exactly how little power women had at the time. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is amazingly daring for its time, suggesting that a woman has a right to leave a drunken, abusive husband. The Brontë sisters were fairly forward-thinking for their time, although I doubt they intended to be (and despite being very much of their time in other ways).

Sympathy versus accountability

We can sympathise with Heathcliff, but not condone his behaviour. He did a lot of awful things. He might have regretted them later, but he still did all of those things. The thing about Heathcliff is that he is motivated by revenge. And it’s understandable, because he was traumatised and treated horribly. I think the point of his story is that he, ultimately, got his revenge on Hindley and Edgar. Marrying Isabella was to spite Catherine.

However, it didn’t bring him satisfaction or make him happy. He was still miserable. So, he made the lives of Cathy Second, Hareton and Linton, who were innocent, miserable. And that didn’t make him happy either. He should never have returned to Wuthering Heights and maybe then he would have eventually found solace and happiness.

About Isabella, I actually quite like her. Was she a spoiled brat? Sure. However, she actually defied Heathcliff and called him out on his bullcrap. Think about the fact that he was abusive towards her as a more serious problem than her marrying him with wrong expectations. She also ran away from an abusive husband and raised Linton on her own.

So in some way, she was able to have her own income, when in Victorian society, the only thing expected from a highborn girl was to marry well. And she called her son Linton of all things. In the end, I think Heathcliff is complicated. Everyone in this novel is complicated.

He hanged her dog in front of her eyes. He wanted to vivisect her and their son. He locked his dying son out of the house on the moors. He kidnapped the young Cathy. He regretted that he saved a baby’s life. He dug up a corpse so he could get affectionate with it. And that’s just off the top of my head. Abuse doesn’t excuse abuse. At some point, as an adult, you have to take responsibility for yourself and the choices you make.

There are ways in which liking Heathcliff is a red flag; basically, what it flags is people who think toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable men are hot. But after having a close look at his horrible childhood and the injustices he faced (he is coded Romanichal, by the way), it is not a red flag.

Published on: Saturday, February 14, 2026, 06:44 AM IST