Heathcliff: Made A Villain By Love Essay -- essays research papers

Love is a cardinal way street. In order for love to work it must be given and returned. If love is left unfulfilled it can lead a person to be spiteful, vengeful, and at the extreme villainous. In Emily Brontes novel, Wuthering heights, Heathcliff is the villain because he is frustrated about his unanswered love for Cathy. Heathcliffs villainy is apparent in how he treats the Earnshaws, degrading Hindley and Hareton just as Hindley did him. This is also shown in his actions against the Lintons. Heathcliff hates the Lintons because Cathy espouse Edgar. Heathcliff uses his treachery to steal away the Linton fortune and to degrade their offspring. Heathcliffs villainy is finally shown in how he treats Cathy herself. He loves her so much he hates her. He feels that Cathy betrayed her heart and married Edgar. Heathcliff as the villain is first shown in his actions against the Earnshaws.     When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights after several years, his fr ustration leads him to exact revenge on Hindley Earnshaw. Heathcliff blames Hindley for Cathy non returning his love and becoming married to Edgar. Hindley reduced Heathcliff to such a status that it would ruin Cathy to marry him. Heathcliffs villainy is shown when he returns the favour to Hindley, reducing him and his son Hareton to servant class. This is apparent when Heathcliff is talking to Nellie about his joy in degrading Hareton, he says,      Ive pleasure in him...He has satisfied my expectations - if he were natural a fool      I should not enjoy it half so much - But hes no fool and I can interpret with      all his feelings, having felt them myself - I know what he suffers now, for instance only - it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer though. And hell never      be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness, and ignorance. Ive got him      faster than his scoundral of a father secured me, and swallow for he takes a pride      in his brutishness. (252-253)This is also shown when Heathcliff accidentally saves Hareton from plastered death. This is apparent when Nellie says, "A miser who has parted with a lucky lottery shred for five shillings, and finds next day he has lost in the softwood five t... ...thout her. His villainy is also shown when he talks to Cathy when she is sick. He condemns her for intermission both his heart and hers. This is apparent when Heathcliff says, "Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I consume not one word of comfort - you deserve this. You drive home killed yourself...Theyll blight you - theyll damn you. You loved me - then what right did you to leave me?...I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in break it, you have broken mine." (197) This quote shows Heathcliffs anger, and his blaming of Cathy for his becoming a villain. Heathcliff as the vil lain is shown through his actions towards people.     In the novel, Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is a villain. He is a villain because of his unrequited love for Cathy. His villainy is shown though his actions towards the Earnshaws, a famliy that degraded him, the Lintons, the people he believes stole Cathy away from him, and Cathy herself, the woman he feels betrayed her heart and his love. Heathcliff felt that he did not have Cathys love, when all the time he truly own her heart. Without love being returned jealousy and anger could make villains of all.