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   mwestwood Teacher
   Community / Jr. College

   As a Byronic hero, Heathcliff's nature is intrinsically connected to his tormented, inhumanly passionate love for Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, too, loves him passionately, "He's more myself than I am....I am Heathcliff. Heathcliff is her one unselfishness; yet, she rejects him to follow convention and marry her cousin.

   When Heathcliff, whose arrogant nature that lacks any heroic virtue, returns to wreak revenge upon both Hindley and Catherine--the only fit justice for rejection--Catherine tells her sister-in-law, "He's a fierce pitiless wolfish man...and he'd crush you like a sparrow's egg..." Catherine warns Isabelle. As she lies dying, Catherine tells him that he has driven her mad. Then, after Catherine dies, Heathcliff prays her soul will know no rest because he "cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my life."

   Sharing a fierce, tormented, primal love, Catherine and Heathcliff are lost to each other, each possesses the spirit of the other. But, when they are torn apart, Heathcliff destroys them both in his Byronic revenge. Catherine loses her passion and dies; Heathcliff no longer has "his life,,,,[his] soul" and, too, dies, but looks as though carried off by the devil.

   As Shakespeare cautioned, violent delights often have violent ends.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/wuthering

   http://www.enotes.com/wuthering/character

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   Posted by mwestwood on Tuesday November 18, 2008 at 3:26 PM