Wuthering Heights

This lesson plan focuses on Heathcliff and Edgar Linton as character foils. Students will learn about character foils by identifying similarities and differences between Heathcliff and Edgar and by considering how each character values wealth and status. By studying Heathcliff and Edgar as character foils, students will be better able to describe how their traits and behaviors advance some of the novel’s key themes and major ideas—notably, those regarding wealth and social status.

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights drew harsh criticism when it was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Critics took offense to the appalling behavior of the novel’s characters, particularly Heathcliff. In 1848, a reviewer for Atlas declared that “[w]e know nothing of the whole range of our fictitious literature which presents such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity.” Other critics denounced the novel as unoriginal and inconsistent in style. There was speculation about its author being the same author who wrote Jane Eyre—Charlotte Brontë’s novel, which also contains gothic elements but a distinct narrative voice. Charlotte revealed that Wuthering Heights was written by Emily the following year, after Emily died of tuberculosis. Critics subsequently reevaluated their opinions, and the novel is now considered a fixture of the English literary canon.

Some readers of Wuthering Heights focus on the tragic love story of Heathcliff and Catherine, who fall in love as children on the moors of Yorkshire. However, the novel more closely follows the self-destruction of Heathcliff, an adopted orphan who struggles to navigate his ambiguous social status among the respectable Earnshaw and Linton families. What begins as an intense relationship between foster siblings becomes a story of revenge when Heathcliff is reduced to the status of servant by his foster brother, Hindley. Heathcliff experiences significant prejudice because of his lowly status, culminating in the loss of Catherine to the respectable Edgar Linton. Heathcliff disappears, only to emerge years later with a fortune and a plan to avenge himself against both Hindley and Edgar.

As a work of gothic fiction, Wuthering Heights incorporates supernatural elements to engage the social issues of its time and to explore the extremes of human emotion in ways that seem simultaneously implausible and profoundly relatable. The novel is full of familial conflict, jarring scenes of brutality, madness, intense weather, and ghosts. It is also full of doubles and foils: between characters, houses, and even abstractions like nature and civilization.

One of the most significant sets of character foils is Heathcliff and Edgar Linton, who compete for Catherine’s love and are opposites in every way. Heathcliff is a brooding and enigmatic man relegated to the lower classes. Edgar is an even-tempered and predictable man who was born into wealth and status. Heathcliff is cruel, whereas Edgar is kind. Heathcliff accumulates wealth and uses it to control people, whereas Edgar simply enjoys his inheritance, though he seems to believe that it makes him inherently superior to those who are below him on the social hierarchy. Comparing and contrasting Heathcliff and Edgar not only yields a rich character analysis, but also explores the novel’s perspective on wealth and the constraints of social class.