Tabitha Adams - English
These actions of disguise, degradation and self-restraint show a self-abasement which would
never have been displayed by the proud and mighty Achilles, nor any other Homeric hero. With
the creation of Odysseus, Homer has defied his own convention to produce a hero who must
use not only brute-strength but cunning and guile to survive.
The conventional hero in the context of Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights is much harder to
define, predominantly because Brontë is not writing within a clearly defined heroic tradition
unlike Homer. For example Heathcliff is often read as a Byronic hero like Mr. Rochester in Jayne
Eyre. Heathcliff is, as typical of a Byronic hero, an outcast, a lonely soul with a mysterious origin.
Nelly Dean speaking to Mr. Lockwood of Heathcliff’s history says “It’s a cuckoo’s sir- I know all
about it: except where he was born, and who his parents were” 5 . Heathcliff also has the
features of a Byronic hero, dark and brooding with hauntingly memorable eyes, which Nelly
describes as “that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried… like devil’s spies” 6 . Furthermore
Heathcliff is morally ambiguous, a central characteristic of the Byronic hero.
Yet in various ways Heathcliff deviates greatly from this category of hero. Usually a Byronic hero
bears the burden of a terrible and mysterious crime, undisclosed to the reader till the end of
the novel. However all Heathcliff’s offences are clearly laid before us: his leading of Hindley
Earnshaw to perdition, his vengeful courting of Isabella Linton, his deliberate degrading of
Hareton, his cruel treatment of his son Linton and his abduction of the young Catherine.
Furthermore Heathcliff only exhibits the ‘melancholy habits’ characteristic of a Byronic hero
after Catherine’s death, as a natural symptom of his bereavement and suffering, not as the
“insufferable sorrow of the hero’s lot on earth” 7 . Therefore although Brontë has portrayed
Heathcliff with many Byronic characteristics, he does not quite fit within this convention.
If Heathcliff fits only superficially within the convention of the Byronic hero, he is even more
misplaced within the convention of the rigidly moral Victorian hero. Heathcliff is an orphaned
gipsy- not initially wealthy or of a high-class background like the typical Victorian protagonist.
Furthermore he has almost no moral regard and commits many cruel and sadistic acts. Cathy
herself describes him in Chapter 10 as “a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.” 8 , the strong suggestion
of animal qualities in Cathy’s words very much distance Heathcliff from the refined gentlemanly
behaviour of the typical Victorian hero.
5
Pg. 24, Brontë, E., 2000. Wuthering Heights. Ware: Wordsworth Editions
Pg. 39, Brontë, Wuthering Heights
7
Pg. 18, The Open University., 1982. Arts: A Third Level Course The Nineteenth-century Novel and its
Legacy Unit 5 Wuthering Heights. Milton Keynes: The Open University Press
8
Pg.74, Brontë, Wuthering Heights
6
6
10