Tabitha Adams - English
has created” 20 . Sydney Dobell writing in 1850 says “The authoress has too often disgusted
where she should have terrified and has allowed us a familiarity with her fiend” 21 . These
Victorian critics suggest that Brontë’s character Heathcliff is a demon and therefore should be
treated thus by the author and were clearly uncomfortable with Brontë displaying Heathcliff in
many a natural and human manner, his deeds accounted for by motives rather than pure
malicious intent. We can see from the punitive comments of these critics that with the creation
of Heathcliff Brontë is contesting the dogmatic moral preaching of Victorian society.
Heathcliff is successful in obtaining his revenge and faces no retribution. He remains morally
ambivalent till the very end and this is Brontë’s main defiance to the convention of a hero.
However Dorothy Van Ghent says of Heathcliff in her essay on ‘Heathcliff as an archetypal
Demon’; “It is because of his ambivalence that, though he is the ‘enemy’ ethically speaking, he
so easily takes on the stature and beauty of a hero, as he (the archetypal Demon) does in the
Satan of Paradise Lost” 22 . Van Ghent recognises that because Heathcliff appears to be his own
free spirit with no conventions properly binding him, he becomes a creature of inspiration and
admiration- integral properties of a hero. If his moral ambiguity authenticates Heathcliff as a
hero, then Brontë has successfully transformed the convention of the hero.
20
Pg. 359, Whipple, E.P., “Novels of the Season,” North American Review (October 1848). Pg. 26, Bloom,
H. ed., 2000. Bloom’s ReViews: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers
21
Pg. 169, Dobell, S., “Currer Bell” (1850), The Life and Times of Sydney Dobell, ed. Emily Jolly (1878). Pg.
27, Bloom, H. ed., 2000. Bloom’s ReViews: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Broomall: Chelsea House
Publishers
22
Pg. 164, Van Ghent, D., “On Wuthering Heights,” The English Novel: Form and Function (New York:
Rhinehart & Co., 1953). Pg. 43, Bloom, H. ed., 2000. Bloom’s ReViews: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers
11
15