Welcome to day four of Wuthering Heights Week here at White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. Today’s post is about why Wuthering Heights is an absolutely brilliant novel for giving us a love story with unlikable leads!
Now, I need to admit, as the title states, I do love the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff, even though they are unlikable. However, there is a brilliance in having two characters that it can be honestly difficult to root for at the center of the narrative. This is especially true given just how dark this romance truly is! My love for the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff comes out of the fact that I can sympathize and even empathize with just how they got to the point of acting how they do in the novel.
So, let’s unpack just what makes them unlikable, and why it is okay to not like the characters of even your favorite stories! Catherine’s unlikability stems from the descriptions of just how spoiled, self-centered, and cruel she can be. Much of this is cruelty towards Nelly herself, and as I discussed in my post on the unreliable narrators, this cruelty may be exaggerated, as we only get Nelly’s perspective! However, when we take it at face value, Catherine’s insistence on having things her way and the cruelty she can exhibit when not given what she wants paint her as a spoiled and immature character.
Heathcliff is even more unlikable than Cathy, as his cruelty and dark temperament are far more pronounced. While Nelly described Cathy as being more like a naughty child, even when she is a married adult woman, Heathcliff is literally called a villain and a devil time and again. He does some truly horrific and unforgivable things, including hanging Isabella’s dog, which he admits to doing, and treating Isabella abominably (and even violently) during their marriage. Much of what Heathcliff does in the novel after he has grown to adulthood is with the desire for revenge. He married Isabella to spite Catherine and Edgar; he made sure that his son and Catherine and Edgar’s daughter married to inherit Thrushcross Grange, and he got control of Wuthering Heights in the first place to get revenge on Hindley Earnshaw. The Heathcliff that we meet again after being absent for three years is a man hardened by heartbreak, but still deeply longing for the love of Catherine Earnshaw Linton!
Now that I have gone over some of the reasons many people find these characters unlikable, let’s look at why I still like these unlikable characters. Firstly, I do truly love Catherine and Heathcliff, as I grew up with this book, and I have read it so many times, making the characters like old friends, even if they do abominable things. Yet, as I mentioned above, I also like the characters because, even when seeing them through Nelly’s biased lens, it is easy to see what led them down the path of despicable actions. Heathcliff was a foundling, literally picked up off the streets by Mr. Earnshaw, who doted on him, even preferring him over his own children. This made Heathcliff rather spoiled early on, but he had already had so much trauma that we have no way to know the full extent of beforehand, so it is understandable that Mr. Earnshaw would dote on the grateful young boy. While Catherine loved Heathcliff and did not bear ill will that her father doted on him, her older brother Hindley did not feel the same.
When Mr. Earnshaw passed away, and Wuthering Heights was left to Hindley, the young man quickly took his revenge on Heathcliff, relegating him to being a servant and stableboy. Beyond this, Hindley actively sought to punish Heathcliff at every turn and reprimand him for any seeming slight. Heathcliff suffered great abuse from Hindley after Mr. Earnshaw’s death, which clearly left scars on his psyche. His desire for revenge against Hindley is certainly understandable, even if his actions can be vile.
As for Catherine, she is often described by Nelly as a high-spirited young girl who was sometimes a rough playmate. As I said earlier, Catherine is more described as naughty with a cruel streak than as a true villain. However, Nelly also stated that Catherine was very loyal to her childhood playmates, meaning that even though Nelly never liked Catherine (by her own admission), Catherine still saw her as a confidant as she grew up. This loyalty that Catherine time and again exhibits to Heathcliff, and even to Nelly when she is not being cruel to her, is something that makes me like Catherine. At the end of the day, I think Catherine was very misguided in her actions when she accepted Edgar’s proposal in the hopes of using his money to help Heathcliff get out from under her brother’s thumb. Yet, her heart was in the right place, even if in her youthful naivete she accepted a marriage proposal from a man whom she knew she would not always love. In one of the most powerful moments, Catherine described how her love for Edgar was like the foliage on the trees; it would change with time, but her love for Heathcliff was like the rocks on the forest floor, always there and never changing.
So, while neither is written as a traditionally likable character, they are beautifully written with an understandable reason for how they behave. Given how toxic their romance is, it makes sense that they would be portrayed as characters who are difficult to like. Moreover, their unlikable characteristics are part of what makes them interesting characters. After all, many do tend to love the villains, which is why I think that these two characters endure as favorites, even if they can be considered traditionally unlikable. Not because lovers of this novel seek to emulate them, but because they speak to the Shadow within each of us, and teach us about the darkness within everyone!
I hope that you have enjoyed my analysis of the brilliance of having two unlikable, yet sympathetic leads to this dark romance story, and why I love them anyway. How do you feel about Catherine and Heathcliff as characters? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a book cover for the novel. I found the image on https://hauntedhearts.wordpress.com/tag/wuthering-heights-book-cover/.
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2021/04/10/heathcliff-as-byronic-hero/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/03/17/wuthering-heights-a-happy-ending/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/09/26/catherine-earnshaw-a-faery-changeling/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2024/11/29/the-two-catherines-of-wuthering-heights/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/04/27/emily-brontes-impact-kate-bush-the-music-videos-and-the-unthanks/