Heathcliff

Heathcliff is the brooding protagonist of Wuthering Heights (1847), the only novel by English author Emily Brontë. A captivating if often brutal personality, he shares a destructive romantic bond with the willful Catherine Earnshaw and enacts a long and insidious revenge against her family and the neighboring Lintons. His character is one of the great Byronic heroes in literature.

“Eyes full of black fire”: Description and character of Heathcliff

Wuthering Heights is set in England at the turn of the 19th century in the Yorkshire moors, where the Earnshaws and the Lintons are owners of the estates Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, respectively. The story is mostly narrated by Ellen Dean, a housekeeper who has worked in both households and witnessed the many tragic events that unfolded in them. She relates these tragedies to Mr. Lockwood, a visitor from London who is renting Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff. After a brusque and harrowing introduction to Heathcliff and his family, Lockwood judges his landlord to be a “rough fellow” and a “churl.”

Mrs. Dean’s account begins about the time the Earnshaw family—which consists of Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, their 14-year-old son, Hindley, and their 6-year-old daughter, Catherine—take in Heathcliff, a boy about Catherine’s age whom Mr. Earnshaw finds on the streets of Liverpool. His origins are a mystery and remain so throughout the book. The Earnshaws decide to call him Heathcliff, which he used “both for Christian and surname,” for a son of theirs who died young.

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Characters in Literature

Even as a child, Heathcliff is often described as subhuman, distinguishing him as an outsider. He is said to be “dark almost as if it came from the devil,” a “dirty, ragged, black-haired child” who repeats to the Earnshaws “some gibberish that nobody could understand,” and a “gipsy brat.” Later, the Lintons guess Heathcliff to be “a little Lascar” (an Indian sailor or military servant) or “an American or Spanish castaway.” Mrs. Dean tells Heathcliff, “Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen.”

Much is made of Heathcliff’s appearance, which is the opposite of the fair-haired and blue-eyed Edgar Linton (who becomes his rival for Catherine’s affections). Along with black hair, Heathcliff has black, deep-set eyes, thick brows, and dark skin. Like Catherine, he has a stormy nature. They form a close bond, whereas Hindley abuses Heathcliff and eventually reduces him to the role of a servant. To escape Hindley and the proselytizing of the Earnshaws’ servant, Joseph, and the local curate (a minister who assists a vicar or rector), Heathcliff and Catherine spend hours alone together on moors.

Though Catherine loves Heathcliff, she marries the wealthy and gentle Edgar. After accepting his proposal, she confesses to Mrs. Dean that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff. Noting their similar natures, she further confesses:

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

But having heard only the first part of her confession, Heathcliff flees Wuthering Heights and returns three years later, ready for revenge. He has grown into “a tall, athletic, well-formed man.” Mrs. Dean detects: “A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued.” He has also acquired a fortune and an education, but it is not known where or how he acquired them.

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Among his schemes are to take possession of Wuthering Heights from Hindley and to marry Edgar’s sister Isabella. After Catherine dies in childbirth, Heathcliff’s obsession with her continues. Later he admits to opening her grave on two occasions to see her face again. Heathcliff also orchestrates a marriage between his sickly son, Linton, and Cathy, the daughter of Edgar and Catherine, in a plot to inherit the Lintons’ estate.

Heathcliff’s intense misanthropy and brooding personality affects all those around him, turning Wuthering Heights into a household in which family members and servants regularly inflict each other with violence and cruelty. Peace is restored after he dies, though he is haunted by Catherine to the end. Locals say that they often see his and Catherine’s ghosts together on the moors.

Where is Heathcliff from?

Many scholars have attempted to figure out where Heathcliff came from or what his ethnicity is. In the book various characters guess him to be Indian, Chinese, American, Spanish, or Roma. Many scholars, however, think he is either a Black African or an Irish immigrant. These suggestions are based on where Mr. Earnshaw found him and the era in which Wuthering Heights was written.

By the 18th century Liverpool had become Britain’s second largest port city, trading with the Americas and the West Indies and serving as a center of the transatlantic slave trade between West Africa and the West Indies. Given the frequent descriptions of Heathcliff as black-haired, black-eyed, and dark-skinned, it is not unlikely that he is of African descent and might have arrived in England through the slave trade. Moreover, Heathcliff is said to be “hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment: he would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear.” Some readers think this suggests that Heathcliff had indeed been enslaved.

Further, in the 1840s, when Brontë was writing her book, American abolitionist Frederick Douglass was lecturing throughout the United Kingdom and promoting the cause of abolition. Douglass was a well-known figure, and British newspapers reported on his travels and lectures, making it possible that Brontë was aware of the plight of enslaved people.

The theory that Heathcliff is Irish also stems from events in the 1840s and Liverpool’s status as a port city. During the Great Famine (1845–49) in Ireland, the city received thousands of Irish migrants. Many of the famine’s refugees were Irish speakers, and young Heathcliff is described as speaking a language unintelligible (“gibberish”) to the Earnshaws, a possible reflection of British colonialist views of Ireland and its population.

List of actors who have played Heathcliff

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One of the few film or television adaptations to cast an actor of color in the role of Heathcliff was Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film version, which stars James Howson as the brooding hero. Other actors who have played Heathcliff include:

• Laurence Olivier in the 1939 film directed by William Wyler
• Ian McShane in the BBC’s 1967 TV series
• Timothy Dalton in a 1970 film directed by Robert Fuest
• Ralph Fiennes in Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 film
• Tom Hardy in a 2009 TV miniseries
• Jacob Elordi in a 2026 film directed by Emerald Fennell