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| Character | Heathcliff???? | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | Male | |
| Age Range(s) | Young Adult (20-35), Adult (36-50) | |
| Type of monologue / Character is | Angry, Scolding, Descriptive, Mocking, Malicious/scheming | |
| Type | Dramatic | |
| Year | 1847 | |
| Period | 20th Century | |
| Genre | Romance, Drama | |
| Description | Heathcliff debases and mocks his wife Isabella | |
| Location | Chapter XIV | |
Summary
The story takes place in the beginning of the 19th century and its main focus is the passionate love between Heathcliff and Catherine. The narrators are Mr. Lockwood, a gentleman who in the beginning of the story arrives in a manor in Yorkshire, Thrushcross Grange, and rents it from Heathcliff, a mysterious wealthy man who leaves in Wuthering Heights. The other narrator is Nelly, the housemaid. As he arrives in the manor, Lockwood falls sick and asks Nelly to tell him the story of the families that lived in Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the Earnshaws and the Lintons.
Nelly tells him Heathcliff was a poor little boy who was adopted by Mr. Earnshaw. Mr. Earnshaw had a daughter, Catherine, and a son, Hindley, who strongly dislike Heathcliff as he joins their family. With time, however, Catherine and Heathcliff become inseparable. As they grow, Mr. Earnshaw ends up preferring Heathcliff over his own son.
After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley inherits Wuthering Heights and starts treating Heathcliff as a common laborer to get revenge. Catherine, after meeting her rich neighbor Edgar Linton, even if she loves Heathcliff, becomes interested in him and eventually marries him. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights and returns after several years as a wealthy man. Even if Hindley dies soon after, he decides to seek revenge. He mistreats Hareton, Hindley's son, and sets his sights on Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, for her wealth. Catherine falls ill and she is nursed for months by Nelly and Edgar. Isabella marries Heathcliff and the two elope and later settle down in Wuthering Heights. Isabella's life, however, is misable as she is constantly mistreated by Heathcliff, who obviously doesn't love her.
In this scene Nelly has come to Wuthering Heights to visit Isabella. In this monologue, after Nelly urges Heathcliff to treat his wife kindly, Heathcliff debases and mocks his wife, saying that he never told her he loved her and even if he mistreated and tormented her constantly, she would always come back for more...
Nelly tells him Heathcliff was a poor little boy who was adopted by Mr. Earnshaw. Mr. Earnshaw had a daughter, Catherine, and a son, Hindley, who strongly dislike Heathcliff as he joins their family. With time, however, Catherine and Heathcliff become inseparable. As they grow, Mr. Earnshaw ends up preferring Heathcliff over his own son.
After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley inherits Wuthering Heights and starts treating Heathcliff as a common laborer to get revenge. Catherine, after meeting her rich neighbor Edgar Linton, even if she loves Heathcliff, becomes interested in him and eventually marries him. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights and returns after several years as a wealthy man. Even if Hindley dies soon after, he decides to seek revenge. He mistreats Hareton, Hindley's son, and sets his sights on Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, for her wealth. Catherine falls ill and she is nursed for months by Nelly and Edgar. Isabella marries Heathcliff and the two elope and later settle down in Wuthering Heights. Isabella's life, however, is misable as she is constantly mistreated by Heathcliff, who obviously doesn't love her.
In this scene Nelly has come to Wuthering Heights to visit Isabella. In this monologue, after Nelly urges Heathcliff to treat his wife kindly, Heathcliff debases and mocks his wife, saying that he never told her he loved her and even if he mistreated and tormented her constantly, she would always come back for more...
Written by Administrator
| Excerpt |
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| HEATHCLIFF: "She abandoned them under a delusion...picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished. But, at last, I think she begins to know me: I don't perceive the silly smiles and grimaces that provoked me at first; and the senseless incapability of discerning that I was in earnest when I gave her my opinion of her infatuation and herself. It was a marvellous effort of perspicacity to discover that I did not love her. I believed, at one time, no lessons could teach her that! And yet it is poorly learnt; for this morning she announced, as a piece of appalling intelligence, that I had actually succeeded in making her hate me! A positive labour of Hercules, I assure you! If it be achieved, I have cause to return thanks. Can I trust your assertion, Isabella? Are you sure you hate me? If I let you alone for half a day, won't you come sighing and wheedling to me again? I daresay she would rather I had seemed all tenderness before you: it wounds her vanity to have the truth exposed. But I don't care who knows that the passion was wholly on one side: and I never told her a lie about it. She cannot accuse me of showing one bit of deceitful softness. The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself. But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now, was it not the depth of absurdity -- of genuine idiocy, for that pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love her? Tell your master, Nelly, that I never, in all my life, met with such an abject thing as she is. She even disgraces the name of Linton; and I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back! But tell him, also, to set his fraternal and magisterial heart at ease: that I keep strictly within the limits of the law. I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation; and, what's more, she'd thank nobody for dividing us. If she desired to go, she might: the nuisance of her presence outweighs the gratification to be derived from tormenting her!" |
