Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

This article is about Wuthering Heights character. For other uses, see Heathcliff.

Heathcliff
Wuthering Heights character
Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in 1939
Created byEmily Brontë
Portrayed byLaurence Olivier
Richard Burton
Timothy Dalton
Tom Hardy
Ralph Fiennes
Cliff Richard
Robert Cavanah
James Howson
In-universe information
OccupationFarm-owner
SpouseIsabella Linton (wife)
ChildrenLinton Heathcliff (son)
RelativesHindley Earnshaw (foster brother)
Catherine Earnshaw (foster sister and a significant other)
NationalityEnglish

Heathcliff is a fictional character in Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.[1] Owing to the novel's enduring fame and popularity, he is often regarded as an archetype of the tortured antihero whose all-consuming rage, jealousy and anger destroy both him and those around him; in short, the Byronic hero.

He is better known for being a romantic hero due to his youthful love for Catherine Earnshaw, than for his final years of vengeance in the second half of the novel, during which he grows into a bitter, haunted man, and for a number of incidents in his early life that suggest that he was an upset and sometimes malicious individual from the beginning. His complicated, mesmerizing, absorbing, and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, incorporating elements of both the hero and villain. Actors who have portrayed Heathcliff on screen include Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy.

  1. ^ Stevenson, John Allen (1988). ""Heathcliff is Me!": Wuthering Heights and the Question of Likeness". Nineteenth-Century Literature. 43 (1): 60–81. doi:10.2307/3044981. ISSN 0891-9356. JSTOR 3044981.