Throughout the novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, most of the major Characters learn, grow, and change due to the experiences and challenges that they face throughout their lives. Heathcliff transforms from a companion and lover of Catherine’s to a harsh and brutal adult. When Heathcliff is described, he is said to be a “dark-skinned gipsy, in aspect, in dress, and in manners a gentleman,” (3, 24-25). He is an outsider from the beginning. Yet,
Catherine falls in love with him despite his “vagabond” (102) appearance. Heathcliff’s transaction begins after he overhears Catherine and Nelly’s conversation on whetehr or not Catherine should marry Edgar Linton. He had listened until he heard Catherine say that it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no farther. Then Heathcliff leaves for three years without a trace. Heathcliff returns as a “tall man dressed in dark clothes, with a dark face and hair. ” (86, 10-11).
He was also described as being “an unclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation;he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. ” Throughout the three years in which Heathcliff disappeaared, he became exactly what he was scared of as a young boy. Hindly Earnshaw treaated Heathcliff as an outsider, and looked down upon him with hate and disgust. Living through this led Heathcliff tobecome just what Hindly said he was. Heathcliff was told his whole life that he was an outsider nd a failure. He eventually transformed into just that. Heathcliff come across as a dark and evil person when deep down inside he only wants to be happy with the one he loves. If he was treaated equally in his life, he would not have become the evil man that he did because of this type of behavior would not have been present for him to copy. Heathcliff could have been a good person if the enviornment he grew up in treated him equall despite his differences.
