Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel regarding the lives of the Earnshaws and Lintons. Through three generations, they all experience wave after wave of tragedy all originating with Heathcliff’s overwhelming desire for revenge against the Lintons. This hatred is brought on by the treatment Heathcliff receives from the Lintons as well as Edgar Linton’s marriage to Catherine, Heathcliff’s soul mate. Although many passages of love are exposed in Wuthering Heights, the true genre of this book is tragedy due to the role of characters other than Heathcliff, the untraditional happy ending, and the death of the heroine early in the story. The role of several characters makes this novel a tragedy. Hindley, Hareton, Cathy, and Linton would be completely unneeded if this were a true love story. Hindley becomes Heathcliff’s Nemesis from the very beginning. He is cruel and hateful towards Heathcliff. “He [Hindley] drove him [Heathcliff] from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead, compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm” (Bronte, 49). Hareton is also unessential to a love

between Catherine and Heathcliff. Hareton is Hindley’s son and is treated like a slave, much the way Heathcliff was treated as a boy by Hindley. At one point, Heathcliff, talking to Nelly, describes what is in store for Hareton, “I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly; it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though"”(Bronte, 211). Hareton and Cathy’s love does make for a reconciliation of all this tragedy. However, it is after the majority of the book and therefore does not negate the previous misfortune. Linton is a pathetic boy who only brings disgust and general pity to the book. Through the book, Linton is very sick. In this scene, Cathy has come to pay him a visit, “…trembling, and retaining her hand as if he needed its support, while his large blue eyes wandered timidly over her, the hollowness round them transforming to haggard wildness the languid expression they once possessed” (Bronte, 249). None of these characters are heroic or essential to the love between Catherine and Heathcliff. The only possible heroic figure is Heathcliff who is evil and rotten. Furthermore, this novel does not have a traditional love story ending. Nearly the entire key characters die and most before the book is halfway over. In the first half, Heathcli

Some topics in this essay:
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