yes actually please elaborate on your haterisms for heathcliff. to hate someone requires just as much passion as love so i WILL be seated for your inner thoughts and analysis on this Lad.
oh my goodness gracious anon i don't think you know what you're getting yourself involved with HGHHFJFFH BUT SINCE YOU'RE SO KINDLY GIVING ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT IT I WILL GLADLY OBLIGE!!!!
short answer
he's stupid and dumb and ugly how could anyone ever like him smh my head
long answer
he reminds me way too much of myself and it freaks me out to an immense degree. he is also the only character in media to piss me off, which is saying something because while i do get frustrated easily, i usually let go of it quickly when i remember that hatable characters are written with the intention of being hated. that makes it pretty hard for me to hate them as a result—i also have a preference for villains over hero characters. heathcliff is the only exception to this trend. i've hated him even before reading wuthering heights (which HOLY FUCK ate away at my sanity cause he's a BITCH and GOD I ACTUALLY THREW THE BOOK. IT WAS THAT BAD.) and when i think of heathcliff, i think more of his literary counterpart rather than limbus heathcliff. they're both insufferable though so!!!!
pre wuthering heights
i didn't really care for him at first, cause even at first glance i knew he was just one of those bad delinquent boys that have been abused throughout his life and built a hard exterior to hide it but is secretly a super pathetic yearner with abandonment issues. except my friend who got me into limbus is super in love with him and wouldn't shut up about hobocliff specifically, and i was like OK FINE YOUR MAN IS... NOT COMPLETELY GROSS. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW. jhfgjghfggh and it rubbed off on me, rabbitcliff quick suppression spam earlygame did something to my brain. i hate how white he is in his preuptie art but holy balls was his consistent 300+ damage (which was a lot for my standards back then) extremely attractive
also look at his slutty waist. and his hips? oh my god?? oh my god??? so like yeah the heathcliff brainworms kinda got to me oops..........
i cant pinpoint an exact time but i think i started getting genuinely angry at him during canto 5 when he insulted dante in that scene with smee. and then he'd go on and look hot in another cg and then i'd be very quickly enthralled and forget that i was ever upset at him. THEN he'd look at someone wrong and i'd be like "oh my god why does he exist GET OUT GET OUT OMG YOU'RE PISSIMG mE OFF". my moods are very well regulated as i'm sure you can see!!! i'd keep going back and forth with him, some days i love him and other days just looking at him makes me mad. also hes canonically a yandere. hes canonically a yandere. hes CANONICALLY A YANDERE JHYEWGR732URIEFOKOHU foams at the mouth and dies i want him so bad
post wuthering heights (and analysis)
up until reading his source material my mood swings with him were usually very transient and happened over small stuff. now i just overall hate him. i actually fucking hate him. he's the most insufferable bitch ever i hope he rots eternally. omg. i got into the book knowing he was an ass but i wasn't ready for the several pages straight of dialogue where he's just yapping on and on about his desire for revenge and his codependency towards cathy. i wasAT MY WITS END. i've read the book twice now and i've been meaning to for a 3rd time i dont know why i keep torturing myself in this way because i physically feel my hypertension increase every time heathcliff is on screen. PLEASE HELP ME
fans will first notice that limbuscliff's and WHcliff's personalities are NOTHING alike. WHcliff is just a petulant sadomasochist bitch who wants cathy to make him miserable and if he doesn't get his way then he'll respond by making everyone else around him miserable. wheras limbuscliff is actually very compassionate and kind and can respond well to people as long as you treat him with dignity. that's because limbuscliff isn't even supposed to reflect WHcliff! he reflects hareton, who is WHcliff's foster son who he neglects and puts into child labor!
(well actually i could argue limbuscliff has some flavor of sadomasochism in him too cause.
he literally admits to just wanting her to regret/make her suffer for her actions. plainly, he wants to punish her for choosing the wrong man. if that isn't a form of sadism i don't know what it is. and:
"for you to topple me... for you to ground me up until i'm nothing." HELLO 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 ok heathcliff. ok heathcliff i see you. you have made your point known. you have made yourself clear. also him getting possessive over the title "cathy" is very funny to me.)
anyway, hareton presents himself as very peasantly and rude, and he's deeply insecure about his intelligence (which he lashes out at others for), but he's actually very smart and kind. he just never received the proper resources, care, nor formal education cause both his dads are assholes and his mom died early on, so he became pretty emotionally stunted as a result.
you see his good side start coming out when another character starts treating him like a regular human being, and gives him a book as a way to apologize for making fun of him.
this kind of characterization sounds a lot more familiar to limbuscliff rather than the arrogant sexually violent ho. some people think hareton is evil because he hung a litter of puppies one time, but you have to remember that he was, like, 8 when he did that. also, he got that behavior from heathcliff, who was his primary role model cause no one else looked after him. if heathcliff is going to be abusive towards animals (which he is! not even past the first chapter does he kick a dog!), hareton is going to think that behavior is acceptable and do the same. considering the shit heathcliff and hindley forced hareton through during his formative years, he grew to be relatively normal by the end of the book, which is very impressive because everyone is miserable in wuthering heights.
what's very captivating about the novel is that heathcliff treats you, the reader, the same way he treats his wife. for hundreds of years til today, even before the release of wuthering heights, there's a very popular trope in romance novels that states "a reformed rake makes the best husband" and many times the book will tease you into thinking that heathcliff is going to get that reform—that he's not going to get any worse than he already has.
guess what! he DOES get worse! isabella linton, who he marries and is also arguably the best character in the book (i absolutely LOVE isabella), often goes through cycles of idolizing him -> being abused, which crushes that idolization -> running away -> realizing she has nowhere else to go and inevitably crawls back to him, knowing she will be abused again -> idolizing him again as a way to cope (i could be mistaken about this last bit because it's been a while since i last read WH but regardless it's still vile). and you're just going to have to sit there and endure the horrors that you witness from reading that because you're that enraptured by him. as long as you're holding the book, you're under his control—it's pretty funny. like, how red can the flag get? how shitty does he have to be for you to feel deeply repulsed, only for you to delute himself into thinking he's a romantic lover, and to try to find out what happens in the next chapter where he'll definitely get better?
he's a pretty revolutionary character for his time. so much so that everyone hated wuthering heights when it was first published for being "coarse and immoral" and charlotte bronte, emily bronte's sister and also the author of jane eyre, basically hardcore glazed the book—almost to the point of lying—until everyone was forced into liking it. and i agree. speak your shit charlotte💥
here is a part of her preface. "never once swerving in his arrow—straight course to perdition" PLEASE. THERE IS NOTHING STRAIGHT ABOUT HEATHCLIFF'S CHARACTERIZATION. NOT EVEN HIS SEXUALITY /hj. he's not someone that can easily be understood. that's what makes him so appealing, because you keep trying to project things that you want to see in him despite the fact that you just vaguely know he's going to continue to be shitty. yet even so you keep getting hints that he'll get a redemption arc over and over, and when he ACTUALLY acts shitty like you already know he will, you're still surprised. the book really fucks with your brain like that.
a lot of people hone in on the first generation of wuthering heights before catherine's death because that's where most of the iconic scenes and codependency shows itself—it's where he establishes his desires for revenge and what fuels it. pmoon is the same. i don't blame them because the main selling point of the book is his toxic relationship with cathy, but i find that the second generation is much more interesting because that's where you see him actually carry out his plans for vengeance.
and TRUST ME. THEY GO DEEP. as in grooming two children who don't love each other into a shitty marriage solely so that he can steal someone's inheritance property.
look at my girl cathy jr (linton and the late catherine's daughter) spitting her bars. i love cathy jr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the best part, though, is that there's historical significance to his bitchiness. for some context, heathcliff was found in liverpool, and the story takes place in the late 1700s. up until 1807, liverpool was known to dominate the transatlantic slave trade. not only that, but at the time emily wrote wuthering heights in the 1840s, there was a severe depression in the british economy cause factory workers had like the worst working conditions ever and rich people were afraid they'd retaliate against them. a lot of rich people held these workers with a mix of pity and fear, like they cared just enough to feel a little bad but not enough to actually do anything about it despite having the power to.
you see this reflected in our attitudes towards heathcliff. it's natural to feel bad for him when he's a powerless victim against hindley's tormenting, but when he comes back with money and power and as a "handsome gentleman", it's suddenly very easy to demonize him. it's like how rich people will be generous sometimes when they're in a good mood, but when it comes to enacting and sustaining real change that will be at the cost of their power, poor people are seen as villains.
so the book isn't actually just about toxic doomed couples, it's also about the industrial revolution and class wars. one of the overarching themes is nature vs culture, which you can see in cathy's decision to marry linton for socioeconomic power despite loving heathcliff more. isabella linton as a whole is also a representation of culture. this is just a personal headcanon of mine, but i think it also makes references to british colonization in india. ANOTHER take of mine is that it references the opium war between england and china. the text is really political, but you have to look pretty far in to find it, which i like a lot.
that's about as much that comes to mind right now, i'll probably add more when i'm less sleepy. i am not normal about him. my hate is so extreme i immersed myself in as many corners of his literature so that i can hate him properly. IT'S BAD. IT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR YEARS NOW. SET ME FREE OTL I BEG I PLEAD
also. i used to associate him with a certain very toxic and racist heathcliff fan that was popular on twitter and reddit before she deleted her accounts. that didn't help. thankfully i barely remember she exists anymore cause my personal problems i had with her happened over a year now but oh my word did i genuinely hate him for it
when i was deciding to go on ao3 and tumblr i considered putting on a "i am heathcliff's #1 fan!" but i could never. he's too ugly for that. why would i ever be a fan of someone so putrid. i actually feel bad for the heathcliff fans and send you all get well soon cards. i hope your recoveries are smooth. much peace and love!
