According to Steven T. Asma’s On Monsters, “[t]he term monster is often applied to human beings who have, by their own horrific actions, abdicated their humanity” (Asma 8). Monsters are persons, or beings that have done horrendous deeds. A monster is “that unpredictable, uncontrollable force that cannot be reasoned with or persuaded” (Asma 153). Both Heathcliff of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and the Monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be described as monsters. However, these monsters did not find their beginning as evil beings. Monsters, such as Heathcliff and Victor’s creation, whether made or born, are the product of lack of affection from both family and romantic love.
Monsters are not separate from humans, but created when human nature is skewed. This is why “the most terrifying and the most uncanny feature of the creature lies not in his dissimilarity or otherness but in the fact that he resembles his creator and all the other humans he encounters” (Marshall 208). All humans are capable of becoming monsters and our behaviors and choices are what make a monster, and not our creation (Allen 33).
Heathcliff and the Monster are treated like monsters because people often dislike what is different from their own selves. Monsters in modern society can appear “simultaneously as the demonic disemboweler of slasher films and as a wide-eyed, sickeningly cute plush toy for children” (Cohen viii). Heathcliff is presented to the reader as a lover of sorts but then as a cruel torturer, while Victor’s monster can seem both huggable and malevolent depending on the part of the novel that is being discussed. Daniel Cottom notes that, “[i]n the activity of thought, one finds the unhuman coming alive” (Cottom 1067).Thus, it is the perception of how these characters act that gives a term ‘monster’ and nothing that can be considered tangible or physical.
Heathcliff, while human, has a very similar entrance to the world as the monster in Frankenstein. Both are parentless and do not have a natural or ordinary beginning. Mr. Earnshaw finds Heathcliff roaming the streets of Liverpool, and Victor creates his monster with spare body parts. Neither has a story of origin or a recognizable past. While it is known that Heathcliff has been found, there is no mention or recollection of his life before the time he spends with the Earnshaw’s.Victor’s monster also has no life before he has been animated, and thus, their introduction to the worlds they live in serve as a type of “birth”. Neither is a natural birth and both are doomed to be unordinary or unacceptable from their beginning.
Heathcliff and the monster are both treated poorly upon their arrival into the worlds that they occupy. When Heathcliff arrives Mrs. Earnshaw rejects him immediately by suggesting they “fling it out of doors” (Bronte 44). Heathcliff has an entire family to reject him – The children refusing to sleep with him, Nelly agreeing, and the harsh words of Mrs. Earnshaw. When first introduced the Monster is rejected by Victor, who is appalled by the mere presence of what he believes to be a “demonical corpse” (Shelley 40). Similarly, Mr. Earnshaw, upon introducing Heathcliff, describes him as “dark almost as if it came from the devil” (Bronte 43).
John Allen Stevenson talks of Heathcliff ’s entrance to the world of Wuthering Heights as him being immediately cast an outsider. In the city it would not be strange or considered odd to have a poor child roaming about. He states that “by transporting the child from the city, where strangeness is not, as it were so strange, and placing him in the rural setting of the heights, Earnshaw introduces into his own apparently stable and stratified society a figure that is doubly alienated from it” (Stevenson 48). Cameron Dodworth goes as far to say that “Heathcliff is the most foreign Other or ‘outlander’ in the novel, and, as a result, he can never really belong” (Dodworth 127).Victor’s Monster is subject to a similar circumstance. Since there is no place in the natural world for a being that has not been born, he is immediately cast as something otherworldly or monstrous.
The Monster and Heathcliff are not raised or introduced fully to the world by their creators. Since Victor has abandoned his creation, the Monster is forced to view the world through the eyes of cottage-dwellers. Heathcliff is also abandoned when Mr. Earnshaw dies early in the story and leaves Heathcliff to the cruel dictatorship of Earnshaw’s jealous son, Hindley.
Hindley subjects Heathcliff to the treatment that he would any slave-boy. Hindley does this even though his father clearly wished for Heathcliff to be like another son.This was apparent in his naming Heathcliff after his own deceased child.
He drove him 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 55).
Victor’s monster learns about society in an entirely different way. When Victor and the monster finally meet face to face he is given a first-hand account of the monster’s life.
The monster informs Victor that he has been living in a hovel and that he has been watching people and learning how they live.The people whom he watches become very dear to him. It is here, from these people, that the monster learns his notions of love, and unfortunately, rejection. Heathcliff ’s experiences outside of the Earnshaw’s estate are not a welcoming sort. It is not expected either, as Nelly Dean tells Lockwood that they do not often take to strangers. When Heathcliff and Catherine go off to Thrushcross Grange, they are first believed to be thieves.The hounds are called on them, and Catherine is bitten. When their identities are discovered, Catherine is taken in, but Heathcliff is drug away. Mrs. Linton is the most irritated by the boy’s presence in her home.
‘A wicked boy, at all events,’ remarked the old lady, ‘and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I’m shocked that my children should have heard it.’ (Bronte 61)
In Frankenstein the monster is also treated as something that does not belong with people. At first,Victor’s monster studies people who live in a cabin – we learn their names are De Lacey, Agatha and Felix.The monster marvels at their story and how as a family they love and support one another, even when they have lost everything.The monster grows to love these people, and supposes that he could become their friend.These people are the monster’s first look at how humans can be. Instead of his cruel-natured creator he now sees that people can be kind and compassionate.
They loved, and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them.The more I saw them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks turned towards me with affection (Shelley 107)
When the monster finally decides to formally meet the family he holds in his affection, he tries speaking to the blind old man. At first, he is received pleasantly, but when the son, Felix, comes back he is chased off. Instead of listening to the monster Felix regards him as many people might, with fear.The family does not give the monster a chance, and like those in Wuthering Heights, they meet the outsider with fear and insolence.
Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with a stick (Shelley 110)
The monster and Heathcliff are both under the assumption that they are not worthy of the worlds that they inhabit. Heathcliff is “as cruel to himself as he is to others” (Levy 161). Heathcliff rejects Nelly’s attempt to comfort him when he has experienced the grief of Catherine’s death. He responds, without composure, and bangs his head against a tree trunk.The monster in Frankenstein is also led to believe that he is unworthy of the world and of affection.
[E]ndowed with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the Earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? (Shelley 96)
Both the Monster and Heathcliff were subject to terrible childhoods. However, this lead them still to pursue love in their own manner. Heathcliff, infatuated with Catherine, leaves to become a man who is worthy of her favour.Victor’s monster begs for a mate to be created in his equal: “with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being” (Shelley 118).
These characters, the monster and Heathcliff, show terrible behavior even before they have been denied the amenity of romantic love. Heathcliff has shown his brutish nature on many occasions. On one occasion he wants to “have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the housefront with Hindley’s blood” (Bronte 59). The monster in Frankenstein also behaves violently before he comes to ask for a mate in his likeness.The monster strangles Victor’s younger brother, William, in cold blood. While these events are terrible, it is not until they are completely torn from love that each character unleashes their greatest anger.
The Monster offers to live in seclusion from mankind if Victor grants him his wish of having a mate. He tells Victor that if he shall refuse, he will see him on his wedding night. Heathcliff does not verbalize his revenge, but upon losing Catherine we see the worst of his character. Heathcliff becomes obsessed with revenge.
Heathcliff and the Monster are both driven by their desire to be loved.Their ultimate downfall is romance.This could be reflective of Susan Stewart’s comments that, “the monster’s sexuality takes on a separate life” (Stewart 104). Both Heathcliff and the Monster are driven by their desire.Their need to be loved and accepted by another is their sexuality and in this, they are slaves to this urge. It is a life on its own that is created by the fuel of finding another like them. Heathcliff himself proclaims that Catherine is his soul.
Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! (Bronte 211)
Each monstrous act in Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein can be drawn back to the characters’ desire for love and their revenge due to the lack of it. Eric P. Levy verbalizes this notion with his statement that “Heathcliff imposes loneliness on others in revenge against the lack of love he himself was forced to endure” (Levy 171).The loneliness that Heathcliff inflicts on others comes in the form of his destruction of both The Heights and Thrushcross Grange. In Frankenstein, the Monster’s version of revenge is to destroy Victor’s family through murder.The Monster leaves Victor with nothing left but his obsession with finding and killing the monster that he created.
The Monster, upon learning that a boy he tried to seize was the relation of Victor, decides that he will make Victor suffer. When the monster killed William “[his] heart swelled with hellish triumph” (Shelley 117). Upon discovering the feeling of revenge he exclaims, “I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him” (Shelley 117).
The Monster lashes out and kills Victor’s brother, William, not because he hates the boy, but because he knows the boy is the family of Victor. Before the Monster knows the lineage of the boy, he is willing to let him live.Thus, in his despair and depravity of love, he becomes a monster, letting go of what would make him humane or human in being. While Heathcliff does not show signs of being kind or considerate before losing Catherine, he is certainly nastier after she is gone. His treatment of Isabella, upon Catherine’s sickness, is the perfect example. Before this point we see Heathcliff as both the tormented child and the mistreated boy, but after this point he loses what little humanity that he was supposed to posses. Isabella, in her account to Nelly Dean wonders “[i]s Heathcliff a man? And if not, is he a devil?” (Bronte 172). Isabella becomes afraid of what she has married and sees the cruelty that Heathcliff has become capable of.
I sometimes wonder at him with an intensity that deadens my fear: yet, I assure you, a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens. He told me of Catherine’s illness, and accused my brother of causing it; promising that I should be Edgar’s proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him” (Bronte 183)
The Monster and Heathcliff eventually give in entirely to their monstrous beings. Heathcliff seeks only revenge against those who have wronged him. He takes into his possession not one, but two houses.The Monster takes from Victor the things he was never given – his wife and family. Both Heathcliff and the Monster leave those who have wronged them suffering. Heathcliff ’s revenge is less simple. He forces his son, Linton, to marry young Cathy, the daughter of Catherine and Edgar.Through this pair he destroys Thrushcross Grange, and has made a beggar out of young Cathy. Hareton, the son of Hindley, is worse off. Hareton does not know he deserves the house and has been wronged, and loves Heathcliff as a master. The characters, Heathcliff and the Monster, are successful in carrying out their revenge. However, neither is given happiness or what they were originally deprived of.
Heathcliff dies, still without Catherine, and the Monster spends, presumably, the last of his days in the arctic alone. Both characters are past redemption and have become complete shells of beings.Through their actions they have forced away any redeemable human qualities and thus, the lack of love and affection has created two terrible beings, and devils that do not belong in the worlds that they occupy.
Works Cited
Allen, Graham. Shelley’s Frankenstein. London: Continuum, 2008. Ebook. 23 Nov. 2014.
Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Ebook. 23 Nov. 2014.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.
Cohen, Jeffrey J. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Ebook. 29 Nov. 2014.
Cottom, Daniel. “I Think;Therefore, I Am Heathcliff.” ELH. 70.4 (2004): 1067-1088. Web. 23Nov. 2014.
Dodworth, Cameron. “The Mystery Of The Moors: Purgatory And The Absence / Presence Of Evil In Wuthering Heights.” Bronte Studies 37.2 (2012): 125-135. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.
Levy, Eric P. “The Psychology of Loneliness in Wuthering Heights.” Studies in the Novel. 1996: 158-77. Web.
Marshall, Julian. The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 1889. Print.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1993. Print.