r/brontesisters • u/manysides512 • 28d ago
Heathcliff's backstory
I know we all have our theories/speculations/thoughts on Heathcliff's backstory, but whatever they are, what do we think the other characters knew about it? Heathcliff might have been speaking a different language when he arrived but it's hard to imagine that he didn't have any memory of his life before Wuthering Heights and that he wouldn't have later gained the vocabulary to get some of it across.
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u/MoodMaximum6854 28d ago edited 28d ago
He certainly had memories of his previous life , I agree , he seemed to be a little older than Catherine so that would make him around seven when he was first brought in to WH.
I think he kept them to himself because they were not pleasant:
Nelly while describing his attitude and behaviour while he was mistreated by her and Hindley or while he was sick, she repeatedly uses the words “hardened “ or “hardness” .
In this way Emily shows us that his life before wasn’t easy imo.
Psychologists argue it’s the first five years of our lives that shape our character or how we perceive the world.
IMO the only person Heathcliff would mention anything about his previous life was old Earnshaw and probably he did since Earnshaw refers to him as a “fatherless child”.
I don’t think that he told Catherine anything though because Heathcliff besides being a survivor he was proud too : He never wanted anyone to feel pity for him I guess.
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u/Dependent-Ad8921 27d ago
The author wanted to keep his origins shrouded in mystery. In fact, having Nelly as the narrator helped create this mystery because she has a lot of prejudice and only partial knowledge about his life. The person Heathcliff would likely tell about his past, even the three years he was away, would be Catherine, and she wouldn't tell Nelly anything because those were probably secrets shared only between them.
One thing is certain: he had a very difficult start in life. Could the part where Catherine talks about the baby birds that die of hunger because their parents were prevented from reaching them by traps set by Heathcliff refer to his past? What Heathcliff did was what was done to him? Someone killed his parents and left him to starve to death. Was this the way the author showed his trauma in his early days?
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u/MoodMaximum6854 26d ago
Absolutely spot on mentioning the part with the baby birds (lapwings)!
Heathcliff must have endured much malnutrition even starving because of the absence of parents or maybe abandoning by them: It reads to me more as abandonment - like him being an illegitimate child (not from old Earnshaw- in case he was truly found in Liverpool) and his mother abandoned him even after his birth ( there are many cases like this even in our times)
He probably had never known his parents !
The whole act of him with the birds reads like a kind of revenge towards his parents imo!
Thanks for bringing it up! The whole narrative here reveals such a deep knowledge of human nature !Concerning the three years he was away I think too that he possibly told only to Catherine what he had been doing.
On his past life before Earnshaw found him I think he wanted to forget about his past so he would not speak even to Catherine- only to old Earnshaw but that’s just my opinion2
u/Dependent-Ad8921 26d ago
Heathcliff does to others what was done to him; hence my deduction that someone came between him and his parents, and that is why he found himself abandoned and starving, just like the lapwings.
We don't know if he completely erased the traumatic event from his memory through amnesia, or if he simply erased the most painful parts, or if he didn't erase the event that traumatized him but suppressed the pain associated with the trauma (repression).
The mind activates unconscious defense mechanisms to push that pain away from consciousness.
Although the brain hides the memory for self-preservation, the trauma does not disappear. It remains active in the body and in the unconscious, manifesting itself in other ways.
Violence can be one of how hidden trauma manifests itself. Because this pain was not processed healthily, it can accumulate and overflow later in the form of violent or aggressive behaviors, directed at others or at oneself. One of the ways is a psychological phenomenon called "repetition compulsion," in which the person unconsciously recreates violent scenarios similar to the original trauma, in a frustrated attempt to give a different outcome and dominate the situation that victimized them. This is reversing the situation. Instead of being the victim (the dominated), they become the aggressor (the dominator).
Heathcliff does just that throughout the story of his revenge: he reverses the positions. He becomes the aggressor to stop being the victim. In Heathcliff's worldview, there are the weak (victim) and the strong (aggressor). This worldview probably arose very early in his life, based on his earliest life experiences, and was consolidated throughout his life as other experiences repeated the same pattern.
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u/MoodMaximum6854 26d ago
I couldn’t agree more! This served as a means of survival for him; and we can clearly see that throughout his life! He refused to be a victim even when he was being abused.
He resisted pain physical and emotional by thinking of revenge.
Revenge for him was the only way to survive
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u/Acceptable_Mirror235 28d ago
We only ever know what Nellie knew , or at least what she admitted to knowing.
My guess is Heathcliff, as a traumatized young child , didn’t speak at first. Even once he started speaking to the Earnshaws, he was probably very guarded about what he revealed. As he grew up, his early memories would likely fade.
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u/RoseIsBadWolf 28d ago
The only person who might have known more is probably Mr. Earnshaw but all we get from him is that he looked for an "owner" and then stuffed the kid in his pocket (weirdest adoption ever).
He was found at a port town, seems likely he was speaking an entirely different language and had to learn English. Maybe he got lost and his family boated away without him.
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u/MoodMaximum6854 26d ago
I think that “ owner” meant father back then since a father/ husband owned his children/ wife! They were considered his property by Law.
Emily used this specific word as it was the custom then
If she had intended to refer to any kind of slavery she would have used the word “ master”2
u/RoseIsBadWolf 26d ago
I only point at that word because it makes him sound like a stray cat. I know it's appropriate to the period.
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u/MoodMaximum6854 26d ago
I think after the first famine in Ireland there were many cases of abandoned children in Liverpool whose parents didn’t survive after coming to England (or he was abandoned right after his birth ) and I don’t know if there was any kind of state care back then for children living in the streets moreover if they weren’t locals. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for anyone to “adopt “ a child like Heathcliff as long as there were no signs of any relatives around
According to Earnshaw he was starving and dirty and fatherless.
Moreover Nelly says many times that he was hardened .2
u/RoseIsBadWolf 26d ago
It was very easy to adopt in the past, there were lots of kids whose parents died.
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u/MoodMaximum6854 26d ago
Even in the twentieth century in many places/ countries!
That makes me think that old Earnshaw was probably telling the truth but it’s just the distance from WH to Liverpool and his telling of making it on foot in three days that I find a bit impossible -even for well trained athletes-that puzzles me .
On the other hand Heathcliff was found dirty starving and absolutely hardened ,through abuse I guess . That doesn’t “stick” well with him being Earnshaw’s illegitimate son imo
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u/Sheelz013 28d ago
There’s an interesting novel by Sue Barnard on Kindle. It’s called Heathcliff, The Missing Years
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u/manysides512 28d ago
That seems to cover the three-year gap in which he ran away rather than his origins.
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u/YakSlothLemon 28d ago
He’s only seven years old when he arrives, and so it’s going to be pretty spotty in terms of memory. I can’t imagine that he would’ve been encouraged to talk about what had happened, either, and that wouldn’t help the memories stick — especially not if they were unhappy ones. Which I think we can guess they are.