i just finished reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and i couldn't help but notice there were a few strange similarities between Snape and Heathcliff.

they both fall in love with their best friends as children, they are both outcasts and hated by their love's sibling. both lily and cathy die young, not long after having children (well, a year in lily's case). Bothe Snape and eathcliff never get over the love of their life's death and both linger on the time spent with them. lily and cathy marry people hated by the men who love them. both men died thinking of the woman they loved & both became hardened by miserable lives.

they are also physically similar, with dark eyes and hair.

of course their are differences, like the fact that cathy loved heathcliff back, lily wasn't as mean or wild as cathy and snape was a lot more misunderstood, but i can't help seeing the similarities.

Yeah wow I never realized that before, but I suppose that's because I haven't read Wuthering Heights in about 6 years lol. That's crazy, excellent find

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Lirene
LL Moderator

hum? never heard of this book before, but just for the character that's smiliar to snape. i'm going to find it immediately.

So much...I haven't read the book fully ...But when my sister naratted the story to me I found so much similarities between him and Snape....In fact my friend felt the same when I told her the story....
It is like Snape is the refined form of Heathcliff........

I think there are simply reoccuring features of archetypical character depiction in any kind of literary genre which then in a way account for a sort of similarity. But as for motivation, character development and all that I wouldn't really compare Snape to Heathcliff. Well, they're driven by the love to a woman - but that's a device made use of regularly so it doesn't actually indicate any more than a superficial likeness. Snape isn't half as aggressive or demonic as Heathcliff. Heathcliff always seems to me completely determined by animal drives - somehow like a brute, like the Freudian Id, an almost mythical being. I think Snape has nothing of that - as a character he is determined, self-controlled and acts rational. Heathcliff shows a total disregard for everyone else (except Cathy of course) but I think the same is not true for Snape - he respects and feels for Dumbledore, the other teachers (especially McGonagall), is touched and influenced by his friendship to the Malfoys, etc. Heathcliff never cared if he was loved, it simply was of no importance to him, whereas Snape tried too hard to be - well, admittedly perhaps not exactly to be loved but to be respected. I think everything Snape does is due to some kind of inferiority complex and that certainly doesn't apply to Heathcliff as I understand him.

That's very interesting. They both definitely have the brooding rejected lover thing going on. I think that one of the biggest diferences would be Heathcliff's rage vs. Snape's controll. We see Snape lose it every once and a while, but not nearly as much as Heathcliff. And while both of their energies are driven by love lost, it portrays itself in a different way. Snape's love for Lily reveals itself in is protection of Harry and self-sacrafice to try to stop Voldemort. It's likes he's trying to prove himself, to make up for what he's done. Whereas everything Heathcliff does is driven by revenge, he manipulates several families and generations for that matter around his will.

There are some definite similarities in the situations that they each are in, but the difference in character is what (in my oppinion) makes Snape an easier character to like because he arouses more sympathy than Heathcliff. They are both mean, and I'm saying I like Snape, but I really hated Heathcliff. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it comes down to selfishness, Heathcliff was selfish while Snape was much more selfless.

Very good observation, I had never thought of that before.

There are definite similarities in externals at least, the embittered, rejected lover, the loathing both feel for the offspring of their beloved by another man, both are outcasts in their own way and resentful of this and both men carry their frustrated passion to the grave.

However, having said that, Snape and Heathcliff's relationships to Lily and Cathy respectively are quite different. Cathy and Heathcliff's love has little to do with conventional or societal notions of romantic love - a love that is based in 'visible delight like the foliage in the woods' It is based rather on an intense instinctive sympathy of like souls, a sense of identification of one with the other in which the usual issue of its being requited or not is not in question. Cathy loves or identifies with Heathcliff as much as he does with her. The whole speech she makes to Ellen Dean the night she chooses to marry Edgar when she says, "Nelly I am Heathcliff. He is always, always in my mind. Not as a pleasure any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being - so don't talk of our separation again- it is impracticable;" makes it clear that the tragedy of their relationship does not rest in one who loves where the other does not; but rather in Cathy being misguided in believing that in opting for a romantic infatuated sort of love with Edgar, she is not also betraying her deeper, instinctual, primal (whatever one may call it) love for Heathcliff.

Snape's love for Lily fits far more within traditional notions of romantic love - a love whose delight exists in that which is 'other' - not a love based on a sense of identification with the beloved. This type of love is, of course, can be unrequited, as it is in Snape's case. It is Lily's very difference from Snape that is a large part of the attraction. He looks to her as someone that might complement him, perhaps and bring great delight into his life if he could have won her; but there is no sense of identification.

Snape's later actions, after the death of his beloved unlike Heathcliff is not motivated by revenge but by remorse. Sure, he hates James just as passionately as Heathcliff does Edgar and he dislikes Harry as Heathcliff dislikes the younger Cathy but he chooses to help Harry, albeit for Lily's sake only, rather than torment him as Heathcliff does to the younger Cathy. Is Snape selfless? I doubt it; but in feeling so guilty that he had led Voldemort to the Potters, the only way he could honour her memory was to protect her son. Had, however, he been able to win Lily over James's and Harry's dead bodies he may well have gladly done so. The only slight hint of revenge Snape may have felt was in knowing that he, the despised Snivellus, could protect Harry where James could not, even of course knowing that James would never know of it.

I have to say that Snape put me in mind of Heathcliff (at least from OotP onwards) to the point where I was wondering if he'd had a thing with Petunia (Isabella)!

Much like Snape with Harry, Heathcliff hates young Cathy as a personification of her parents' union:



But it wasn't until I re-read WH recently that I realised Cathy II is saved because she has her mother's eyes:



And then again...



Sounds familiar?