The hero of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), a romantic novel with GOTHIC elements of passion and revenge.
Heathcliff is a wild-spirited, gypsy orphan whom the kindly Mr. Earnshow finds on a street in Liverpool and brings to Wuthering Heights, his home on the Yorkshire Moors. Mr. Earnshaw's daughter Cathy falls in love with Heathcliff, but her brother Hindly hates and abuses him. Heathcliff morosely endures Hindley's abuse, vowing ultimate revenge. When H overhears Cathy haughtily saying that she will never marry a person so degraded in social status as he is, he runs away. Three years later, Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights a rich and polished man, determined to have Cathy and to ruin Hindley.
A Heathcliff is a dark-natured,brooding, tempestuous person obsessed and possessed by a single-minded love, a romantic hero. Today such a character's intensity lends itself to mockery by those who find such passions embarassing.
~Facts on File Dictionary of Historical and Cultural Allusions.