I was all caught up in the elegance of the historic perspective you brought into this conversation—visions of Brontë sisters trapped by their gender writing gothic novels about women trapped by their gender—when you dragged me back into the story with the question, "what is it about Heathcliff that makes him a somewhat redeeming character?" At this point in the book, I can only respond at the top of my lungs, NOTHING! He is horrible. The extent to which he will abuse Isabelle is prefaced by his cool response when Catherine reveals Isabelle's crush to him, "...thank you for telling me your sister-in-law's secret: I swear I'll make the most of it." What a creep! He continues to explain that while he's angry at Catherine for not being jealous, he won't take his revenge on her because "the tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them." So, for his own cruel amusement he whisks Isabelle off (killing her dog on the way, as you point out), marries her, and brings her back two months later only to alternate between ignoring her, verbally abusing her, and telling her how much he loves Catherine. I believe in modern times we'd call his behavior sociopathic.
Imagine if your best friend was dating Heathcliff. Would you try to support her through this bad boy crush and hold back your real opinion to avoid risking your friendship? (We've all been there.) Or would you practically stage an intervention, getting your whole group of friends together to shake her and shout, "what are you doing?! This guy is completely bananas! You can do so much better!" I'm thinking the latter. There are some guys that are just that bad, and I'd put Heathcliff solidly in that category. And yeah, yeah, I know, a few chapters ago I was blathering on about nature versus nurture and he's just become what they made him, but it doesn't matter how he got here. He's cruel and horrible and I don't want my friend dating him.
Except, Catherine.
Catherine is turning out to be no one I want to be friends with. I think she sums up her own self-obsessed arrogance when she says to Nelly, "I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.” When her husband finally confronts Heathcliff, she humiliates poor Edgar to such an extent that he ends up punching Heathcliff in the throat and throwing him out of the house. She then dramatically declares that she'll get her revenge on both of them by breaking her own heart to break theirs. Sheesh. What a drama queen. One of my favorite moments comes when—during one of her teenagerish dramatic moments - Catherine tells Nelly to wipe the look of apathy off her face and try to look a little worried. (I really want to read a book with Nelly as the main character—want to write some fan fiction with me?) So maybe they deserve each other.
You know what my problem is? We're halfway through this book and I'm finding that I don't care. Heathcliff and Catherine are so unpleasant that I don't really want to spend more time in their company and I feel like whatever misery they end up in is just well-deserved. You see? When we started this I wrote that I remembered this book appealing to my gloomy, moody teenager self. Now I just feel like I'm too old for this stuff. I want to just tell them to get over themselves and get over their drama. I'm not patient enough to be a good friend to Catherine.
You want to know why Heathcliff is considered a Byronic hero? Beats me. But trying to answer that question might be just enough to keep me reading this soap opera.