Transgressing the Boundaries of the Outsider in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Michael Stewart's Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff (2018)

Abstract

This article examines how the figure of the outsider, embodied by Heathcliff, transgresses social, affective, and spatial boundaries in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Michael Stewart’s neo-Victorian adaptation Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff (2018). Drawing on affect theory and spatial theory, the study argues that Heathcliff’s pain functions as a source of affective agency, enabling him to resist marginalisation and assert his identity. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff’s suffering—caused by racial, social, and emotional exclusion—leads him to embrace an outsider identity and disrupt the social order through acts of hostility and revenge. His orientation toward pain becomes both a form of self-definition and a means of challenging the artificial boundaries imposed on him.

In contrast, Ill Will reinterprets Heathcliff’s experience by granting him narrative voice and exploring his journey to uncover his origins, emphasising his sense of displacement, unhomeness, and identity struggle. Although he initially seeks to escape his pain, he ultimately recognises it as central to his identity and agency. The article concludes that both texts portray the outsider’s transgression of boundaries as driven by affective experience, particularly pain, which destabilises social divisions and exposes the oppressive structures that produce exclusion. Through this comparative analysis, the essay highlights how neo-Victorian fiction revisits and expands the emotional and social complexities of canonical literary outsiders.