George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron, constructed a classic type of character for his time known as the Byronic hero
• Victorian poets, artists, and novelists used Byronic figures and attitudes in their works. These hero
•figures are more a hero unto themselves than others. Charlotte Bronte's character, Mr. Rochester, and her sister Emily's Heathcliff assume strong influences of Byronic heroes. Most of the traits associated with this fictional type come from Byron's works, although his own life fits the description to an extent. .
Lord Byron died in 1824 when the Bronte's were still children, and the they were no doubt familiar with Byron and his work. In Canto one of his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage we see some general traits of the Byronic hero; "For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,/Nor made atonement when he did amiss,/Had sigh'd to many though he lov'd but one,/And that lov'd one, alas! could never be his.
•(ln. 37-40). The Byronic hero is "an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, superior in his passions and powers to the common run of humanity
•e harbors the torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an inevitable doom. He is in his isolation absolutely self-reliant, pursuing his own ends according to his self-generated moral code against any opposition, human or supernatural. And he exerts an attraction on other characters that is more compelling because it involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human concerns and values.
•Norton, 522). .
Heathcliff and Rochester fit slightly different molds of the Byronic hero. Both long for a woman they can't have. They endure suffering and isolation because of their selfish struggle to attain love and fruition of their passions. Heathcliff's struggle is more outward and hurts more people along the way; his behavior terrifies those around him.
