Heathcliff the sociopath

No doubt the most memorable, striking, and horrendous "scene" in Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" isn't actually a scene at all because (like most of the novel, actually) it's reported to us rather than actually presented first hand: I'm talking about the scene when Heathcliff digs up Catherine's gravesite, pries or smashes open the lid on her casket, and beholds her corpse of 18 years - and then his recollection, if I have this right, that he did the same thing on the night of her burial and embraced her dead body. These are really strange and powerful scenes by any measure - and I think Bronte breaks all the rules here and thereby makes these moments all the more powerful: if she as the author/narrator were to present and describe these scenes, we'd feel that it's way over the top, it could never happen, it's an author pushing her material way too far; however, by giving us this information through the deranged Heathcliff - we actually can and do believe them - that is, we don't necessarily believe they could or would have happened, but we can definitely believe that Heathcliff would tell say these things - perhaps just for the shock value or for self-aggrandizement, or maybe they are "true." As the novel moves toward its conclusion, it becomes all the more apparent that Heathcliff, often described as Satanic, devilish, evil, and so forth, is truly a horrible character, and in fact, more than being Satanic, I would describe his as an anti-Christ: he has born misery and been mistreated, but instead of learning for his experiences and growing, becoming a better person, making the world better for others because he has suffered - that is, instead of becoming a progressive or a revolutionary or an artist - he treats people as horribly as he was treated - worse, even. He's not an Iago - Iago's malignancy was unmotivated - but he's a beguiling sociopath. Our prisons are full of people like Heathcliff; our novels are not.