The most vituperative outburst in literature: Wuthering Heights

Nelly visits Heathcliff and Isabella at Wuthering Heights and it's obvious that Heathcliff is mentally deranged. He lashes into Isabella with the most vituperative, scornful outburst in the history of literature (maybe some passages in Shakespeare, an obvious and pervasive influence on Emily Bronte's style and composition) can compare, but not much else. His apparent, stated motive is to get Nelly, the servant, to arrange for him to have some time alone with Catherine during a surreptitious visit to Thrushcross Grange. But in his anger and contempt, he seems not just a passionate man, which he is, but a dangerous man with an unbalanced mind. He'll do anything to get near Catherine again - which makes us think at least as contemporaries, that her own safety is endangered. His hatred for Catherine's husband, Linton, is irrational and misplaced: Linton did nothing overt to ruin Heathcliff's life, and there's no reason why Heathcliff should despise and destroy him - at least no rational reason, but Heathcliff isn't a rational guy. In some ways, he's like Iago, full of motiveless malignity, but unlike Iago he claims to be a man in love - not just a man "in hate." Yet what kind of way is that to go about winning Catherine's heart? Of course, she may be just as perverse as he is - drawn to his over-topped passion and to his obsessive and excessive behavior - which is far more than vengeance against those who wronged him throughout his childhood (it's notable how small a role Hindley, the real childhood antagonist, plays in this part of the novel). Heathcliff's animosity against the world is born from his sense of complete alienation and displacement: the bastard child, of a different race, abused and mistreated throughout his life by his intellectual and physical inferiors - a Caliban, in fact.