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Heathcliff was my first gothic hero, which I differentiate from the romance hero of today's genre. Traditional gothic heroes are monstrous and angst-ridden creatures, and their fates are usually tied to something horrible about their pasts.
Bronte did something unusual. She made Heathcliff very human and yet, still retain his monstrosity. He loved beyond death, which was ultimately romantic, and his madness for Cathy was both passionate and awesome scary at the same time. Yet, I liked him better than some of the revenge rakes of today's bad boys--"men" who play cards and walk around attended by their servants, the ones that kidnap the heroines and force them to submit to their control. Bah, they aspire to Heathcliff's bad boyness!
Also, Cathy had a power over Heathcliff that rivaled his batshit crazy revenge plan, and she knew it too. She was the ultimate bad girl, a pre-Scarlett O'Hara, always thinking about herself, yet giving in to the wildness in her whenever she was with her Heathcliff.
As you can tell, I'm batshit crazy about Heathcliff :). He had many qualities of the romantic hero--alpha, arrogant, too sure of himself, ultimately brought down/tamed by love of a woman--but being a gothic story, of course, his story ends tragically. But there was hope too at the end, with the love of the "new" young Cathy and the boy Heathcliff brought low, like he was.
Finally, if you look at urban fantasy and paranormal series today, there are seeds of Heathcliff and Cathy in the characters, except, of course, you get more blood and gore, mixed with magic. Angst-filled, anger-ridden powerful hero out to get revenge; super-controlling males who want to bind their women to them; the call of death and loving beyond; the cold power of the heroine capable of killing her man; the inability to communicate beyond verbal fighting--all these themes arose from Wuthering Heights.
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