Hindley's Revenge

Heathcliff is a victim of class hatred but he also manipulates situations to his advantage and becomes an arch - exploiter. For example, after the death of his wife, Hindley went insane. Heathcliff used this opportunity to take revenge and took Wuthering Heights away from Hindley. He then went further and married Edgar’s sister, not for love or monetary gain but to get back at Edgar for marrying Catherine, and treated Edgar’s sister terribly.

Hindley and Cathy change him into a degraded lover: ‘He drove him from their company to the servants… “I love him”’. This shows that Hindley degrades Heathcliff by making him a servant, after Mr. Earnshaw’s death. Cathy turns Heathcliff into a lover by loving him.

In the story Heathcliff is a pretty significant character. He is brought in by Mr. Earnshaw as an orphan and is treated well by him. He then starts to fall in love with Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine that lasts the whole story. However, when Mr. Earnshaw dies, his son Hindley becomes in charge of the house basically treats Heathcliff as a servant, he constantly looks down at him as if he is useless. So, in the beginning of the story when Heathcliff is first introduced as a dirty orphan who is taken in by Mr. Earnshaw who is instantly hated by Hindley because he feels his father loves Heathcliff more than himself. This results in Hindley bullying Heathcliff as a child and when Mr. Earnshaw dies and he becomes in charge to remember to flog him. At this point in the story and the first transformation of Heathcliff he goes from being an orphan to being hated by Hindley and becoming his human punching bag. The interesting thing about this is that Heathcliff just takes it he never really fights back or tell Mr. Earnshaw he just gets up and goes about his business not even acknowledging that it happened.

When Heathcliff returns three years later, his love for Catherine motivates him to enact revenge upon all those who separated him from her. Since he last saw Catherine, he has “fought through a bitter life”; he “struggled only for [her]” (Brontë 71). Nelly observes a “half-civilized ferocity” in Heathcliff’s brows (Brontë 70); she views him as “an evil beast…waiting his time to spring and destroy” (Brontë 79). Heathcliff’s obsessive love for Catherine becomes a menacing threat. Heathcliff reproaches Catherine because she “treated [him]

Brontë shows how cruelty passes through generations through Hindley’s mistreatment towards Heathcliff. From the moment Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff, Hindley enters a state of melancholy and loathes that his father clearly favors Heathcliff over him. Mr. Earnshaw’s adoption of Heathcliff upsets Hindley, his father clearly favors Heathcliff over him. Consequently, Hindley reciprocates this hatred when he meets Heathcliff, comparing him to satan and wishing for his death. Heathcliff, unable to act against these cruel words, silently absorbs them. This interaction reveals traits of each character: the maliciousness of Hindley’s character, who hates on the young Heathcliff without reason; and the timidity of Heathcliff, fostered by his inability to stand up for himself. Although timid at the moment, Heathcliff assimilates this cruelty so that he can inflict it upon others, just as Hindley does the same to him. This depicts how the victim of suffering develops into the bearer of cruelty. Soon after Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Hindley assumes control of his household and unleashes even more cruelty on Heathcliff. In a fit of

As a young orphan who is brought to Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is thrown into abuse as Hindley begins to treat Heathcliff as a servant in reaction to Mr. Earnshaw’s death. As a reaction to both this and Catherine discarding Heathcliff for Edgar, Heathcliff’s sense of misery and embarrassment causes him to change and spend the rest of his time seeking for justice. Throughout this time, Heathcliff leans on violence to express the revenge that he so seeks by threatening people and displaying villainous traits. However, Heathcliff’s first symptom of change in personality is when Heathcliff runs into Hareton after Cathy “tormented

The character of Hareton is used by Brontë as a tool to show not only how willing Heathcliff is to take revenge, but also to show how Heathcliff ended up how he did by choice, whereas Heathcliff, thrown into the same if not worse situation by Heathcliff, decided to educate himself and become the best person he could, eventually leading him to win Cathy’s heart.

When a person is wronged by another, one’s first instinct is to seek revenge with the intention to inflict harm upon those who have wronged them, but instead end up harming themselves in the process. Heathcliff’s main aim throughout the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was to seek revenge on those who have wronged him during his childhood. It presents the idea of the cycle of revenge through the literally elements of character, irony, and theme. In the novel Heathcliff passionately tries to seek revenge through anger and violence for the abuse which he experiences throughout his childhood.

He says that Cathy “shall pay [him] for the plague of [being] eternally in [his] sight” (WH, 35), showing how he wants Cathy to pay him because the sight of her angers him. When Hindley is drunk and playing cards, Heathcliff cheats him. Even though Hindley was mean to Heathcliff when he was young, Heathcliff will never forgive him, thus, he wants to see Hindley fall which is why he cheats him. Heathcliff also forces Cathy to marry Linton, so that way he can secure the inheritance for himself. He doesn't care if Cathy and Linton love each other, all he wants is to profit.

As soon as Hindley’s father dies, Heathcliff is taught the true meaning of hate by Hindley. As Heathcliff ages, his hate for Hindley grows inside of him, along with a need for revenge. Heathcliff’s need for revenge allows him to formulate his diabolical plan for taking over both the Grange and the Heights, upon return from his three year sojourn. Heathcliff’s ability to gamble the Heights away from Hindley foreshadows the unyielding power of Heithcliff’s hate when fueled by revenge. Thus establishing hate as the source of Heathcliff’s revenge.

Wuthering Heights made me realise that revenge is something that people earn “considerable satisfaction” from and that is the nature of revenge. However, I realised that revenge is not the solution to satisfaction and violence only “wounds those who resort to them worse than their enemies.” I found Emily Brontë’s concept of revenge captivating because I never realised the depth of revenge. I think all the actions in the novel results from a character’s desire for

The relationship between Heathcliff and Hindley revealed and developed the abusive nature of Heathcliff. Heathcliff was taken in as a young boy into a wealthy family that had two children. Ever since the day he was brought home the eldest son, Hindley, resented how the father favored him more. For example, Heathcliff threatened to tell their father if Hindley did not let him have his horse. This one childish threat had created the foundation of the resentment between the two men. Heathcliff threatened to tell their father that Hindley was making him feel unwelcome and abused emotionally, Hindley decided to not see if Heathcliff was going to follow through with the threat therefore gave him the horse. Later on through life, once the father dies, Hindley decides to take his absence as an excuse to start really physically abusing Heathcliff. He would beat him and punch him without thought of how this would transfer into the rest of his life. Heathcliff was also verbally assaulted by Hindley which is a twist on the traditional sense of cruelty. Hindley is demeaning towards Heathcliff and calls him a slave and make sure that he know that he is not equal with himself or his sister Catherine. This point planted the seed of doubt and not being good enough for the rest of his life. This continual mental assault forged the mindset of little Heathcliff to how he would exact revenge on Hindley for all of his wrongdoings. This cruelty from Hindley was due to the favoritism that Heathcliff received as a child, the death of his father, the death of his wife, and the constant reminder of his wife through his son. The constant cruelty is the motive for Heathcliff's actions once he returns to the Heights. Through baiting Hindley, in his own personal torment from his wife's passing, all the money and possessions are gambled away with Heathcliff as the new owner. Wuthering Heights itself

Hindley and Mr. Linton fear Heathcliff’s malevolence and violence, trying to avoid him as much as possible because of it. Mr. Linton forbids his daughter, Cathy, from visiting Wuthering Heights because he does not want Heathcliff to hurt or harm her. Hindley attempted to murder Heathcliff because of his malevolence (167). Heathcliff’s malevolence may be a symptom of his grief after Catherine died. Catherine was his only and true love, and her death may have caused him to become slightly crazy.

Threw out the story you will see that Heathcliff has a very unhealthy passion; this is the next attribute of a Byronic Hero. This unhealthy passion is driven by revenge. As you read the book it seems that Revenge is the only thing that keeps Heathcliff going. Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights filthy rich after running away for 3 years when Catherine married Edgar. He uses some of his money to loan to Hindley’s gambling problem so that Hindley will become even more engulfed into debt. Heathcliff also wanted to seek revenge against Edgar for obvious reasons. So he

Hareton Earnshaw, a victim of Hindley, Heathcliff, and Cathy, stands up for himself, shocking the reader’s perception of his character. Hareton is a victim of his father’s alcohol abuse and gambling addiction. These addictions are a result of Frances’ death and the reader becomes sympathetic towards Hindley; however, Hareton is the innocent victim affected by the lack of care from his father. Hareton is a toddler when Hindley holds him over the railing of a staircase, threatening his life. Once Hindley dies, Heathcliff takes on the responsibility to care for young Hareton. He does not know that he is being used as part of Heathcliff’s plan to get revenge on Hindley for abusing him as a child. Heathcliff wishes to keep Hareton ignorant and uneducated in an effort to degrade him. When describing Hareton, Nelly, the house servant, says, “He appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice” (Bronte 152). Hareton is a victim to society because he is kept an uncivilized and ignorant young man. The reader feels sympathetic towards him because he is made to be an inferior