Revenge in Wuthering Heights Essay

The audience can instantly see that there is a hierarchy that has developed between Hindley and Heathcliff. Hindley acts as if Heathcliff is his servant, and wants Heathcliff to welcome guests “like the other servants”. This will later develop and show reader’s how Hindley’s impact on Heathcliff has changed Heathcliff as a person.

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Heathcliff’s strong love for Catherine guides his transformation as a character. While Heathcliff enters the story as an innocent child, the abuse he receives at a young age and his heartbreak at Catherine’s choice to marry Edgar Linton bring about a change within him. Heathcliff’s adulthood is consequently marked by jealousy and greed due to his separation from Catherine, along with manipulation and a deep desire to seek revenge on Edgar. Although Heathcliff uses deceit and manipulation to his advantage throughout the novel, he is never entirely content in his current situation. As Heathcliff attempts to revenge Edgar Linton, he does not gain true fulfillment. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Brontë uses Heathcliff’s vengeful actions to convey the message that manipulative and revenge-seeking behaviors will not bring a person satisfaction.

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 hated him”’. This shows that Mrs. Earnshaw neglects Heathcliff, not loving him as much as her other children. Hindley hates Heathcliff and therefore abuses him, making him a victim. However, Mr. Earnshaw loves Heathcliff, and along with Hindley and Mrs. Earnshaw, makes him into a loved and neglected victim.

Through self-centered and narcissistic characters, Emily Bronte’s classic novel, “Wuthering Heights” illustrates a deliberate and poetic understanding of what greed is. Encouraged by love, fear, and revenge, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Linton Heathcliff all commit a sin called selfishness.

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 ugliness of human nature is undoubtedly shown through toxic relationships in Wuthering Heights. They toxicity can be shown through almost every character relationship. The bain of toxic relationships can be shown right in the beginning of the novel with Hindley and Heathcliff. They immediately get off on the wrong foot all because one of them chooses to let their ugliness take over. Hindley is extremely jealous of Heathcliff, “...and is subject to Hindley's jealousy almost right away” (Galt). His jealousy sparks from the fact that his father seems to favour Heathcliff over him. This does Heathcliff no favours as it causes Hindley to be cruel and brutal towards him. Infact, on several occasions Hindley can be found almost abusing Heathcliff, "Take my colt, Gipsy, then!" said young Earnshaw. "And I pray that he may break your neck: take him, and he damned, you beggarly interloper! and wheedle my father out of all he has.” (Bronte 4) and “‘ Off dog!’ cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay.” (Bronte 45). The abuse and hatred that Heathcliff receives from such a young age cause him to give the same treatment in the other relationships in his life. In Heathcliff’s relationship with Isabella he can be seen showing the same abuse towards her, Heathcliff seized, and thrust Isabella from the room; and returned muttering—"I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and grind

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.

Heathcliff's role as an avenger is helped by his intelligence and understanding, not just of his own motivations, but of the motivations of others. He recognizes the source of Isabella's infatuation that-: "she abandoned this under a delusion" - "picturing in me a hero of romance". He also capitalizes on Linton's poor health by inviting the pity of Cathy so that her affection and sympathy would facilitate a marriage that would leave he, Heathcliff, as master of the Grange.

In the beginning of the novel, Nelly tells Mr. Lockwood that “Hindley hated [Heathcliff]… so, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house” (Bronte 32-33). This quote alludes to future “bad feeling” in the house originating with Hindley’s hatred of Heathcliff. “Bad feeling” (otherwise known as oppression, violence, victimizing, etc.) that Hindley initially kindled continued to plague the house for years after Hindley’s oppression of Heathcliff. Eventually, Heathcliff develops into a powerful, mysteriously rich figure and decides to exact his revenge on Hindley. In his article “Wuthering Heights as a Victorian Novel”, producer and writer Arnold Shapiro comments on Heathcliff’s transformation, noting how “Emily Bronte shows Heathcliff becoming a parody of his former tormentors, of Hindley especially. Reversing the golden rule, he does to his son, Linton, what Hindley had tried to do to him” (13). Heathcliff has undergone an emotional transformation after which he desired revenge on Hindley. Catherine, like Heathcliff, experiences a brutal transformation. Catherine begins as a sympathetic, gentle girl but later evolves into a more vengeful being. Shapiro notes, “Once she gets a taste of life at the Lintons’, she decides that she enjoys gentility; like her brother, Hindley, she enjoys wielding power and

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

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (63). Catherine does not want to marry Heathcliff because it would degrade he and hurt her social status even know she loves him. Catherine really loves Heathcliff a just doesn’t want to marry him because of his social status. In essence his social status is bad because of Hindley. When Heathcliff becomes rich he starts to make his revenge on Hindley and helped drive him to his death. Bell states that “When Heathcliff requires his fortune he uses the power that it affords to avenge himself against Hindley, whom easily corrupts and destroys” (Bell). This was the beginning of his revenge.

            When hate is generated into the conflict, it always induces power and becomes domination to the situation. Three years had passed when Heathcliff expatriated Wuthering Heights, comes back as a rich man and finds that Catherine, the only woman he loves on earth, married with Edgar Linton.