Hindley's Destructive Love for Frances

Follows how Hindley's love for Frances becomes first his redemption and then the engine of his ruin after her death.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Bride's Delight

A Foreigner's Charm Making a Home of a Wilderness Frances, stranger to the moors, delights in the white floor, the pewter dishes, and the wide hearth of Wuthering Heights, and Hindley is transformed by her pleasure. Her affection for Catherine and her careless charm bind the household in a temporary peace. A Perilous Happiness Hindley's love is total and possessive, built on his need for a home after years of resentment. He builds his whole future on this fragile woman, unaware of the fragility of her health.

The Blighted Hope

An Unspoken Fear A Wife Slipping Away Frances's cough, her trembling, and her horror of black all signal a consumption that Hindley refuses to recognize. The doctor's verdict is delivered to the servant girls, not to the husband, who insists his wife is growing stronger. A Love in Denial Hindley's love expresses itself as a stubborn refusal to admit loss. He builds a fortress of cheerful lies around Frances, and when the truth breaks through, it will shatter him.

The Widower's Abyss

Curses Instead of Tears The Soul That Would Not Lament Hindley, who had room in his heart for only two idols, is left with none; he neither weeps nor prays but curses and defies God and man. His love for Frances becomes the standard by which he measures his loss, and the loss makes him reckless. A Desecrated Memory The memory of his beloved becomes a mockery: he drinks in her name, gambles away her son's inheritance, and abuses the child she died to bear. The sweetness her life gave him is wholly converted into gall.

The Broken Father

A Child as a Wound The Unwanted Offspring Hindley's love for Frances was so total that his son becomes a living reproach, a reminder of what he has lost. He squeezes the boy and threatens to fling him over the banister, capable of tenderness only in fits of drunken affection. A Legacy of Fear Hareton learns to dread his father, and the love that should have sheltered him becomes another source of terror. The family's tragedy is compounded as the father's broken heart beats out its rhythm on the child.

Frances's arrival at Wuthering Heights

the months before Hareton's birth

the days and years following Frances's death

the years of Hareton's childhood under Hindley's rages