Hindley Earnshaw and Hareton Earnshaw's relationship

The relationship between Hindley Earnshaw and his son Hareton Earnshaw is the novel's most devastating study of inherited ruin, a father-son bond forged not in nurture but in neglect, violence, and dispossession. From the moment of Hareton's birth, Hindley's conduct toward his son is shaped by the consuming grief and dissipation that follow his wife's death, and the consequences cascade outward to strip Hareton of his birthright, his education, and even his knowledge of his own wrongs. The relationship is the engine of Hareton's degradation and the measure of Heathcliff's revenge, and its eventual resolution is central to the novel's movement toward restoration.

Origins and Early Neglect

Hareton falls wholly into the hands of Ellen Dean almost from birth, as Hindley, provided he sees the child healthy and never hears him cry, is content to ignore him entirely. The father's sorrow is of a kind that will not lament: he neither weeps nor prays, but curses and defies, execrating God and man and giving himself up to reckless dissipation. His tyrannical and evil conduct drives away the servants, leaving only Joseph and Ellen, who stays because she had been his foster-sister and excuses his behavior more readily than a stranger would. Hindley's bad ways and bad companions form a destructive example for Catherine and Heathcliff, and his treatment of the latter is enough to make a fiend of a saint. The household becomes so infernal that the curate stops calling and no decent person comes near, with the sole exception of Edgar Linton's visits to Miss Cathy.

The Fall from the Banister

The relationship reaches its most harrowing moment when Hindley, in a drunken fit, carries the squalling and kicking Hareton upstairs and lifts him over the banister. Ellen cries out that he will frighten the child into fits and runs to rescue him, but as she reaches them, Hindley leans forward on the rails to listen to a noise below, almost forgetting what he has in his hands. At the instant Ellen's eye quits Hareton, the child gives a sudden spring, delivers himself from the careless grasp that holds him, and falls. Heathcliff arrives underneath just at the critical moment and, by a natural impulse, arrests the descent, setting the child on his feet. The look on Heathcliff's face expresses, plainer than words could do, the intensest anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge; had it been dark, Ellen daresay he would have tried to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton's skull on the steps. Hindley descends more leisurely, sobered and abashed, but the episode reveals the depth of his negligence and the precariousness of his son's life.

Dispossession and Dependence

Hindley's ruin is completed by his mania for gaming, which leads him to mortgage every yard of land he owns for cash. When he dies, the lawyer reveals that the whole property is mortgaged and that the sole chance for the natural heir is to allow him an opportunity of creating some interest in the creditor's heart. That creditor is Heathcliff, who has become the mortgagee and thus the master of Wuthering Heights. Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighborhood, is reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's inveterate enemy, living in his own house as a servant, deprived of the advantage of wages, and quite unable to right himself because of his friendlessness and his ignorance that he has been wronged. At the funeral, Heathcliff lifts the unfortunate child onto the table and mutters with peculiar gusto, "Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!" The unsuspecting child is pleased at the speech and plays with Heathcliff's whiskers, stroking his cheek, while Ellen divines its meaning and protests that the boy must go back with her to Thrushcross Grange, for there is nothing in the world less Heathcliff's than he is.

Degradation and Ignorance

Under Heathcliff's dominion, Hareton grows into a ruffianly child, strong in limb and dirty in garb, with a look of Catherine in his eyes and about his mouth. He is denied the education and standing that should have been his, and his degradation is compounded by his complete ignorance that he has been wronged. He lives as a servant in his own house, and his rough, unlettered state becomes a subject of contempt for his cousin Catherine Linton, who taunts him as being just like a dog or a cart-horse, doing his work, eating his food, and sleeping eternally. She wonders what a blank, dreary mind he must have and asks whether he ever dreams, but he will neither open his mouth nor look again. The degradation that began with his father's neglect is thus perpetuated and deepened by Heathcliff's deliberate cruelty, leaving Hareton a figure of pathos and wasted potential.

Aftermath and Restoration

When Heathcliff dies, the relationship's legacy is finally confronted. Joseph, the old servant, falls on his knees and returns thanks that the lawful master and the ancient stock are restored to their rights, while Hareton, the most wronged, is the only one who really suffers much. He sits by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest, pressing its hand and kissing the sarcastic, savage face that everyone else shrank from contemplating, bemoaning Heathcliff with a strong grief that springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel. The irony is complete: the son whom Hindley nearly killed, whom Heathcliff deliberately degraded, mourns the tyrant who stole his inheritance. Hareton's capacity for grief and his eventual reconciliation with Catherine Linton suggest that the damage wrought by his father's failures and Heathcliff's revenge can, in the end, be partially undone, as the ancient stock is restored to its rights and the crooked tree begins to grow straight.