Hindley Earnshaw's Destruction

Charts Hindley Earnshaw's self-destructive spiral from neglected heir to drunken mortgagee who dies in debt.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

The Crushed Heir

A Present Lost The First Injury Hindley's fiddle is crushed in the great-coat that shelters the foundling, and the stranger who caused the loss is soon preferred by his father. The boy's jealousy is born of a legitimate sense of displacement. A Hatred Instilled Old Earnshaw's open favoritism toward Heathcliff feeds every bitter thought, and when his mother dies, Hindley's father is no longer a friend but an oppressor. The wreck of the household begins with this quiet accumulation of injury.

College and Rage

A Reluctant Banishment Sour Grapes Old Earnshaw, persuaded by the curate, sends Hindley to college, muttering that the boy is nought and will never thrive. The exile is meant for peace but is read as rejection, and Hindley returns harder and more bitter. A Master's Revenge On the day of his return, Hindley strips the house of its old order, banishes the servants to the back kitchen, and gives Heathcliff to the fields. The man who felt dispossessed becomes the tyrant who dispossesses.

The Devil's Widower

Sobriety Abandoned A Godless Grief Frances's death robs Hindley of the only person who made his life bearable, and he plunges into a drunkenness that is also a blasphemy: he says he will send his own soul to perdition to punish its Maker. A Father Turned Monster His violence now falls on his own son, he terrorizes the servants, and he begins to gamble away the estate. The despairing man who once idolized his wife now becomes the destroyer of everything she left behind.

The Knife and Pistol

A Midnight Murder Attempt Half Man, Half Fiend Hindley, sobered by a strange suicidal resolution, arms himself with a knife-pistol and waits to shoot Heathcliff through the door. His plot fails, his wrist is slashed by his own spring-blade, and Heathcliff tramples him before leaving him for dead. The Unrepayable Debt The botched murder attempt is the climax of his enmity, revealing how far the master of the Heights has sunk below every law of man and hospitality. Isabella's account of the night emphasizes his helplessness and Heathcliff's cold superiority.

The Drunkard's End

A Corpse on the Settle Death in the Bottle Hindley dies at twenty-seven, having locked himself in the house and drunk himself to death; Heathcliff and Joseph find him stiff on the settle with a horse's snoring in the yard. He leaves Hareton an orphan and a beggar, the estate mortgaged to his enemy. A Life That Bled Away Kenneth's report is almost casual: "He died true to his character, drunk as a lord." Nelly weeps as for a blood relation, remembering the boy who played with her at the guide-stone, and wonders privately whether he had ever had fair play.

the day of Heathcliff's arrival, when Hindley is fourteen

the years at college, before his return with Frances

after Frances's death

the week after Catherine Earnshaw's funeral, during Heathcliff's attempt to enter the house

six months after Catherine's death, in autumn 1784