Hareton Earnshaw's degradation

Hareton Earnshaw's degradation is one of the most deliberate and sustained acts of revenge in Wuthering Heights, a process by which Heathcliff systematically reduces the rightful heir of the Earnshaw family to a state of brutish ignorance, illiteracy, and servitude, robbing him of his inheritance, his education, and even his awareness of his own dispossession. The degradation is not merely a consequence of neglect but an active, calculated project that spans Hareton's entire childhood and youth, shaping him into a rough, uneducated laborer who lives in his own house as a dependent, deprived of the advantages of wages and ignorant that he has been wronged.

Origins and Early Neglect

Hareton's degradation begins even before Heathcliff's return, rooted in the neglect and abuse he suffers under his father, Hindley Earnshaw. After the death of his wife Frances, Hindley descends into reckless dissipation, cursing and defying God and man, and giving himself up to drunkenness. He treats Hareton with violent caprice, at one point dangling the child over a banister and nearly dropping him, an incident from which Heathcliff saves the boy only to express anguish at having thwarted his own revenge. Hindley's drunken rages and neglect leave Hareton in the care of Nelly Dean, who becomes his primary nurse and protector. When Nelly is forced to leave Wuthering Heights to accompany Catherine Earnshaw to Thrushcross Grange after her marriage, Hareton, then nearly five years old, is left behind, and Nelly reflects that he has since become a stranger, likely having completely forgotten her.

Heathcliff's Systematic Degradation

After Hindley's death, Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights and assumes guardianship of Hareton, whom he deliberately sets out to degrade. He boasts that he will make Hareton as crooked as another tree twisted by the same wind, and he carries out this plan with ruthless consistency. Heathcliff never teaches Hareton to read or write, never rebukes him for any bad habit that does not annoy his keeper, and never leads him a single step toward virtue or guards him by a single precept against vice. The boy is allowed to grow up in complete ignorance, learning only to swear and to obey his own will. When the curate attempts to teach him, Heathcliff threatens to dash the curate's teeth down his throat if he steps over the threshold. Hareton himself tells Nelly that Heathcliff pays his father back what he gives to him, cursing his father for cursing him, and that Heathcliff says he may do as he will.

The Effects of Degradation

The consequences of this systematic neglect are profound. By the time he is eighteen, Hareton is a great, strong lad, but he is completely illiterate, unable to read even the inscription over his own door, which bears his own name, "Hareton Earnshaw." He speaks in a rough Yorkshire dialect and is described as awkward and rough, with a countenance that shows good qualities lost amid a wilderness of weeds. He is sensitive to slights and has a dim notion of his inferiority, but he takes a pride in his brutishness, having been taught to scorn everything extra-animal as silly and weak. Heathcliff himself observes that Hareton is no fool, and that he can sympathize with all his feelings, having felt them himself, but that Hareton will never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance. Heathcliff has got him faster than his scoundrel of a father secured him, and lower, for Hareton takes a pride in his brutishness.

The Role of Joseph

Joseph, the elderly servant, contributes to Hareton's deterioration through a narrow-minded partiality that prompts him to flatter and pet the boy because he is the head of the old family. Joseph lays the whole burden of Hareton's faults on the shoulders of Heathcliff, the usurper of his property, and takes satisfaction in watching him go to the worst lengths, reflecting that Heathcliff must answer for it. Joseph has instilled into Hareton a pride of name and lineage, but his dread of Heathcliff confines his feelings to muttered innuendoes and private comminations.

The Beginning of Recovery

Hareton's degradation begins to reverse only when Catherine Linton, the younger Catherine, enters his life. Her scorn for his ignorance initially provokes him to attempt to learn to read, but her laughter at his efforts causes him to burn his books in shame and anger. However, her later kindness and her offer to teach him, along with her kiss of reconciliation, gradually break through his defensive brutishness. Under her patient tutelage, Hareton's honest, warm, and intelligent nature shakes off the clouds of ignorance and degradation, and his brightening mind brightens his features, adding spirit and nobility to his aspect. By the end of the novel, Hareton and Catherine are engaged to be married on New Year's Day, and Nelly Dean declares that the crown of all her wishes will be their union, as Hareton has been restored to his rightful place as a gentleman.