Heathcliff and Hindley Earnshaw's enmity

The enmity between Heathcliff and Hindley Earnshaw is the engine of the novel's central conflict, a reciprocal cycle of childhood persecution and adult revenge that shapes the fates of both families. From the moment Mr. Earnshaw brings the orphaned Heathcliff home, Hindley's hatred—born of displaced paternal affection and class contempt—drives him to degrade and brutalize the foundling. Heathcliff, in turn, nurses a patient, implacable desire for repayment, and after years of absence returns to systematically dismantle Hindley's life, seizing his property, corrupting his son, and reducing his rival to a drunken, desperate wreck. Their struggle is not merely personal but structural, entangling the Earnshaw and Linton dynasties and passing its consequences down to the next generation.

Origins of the Rivalry

Hindley's hatred begins the moment Heathcliff enters Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw returns from Liverpool with a "dirty, ragged, black-haired child" found starving in the streets, and almost immediately the old master's favoritism toward the foundling displaces his natural son. Hindley, a boy of fourteen, watches his father pet Heathcliff "up far above Cathy" and regard his own son as a persecutor of the "poor fatherless child." The resentment is immediate and mutual: Hindley and the young Nelly Dean "plagued and went on with him shamefully," while Heathcliff endures blows without winking or shedding a tear, a stoicism that only enrages Hindley further. When Mrs. Earnshaw dies less than two years later, Hindley has already learned to see his father as an oppressor and Heathcliff as a usurper of his privileges. The old master's death, when Hindley returns home for the funeral, removes the last restraint on his cruelty.

Hindley's Degradation of Heathcliff

Once master of Wuthering Heights, Hindley immediately sets about reducing Heathcliff to the status of a labourer. He drives him from the family's company to the servants, deprives him of the curate's instruction, and insists he work outdoors "as hard as any other lad on the farm." Heathcliff bears this degradation "pretty well at first" because Catherine Earnshaw teaches him what she learns and works or plays with him in the fields, but Hindley's tyranny is relentless. He orders Heathcliff flogged for missing church and threatens to turn him out of the house if he and Catherine play together. The physical abuse escalates: Hindley strikes Heathcliff with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay, knocking him under a horse's feet, and boasts that he will turn him out of doors as soon as his father dies. Heathcliff, even as a child, begins to calculate his revenge, telling Nelly Dean, "I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last."

Heathcliff's Return and Systematic Revenge

After a three-year absence, Heathcliff returns to the neighbourhood a transformed man—tall, athletic, well-formed, with a countenance that retains "no marks of former degradation." He immediately takes up residence at Wuthering Heights, ostensibly as a paying lodger, and begins to execute his plan. Hindley, already deep in dissipation after his wife Frances's death, is no match for him. Heathcliff joins Hindley's card games, wins his money, and lends him more, steadily tightening a financial noose. He encourages Hindley's drinking and gambling, knowing that every debt deepens the mortgage on the estate. Joseph reports that the two "sit up all night together continually" with dice and brandy, while Hindley "borrows money on his land" and does nothing but play and drink. Heathcliff's patience is absolute: he waits for Hindley to destroy himself.

The physical confrontation that erupts one stormy night reveals the full measure of their hatred. Hindley, armed with a pistol fitted with a spring knife, attempts to ambush Heathcliff at the door, but Heathcliff wrenches the weapon away, the charge explodes, and the knife slits open Hindley's own wrist. Heathcliff then kicks and tramples his fallen enemy, dashes his head against the flags, and drags the apparently inanimate body onto the settle. He binds the wound "with brutal roughness," spitting and cursing throughout. Hindley survives but is broken, and within six months he is dead—drunk, alone, at twenty-seven, having mortgaged every yard of his land to Heathcliff.

Consequences for the Next Generation

Heathcliff's revenge does not end with Hindley's death; it extends to Hareton Earnshaw, Hindley's son. As the coffin is carried from the house, Heathcliff lifts the child onto the table and mutters, "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!" He raises Hareton in deliberate ignorance, never teaching him to read or write, never rebuking any bad habit, and reducing him to a servant in his own house. The boy grows into a "great, strong lad" who cannot spell his own name and who swears at his cousin Catherine Linton when she first meets him. Yet Heathcliff's feelings toward Hareton become complicated: he sees in the young man's face the features of Catherine Earnshaw, and this resemblance begins to disarm his hatred. In the end, Heathcliff confesses that he has "lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction" and that Hareton's presence causes him "pain, amounting to agony" because it recalls the love he has lost. The cycle of enmity finally exhausts itself, not through reconciliation but through the strange, consuming power of memory.