Heathcliff and Linton Heathcliff's relationship

The relationship between Heathcliff and his son, Linton Heathcliff, is one of the most brutal and instrumental in Wuthering Heights. From the moment Heathcliff reclaims the sickly boy from Thrushcross Grange, he treats him not as a child to be loved but as a tool for revenge, a legal pawn in his scheme to usurp the Linton and Earnshaw estates. Their bond is defined by contempt, manipulation, and a coldly calculated plan to use Linton's marriage to Catherine Linton as the final stroke of Heathcliff's long campaign of vengeance.

Reclaiming the Son

Linton Heathcliff enters the story as a distant, almost forgotten figure, living under the guardianship of his uncle, Edgar Linton, at Thrushcross Grange. This arrangement is broken when Heathcliff sends Joseph to the Grange with a peremptory demand: "Hathecliff has sent me for his lad, and I munn't goa back 'bout him." Edgar Linton, recalling his dead sister Isabella's hopes and fears for her son, is deeply grieved at the prospect of yielding him up, but he sees no way to avoid it. He resigns the boy, only asking that the transfer wait until the next day, as Linton is in bed and too tired to travel. The custody battle is thus settled not by law or affection, but by Heathcliff's sheer will.

When the trembling child finally arrives at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff's first reaction is one of savage disappointment. Staring his son into "an ague of confusion," he utters a scornful laugh and exclaims, "God! what a beauty! what a lovely, charming thing!... Hav'n't they reared it on snails and sour milk, Nelly? Oh, damn my soul! but that's worse than I expected—and the devil knows I was not sanguine!" The boy, who does not even comprehend that the grim, sneering stranger is his father, clings to Ellen Dean with growing trepidation and hides his face on her shoulder, weeping. Heathcliff drags him roughly between his knees, holds up his head by the chin, and declares, "Thou art thy mother's child, entirely! Where is my share in thee, puling chicken?"

A Tool for Revenge

Heathcliff's motives for reclaiming his son are entirely strategic. He tells Ellen Dean that his son is the "prospective owner" of Thrushcross Grange, and that he wants "the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers' lands for wages." This, he admits, is "the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!" He has furnished a room for Linton in handsome style and engaged a tutor to come three times a week from twenty miles' distance, but this is not kindness; it is a calculated effort to "preserve the superior and the gentleman in him, above his associates." Heathcliff's only regret is that Linton "so little deserves the trouble," and he is "bitterly disappointed with the whey-faced, whining wretch."

Heathcliff's plan crystallizes when he reveals his design to Ellen Dean: "That the two cousins may fall in love, and get married. I'm acting generously to your master: his young chit has no expectations, and should she second my wishes she'll be provided for at once as joint successor with Linton." When Ellen objects that Catherine would be the heir if Linton died, Heathcliff corrects her, revealing his legal mastery: "There is no clause in the will to secure it so: his property would go to me; but, to prevent disputes, I desire their union, and am resolved to bring it about." The marriage is not a hope but a command, and Linton is his instrument.

The Forced Marriage

Linton becomes the active agent of his father's scheme when he lures Catherine Linton to Wuthering Heights. After the pair is trapped there, Linton, no longer in terror for himself, calmly announces the plan: "Papa wants us to be married... And he knows your papa wouldn't let us marry now; and he's afraid of my dying if we wait; so we are to be married in the morning, and you are to stay here all night." When Catherine insists on going home to relieve her father's suspense, Linton's cowardly terror of Heathcliff's anger restores his "coward's eloquence," and he clasps her in his feeble arms, sobbing, "You must obey my father—you must!"

Heathcliff's contempt for his son is never more evident than in this scene. He dismisses Linton's snivelling with a sneer, telling him, "In a month or two, my lad, you'll be able to pay her back her present tyrannies with a vigorous hand." He then orders the boy to bed, and Linton exits "exactly as a spaniel might which suspected the person who attended on it of designing a spiteful squeeze." The father's only praise is grudging: "By chance, you've managed tolerably. I'll look to the rest."

The Will and the Inheritance

The legal consequences of this forced union unfold after Linton's death. Heathcliff goes up to Catherine's room to show her Linton's will, which bequeaths "the whole of his, and what had been her, moveable property, to his father." The poor creature had been threatened or coaxed into that act during her week's absence, when her uncle died. The lands, Linton being a minor, he could not meddle with, but Heathcliff claims and keeps them "in his wife's right and his also," and Catherine, destitute of cash and friends, cannot disturb his possession. The son's life and death are thus reduced to a series of legal transactions, each one transferring power and property to the father.

The Final Disintegration

In his final days, Heathcliff's obsession with Catherine Earnshaw's ghost has entirely displaced any thought of his son. He roams to and fro in a state approaching distraction, and tells Ellen Dean that he wishes to send for Mr. Green, the lawyer, to make legal inquiries, confessing, "I have not written my will yet; and how to leave my property I cannot determine. I wish I could annihilate it from the face of the earth." His son is not mentioned; the tool has served its purpose and been discarded. The relationship ends not with reconciliation or grief, but with the father's complete absorption in a love that has nothing to do with the child he used and despised. Linton Heathcliff is remembered not as a son, but as a casualty of his father's monomaniacal revenge, a weak and pitiable figure whose only value was the legal claim he provided to the estates of his enemies.