Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff becomes master of Wuthering Heights after Hindley Earnshaw's death, having secured the property through mortgage and debt, and reduces Hareton Earnshaw to a state of dependence. This event marks the culmination of Heathcliff's long-nurtured revenge against Hindley, transforming the Heights from a site of his own degradation into the seat of his power, and completing his rise from a homeless, dark-skinned gipsy child—found starving in the streets of Liverpool and brought home by Mr. Earnshaw—to the owner of the house where he was once treated as a servant and a vagabond.

Causes and Background

Heathcliff's path to mastery was paved by Hindley's own self-destruction. After the death of his wife Frances, Hindley gave himself up to reckless dissipation, drinking heavily and gambling away his inheritance. He mortgaged every yard of land he owned to Heathcliff, who had returned from his three-year absence a wealthy man. Heathcliff, who had once been called a "gipsy" and a "ploughboy" by Edgar Linton, and who had been described by old Mr. Linton as "a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway," now held the financial reins. Hindley's desperate borrowing, combined with his mania for gaming, left the estate entirely in Heathcliff's hands as the mortgagee.

What Happens

Hindley died barely six months after his sister Catherine, drunk as a lord, at the age of twenty-seven. Heathcliff, who had been present when the body was discovered, showed no sorrow. He maintained a hard, careless deportment, and when the people were bearing the coffin from the house, he lifted the unfortunate child Hareton onto the table and muttered 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 attorney proved to Mr. Linton that Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned, and that Heathcliff was the mortgagee. In that manner, Hareton, who should have been the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was 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, quite unable to right himself because of his friendlessness and his ignorance that he had been wronged.

Consequences and Aftermath

Heathcliff's mastery of Wuthering Heights was absolute. He held firm possession, and the house, which had once been a scene of riot under Hindley, regained a kind of comfort under female management, though the master himself was too gloomy to seek companionship. He deliberately kept Hareton in a state of brutish ignorance, never teaching him to read or write, and never rebuking him for any bad habit that did not annoy his keeper. Joseph, the old servant, contributed to Hareton's deterioration by flattering and petting him as the head of the old family, while laying the burden of his faults on Heathcliff. The villagers affirmed that Heathcliff was a cruel hard landlord to his tenants. Yet the ultimate irony of his triumph was that, years later, he found himself unable to take pleasure in his victory. He confessed to Nelly Dean that he had lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and that the sight of Hareton and the younger Catherine—whose eyes were precisely similar to those of Catherine Earnshaw—caused him pain amounting to agony. The world, he said, had become a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that he had lost her.