Racism in the novel Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff’s vengeance upon both the families

“…as a gift from God, though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil” – the first time the readers are introduced to Heathcliff, the protagonist of this novel, as when Mr. Earnshaw describes Heathcliff to his wife. Bronte makes a clear distinction between Heathcliff and the others through the colour of his skin and right from the beginning there is a connection between Heathcliff and the devil. The association between the darkness of his skin and ideas of the devil suggests some level of racism.

            He is described as “a dirty, ragged, black-haired child … (which) only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand.” The reference of his black hair and the way in which the members of the Earnshaw household gawk at him dehumanizes Heathcliff and turns him into a spectacle, an object almost. In a curious way, the attitude they exhibited to Heathcliff helps him build enough grudge and hatred that he would want to wreak upon the vengeance.

            While Mr. Earnshaw doted on the child, everybody else hates him, and he seemed a sullen child who seemed to have been hardened by ill-treatment. From the very beginning, this child bred bad feeling in the house. Though Catherine became rapidly intimate with him, Hindley would miss no opportunity of treating him in an unkind and even cruel manner. Heathcliff’s vindictive nature is brought to our notice early when, after he has been brutally treated by Hindley, he says – “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. I hope he will not die before I do.”

            On overhearing Catherine that it would be degrading to her to marry him, Heathcliff feels so offended and insulted that he leaves Wuthering Heights and simply disappears without telling anyone whither he is going. 3 years later, he returns mysteriously as a changed man. During the meantime, Catherine has already got married to Edgar, by which the great ambition of Heathcliff’s life has already been frustrated. He already harbours thoughts of revenge against Hindley, and when Edgar refuses to treat him as a social equal, his mind is filled with a fierce hatred for Edgar also. From now on his career is one of a series of cruel deeds showing his beastly and monstrous nature in which there is no place for any human feeling.

            He first of all takes his revenge upon Hindley, who being a heavy drunkard and gambler, quickly falls into his hands. The result of Heathcliff’s machinations is that soon he acquires the property called Wuthering Heights. He had started as a guest there, but soon he becomes the master of the place because Hindley had mortgaged all his property with him to pay the debts, which he had by his gambling.

            The manner he brings up Hareton, the son of Hindley, is another example of his brutality, monstrosity and vindictiveness. He seems to have bent his malevolence on making Hareton a brute, with the result that Hareton has not been taught to read or write, has never been rebuked for any bad habit, has never been encouraged to take a single step towards virtue. He tells Nelly how happy he feels to see the result of the training which he has given Hareton in bringing him up as a comple brute.

            One of the devices by which he takes his revenge upon Edgar is to pretend that he loves Edgar’s sister Isabella who is bewitched by him and elopes with him. Soon after getting married to her, he begins to treat her in such a brutal manner that she has to run away from home with his own child in her womb, in order to escape from his perpetual insults and tyranny. The letter which she writes to Nelly clearly shows the inhuman treatment she has been receiving from him – “A tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens. I do hate him. I am wretched. I have been a fool.”

            Even his treatment to Cathy, the daughter of Edgar and Catherine, is also revengeful. He lures her by false pretences to his abode (Wuthering Heights) and treats her in such a rough manner that we feel shocked. At first, he speaks to her kindly, telling her that his son (Linton) is pining to see her and will die if she does not respond to the young man’s love for her. Once she is in his grasp, he makes her a prisoner at Wuthering Heights, when her father is in the deathbed, in order to marry her to Linton, if necessary by force.

            Subsequently, by contriving the marriage of his son with Cathy, he becomes the owner of Thrushcross Grange. In this way, the child who had been picked up from a Liverpool slum becomes the master of the two huge properties belonging to highly respectable and old families both of which he is able to ruin and wreak.