Parental Controls

A whirlwind of death, abuse, and twisted love stories, the circumstances in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are anything but ordinary. Although wrong choices and complex love stories play a role in moving the plot along, a closer analysis shows that the lack of proper parenting is one of the root causes of the commotion, as it gravely affects the child and also the subsequent generations.

While parents are obliged to love and care for their children with equal assets, conflicts arise when parents resort to favoritism, ending up affecting the child’s adulthood later on. In the beginning of the book, Heathcliff disrupts the balance once held in the Earnshaw household, “...Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent’s affections, and his privileges...” (48). Because Mr. Earnshaw openly preferred Heathcliff over his own biological son, Hindley Earnshaw not only felt resentment and jealousy towards Heathcliff, but also a sense of remorse as he could never find favor in his father’s eyes as he desired. As Heathcliff came between Mr. Earnshaw and his son, Hindley seemingly lost the fatherhood figure in his life. As Hindley would grow older to become a father, his low self esteem and distorted view of the world came along with it. As Hindley is a victim of favoritism, it shaped him to become a very vulnerable character. This ultimately led Hindley to be the intoxicated, corrupt and abusive parent he is to his own son, Hareton. Hindley did not merely hate his son, but rather he repeated the past by implementing the same actions his father took on him. Hindley, a gambler and a drunk, dissociated himself with his own son, overlooking him just as Mr. Earnshaw had done to him years before.

It is true that there were other possible factors tha...

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...stop it, they continued to let the mistreatment persist. This ultimately leads to Heathcliff taking out the same feelings that he once held, onto his son and other people around him.

Throughout all the anarchy in the novel, the main source of commotion derives from the lack of proper parenting that is implied on the children. As children look up to their parents for guidance, they absorb, learn and replay exactly what they observe from their elders; therefore, a child’s behavior ultimately reflects their experiences at home and their parents attitude towards them. The children in Wuthering Heights are left to deal with the mistakes and failures of their own parents that lead to an emotionally torn child intertwined with self-victimisation. The corrupt ways they grasped from their parents, lead to similar actions and emotions portrayed to the consequent generation.