Carefree, No Moor

            After reading these next few chapters In Wuthering Heights I was intrigued thinking about the relationships between the different characters. As we read earlier on in the novel, when Catherine and Heathcliff were children they would often run off together and play and enjoy each other company as most young people do. We can compare their relationship to that of their children years later. I found it interesting that the carefree attitude that Catherine and Heathcliff once had is not as easily acquired for their own children. Heathcliff’s son Linton is a sickly boy who is often too weak to go out and instead stays inside whining all day. His father treats him quite poorly as he never even loved his mother and thus doesn’t care much for the boy. Cathy, Catherine’s daughter longs for more freedom but her father forbids her from seeing Linton because of the bad history he has with Heathcliff. I think it’s also important to talk about Heathcliff’s treatment of Hareton, Hindley’s son. It seems that Heathcliff loves treating the people in his life very poorly. I find this extremely ironic as Heathcliff himself used to be treated badly by Hindley and was often times treated like a servant in his own home. Now, many years later, Heathcliff has made it his mission to take revenge on those who have wronged him and I think that is apparent with his mistreatment of Hindley’s son, Hareton. Instead of being able to go out and play with his cousins Cathy and Linton, he is forced to do whatever Heathcliff says. He is practically treated like a servant and has no freedom of his own. Heathcliff won’t even let Hareton get a proper education so he doesn’t even know how to read. After reading this, I immediately thought of the poem we read in class called “The Cry Of The Children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This poem expresses the child labor victim’s sorrows as they spend all their time working instead of playing and enjoying their childhood. Although Cathy, Linton, and Hareton aren’t out working in factories all day, they are bound by family ties and obligations and have no time to enjoy themselves. In my opinion, Hareton is the one who is really put to work and is ordered around by Heathcliff the most. Unlike their parents, Linton and Cathy don’t have the luxury of roaming around the moors and acting carefree. 

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