The Need For Revenge In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

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Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights employs one of the most powerful forces to drive its plot forward: the need for revenge. This is a force like no other because it thrives on negative emotions such as suffering, loss, and anger, especially from the pain of rejection in the novel. Not only is it influential, but also prevalent. Bronte depicts that the need for revenge is hidden in many characters, suppressed by love, until a single event unleashes its fury, corrupting characters and causing them to aggravate their misdoings, with one disaster following a first. Revenge, like abuse, is a repeating cycle; a sufferer becomes the inflicter of suffering on others so that everybody feels the pain, and only the power of love can overcome this …show more content…

After Heathcliff gets revenge by bankrupting Hindley for mistreating him (which was Hindley’s revenge for Heathcliff having become his father’s favorite), Hindley’s desire for revenge multiplies. At first he simply wanted to separate Heathcliff from Cathy, but now he tells Isabella, “I will have [my house] back; and I’ll have his gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!” (124). Hindley’s desire for revenge has become murderous and intensely cruel, to the point of wishing Heathcliff’s soul to be in Hell. Heathcliff, originally abused by Hindley, has become the abuser and appears to grow more greedy for revenge as the plot develops. When he explains to Catherine, “ You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style” (100), he is showing her that she can torture him as much as she wants, but he will pass all of this pain onto someone else. The remedy to his pain is to become the inflictor of pain. Compounding his emergence as the abuser, later in the novel Heathcliff develops an interest in tormenting Hindley’s son, Hareton. He wants to “see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” (165), meaning that that he was blown by the wind and became twisted by Hindley, now he will return the favor to Hareton, denying Hareton an …show more content…

It just takes one person to start a cycle of repeated hatred and suffering, but also only one person to break this chain and bring happiness into the world. The relationships at Wuthering Heights are based on envy and revenge and only bring pain. This is ironic as the perpetrator of abuse believes it will bring them relief from their pain. But Bronte points out the futility of carrying out revenge since even when fulfilled, it does not serve its purpose of relieving pain or restoring love. That can only be achieved when people stay true to the path of love and are tenacious enough to overcome their

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