Heathcliff's Childhood Quotes

Due to the time that this novel was written a boys childhood would be a lot stricter than the girls, in the novel this is present between Heathcliff and Catherine, which would naturally make his childhood bitter in comparison. Heathcliff’s childhood could be considered bitter in many ways due to his relationship with the different people within Wuthering Heights and how he got there in the first place. The most common relationship that would make is childhood bitter was his relationship with Hindley Earnshaw.

Mr Earnshaw found the orphaned Heathcliff in Liverpool, where we are lead to believe that Heathcliff would be found around the docks as due to unemployment as a result of industrialisation, the Irish potato famine would lead to thousands

Mr Earnshaw refers to Heathcliff as “It” this could become very degrading for Heathcliff as he wasn’t treated like a human, in contrast to this, this was on the first night of him being in the Earnshaw residence which means that they hadn’t got to know him yet. Heathcliff’s relationship with Mr Earnshaw would of been one of the things that made his childhood more bearable as we are told that Heathcliff became Mr Earnshaw favourite child, we are told by Nelly Dean that she considered the relationship sinister as he become more loved by Mr Earnshaw than Hindley. Moreover we are also told that Mrs Earnshaw was wary of the child and didn’t want to keep him, this could of made Heathcliff childhood bitter by knowing that not everyone wanted him there. His relationship with Hindley Earnshaw may have made his childhood very bitter as he was physically and verbally abused by him. We are told that after a few days, “Miss Cathy and he were now very thick; but Hindley hated him” this show us that Hindley started hating him from the start, this would later continue into adulthood. Furthermore once Hindley starts to abuse Heathcliff we are told this “he would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear, and