Reading Portrayal of Hindley Earnshaw in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is considered as being one of the masterpieces of Emily Brontë which serves to the Gothic and the genre, itself, both in terms of its setting, main characters, and the supernatural figures it includes. These gothic elements accordingly have a variety of influence on the haunted selves of certain characters in the novel, as well. Being an orphan and the actual outsider of the story, Heathcliff is first introduced to the Earnshaw mansion. Then, despite the fact that Cathy and Heathcliff have had mutual affectionate feelings, Hindley who is to get the ownership of the house after his father’s death, has had a grudge towards Heathcliff the anger of whom begins to worsen over time. The biological child and true heir of Earnshaw family, therefore, turns out to be an outsider in the novel owing to the animosity and malice he feeds towards Heathcliff. From a psychoanalytic perspective, it could be affirmed Hindley Earnshaw has an identity crisis which mostly depend on his envy leading him to regard the outsider, Heathcliff, with further contempt and disdain. Feeling himself as the spurned son with the appearance of Heathcliff, Hindley’s drive for the villainous role has arisen more when he was sent away for school gradually advancing him to the point of a real outsider of the mansion. Thus, the aim of this study is to demonstrate how Hindley has been born to the symbolic position of outsider when compared to the true and genuine outsider Heathcliff who has no biological bonds to the house. While doing so and analyzing the split self of Hindley which is haunted by the grudge he feels towards his rival, the lens of psychoanalytic theory is to be referred throughout the research.