Most of the Earnshaw family members responded to Heathcliff's arrival in a very rude manner at first, and then, when Mr. Earnshaw died, their attitude towards the "gypsy brat- turned inhumane. The once respectful household was forever disrupted from the moment Heathcliff set foot in Wuthering Heights. The profound hate these people had for the innocent child grew quickly and corrupted the atmosphere in this home. In Clifton Snider's The Imp of Satan: The Vampire Archetype in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, he mentions how Heathcliff's different appearance made Hindley and Nelly Dean discriminate him:.
Heathcliff's difference is emphasized from the time Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, a boy he found in Liverpool starving and homeless, whom even Earnshaw [called] "it-: " you must e'en take it as a gift of God, thought it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil- (28). [Nelly] [called] Heathcliff a "gypsy brat- (29), and Hindely, [called] him a "dog- and an "imp of Satan- (31). (http://www.csulb.edu).
Since Mr. Earnshaw saw Heathcliff as his center of interest, he defended and protected him from people or things that could do him any harm. After several years, when he died and Hindley became the head of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff received massive torture from him. "Heathcliff here is not he instigator but the recipient of violence; violence which his arrival has provoked in that defensive, exclusive family unit."" (Holderness 30). He treated the "unwanted gypsy- as anyone would treat a servant, or an animal, for that matter. Poor Heathcliff became the unfortunate victim of the hate and jealousy several of the wretched characters had on him, but after many years of torment bottled up inside of him, he sought to get revenge on the people who made him suffer. .
"Heathcliff doesn't remain a victim all his life: he deliberately resolves to free himself from the humiliation of oppression by attaining for himself the status of an oppressor.
