English Monologue – Wuthering Heights

English Monologue – Wuthering Heights

Character: Hareton Earnshaw

Time in the Novel: After Hareton sees his cousin Cathy for the first time

 (Walk on angrily, dropping pile of rags on table) I still remember him saying, “You are mine now.” I saw the bitterness in Mr Heathcliff’s ^[a]eyes as he beckoned for me to follow him toward the cursed walls of Wuthering Heights and that was the beginning of it all^[b]. Hareton disappeared that day, becoming just another shadow.^[c] All my life, trapped beneath who I really am ^[d](look down in disappointment). Stuck, just like my father in the ground. ^[e]Time has passed since, the many years becoming darker. Anger and hatred have consumed me, creating the man I am now, the shadow of Heathcliff. ^[f]

Long before I was born, there was conflict. I hear the stories of my origins, the start of turmoil and tragedy. Heathcliff is a cruel, ruffian man, conditioned by the events that followed him^[g]. He was taken in by my grandfather, as an orphan on the street in Liverpool. My father, Hindley loathed him the day he stepped foot into Wuthering Heights. I am told that even Heathcliff was favoured over my own father, over the real son. How blasphemous!? I wonder what old Earnshaw ever saw in him, all I see is a bottomless pit of emptiness and cold^[h], hinged^[i] upon revenge and anger. He’s a misanthropist! So, I guess he does to me^[j], what my father had done to him all those years. He’s still getting revenge on Hindley even now after he’s dead^[k], that hatred has passed over to me^[l]. I’m illiterate, working tiresome hours. But what can I do? I’m no one. I can’t even read, no one is here to teach me. I want to improve myself quite greatly^[m], but I am so restricted here.

Cathy. ^[n]I saw her the other day when she visited Linton here. I know of Heathcliff’s plan to get the Grange off the Linton’s^[o], he’s^[p] going to force a marriage with Cathy and his son^[q]. The devil himself lives in the same house as me, I swear of it.^[r] But what can I do? Cathy hates me, I know it, she’s just like Linton and shares the same despise as Heathcliff. ^[s]I’m condemned to a lower status ^[t]so long as they live. I hate all of them (stomps angrily). Linton and Cathy are both my cousins. Linton has inherited the cold heartedness of his father and Cathy doesn’t even know she is my kin. (Change in tone to curiosity) Though I feel it^[u], like I feel the changing of the wind, that we are equal. Her passion is rooted in her as much as it is in me and we are one in the same. I sense her love for the wild, for adventure. She is more Catherine than she is Edgar. But this hatred that grows inside me, advances every passing day. ^[v]