Primroses in the Porridge: Hareton Earnshaw’s Transgression against his Homosocial Family in Wuthering Heights

This essay argues that in choosing the younger Catherine and standing up to Heathcliff in her defense, Hareton Earnshaw transgresses the celibate misanthropy and misogyny at the homosocial home of Wuthering Heights formed by Heathcliff, Joseph and Hareton in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It is a choice in favour of the fecundity promised by the marriage pending at the end of that novel. Hitherto a labourer, foul-mouthed and unkempt, Hareton, now learning to read, is coming into his birthright not only as presages the Heights, but as a husband who will participate in engendering births of other Earnshaws. Heathcliff, who permitted himself to live for years after the elder Catherine’s death, nourished by vengeance alone (and patriarchal vengeance at that, rooted in land ownership), is finally defeated by Hareton’s apparent disloyalty in choosing love.