How did Heathcliff get rich in Wuthering Heights? The book explained his dodgy dealings

The new Wuthering Heights movie focuses less on social commentary, and more on Jacob Elordi’s back muscles. The film doesn’t really explain why Heathcliff disappears for several years, then returns after a huge glow-up. Thankfully, the actual Wuthering Heights book does explain how Heathcliff gets rich.

Here’s what we know about Heathcliff’s time away

The timeline in the film is a bit different to in the book. In the Wuthering Heights novel, Heathcliff runs off at age 16, then returns three and a half years later. He’s suddenly super rich, as well as “polished, gentlemanly, and physically impressive”. Emily Brontë’s words, not mine.

Heathcliff doesn’t ever outright say what he got up to in this time. He describes himself as  “a forager for a fortune”. He tells Catherine: “I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice; and you must forgive me, for I struggled only for you!” So, it was definitely difficult.

Nelly speculates that Heathcliff might have joined the British army. She does ask whether he was a soldier, and says “his upright carriage suggested the idea of his having been in the army”.

He has a new haircut, but zero excuses
(Image via Warner. Bros)

We can work out from the dates in Wuthering Heights that Heathcliff was away for the last three years of the American War of Independence. However, Heathcliff was 16, he hadn’t received a formal education, and he didn’t have any nepo baby connections in the military. If Heathcliff had joined the army, he would have been a low-ranking soldier. He wouldn’t have made a fortune in just three years from only his pay.

The novel mentions that the villagers gossiped about how he made his money. So, the reader is led to believe that Heathcliff made his fortune through crime.

Keep in mind that the book is set before Britain abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. Catherine’s father found Heathcliff in Liverpool, which was the largest slave-trading port. Many scholars have suggested that Heathcliff could have made money by being involved in the slave trade.

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The movie really plays downplays what an objectively horrible person Heathcliff becomes in the book, even by the standards of 1840s Britain.

The book does detail how Heathcliff manages to buy Wuthering Heights

(Image via Warner Bros.)

The Wuthering Heights novel does have a much more detailed explanation of how Heathcliff became rich after his return, though.

The film cut out a huge character: Catherine’s older brother, Hindley. In the book, Hindley struggles with addictions to alcohol and gambling. Heathcliff exploits this. He gambles with Hindley, so he loses even more money. Hindley becomes deeply so deeply in debt. Heathcliff  convinces Hindley to mortgage off Wuthering Heights to him.

In the film, Catherine’s father struggles with addiction instead of Hindley. It seems as if in the world of Emerald Fennel, Heathcliff exploits him in the same way.

Once Heathcliff has Wuthering Heights and all the land that comes with the estate, he makes money from farming the land and by being a “cruel, hard landlord to his tenants”.

In the book, he manages to become the guardian of Cathy’s daughter. Heatchliff also pays a very dodgy lawyer called Mr Green to help scam both her and his own son out of inheriting the Lintons’ money and Thrushcross Grange (for a while, anyway).

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