How Heathcliff made his money

[kev67]

This (http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/faq.htm) is interesting. It reckons Heathcliff probably made his money as a slave trader in the three years after he ran away from home. I thought it was a little unlikely he entered the army because he could not have bought a commission, so probably wouldn't have been able to earn much money.

Well, well, well, naughty Heathcliff.

I thought Heathcliff may have made a good slaver, but I wondered whether even doing this would have been enough to earn him as much money as he apparently had. For a start, Heathcliff was only sixteen when he ran away, and it seems unlikely the captain of a slave ship would have given an inexperienced sixteen-year-old a very big cut of the profits. Secondly, how rich were humble sailors in those days. I think many Liverpool sailors would have been involved with the slave trade. They must have made a fair amount of money on a year long journey, but could they have got rich.

However, this blog (http://aliceamericanrevolution.blogspot.co.uk/) says working on the African coast as a slaver was, although very risky, very profitable. Maybe this is what Heathcliff did.

Africa's west coast was known as the "white man's grave," and for good reason. The slave traders who worked along the coast lived in an inhospitable land. Exposure to the hot, damp climate and to diseases that their bodies had little resistance to resulted in short life expectancies. There was a reason to be there, though, and that reason was money. Every slave trader had the hope of making a quick fortune, and although many would become successful, there were many more -- such as Nicolas Owen -- who wouldn't.

An entry in the journal of Nicolas Owen reads as follows: "I have found no place where I can enlarge my fortune so soon as where I now live, wherefore I entend to stay in order to enlarge my fortune by honest mains." Owen was sincere when he stated that the slave trade was a way to prosper "by honest means" -- nowhere in his journal, which he kept for five years, does he show any compassion for slaves or the least bit of remorse for being involved in the slave trade.

Owen had sailed to Africa with his brother. Once there, they were captured and imprisoned. A slave dealer named Richard Hall rescued the two and offered them jobs as his agents. With no money to return home, the two brothers accepted the offer. Like all traders at the time, Owen did not capture slaves himself.

it was Africans who acquired slaves and traded the captives for various European goods. Sometimes the captives would be prisoners of war. Other times, groups would venture deep into Africa's interior for the sole purpose of capturing slaves.

passages illustrate the inherent dangers of being a slave trader. In one account, Owen tells of how some Africans had seized an Englishman who was walking at night on a trail. "As soon as their prize is secure they devour him without mercey along with their ascociates in the bushes, who has prapared a fire for that purpose.

[kiki1982]

Hmmm, that's an interesting spin. Although I don't know if we can believe that statement about 'devouring' a white man in the bushes. Seems to me like a pretty biased, typical 18th-19th century horror story... Maybe they killed him, I grant you that.

Nonetheless, you do have to ask questions about the time Heathcliffe can actually amass his riches. The timeframe seems pretty short for such an apparent incredible lot of it. You could get really rich in the slave trade, but I think you needed money to start (if you want to sell, you need to buy first, or catch in this case; and you need transport). I guess the only ones who really got rich were not the sailors, but rather those who were at the end, the merchants, so to say. And they were not even operating at full capacity, sometimes half of their insured cargo perished. Just imagine if they had had 100% of their cargo to sell...

Robert Stowell has noted the similarity between The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas and Wuthering Heights. Both Dantès and Heathcliffe have been wronged in some way, disappear for a while, then appear with an incredible lot of money which no-one knows where it's come from (Dantès comes from the Borgias, but no-one knows that), and both commit revenge with it. Although the need for revenge evaporates (to take his words) when it is about to take fullfilment.
Some others (can't remember where I read that) argued for Heathcliffe as a kind of Faust. indeed, there is something sinister and utterly lonely with Heathcliffe, which he only loses at the very end.
The last adaptation I know of did take that view. Very nice thing, albeit a little weakened to make it more realistic (although I don't know whetehr that's a bad thing; I have found all other Heathcliffes on TV too much to the supernatural side to be not ridiculous on screen. Somehow he works better in a book), but very similar to Gérard Depardieu's rendering of The Count in the 90s. Both very nice, actually.

I've always thought of the beginning of WH as incredibly lonely and desolate, like the lonely place hell must be. He's got everything, but no love and affection. He loses his humaity and has almost become a macine. Like Faust and all real Byronic heroes (from Bryon's own making), he's got everything he wishes, but love and affection make a person human. He's not got that. The result is that he lives, but no more than that. As Faust he will live on without real aim in life, apart from his revenge, but what will happen after the revenge has been fulfilled? Does the devil come and get him?

Therefore, the idea that his wealth came from a deal with the devil is not su unthinkable in a context where Goethe's Faust was all the rage. I think Heathcliffe is supernatural enough from the start to account for something mad like that.

[Emil Miller]

On reading Wuthering Heights I did of course wonder how Heathcliff amassed his wealth whilst abroad but I concluded that it was simply a Deus ex Machina used by Bronte to enable the plot to continue with its central character firmly back in the frame. It doesn't matter how he made his fortune except within the context of the story. It might have been from the slave trade or any number of other possibilities but the important thing was for him to be able to arrive back on the scene and continue his love affair with Cathy.

[qimissung]

You are all posing some very interesting ideas. I love your suppositions, Kiki. I tend to think, along with Emil, that it doesn't really matter how Heathcliff got his money; the important thing is that he came back. Is it also important that he has money? Because Bronte could have come up with any number of scenarios to get him back in the picture. I suppose he could have come back beaten and wounded to the only place he could call home. Instead, he comes back with a pile of money-which ostensibly puts him on equal footing with the others. Of course he will ever be the outsider, but nevertheless he now has some power of his own.

I think we can safely assume that his are ill-gotten gains, much in the way of Gatsby-both of whom also suffer unrequited love for a wealthy maiden. But where Gatsby is generally seen as pure of heart, Heathcliff is made of darker stuff. I love your Faustian theories, Kiki, and your comparisons to "The Count of Monte Cristo."

[neilgee]

You are all posing some very interesting ideas. I love your suppositions, Kiki. I tend to think, along with Emil, that it doesn't really matter how Heathcliff got his money; the important thing is that he came back. Is it also important that he has money? Because Bronte could have come up with any number of scenarios to get him back in the picture. I suppose he could have come back beaten and wounded to the only place he could call home. Instead, he comes back with a pile of money-which ostensibly puts him on equal footing with the others. Of course he will ever be the outsider, but nevertheless he now has some power of his own.


I think that you think more or less as Emily would have done in creating this work - as one woman understands another (are the blokes perhaps trying to be too literal) -
it doesn't matter how he got the money as Emil says it is a plot device.

There is no way Heathcliffe was going to become a successful slave trader between the ages of 16 & 19 with no money to start out with, realistically, without coming under the favour of some patron.

I'm sure it never even crossed Emily's mind but if we are going to compare plot devices to the reality of the time then maybe Heathcliffe was taken up by an older male lover/patron who did have wealth and hence his incredible riches when older lover died/is murdered.

Those things did happen, I'm sure, even in those days.

[kev67]

I think Heathcliff could have got down to Africa. He could have enlisted as a landsman, then jumped ship when they got to Africa. He couldn't have set up as a trader, but a trader could have employed him as an agent. That is what happened to Nicholas Owen, who was rescued by a trader and then offered a job. The problem is Heathcliff doesn't really have enough time to amass a fortune. He could make quite good money, but he's got to get down there first, and a trader won't give a green sixteen or seventeen-year-old a decent cut of the profits until he gets some experience and proves himself. If he was away five to seven years, he could make a lot of money. The other problem is that while he's away making a fortune, he is also trying to improve himself and acquire an education. He couldn't really do that working as a slaver in a fort on the African coast.

That mainly leaves boring, old crime. He could have been a highway man like Dick Turpin, but he'd be quite conspicuous. Perhaps sheep stealing or house breaking were more his line.

I don't see him as an old man's sexual play-thing :sosp:

As PaulT writes on his website (http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/faq.htm), Heathcliff is a bit shifty about what he was doing while he was away, but Nelly seems to think he was in the army due to his bearing and foreign accent.

[qimissung]

Yeah, it's kind of a weak point in the plot. There just isn't time for such a young, uneducated man to have amassed such wealth. The army seems the most likely place for him to have landed, but hardly anybody got rich in the army.

Most likely he acquired it unexpectedly, don't you think? Maybe like Westley in "The Princess Bride" he worked for someone who was making a great deal of money illegally, and they died, and well, there he was, and there the money was...and so it was his. Maybe it was a rich old accountant, and either he had a heart attack, or maybe someone hit him on the head.

Or maybe he ended up in the slave trade. He had a lot of brute strength and savagery. Maybe he made his way up the ladder fairly quickly, doing something vile that brought him to the captain's attention. Maybe he made off with the goods, or became a pirate.

Maybe he was the dread pirate Roberts. (sorry, Kev, couldn't resist).

[kiki1982]

You are all posing some very interesting ideas. I love your suppositions, Kiki. I tend to think, along with Emil, that it doesn't really matter how Heathcliff got his money; the important thing is that he came back. Is it also important that he has money? Because Bronte could have come up with any number of scenarios to get him back in the picture. I suppose he could have come back beaten and wounded to the only place he could call home. Instead, he comes back with a pile of money-which ostensibly puts him on equal footing with the others. Of course he will ever be the outsider, but nevertheless he now has some power of his own.

I think we can safely assume that his are ill-gotten gains, much in the way of Gatsby-both of whom also suffer unrequited love for a wealthy maiden. But where Gatsby is generally seen as pure of heart, Heathcliff is made of darker stuff. I love your Faustian theories, Kiki, and your comparisons to "The Count of Monte Cristo."

I think indeed, Heathcliff's money is a deus ex machina, as Emil said. It is a plot device.

But I do think it is important that he has money when he comes back. Indeed, Brontë could have decided to have him return wounded, but the story would have gone totally different. In this case you could almost say he 'eats' up the family. Like Dantès, he exploits everyone's weaknesses in order to slowly accomplish a revenge. He prompts Hindley to drink so he loses all interest in his estate/farm, ruins himself. Heathcliff then buys him out and thus slowly squeezes Hindley until he's got nothing left. The rest has to stand and watch while he does itL He eats up Linton's estate as well and marries his sister (which denotes he must have had a serious lot of money; the Lintons weren't poor and Linton would never have given his sister to a poor man); he unites his own son with Cathy's daughter and thus unites the two estates under his supreme command. He is like a dark irresistable force that comes into the two families' lives. They can't repell it because they don't have the strength to do it, until the end, where love wins it from the cold darkness Heathcliff represents.
If Heathcliff had no money, he could not have done this. The money does not only hand him a certain equality, but it hands him the power to prompt them to do what he would like them to do.


I think that you think more or less as Emily would have done in creating this work - as one woman understands another (are the blokes perhaps trying to be too literal) -
it doesn't matter how he got the money as Emil says it is a plot device.

There is no way Heathcliffe was going to become a successful slave trader between the ages of 16 & 19 with no money to start out with, realistically, without coming under the favour of some patron.

I'm sure it never even crossed Emily's mind but if we are going to compare plot devices to the reality of the time then maybe Heathcliffe was taken up by an older male lover/patron who did have wealth and hence his incredible riches when older lover died/is murdered.

Those things did happen, I'm sure, even in those days.

Haha, there is another woman here ;).

I think indeed the timeframe is a bit short. There are always strokes of luck, of course. You never know about the male lover ;).

Someone said something about an education:

That was another similarity with The Count. He too, sails off to the orient and comes back unrecognisable (apart from for his old fiancée who becomes almost indisposed when she sees him), with a gentleman's ways. But to get that education, all that knowledge, his household and his manners, in short, to be believable at all, he did take some 15 years instead of three. So, in a way, Dumas's story is more realistic.

That's the weak point of WH, although to be fair, we are still in a very extreme era when it comes to plots. Byron's influence can't have done much good either :p. She was fluent in German wich might have helped in constructing some barmy stories (Sturm und Drang was particularly unrealistic in its heyday).

[kev67]

I don't think Heathcliff relies on strokes of luck. He forms plans that he grimly pursues over years.

I think it does make a difference what Heathcliff was doing after he ran away at sixteen. If he had been a slaver on the African coast, it would have seemed a million miles away from Wuthering Heights. He would have just begun making lots of money with the prospects of making lots more. To tear himself away from that to return to some chilly, cheerless place like Wuthering Heights would have taken some powerful draw: his love for Catherine and desire for revenge, no doubt. I tend to think he made his money from crime; however on returning to Wuthering Heights, Nellie thinks he sounds slightly foreign and to have a military bearing. He seems to have done a lot of physical training. His return after three years could reflect some sort of contract having come to an end, such as a ship journey or a spell in the army. He seems to be good at gambling. Perhaps he amplified his earnings that way.