Revenge after injury

Shelley’s creature begins capable of affection and turns to murder after every human door closes. Heathcliff begins as a child made other and returns as a systematic avenger of Hindley’s abuse and Cathy’s marriage. Both plots make the original injury real and still refuse to baptize the later cruelty as justice.

The difference matters. The creature can narrate his education and ask for a companion; Victor’s refusal is a second creation-crime. Heathcliff narrates little and builds a property machine that reproduces humiliation in Hareton and young Cathy. Pair the books to ask what revenge is for — speech that fails, or power that succeeds — and then return to each novel’s quieter counter-currents: Walton’s turn homeward, the second generation at the Heights.