Frances Earnshaw

'...she had neither money nor name...'

We are introduced to the concept of Frances Earnshaw in Volume I: Chapter III.

Frances is the wife of Hindley Earnshaw and the mother of Hareton.

When Hindley Earnshaw returns home from college to Wuthering Heights, he brings a wife with him. She is described as ‘half silly,’ by Ellen “Nelly” Dean, and after only a short time at the Heights, her ‘peevish’ attitude causes Hindley to become ‘tyrannical.’

Frances dislikes Heathcliff—no reason is given by Brontë—and so, Hindley banishes him to the servants, deprives him of the education provided by the curate and insists he labour out-of-doors.

An account of what life must have been like living under one roof with Hindley and Frances is preserved in the margins of one of Catherine Earnshaw’s books:

On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners!

“‘You forget you have a master here,’ says the tyrant. ‘I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by; I heard him snap his fingers.’

“Frances pulled his hair heartily; and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of.”