Themes In Wuthering Heights 255x29

Themes in Wuthering Heights: Sadism, Cruelty and Violence. By Leia Skywalker 2000 The confronting images of brutality and inhumanity in Wuthering Heights initially shocked many of its readers in 1847. Persistently disturbed by vivid descriptions of hanging puppies, physical torment, and emotional agony , the reader is yet willingly enticed into a microcosm that encomes the wild moors. Critic Clifton Snider claims that "...the reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance," displayed in Hindley's raging hatred against Heathcliff, and subsequently in Heathcliff's torment of Isabella, Linton and young Cathy. Taunting, vivid and wild, the reader is even further drawn in to the novel. Sadism, cruelty and violence are distinctly the dominating elements in Wuthering Heights. The first, and perhaps most disturbing image of cruelty we are presented with, presides with Lockwood's dream in chapter 3. A ghost-waif tapping at his bedside window confronts Lockwood. It is apparent that the owner of this lost soul is the first Catherine Earnshaw. The image startles Lockwood, who cowardly scrapes and scratches the nymph's wrist on the broken windowpane. "Terror made me cruel...I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes." chapter 3 Dorothy Van Ghent maintains that "The cruelty of the dream is the gratuitousness of the violence wrought on a child by an emotionally unmotivated vacationer from the city, dreaming in a strange bed...The coffin-like bed shuts off any interference with the wild deterioration of the psyche." Lockwood's reaction indeed seems extreme, the foreigner to the Heights has committed a remarkable act of cowardice. This image remains one of the most haunting and violent projections of the novel. "It confronts us with the potential brutality that lurks in the unconscious of even the most innocuous character and, indeed, in one whose position as an outsider and an auditor links him most closely with the reader." (Nestor 1995) Wuthering Heights and its early inhabitant's posses the sadistic drive for strength and dominance. In the beginning chapters when Mr Earnshaw endeavors to Liverpool, he asks the children what they would like. Hindley requests a fiddle, while Catherine desires a whip. Catherine's longing for a whip mirrors the girl's yearning for power and control. Upon her father's return Catherine does not receive her whip, instead her father brings home a motherless "gypsy", Heathcliff. In place of the whip, or perhaps figuratively as the whip, Catherine's sadistic nature is presented with the opportunity to manifest itself with her dominance over him. In time Catherine's puppeteering of Heathcliff sures even old Mr 1

Earnshaw's of the boy. Catherine thrived in this situation and took pleasure in her domination. "...doing just what her father hated most, showing how her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness." chapter 5 During childhood and early adulthood the domination of Heathcliff continues with Hindley. Who constantly physically and mentally batters Heathcliff. This provides the ammunition for later vengeance on Hareton, Linton, Cathy and Isabella. Guilty of usurping old Earnshaw's affection for his biological children, Heathcliff results as the victim of merciless degradation from Hindley until his disappearance in chapter 9. "...the young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his parent's affections, and his privileges, and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries." Hindley's jealousy extends to violence along with the practice of psychologically demoralizing Heathcliff. He frequently refers to Heathcliff as an "imp of Satan", "dog" and "devil", though Heathcliff's stoic nature reciprocates no action. He insidiously waits for the hour upon which he will revive the conflict and crush his enemies. "...he [Heathcliff[ would stand Hindley's blows without winking or shedding a tear...I was sured to witness how coolly the child gathered himself up and, went on with his intention." chapter 4. "I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!" chapter 7. The death of old Earnshaw provides the opportunity for Hindley to take full advantage of his masterdom over Heathcliff. The psycho-sadistic nature of Heathcliff's torment pleasures Hindley. He degrades Heathcliff in front of the Linton's upon Cathy's return from Thrushcross Grange, "..Mr Hindley, enjoying his [Heathcliff's] discomfiture and gratified to see what a forbidding young blackguard he would be compelled to present himself. 'You may come and wish Miss Catherine welcome, like the other servants.'" chapter 7. Emily Bronte skillfully sketches a diminutive line between pleasure and pain through Hindley's torture, Catherine's sadism and Heathcliff's revenge. It is further magnified in Heathcliff's marriage to Isabella, who displayed a fascination with Heathcliff's brutality, a false perception of strength. Catherine persistently tries to divert Isabella's attention elsewhere, by calling Heathcliff "an unreclaimed creature, without refinement-without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinestone...a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man."chapter 10

2

Catherine's of Heathcliff only further allures Isabella, for it is these qualities to which she is attracted. Isabella, though a victim, partakes in Heathcliff's violence by her attraction to it. Not even the hanging of puppies redirected her attraction: "The first thing she saw me do...was to hang up her little dog, and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possible, she took that exception for herself- But no brutality disgusted her- I suppose she has an innate iration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury!" chapter 14. Isabella's sadomasochistic inclination is demonstrated when she proclaims that she wishes to "be killed by him [Heathcliff]" it is her "first desire" in the dejected marriage. The word 'killed' contains not only the literary meaning, but encomes a sexual connotation. In proclaiming that she wishes to be killed by Heathcliff, Isabella embraces the Elizabethan pun for an orgasm. The combination of the two interpretations proves a brilliant device for Bronte, and magnifies the sadistic nature in which Isabella lives. Isabella is increasingly infatuated when Hindley produces the gun he intends to murder Heathcliff with. Intimidated, yet attracted to such a powerful vice, Isabella is inclined towards violence, but is never capable of it: "I surveyed the weapon inquisitively, a hideous notion struck me. How powerful I should be possessing such an instrument! I took it from his hand and touched the blade. He looked astonished at the expression on my face assumed during a brief second. It was not horror, it was covetousness." chapter 13. Perhaps the pinnacle of sadistic sensations lies with the death of Catherine Earnshaw-Linton. Since her youth Catherine drew pleasure from the suffering of others, and her death only begins of her torture of Edgar and Heathcliff. In her marriage to Edgar, Catherine has not only betrayed Heathcliff, but she has betrayed her own world. She acknowledged what was right and chose wrong, it is a moral failure upon which Catherine holds others guilty. In turn Catherine blames Heathcliff and Edgar 'forcing' a necessary choice upon her. At the same, time, however, Catherine received pleasure over their torment. It remained sexually charging to have two men physically fighting over her. Even in youth Catherine's narcissism lead her to the belief that she was universally loved. "How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me.' chapter 12. Catherine's desire to generate Heathcliff and Edgar's suffering manifests itself in death. She claims to Nelly: "I want to frighten him [Edgar]...I'll try to break their hearts by breaking my own." chapter 11.

3

Seeing suicide as a form of revenge, Catherine is driven to anorexia and madness in the days prior to her death, Martin Turnell analyses the characteristics of this condition: "...self starvation...masochism, and suicide form a complex of psychoneurotic symptoms that is almost classically associated with female feelings of powerlessness and rage." Catherine's last encounter with Heathcliff on her deathbed reveals a frenzy of wild and raw ion. In a violent, animalistic excess of ion, Catherine and Heathcliff partake in a parody of a sexual union filled with death and destruction. "Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a bloodless lip, and scintillating eye; and she retained, in her closed fingers, a portion of the locks she had been grasping. As to her companion, while raising himself with one hand, had taken her arm with the other; and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go, I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin." This paroxysmal exchange of affection equates the height of the novel. Bronte's construction of the age releases the animal in Heathcliff. Who's eyes "flashed fiercely", and his breast "heaved convulsively". The lovers' carnivorous transposition climaxes in a violent eruption of retention. "...he...foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her into him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species." chapter 15 . Heathcliff and Catherine are driven by their violent impulses through life. However, "the former is outwardly directed and sadistic, while the latter is inward-turning and masochistic" (Nestor, 1995) Heathcliff's display of ragged emotion and barbaric infuriations afterwards appalls Nelly. She takes the news of Catherine's death to Heathcliff, and is faced with a haunted spirit in an attempt of emancipation: "He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears." chapter 16. In death, Catherine's power over Heathcliff and Edgar remains more influential than in life. Her memory haunts Heathcliff unremittingly until his death, and he never ceases to torture others until this moment. Catherine's torment transcends the physical, it is a power which unearths "no channel in the social world" and therefore dominates the book greater in death (the spiritual world), than in life. The second volume of the novel concentrates on the youngest generations of Lintons, Earnshaws and Heathcliffs. The images of violence and brutality are not as conspicuous as with the elder Catherine, Hindley and Heathcliff. They are however, just as harrowing. 4

Heathcliff continues to inflict suffering upon others, namely Hareton, Linton, young Cathy and Edgar, while the children also partake in the torment of each other. Isabella's offspring, Linton arrives at Thrushcross Grange after his mother's death. Being also the child of Heathcliff, he possesses qualities of both the 'calm and storm', which David Cecil claims are "the cowardice and weakness of calm, the cruelty and ruthlessness of the storm...a child of hate". In his teenage years, Linton grows distant from Cathy, though he has inherited from his father the wanting for domination. Linton's desire for such power never eventuates, he is too weak physically and emotionally to hold such a strength. Heathcliff enacts revenge on Edgar when he 'kidnaps' Cathy. He emotionally tortures her by prohibiting her from seeing her father in his dying weeks. It batters both Cathy and Edgar, who manages to wait on the threshold of death until his daughter's return. Heathcliff manages to psychologically scathe Hareton, Hindley's son. Hareton is symbolically the incarnation of the younger Heathcliff. He endures the same degradation and humiliation, though Hareton and Heathcliff reserve no perminatley ill feelings for each other. Hareton's nature never found fulfillment in destruction, only in rejuvenation. Although Heathcliff proclaims "now would be the precise time to revenge myself", he can't deny the changing attitude towards Hareton "I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally." Eventually, even Heathcliff's desire for violence and cruelty fades. "I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction..."chapter 28. In the final stages of the novel, Cathy torments Hareton by establishing a superiority over him via books and reading. Just as her mother did, Cathy show's Heathcliff that she has more power and influence over Hareton than he does. Cathy "is the stimulus for Hareton's cultural ambition" (Pykett 1989), her cultivation of Hareton is portrayed as a form of sexual control. Her sadistic nature reveals itself not in a destructive manner, but in a positive love, as her strive for domination does not encourage violence or cruelty, but comion and knowledge. The confronting brutality and sadism that lurks beyond the surface encomes all who enter Wuthering Heights, both character and reader alike. Emily Bronte shocks the reader with violent eruptions of ion and physical torment, yet the reader is uncontrollably caught in a web of intrigue, lust and ion. Within the novel "difference can exist without opposition, contradictory elements can exist side by side without disturbance or interaction... Wuthering Heights aquires a transgressive power that offers a potent blend of the satisfaction of fantasy and the fascination of horror."

5