Brutality In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

The relationship between Heathcliff and Hindley revealed and developed the abusive nature of Heathcliff. Heathcliff was taken in as a young boy into a wealthy family that had two children. Ever since the day he was brought home the eldest son, Hindley, resented how the father favored him more. For example, Heathcliff threatened to tell their father if Hindley did not let him have his horse. This one childish threat had created the foundation of the resentment between the two men. Heathcliff threatened to tell their father that Hindley was making him feel unwelcome and abused emotionally, Hindley decided to not see if Heathcliff was going to follow through with the threat therefore gave him the horse. Later on through life, once the father dies, Hindley decides to take his absence as an excuse to start really physically abusing Heathcliff. He would beat him and punch him without thought of how this would transfer into the rest of his life. Heathcliff was also verbally assaulted by Hindley which is a twist on the traditional sense of cruelty. Hindley is demeaning towards Heathcliff and calls him a slave and make sure that he know that he is not equal with himself or his sister Catherine. This point planted the seed of doubt and not being good enough for the rest of his life. This continual mental assault forged the mindset of little Heathcliff to how he would exact revenge on Hindley for all of his wrongdoings. This cruelty from Hindley was due to the favoritism that Heathcliff received as a child, the death of his father, the death of his wife, and the constant reminder of his wife through his son. The constant cruelty is the motive for Heathcliff's actions once he returns to the Heights. Through baiting Hindley, in his own personal torment from his wife's passing, all the money and possessions are gambled away with Heathcliff as the new owner. Wuthering Heights itself

Cruelty compels one to inflict cruelty upon others. In her novel, Wuthering Heights, Brontë illustrates the rough life of Heathcliff, conflicted with whether he should focus his life on loving Catherine Earnshaw or inflicting revenge on those who tortured him as a child. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff into the Earnshaw family as an orphan gypsy, a social class that most of the Earnshaw did not care for. The eldest child of Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley, abuses Heathcliff horribly, shaping the way Heathcliff perceives the world around him. Catherine Earnshaw, Hindley’s younger sister, motivates Heathcliff to endure this pain through their affectionate relationship. With his heart focused on revenge, Heathcliff devises a cruel plan to retaliate those who hurt him; he returns to Wuthering Heights as a refined, powerful man. He takes some of his anger out on Hareton Earnshaw, Hindley’s son; this parallels Hindley’s abuse towards Heathcliff. Through Hindley’s and Heathcliff’s abusiveness in Wuthering Heights, Brontë asserts that cruelty cycles from its perpetrators to its victims.

Catherine tries to better her station both by wedding Edgar Linton and by her steady perusing. She snickers at Hareton on account of his absence of training. Heathcliff concedes that Hareton is

Heathcliff has an obsession with Catherine, and undergoes emotional stress after her death (Bloomfield 291). His unsympathetic personality is also a trait of his mental disorder (Bloomfield 297). Heathcliff’s obsession can be classified as Monomania, he is fixed on one idea to the extent of physical and mental destruction (Bloomfield 295). Heathcliff lets hid ID take over instead of suppressing his instinctual feelings. Heathcliff becomes reckless and self-destructive and develops psychotic depression, he then retreats to Catherine’s room to die (Bloomfield 291). Throughout the novel it seems as though Heathcliff completely ignores his Ego and Super-Ego, and lives only by his ID. Emily Bronte uses mental illness in her characters and their death to alter the plot of Wuthering Heights. All of the characters fit into periodically correct illnesses, but the focus

For Heathcliff, even though he was the one that plot the revenge he was the one also in pain because he was creating pain to the person he loved. Since his lover betrayed him. In chapter 3, it shows the present when Heathcliff is in pain, calling for the person he loved. ‘“Come in! Come in!”. he sobbed. “Cathy, do come. Oh. Do once more! Oh! My heart’s darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!” (p.30). Heathcliff already did his revenge towards Catherine, and thinking it would satisfy him, but it didn 't. Instead throughout the years, he had been thinking of Catherine and hope he could see her. The revenge that Heathcliff plotted, it also affected Hareton. Since Hindley was abused Heathcliff which caused Heathcliff to cause his son to become a servant like what Hindley did to him. Since Hareton became a servant it caused him to lack in education. Since he is in the bottom of the social class it caused him to be vulnerable to be verbally abused by Linton. In chapter 17, it explains how Hareton was suppose to be the one inherit Wuthering Heights, but he wasn 't since Heathcliff revenge toward Hindley was to get all his money which allows him to become the owner of Wuthering Heights. “In that manner Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighborhood… dependence on his father’s inveterate enemy, and lives in his own house as a servant, deprived of the advantage of wages and quite

When Heathcliff returns three years later, his love for Catherine motivates him to enact revenge upon all those who separated him from her. Since he last saw Catherine, he has “fought through a bitter life”; he “struggled only for [her]” (Brontë 71). Nelly observes a “half-civilized ferocity” in Heathcliff’s brows (Brontë 70); she views him as “an evil beast…waiting his time to spring and destroy” (Brontë 79). Heathcliff’s obsessive love for Catherine becomes a menacing threat. Heathcliff reproaches Catherine because she “treated [him]

As a young orphan who is brought to Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is thrown into abuse as Hindley begins to treat Heathcliff as a servant in reaction to Mr. Earnshaw’s death. As a reaction to both this and Catherine discarding Heathcliff for Edgar, Heathcliff’s sense of misery and embarrassment causes him to change and spend the rest of his time seeking for justice. Throughout this time, Heathcliff leans on violence to express the revenge that he so seeks by threatening people and displaying villainous traits. However, Heathcliff’s first symptom of change in personality is when Heathcliff runs into Hareton after Cathy “tormented

As Heathcliff seeks his revenge, he becomes fiendish and is constantly associated with diabolical feelings, images and actions. The use of the imagery reinforces the inhuman aspect of Heathcliff. He regrets saving the infant Hareton. Nelly recalled that his face bore the greatest pain at he being the instrument that thwarted his own revenge. He takes perverse pleasure in the fact that Hareton was born with a sensitive nature, which Heathcliff has corrupted and degraded. Heathcliff's pleasure at this corruption is increased by the fact that-: "Hareton is damnably fond of me". Heathcliff's cruelty is also evident when he hangs Isabella's dog despite her protestations. His attitude is devoid of fatherly feeling. He sees him only as a pawn in his revenge and his main

Hareton is thus reduced to an inhuman “it.” It is not surprising, then, that Hareton is afraid of his father, but Hindley is angered because this reminds him of his failure as a father. Declaring that Hareton should be “cropped” like a fierce dog, Hindley drops his son over the railing of a staircase when the latter shrinks away from him. He is unperturbed when Nelly exclaims: “He hates you – they all hate you – that’s the truth! A happy family you have, and a pretty state you’re come to!” (77). Hindley does not seem to comprehend that physical abuse leads not to love but to fear and hatred – and ultimately, alienation from his family.

While at Thrushcross Grange, she grows infatuated with Edgar, despite her love for Heathcliff. Edgar came from an upper class family as well and took care of her when she was in a dog accident. This leads to her acceptance of Edgar Linton’s marriage proposal despite her statements regarding her love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff overhears unfortunate passages of Catherine's discourse and disappears for a period during which he mysteriously makes his fortune and changes irrevocably from the person he was. Vengeance consumes him, and Heathcliff attempts to destroy the lives of those who wronged him, (as well as their children). Ultimately, Heathcliff’s bitterly executed vengeance is effaced by a love between Hareton and Cathy that mirrors Heathcliff’s own love for Catherine. Hareton is Catherine’s nephew and Cathy is Catherine’s daughter, which makes the two first cousins.

From a very early age, Heathcliff teaches Hareton to hate his father and allows him to act as uncivilized as a rough and wild farmhand. The way that Heathcliff raises Hareton is quite similar to the way Heathcliff himself was raised. “‘I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly: it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he’ll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance. I’ve got him faster than his scoundrel of a father secured me, and lower; for he takes a pride in his brutishness’” (161). Heathcliff raises Hareton the same way that he himself was raised, with an absence of love and a rift between him and his peers. It is obvious there is no lost love between the two, at least on Heathcliff’s part as evident by all of the times when Heathcliff taunts Hareton. It is also evident in the way that Heathcliff keeps Hareton uneducated, just as Heathcliff once was. “‘Can’t read it?’ cried Catherine; ‘I can read it: it’s English. But I want to know why it is there.’ Linton giggled: the first appearance of mirth he had exhibited. ‘He does not know his letters,’ he said to his cousin. ‘Could you believe in the existence of such a colossal dunce’” (162). Heathcliff does this to create a barrier between Hareton and his peers and force Hareton to be as isolated as Heathcliff once believed he was. In other words, Heathcliff had a longing for someone to

Bronte, The author of the Wuthering Heights, expresses many themes and morals in her book. The one most important in the Wuthering Heights is the theme of love and cruelty. The main characters, Catherine and Heathcliff, show these actions time and time again. They occur because of the other, much like the yin and the yang. Love leads to cruelty and cruelty leads to love. In Wuthering Heights, there are two different types of love shown: platonic and passionate. Both of these types of love lead to cruelty to other characters. As Heathcliff states boldly within the first few chapters of the novel, love’s cruelty survives even beyond death. “Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! My heart’s darling; hear me this time, Catherine, at last!”

Hareton is introduced at an early age to domestic abuse, both physical and mental, that leads him to distort his mind on how he views life and who he has to respect. From his birth, Hindley’s father detests him and wishes to avoid all contact with his son. The death of Hareton’s mother upon his birth greatly troubles his father Hindley who

Hareton never knew the love of a mother and only had enough good fortune to have Nelly as a nurse for a very short time. The combination of this and fact that Hindley, after Frances’s death became a wild, drunken and lost man, made Hareton a quiet child. We next see Hareton as six-year-old boy with a mouth willing to let out a stream of curses. Heathcliff, after returning and lodging at Wuthering Heights has started to extend his influence over Hareton. He stops his education but makes him feel as though it was his own choice.

Love can make people say and do crazy things; it can completely consume them. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses psychic pathology in the personalities of her characters. Unhealthy thoughts and actions take place because of the psychic pathology found in the novel. Each of the characters relates to the mental unhealthiness; the causes of their twisted mentality can vary. Mr. Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw’s relationship embodies the damaging mindsets that Bronte imbues throughout Wuthering Heights.