Sadism, Cruelty and Violence in Wuthering Heights
Note that the following essay is wholly prone to narration. I suggest you use it as a compilation of evidence and use the content to make your own arguments.
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 encompasses 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." (Ch 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) Even before Nelly Dean delivers her story, Lockwood - and the reader - are given a premonition of the cruelty that is to follow.
Wuthering Heights and its early inhabitants possess 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 surpasses even old Mr Earnshaw's parental control 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." (Ch 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 (Ch 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 surpassed to witness how coolly the child gathered himself up and, went on with his intention." (Ch 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!" (Ch 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.'" (Ch 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 refinementwithout cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinestone...a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man." (Ch 10)
Catherine's account 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 admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury!" (Ch 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 encompasses 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." (Ch 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.' (Ch 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." (Ch 11).
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 passion. In a violent, animalistic excess of passion, 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 passage 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." (Ch 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." (Ch 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.
We have said that he dominates the novel. We could say, in fact, that the novel is ridden by him. Looming depressingly large, his ponderous weight costs it a heavy price. First of all, he deprives it of tension. The struggle between him and Edgar Linton is unequal, for he is supernaturally strong and Linton is ever a whimpering weakling. When Heathcliff comes back to revenge himself upon the two families, readers expect a real struggle, something that can challenge their intelligence. In that they are disappointed. The novel falls sho:t of the standard of an action story. It is a mere horror story.
Secondly, some members of the Bronte Society are said to have found the central theme of the book to be love conquering hate. That theme, indeed, is almost there, but for Heathcliff. The novel has a "pattern", to borrow a term from K. M. Forster. It is formed by the opposite courses of the elder and the younger
Catharines: whereas the elder Catharine forsakes her congenial mate Heathcliff and marries the wealthy
Edgar Linton, lor which action she pays with her life, the younger Catharine, though married to young
Heathcliff by force, chooses the uncouth but innately congenial Hareton Karnshaw, for which action she prospers. Hareton occupies the same position in the second circle as Heathcliff in the first, and the poignant irony is that Heathcliff oppresses him by deforming his mind. Now, to complete the pattern, Heathcliff must see the irony and admit his sad folly. And that would give the book a large measure of humanity. But he does not. He appreciates Hareton for his likeness to himself, but he never notices the irony. He slows down the persecution of Hareton and young Catharine only because he has mysteriously lost appetite for sadistic pleasure, not because of any remorse. Then he dies supernaturally. Thus the "pattern" is marred. As things stand, we cannot say that the idea of love conquering hate is there in the book, for if we consider the young couple as representing love, they do not triumph over Heathcliff the hater, but merely luckily survive his tyranny. Neither does it make much sense to say that Heathcliff's death symbolizes love triumphant over hate. His hate, for one thing, is there: it has not been vanquished or annihilated. As for his love, when analysed. it will send shudders to those sentimentalists that read into the book such a tender and exalted theme.