Brontë Studies

The Journal of the Brontë Society

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Violence in Wuthering Heights

Graeme Tytler

To cite this article: Graeme Tytler (2021) Violence in Wuthering�Heights , Brontë Studies, 46:3,
262-273, DOI: 10.1080/14748932.2021.1914999

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14748932.2021.1914999

Published online: 28 Jun 2021.

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 € STUDIES,
BRONTE Vol. 46 No. 3, July 2021, 262–273

Violence in Wuthering Heights

Graeme Tytler

Violence in Wuthering Heights is sometimes thought to be so grim in its

manifold guises as to leave some readers with the impression that the
novel comprises a seemingly endless array of physical attacks on the peo-
ple portrayed therein. It is true that there are episodes in which some of
the central figures inflict bodily assaults of various kinds on one another.
Yet it is interesting to note that such assaults are not only comparatively
few, but that they have little of the outrageous brutality characteristic of the
sundry threats or images of violence which are now and then voiced or har-
boured by almost all the characters, yet which, ironically enough, are sel-
dom, if ever, effectuated. In other words, much of the violence in the
narrative tends to remain safely within the boundaries of the human mind
and the human tongue. It is through this very finding, moreover, that we
come to see the extent to which Emily Bront€e’s treatment of violence is at
once discreetly realistic and, from a psychological viewpoint, remarkably
modern. But at the same time as the author suggests that a proclivity to
violence, whether physical or mental, is inherent in practically all human
beings, she nevertheless reminds us, partly through her presentation of
Hareton Earnshaw, that there are ways in which violence may be controlled,
and even avoided altogether.

KEYWORDS Emily Bront€e, kill, murder, punishment, suicide, violence, Wuthering

Heights

Readers of Wuthering Heights (1847) can scarcely have failed to notice how
much the novel is permeated by various kinds of violence.1 It is, moreover, the
very violence of its content that has put a good many people off the book, includ-
ing academics devoted to the study of English literature. No doubt, living as we
do in a society, at least here in Britain, where an act of physical violence wrought
by one person against another is in many cases against the law, not a few of us
admirers of Emily Bront€e’s masterpiece have been similarly perturbed, and princi-
pally so by the sundry acts of violence inflicted by her characters on one another,
whether by hand, fist, foot, fingernails, teeth, iron weight or knife. Thus we may
mention Hindley’s physical violence to Heathcliff in chapter 4; Heathcliff’s to

# The Bront€e Society 2021 DOI: 10.1080/14748932.2021.1914999

 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 263

Edgar in chapter 7; Catherine’s to Nelly, Edgar and Hareton in chapter 8;

Catherine’s and Isabella’s to each other in chapter 10; Heathcliff’s to Cathy and
Nelly in chapter 13; Heathcliff’s and Hindley’s to each other, and Heathcliff’s
and Isabella’s to each other in chapter 17; Heathcliff’s to Cathy and Nelly Dean
in chapter 27; and Hareton’s to Cathy in chapter 31, to cite the most glaring
instances.2 However, for those readers who love animals, and perhaps even set
store by animal rights, the physical violence perpetrated against dogs, horses and
birds in the narrative may be just as perturbing. Indeed, those very readers may
well take umbrage at Heathcliff’s tendency in boyhood to shoot and trap birds,
and in adulthood to hit or kick dogs and horses, to say nothing of his hanging of
Isabella’s springer spaniel.3 Such readers might go even further, not only by
denouncing Catherine for asking her father to bring her a whip from Liverpool,
or for ‘cutting the wing of a goose’ (WH, p. 52) at the Christmas dinner in chap-
ter 7, but also by condemning outright Heathcliff’s, Hareton’s and Lockwood’s
practice of hunting game in the Yorkshire countryside.4
It is nevertheless obvious that animals are, in turn, now and again physically
violent towards human beings in Emily’s novel.5 We see early examples of this
when Lockwood is attacked by the dogs in chapter 1 and when Joseph sets those
same dogs on to Lockwood for seizing his lantern in chapter 2. As at Wuthering
Heights, the dogs at Thrushcross Grange are evidently trained to assault out-
siders, especially intrusive outsiders. In this connection, it is noteworthy that
Heathcliff and Catherine’s illicit visit to the Grange one Sunday evening, for
which the latter is savagely bitten on the ankle by a bulldog, happens to take
place at a well-appointed house owned by the local magistrate, who, overseeing
as he does court cases and other legal matters, is perhaps understandably ever on
the alert for criminals of any and every stamp.6 This is amply suggested when,
perhaps prompted by his servant Robert’s having presumed that Heathcliff and
Catherine are members of a gang intent on murdering the inmates of the Grange,
and even having assured Heathcliff that he ‘shall go to the gallows for this’ (WH,
p. 43), Mr Linton, while examining the latter’s personal appearance, says this to
his wife: ‘Oh, my dear Mary, look here! Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy — yet the
villain scowls so plainly in his face, would it not be a kindness to the country to
hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts, as well as features?’ (WH,
p. 43). That the idea of this extreme form of punishment seems to be deeply
ingrained in the minds of the Linton family as a whole is plain enough when, for
example, Isabella relates that, in the aftermath of Heathcliff’s fight with Hindley
in chapter 17, she felt ‘as reckless as some malefactors show themselves at the
foot of the gallows’ (WH, p. 157); and when Cathy, fearing violence from
Hareton at the very moment he is, ironically enough, about to apologize to her
for evicting her and Linton Heathcliff from ‘the house’, ‘frightened’ him off, as
she informs Nelly, ‘by [her] assertions that [she] would tell papa, and that he
should be put in prison and hanged’ (WH, p. 222).
Since this punitive ethos appears to be tacitly accepted by those who constitute
the inherently patriarchal society portrayed in the novel, it is easy to see why
264 GRAEME TYTLER

punishment in general and corporal punishment in particular should be regarded

as something to be readily resorted to in the upbringing and education of chil-
dren. Not surprisingly, therefore, one may draw a plausible link between the
physical acts of violence perpetrated by Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine and
the fact that they have each been subjected to corporal punishment during child-
hood. Thus we are told, for example, that Catherine, having been caught
‘grinning and spitting’ at the foundling brought home by Mr Earnshaw, is given
‘a sound blow from her father to teach her cleaner manners’ (WH, p. 32). That
Mr Earnshaw is even more inclined to mete out corporal punishment to Hindley
is already obvious enough when Heathcliff, who has been thrashed by the latter
three times one week, gives him the following warning: ‘if I speak of these blows
[to Mr Earnshaw], you’ll get them again with interest’ (WH, p. 33).7 It is, there-
fore, little wonder that Hindley, who feels painfully deprived of his father’s love,
should not only thrash Heathcliff to make up for this lack of affection, but that,
after taking over the mastership of the Heights on his father’s death, he should
also assume the latter’s role as punisher, doing so partly by delegating to Joseph
the authority to thrash Heathcliff or to box Catherine’s ears for their sundry acts
of insubordination.8
It is, accordingly, not difficult to see why Heathcliff, beaten up or whipped as
he has so often been by Hindley and Joseph in his youth, should as an adult now
and again deem physical punishment a suitable way of dealing with those who
have in some way offended or angered him. Thus, for example, we may refer to
the occasion when, having hit Cathy hard for trying to wrest the house key from
his grasp, Heathcliff says this to her: ‘I know how to chastise children, you see’
(WH, p. 239; emphasis added). It is also interesting to note the extent to which
Catherine, too, shares Heathcliff’s outlook in this respect. One example may be
seen when, in her annoyance with Edgar and Isabella in the early part of her mar-
ried life, Catherine says this to Nelly: ‘though I humour both, I think a smart
chastisement might improve them, all the same’ (WH, p. 87; emphasis added).9
Later, Catherine says this to Edgar in response to the accusation he has unfairly
made against her: ‘I wish Heathcliff may flog you sick, for daring to think an evil
thought of me!’ (WH, p. 102; emphasis added). Nelly, too, seems conscious of
the effectiveness of corporal punishment when, for example, in her rage at having
been trapped with Cathy inside the Heights by Heathcliff, she says this to his son
Linton: ‘You want whipping for bringing us in here at all, with your dastardly,
puling tricks’ (WH, pp. 240–41; emphasis added).
Nelly’s aforementioned words remind us of the frequency with which some of
the main characters are prone to threatening one another with various kinds of
physical violence, many of which threats are expressions of anger for what some-
one has said or done. The character most given to making such threats is
undoubtedly Heathcliff, one memorable instance among several being his threat
to detain Nelly at the Heights unless she agrees to arrange a meeting between
him and Catherine at the Grange, and, in the event of her refusal to do so, his
warning her that he will ‘fight [his] way to Catherine over Linton and his
 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 265

footmen’, and that ‘if Edgar Linton meets [him, he would] not hesitate to knock
him down, and give him enough to ensure his quiescence while [he stays]’, add-
ing, ‘If his servants oppose me, I shall threaten them off with these pistols’ (WH,
p. 135). Some of Heathcliff’s physical threats are almost too brutal to be practic-
able, such as the one that Nelly learns about when, having asked young Hareton
whether the curate teaches him to ‘read and write’, she sums up the boy’s answer
thus: ‘No, I was told the curate should have his — teeth dashed down his —
throat, if he stepped over the threshold — Heathcliff had promised that!’ (WH,
p. 98). What is especially interesting about all these threats is that not one of
them is ever carried out by Heathcliff.10
The same is true of the physical threats voiced on occasion by Hindley, and
nowhere more grotesquely than in chapter 9 when, in his drunken state, he utters
the most improbable threats to Nelly and to an infant Hareton. Yet though
Hindley is by then especially memorable for his various physical threats to
Heathcliff, both during Mr Earnshaw’s lifetime and after he has taken over the
mastership of the Heights, no such threat is ever actually fulfilled. Indeed, it is
curious to note how well the author brings out Hindley’s essential fecklessness
through the outrageous threats he fails to realize. Accordingly, it comes as no sur-
prise to the reader when Hindley says this to Nelly in his drunken state in the
Heights kitchen: ‘with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving
knife, Nelly!’, and then even gone so far as to push the point of that instrument
between her teeth, she tells of being ‘never much afraid of his vagaries’, and that
she ‘spat out, and affirmed it tasted detestably’ (WH, p. 65). Hardly less vicious
in the same context is Hindley’s following verbal response to his son’s frightened
reactions to his behaviour: ‘As sure as I’m living, I’ll break the brat’s neck’ (WH,
p. 66), not to mention the threat he has made only moments earlier: ‘I want to
kill some of you, I shall have no rest till I do!’ (WH, p. 65). What is notable
about the latter threat is the way in which it ironically foreshadows his telling
Isabella of his daily intention to murder Heathcliff should he find his bedroom
door unlocked. Yet when he later reassures Isabella that he is about to kill
Heathcliff, we sense much the same inability on his part to honour such a
resolution.11
The foregoing detail forms part of several references in the text to killing or
murder as an idea which, oddly enough, now and again weighs on the minds of
the characters.12 Thus, for example, when called upon by Isabella to see to a ser-
iously injured Hindley, Joseph instantly says: ‘Und soa, yah been murthering on
him?’ (WH, p. 157), with much the same emotion as that with which Zillah, on
catching sight of Lockwood lying on the floor, taunts Hareton with this rhet-
orical question: ‘Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones?’ (WH, p.
14). Such metaphors are, to be sure, not unrelated to the threats made by some
of the characters to kill someone who has angered them. A flagrant example of
this may be noted when, just after being violently turned out of ‘the house’ with
Cathy by Hareton, Linton Heathcliff threatens the latter as follows: ‘I’ll kill you!
[ … ] Devil! devil! I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!’ (WH, p. 221). That detail, which
266 GRAEME TYTLER

forms part of Cathy’s confession to Nelly about her illicit visits to the Heights, is,
ironically enough, followed up when, alluding to Linton’s having coughed up
blood as a consequence of the eviction, Cathy tells Nelly of her own reaction to
Hareton’s forbidding her to visit Linton upstairs: ‘I exclaimed that he had killed
Linton and I would enter’ (WH, p. 222). The rage underlying these threats to
kill, or accusations of killing, is especially linked with those contexts in which
Heathcliff threatens to kill Cathy in much the same spirit with which, in his rage
at having been struck on the throat by Edgar, he earlier threatened to ‘murder
him some time’ (WH, p. 103). This we note when, for example, he reacts to
Cathy’s vituperation of him in chapter 33 with these words: ‘Fling her into the
kitchen! I’ll kill her, Ellen Dean, if you let her come into my sight again!’ (WH,
p. 284). This threat is presently supplemented when, suddenly relaxing his tight
hold on Cathy, Heathcliff addresses her thus: ‘You must learn to avoid putting
me in a passion, or I shall really murder you, some time!’ (WH, p. 285).13 In this
connection, it is interesting to recall how much at their last tryst Catherine and
Heathcliff accuse each other of murder or self-murder in their love relationship.14
Even just after Catherine’s passing Heathcliff is overheard by Nelly uttering these
words: ‘You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their mur-
derers’ (WH, p. 148). Moreover, later in a long confession to Nelly, Heathcliff
describes Catherine’s haunting of him for eighteen years as tantamount to being ‘a
strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hair-breadths, to beguile
me with the spectre of a hope, through eighteen years!’ (WH, p. 257).
The irony of all those references to killing and murder — and here we might
include remarks that various other characters sometimes make about themselves
or about someone else being killed or murdered or nearly so — lies in our even-
tually learning that nobody is actually killed or murdered at any time in the nar-
rative.15 Even Isabella, notwithstanding her murderous thoughts against
Heathcliff, shows that she would not go so far as to kill him, much as she would
at the same time be content to imagine his being killed by someone other than
herself.16 The fact that all threats to kill or murder, as with other threats of phys-
ical violence, including, most notably, the threats of suicide uttered by Heathcliff,
Catherine and Hindley, are never executed, may help us to understand why so
much physical violence in Emily’s novel happens to take place almost entirely
within the boundaries of the mind and the tongue.17 And, as the author suggests,
it is already in childhood that mental violence of all kinds seems to take root.
Certainly, the mental violence that Catherine shows as an adult appears to have
something to do with her tendency as a young girl both to be physically violent
towards, and domineering over, her peers and to be generally rebellious towards
her parents.18 This may in part explain her aggressive attitude not only towards
Edgar, Isabella and Nelly in the early months of her married life, but even
towards Heathcliff after his return to Gimmerton, as may be seen, for example,
when, still mentally unstable after the brain fever she is convalescing from, she
says this to him during their final meeting: ‘I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I
care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do!’ (WH, p. 140).
 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 267

Catherine’s mental violence is, to be sure, hardly as intense or as extreme as

Heathcliff’s, which, not unlike Catherine’s, seems to be rooted in unpleasant
childhood experiences. Indeed, no character in the novel has a more brutal men-
tality than that which Heathcliff already displays in boyhood, as is quite evident,
for example, when, having assured Nelly in the account of his and Catherine’s
illicit visit to the Grange that he would not exchange his condition at the Heights
for Edgar Linton’s, he goes on to say: ‘not if I might have the privilege of flinging
Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!’
(WH, p. 42). Much of Heathcliff’s mental violence, especially after his return to
Gimmerton, is of an essentially prospective nature. Thus to Catherine’s having
warned him about the fingernails by which Isabella has just managed to release
herself from her sister-in-law’s tight grasp, Heathcliff replies: ‘I’d wrench them
off her fingers, if they ever menaced me’ (WH, p. 94). And it is in much the same
vein that he presently goes on to tell Catherine what he would do to Isabella if
she were living with him: ‘You’d hear of odd things, if I lived alone with that
mawkish, waxen face; the most ordinary would be painting on its white the col-
ours of the rainbow, and turning the blue eyes black, every day or two’ (WH, p.
94). It is, however, noteworthy that Heathcliff never once treats Isabella to such
brutal acts, and that, even after he has been viciously struck on the throat by
Edgar in the Grange kitchen, he simply addresses the latter as follows: ‘By God,
Mr. Linton, I’m mortally sorry that you are not worth knocking down!’ (WH, p.
101) — words that, incidentally, are surely more insulting than any physical vio-
lence he might have resorted to in retaliation. Still, Heathcliff seems none the less
anxious to make up for this desistence by imagining how he would deal with
Edgar physically in some future context when he presently says this to Catherine:
‘I would not strike him with my fist, but I’d kick him with my foot, and experi-
ence considerable satisfaction’ (WH, p. 102). Moreover, having shortly after-
wards been warned by Catherine that, just after going out of the kitchen to the
front entrance, Edgar will ‘return with a brace of pistols, and half-a-dozen assis-
tants’, Heathcliff angrily puts this rhetorical question to her: ‘Do you suppose
I’m going with that blow burning in my gullet?’, supplementing it with the follow-
ing vow: ‘By Hell, no! I’ll crush his ribs in like a rotten hazel-nut, before I cross the
threshold! If I don’t floor him now, I shall murder him some time, so, as you value
his existence, let me get at him!’ (WH, p. 103). Such resolutions are, however, not
realized once Heathcliff has presently decided to ‘avoid a struggle against three
underlings [of Edgar]’ (WH, p. 103) who have just entered the court.
Even more gruesome in content is the imaginary scenario that Heathcliff
relates to Nelly after dismissing Isabella from ‘the house’ in chapter 14: ‘I have
no pity! I have no pity! The worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their
entrails! It is a moral teething, and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to
the increase of pain’ (WH, p. 134). Such a sentiment is forcibly linked with those
that Heathcliff conveys to Nelly moments after locking Nelly and Cathy in the
Heights in preparation for the latter’s marriage to his son: ‘How she does stare!
It’s odd what a savage feeling I have to anything that seems afraid of me! Had I
268 GRAEME TYTLER

been born where laws are less strict, and tastes less dainty, I should treat myself
to a slow vivisection of those two, as an evening’s amusement’ (WH, p. 238).
Yet, as is made perfectly plain, never once does Heathcliff injure Cathy or his son
Linton, or, for that matter, Isabella or Edgar, with any one of those physical acts
of brutality he so gloatingly imagines.19
If Heathcliff’s mental violence seems to have its origins partly in the traumas
of his childhood both before and after he was picked up by Mr Earnshaw in
Liverpool, the reader may well consider why it is that Lockwood and Nelly
Dean, about whom next to nothing is known about their early lives, should also
be conspicuous from time to time for the violence of their minds. To be sure, nei-
ther of them uses any physical violence to speak of, even while clearly disposed
to do so on occasion, as, for example, when mistakenly presuming that he has
just been insulted by Joseph, a ‘sufficiently enraged’ Lockwood ‘stepped towards
the aged rascal with an intention of kicking him out of the door’ (WH, p. 11),
but is prevented from doing so at the last minute on realizing that the insult was
directed at Cathy. Such desistence on Lockwood’s part may help to account for
his compensating himself, not unlike Nelly, with physical violence at a purely
mental level as a means of coping with his feelings of anger.20 Perhaps the most
striking example of this is provided by the two ghastly nightmares, in which,
through the verbal violence of the Revd Jabes Branderham and the physical vio-
lence of the members of his congregation towards one another, as well as through
his own excessive cruelty to the waif child, Lockwood doubtless achieves a cath-
artic release of the anger induced in him by the unpleasantness of his experiences
at the Heights in the first two chapters.
Nelly’s mental violence, on the other hand, seems due generally to her experi-
ences of the rough-and-tumble of everyday life since she became part of Mr
Earnshaw’s household as a youngster. This is somewhat suggested by her gener-
ally hostile attitude towards Catherine — an attitude by which she betrays a curi-
ously tough mentality, not to say a certain hardness of heart, as is especially
apparent when, having noticed towards the end of Catherine’s tryst with
Heathcliff that her mistress’s arms ‘had fallen relaxed, and her head hung down’,
Nelly reacts with this thought: ‘She’s fainted or dead, [ … ] so much the better.
Far better that she should be dead, than lingering a burden and a misery-maker
to all about her’ (WH, p. 143).21 Such toughness of outlook has already been
manifested when in an attempt to help Heathcliff recover his self-respect on the
Christmas morning after he asked her to ‘make [him] decent’ because he is ‘going
to be good’, she includes this flattering comparison between himself and Edgar
Linton: ‘You are younger, and yet, I’ll be bound, you are taller and twice as
broad across the shoulders — you could knock him down in a twinkling; don’t
you feel that you could?’ (WH, pp. 49–50). Nelly’s image of Heathcliff is clearly
that of someone capable of vicariously carrying out the kind of physical violence
which, being a woman, she is reluctant to carry out herself. Yet it seems as if the
violence Nelly thus imagines is the product of her own mind rather than the vio-
lence she somewhat unfairly imagines Heathcliff being disposed to perpetrate. A
 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 269

blatant example of this may be noted just after Heathcliff has by pure chance
saved Hareton from certain death. Thus Nelly imagines what Heathcliff would
probably have done if he had known that the child had been dropped over the
banister by Hindley: ‘Had it been dark, I dare say, he would have tried to remedy
the mistake by smashing Hareton’s skull on the steps’ (WH, p. 66). Nor should
we forget that Nelly later goes so far as to imagine the following scenario unless
Cathy is released by Heathcliff from her imprisonment at the Heights in time to
visit her dying father: ‘Her father shall see her, I vowed, and vowed again, if that
devil be killed on his own door-stones in trying to prevent it!’ (WH, p. 250).
Such thoughts on Nelly’s part, and, indeed, similarly violent ones of hers in other
contexts, should remind us that, despite nowhere using any kind of vicious phys-
ical violence to speak of, she scarcely deserves to be looked on merely as the
level-headed, easy-going ‘good sort’ she has so often been taken for.
One by-product of a mind given to violent images and attitudes is undoubtedly
a similarly violent figurative language.22 We note, for example, how readily the
genteel Lockwood in his fits of anger or frustration falls back on extravagant
similes and metaphors to convey the unpleasantness of his experiences at the
Heights. Thus as well as using conventional ones such as ‘storm’, ‘tempest’ and
‘high wind’ when referring to various stages of his fight with the dogs, he seems to
give fullest vent to his anger when he says this to Heathcliff about their behaviour:
‘The herd of possessed swine could have had no worse spirits in them than those
animals of yours, sir’, before further exaggerating the danger of the dogs to an
absurd degree by adding: ‘You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of
tigers!’ (WH, p. 5). Such a comparison surely betokens the violence of Lockwood’s
mind rather than the violence of the dogs, and it is a notable instance of his ten-
dency to suggest that certain physical acts or situations are far more violent than
they are in reality. For example, when describing Cathy’s angry response to his
offering to reach the tea-canisters on the chimney piece, he does so with this com-
parison: ‘she turned upon me as a miser might turn, if any one attempted to assist
him in counting his gold’ (WH, p. 8). There is little doubt that such a comparison
is far grimmer than the reality of Cathy’s conduct towards him.23
Nelly’s comparisons also tend to have a similarly violent quality. Thus it is obvi-
ous that her deep dislike of Joseph accounts for the hyperbolic language with which
she rather fallaciously sums him up as a human being, thereby suggesting that he is
far worse than he is in reality: ‘the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever
ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses on his neigh-
bours’ (WH, p. 35; emphasis added). Noteworthy, too, is Nelly’s practice of impart-
ing the idea of a certain kind of behaviour or a certain relationship or even a look
with images which, entailing animals or plants, seem somewhat excessive.24 For
example, to convey the nature of Heathcliff’s utterly hostile manner of staring at
Isabella, she does so by suggesting ‘as one might do at a strange repulsive animal, a
centipede from the Indies, for instance’ (WH, p. 93). It goes without saying that
Nelly has probably never had first-hand knowledge of such an exotic creature but,
rather, has come across a description of one in one of the many books she has read.
270 GRAEME TYTLER

Not surprising, therefore, is the occasional image she draws from the Bible, with
which she is evidently quite familiar. Thus, when alluding to Heathcliff’s nefarious
influence on Hindley during the time he has been lodging at the Heights since his
return to Gimmerton, Nelly says this to Lockwood: ‘I felt that God had forsaken
the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled
between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy’ (WH, p. 95).
Although the image is not altogether inappropriate, it is none the less shot through
with Nelly’s incurably superstitious attitude towards Heathcliff, which is especially
apparent in contexts where she refers to him as a ghoul, a vampire, a goblin, a
monster and other fanciful creatures, thereby virtually dehumanizing him
altogether.25 It is, then, little wonder that Heathcliff has so often been viewed by
many a reader not as a natural human being, as he is surely meant to be under-
stood, but as some preternatural creature of extra-terrestrial substance and origin.
There are, to be sure, various other forms of violence in Wuthering Heights
that might be said to deserve our critical attention. Thus we might refer to vio-
lence of speech, examples of which abound in the narrative, and perhaps most
noticeably in the vituperative language that Isabella suffers from both Heathcliff
and Joseph; to the violence of hostile looks and even of laughter that Lockwood
has to put up with from Heathcliff, Hareton and Cathy in the first two chapters,
and which other characters have to endure elsewhere; to the violence directed at
man-made objects, memorable instances being not only Catherine’s throwing the
Grange kitchen-door key into the fire or Isabella’s stamping on her wedding ring
and then casting it into the Grange parlour fire, but the remarkably detailed
description of the much damaged state of Hindley’s bedroom as shown to
Isabella by Joseph shortly after her arrival at the Heights as Heathcliff’s bride.26
We might also mention the violence of nature, as already suggested by the epithet
used in the title of the novel, and borne out by references to plants and fir trees
stunted by what Lockwood designates as ‘the power of the north wind’ (WH, p.
2), and by references to storms, one of which destroys ‘a portion of the east
chimney-stack’ (WH, p. 75) on the night of Heathcliff’s disappearance, as well as
the reference to the autumnal storms that Lockwood expects to erode further the
largely slateless roof of the long-disused ‘kirk’ (WH, p. 300). Finally, it is interest-
ing to note how often words such as ‘fling’, ‘strike’, ‘hit’, ‘throw’, ‘wrench’,
‘thrust’, ‘catch’, ‘grasp’, ‘pull’, ‘push’, ‘arrest’ and similar verbs indicative of
physical violence are used with figurative as well as concrete meaning.27
Yet, for all that Wuthering Heights is conspicuous for violence of various
kinds, it is useful to remember that, as has been shown above, the most serious
forms of violence, that is to say, the physical violence exerted by one person on
another, happens far less often in the narrative than some readers might be
inclined to suppose or to recall. As we have already seen, the most heinous acts
of physical violence are but figments of heated imaginations, and, like threats of
physical violence, remain safely within the confines of the human mind as well as
within those of the tongue. In that respect, Wuthering Heights may be said to be,
psychologically speaking, a remarkably modern novel. All this may, nevertheless,
 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 271

seem rather surprising in a narrative where, for example, revenge is such a prom-
inent theme.28 It is, however, worth bearing in mind that even Heathcliff, the
character most committed to the idea of revenge, finds himself, owing to the
effects of his mental illness, ultimately unable to wreak the vengeance which, as
he himself admits, he could so easily have done during the last days of his life
against the youngest generation of Lintons and Earnshaws, and that notwith-
standing his having always been careful not to commit specific criminal offences
of any kind through his constant concern to keep on the right side of the law.29
If, however, such knowledge would still do little to assuage the unease of those
unconscionably disturbed by the violence of the book, especially readers who
regard the violence as often seemingly gratuitous, one might perhaps do well to
point out that the author is by no means intent on bringing violence into her
book for its own sake; on the contrary, her many references to violence are but
testimonies to the remarkable realism of her novel. Yet, at the same time as she is
perfectly aware that a proclivity to violence is an inherent trait of human nature,
and, as we have seen, one latent even in the most respectable of people, she is no
less concerned to remind her readers that there is a way out of violence that is
within the power of us all. This she does pre-eminently through her presentation
of Hareton Earnshaw, who, though reminding us somewhat of Heathcliff with
his occasional acts or threats of physical violence, is nevertheless notable for
being the only character not only to show remorse for his violence to others but
also to exercise self-control in the very moment when he bids fair to hit someone
for antagonizing him in some way or other, be it Lockwood, Linton Heathcliff or
even Cathy herself.30 Indeed, it is through his exceptional capacity for self-
restraint that Hareton, brought up though he has been in a rough-and-ready
fashion, may surely be said to have deservedly become the hero (or anti-hero) of
the second half of Wuthering Heights, and the more so as his intrinsically com-
passionate awareness of his fellow creatures, as manifest on and off throughout
the narrative, has somehow adumbrated the markedly benign, not to say non-
violent, atmosphere that has begun to prevail towards the end of the novel.31

Notes
1
Among several works that discuss violence in (1998), 27–43; Lisa Surridge, ‘Animals and
Wuthering Heights, we may refer especially to Violence in Wuthering Heights’, Bront€e Society
Wade Thompson, ‘Infanticide and Sadness in Transactions, 24 (1999), 161–73; Judith E. Pike,
Wuthering Heights’, Publications of the Modern ‘“My name was Isabella Linton”: Coverture,
Language Association of America, 78 (1963), Domestic Violence, and Mrs. Heathcliff’s Narrative
69–74; N. M. Jacobs, ‘Gender and Layered in Wuthering Heights’, Nineteenth-Century
Narrative in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Literature, 64.3 (2009), 347–83.
2
Wildfell Hall’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, For references to, or quotations from, the novel,
16 (1986), 204–19; Patricia Yaeger, ‘Violence in the see Emily Bront€e, Wuthering Heights, ed. by Ian
Sitting Room: Wuthering Heights and the Woman’s Jack and Patsy Stoneman (Oxford: Oxford
Novel’, Genre, 21 (1988), 203–29; Robin DeRosa, University Press, 1998); hereafter WH. For the
‘To Save the Life of the Novel: Sadomasochism and sake of convenience, the first Catherine is
Representation in Wuthering Heights’, Rocky referred to as ‘Catherine’, the second as ‘Cathy’.
Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 52 For Emily Bront€e’s use of the words ‘violence’
272 GRAEME TYTLER

and ‘violent’ in the text, see Wuthering Heights, self-harm: see Wuthering Heights, pp. 12, 23, 69,
pp. 23, 62–63, 75, 104, 108, 114–15, 140, 155, 70, 105, 106, 109–10, 147, 148. In this
211, 213, 283. connection, Heathcliff’s assumption that Hindley
3
For references to Heathcliff’s mistreatment of deliberately committed suicide is something of an
animals, see Wuthering Heights, pp. 4, 42–43, exaggeration. Indeed, it appears that the latter’s
108, 114, 248. Noteworthy, too, is Hindley heavy drinking on the last night of his life was no
Earnshaw’s cruelty to the bulldog Throttler: see more than one of his usual attempts to forget his
Wuthering Heights, p. 127. troubles: see Wuthering Heights, pp. 164, 165.
4 18
For references or allusions to game-hunting, see See Wuthering Heights, pp. 36, 37, 104, 105.
19
Wuthering Heights, pp. 80, 210, 218, 271. No less Heathcliff’s violence towards Isabella — and even
a probable cause for alarm among certain animal to their son Linton — seems to have been mainly,
lovers would surely be Lockwood’s reference to the if not entirely, psychological: see especially
‘clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham’ displayed Wuthering Heights, pp. 134, 187, 229, 254.
20
in ‘a vast oak dresser’ (WH, pp. 2–3). For Nelly’s comparatively minor acts of violence,
5
For violence of dogs to one another, see see Wuthering Heights, pp. 32, 51, 73, 199, 241.
Wuthering Heights, pp. 171, 175. For Nelly’s occasional threats of physical violence
6
This is partly suggested by Mr Linton’s pompous to Linton Heathcliff, see Wuthering Heights, pp.
words: ‘To beard a magistrate in his strong-hold, 240, 247.
21
and on the Sabbath, too!’ (WH, p. 43). See also Wuthering Heights, pp. 58, 59, 68, 81,
7
Mr Earnshaw’s punitive practices are nostalgically 104, 105.
22
recalled by Joseph when, exasperated at Conspicuous among violent similes are those
Heathcliff and Catherine’s violent treatment of his involving knives and arrows: see Wuthering
theological books, he calls out to Hindley, saying: Heights, pp. 42, 81, 93, 265.
23
‘It’s fair flaysome ut yah let ’em goa on this gait. This tendency on Lockwood’s part may also be
Ech! th’owd man ud uh laced ’em properly — sensed in his use of military metaphors when
bud he’s goan!’ (WH, p. 17). referring to matters of everyday life: see
8
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 16, 17. Wuthering Heights, pp. 2, 4, 5, 25, 28, 80. Such
9
See also Wuthering Heights, pp. 94, 205. metaphors seem to have some bearing on the fact
10
For Heathcliff’s other physical threats, see that both Lockwood and Nelly wonder whether
Wuthering Heights, pp. 22, 44, 132, 135, 161, Heathcliff spent some time as a soldier while
236, 239, 243, 255, 284. abroad: see Wuthering Heights, pp. 80, 82, 84.
11 24
For Hindley’s talk about killing Heathcliff, see See Wuthering Heights, pp. 30, 64, 68, 81,
Wuthering Heights, pp. 67, 123, 124, 155, 159–60. 241, 296.
12 25
For such references, see Wuthering Heights, pp. See Wuthering Heights, pp. 98, 293.
26
22, 29, 31, 57, 60, 65, 66, 87, 96, 131, 134, For examples of violent speech, which includes
160, 170, 186, 191, 196, 204, 235, 296. scolding, cursing and name-calling, see Wuthering
13
For Heathcliff’s other physical threats to Cathy, Heights, pp. 10, 24, 25, 42, 44, 56, 57, 65, 67,
see Wuthering Heights, pp. 239, 243, 255. 70, 74, 75, 77, 83, 97, 122, 127, 132, 134, 142,
14
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 100, 115, 139, 140, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 172, 182, 183, 184,
142, 143. Relevant here are Heathcliff’s and 191, 192, 194, 201, 221, 222, 237, 238, 243,
Catherine’s frequent references to death: see 255, 260, 262, 267, 278, 283, 285; for examples
Wuthering Heights, pp. 19, 20, 87, 105, 106, of hostile looks and scornful laughter, see
108, 110–11, 113, 140, 164, 236, 237, 240, 247. Wuthering Heights, pp. 2, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14,
15
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 22, 28, 29, 31, 57, 47, 57, 59, 67, 71, 90, 92, 101, 120, 124, 125,
60, 65, 66, 87, 96, 170, 186, 191, 204, 235. 147, 182, 183, 191, 195, 220, 224; for examples
16
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 153–56. Not of violence to man-made objects, see Wuthering
without relevance here is Heathcliff’s following Heights, pp. 15, 16, 17, 32, 103, 105, 108, 126,
comment on Isabella as imparted to Nelly in the 154, 200, 238, 244, 268.
27
latter’s presence: ‘But no brutality disgusted her See Wuthering Heights, pp. 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14,
— I suppose she has an innate admiration of it, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 31, 34, 35, 41, 42, 47,
if only her precious person were secure from 51, 56, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 78, 83,
injury!’ (WH, p. 133). 84, 85, 86, 88, 97, 100, 102, 111, 112, 115,
17
For references or allusions to suicide, see 116, 123, 127, 128, 130, 131, 138, 139, 142,
Wuthering Heights, pp. 67, 78, 85, 100, 104, 143, 152, 153, 157, 169, 179, 187, 191, 197,
106, 107, 113, 140, 153, 155, 156, 164, 297. 198, 206, 211, 221, 238, 258, 263, 270, 271.
28
Somewhat related to Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s For references to revenge, retaliation and paying
talk of suicide are references to their moments of back, see Wuthering Heights, pp. 5, 8, 14, 22,
 VIOLENCE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS 273

28, 34, 40, 53, 69, 88, 98, 99, 100, 103, 107, 171, 173, 186, 211, 222, 262, 283, 291,
153, 155, 159, 196, 241, 248, 254, 287. 298–99. For a discussion on Hareton’s
29
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 133, 134, 158, 287. inherently compassionate nature, see Graeme
30
See Wuthering Heights, pp. 10, 194, 279. Tytler, ‘The Presentation of Hareton Earnshaw’,
31
For references to Hareton’s sensitive awareness Bront€e Studies, 39.2 (2014), 126–27.
of others, see Wuthering Heights, pp. 13, 63,

Notes on contributor
Graeme Tytler was born in Yorkshire, educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford
University, and the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and taught
Modern Languages, English and Latin in England and the USA. His publications
include Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces & Fortunes (Princeton
University Press, 1982) and a number of essays on English, French and German
literature, together with many contributions to Bront€e Studies on the novels of
the Bront€e sisters. He has also co-edited a collection of articles entitled
Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture (University of
Delaware Press, 2005). His most recent book is Facets of Wuthering Heights:
Selected Essays (Matador, 2018).
Correspondence to: Dr Graeme Tytler, 17 Dove House Close, Oxford ox2
8BG, UK. Email: sachiko@tytler.plus.com