Essay on Violence and Cruelty in Wuthering Heights

His violence and cruelty seemed too demonic for many readers... Does the modern reader share this view of Heathcliff? Author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontà «, was born in Thornton, Yorkshire on 30 July 1818. She was born the fifth of six children and died at the age of thirty from consumption. The Brontà « children had a love for creating stories and small books, but it was sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne who embarked on writing their own novels. They published their work under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, not willing to declare themselves as female authors because of the sheer intensity of passion contained in their novels, which would not have been considered at all feminine at the time. It was beyond the†¦show more content†¦Mr Earnshaw brings Heathcliff to the Heights when he is still but a boy of about fourteen. Mr Earnshaw finds him starving and homeless in streets of Liverpool, takes pity and returns home with the boy. Cathy immediately shows affection to the stranger but Hindley draws away from him, and instead tortures and scorns him. When Brontà « composed her book, the English economy was severely depressed and the conditions of the factory workers in industrial areas like Liverpool were appalling. Many of the more affluent members of society showed sympathy to these workers, just as Mr Earnshaw may have shown sympathy towards poor Heathcliff. The reader, modern or Victorian, can also therefore immediately sympathise with Heathcliff as a weak, powerless child; defenceless to Hindleys brutality towards him and when Mr Earnshaws health fails him Hindley spitefully degrades Heathcliff, banishing him to the stables, away from the house. However Cathy and Heathcliff still grow closer. They are both wild and free-spirited, born to run out on the moors together. They both promised to grow up as rude savages... One of their chief amusements was to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day. They become inseparable. One day Nelly and Cathy are talking together and Cathy tells Nelly that Edgar has asked her to marry him. Even though Cathy knows she doesnt love Edgar for he is but only forShow MoreRelated The Power of Love in Wuthering Heights Essay1404 Words   |  6 PagesWuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals. 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