Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights - Infanticide and Sadism :: Wuthering Heights Essays

Wuthering Heights Infanticide and Sadism I would care to begin by simply defining the terms infanticide and sadism. Websters Dictionary defines infanticide as the killing of an infant or the suffering of an infant. The same source defines sadism as both a disorder in which sexual gratification is derived by causing pain or abasement to others and simply pleasure in being cruel. Now, while reading Wuthering Heights, I was giving every character the benefit of the doubt. I was accounting their rough bearing to simple hard times. However, after reading Infanticide and Sadism in Wuthering Heights my eyes were opened to the perversion of the world portrayed in Wuthering Heights. To start off, I would like to take a good look at the suffering of the small fryren. Each child does not have the benefit of their mother for a very considerable period of time. Catherine Earnshaw is not sooner eight when her mother dies Cathy Lintons birth coincides with her mothers death Haretons mother di es the year of his birth and Heathcliff is an orphan by the time he is seven. rase the children who receive motherly care throughout childhood do not receive it long after they reach puberty. Linton Heathcliff loses his mother when he is not quite thirteen- Linton, of course, is a child completely his life- and Isabella Linton is orphaned when she is fourteen. The only exceptions- and these unimportant - are Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar Linton, who are sixteen and eighteen respectively when their mothers die (and even their mothers are obviously not very motherly). (Thompson 139). Bronte does away with all of the mothers. Why does she so that? She kills off the mothers to help better accent the childrens struggle against all the psycho adults who are all out to kill them. The first child to receive this kind of treatment was Heathcliff when he first arrived and Mrs. Earnshaw wanted to fling it outdoors. This sort of treatment was subjected to every child in the book, and without th eir mothers, there was nobody to protect thern. Hareton Earnshaw lives a more dangerous life than most of the children. He lost his mother the year of his birth and worn out(p) a great deal of his childhood hiding from his father, whose first instinct when drunk is to kill his son. Hareton manages to survive, but Linton Heathcliff is not so lucky.