Quote:
"Abuse in Chaotic families
Sibling sexual abuse victims often live in dysfunctional family environments that subtly foster incestual behaviours.... Sibling incest appears more likely to occur in large families characterised by physical and emotional violence, marital discord, explicit and explicit sexual tensions, and blurred familial boundaries.Emotionally and /or physically absent parents may empower older siblings to assume parental roles, in short, these families are chaotic and unlikely to recognize the significance of behaviors occurring between siblings." (Asherman & Safier, 1990, Caffaro & ConnCaffaro, 2005)"
When we look at the psychology of both Heathcliff and Cathy, we can see the underlying damage that was done during childhood.
Heathcliff was brought into an already chaotic household, with few boundaries. We are told he had an "evil" dark countenance and other critics have remarked on a racist element in the novel. This made him an outsider and a target and he began using his wits and his strength of character to survive in a place where he was without any form of escape and one where dependent for sustenance and shelter. He was subjected to physical and emotional violence from a number of sources but chiefly the brother of the household.
The boundaries were even more difficult with Nelly Dean being one of the children.
Cathy on the other hand, had been able to have some maternal caring before her mother died and she had the continuity of feeling that her father owned the place where she lived and there was a degree of entitlement and continuity in her status in the community.
See Winnicott. (
maternal gaze and good enough mother )
From the beginning of Nelly Dean's commentary, we are introduced to a group of children that were bringing themselves into adulthood. If we take a Freudian analysis, the super ego was given little chance to develop. The checks and balances provided by a sound personal conscience were not given any guidance by adults apart from Jacob using biblical texts which were often rejected.
Cathy was the only person in Heathcliff's childhood that gave him, love, kindness,understanding and also she represented a romantic kindred spirit. She became for him, not only mother, sister,friend, potential sexual partner but also a lifeline and something for him to psychologically hold onto when he was the most vulnerable member of that chaotic household and his personality was being brutalised.
Their relationship is psychologically precarious for both of them. It was deeply harmful and eventually disastrous.
They ran wild and carefree over the moors until Cathy met Linton. Was she totally mercenary/opportunistic and attracted to a lifestyle or was there actual genuine feeling between them? I think it is the latter. It is possible to love two people and she was a girl maturing, and open to the new and possible other choices and partners.
Then came the fateful rejection when Cathy says of Heathcliff- " I am him"- referring to Heathcliff. What are we to make of this? their psychological characters were intermingled through what many people who may have thought as "child play" and actually was incest. We can only ponder to what passed as child play on the moors. Heathcliff overhears her plan to marry and the rejection must have been absolutely traumatic for his mental health. In fact he disappears for three years, we know not where.
We are told Cathy is happy and content in her marriage. And it is seen through Linton's behaviour that he certainly loved his wife.
When Heathcliff returns he is a changed man and he challenges Linton in front of Cathy. She becomes angry and sides with Heathcliff, and rejects her husband but it is also a condemnation of Hewathcliff she wants Linton to behave as an Alpha man and attack him physically, something she was accustomed to in her own household as a child. Heathcliff, for her, is perhaps some idealised alpha man, strong, courageous and capable of protection, which she may have liked in her childhood but then saw another type of love. Her emotions, then come into conflict and she becomes emotionally very confused and she is unable to cope. She has a nervous breakdown, going to her room and spending days in anguish , never to be the same again and some time afterwards she dies in childbirth.
On the other hand, after Cathy's death, Heathcliff becomes obsessed with a rage of revenge. In the second part of the novel we read the extent of his cruelty to everyone around him. He is an isolated tormented man. The cruelty is shocking and it is difficult to imagine a woman in the nineteenth century could have imagined this kind of disturbing behaviour. It is almost too difficult to read. It may be that when Heathcliff returned he took demonic delight in Cathy's arousal of negative passion. The cruelty to people she loved, her sister in law, her sister in law's child, her daughter,her brother's child may have been a kind of punishment to her through spiritual realms.
He dies at the hands of Cathy's apparition. Ending his torture and his torture to others. This happens only after he stops his cruelty seemingly having just run out of his anger and obsession.
At the end of the novel we see that Emily Bronte provides us with a resolution and a healing when second generation cousins are brought together through acts of kindness and genuine love, and their future is secure.
I am focusing on one element of the novel which I find interesting, but of course, the novel has been fascinating to readers for more than a century. As a woman and a feminist, I cannot accept that Emily Bronte wrote about such depths of abuse; physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and sometimes all of them combined, without either a) having knowledge of such things occurring on the moors and related through a third party or b) she herself had personal experience of some kind of disastrous abuse.
As women we know that we are often the victims of abuse, which is not always recognised. I would say in conclusion that this novel is full of pain for both genders.
Zoe Ainsworth-Grigg
www.zoeainsworthgriggbooks.com
Zoe Ainsworth Grigg holds a Diploma in Psychoanalytic
Psychology, Birkbeck College, ( London University) Certificate in Person Centred Art Therapy and also studied
feminist literature as part of a BA degree in Humanities.
