Emily Bronte explores the depths of both mental cruelty and physical cruelty in what has been branded by John Bowen as an “extraordinarily violent book”, Wuthering Heights. Mental cruelty is suffering without physical assault, whilst physical cruelty causes harm to another, whether intentionally or not. Both mental cruelty and physical cruelty are demonstrated within the novel, as a result of oppression, society and circumstances in this Gothic novel, each main character is exposed to excess elements of both said cruelties over the course of Wuthering Heights.
Based upon David Cecil’s theory that Wuthering Heights is an allegory to which he applies the ‘House of Storm’ and House of Calm’ concept, the Heights is immediately established to be a place of innate cruelty and of wild uninhibited primitive emotions. This is made evident when Mr. Lockwood, an educated gent of a high social class visits the heights and is met with the imminent cruelty of the residents. The dogs which inhabit Wuthering Heights are “not accustomed to being spoilt”, much like Heathcliff who is first labelled as “it” and experiences the long term effects of mental cruelty through exclusion and brandishing as a “gipsy boy”, which were deemed as undesirable and a pollutant to society at the time of writing. Instantly Heathcliff is faced with mental cruelty of both social attitudes at the time towards ethnic groups, and the torment which faces him in the form of Hindley and Edgar Linton as he is treated and brandished as an outsider, in the liminal state of acceptance. Arguably, more suffering is inflicted in this instance by mental cruelty by Hindley towards Heathcliff, as the mental cruelty absorbs itself into every fibre of Heathcliff’s being, constructing his future and his persona. Whereas he becomes somewhat immune to Hindley’s thrashings from the offset, as he would stand Hindley’s blows