Domestic violence is an issue notoriously present in Australia, and desperately needs to be addressed. Rosie Batty’s son was murdered by his father Greg Anderson who was Batty’s partner at the time. Anderson struck his son over the head and stabbed him to death in an isolated cricket net. In the past decade, there has been a surge in cases of domestic violence in Australia. In 2013, the Queensland Government reported over 65,000 incidents of domestic violence which were reported to the Queensland Police. Domestic Violence cases need to come to an end.
The dysfunctional love story, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte lends itself a great deal of violence that inevitably includes the guests and residents of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood and Isabella begin to have cruel and violent thoughts after only a short time in Wuthering Heights. In the beginning of the novel, the violence is directed at the one who is perceived as being the perpetrator who created bad feelings, but overtime throughout the novel the violence becomes more calculated and direct.
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When Lockwood first arrives at Wuthering Heights he appears to be a meek and mild man but when his stay at Wuthering Heights lengthens, his demeanour changes. Violence is apparent in his dreams, Lockwood’s dream is religious in nature, but when he is accused of committing the unforgivable sin of being unforgiving, Wuthering Heights begins to turn on him. ‘In the confluence of the multitude, several clubs crossed; blows, aimed at me, fell on other sconces.’ The violence does not end here; Lockwood thinks he is awake but enters a second nightmare in which the ghost of Catherine grabs his arm through the window. Out of fear, Lockwood rubs her wrists against the glass until they bleed. The fact that Lockwood begins to think violent thoughts nearly as soon as he arrives at Wuthering Heights establishes the violent nature of that place.
After Edgar marries Catherine, Heathcliff swears vengeance on the entire Linton family. He goes so far as to marry Edgar’s sister, just so he can abuse her. On Heathcliff’s and Isabella’s first night together at Wuthering Heights, Isabella realises what she has gotten herself into when Heathcliff promises ‘…that I should be Edgar’s proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him.’ When Isabella had finally had enough, she sides with Hindley in a fight between Hindley and Heathcliff and then she taunts Heathcliff about his failed relationship with Catherine. Unable to handle her insults and mockery ‘…he snatched a dinner- knife from the table and flung it at my head. It struck beneath my ear, and stopped the sentence I was uttering…’ This prompted Isabella to finally leave Heathcliff.
Heathcliff is so violent because of his childhood; he was constantly beaten and abused by Hindley Earnshaw. This eventually leads to him using violence as a way to express his emotions such as love and hate. Heathcliff’s aggressive attitude towards everyone around him ends up with his very own self destruction. Heathcliff proves himself to be an embodiment of wickedness, as he wreaks destruction and misery upon himself and those around him. When Mr Earnshaw died and passed Wuthering Heights’ control to his son, Hindley made a good use of the situation to fulfil his revenge to Heathcliff.
Heathcliff poetically fantasises about his wife and his desire to hurt her when he states ‘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 colours of the rainbow, and turning the blue eyes black, every day or two…’ Abusing Isabella is what drives Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights is still relevant to the 21st Century, a story that is relevant to this is a story written by the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria (DVRCV).
‘I was a single dad with children and remarried. What an idiot I was. I should have spotted the warning signs.
Whenever anything went wrong, she’d blame me. Anyway, it turned into a living nightmare within a year of being married.
She took every opportunity to belittle me.
When in a temper, she often hit me but never on the face. I thought I deserved it because I was withdrawn and a bad husband – that’s what she kept saying. She forced me to have sex to become a good husband for her. I couldn’t leave because that would have meant leaving my children.
I tried to tell my mother but what little I told she said, “What are you doing to make her behave that way?” I felt abandoned by everyone except the kids. After several years my wife said she was leaving. Everyone said the breakup was my fault. I never told anyone what really happened.
Years later I finally had the courage to tell a counsellor that I went to because of depression after I lost my job. I had no close friends by then.’
Domestic Violence is a consequential issue currently in Australia, the toxic relationships need to come to an end before more lives do.
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