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<title> The Elements of Violence and Passion in Emily Brontė's Wuthering Heights </title>
Emily Brontė's novel Wuthering Heights is filled with many of the most important ingredients in life: happiness, sadness, health, sickness, kindness, cruelty, life and death. However passion and violence are perhaps the most significant elements in this novel. These elements really make the novel exciting and they are sometimes so vividly described that you almost think that Heathcliff and the others are in the same room as yourself. Personally I believe that ingredients like these two would improve every novel. My intention is to discuss and point at the elements of passion and violence in this novel and I will also refer to L. Cookson and B. Longhrey's article The Return of the Repressed: passion and violence in Wuthering Heights and T. Eagleton's article Myths of Power in Wuthering Heights in my discussion.

Wuthering Heights is really permeated with passion and violence and especially passion I would say. Violence only shows its face now and then to stir things up a bit. When reading the novel one becomes fascinated by the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff. I do also agree with Cookson and Longhrey (1988:72), who write in their article that "violent passion and anguish of unfulfilled desire" are central to Wuthering Heights. Catherine and Heathcliff start up as friends, but then their relationship grows stronger and stronger and as Catherine herself puts it: "...he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..." (Brontė 1995:ch. 9). The love between Catherine and Heathcliff is perhaps not the every day love that one might be used to reading about. Their love is more of a supernatural kind, it seems, and because it is so strong it causes them both a lot of pain. However it is a bit puzzling that Catherine decides to marry Edgar Linton when she knows how much she loves Heathcliff, just because it would degrade her to marry him. One must not forget, though, what kind of society and times the story is situated in. A woman had to think about her future in those days, because she had no way of earning money, so her only possibility to have a good life was to marry a wealthy man. By marrying Edgar Linton Catherine tries to deny her obvious love for Heathcliff and signs her own death certificate. The passion between them enters a new era, where Heathcliff disappears with a broken heart and his return and his conflicts with Edgar causes Catherine's mental illness and she finally dies. Again their passion goes into another era where Heathcliff is left alone in the world with his passion and his ghosts. After Catherine's death Heathcliff suffers a great deal and becomes even more violent and revengeful than he has been before and it seems as though he is only waiting for his own death, so that he will be able to be reunited with Catherine. I agree with Terry Eagleton (1976:126), who writes in his article: "Their love remains an unhistorical essence which fails to enter into concrete existence and can do so, ironically, only in death. "

Passion plays a big part in Wuthering Heights, but I think that it is the passion that creates the violence in the story. One almost gets the feeling that violence could not be if passion was not there and vice versa. The one element could not exist without the other. Both Catherine and Heathcliff are brought up at Wuthering Heights, where people never have been afraid of showing their feelings and temper, which might also be a reason for the violent passion between the two. Their deep love for each other is proved to be very passionate in the book, but they both show signs of violent behaviour, especially Heathcliff of course. Heathcliff had a violent behaviour even before Catherine has left him as in this example, where Edgar Linton has insulted him: "He seized a tureen of hot apple-sauce, the first thing that came under his gripe, and dashed it full against the speaker's face and neck..." (Brontė 1995:ch.7). Catherine might not be as violent as Heathcliff by far, but the fact that she wishes for a whip, when she can wish for whatever she wants when her father goes to town, shows that she at least has the intention to violent. Catherine and Heathcliff are not the only characters in the novel, who act violently. Catherine's father, Mr. Earnshaw, shows his dislike with Catherine's behaviour by striking her: "Cathy...showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing, earning for her pains a sound blow from her father to teach her clean manners". (Brontė 1995:ch.4). Hindley is also hitting and bullying Heathcliff. Isabella smashes her wedding ring when she has escaped to Thrushcross Grange. Through Mr. Lockwood's dream we also learn that he, as Mr. Cookson and Mr. Longhrey (1988:76) put it: "has a potentially violent side to him". It is not only humans that are violent in Wuthering Heights dogs also described as beasts, when Catherine and Heathcliff are outside Thrushcross Grange for the first time: "They have let the bull-dog loose, and he holds me!" (Brontė 1995:ch. 6) Catherine cries to Heathcliff. The most violent character in this story is after all Heatcliff, who hits and bullies almost everyone, who comes in his way, even Catherine, whose grave he desecrates so ruthlessly.

What is the meaning of all this violence and passion one might ask oneself. It is of course difficult to find out what kind of thoughts really went through Emily Brontė's mind when writing Wuthering Heights, but I agree with some of Cookson and Longhrey's (1988:72) thoughts about it. They mean that Brontė wanted first to "display these disruptive emotions" and make an exciting novel with them and then "control them" by bringing together the two families, who had experienced so much passion, violence and death. The young Catherine and Hareton find each other, their tormentor dies and the violence finally ends, but the passion is still there and who knows what it might stir up in the future? I also believe that we as readers are so fascinated and shocked by this story with all its dramatic events, because they are all situated in an everyday context. The fact is that all though this novel is written in the 19th century it is not so far from our everyday life, because passion and violence are parts of many people's lives also today. Cookson and Longhrey (1988:75) also have a good point when they write: "The passionate outburst of Catherine to Nelly, the violence of Heathcliff gnashing and foaming like a mad dog, or dashing his head in grief against a tree-trunk, stick in the memory longer than the loving, playful slap which the young Catherine gives to Hareton as she teaches him to read". This must mean that Emily Brontė knew what kind of ingredients you have to put into a really great novel and that passion and violence is something that the reader wants to read about, even though he might not dare to admit it.

Literature 
Primary
Brontė, Emily. Wuthering Heights.1847. St Ives plc: Penguin, 1995.
Secondary
Cookson, L., and Bryan Longhrey, eds. Longman Critical Essays: The Return of the Repressed: Passion and Violence in Wuthering Heights.Harlow: Longman, 1988.
Eagleton, Terry, "Myths of Power: Amarxist Study of the Brontės." Myths of Power in Wuthering Heights. London and Basingstoke, 1976, pp.97, 100-11, 112-15, 116-21, 142-3.
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