Alexandra Lewis states that \u201cHeathcliff himself becomes a symbolic embodiment of the operations of trauma upon the mind\u201d (417). She goes on and shows how characters\u2019 reactions with Heathcliff\u2019s return are similar with actions of people who have experienced traumas (417-418). He intrudes people\u2019s life. He makes Catherine unearth her violent emotions, leading to her eventual breakdown. He drives Hindley to murder attempts and more alcoholism with his presence. He scares Linton into doing his bidding. All of his actions and effects on people can be translate to trauma response, such as mood swings, breakdowns, constantly haunted by the memories, alcoholism, depression, and so on. Through Lewis\u2019 view, Heathcliff essentially represents the traumatic memory that resurfaces after seemingly disappears for years and disrupts everyone\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
However, it is also important to remember that Heathcliff is how he is because of trauma. He is constantly being treated as the Other by everyone around him, tormented by Hindley, and antagonized even by Catherine herself. All of this abuse and trauma, along with the seemingly rejection from Catherine, lead him to run away. In other word, while Heathcliff seems to embody the work of traumatic memory, he is also created by traumas. Not only so, he is affected by traumas as well. And his trauma response is rage. Unlike other characters, whose traumatic memories seem to go away then come back, Heathcliff\u2019s traumas stay with him, boiling and fueling his obsession for revenge. They also lead him to desecrate the graves, look for ghosts, and most importantly, traumatize the next generation. With his effects on Hareton, Linton, and Catherine the younger, the traumas are no longer contained within his generation\u2019s cycle of trauma and abuse, but branching out to the next, potentially creating an entirely new cycle. This is also one of the commonly known results of trauma and abuse. Thus, through Lewis\u2019 lens, Wuthering Heights <\/em>represents trauma, its effects, and its cycle of existence through Heathcliff.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lewis, Alexandra. \u201cMemory Possessed: Trauma and Pathologies of Remembrance in Emily Bronte\u2019s Wuthering Heights<\/em>.\u201d Pp. 406-423.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alexandra Lewis states that \u201cHeathcliff himself becomes a symbolic embodiment of the operations of trauma upon the mind\u201d (417). She goes on and shows how characters\u2019 reactions with Heathcliff\u2019s return are similar with actions of people who have experienced traumas (417-418). He intrudes people\u2019s life. He makes Catherine unearth her violent emotions, leading to her … Continue reading Heathcliff: The Cycle of Trauma and Abuse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4978,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4978"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}