In Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, it’s hard not to see that it is a novel of violence. With the hate spewing out of everyone’s mouths and the nonstop beatings upon and from Heathcliff throughout the novel. But it’s not just the people who are mean and violent, but the dogs are also. Why would Bronte put such a violent representation upon the innocent creature of dogs? More importantly, do they symbolize something to make it so pronounced?
The characters that live up at Wuthering Heights have a “savage” behavior, as Nelly would put it. The household is rude, uncaring, and have a lot of hate towards one another. The dogs there even take upon this behavior by being tense, hostile, and violently aggressive. But if all the dogs in the novel were portrayed as friendly, the novel would have a different feel for it and it wouldn’t make much sense to have an animal so happy in a dark and violent environment. Therefore, I argue that Bronte uses the dogs to symbolize the violence in their household characters. When we are first introduced into the novel, the first thing we see is Lockwood’s interaction with the dogs at the Heights who snarl and lunge at him, knocking him to the floor. With this scene sets the reader up with an uneasy
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He was brought home by Mr. Earnshaw like a scared stray pup. Then in chapter three, described by Catherine, "Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled us both into the back kitchen." Through out the novel we get several references to Heathcliff as a dog. His animalistic behavior is also influenced upon young Hareton, who grows up at the Heights with Heathcliff, acting much like him in a wild, fierce, defiant way. For example, the night of Isabella’s marriage to Heathcliff, upon arriving at the Heights, Hareton threatens to set Throttler, the bulldog, on