Empty Nests and Murdered Babies: Thoughts on the Theme of Infanticide in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Abstract

In 1842 Emily Brontё wrote a series of French essays. In the piece called ‘Le Papillon’, a nightingale is singing. The speaker warns the mother-bird to stop, fearing a particular kind of danger: ‘Poor fool […] is it to guide the shot to your flesh or the child to your little ones that you sing so high and so clear? Silence this inappropriate melody, huddle down on your nest; tomorrow, perhaps, it will be empty’. When Emily Brontё wrote Wuthering Heights four years later, the idea of empty nests or murdered babies continued to haunt her imagination. Her novel reveals wreckage and devastation. The sense is of harm done. In this article, by using the insights offered by Kleinian psychoanalysis, I explore the theme of infanticide — or the phantasy of baby-murder — such a point of fixation for the novel, and its author, but less so for readers and critics; largely because sadism and envy are uncomfortable elements to consider.