Commentaires psychocriminologiques et médicolégaux sur Wuthering Heights (Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent) : une problématique passionnelle, paranoïaque et perverse ?

In a criminological and forensic perspective, the author first presents the main biographical data concerning Emily Brontë and summarizes the plot of her famous novel, Wuthering Heights (1847). He then discusses the following: assault and battery, kidnapping and unlawful detention, the state of corpses, violations of burial sites, and other issues. In analysing the reciprocal passion that burns between Catherine and Heathcliff, the author reveals the latter to be suffering from a serious personality disorder with paranoid, borderline and antisocial features associated with depressive and sadistic evil tendencies. This former vagabond, who becomes the “master” of two patrician families in order to gain revenge, presents several characteristics of dangerousness, and it is surprising that he did not kill Catherine and/or her husband Edgar. The absence of sexual relations between the two lovers, who were childhood friends, probably played an important role in preventing him from perpetrating the act of murder. Unable to accept the separation from Catherine (marriage and death of the latter), Heathcliff allows himself to die so that he can be buried next to her and finally attain an absolute amorous relationship with the object of his passion.