The Narrators of Wuthering Heights

Carl R. Woodring

Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 4. (Mar., 1957), pp. 298-305.

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 T h e Narrators of

Heights
CARL R. W O O D R I N G

S INCE THE SEMINAL STUDY by C. P. Sanger in 1926, the struc-

ture of Wuthering Heights has been further illumined by a host
of laudatory critics, notably Paul M. Fulcher (1g2g), Lord David
Cecil (1934), Boris Ford (1939), G. D. Klingopulos (1947), Mel-
vin R. Watson (1949), Mark Schorer (1g49), Royal A. Gettman
(1g50), Bruce McCullough (1g50), Dorothy Van Ghent (1g52),
B. H. Lehman (1g55), and V. S. Pritchett (1956). Reprintings of
the Oxford World's Classics edition preserve an older view in H.
W. Garrod's resolute assertions, dated 1930, that the story, suffering
from "inferior technique," is in parts "uncertainly conceived" and
"in general ill constructed." Although most laudatory critics have
noticed the debt owed by the structure of the novel to its use of two
presumed narrators, more remains to be said about the utility of
Lockwood and Nelly Dean.
The earlier scholar, learned in Gothic romances and tales from
BZac~woodS,found in Nelly's narrative within narrative the mis-
fortune of inherited inconvenience; the later critic, familiar with
selected masterworks, hails the use of contrasting narrators as a
wonder of creative intuition. Let us accept the method as bor-
rowed from inferior tales, but chosen rather than inherited. What
Carl R. Woodring, assistant professor of English, University of Wisconsin, has been
Guggenheim Fellow and Ford Fellow, 1955-56.

c 298 I
Narrators of W u t h e r i n g Heights 299
other method could have better provided the reader with the inter-
locking of familiar details concerning two generations and a
stranger's astonishment over the beginning, the middle, and the
end of Heathcliff's story? Nelly alone, Heathcliff himself as Jame-
sian or Austenian register, omniscient author, a series of actors or
servants speaking independently-none of these as narrative
authority could have provided the union of intimacy, intensity,
interpretation, and detached admiration that Emily Bronte needed
and achieved. Lockwood, the stranger, shares the reader's wonder
at the characters and events; Mrs. Dean, the intimate, has long
supped with wonders; stranger and intimate combine to certify the
general facts.
The double narration is a convention and must be accepted as a
convention. Much in Wzlthering Heights, including characters
as well as techniques, rests upon transformed conventions. Swept
with the surge of demonism and quieted with purgation and
repose at the end, the reader need not be disturbed because the
conventions allow Nelly to linger overlong at various doors or
Lockwood to report what Nelly said Zillah said the second Cath-
erine said to Hareton. If, however, the critical reader becomes
disturbed, if he demands a logic in the deviousness by which solil-
oquies reach him, he has no justification for exclaiming that
Lockwood must have memorized Isabella's unlikely letter to Nelly
verbatim. The logic he unnecessarily demands lies in this: ulti-
mately all the words come to us from Lockwood. As after accept-
ing the illusion of memory in a flashback, we may believe on
critical reflection that the letter from Isabella as read by Nelly con-
tained a briefer summary than Lockwood reports to us. Like his
creator, Lockwood understands the value of first-person narrative;
after 1784 in the events related by Nelly, he continues the story
"in her own words, only a little condensed." That the events oc-
curred, their impact makes us believe; Lockwood's intervention
can account for similarities between the styles of Nelly, Isabella,
and Zillah through which the events make their impact. If we
300 Nineteenth-Century Fiction
hesitate to believe that Nelly remembers what Heathcliff said the
Lintons said to each other some twenty-five years ago (Chapter
VI), we can believe that Lockwood has supplied the appropriate
words. To a protest that the author clearly thought of each scene
as resting on the authority of its original narrator, the answer is
that each scene does still so rest and that no justification exists
for hanging critically suspended between these narrators and Lock-
wood, who is characterized by the author as a man who did in
fact compose the book as we have it. The self-taught Nelly may
mimic Joseph; so may Isabella; always it is the tenant of Thrush-
cross Grange who records Joseph's dialect.
Lockwood is an educated diarist from the city who records in
course the remarkable events of his first two days among moors
and boors. By dreaming in Cathy's paneled bed, he comes to pur-
sue less palpable wilds. Emily Bronte may seem to allow him four
days to transcribe the first nine chapters, a day for Chapter x,
four weeks altogether (ill as he was) to hear and record the story
through Chapter xw, another week to report the urgency of
Chapters xv through xxx, and at last the leisure of a possible
three months to compose the subdued descent from Chapter
XXXII to the final meditation over "the sleepers in that ,quiet
earth.'' A qualification seems necessary. Without hesitation the
author sacrifices strict consistency for immediate effect, but Lock-
wood's diary entries, as in Chapters 111, rx, x, xv, and xxx~,
especially the bored remarks in the present tense, may be taken
as his immediate record during illness and convalescence when
he resisted the appeal of violent rusticity. We may suppose that
increased understanding and physical distance from the moors
greatly stimulated his memory of the narrated details and per-
mitted lengthy insertions when the story became meaningful to
him. Observe the tenses in the following passage in Chapter x:
I am too weak to read; yet I feel as if I could enjoy something interesting.
Why not have up Mrs. Dean to finish her tale? I can recollect its chief inci-
dents, as far as she had gone. Yes: I remember her hero had run off, and
Narrators of W u t h e r i n g Heights 301
never been heard of for three years; and the heroine was married. 1'11 ring:
she'll be delighted to find me capable of talking cheerfully. Mrs. Dean came.

At first Lockwood parades before us as a brittle ironist; slowly

his irony mellows and finally dissolves. Quoted against himself,
he has been called misanthropic. He is not. A reticent man, he
comes to Thrushcross embittered because his chilly reticence has
cost him the love of an attractive girl. In an unsociable mood, he
nonetheless finds Heathcliff disgustingly unsociable. So gregarious
is he that he soon craves conversation with his unpromising house-
keeper, Mrs. Dean. If he seems inane, he suffers from the inanity
his author attributes to the average London reader into whose
hands her book will fall. In his introduction to the Rinehart Col-
lege Edition, Mark Schorer follows Garrod in interpreting the
original plan of the novel as the edification of a sophisticated and
sentimental prig, Lockwood, in the natural human values of grand
passion. Rather, Lockwood reacts for the normal skeptical reader
in appropriate ways at each stage of the story and its unfolding
theme. Within the action, he plays a more individual role. As
actor, he tries to protect his "susceptible heart" (Chapter 11) from
attachment to the widowed Catherine; by March (Chapter XIV),
he feebly resists the fascination of her eyes because he fears a
"second edition" of her mother. By such self-restraint he thinks to
"extract wholesome medicines from Mrs. Dean's bitter herbs." He
reveals in Chapter xxv that he has fallen, he has asked that her
portrait be hung over his fireplace, but he hesitates to act precip-
itately lest Catherine not return his love. Here the author intends
Lockwood to replace Linton in the reader's mind as the active
rival of Hareton. The suspense of this rivalry is to imbue Mrs.
Dean's last words in the spring: ". . . I can see no remedy, at
present, unless she should marry again; and that scheme it does
not come within my province to arrange" (Chapter xxx). Al-
ways the sentimentalist, Lockwood feels pain when Catherine fails
to perceive the value of dining with him instead of with "clowns
and misanthropists" (Chapter xxx~).In September, he reports,
302 Nineteenth-Century Fiction
"I bit my lip, in spite, at having thrown away the chance I might
have had" (Chapter XXXII),and at the very end he admits to
grumbling at the complacent love of Catherine and Hareton. The
author manipulates and tolerates Lockwood much more for struc-
ture and plot than for theme.
Prefiguring Conrad's use of Marlow, Nelly's oral language sets
itself off from Lockwood's prose by such simple phrases as "really,
you know, Sir'' and "well, Mr. Lockwood." Again an adequate
convention, productive of immediate credibility and pleasure.
Verisimilitude of narration gives way, happily, before binding
detail. Cathy returned from her five weeks at Thrushcross Grange
a neat little lady: "I was all over flour making the Christmas cake,
and it would not have done to give me a hug; and, then, she looked
around for Heathcliff" (Chapter VII).
As judge, Nelly pronounces Heathcliff a "black villain" and
"evil beast"; Cathy a "wild, wicked slip" who "meant no harm";
and Joseph the "wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee." Cathy, she
decrees, must be "chastened into humility." As interpreter, Nelly
calls Heathcliff's a cuckoo's story-although she avoids assigning
such a label to the later spiritual cuckoldry. As chorus, she lays
aside superstition to proclaim happiness in the tranquillity of
Cathy's death-chamber. In interviews, as attorney, she asks ques-
tions the reader wants asked. As in T h e Brothers Karamaxou, the
intensity of the passion lends credibility to the compulsive confes-
sions; Nelly is the natural recipient of natural and unnatural con-
fession.
She also acts. Attentive witness, narrator, and elucidator of past
events, Mrs. (that is, Miss) Dean not only plays an active role
economically designed, but also commands interest as a personality
considerably beyond any of Thackeray's justly admired servants.
Alert, observant, prying, gossipy, slightly superstitious,bold, saucy,
tolerant, motherly, she has a very suspicious array of traits. Firm
at the center, her character seems conveniently amorphous at the
periphery. Even more than Lockwood's, her actions and utterances
Narrators of W u t h e r i n g Heights 303
fit the immediate needs of the situation before the reader; she is
no Mrs. Gamp to steal either attention or consistency from the
central characters. This malleability makes her seem more com-
plex. Heathcliff must be complex; Nelly may merely seem so.
Superstitious enough to foreshadow with presentiments, she is
skeptic enough to acknowledge her superstition. She remains a
credible and canny witness by doubting the supernaturalness of the
characters and events that certainly are, she has convinced us,
supernatural. With placid disapproval, she can feel and commu-
nicate the basic distinction, expounded by Heathcliff and his Cathy,
between demonic love and civilized emptiness.
In Nelly, Emily Bronte ingeniously produced the exactly needed
combination of servant, companion, and saucy antagonist. With
personal dignity, she keeps secrets; as a respected nurse, she tattles;
she intercepts letters between young culprits; she scolds; she
watches pots; she dances with the ungentle gentlefolk when
needed (Chapter VII). Her removal in 1783 from Wuthering
Heights to Thrushcross Grange had to be conceived before com-
position began; perception of her wonderful capacities as a catalyst
could not have been long delayed. As witness and chorus, she
must take part in nearly every scene in the book. We become
accustomed to her interference from the time she admits putting
the waif Heathcliff on the landing to encourage his running away
(Chapter IV). Soon deciding to scrub his person and manners,
she plants in him the germinal suggestion that he might be an
Oriental mogul, able to buy Wuthering Heights (Chapter VII).
She provokes Cathy to show violence before Edgar (Chapter
VIII); she unloads Hindley's gun (Chapter VIII) ; after her tat-
tling to Edgar of Heathcliff's insolent acts results in an open clash,
she lies to avoid further violence (Chapter XI). Yet even when
she combines instigation of acts with explicit judgment of those
acts, her author scrupulously prevents Nelly's actions from seem-
ing to modify in any way either the personalities of the more im-
portant characters or the major directions of the plot. NeIly is
304 Nineteenth-Century Fiction
allowed, not to advise Cathy on accepting or rejecting Edgar, but
to catechize her after the acceptance (Chapter IX). Her own ad-
missions of guilty responsibility make the reader the more ready
to distribute blame among the principals. Locked inside Wuthering
Heights in August 1800, she uttered and then withdrew a con-
fession :
I seated myself in a chair, and rocked, to and fro, passing harsh judgment
on my many derelictions of duty; from which, it struck me then, all the
misfortunes of all my employers sprang. It was not the case, in reality, I
am aware; but it was, in my imagination, that dismal night; and I thought
Heathcliff himself less guilty than I (Chapter XXVII).

Most scenes in the novel receive some imprint from Nelly's

character or position. Her catalytic instigations gather strength
almost imperceptibly from the many times when her actions help
build portraits of herself and of the principals but otherwise merely
provide a way of stating what occurred, as when she innocently
supplies little Catherine with provisions for a ride to Wuthering
Heights (Chapter XVIII).The frequency with which her char-
acter helps to determine the nature of immediate acts helps to
support the rarer occasions when she influences the action without
motivation, as when her one prolonged illness makes possible the
meetings between Cathy and Linton (Chapter XXIII).Occasion-
ally she acts with inadequate motive to gain and communicate
information for her author; more often adequate motives impel
her. She softens toward Heathcliff the waif because measles make
him quiet and lead him to praise her for nursing him; soon, there-
fore, Heathcliff can deceive her by his silence at mistreatment from
Hindley (Chapter IV). It is a condition of both respectability and
forehandedness that she chaperon the final meeting of Heathcliff
with Cathy, who is about to die in childbirth. That the unearthly
lovers show awareness of her presence merely emphasizes their
undiminished passion (Chapter xv). Even here Nelly is up to
her usual trick: by her own actions, in character or credible for
the moment, she reveals the character of others.
Narrators of Wuthering Heights 305
Acknowledged as narrators and interpreters, Mrs. Dean and
Lockwood have been slighted as actors in the plot. Lockwood
does not merely hear the tale in a tavern in Leeds; he dreams in
the paneled bed beside the ghostly window and himself threatens
to interrupt the final purgation and the happy-ever-after. As Heath-
cliff intrudes from some netherworld, Lockwood intrudes from
the city. Mrs. Dean belongs. From the time she takes HindleyYs
knife between her teeth, she perfects the symbols. She interweaves
Heathcliff's hair with Edgar's for Catherine's locket; at the end
she combs the hair of the dead Heathcliff and closes the window.