Foolish notions: narrative perspective in Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights (1847) is narrated entirely in first person, split between the predominant
voices of Lockwood and Nelly Dean. While we may feel connected to these two characters,
at least superficially, Brontë’s use of first person narration creates a sense of distance when
it comes to the novel’s protagonists, as it adds additional layers of separation between them
and the readers. The narrative structure has been likened to Russian dolls, with Nelly Dean’s
story and shorter stories told by other characters all sitting inside Lockwood’s framing
narration. While this structure has a significant effect on the way we experience the story,
this essay is more focussed on Brontë’s choice of Lockwood and Nelly as the two main
storytellers and how she contrasts their perspectives with the characterisation of the
protagonists. Her creation of two such “foolish” characters as the primary storytellers is what
really creates an obstruction to readers, preventing us from getting closer to the novel’s
central characters. The separation and ambiguity created by Brontë’s narration is intentional
and crucial to the novel as a whole. It instills a sense of mystery and reminds readers of their
status as outsiders; we share this status with her narrators, as well as their profound inability
to truly understand the inner workings of the novel’s protagonists. While readers are able to
get beyond the “foolish notion[s]” (168) of Lockwood and Nelly, in doing so we come to
understand that Brontë, more broadly, uses these narrative perspectives to portray the
elusive nature of objective truth and the futility of trying to truly comprehend the lives,
relationships, and motivations of others.

From the very beginning, readers have to negotiate the obfuscation and unreliability of
Lockwood’s narration. His diary entries are verbose, and riddled with statements of
contradictory and dubious opinion. Comparing himself to Heathcliff, at first he says they are
“a suitable pair to divide the desolation between them” (3), eager to liken himself to such “a
capital fellow!” (3) However, by the end of the first chapter he tells us that “it is astonishing
how sociable [he] feel[s] [him]self compared with him.” (8) Thus, in a short space, Lockwood
is revealed to be pompous and superficial, keen to liken himself to Heathcliff, a character of
interest and high social standing, before moving swiftly on to imply a sense of superiority
over his landlord. The final lines of the first chapter augment this with a comical lack of self-
awareness: while Lockwood is observant enough to note that Heathcliff “evidently wished no
repetition of [his] intrusion”, Bronte follows this immediately with Lockwood’s statement, “I
shall go, notwithstanding.” (8) So, in the space of a few pages it becomes clear to readers
that our narrator’s judgement of character is skewed by self-centredness and a desire to
impress. As Lockwood is set up in contrast to Heathcliff, the latter becomes imbued with the
mystery and depth lacking in the narrator. While the narrative perspective allows us to
perceive this, its limitations mean we cannot explore these depths any further. Thus we can
see how the narrative perspective is crucial in creating a sense of mystery typical of Gothic
literature.

Bronte uses humour and dramatic irony in a way that allows us to see things Lockwood
cannot, and to establish him as a character who misreads situations and who has no self-
awareness. In the second chapter he tries to charm young Catherine by asking if a “cushion
full of something like cats” were her “favourites”, only to discover it was in fact “a heap of
dead rabbits.” (11) Thus Bronte establishes a humorous juxtaposition between reality and
Lockwood’s reading of that reality, which runs throughout his narration and creates a sense
of dramatic irony. He says later: “I began to feel unmistakably out of place in that pleasant
family circle.” (14) Use of the word “pleasant”, in this context, strikes readers as comedically
inaccurate, and further illustrates Lockwood’s inability to ‘read’ his surroundings and his own


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emotions - he cannot connect his feelings to the undertones in his surroundings, undertones
that are obvious to readers in the “austere silence” of the room, as well as the bleak setting
and the abrupt dialogue from the inhabitants. He ‘sees’ what he expects or wants to see, in
this case “a pleasant family circle” rather than the dysfunctional and hostile dynamics that
are described. There are multiple indications that suggest the unfavourable nature of the
environment, and readers can glean from Lockwood’s words that he is inept at properly
understanding, let alone conveying, the mood of the room. All this, in the exposition of the
novel, establishes a sense of distrust, and a lack of certainty in Lockwood’s descriptions.
His is an unreliable perspective in this respect; however, thanks to Bronte’s “authorial
flagging”, he quickly becomes what James Wood refers to as a “reliably unreliable” narrator
(Wood, 7). In turn, this makes our perspective of the protagonists, especially Heathcliff,
more stable and it heightens the sense of mystery and complexity surrounding them.

When Lockwood begins transcribing Nelly’s narration, readers begin to realise that her
accounts are, to an extent, similarly skewed. Her narrative perspective plays with time; when
she describes Heathcliff’s childhood, Brontë uses prolepsis in describing her perceptions of
Heathcliff: “I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived so completely, as you will
hear.” (40) This not only foreshadows Heathcliff’s actions, to be revealed later in the novel,
but it also reminds readers that Nelly speaks with hindsight, and that her accounts of the
distant past will inevitably be biased due to her existing predispositions toward the subjects
of her story. Readers cannot know definitively whether characterisation of young Heathcliff
as “vindictive”, for instance, is a valid and objective observation, or a judgement unfairly
imposed upon a child based upon the knowledge of future events. Nelly Dean even admits:
“I had no more sense, so I put it (Heathcliff) on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be
gone on the morrow [..] Hindley hated him, and: to say the truth I did the same.” (37-8)
Nelly’s dehumanisation of Heathcliff and her condemnation of his vindictiveness becomes
ironic and hypocritical. Nelly played a direct role in Heathcliff’s abuse, yet she describes
Heathcliff’s mistreatment as if she played no part in it. For instance, she recounts Heathcliff’s
bruises from a confrontation with Hindley when they argued about a horse: “I persuaded him
easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises on the horse.” (40) In this instance, she protects
Hindley at Heathcliff’s expense, choosing to trivialise Heathcliff’s injuries, rather than putting
an end to his abuse. While Nelly is characterised as being more self-aware and perceptive
than Lockwood, she is still established as a “reliably unreliable” source and we quickly learn
that her self-interested perspective limits our understanding of the protagonists.

The fact that the narration falls upon two unreliable sources creates a layer of uncertainty
and mystery that runs throughout the novel. The ambiguity that this creates means that
readers are unable to fully delve into the minds of the subjects of the story. After Catherine’s
death, Nelly describes what she perceives to be Heathcliff’s emotions: “I perceived that he
had got intelligence of the catastrophe; a foolish notion struck me that his heart quelled and
he prayed.” (168) Despite the vivid description Nelly provides, Brontë draws attention to the
fact this was all “perceived” by her, and that her interpretation was simply a “notion”, rather
than fact. Indeed, this concept of “perception” and its unreliability is a motif in the novel and
a major source of its tensions and complexity. The novel ends with Lockwood looking over
the graves and “wonder[ing] how any one could imagine unquiet slumber for the sleepers in
that quiet earth.” (337) Given all that has gone before, including his own experience with
Catherine’s ghost in Chapter 3, Brontë is clearly drawing our attention to the naiveté of this
conclusion based on his mere perception of a “ benign sky” and “soft wind breathing through
the grass.” (337) Now joined in death, Catherine and Heathcliff remain enigmatic to readers
and we are left with the fact that we will never fully comprehend their stories. Indeed, readers
can only “imagine”, as we cannot know for certain.



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While Brontë evokes a sense of peace at the end of the novel which can be read as
Lockwood’s blissful ignorance, readers are left with more than this; we cannot know for
certain but we are not ignorant. We are left with what Keats called Negative Capability, his
term for what he saw as a desirable, creative state of mind that is “capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” (Keats,
43). Brontë’s use of naive first person narrative perspectives conveys the impossibility of
obtaining complete insight into the lives of others; while Nelly and Lockwood strive to simplify
and define what they perceive, Brontë’s use of contrast, humour and dramatic irony elevates
readers to a higher plain of appreciation for the mysteries and complexities we will never
fully fathom.

Works Cited

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Penguin Classics, 1847.

Keats, J. The letters of John Keats: A selection (R. Gittings, Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1970.

Wood, James. How Fiction Works. Vintage, 2009.

Word count: 1498

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