The Function of Narrative and the Narrators in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights, as one of the best-known novels in the history of literature, manages to reflect the theme and emotion of the text through the narration and the narrators themselves. Emily Brontë, as a Victorian woman herself, criticizes the social ideals of her time with the help of her talented pen and the characters she created. While presenting the story of Cathy and Heathcliff, she uses at least two layers of narrative primarily through the story’s two main narrators; Lockwood and Nelly Dean. There are, as one may expect from different characters and narrators, some differences between the ways the characters transfer the story which affects the perception of it. While the layered narrative of Wuthering Heights gives a sense of unreliability, the choice of narrator in the novel, Nelly Dean and Lockwood presents a dynamic between the events that are told, the narration, and the narrators, which completes and covers the story.

Different characters and backstories affect the way a story is told. Lockwood and Nelly Dean have completely different backgrounds and aspects of their characters. To begin with, Lockwood, the first main narrator of the love story of Catherine and Heathcliff, starts the story as an outsider. He is not one of the residents of Wuthering Heights who witnessed every soul's story that lived within its walls. Thus, he was not capable of telling the full story directly, however; he was able to make an entrance to life in Wuthering Heights as an inspector. As Carol Jacobs mentions in her article “Wuthering Heights: At the Threshold of Interpretation”, the first time he goes through the front door of Wuthering Heights is a metaphor for the doorway that opens to a new and foreign world with an interesting story (50). As she further explains, Lockwood is intruding on Heathcliff's and others’ lives. Yet, to fully know the story, he – and the reader – needs an insider, someone who witnessed the events, to tell everything. At this point, the narration shifts from Lockwood’s possession to Nelly Dean’s, though Lockwood never completely ceases from the story but exists mostly as a recorder of Nelly’s telling.

The first three chapters are fully Lockwood’s narration and they provide a driving force for the beginning of the story and an insight into it. In these chapters, when Lockwood stays in Catherine’s old room, he sees a nightmare. This nightmare is a metaphor for the story of the house that seeks to be told and revealed. Carol Jacobs expresses this kind of notion through these words: “Perhaps, after all, it is Wuthering Heights that dreams here, dreaming a violent struggle with its other, Lockwood, to define a space for its fiction” (53). So, Lockwood takes up his role as the other who should set a story free for everyone to know as the house wishes. When he goes back home, he asks Nelly Dean to tell her the story. He wants to enter the story and be a part of it by acknowledging it. 

As Nelly tells everything, Lockwood quotes it for the reader. This filters the story and makes it unreliable because unlike Nelly, who actually lived all those events and never fully became a judgmental character - even though her narration is still away from the absolute truth thanks to the nature of story-telling and language - Lockwood has not experienced the story and has more prejudice towards the other characters, especially Heathcliff. This makes one doubt whether Lockwood thoroughly depicts the story or adds his interpretation to it. The second option is more likely to be true. While Nelly’s narrative is more reliable thanks to her attitude and background, Lockwood’s narrative is a bit more unreliable because of his demeanor and his status as an outsider.

Lockwood’s narration, as Carol Jacobs indicates, emphasizes one of the themes of the story; being the other, being an outsider. Lockwood is uncomfortable with being outside of life in Wuthering Heights, being refused to be accepted fully. Thus, he, in a way, forces himself into the story as the story forces itself into him and his narration. Moreover, Nelly plays the role of an insider who accepts an outsider in her world. Nelly represents the unity and clemency that Emily Brontë wants to have in the society she lives in and shows this through her depiction of the story. 

Lockwood is a narrator who renders the story unreliable but depicts the theme of the story through his existence while Nelly Dean is a narrator who accepts to share the story and make others a part of it and lifts the sense of unreliability with the help of aspects and background of her character. These two narrators differ in many ways, but when brought together, complete the story and everything the story aims to tell. From this perspective, we can say that Emily Brontë successfully conveyed her perspective on the matter.

Works Cited

https://www.jstor.org/stable/303164