The Observers

There can be many reasons for authors to use a dual narrative. While it can be used to tie two events that the narrators witnessed apart to make a story whole, that is not the case for Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Bronte instead uses one person who knows the whole story to narrate and utilizes the other as the glue that holds the story together as he too knows much about these characters, although not the whole story. Lockwood is the main narrator, albeit not knowing the whole story. While it is Nelly’s story to tell, without Lockwood’s crucial input the story would be lacking bits and pieces. With all of that said it can be argued that both narrators are a third person in the story as Nelly is always the third person to what happens at Wuthering Heights, and with Nelly only passing through what she has witnessed, making Lockwood a third person in the story as well, regardless of both of them being familiar with the tenants. 

Lockwood treats what he hears from Nelly while he has fallen ill, as a story notwithstanding the fact that he has actually met with those people before. Nelly’s unsophisticated use of everyday language adds to this as Lockwood and the tenants of Wuthering Heights compared to Nelly are of different backgrounds. This instance is seen in the fifteenth chapter of Wuthering Heights as Lockwood describes Nelly’s narrative as “I’ll continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole, a very fair narrator, and I don’t think I could improve her style.” Nelly tells the story as if it is real-life gossip while perhaps due to Lockwood’s intoxicated dream state, it is the exact opposite for him. These events are too real for Nelly for even for the parts she did not experience first-hand, she read through it on her own whereas for Lockwood it is merely nothing but an entertaining story he wants to hear. 

Lockwood’s dreams of Catherine unlock a few chapters of mystery that would otherwise not be discovered without his side of the story. Despite Lockwood’s outsider view of the story and the characters, his dreams are a crucial part of the story. 

With all of that taken into account, Lockwood is the primary narrator while Nelly is solely a secondary one but their parts in this story are the same for both of them are merely observing the story as an outsider with the only difference being Nelly being an outsider while living through the events compared to Lockwood using Nelly as an agent to be a part of the observant crowd alongside Nelly.