Dual Narrators

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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

HeightsCARL R. W O O D R I N G

SNCE THE SEMINAL STUDY by C. P. Sanger in 1926, the struc-ture of Wu thering Heights has been further illumined by a hostof laudatory critics, notably Paul M. Fulcher (1g2g), Lord DavidCecil (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 ofthe Oxford World's Classics edition preserve an older view in H.W. Garrod's resolute assertions, dated 1930, that the story, sufferingfrom "inferior technique," is in parts "uncertainly conceived" and"in general ill constructed." Although most laudatory critics havenoticed the debt owed by the structure of the novel to its use of twopresumed narrators, more remains to be said about the utility ofLockwood and Nelly Dean.The earlier scholar, learned in Gothic romances and tales fromBZac~woodS,found in Nelly's narrative within narrative the mis-fortune of inherited inconvenience; the later critic, familiar withselected masterworks, hails the use of contrasting narrators as awonder 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 beenGuggenheim Fellow and Ford Fellow, 1955-56.c 298 I


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Narrators of W u t h e r i n g H e i g h t s 299other method could have better provided the reader with the inter-locking of familiar details concerning two generations and astranger's astonishment over the beginning, the middle, and theend of Heathcliff's story? Nelly alone, Heathcliff himself as Jame-sian or Austenian register, omniscient author, a series of actors orservants speaking independently-none of these as narrativeauthority could have provided the union of intimacy, intensity,interpretation, and detached admiration that Emily Bronte neededand achieved. Lockwood, the stranger, shares the reader's wonderat the characters and events; Mrs. Dean, the intimate, has longsupped with wonders; stranger and intimate combine to certify thegeneral facts.

The double narration is a convention and must be accepted as aconvention. Much in Wzlthering Heights, including charactersas well as techniques, rests upon transformed conventions. Sweptwith the surge of demonism and quieted with purgation andrepose at the end, the reader need not be disturbed because theconventions allow Nelly to linger overlong at various doors orLockwood to report what Nelly said Zillah said the second Cath-erine said to Hareton. If, however, the critical reader becomesdisturbed, if he demands a logic in the deviousness by which solil-oquies reach him, he has no justification for exclaiming thatLockwood must have memorized Isabella's unlikely letter to Nellyverbatim. 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 oncritical reflection that the letter from Isabella as read by Nelly con-tained a briefer summary than Lockwood reports to us. Like hiscreator, 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 interventioncan account for similarities between the styles of Nelly, Isabella,and Zillah through which the events make their impact. If we


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300 Nineteenth-Century Fictionhesitate to believe that Nelly remembers what Heathcliff said theLintons said to each other some twenty-five years ago (ChapterVI), we can believe tha t Lockw ood has supplied the appropriatewords. T o a protest that the author clearly thought of each sceneas resting on the authority of its original narrator, the answer isthat each scene does still so rest and that no justification existsfor hang ing critically suspended between these narrators and Lock-wood, who is characterized by the author as a man who did infact compose the book as we have it. The self-taught Nelly maymimic 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 incourse the remarkable events of his first two days am ong moorsand boors. By dreaming in Cathy's paneled bed, he comes to pur-sue less palpable wilds. Emily Bronte may seem to allow him fourdays to transcribe the first nine chapters, a day for Chapter x,four weeks altogether (ill as he was) to hear and record the storythrough Chapter xw, another week to report the urgency ofChapters xv th rough xxx, and at last the leisure of a possiblethree months to compose the subdued descent from ChapterXXXII to the final meditation over "the sleepers in that ,quie tearth.'' A qualification seems necessary. Without hesitation theauthor 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 takenas his immediate record during illness and convalescence whenhe resisted the appeal of violent rusticity. W e may suppose thatincreased understanding and physical distance from the moorsgreatly stimulated his memory of the narrated details and per-mitted lengthy insertions when the story became meaningful tohim. 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


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Narrators of Wu t h e r i n gHe igh t s 301never been heard of for three years; and the heroine was married. 111 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; slowlyhis irony mellows and finally dissolves. Quoted against himself,he has been called misanthropic. He is not. A reticent man, hecomes to Thrushcross embittered because his chilly reticence hascost him the love of an attractive girl. In an unsociable mood, henonetheless finds Heathcliff disgustingly unsociable. So gregariousis he that he soon craves conversation with his unpromising house-keeper, Mrs. Dean. If he seems inane, he suffers fro m the inanityhis author attributes to the average London reader into whosehands her book will fall. In his introduction to the Rinehart Col-lege Edition, Mark Schorer follows Garrod in interpreting theoriginal plan of the novel as the edification of a sophisticated andsentimental prig, Lockw ood, in the natura l hu man values of grandpassion. Rather, Lockwood reacts for the n ormal skeptical readerin appropriate ways at each stage of the story and its unfold ingtheme. Within the action, he plays a more individual role. Asactor, he tries to protect his "susceptible heart" (Chapter 11) fromattachment 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." Hereveals in Chapter xxv that he has fallen, he has asked that herportrait be hung over his fireplace, but he hesitates to act precip-itately lest Catherine not return his love. Here the author intendsLockwood to replace Linton in the reader's mind as the activerival of H are ton. T he suspense of this rivalry is to imbue Mrs.Dean's last words in the spring: ". . I can see no remedy, atpresent, unless she should marry again; and that scheme it doesnot come within my province to arrange" (Chapter xxx). Al-ways the sentimentalist, Lockw ood feels pain when Catherine failsto perceive the value of d in ing with him instead of w ith "clownsand misanthropists" (Chapter xxx~).In September, he reports,


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302 Nineteenth-Century Fiction"I bit my lip, in spite, at having thro wn away the chance I mighthave had" (Chapter XX XII), nd a t the very end he admits togrum bling at the complacent love of Catherine and H areton. T h eauthor manipulates and tolerates Lockw ood much more for struc-ture and plot than for theme.

Prefiguring Conrad's use of Marlow, Nelly's oral language setsitself off from L ockwood's prose by such simple phrases as "really,you know, Sir'' and "well, Mr. Lockwood." Again an adequateconvention, productive of immediate credibility and pleasure.Verisimilitude of nar ration gives way, happily, before bin din gdetail. Cathy returned from her five weeks at Thrushcross Grang ea neat little lady: "I was all over flour making the Christmas cake,and it would no t have done to give me a hu g; and, then, she lookedaround for Heathcliff" (Chapter VII).

As judge, Nelly pronounces Heathcliff a "black villain" and"evil beast"; Cathy a "wild, wicked slip" w ho "meant no harm";and Joseph the "wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee." Cathy, shedecrees, must be "chastened into humility." As interpreter, Nellycalls Heathcliff's a cuckoo's story-although she avoids assign ingsuch a label to the later spiritual cuckoldry. As chorus, she laysaside superstition to proclaim happiness in the tranquillity ofCathy's death-chamber. In interviews, as attorney, she asks ques-tions the reader wants asked. As in T h e Brothers Karamaxou, theintensity of the passion lends credib ility 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 pastevents, Mrs. (that is, Miss) Dean not only plays an active roleeconomically designed, but also commands interest as a personalityconsiderably beyond any of Thackeray's justly adm ired servants.Alert, observant, prying, gossipy, slightly superstitious, bold , saucy,tolerant, motherly, she has a very suspicious array of traits. Firmat the center, her character seems conveniently amorphous at theperiphery. Even more than Lockwood's, her actions and utterances


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Narrators of Wu t h e r i n gHe i g h t s 303fit the imm ediate needs of the situation before the reader; she isno Mrs. Gamp to steal either attention or consistency from thecentral 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 isskeptic enough to acknowledge her superstition. She remains acredible an d canny witness by doubting the supernaturalness of thecharacters 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, E mily Bronte ingeniously produced the exactly neededcom bination of servant, com panion, and saucy antagonist. W ithpersonal dignity , she keeps secrets; as a respected nurse, she tattles;she intercepts letters between young culprits; she scolds; shewatches pots; she dances with the ungentle gentlefolk whenneeded (Chapter VII). Her removal in 1783 from WutheringHeights to Thrushcross Grange had to be conceived before com-position began; perception of her wonderful capacities as a catalystcould not have been long delayed. As witness and chorus, shemust take part in nearly every scene in the book. We becomeaccustomed to her interference from the time she admits puttingthe waif Heathcliff on the landing to encourage his runn in g away(Chapter IV). Soon deciding to scrub his person and manners,she plants in him the germinal suggestion that he might be anOriental mogul, able to buy Wuthering Heights (Chapter VII).She provokes Cathy to show violence before Edgar (ChapterVIII); 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 whenshe combines instigation of acts with explicit judgm ent of thoseacts, her author scrupulously prevents Nelly's actions from seem-ing to modify in any way either the personalities of the m ore im -portan t characters or the major directions of the plot. NeIly is


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304 Nineteenth-Century Fictionallowed, not to advise Cathy on accepting or rejecting Edgar, butto catechize her after the acceptance (Chapter IX) . Her own ad-missions of guilty responsibility make the reader the m ore readyto distribute blame among the principals. Locked inside W utheringHeights in August 1800, she uttered and then withdrew a con-fession :I seated myself in a chair, and rocked, to and fro, passing harsh judgmenton my m any derelictions of duty ; fro m which, it struck me then, all themisfo rtunes of all my employers sprang . It was not the case, in reality, Iam aware; but it was, in my imagination, that dismal night; and I thoughtHeathcliff himself less guilty than I (Chapter XXVII).

Most scenes in the novel receive some imprint from Nelly'scharacter or position. Her catalytic instigations gather strengthalmost imperceptibly from the m any times when her actions helpbuild portraits of herself and of the principals but otherwise merelyprovide a way of stating what occurred, as when she innocentlysupplies little Catherine with provisions for a ride to WutheringHeights (Chapter XVIII).The frequency with which her char-acter helps to determ ine the nature of imm ediate acts helps tosupport the rarer occasions when she influences the action w ithoutmotivation, as when her one prolonged illness makes possible themeetings between Cathy and Linton (Chapter XXIII).Occasion-ally she acts with inadequate motive to gain and communicateinformation for her author; more often adequate motives impelher. She softens toward Heathcliff the waif because measles makehim quiet and lead him to praise her for nursing him ; soon, there-fore, Heathcliff can deceive her by his silence at mistreatment f romHindley (Chapter IV ). It is a condition of both respectability andforehandedness that she chaperon the final meeting of Heathcliffwith Cathy, who is about to die in childbirth. That the unearthlylovers show awareness of her presence merely em phasizes theirundiminished passion (Chapter xv). Even here Nelly is up toher usual trick: by her own actions, in character or credible forthe mom ent, she reveals the character of others.


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Narrators of Wu t h e r i n gHe igh t s 305Acknowledged as narrators and interpreters, Mrs. Dean andLockwood have been slighted as actors in the plot. Lockwood

does not merely hear the tale in a tavern in Leeds; he dreams inthe paneled bed beside the ghostly window and himself threatensto interrup t the final purgation and the happy-ever-after. As Heath-cliff intrudes from some netherworld, Lockwood intrudes fromthe city. Mrs. Dean belongs. From the time she takes HindleyYsknife between her teeth, she perfects the symbols. She interweavesHeathcliff's hair with Edgar's for Catherine's locket; at the endshe combs the hair of the dead Heathcliff and closes the window.

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