Lockwood as the narrator

I have finished reading Bronte's Wurthing Heights For the first time. I am still indiferent on the novel, but I did have a realization about half way through the novel that proved itself throughout the novel. In Chapter 1 Lockwood is the narrator, and from about chapter 2 untill chapter 10 Nelly is the Narrator. Then from chapter ten until the end of the novel Lockwood is once the narrator again. From this i realized that Heathcliff is not the most demonic character in all of literature as he is portrayed and said to be. Lockwood descibes him as having black eyes from the beginning, and the other times he is the narrator he calls him demonic, evil, as well as the devil himself. However when Nelly portrays Heathcliff, she talks about him as if he is just a kid trying to fit in, and just will not be accepted by his peer except for Cathrine. This shows how this whole story is just a story, the way Lockwood tells it, is not how it is. Also if you really look at Lockwood and his actions, you can see how he is not a trust worthy narrator. He talks about everything from first impressions only. He does not go indepth about how heathcliff came over and spet and hour with him while he was sick, nor does he go in depth about how heathcliff invited him inside as he was leaving. So what i guess i am saying is that heathcliff is just an ordinary guy who got a little misfortune, and got a little mad over it. He was not the demonic and overly passionate person that he was portrayed by lockwood, because you can not trust what Lockwood tells you, because he is only telling you what he see, and when you take a step back, he has seen nothing that he tells you.

Well I get the impression that Lockwood is a bit of an idiot but I think the reason behind the differences in feeling toward Heathcliff is more because Nelly knew him from the beginning and knew the circumstances that made him the way he is as opposed to Lockwood who is seeing him as an outsider.

Well Lockwood never really knew Heathcliff, so definitly first impressions there, but I'm pretty sure Nelly herself often potrays H as demonic, cruel, a beast etc. especially in his later years. After all they did toussle in the parlor and she witnessed Heathcliff's pysical violence on more than one occasion at Wuthering Heights. But yeah, there is definitly more to H than anger, pain etc. All that was born out of the love.

Yes Nelly does talk about the nastier aspect of Heathcliff's character but I think she talks about them with more understanding and sympathy than Lockwood. She knew why he was like that, she just didn't approve.

Well yeah, I agree, there was more to H than that side of him and I think Nelly had a very genuine affection for him, even at his worst. She would side with him, more often than not (after a little persuasion), but the original poster was saying the side seen by Lockwood wasnt really valid or something, "he was not the demonic and overly passionate person that he was portrayed by lockwood". . I disagree. I think H was very passionate and pretty demonic, regardless of the reasons behind it. If you see a complete assh*le on the street, he is still an assh*le no matter what drove him to it. H had passion, bucketloads actually, for Catherine and what she represented, and he deprived an innocent kid of even a basic education to get back at his enemies. Also he pretty much drove his own kid to death and tried pretty hard at driving not a few others to death, not to mention the misery he dished out to Cath jnr..effectivly turning her from a carefree child into a bitter-before-her-time teen. Heathcliff would grind people down. Grinding...grinding... destroying ...cutting off the air supply.. He wasn't a wild eyed heritic running about the moors and screaming at the moon, but demonic? Very :)

Actually someone needs to start a thread on H's child abuses.

“Wuthering Heights has a peculiar narrative method, in which there is no first-person narrator, yet every word is spoken by a character in the story, and the author remains withdrawn: a method which combines the objectivity of impersonal narration with the subjectivity of the first person. This method denies us any special intimacy with the hero or heroine; nor do we have the reassuring authority of an impersonal narration. The novel is rather pervaded by a radical uncertainty about the story that is told. It displays a quality of ambiguity flowing not just from the presence of ghosts and mysteries, but from the absence of any reliable narrative authority. Where there is room for doubt about the accuracy of a witness’ testimony, readers can hardly be positive in their convictions about what really ‘happened’. The first word of the novel is ‘I’, suggesting the opening of a first-person narrative. But Mr. Lockwood is not the novel’s hero and the substance of the story is not his experience. Nor does he transmit to us a clear understanding of the central character Heathcliff: in fact, his own reaction to Heathcliff is one of confused perplexity.”
Graham Holderness

Mr. Lockwood is quite interesting to me. He is the only character in the story who is not directly involved in this plot line. His purpose is entirely narrative and for that reason, I must give due credit to his objective position in the novel. He is intended to represent the general audience when it comes to how savage and rude this atmosphere is, especially to an outsider. If anything, he lends some comfort to those of us who are also rather taken aback by how isolated and unusual these two families are. It's quite amusing to me how he initially comments on Heathcliff. Although he is in fact somewhat bewildered by Heathcliff, he remarks that Heathcliff's disposition is probably stemmed from a bad childhood or some other occurrance, and therein lies the concept of the byronic hero. The reader is led to identify with Lockwood, and in doing so, we notice several places in the book where we are compelled to feel sympathy for Heathcliff. Another interesting thing that I have pondered concerning Heathcliff is that he exits the book in almost the same fashion that he is introduced. Alone, dark, cold, miserable, friendless and almost frightful. He clearly stands unredeemed at his death. As wayward as Catherine was, she was somehow redeemed, but not so with Heathcliff. He just might be one of the darkest characters in literature! Because there are just as many times when he deliberately inflicts negativity on other characters as there are times to feel sympathy for him. He is also a beautiful example of a character foil with Edgar. And what would this story be like if Bronte had maintained more civilized characteristics with him? Or any characters for that matter?

ahaaa

I think Also Nilly sometimes appears to be hating Catherine's haughtiness, so how the hell can we trust someone who hates her to tell us her story.

Okay, this is the big answer actually:

Locwood is what you call in a novel an UN-trustworthy narrator, which is a narrator who lets his or her emotions in too much...
Nelly is a trustworthy narrator since she is more neutral, hence the idiotry of Lockwood ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Onzalvin

Okay, this is the big answer actually:

Locwood is what you call in a novel an UN-trustworthy narrator, which is a narrator who lets his or her emotions in too much...
Nelly is a trustworthy narrator since she is more neutral, hence the idiotry of Lockwood ;)

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Surely it's the other way around? Nelly has known Heathcliff for most of his life. She recalls the way he was treated as a child and has sympathies with him because of that even though he grew up to be nasty. She is the one who is emotional. Lockwood barely knows any of the characters. The first Cathy is dead before he even appears. How can he be emotional over a story he is hearing for the first time?

Has anyone ever seen the movie Rashômon? In it three people tell the same story- but each time it's different, the character influences the story through their own motives and prejudice. The last person telling the story is a bystander, and we are led to believe his version is the "true" version as you think that since he's not invested in these other people than he's the objective observer. But then you find out he stole something from one of the characters thus throwing his objectivity and his version of the story into suspect.

The point being is that no one is "objective" and their's no such thing as a true story when a human is telling it since we all remember things differently and bring our own prejudices and opinions into the circumstances of the events.

For instance Mr. Lockwood is a bit of a city dandy coming in and seeing a brutish country man. Of course he's gonna see Heathcliff as "the devil" and wright him off as evil since from his prospective and background that's all he could think him to be.

Nelly Dean continually plays Catherine as selfish and haughty because coming from the proper respectable working class life she has led someone with "airs and graces" like Catherine comes off as snobbish and an affront.

And I bet if Heathcliff told the story we'd get another version of it, the same with Catherine or Edgar. I think that's one of the clever bits Bronte put in to the story- the idea that we could never get the "true" story of Catherine and Heathcliff since the narrators are prejudiced in their different ways against the pair. And I definitely think prejudice is a big theme in the book in general.

I have been reading the York Notes for Wuthering Heights. The person who wrote them, Claire Jones, seems to think he is an utter plonker. According to her, he is insensitive, unobservant, conceited and unreliable. I thought that was a little unfair. He is a bit of a wally and pathetic with women. However, he is a stranger in the place. I thought it was customary in those days for genteel folk to drop in on each other, who would not expect to be treated with such lack of hospitality. Alright, he mistook a pile of rabbits for a chair of cats and lost his way in the snow from the gates of Thrushcross Grange to the door - so what? Claire Jones says even his observation in the final chapter about it being "hard to imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth" marks him out as an unimaginative observer and unreliable narrator. That seems totally unfair to me. However, I didn't like him blaming Zillah for letting him sleep in Catherine's old room where he suffered those terrible nightmares.

I read an interesting essay titled 'The Narrators of Wuthering Heights' by Carl R Woodring. He is a bit kinder to Mr Lockwood than Claire Jones. He says Mr Lockwood is an 'educated diarist from the city.' If Mr Lockwood is insensitive and unobservant, he at least seems to have superb recall, because he is able to write down most of what Nelly Dean tells him from memory. I wondered about that in the chapter in which Mr Lockwood says he is repeating what Nelly told him but in a slightly condensed form, because the style did not change at all. Did Mr Lockwood previously write down everything Nelly told him as she spoke or did he write it out later? He also seems able to record Joseph's speech when he is unfamiliar with the dialect. I also wondered who he was writing for. If it was a diary, why did he report his unhappy, mishandled courtship nearer the date when it happened the previous summer? If it was for others to read however, presumably he'd want to leave that bit out, and some of his other private thoughts too.

I cannot remember reading another book with a double narrative style, although apparently Anne Bronte used it in The Tenant of Wildfield Hall. In his essay, Carl R. Woodring said it had been a much used technique at the time Wuthering Heights was written. Actually, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner rings a bell from school as another instance where the double narrative technique was used, but it seems to have fallen so out of favour that it now seems innovative (at least to me).novative (at least to me).

Lockwood is our only 'normal' character so we have something to measure the Earnshaws/Heathcliff's savagery against.