Refer to chapter one of Wuthering Heights and comment on how Emily Brontë introduces her reader to the novel in Chapter one of Wuthering Heights.

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Refer to chapter one of Wuthering Heights and comment on how Emily Brontë introduces her reader to the novel in Chapter one of Wuthering Heights.

Consider: The setting and atmosphere, narrative technique, including the use of Lockwood as a narrator compared with later narrators and preparation in the opening for the rest of the novel

        Emily Brontë’s opening chapter to ‘Wuthering Heights’ creates intrigue and curiosity. This greatly relies on the atmosphere, narrators and setting Emily Brontë chose to introduce the reader to the different world and people of Wuthering Heights.

        Emily Brontë starts the opening chapter with a date – 1801, therefore suggesting that this is someone’s diary. The diary belongs to Mr Lockwood, who happens to be staying at Thrushcross Grange. Not suprisingly, Lockwood starts his diary off with the word ‘I’ which sums up Lockwood’s egotistical nature. In this new world which makes a distant memory of the civilised society Lockwood comes from, he feels himself to be above those around him, referring to Joseph as ‘ an old man, very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy.’

        From the very onset Emily Brontë introduces Lockwood to us as a very unreliable narrator. He bases all his conclusions on speculations, and his speeches are full of guesswork like ‘ I conjectured’, ‘I detected’, ‘I believe’ and ‘I suppose’.

        Some of Lockwood’s comments on the house like ‘other dogs haunted other recesses’, ‘a wilderness of crumbling griffins’, and referring to the chairs as ‘one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade’ are maybe his closest observations that in fact give an indication to what the people in the house are really like. Like the dogs, they each prefer to distance themselves from things that disinterest them. Similarly to the chairs they do not amerce themselves in the full flow of life in terms of Lockwood’s society, they prefer the dark which is how Lockwood sees Wuthering Heights. These people have all been through very hard times, emotionally and physically and what Lockwood is viewing is their ‘crumbling’ souls like the griffin’s and of course set in the ‘wilderness’ of the Heights. Ironically, virtually everything else that Lockwood says that is he has taken time over to analyse, is in fact complete nonsense. For example, in Lockwod’s opening paragraph he admits that ‘Mr Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us’. The reader can already see by the end of the first chapter that there are no similarities between Lockwood and Heathcliff and Lockwood has no notion of the word desolation compared to Heath cliff.

Sadly, only the reader learns from Lockwood’s mistakes as he even tries to explain, Heathcliff’s character, a man he has only spoken to once!  This of course focuses the reader’s attention on the way even though we can not accept what Lockwood says as the truth, as it has been filtered through his character and prejudices and then expanded on through Lockwood’s fancy use of language. Against the contrast of Heathcliff’s and Joseph’s monosyllabic, straight to the point returns, Lockwood’s use of the word ‘penetralium’ instead of house, and ‘domestics’ and ‘establishment’ pick up on how out of place Lockwood’s airs are. This of course symbolises the ways in which, with Heathcliff, what you see is what you get, he does not create a fancy facade to cover up any undesirable qualities, therefore this makes the action and language of Lockwood in a place like Wuthering Heights even more absurd.

        The fact that Lockwood is always at pains to try to show how educated he is, (for example he refers to ‘Twelfth Night’ when he says ‘I never told my love…’) in a place where no-one cares highlights how inadequate any of his ideas or thoughts about the story are.

        Lockwood often uses elaborate similes such as ‘atmospheric tumult’ to mean ‘storm’ which actually suggests that Lockwood is adept at seeing behind the picture and at the under current. But in fact the case is the opposite, demonstrating that Lockwood’s behaviour is merely a show, which is almost as shallow as himself.

        The rare pieces of information that Emily Brontë allows to be presented to the reader without being filtered are all the more powerful and striking when mixed in with Lockwood’s elaborate and foolish pretentious views.

        We see the narrator is not neutral and colours events with his own character. For example, when Lockwood says:

        ‘I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons’

        He actually is comparing characters to himself and suing his experiences of life to understand them. Lockwood will not get very far! Lockwood has got the point that Heathcliff’s reasoning is unimaginable. To Lockwood it is beyond his comprehension, and for him to guess at it is just a waste of his time.

        Almost strangely, the way Lockwood struggles and clumsily narrators the story would in most cases dilute it’s power and significance, in fact, paradoxically, it shows how the story is based on the uncertainty and intangible motives for characters’ behaviour and that for someone else to point out the true thoughts and feeling of the reader would undermine the essence of the story in it’s ambiguity.

        In summary, Lockwood is extremely unreliable, even in the first chapter he makes a judgement on Heathcliff that is entirely wrong. He frequently mistakes social relationships and situations through his hypocritical, but egotistical view of those at Wuthering Heights.

        In Chapter one, Lockwood refers to a period when he was ‘head and ears over’ a girl that he met at the coast. His language when referring to the object of his affection includes: ‘a most fascinating creature’, ‘a real goddess’ and on his loves departure he comments ‘a curious turn of disposition’. It seems evident from Lockwood’s language that is full of clichés and artificial terms of endearment, that Lockwood has not a notion of what love really is, and that which he supposed to be love, he shrank away from. This is in complete contrast to the way Heathcliff submerges himself in his love for Cathy, and particularly picks up on the superficial nature of Lockwood, and how ridiculous Lockwood’s comparison of himself and Heathcliff was, in the first chapter.

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        Lockwood is obsessed with his image as a misanthropist, yet hypocritically refers to Heathcliff’s behaviour as idiosyncrasy and calls ‘as soon as possible’ after his arrival to pay a social call to his neighbours!

        The other main narrator is Nelle Dean, she was a servant girl at Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff was brought there, and therefore she has lived at or near Wuthering Heights her whole life. She acts as a second filter. Not only is the information relayed through Lockwood, but Nelle Dean first tells it to him and often events are told to Nelle as direct speech or ...

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