Lockwood is an outsider coming into a world which he knows nothing about and finds unreceptive, yet amazing. He arrives at the end of November 1801 as a tenant of Thrushcross Grange, after his initial meeting with Heathcliff, he leaves for 2 months, in which his fascination of Heathcliff, both young and old Catherine and the Heights grows, which leads to the beginning of Nelly’s narrative. He briefly returns in September 1802, when he hears the conclusion of Nelly’s narrative and the final events of the novel take place.
In the novel Lockwood presents the situations as he seems them, the reader is therefore brought closer to the action through the eyes of the narrator himself. The presence of Lockwood allows Emily Bronte to begin her story at the end and work backwards and forwards in time. The opening chapters narrated by Lockwood give the reader an introduction to early 19th century life. The style of Lockwood’s narration is in that of a diary, which allows the reader to understand the story with intimacy and from a supposedly impartial character. Lockwood is intelligent and perceptive, and pays a lot of attention to detail, when he first visited the Heights he noted the chained gate, while at the end of the novel when he returns to find Heathcliff dead, he notices “Both doors and lattices were open”. With his attention to detail, character differences are noticed in Lockwood, Cathy was once described as “the little witch”, later she has “a voice as sweet as a silver bell”. Hareton is described in one of the opening chapters by Lockwood as a bore and a clown and by the end of the novel he has become “a young man respectably dressed” with “handsome features”, therefore fulfilling his role as an detached outsider, bringing dimension to the novel, which is quite different from the perceptions of Nelly.
Nelly Dean’s narrative, though full of detail and amazing accuracy, seems she is describing events she witnessed an hour ago. Her remarkable ability to remember the smallest of details 20 years later makes us question her reliability. Nelly remembers every word, every movement and every detail, which makes her invaluable as a narrator. Nelly provides the inner frame of the narrative; we see all three generations of the Earnshaw’s and the Linton’s through her eyes, although she tells her story in the exact words of the characters, her personal opinion gives us more of an insight into the characters and their past, including the past of which we know little or nothing about. Nelly is sometimes slightly limited because of her conventional, religious and moral values, which often prevent her from understanding the character and their emotions fully. However, with the reader generally having a more open mind than Nelly and more background than Lockwood, it can appear that the reader understands the situation better than either of the narrators. The amount of dialogue included in Nelly’s narration may make the reader question the reliability of her narrative, but allows the reader to have a direct relationship with the characters, allowing a more personal response from the reader.
While Lockwood and Nelly make up the main narrative of the novel, the smaller narratives like Catherine’s diary give us a direct glimpse into the lives of the main protagonists; they suddenly appear without warning and stick in our minds vividly. Isabella’s letter to Nelly tells us exactly how she’s feeling, up to this point we know little of Isabella’s actual thoughts, but after we know about her and Heathcliff’s marriage as though we had witnessed it.
The multiple narratives from Catherine, Nelly and Lockwood allow Emily Bronte to jump from present to past. Nelly's story is studded with dates, which allows us to work out precise dates and ages of characters. The order of events structures the time scale, allowing events such as Heathcliff opening Catherine’s coffin to happen later on in the novel. The series of events and the timescale used, particularly with Catherine dying in the middle of the book and Heathcliff dying at the end suggest that the novel was structured around revenge not love, the theme Wuthering Heights is generally associated with.
If it weren’t for the two narrators Nelly and Lockwood there would be no point in the story of Catherine and Heathcliff, then Catherine and Hareton being told. Emily Bronte’s use of multiple narrators allows the reader to understand the story from numerous perspectives and gives the story more dimensions than it otherwise may have had. I think the device of multiple narrators has worked, although the narrators and time-scale may appear confusing, I think it is essential for the story to be told in the effective way it has been by Bronte.
