Literary Topoi in Wuthering Heights

Sadistic landlords, misguided romances, and a slew of deaths make for a less-than-ideal bedtime story. For Lockwood, however, these rather mysterious occurrences provide plenty of entertainment to pass the time while bedridden with sickness. Emily Brontë’s celebrated Wuthering Heights is a novel that recounts the complicatedly interwoven pasts of Wuthering Heights’ denizens. Uniquely, Brontë frames Lockwood’s narrative around a series of shorter stories that link together to recreate the conflicted history of Wuthering Heights and Thrushwood Grange. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë rejects the classic linear method of storytelling in favor of a more piecemeal structure and relies on Lockwood to put together the pieces.

At the outset of the novel, Brontë portrays Lockwood approaching Wuthering Heights for the first time. Like readers, Lockwood is impervious to the dark history of Wuthering Heights. As Lockwood learns more about the residence’s tenants, his skepticism and disbelief mirrors that of the readers who pioneer alongside Lockwood. The novel begins in media res, in the middle of the action, which inevitably demands a curiosity for the events that preceded the arrival of Lockwood. It is not until Lockwood is bitten by Heathcliff’s dogs and is forced to remain in bed that the story of Wuthering Heights’ past begins to unravel.

For a story with such a unique narrative structure, Brontë selected a rather typical setting for the level of narrative that involves Lockwood and Nelly. Yet however bland a bedridden Lockwood may be, Brontë’s chair-and-bed setup adheres to structural convention. In Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition, Jeffrey Williams posits that framed narratives contain classic topoi of specific times and places, that is, literary clichés that constitute the setting. Frequently, these topoi effect “not only a pedestrian social entertainment to pass the time, but symbolically a pharmakon to stave off danger and grief” (Williams 111). In Wuthering Heights this literary topos takes the form of Nelly’s long conversations with Lockwood in which she recounts the background of Wuthering Heights to take his mind off the “grief” of his grippe. Totally unfamiliar with the history of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood must accept Nelly’s stories as truth, even though her own biases distort her recollection of the details.

Because Ellen “Nelly” Dean is one of the only sources of authority concerning the history of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood, and by extension readers of Wuthering Heights, invest a lot of confidence in Nelly’s narration. However, it is crucial to remember that Nelly is a fallible human being and that her picture of the past, while accurate, may not be complete. For instance, Nelly tends to downplay events that cast her in a negative light. Such is true when she explains to Linton Heathcliff that his father will “be fonder of [him] than any uncle, for [he] is his own” (Brontë 172). As readers will realize at this point, Nelly is lying. There is no evidence throughout the rest of the novel that supports the notion that Heathcliff will love his son, especially considering how he treated his mother. After dropping off Linton with Heathcliff, Nelly moves to leave the scene quickly, asserting that she had “no excuse for lingering longer” despite Linton’s pleas for help (Brontë 175). Such urgency to gloss over this part of the story when she converses with Lockwood suggests a subtle attempt of cover-up on the part of Nelly. On balance, Nelly is a pretty reliable character, but readers have to keep in mind that her subjective lens will cloud her objective depiction of Wuthering Heights’ history.

           So, Wuthering Heights is an incredibly self-contained novel. The character interactions are plentiful, but only occur between the two distinct households of Wuthering Heights and its literary foil, Thrushwood Grange. While Wuthering Heights is characterized by wild passion and hatred, Thrushwood is governed by compassion and order. In many ways, this novel’s scrambled structure mimics the disjointed lifestyle that dominates Wuthering Heights. Brontë’s narrative places a huge premium on Lockwood, a critical vehicle who discovers the events of Wuthering Heights’ past. The readers simply accompany Lockwood on this journey. While his sources may not be completely truthful, Lockwood nonetheless helps us understand an incredibly nuanced narrative within a novel that could not have existed without his voice.

Works Cited

Williams, Jeffrey. Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1998.Questia School. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.

Brontë, Emily, Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Caroline M. Freich, G. D. Hargreaves, and Jan Hargreaves. Wuthering Heights. London: Smith, Elder &, 15 Waterloo Place, 1870. Print.

•