Peeling Back the Layers of Narration Stephanie Perez 12th Grade

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë employs a complicated narrative structure where characters’ stories are passed down a chain of narrators until they are finally recorded in a diary through an outsider’s perspective. This outsider is Lockwood, a character who, much like the readers, is meeting the mysterious inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange for the first time. An eager Lockwood begins to hear the first-hand account of what went on in these two houses from Nelly Dean, who may not be the most reliable narrator due to her allegiance towards some of the characters and hatred towards others. To make up for the holes in Nelly’s story, Brontë introduces other narrators, who relate parts of the narrative that Nelly was not a witness to. Brontë uses this complicated web of narrators to present multiple perspectives of each character so that readers are getting the most objective and believable version of the events that transpired at Wuthering Heights.

The perspective that Lockwood offers readers of the characters at Wuthering Heights is muddled and confused. He errs in his descriptions of the people he meets, calling Heathcliff “a capital fellow” and mistaking Cathy to be his daughter (1). Eventually, Lockwood...