A week or so ago, I sickened of purchasing new books long enough for me to pick up Wuthering Heights again, after two years of having first read it. As the first time, I was blown away by Emily Bronte's lyrical style and her exquisite eye for detail. The whispering, mourning moors beyond the Heights, the fiercely defiant Joseph, who makes for such an odd servant, and the destructive and consuming love between a savage Heathcliff and a selfish Catherine - yes, they all blew me away in equal proportions. Since I was reading it for a class in Romantic Literature, I had little leisure to pursue my own meandering thoughts. (Which reminds me how the phrase "unreliable narrator", in my four years' worth of lit tutorials, came up more times than I cared to count (and with almost the same frequency as "postmodernism"). It seems to be an obsession with undergraduates to keep pointing out that narrators are unreliable (and how almost everything can be explained away because it is postmodern). Unfortunately, few showed how and why.)
English novels of the 18th and 19th century had a tendency to contain frame narratives. Frankenstein is a popular example; each of its multiple narratives delving deeper and deeper into the monster's story. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine are other examples. The purpose of a story-within-a-story technique is to offer multiple perspectives on an event, opening up the possibility of multiple meanings within and without the scope of a text. It is a conscious effort to call attention to the fact that what is being told is a story, and this self-consciousness raises questions about how narratives tell themselves. One of the interesting things I found about using the frame conceit is that while it distances the reader from the space, time and locale of the story, it inevitably draws him deeper into the narrator's psyche. In other words, a certain sense of extreme subjectivity is heightened and an odd tango between distance and nearness is negotiated. In the case of Wuthering Heights, such a dramatic degree of subjectivity is achieved that meaning-making is problematized. More on this later.
The novel begins with Lockwood's introduction to the Heights but it is Ellen (Nelly) Dean's narrative that takes up a large chunk of the text. Her voice is that of the novel's and we, the readers, are in Lockwood's position, locked into the role of listeners. Just as Lockwood is paralysed as Nelly's tale unfolds, asking no questions and making no interruptions - notice it is always she who signals the end of an episode, while he grudgingly obliges - so we, the readers, are seated silently listening.
Nelly Dean's narrative takes on the quality of the extremely subjective: her defends and excuses are woven into the fabric of her narrative. Lockwood does not question it since it is the only account he has. The reader, fortunately less passive than Lockwood, has a duty to churn through this mismash of events/opinions/justifications/prejudices, etc and filter out as close a representation of events-as-they-occured. Of course, we remember Saleem Sinai saying memory has its own truth and realize that any attempt to uncover some sort of objective reality quite impossible. Bronte, it seems, comments on the impossibility of accurate representation, much less on one true representation.
Ellen's power over the narrative as well as the mute Lockwood-as-reader places her in an extremely advantageous and powerful position and I think she is aware of this. Many times in the text, her voice rises with indignation at the accusations levelled against her, yet one gets the sense that she cannot disguise the pleasure in her voice at being the only person coherent and "objective" enough to pass on the tale. I think she is also pleased at being given the opportunity to validate her actions that had gotten her into trouble with Edgar Linton just before Catherine's second illness; plus it gives her a reason to go on a power trip by affording her a role and purpose greater than that of mere maid - she is now the beholder and dispenser of knowledge.
In contrast to Ellen's masculinity is a feminized Mr. Lockwood. First overcome by the daunting and dramatic appearance of Wuthering Heights, he is treated with less cordiality than expected from his host; he is scolded and dismissed by Heathcliff's servant, Joseph, then attacked by a pack of dogs, and, to cap it off, is afflicted for a few weeks by an illness. When we observe his apparent inability to comprehend the strange set of rules governing Wuthering Heights, he is reduced to a comical position. His earnest attempts to observe social decorum are utter failures in a house where such values are meaningless. This misplaced propriety gives us a sense of Lockwood-as-female at his first ball in proper society, introduced to gentry and stumbling quite successfully all over the place. Pitiful, yes but funny also.
In subtle ways, Nelly Dean admits to being an untrustworthy servant to her master and mistress, which foreshadows her incredible unreliability as a narrator too. "I remembered Mr. Edgar's stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last." A bit of context is necessary: the incident in question here is regarding Heathcliff's visit to Thrushcross Grange and the fight it provoked between Linton and Heathcliff. Ellen had a significant role to play in the confrontation by "carrying tales" to Linton, although she wasn't exactly lying but she wasn't minding her business either. She then failed to inform Linton of Catherine's three-day fast/starvation because she felt Mrs. Linton was putting on airs (there is sufficient evidence to indicate this but let us not forget she also dies a short while later), but Nelly's self-granted independence of action maximized the potential disaster the situation had to offer. On day three, when she half-truthfully tells Catherine that Mr. Edgar did not inquire about her absence about the house because he had been reading his books all along, she precipitates an illness that sends Catherine Linton to her grave. Nelly's role and actions, at this point, takes on shades of cunning and manipulation.
Although it is a rather unkind reading, I think there is a case to be made of Ellen Dean's many attempts to usurp power that is otherwise denied to her in the position of maid. These, of course, are well-justified and covered up in her narrative to Lockwood; she appears only as one most concerned of everyone else's wellfare. Yet it is not entirely fair to say Nelly is only a power-hungry, devious, Machiavellian old maid although that would fall very nicely under a Gothic reading. It could entirely be possible that she unconsciously imbibes these traits under the guise of a kind, well-meaning caretaker. She has, after all, seen to the care of Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw since their birth, as well as their children. More than once, she helped Heathcliff escape from Hindley's murderous and envious grasp. Moreover, that Catherine Earnshaw is a selfish woman was mentioned by Heathcliff, too, which makes Nelly's reaction to her mistress's fast not unusual. And if we can believe her on these accounts, we can also believe that her narrative is an intensely subjective one, colored by her own insecurities and neuroses.
