O p e n i n g s5mini- narrative with another, without telling us what to make of the
characters and events it portrays. It is in no hurry to let us know
whether Heathcliff is hero or demon, Nelly Dean shrewd or stupid,
Catherine Earnshaw tragic heroine or spoilt brat. This makes it
difficult for readers to pass definitive judgements on the story, and
the difficulty is increased by its garbled chronology.
We may contrast this ‘complex seeing’, as it has been called,
with the novels of Emily’s sister Charlotte. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre
is narrated from one viewpoint only, that of the heroine herself,
and the reader is meant to assume that what Jane says, goes.
No character in the book is allowed to deliver an account of
the proceedings that would seriously challenge her own. We, the
readers, may suspect that what Jane has to report is not always
without a touch of self- interest or the occasional hint of malice. But
the novel itself does not seem to recognise this.
In Wuthering Heights, by contrast, the partial, biased nature of
the characters’ accounts is built into the structure of the book. We
are alerted to it early on, as we come to realise that Lockwood, the
novel’s chief narrator, is hardly the brightest man in Europe. There
are times when he has only a slender grasp of the Gothic events
unfolding around him. Nelly Dean is a prejudiced storyteller
who has her knife into Heathcliff, and whose narrative cannot
wholly be trusted. How the story is seen from the world of
Wuthering Heights is at odds with how it is viewed from the neigh-
bouring Thrushcross Grange. Yet there is something to be said for
both of these ways of looking, even when they are at loggerheads
with each other. Heathcliff may be both a brutal sadist and an
abused outcast. Catherine may be both a petulant child and a
grown woman in search of her fulfilment. The novel itself does not
invite us to choose. Instead, it allows us to hold these conflicting