| Description |
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is formed in the telling of a story. The history of the Earnshaw and Linton households, set on the northen moors in the latter half of eighteenth century England, is told by the servant, Ellen Dean, to the newly arrived tenant, Mr. Lockwood. Nelly plays a central role in experiencing the actions of the characters; and where she isn't present to witness the events, these characters provide narration for her. Lockwood now transcribes the story as it is told to him, leaving a record for us, the readers. We are the last component in system of speaker and listener relationships that permeate the novel. This rather mechanical description of the operation of the narrative form may suggest that the characters serve only as literary devices, or simply a means for Bronte to tell her story. However, the narrators are more than just cogs within a whirling, storytelling machine. Bronte fills out her characters with intricate psychologies, revealing their desires, fears, motivations and dispositions. Therefore, Bronte's characters don't narrate simply because they are required to create this multi-narration form, but participate because they need to communicate. They must "let out" the events of their lives because they are driven by forces like guilt, or the need for outside judgment, or the need to examine the self. Wuthering Heights exists because their stories must be told. The purpose of this paper is to examine the motivations, desires, and fears of the narrators of Wuthering Heights and to demonstrate how they come to tell their stories. A reading of the novel will show that the narrators are not created simply as devices to function within the narrative form, but that this form necessarily follows from the lives and personalities Bronte has created for these characters. |
