Lesson 2 - Wuthering Heights; Discussing Chapter 1

In this lesson we focused on chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights and looked at the narrative method in detail.

At the beginning of the lesson we were shown 4 sentences from various books/films and asked to spot the odd one out, most people came up with the fourth sentence as the odd one out and the reason for this being that it lacked detail compared to the others.

While sentences 1 - 3 listed times and dates and further details line 4 was very vague, we continued to look closer into the quotes and identify their form and context (report, diary etc.)

This brought us to the narrative method used by Emily Bronte in Wuthering heights, we identified it as a retrospective narrative viewpoint in the form of a diary - the time marker '1801' in the first line of chapter 1 reveals this key narrative feature.

Next we went on to discuss Mr Lockwood as a character and share our views on him from what he had said and done in chapter 1.

Some ideas about him were that he was a shy man, socially withdrawn and a bit pathetic.

During chapter 1 when he begins to recall the past these ideas are seen to take form, he says he spent the summer with a 'real goddess' but he 'never told my love vocally' and instead 'shrunk icily' into himself 'like a snail' - this image of a snail hiding away suits Mr Lockwood's socially withdrawn and shy personality perfectly.

The activity we did next consisted of two people going on to a different table and having a conversation where one person was telling the other everything they did the night before while another person sat near them and listened in to the conversation.

The person who listened in to the conversation then had to recall and write down everything that was said to have happened on to a piece of paper, this paper was then given to someone else who read it then this person told the person next to them what the paper said.

This person then told the person next to them and this person was asked to speak out loud and tell the class what they were told - the information told to the class was quite different compared to what was said in the initial conversation.

This task was used to demonstrate how unreliable information can be given from recall and each of the people who were told the information in class were representative of the characters in Wuthering Heights.

As well as the story being from a retrospective narrative viewpoint, it is also coming from various sources and has been "filtered" through a few people which creates a fairly unreliable narrative.

This adds to the presence of the Gothic element of uncertainty within the story, you can't be sure if what's being said is the truth, or if it's being over exaggerated or played down.

After this we looked at this we followed the theme of Gothic elements within chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights.

The first and most apparent one is the setting, Wuthering Heights itself is described as having windows being 'defended with large jutting stones' and 'grotesque carving lavished over the front' which strikes quite a fearsome image - it sounds like it's more of a castle than just a house following the theme of the Gothic's use of oppressive and over the top environments.

The theme of horror came up next with Mr Lockwood being attacked by the dogs in the family sitting room, this gives the reader a sign that all is not well and ordinary at Wuthering Heights - again this creates a sense of uncertainty of what further troubles are to come.

Another aspect of the lesson was looking at the narrative of Wuthering Heights in depth, we first identified that the whole story is being told retrospectively by Mr Lockwood who from chapter 4 is getting his information from Nelly.

Reliability can first be questioned here because it has been a long time since the events she's recalling took place, also is what Mr Lockwood is telling the reader exactly what Nelly is saying?

The style of the narrative brings up the question of the roles of men and women in the 1800's, even though the story is completely Nelly's it passes through Mr Lockwood before it reaches the reader - this highlights the idea of women being oppressed by men.

This could be also be related to Emily Bronte being forced to write under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell" because female writers weren't allowed to have their work published then.

A woman's words are ignored and considered of no significance until spoken by a man - this is shown in the narrative because where the story is essentially Nelly's, Mr Lockwood tells the reader the story and the only voice we hear is his.

In relation to this topic looked at a sheet comparing a section of Nelly's and Mr Lockwood's narrative.

Nelly as a narrator is more engaging, she is part of the story - you don't just get the story, you get her thoughts, feelings and opinions about everything that's going on as well as her actions and speech.

Even though both narrators are unreliable (due to the filtering of information and the amount of time that has elapsed since the events occurred) Mr Lockwood as a narrator seems less reliable than Nelly, he is also more reserved and comes across as quite assumptive which results in him making quite a few mistakes in judgement to his misfortune - also he is quite inwardly arrogant, he tends to think it more than express it openly.

To close the lesson we then went on to read chapter 2, in this chapter Mr Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights uninvited for a second visit.

In this chapter a bit more of his personality is shown and he comes across as quite arrogant and a bit of an angry man.

An example of his arrogance is when he talks about Cathy and Hareton and says that 'she has thrown herself away upon that boor, from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity - I must beware how i cause her to regret her choice.'

This statement just emanates pure arrogance and shows that Mr Lockwood considers himself to be a 'better individual' but as well as looking quite conceited and arrogant he made himself look like a fool as well because he was being assumptive about Hareton and Cathy's relationship without even bothering to ask for information himself.

The homework for this lesson was...

Read the article called 'Lockwood: a suitable guide' on eMagazine then answer the following questions.

x What are the authors key points about Lockwood ?

x What are Lockwood's failing as a character/narrator?

x How does Lockwood present himself? Is this realistic?