Wuthering heights - Essay Example

The idea of the novel Wuthering Heights as an invitation is one that finds some amount of support in its beginnings. The use of first-personnarrative establishes an immediate intimacy between narrator and reader, which is an invitation to share the contents of his experiences from that point onwards. His tale, which is at first confined to his own experiences with the cast of Wuthering Heights, presents several situations and relationships that prove to be too enigmatic or esoteric for him to decipher on his own. He ostensibly seeks the help of Nellie to provide the background to the current situation. Yet, even in Nellie's telling of the story, there is sometimes detected a tendency to misrepresentation that comes of her closeness to the characters of whom she speaks. The presentation of the story to the reader, therefore, rather than providing a merely distracting or diverting tale, might be seen as an application to a disinterested party to help construct the situations themselves as well as the meanings that are to be derived from them. Though the extraction of meaning from any text constitutes a de-shrouding of some of its mystery, it might be argued that Emily Bront's intention in writing the novel was not that the reader solve any so-called "key mystery." Rather, it has been the work of the author to construct a coherent and complex text, and this she does through the use of narrative structure, setting, naming, and the socio-economic situations of the time. Through these, the text provides ample opportunities for the reader to fortify his/her derived structure with inferences, and therefore create anew his own specialised version of the narrative. Construction has been defined in the Microsoft Encarta dictionary as the creation that results from systematic thought (2005). The idea that the reader has a part to play in the construction of the text is one that is embraced by reader-response critics. The existence of "gaps" in the narrative is thought to point toward the author's intention that the reader imbue the text with his own constructed relationship, sentiment, or rationale or theoretical "model" (Tompkins, 115). Such gaps might be very subtle, such as in Lockwood's continued mistaken conjectures about the nature of the relationship shared by little Catherine, Heathcliff and Hareton at the beginning of the novel. Then, while speaking to little Catherine, and in an effort to guess at her tastes, he blunders again and again, showing himself almost incapable of accurate judgement about these people. Yet he seems to be a man of a reasonable amount of intelligence. The reader thereby is as intrigued by these characters that seem so enigmatic and feels the need to establish the relationships among them. So it is that Bront fabricates a situation in which the narrator is not master of the story he tells and in which the reader realises he must actively engage in the story's construction rather than take the word of a possibly inaccurate narrator. An aspect of the novel that adds another cryptic layer is the existence of more than one narrator. The story is twice removed from is source, and the reader is for this reason placed on his guard. David Marsh reflects that "the authority of the story is constantly undermined by the act of narration, so that meaning retreats from [the reader]" (4). Furthermore, Nellie's description of Heathcliff is seen to be a gush of emotion hinged on an idealistic view of the master of the house. Bront's language is quite telling in one instance. Nellie says, "Some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort" (Bront, Emily; 5). Later in the same passage, she admits that her descriptions are fallacious: "I bestow my own attributes overliberally on him" (5). The reader realises that many of Nellie's conclusions are overlaid by sentiment, and if unbiased truth is to be found, the reader himself must construct it from the barest of facts provided by these narrators. Through the creation of such a situation, Bront issues her invitation to the reader's subconscious, letting it be known that reading of this text must not be a passive receiving of information, but an active search for data from which to construct the truest possible version of the tale. The text begins in 1801, but it recedes farther into the past via flashback so that most of the action of the story takes place in the 1700's. This veil granted by the past adds mystery to the text, and with that mystery the reader identifies a greater possibility for misrepresentation or narrative mistakes. The reader is granted a greater freedom, too, to make conjectures about situations and to construct themes and ideas about the nature of relationships, as well as about the morality or depravity of characters. Apart from the temporal aspect of the setting, Bront's images and use of language creates the idea of darkness and uncertainty surrounding the house Wuthering Heights. In this darkness, the reader is summoned to offer a light in order to correctly view the situations depicted. When Heathcliff mistakenly saves Hareton from a fall, for example, the reader is made to understand that things might have been different had the setting been also different (Bront, Emily; 75). The reader understands, therefore, that the characters cannot be understood solely on the basis of what they do. Outside factors sometimes impede their abilities to do what they really want, and close attention must be paid to these in order to fashion the true tale. The adjective "Wuthering" is explained to be representative of "the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather" (Bront, Emily; 4). The weather and general situation on the moors is also very precarious, and this is utilized by Bront to the effect that it grants uncertainty to the narrative. The caprices of rain and sunshine identify with the possible caprices of the characters of the tale. The moors are generally level plains that often have large and deep wet patches into which a person could fall and drown. Bront's "characteristically English" imagination (Cecil, 148) allows her to use this as a hint to the reader that he must stay alert and not fall into any narrative blunders, but extract the true meanings. The confusion of names along with the socio-economic situation in which the characters are placed also invite the reader to aid in the story's creation. The children of the Earnshaw family are identified by Christian names, but Heathcliff's difference is accentuated by the fact that he has no given name. He has no genteel beginnings, and the mystery of his true personality and true class is represented by this lack. The reader is prompted to infer his character-to construct it-through attention to his actions. The necessity of further constructions through naming can be seen in the two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, whose social classes are not quite the same, though they live in such close proximity. They at first appear separate, and their children do not mingle. Yet later, Catherine's response to their hospitality and indoctrination allows the reader to adjust his/her view of Catherine, and in effect, a new Catherine emerges from the construction-one who seeks a higher social status and a new name. Prior to this, Mr. Lockwood had been dazzled by encryptions of several versions of Catherine's surname-Heathcliff, Earnshaw, and Linton. The transformation culminates in her changing her name to Catherine Linton-yet the reader still has work to do. When Catherine marries Linton, and though she dies, a new Catherine emerges from the story, whose life begins as classy Catherine Linton and transforms in the other direction, through marriage to a lower-classed Heathcliff, and then loving an Earnshaw. The reader must work through all these names and classes to rightly construe the characters who wear them. Emily Bront was an expert at constructing meaning from fragments, so it is not mysterious that she should require this of her readers as well (Bront, Charlotte 14). The author of Wuthering Heights sought to engage the reader actively in the creation of the story surrounding the mysterious manor. The complexity of the tale and the myriad of interpretations that have be accorded it points to the idea that Emily Bront included narrative gaps and uncertainties which served as invitations for interpretation and construction by the reader. In her attempt to summon the reader, she employs a complicated narrative style. She also exploits the novel's other components, such as setting, naming, and even the socio-economic background of the time. Through these, the reader is to a reasonable extent invited to construct the characters and their relationships, and through them the story itself, yet not without unlocking some of the mystery contained within. Works Cited Bront, Charlotte. "Editor's Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights." Wuthering Heights. London: Penguin, 1994. Bront, Emily. Wuthering Heights. London: Penguin, 2002. Cecil, David. Victorian Novelists: Essays in Revaluation. London: Constable & Co., 1934. Microsoft Encarta Reference Library CD-ROM. Microsoft Corporation, 2005. Marsh, David. Emily Bront: Wuthering Heights (Analysing Texts). New York: St. Martin's, 1999. Tompkins, Jane P. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980. Read More