I1

U&IT 2 THE PROBLEM OF NARRATIVE

'r

Objectives Introduction What is 'Narrative'? Narrative Scheme in the Novel Who is the Narrator? Narrative Techniques Comparison with Cinema Let Us Sum Up Glossary Questions Suggested Reading

2.d
I

OBJECTIVES

udy of the narrative of a novel is a complex business these days! The way the novelist islher story becomes important when we realize that there is no uniformity in the act of ion and that certain things are told in a certain way whereas other things are narrated in a t way. The narrative of Wuthering Heights has provoked wide-ranging responses and ns from its readers and critics. It is quite obvious that Emily Bronte was experimenting rking out different relationships with narrative techniques and the various issues that ed her to enrich her text with multiple levels of meanings. The aim of this Unit then is Heights ~ in order to understand how far these to f k u s on the narrative technique of ~ u t h e r i n tec+iques contribute to the ov&all effect of the novel.
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2.4

INTRODUCTION
rd problem' is a part of the title of this Unit. Why is the narrative aproblem? Is it a only when a text like Wuthering Heights is in discussion, or has the narrative always roblematic subject? There are two reasons as to why I think that there is aproblem narrative. The first reason is related specifically to the novel, Wuthering Heights. agree that there is a basic cpmplexity about the narrativein Wuthering Heights. It is o grasp the sequences of events in the novel, as there are many narrators who speak different time zones. It makes us wonder, why Emily Bronte needed to tells us her story ch a complicated manner.
d reason is more general and addresses the significant amount of work that has been he subject of the narrative. You may have come across terms like, nairation, ative, narrator, narrativized, narratology, discourse, meta-narrative, . The meaning of these words are varied. Critics use them in context. You cross these words when you study critical material on literature in general and n particular. All these terms and many more are today associated with the great academic work that is being done in the field of literary criticism and cultural t deal exclusively with the whole process of narration. Story telling today is as a complex activity that involves much more than the storyteller and the here are many kinds of direct and indirect influences that work on the production, nd reception of stories. May I warn you that the modern critic uses terms like blematic and problematise with caution as these terms have been distinctly

Wuthering Heights

2.2

WHAT IS 'NARRATIVE'?

The narrative is defined in the dictionary as 'a spoken or written account of connected events in order of happening'. ~ e r a r d Genette defines narrative as 'the representation of an event or a sequence of events, real or fictitious, by means of language, and more particularly by means of written Vanguage4'. This means that narrative is sequential. It is a kind of story telling. We are exposed to many types of story telling in everyday life. The television newsreader draws our attention to the main 'story' ofthe day. 'The newspaper or television advertisement is a story about a product. Novels, comics, poems, short stories, letters, articles in magazines, plays are all in some ways a kind of story. They are all narratives. So are interviews, ceremonies, a police diary, a patient's report to his doctor, certificates, sermons and jokes. Even the message on a tombstone is a narrative because it tells a short story about a person, hisher name, date of birth and the date of death. Ronald Barthes, the French critic who did significant work on the subject of the narrative in the 1960's writes: The narratives of the world are numberless. Able ta be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio's Saint Ursula), stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversation. Moreover... narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it beings with the very history of mankind, and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative.' Thus, it seems that from the time we open our eyes in the morning to the time we go to sleep at night, we are constantly involved with many kinds of narratives that go on around us. If we dream while in sleep that too is a narrative! It is as if many voices are constantly telling us many stories. All these voices, narrations, emerge from within the society that we live in and narrate whatever the society desires or cares to listen to. These narratives essentially are representations of the way the society looks at things: its beliefs, assertions and interpretations. In short, its ideology. For a detailed definition of ideology and its relation to society and culture read Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1977). When we talk about the narrative in a novel similar questbns arise. Who is narrating? What beliefs, assertions and interpretation does the narrationlnarrator seek to influence the reader with? Does the reader enjoy reading a novel if his own ideas, beliefs and thoughts are complimented in the text? When we seek to answer these questions we will realize that the narrative in the novel no more remains the simple act of storytelling by the storyteller but becomes a complex presentation of many. voices. Some of these voices are louder than the others, some in the forefront and others in the background. The reader may even find voices that are not there, those that have been censored, sometimes deliberately and at other times perhaps unconsciously. The narrative technique employed by Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights is not only very complex but it is also a radical departure from the narrative styles that were being followed by her contemporaries. Indeed, the narrative of Wuthering Heights has been recognized as an experiment much ahead of its time. Before we proceed to discuss the many interesting features and the various intentionalities that are contained within the narrative of Wuthering Heights it would perhaps be appropriate to broadly look at the narrative sequences in the novel.

2.3

THE NARRATIVESCHEME IN THE NOVEL

1 do hope you have read the novel by now. The text I have used is Wuthering Heights, ed. David Daiches.Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965. All references hereafter will be to this edition.

Titl Page of WUTHERING HEIGHTS :A NOVEL, BY ELLIS BELL, IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I London :Thomas Cautley Newby, Publisher, 72, Mortimer St. Cavendish Sq. 1847. Lockwood begins the narrative. Lockwood discovers Catherine's Diary. The reader, through Lockwood reads Catherine's diary entries. This is followed by Lockwood's narration about his dream. Nelly Dean begins her tale. Nelly interrupts her narration and then decides to 'follow the story in true 'gossip's fashion'. Nelly continues with her story. The chapter ends with Lockwood observing that Nelly glanced towards the time -piece over the chimney; and was in amazement, on seeing the minute hand measure half past one. The story telling is suspended for the time being. Lockwood is not feeling well enough to read, he does want to 'enjoy something interesting' so why not ask Mrs. Dean to 'finish her tale'. Lockwood urges Nelly to continue with the narration from the point where she left off. In Lockwood's words, from the point where 'the hero had run off and the heroine had got married. Nelly reads out Isabella's letter to her. 'Relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living'. Most of this chapter is Isabella's narration of events after her marriage to Heathcliff. Nelly resumes her own narrative. The Chapter ends with the coming of Dr. Kenneth to examine Lockwood. Lockwood confides to his readers that he better 'beware of the fascination that lurks in Catherine HeathcliWs brilliant eyes'. And that he had surrendered his heart to a young person who was the second edition of her mother. Lockwood is convinced that Nelly is a 'very fair n m t o r ' and he could not possibly 'improve upon her style'. Nelly resumes her narration. lsabella runs away from Wuthering Heights and arrives at Thrushcross Grange and narrates to Nelly her odeal. The opening sentence reminds the readers that Nelly Dean still continues with her narration. Nelly tells Lockwood that the last portion of he^ narrative (end of Chapter twenty four) had happened only a year back. She says that she did not think that in twelve months time she would be amusing a stranger with the story about the happenings at Wuthering Heights and that perhaps Lockwood would not remain a stranger for very long. Lockwood urges Nelly to tell him more about. Cathy. Nelly narrates the events of the past one year. Nelly ends her story. Lockwood decides to spend the next six months in London. Lockwood recounts his visit to Wutkring Heights. The chapter beings with a date. 1802. About one year after tockwood had left Thrushcross Grange. Now Lockwood makes another visit to Wutkring Heights. Meets Nelly and she ' fhmished' him with the 'sequel of Heathcliff's history'. Nelly's narration

The Problem of
Narrative

Wuthering Heighb

Chapter thirty-four

Nelly en& her narration. Lockwood ends his narration with his visit to Heathcliffs grave.

2.4

WHO IS THE NARRATOR?

The above table clearly shows that there are many people who narrate the story of Wuthering Heights. It also shows that the narrative has many intentional breaks. Firstly, there is the author who does not publish her novel in her own name but uses a pseudonym, Ellis Bell. The problem of identifying the narrator begins here. The three Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne all used pseudonyms, but with the same title. Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell respectively. The contemporary readership erroneously thought that the works published under these names was the work of one person. Many ~ictorian readers of Emily Bronte thought that Wuthering Heights was perhaps the work of a man. Three years after the publication of Wuthering Heights, Charlotte explained that since 'the little mystery, which formerly yielded some harmless pleasure, has lost its interest' and that since 'circumstances are changed' it was her duty to reveal the origin and authorship of the books written by her sisters and herself. In the Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell September 19, 1850, by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte), the strategies that the sisters had devised about the publication of their works is explained. (You will find this in the Penguin edition of Wuthering Heights that I have referred to,) We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and comistency : It took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because -without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' - we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise. The pseudonym is by definition fictitious. It is a literary masquerade. The uses of pseudonyms in the case of the Bronte sisters was an attempt to deflect public interest from the private life of the authors. Moreover, as Charlotte points out, the sisters were aware that the contents of their writing may not appeal to Victorian sensibility, particularly, if it was understood that the authors were women. Charlotte is also appealing to the critics and readers for an impersonal and objective evaluation of their work. Implicit in the argument is the idea that the content of their work is more important than the personality of the authors. Thus, it was not so much due to 'harmless pleasure' that pseudonyms were used but rather to avoid harmful repercus.sions that the subject and its treatment may have generated during the midnineteenth century. The strategy that the sisters adopted to present their work to the world was indeed carefully devised. They were aware of the fact that the contents of their work contained ideas that would shock and challenge conventional moral and ethical cqdes. It is worth noting that this feminist assertion is done by a negation of identity. Emily Bronte's awareness of the fact that her novel was to open up many uncomfortable questions and issues that Victorian society was not prepared for, is evident from the way she narrates the story in her novel. After the fictitious Ellis Bell, the reader next encounters Mr. Lockwood. He is the author's (Ellis Bell's) persona who will be responsible to narrate the story to the readers. One of the important assumptions of successful storytelling is that the storyteller and his audience must be in complete rapport with each other. But with Lockwood, as narrator, the reader is not so sure. The pompous language he uses, the self importance he projects and his impatience that leads to making wrong judgments and erroneous conclusipns makes the reader quite skeptical about Lockwood being a reliable narrator. He seems to be an ordinary kind of man affecting fashionabte manners. A dandy. His language is artificial and

ed when he encounters 'genuine bad nature'. When real people behave in a real wa).. like Lockwood whose experiences in life have been structured by conventionality are s and lost. Lockwood's predicament is a fair warning to readers who are expecting tional literary experience in the reading of Wuthering Heights. ader, Lockwood's story is engrossing though the storyteller's credibility is suspect . m (for Lockwood it is more of a nightmare) is something that increases the reader's . So does the diary notes of Catherine which Lockwood reads by trespassing privacy. With Lockwood as narrator the reader experiences the same kind of as one would if one was accompanying a trespasser. The reader also knows that d has in the recent past failed to respond to the possibility of a 'real' relationship with was happy flirting with. There is the danger of his seeing things the way he wants an the way they really are. When the author provides another narrator in the form an the reader is more comfortable. Now Lockwood becomes the audience and ryteller. Nelly is an insider and her unraveling of the secrets of Wuthering be taken as the unburdening of the heavy weight of terrible memory and not as into privacy. This shift from Lockwood to Nelly Dean is deliberate. It is a technique ch Emily Bronte is able to critique the conventionality of the male narrator and the Victorian consciousness that he represents. rative is extraordinary in its ability to capture every minute detail and its emphatic , uality. It is as if Nelly is telling of events that had happened very recently ,so presentation. Nelly's narration takes her audience very close to where the action e has spent her whole life in the Heights and the Grange, she is not only a first s to its intimate affairs but also an involved participant. 'Though Charlotte Bronte r as a 'specimen of true benevolence and homely fidelity', few readers today would be accept her as that. Her conventional religious and moral sentiments combined with s attitude towards those whom she had nursed as children (specially Catherine cannot make her an objective narrator. Nor will the reader be entirely unlike Lockwood, of the moral lessons and the seeming truths that Nelly with self-appointed authority. The reader will always perceive more than what

The Problenl Of Narrative

2.d

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES
g the nansltive technique in Wuthering Heights is to see it as the of a Chinese box. A story within a story that can be unravelled by removing one layer ther. A room within a room that the reader keeps eritering, in which the rooms are physical spaces but also spaces of the mind. Note how Lockwood enters Wuthering and hostile environment. Then he enters the m of Wuthering Heights where the environment is warm but his reception is not. oes further into the house and finds himself in Catherine's bedroom where he her diary. The diary is the key to our entry not only to the past but also into s mind. This progress inside the house is complimented by Lockwood's entry into Wuthering Heights which climaxes with his encounter with Catherine's apparition. rushcross Grange, in more comfortable surroundings, Lockwood's passage into the ues with Nelly's recapitulation. This technique adds a degree of suspense and the narration and provides great scope for dramatic shifts in time and space. At the past and present is woven together in the way Nelly and Lockwood interpret and umstantial ironies of the tale can thus be ed and dark world approximates the familiar les of gothic tales in which the mind is turned on itself and the dark side of the osed. But unlike their Gothic predecessors, the narrators of Wuthering Heights ounter and experience because of the moral and official iller in the essay ' Wuthering Heights : Repetition and the "uncanny"' points out is a line of witnesseslnarrators, from Emily Bronte to the pseudonymous Ellis Bell d to Nelly Dean to Heathcliff to Catherine who form this complex naprative. e novel is like moving 'inside of the inside' or sometimes the other way round. Just narrators in the novel, consequently there are many listeners. Nelly has t of both Catherine and Heathcliff. Both of them have from time to time felt

Wuthering Heights

the need to confide their thoughts to Nelly. A letter from lsabella informs Nelly of the story of Isabella's disastrous married life. Lockwoodis Nelly's audience. Ellis Bell knows of Lockwood's story. Finally the consciousness'of the reader (we) envelops the consciousness of all the other characters including that of Ellis Bell. According to Miller, the reader is condemned to resurrect the ghostly past of Wuthering Heights. Different voices speak to the reader and no one seems to completely comprehend the meaning of the events. The reader is aware of something familiar but is unable to grasp it or even to articulate it. This gives the text its uncanny, baffling flavor. It is not a very comfortable feeling to know that one does not understand what is happening around oneself. Conventionally readers are used to stories that follow patterns of the unity, of time and place and event in the classical Aristotelian sense. Unity helps in fixing the story and helps the reader to 'read' moral and ethical meaning into the text. Are we not always asking 'so what is the moral of the story'? The reader or even the narrators wish to find some kind of unity of meaning. Nelly and Lockwood are continuously interpreting what they witness. By doing so they attribute meanings which are coloured by their own understanding and moral commitments. Most early critical readings of WutheringHeights accepted the Nelly-Lockwood desire to explain the central mystery and attribute specific meanings to the relationships in the novel. Liberal humanist critics like F.R. Leavis, who positioned Wuthering Heights within 'the Great Tradition' of English novels, seek to read into the novel self-evident aesthetic and moral values. There are universal 'human truths ' that the novel upholds. From this position the Nelly-Lockwood narration is seen as a bland and prosaic recapitulation of a relationship that in essence is raw, pure, wild, intuitive and natural -something transcendental and beyond the limits of reason. Universal paradigms were sought and imposed. The most common one was that of polarity, or a binary, where the novel was explained as a creative response to the universal opposition between nature and civilization, intuition and reason, day and night, heaven and hell, real and unreal, order and chaos and so on. The narrative structure, as well as the form of the novel, in this view was a design that heightened this sense of polarity. The originality of the author was located in her being able to focus on those aspects of human consciousness that were generally hidden from view. Very often the novel was compared to drama and shades of Shakespearean tragedy were discerned. Nelly and Lookwood were seen as spectators. One was a sophisticated urbanite while the other a simple pebant woman. 'The intensity of the drama cut across class or intellectual.barriers in the way the novel moves from the world of everyday reality to the world of 'spiritual reality'. The author's unconventionality was in her ability to create characters like Heathcliff and Catherine who defied present day moral and social demarcations in order to achieve higher, spiritual levels of meaning and being. Wuthering Heights was a triumph of the Romantic imagination in its quest for an ideal that sought an alternative to the mundane and base nature of everyday reality. This Romantic idealization was questioned by later critics who offered a different interpretation. Frank Kermode adopted the view that there were 'many truths' that could be read into th2novel. The many truths are represented by the many voices of narration in the novel. Priority was given to the text. Close reading of the text prompted a shift from a singular perspective to multiple a perspective. The richness of the text lay in the way it suggested multiple levels of meaning. The narrative pattern was seen as a technique which helped to open the text to multiple levels of scrutiny and opened out space for varied interpretations and responses. Nelly and Lockwood are not seen as narrators who take the reader to the ceptre of the story but are now seen as voices amongst many voices in the story. You could read Freudian or Marxist or biographical or symbolic or feminisi meaning into the text depending on what position you took. The narrators' confinement to their own narrow understanding of what they narrate only brings to sharp focus the intensely complex and richly textured contents of the text. Finally, the modem &constructionist critic would say that there are 'no truths' that can be read into the text of Wuthering Heights. Deconstructionist approaches challenge any position that seeks to make a judgment, its contention is that it is not possible, objectively or scientifically, to determine the 'truth' about anything. According to the deconstructionist, any claim to 'truth' or any absolute value is an assertion of a construct which is generally a part of social ideology. In this case, Nelly and Lockwood's assertions are seen as futile, because the novel just doesn't conform to any value judgment. From this point it is argued that the structure of the narrative is deliberate in the way it deflects the reader from arriving at any secret truth about Wuthering Heights. Since there are no secret truths and ordering principles by which the novel can be explained, any attempt to do so would be futile. This is not a flaw

e novel but the result of a very carefblly considered structure that Emily Bronte designed novel to frustrate the mind's desire 'for logical order with a demonstrable base'. constructive analysis suggest that the narrative is designed in the form of frames. alogy is derived from pictureJpainting frames. A picture frame encloses within it a . Though the focus is on what is pictured inside the frame, the viewer is aware of what it and not pictured. The 'internal' suggests the 'external' and it is for the reader to decipher it. There are various boundaries that define the limits of these in Wuthering Heights. There is the outer boundary of a time and place in which Nelly her convalescent master Lockwood. The inner boundaries consist of the Earnshawton interactions with the Heathcliff-Catherine relationship at its core. The narrators are They encompass a story within a boundary and at the same time they leave certain ut of the frame. Narrators, by the logic of this argument cannot be totally objective always in the process of shifting, regulating and controllingtheir material. Nelly Lockwood keep surfacing as narrators in the text to remind the readers that the tale is 1-5; which makes the reader constantly aware of the idea that there are things beyond the ndaries of the Lockwood-Nelly tale. So the question th'at we must now face is : 'Whose reading in the text: Heathcliff-Catherine's or Lockwood-Nelly's ? It seems that never really know Heathcliff-Catherine's relationship because they are not the k (except for Catherine's diary notes). The reader has no choice but to eavesdrop on d-Nelly confabulations. John T. Matthews suggests: that the narrative frame is required because the central characters are incapable to utter their relation. Perpetually frustrated they cannot articulate the relation that would bind them, and so they leave a gap to be framed and filled by the loquacity of the narrator^.^

The Problem Of Narrative

n a close and deconstructivk (inspired by French philosopher Jacques Derrida ) reading of the ext, John T. Matthews, argues in the essay 'Framing In Wuther!ngHeights', that NellyLockwood's 'frame story aspires to bring the remains of the enframed story [that of Heathcliff-Catherine] within safe confines'. That 'Catherine and Heathcliffs love is the ghost of the prohibitions that structure society : it has the air of unspeakably natural passion, even incest, the spaciousness of escape from tyrannous convention, the heedlessness of selfabandon, the dark allure of disease and deathliness.' But the narrators are incapable of representing this relation, conventional and self contained as they are. They can only impose a frame that is a product of their imagination and experience. Matthew points out that the subversive passion which is at the core of the story is reverted back to subservience, to 1 convention, representation, reason and health at the end of the novel by the narratw in the way they seek to escape from defining the core relationship of their story. Nelly-Lockwood can only impose meaning and sense, whereas Heathcliff-Catherine negate meaning and sense. Matthews posits that it is impossible to determine if the core is more important than the frame, I but there is a constant connection between the two and that one dissolves into another.
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2.6

h.1 this sense the narrative is only an attempt, a feeble attempt at that, by Lockwood-Nelly to

11 us of past events as they understand them. Moreover there is also the point that Heathcliff nd Catherine cannot define their relationship. Though Nelly-Lockwood never search for ords to express themselves, they do not represent an authoritative voice. This defusion of he authorial voice and the inability to articulate their own story by the central characters rings the novel in line with modem texts, where the problem of language and expression is xplored time and again.

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COMPARISON WITH CINEMA

I Here I would like to suggest a co-relation with modem cinema. Imagine a scene in a film
where a character is telling another character of something he has seen in the past. These two characters are then framed by the camera which shoots the scene of this story telling. Then this scene is projected on the screen in the cinema hall for the audience to see. To make the story telling visually interesting, the director sometimes dramatizes the story and shows it as flashback in between the story telling. You will realize that our characters have a position, which is their story telling environment and their time and place. The camera has a position. The camera position indicates the meaning that the director wants to give to *e scene in question. A close up of the lips of the storyteller, a shot of both the storyteller and the listener

WuflreringHeights

from medium range and a shot of the house in which this story telling in going on can be significant in different ways and can be inteipreted as deliberate interventions of the director in the way he wants to shoot the sequence of the story telling. Finally the audience too has a position in a seat in cinema hall and must see what is being projected on the frame of a screen. The audience is also subject to time and place, histow, society and culture. All these are interrelated but at the same time quite independent. Wuthering Heights is designed in a similar way. Ellis Bell is the director where as Emily Bronte is the invisible producer! The storytellers are Nelly and Lockwood. The readers are the audience. The eye of the camera is located in mid-Victorian social reality. It chooses to show some aspects of it and keeps the rest out of its frame. The camera is sometimes very close to the narrators and sometimes dissolves into flashbacks. Cinematically, Isabella's letter is a flashback within a flashback. The role of the cinema audience in absorbing what helshe sees is important. One could have a total willing suspension of disbelief and believe in what the directors shows us in which case the thrill and the suspense of the unknown is what really matters, or one can be a very perceptive viewer and constantly be aware of the changing position of the camera, from inside the room, to the back garden, to the open spaces of the heath to a close-up of Catherine's diary etc. to understand how the director is manipulating one's responses. You are left with two options. 1. To accept that the direcfpr must manipulate response in order to get the right reaction from his audience. 2. That dl narration is basically mwipulation of response and that it is better to open up to many responses than to be coaxed into accepting any one. I have used this analogy of the cinema to explain more graphically how the narrative technique in Wuthering Heights creates multiple perspectives and how that deflects the perceptive reader from arriving at any one explanation of the text.,

2.7

LET US SUM UP

We must remember, Wuthering Heights was being written in an age that lay great stress on meaning, sense, order, civilization and progress. Perhaps that is the reason why early critics of the novel arrived at single explanations of the novel. The realistic in the novel was seen a veneer over what was essentially romantic and spiritual in nature. But in'reality it was precisely all the virtues of the mid-Victorian society of meaning, sense, order, civilization and progress that were being subverted by Catherine-Heathcliff. To my mind, Emily Bronte was throwing a challenge, quite remarkable in that day and age, by creating a relationship that would resist being defined by the codes of her society. To begin with, Nelly and Lockwood fail miserably to define or codifj that relationship. The author's triumph is in her narrator's failure. Nelly's story to Lockwood is her version of the real thing. It is her understanding and her representation. Narration is representation. But like all representations it is not the real thing but an image of it, a copy. Nelly narrates her story both for her own benefit as well as for the benefit of her audience (Lockwood). Both she and Lockwood, as we have observed, are already positioned within certain.social structures of thought and belief, which we call ideology. This ideology colours their narration by which they may not only misread and misinterpret some of the conditions of their story but also occasionally misrepresent things. What it means is that ideology is part of the narrative. One of the characteristics of ideology is that it grabs people, mostly without their being aware of it. Nelly is the primary narrator, and has already been grabbed by the ideology of her times. In turn, her narrative grabs Lockwood. 'See, how Lockwood never questions any of Nelly's assumptions, assertions or qualifications. Lockwood's narration is what the author is using to grab her readers. If one is not careful, Lockwood waald seduce us all to accept his narrative without any questions,just as he did of Nelly's account of the events. It is here that the pseudonymous Ellis Bell is of vital importance. Nelly's impression of the events at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange impresses Lockwood who in t u r n has impressed Ellis Bell who authors the story for publication. This brings us to a series of interesting questions. Is Emily Bronte suggesting that she has not been seduced by the story? Since this is not her story but Ellis Bell's? Has Emily Bronte succeeded in resisting the ideology of her narrators? Does Emily Bronte neither share Lockwood's ideas nor his kind of enthusiasm about the story?. For her the events have a completely different meaning that she would rather not divulge.or finds it iinpossible to explain? The answers to these questions are not easy, but the point I am trying to make is that'there is a distinction between the narratorlnarrators and thesauthor. Emily Bronte was aware of the

deology of her own times. This is not a new technique. Chaucer used it in Thc &l,ry Tules, and Swift in Gulliver's Travcls and later Conrad would use similar niques in his novels. In all the cases a persona is used for the narrative whose intellectual ion was often questionable and there was always the scope of arriving at meanings other what the narrator was able to draw or suggest. Similarly, a sophisticated use of the same ique is used in Wuthering Heights. The narrative pattem is potentially radical in the way sts attempts of reading a singular meaning into it. To the modem reader, the narrative ique in Wuthering Heights helps in the emergence of plural points of view and that is tnakes the text a real experiment much ahead of its times.

The Problem Of Narrative

218

GLOSSARY
a larger narrative. The society, its development and culture can be seen as a meta narrative, within which a particular narrative, like that of a novel can be seen. in Marxist terminology, ideology is the way society conceals the contradictory character of the essential pattem of social relationships. Ideology is something false, and helps to hide the real nature of things. the way ideology influences or 'captures' the individual. in a way that does not challenge the established order of things Aristotle's famous concept of the Unities of time place and action defined in the Poetics. A school of thought which stressed on the independent nature of artistic activity,

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etanarratives

ic(eology

I jterpellation

P
I
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onventionality ristotelian

inary

consisting of two things or parts; double.

.9

QUESTIONS:
Do you think Nelly is a reliable narrator? Can narrators be reliable? Discuss. Of the three critical positions that we have discussed about the narrative in the novel, which do you think is the most acceptable. Why? Do you think Wuthering Heights is a modem novel? Does the narrative technique make the novel modem? We have mentioned Swift, Chaucer and Conrad as authors who practiced the technique of narration with the use of a persona. Can you think of other novelists who use similar techniques. Can you point out differences?

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k.10 SUGGESTED READING

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Stevie. Emily Bronte, Hertfordshire, Harvester riters Series ed. Sue Roe.

- Wheatsheaf,

1988. Key Women'

'Neill, Judith. ed. Critics on Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Readings in Literary Criticism, ondon : George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1968.

Wuthering Heights

References
I

Gerard Genette, Figures of~iteraty Discourse, trans. Alan Sheridan, Oxford: Blackwel I,

1982. p. 127
2

Ronald Batthes, 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives', Image-Music- Text,

trans Stephen Heath (Fontana, 1977) p.79

mil^ Bronte : Wuthering Heights ed. Miriam Allott, Macmillan, 1992.p.224

John T. Matthews. Framing in Wuthering Heights. New Casebooks.