Ambiguity in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights [1 ed.] 9783657704958, 9783506704955

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Lisa Ebert Ambiguity in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

BEITRÄGE ZUR ENGLISCHEN UND AMERIKANISCHEN LITERATUR Im Auftrag der Görres-Gesellschaft herausgegeben von Matthias Bauer und Jan Stievermann

Band 39

LISA EBERT

Ambiguity in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

2020

Printed with kind support of the Görres-Gesellschaft. Cover illustration: Mullioned Window (E1), pencil on paper by Emily Brontë, January 19, 1828. By courtesy of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. © 2020 Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, an Imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany) www.schoeningh.de Cover design: Evelyn Ziegler, Munich Production: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISSN 0935-4867 ISBN 978-3-506-70495-5 (paperback) ISBN 978-3-657-70495-8 (e-book)

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi 1. Ambiguities of Perception in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 Dreaming and Ghostly Apparitions in Lockwood’s Narrative of His “Terrible Night” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 “[T]he air swarmed with Catherines”: The Beginning of the Third Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lockwood’s Unambiguous Dream about Jabes Branderham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 “[T]he fingers of a little, ice-cold hand”: Lockwood’s Encounter with Catherine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.2 “My bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief”: Sensory Delusion and Memory in Nelly’s Narrative of Her Experience at the Signpost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Foregrounding Perception as a Basis for Narrating: The Beginning of Nelly’s Narrative . . . . . . . . 25 “[I]t appeared that I beheld my early playmate”: Nelly’s Perception of the Child on the Heath. . . . . . . . . 29 “The apparition had outstripped me”: Nelly’s Interaction with Hareton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 1.3 “Don’t you see that face?” Catherine’s Vision(s) before Her Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 “I see in you, Nelly”: Catherine’s First Vision . . . . . . . . . 44 “I see a face in it!”: Catherine’s Vision of Herself . . . . . . 50 “Look! […] that’s my room, with the candle in it”: Catherine’s Vison of Her Afterlife. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 1.4 “I could almost see her, and yet I could not!”: Misperceptions in Heathcliff’s Hypodiegetic Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 “It seemed that I heard a sigh”: Auditory and Tactile Evidence of Catherine’s Presence at Her Grave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 “I had not one [glimpse]”: The Absence of Visual Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

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1.5 “[I]t seemed, exactly, that he gazed”: Nelly’s Perception of Heathcliff before His Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 “[A] monomania on the subject of his departed idol”: Mental Illness and Catherine’s Presence in Heathcliff’s Final Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Two Layers of Perception: Nelly’s Observation of Heathcliff’s Perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 1.6 Wuthering Heights as an Epistemological Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 2. Ambiguities of Narration in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 2.1 Multiperspectivity and Ambiguity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Ambiguity and the Balance between Narrative Voices in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Ambiguity and the Division between the Experiencing Self and the Narrating Self. . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 2.2 Narrative Embedding and Ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Narrative Embedding and Global Ambiguity . . . . . . . . . 101 Ambiguity and the Illusion of Immediacy in Wuthering Heights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Ambiguity and Embedding in Heathcliff’s Hypodiegetic Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 2.3 Ambiguity and Time in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Ambiguity and Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Ambiguity and Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 The Dynamics of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights . . . . 133 2.4 Wuthering Heights as a Narratological Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 3. The Ambiguous World of Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 3.1 The Permeability between Humans in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . 139 Ontological Ambiguities in Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s Reflections on their Relationship . . . . . . . . 141 “Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo!”: Identity and Separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 3.2 The Permeability between Life and Death in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 “[A]lmost as death-like”: The Juxtaposition of Catherine’s Corpse and Her Sleeping Husband . . . . . . . 155 “[I]ncomparably beyond and above”: Catherine’s Abode in Afterlife. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

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3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

“I have nearly attained my heaven”: The Ambiguity of “Heaven” in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 “[U]nquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”: The Global Ambiguity Regarding the Nature of Death. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 The Permeability between Humans and Nature in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 The Agentive Natural Environment of Wuthering Heights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Heathcliff and Catherine Blend into Nature . . . . . . . . . 174 Transcending Boundaries of Time and Space in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 The Past and the Present in Nelly’s Depiction of Her Experience at the Signpost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 “[A] personification of my youth, not a human being”: Heathcliff’s Return to Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 “Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?” Metaphors and the Ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 “Is Mr Heathcliff a Man?”: Questions and Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 “I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married”: The Problem of Categorizing Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 “A man’s shape animated by demon life”: The Reception of Heathcliff’s Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Wuthering Heights as an Ontological Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

4. Conclusion: Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights: A Global View . . . . . . . 207 4.1 Ambiguity and Genre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 4.1.1 Genre Ambiguity Established: the Paratext of Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 4.1.2 The Gothic and Travel Narratives in the Opening Chapters of Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 4.1.3 Gothic Tropes and Emotions and the Narrative Voices of Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 4.1.4 The Gothic and Narrative Embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 4.1.5 Genre, Global Ambiguity and the World of Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

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4.2 The Constitution of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights . . . . . . . . . . . 230 4.2.1 The Ambiguities of Wuthering Heights and Approaches to Ambiguity in Literary Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 4.2.2 The Contribution of the Concept of Ambiguity for the Study of Wuthering Heights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 4.2.3 Wuthering Heights and its Implications for the Research on Ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Acknowledgements This book is a revised version of my dissertation, which was accepted by the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Tübingen in September 2018. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. Dr. Matthias Bauer and Prof. Dr. Angelika Zirker for their ongoing support not only during the writing of this book but for almost ten years now. Their passion for English literature has accompanied me since my time as an undergraduate student and has motivated me to begin this project. This book grew out of generous conversations with them, their ideas, as well as their continuous feedback and encouragement. I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Burkhard Niederhoff for reviewing my dissertation and to Prof. Dr. Janet Gezari for her advice and the delightful week we spent together in Tübingen. Her visit, as well as my research stay at Chawton House Library and my attendance at conferences was financed by the RTG 1808: “Ambiguity – Production and Perception.”1 I am incredibly grateful to the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) who have funded this project. I was lucky to enjoy the company and professional input of not only one but two sets of supportive colleagues. In the past few years, I have spent many hours with my colleagues at the chair of Professor Bauer talking about English literature, life as a PhD-student and many other topics besides. During numerous lunches, research notes and coffee breaks at the RTG 1808, we discussed everything from ambiguity to linguistic theories and the intellect of cats. Working with all of them has truly been a pleasure and the conversations we had have not only been extremely helpful but also inspiring and very entertaining. I would also like to thank Elias Güthlein and Asya Achimova, who have shared their offices and the best and worst of times during the writing of this book with me, to Curtis Runstedler for proofreading, and to Inken Armbrust, Eva Haag, and Sophie Priester for all their help. Most of all, I would like to thank my partner Thorben Rudolf, my parents and my sisters Hannah and Leonie, as well as Susanne Riecker and Nicole Poppe. You managed to make me laugh during the most challenging times, proofread manuscripts, wrote Excel macros, made dinner when I had no time to cook, kept up my motivation, and provided much practical and emotional support besides. You have made this project possible.

1  The RTG 1808 – Ambiguity: Production and Perception is funded by the German Research Foundation (project number 198647426).

Introduction I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (WH 337)1

The final sentence of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights epitomizes a phenomenon that constitutes both a structural key element and a thematic focus of the novel: ambiguity. Despite the efforts of the narrator Lockwood to dismiss any doubts about the possibility that Catherine2 and Heathcliff may “[slumber] unquiet[ly]” and thus roam the earth after their deaths, the closing lines of the novel foreground the fact that this pending issue is not resolved at all. While several critics have commented on this striking effect – such as McCarthy, who notes that “Brontë ends her ambiguous novel on a splendid note of ambiguity” (61) – the question how this is brought about begs quite a complex answer.3 The intricately constructed final sentence of Wuthering Heights contains several interdependent ambiguities that address the nature of the narrated world in the novel. The term “sleepers” that Lockwood employs is conventionalized to such an extent as a metaphorical expression for the dead that this meaning is one of the first to be mentioned in the OED (“sleeper, n.” I. 2.a.). Yet, Lockwood’s words reveal its literal meaning and thus foreground its inherent potential for ambiguity, not the least through its interaction with “slumbers.” Although part of the same semantic field, this noun is far less lexicalized as an expression for death because of its connotation of ‘light sleep.’ This seems to indicate that the state it describes is temporary, that Catherine and Heathcliff might wake at any time, and their afterlife might thus be much closer to a literal “sleep” than Lockwood proposes, an effect which is emphasized by the adjective “unquiet.” The literal meaning of “sleepers” and “slumbers” is furthermore supported by yet another ambiguity in the same sentence. Lockwood’s description of the wind as “breathing” at the grave can be interpreted figuratively as a pathetic 1  All quotations from Wuthering Heights in this study are taken from the Penguin Classics edition (2003; ed. Pauline Nestor). 2  To avoid any confusion between the characters, I will follow many other critics in calling the mother “Catherine” and the daughter “Cathy” throughout my study. 3  Several critics have pointed out the ambiguity of the final sentence, but do not provide an analysis of how and why it is ambiguous, such as Stoneman, Hillis Miller, Kullmann (Vermenschlichte Natur) and Williams.

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fallacy,4 which poetically describes the sound of the wind; but the ability to breathe also constitutes the decisive difference between the dead and those who merely sleep. A literal reading of “breathing” in this instance suggests that the wind may be breathing with the “sleepers.” The converging ambiguities of “sleepers”, “slumbers” and “breathing” are ontological, since they address the very nature of the narrated world of the novel. Yet, processes of sensory perception depicted within this world as well as the narration of Lockwood contribute significantly to these ambiguities. Lockwood’s claim that Catherine and Heathcliff do not merely slumber is based on his perception of the scenery as idyllic: I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (WH 337; my emphases)

The chiastic construction of the “quiet” appearance of the grave as contrasted with the “unquiet slumbers” renders Lockwood’s sensory perceptions into an integral part of his strategy of dismissing the very possibility that Heathcliff and Catherine may roam the earth after their deaths. The serenity of the graves is indeed the only evidence about the nature of the “sleepers’” afterlife that is available to him in this instance; yet, it is not conclusive since the graves’ surface does not necessarily reflect the state of their inhabitants and appearance more generally is not necessarily a reflection of reality. Indeed, the visual and tactile evidence Lockwood presents is interspersed with his interpretation of it as revealed in his description of the wind as “soft” and the sky as “benign.” Lockwood’s own choice of words when he describes the wind as “breathing through the grass” may point in a different direction, as do the moths and the harebells he mentions, which are associated with the dead that do not rest in their graves in British legends (Briggs, The Fairies 63).5 In thus showing how the senses are crucial sources to attain knowledge about reality but are at the same time not sufficient, Brontë’s novel mimetically represents the problem of perception in the novel and exploits its inherent potential for ambiguity.

4  The term “pathetic fallacy” goes back to an 1856 essay by John Ruskin, in which he criticises a tendency in Romantic poetry for attributing “human emotions, sentience, or conduct […] to objects, animals, or natural phenomena” (Burwick 217). 5  Compare Grudin, who has likewise noted that the moths and harebells in the closing lines of Wuthering Heights “suggest another connection with the very beliefs Lockwood is attempting to discredit” (404).

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Lockwood’s words in Wuthering Heights not only draw attention to the fact that all perception in the novel is narrated but also foregrounds other ways in which the process of narration becomes productive for ambiguity: I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (WH 337; my emphases)

Lockwood employs an indirect rhetorical question to dismiss the possibility of “unquiet slumbers” as ridiculous; yet, it indeed evokes the position of “any one” who can “imagine” just that. Rhetorical questions can serve as a means to underline a point by excluding another possibility as merely theoretical; the case is different for Lockwood’s indirect rhetorical question because there are indeed several characters in the novel who can and do “imagine unquiet slumbers.” Earlier in the very same chapter, Heathcliff is shown to be convinced that he perceives Catherine, who died nearly two decades earlier (WH 331–32); moreover, Joseph and a little boy both claim to have seen her and Heathcliff, who has died in the meantime (WH 336); the “country folks” would, according to Nelly “swear on their Bible that [Heathcliff] walks” (WH 336); and she herself displays a fundamental uncertainty concerning this issue (WH 336–37).6 Accordingly, Lockwood’s rhetorical question does not function as a mere affirmation of a universally accepted truth in the narrated world but rather as a reminder that this issue is a contested one, which may be tied to the ambiguity of “could” (WH 337): it seems to be employed as a subjunctive by Lockwood but in the context of the novel can likewise be read as a simple past form of “can.” Furthermore, the ambiguity of the verb “wonder” (WH 337) may reveal Lockwood’s own latent uncertainty. According to the OED, it can both mean “to be struck with surprise or astonishment, to marvel” about an object of wonder expressed in a clause (1.b.) or “to feel some doubt or curiosity” towards it (3.). The difference between these meanings may seem subtle, but its impact is crucial as concerns the speaker’s attitude regarding what is expressed in the clause, as a comparison to a syntactically and semantically very similar sentence from Bill Appleton’s novel Wide Boy may show:

6  See chapter 2.1 for an in-depth analysis of this passage with a focus on the narratological concept of multiperspectivity.

xiv WH

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I lingered [I] wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in round that quiet earth. them […] (WH 337) [and] I was how anyone could even imagine it possible to conquer As we amazed such a place without strolled explosives or modernaround day smart bombs. the (WB 137) grounds

In both novels, a narrator is observing a place, and the embedded rhetorical questions are nearly identical; yet, the respective choice of predicates, though they appear to be synonymous, leads to a decisive difference in meaning. The expression “was amazed,” used by Appleton’s narrator (WB 137), has only one non-obsolete meaning according to the OED, namely being “lost in wonder or astonishment” (“amazed, adj.” 4.). His embedding frame thus adds to the rhetorical question’s function of emphasizing the narrator’s belief in the absurdity of what is expressed in the question itself. The same mechanism can be applied to the last sentence of Wuthering Heights if ‘wonder’ (WH 337) is taken to express Lockwood’s surprise (OED “wonder, v.” 1.b.). Yet, “wonder” may also indicate Lockwood’s implicit doubts; in this case, his framing of the rhetorical question may express that he himself is undecided about the question of unquiet slumbers. Instead of providing closure, the ambiguities of these final lines of Wuthering Heights draw attention to the equilibrium concerning the nature of the narrated world that is skilfully created in the novel. The interdependent ambiguities of “sleepers” (WH 337), of “slumbers” (WH 337) and of “breathing” (WH 337) are intricately connected to contrasting assumptions about the world. If a literal reading of the “sleepers” in the final sentence is adopted, Catherine and Heathcliff are assumed to merely slumber and regularly roam the heath where they encounter the living. This reading entails that the boundary between the realms of life and death in the world of Wuthering Heights must allow for permeability. If the “breathing” of the wind in the same sentence is not merely regarded as a pathetic fallacy but read literally as a result of the connection between the sleepers and the wind, then the boundary between human beings and the natural environment must be assumed to likewise be permeable in this world.

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The significance of the dense final sentence of Wuthering Heights, which foregrounds these fundamental ambiguities, is emphasized by its rhythmic form that can be likened to that of a poem.7 It iconically represents the quietness and serenity of the scenery, which is only broken by the “fluttering” of the moths. A connection of experience in the novel and experience of the novel is thus established that may result in an impression of an immediate access to the scenery itself as Lockwood experiences it, in spite of the sensory perception and the narrative act that are superimposed on it in the fictional construct of the novel. The co-presence of these aspects is nevertheless equally foregrounded in the rhythm of Lockwood’s words through the parallelization of clauses initiated by predicates, which are accordingly emphasized: I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (WH 337; my emphases)

Lockwood’s “linger[ing]” about the graves, which we must believe in if we are to accept the narrative, is thus juxtaposed with his processes of perception (“watch[ing]” and “listen[ing]”) and his reflections about these sensations (“wonder[ing]”). The separate but connected aspects of the nature of the narrated world itself, the character’s sensory perceptions, and narration as means to attain knowledge about it, are not only foregrounded in the closing lines of Wuthering Heights but throughout the novel. The whole text is – in the fictional construct of the novel – part of Lockwood’s narrative and thus filtered through his interpretation of the narrated world as he perceives it and at times also part of the narratives embedded in his. The numerous and bewildering ambiguities of Wuthering Heights can be analysed as the interplay and interdependence of ambiguities regarding each of the three aspects. Thus, ambiguous perception is dependent on and influences both the world it concerns and the narration through which we learn about it. Ambiguous narration is dependent on and influences the perceptions on which it is based and the nature of the world it tells about and the ambiguous nature of the world about which we are told is dependent on and influences the way it is perceived and narrated. Each of these aspects is a source of ambiguity in Wuthering Heights, and each serves as a heuristic tool to show how the novel foregrounds sensory perception, 7  Compare Jeremy Cott’s article “Structures of Sound” for a detailed analysis of the phonetic structure of the closing lines of Wuthering Heights.

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narration and the narrated world itself. At the same time, each of them is intricately linked to the other, which means that their separation is not an ontological one. Rather, it unveils how the novel makes use of the inherent potential for ambiguity of each of these aspects and in the process sheds light on each of them. In chapter 1, ambiguities of perception in Wuthering Heights are discussed that emerge as a result of the tension between sensory perception and reality as well as appearance and reality. Contrasting interpretative possibilities are juxtaposed in each of these passages. In some of them, sensory perceptions are either based on physical reality or originate in the characters’ minds; in others, several ways in which the characters sensory perceptions can be interpreted coexist, as in Lockwood’s remarks on the “quiet earth” (WH 337). In many of the novel’s ambiguities of perception, contexts are evoked that can be tied to contemporary discourses about how the senses can be tricked and about “rational” explanations for ghostly apparitions that correspond to interpretative possibilities for the ambiguities. They range from nightmares, to vivid memories, and physical and mental illnesses, to misinterpretation of auditory and tactile perceptions. Chapter 2 debates how narrative transmission becomes a source of ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. Frequently, contrasting readings for the novel’s ambiguities are presented within the text and tied to different narrative voices, as in the closing lines in which Lockwood’s dismissal of “unquiet slumbers” (WH 337) is juxtaposed with the position of those who have affirmed their belief in just this. The embedded syntactic structure of the final sentence integrates those voices in Lockwood’s narrative and thus inverts this technique found throughout large parts of the novel, where Lockwood’s voice becomes part of the narrative embedded in his. The novel’s multiperspectivity contributes significantly to its ambiguities; instead of a hierarchy of narrative voices which might result from the novel’s nested structure of embedded narratives, all of the narrators are shown to frequently err in their interpretations and an equilibrium is thus established between several distinct interpretative possibilities that are proposed by them. Ambiguity emerges in the narratives as a process, in which more and more local ambiguities of words, phrases, sentences and text passages are connected to global ambiguities, which persist throughout the text.8 Furthermore, embedding ambiguities present different possible speakers for the same utterance to the reader. 8  The term “local ambiguity” refers to ambiguities that concern smaller units of the text, such as words, phrases or text passages in this study and not (as it has also been employed) to ambiguities that are eventually resolved. For the latter phenomenon, the phrase “temporary ambiguity” is used.

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In addition to these epistemic problems, the nature of the narrated world itself is both constituted through the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights and becomes functional for them. Throughout the novel, ontological ambiguities not only address the possibility of a permeability between the realm of the living and that of the dead, and between human beings and nature, but also a union between Catherine and Heathcliff that transcends the boundaries of their selves as epitomized in Catherine’s famous claim “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82; cf. chapter 3.1). Moreover, passages like the merging of Catherine’s old room at the Heights with her new room at the Grange challenge the laws of space and time, and various ambiguities pose the question if Heathcliff can be regarded as a human being. The sheer number of intricately connected ambiguities suggest that the world of Wuthering Heights challenges boundaries and established categories; accordingly, its very nature could be regarded as ambiguous. The interconnected ambiguities discussed here are ambiguous in the sense that they ask the reader to think in alternatives as two or more distinct meanings emerge in the given context for the same words, sentences, text passages, or texts. Accordingly, ambiguity is regarded as a feature of language which differs from related concepts like vagueness, indeterminacy and openness because it requires a distinctness of coexisting meanings.9 Unlike the type of ambiguity that Christoph Bode has postulated as a defining feature of every literary text (“Aesthetics” 75),10 ambiguity in this more narrow sense is a specific phenomenon that can occur in works of literature and in language in general.11 In the closing lines of Wuthering Heights, words like “slumber,” “sleeper,” “breathing,” and “wonder” (WH 337) are ambiguous because they can be interpreted in several distinct ways in the given context. Such local ambiguities of words, phrases, sentences, and text passages are frequently tied to global ambiguities, which emerge as a result of distinct, interdependent local ambiguities in the novel. The ambiguity of “sleepers” and “slumbers” at the end of Wuthering 9  Compare Esme Winter-Froemel and Angelika Zirker’s definition that ambiguous utterances “can be assigned two (or more) distinct interpretations”(290). See Pinkal for a discussion of the difference between ambiguity, vagueness and underspecification. Chapter 4.2 contains a detailed overview of theoretical approaches to ambiguity. 10  For a critique of the use of the term ambiguity in the broad sense of the term that Bode proposes compare, for instance, Bauer et al. (65) as well as Berndt and Kammer, who argue: “Es ist deshalb […] gerade für ein auf die Spezifika literarischer Ambiguitätsreflexion zielendes Interesse keineswegs notwendig, ja nicht einmal sinnvoll, den eng und präzise gefassten Begriff der strukturalen Ambiguität und die von ihr erzeugten diagnostisch produktiven Krisen einer unscharfen Mehr- und Vieldeutigkeit des offenen Kunstwerks zu opfern” (24). 11  My definition of the term ambiguity is thus also much narrower than the one Empson has proposed in Seven Types of Ambiguity: “any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language” (1).

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Heights (WH 337), for instance, evokes earlier local ambiguities in the novel such as those in Heathcliff’s dream of “sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper [i.e. Catherine], with [his] heart stopped, and [his] cheek frozen against hers” (WH 289; compare chapter 3.2) and the ambiguous depiction of Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine as a nightmare or as an apparition in the third chapter of Wuthering Heights (compare chapter 1.1). Each of these instances is locally ambiguous, but each of them also addresses the underlying question of the nature of Catherine’s (and later Heathcliff’s) afterlife in the novel. Global ambiguity emerges through the interaction of local ambiguities centred around the question if the narrated world allows for an afterlife that is closer to actual “sleep” than commonly assumed and for an interaction between the living and the dead. This global ambiguity also in turn influences local ambiguities: when the question of “unquiet slumbers” (WH 337) is raised, all previous local ambiguities become a context for reading this sentence and an interpretation of these earlier ambiguities can, vice versa, be influenced retrospectively through the ambiguity of “sleepers” and “slumbers” (WH 337). To do justice to this phenomenon as it unfolds in the reading process, chapter 1 resorts to an approach of analysing ambiguities of perception chronologically on the level of discourse. Accordingly, these ambiguities are traced as they emerge in the text and, in their interaction with one another and with other text passages, contribute to the global ambiguity regarding the nature of the narrated world that culminates in the closing lines of the novel. Wuthering Heights has sparked a lively scholarly debate since its publication in 1847, in which a co-presence of meanings and the novel’s curious resistance to analysis is frequently addressed, but none of the critical texts has offered an in-depth analysis of its ambiguities. Queenie Leavis has claimed in an influential early reading of Wuthering Heights that “some things in [Brontë’s novel] are incompatible with the rest, so much so that one seems at times to find oneself in really different novels” (25). More recently, Simon Marsden has argued that Emily Brontë “never sought to find truth in a middle ground between polarities” in Wuthering Heights (242).12 Joseph Caroll notes that the novel “powerfully evokes unresolved discords” (254) and goes on to remark that Wuthering Heights “has proved exceptionally elusive to interpretation” (241), another aspect which has been raised time and again since 1847. A review of Wuthering 12  Marsden is concerned with intertextual relationship between Wuthering Heights and the Bible and Brontë’s interaction with concepts of Christianity in the nineteenth century. One example he gives for the co-presence of “polarities” in Wuthering Heights is Heathcliff, whom he regards as representing “Christ or Satan […] predicated upon the notion that these are not mutually exclusive categories” (246). Compare also 144n9.

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Heights, which appeared in January 1848 in Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, calls it “a strange sort of book – baffling all regular criticism” (qtd. in Newman, Wuthering Heights 347) a view that is shared by Dorothy van Ghent, who claims that it is “of all English novels, the most treacherous for the analytical understanding to approach” (The English Novel 153). In her review of the critical reception of the novel, Heather Glen concludes that “Wuthering Heights has become a veritable battleground for competing interpretations” (“Critical Commentary” 352–53). Those who have employed the term ambiguity in their readings of the novel do not elaborate on what they mean by it and how this effect is attained, such as McCarthy (61); or they use it as synonyms of related terms like uncertainty, indeterminacy, plurality, or openness, which frequently results in an indistinct mixture of several separate phenomena that are treated together. Kermode, for example, mentions most of these terms interchangeably in his discussion of the novel, and as a result does not differentiate between very different phenomena. Other critics have addressed the ambiguity of the novel without ever referring to the term “ambiguity”, or without providing a thorough analysis of the phenomenon, such as Jordan, who notes that “Emily Brontë […] does not explain mysteries away-in the fashion of Ann Radcliffe or Jane Austen” (2). Bowen similarly claims that “[t]he novel brings […] two fields of understanding together, and neither is allowed to trump the other” (209).13 Janet Gezari has likewise argued that “Brontë’s novel has demonstrated its capacity to generate an unusual ‘plurality’ of readings, different for different times and readers, and yet not cancelling each other out” (“Introduction” 5). The most perceptive approach to the novel’s global ambiguity so far has been proposed by J. Hillis Miller, who notes in Fiction and Repetition that Wuthering Heights is not merely open to interpretation as many, if not all novels are, but observes “striking” inconsistencies (50) between different readings of Wuthering Heights in the scholarly debate of the novel. For him, 13  Bowen never clearly specifies what he means by the “two fields of understanding” in Wuthering Heights but notes that “the novel is fascinated by what lies at the limits of the human. It is haunted by the forces of death and the diabolical; the compulsive demands of the infantile, sovereign, and sublime; and the derangements wrought on human action and purpose by radical excess and evil. The book is full of animals, spirits, and ghosts, and those, like Heathcliff, about whom we can never be sure. If we ask a simple question of the book- why, for example, is Heathcliff so appallingly vengeful to those such as Hareton Earnshaw who have done him no harm - we can find explanations in the unlucky chances of life. He is an orphan, brutalized by Hindley, relegated to the status of a servant, and estranged from his beloved Catherine. But the novel matches such social, historical, and psychological explanations by suggesting that he may be diabolical, a vampire, or a ghoul” (209).

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Introduction [t]he error [in all these approaches] lies in the assumption that the meaning is going to be single, unified, and logically coherent. My argument is that the best readings will be the ones which best account for the heterogeneity of the text, its presentation of a definite group of possible meanings which are systematically interconnected, determined by the text, but logically incompatible (51).

Hillis Miller never uses the term ambiguity in his chapter on Wuthering Heights, but the phenomenon he describes comes very close to the concept of ambiguity used here in that it addresses the co-presence of distinct, contrasting meanings. Ambiguity in this narrow sense can be found in many literary texts but Wuthering Heights is special in how pervasive and interdependent its ambiguities are, as a comparison with Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw shows. James’s story is frequently quoted as a prime example of literary ambiguity14 and is one of the texts on which Shlomith Rimmon bases her influential concept of narrative ambiguity. Like Brontë’s novel, The Turn of Screw contains ambiguous passages in which the dead may appear to the living but for which an alternative interpretative possibility is likewise established in the text, as in the following instance: Miss Jessel stood before us, on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was there, so I was justified; she was there, so I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs Grose, but she was there most for Flora. (212)

The governess, whose embedded narrative constitutes the main part of The Turn of the Screw, either indeed sees her dead predecessor Miss Jessel, or she merely imagines doing so. The narrator shows herself firmly convinced that Miss Jessel “was there,” and she concludes from this that she herself “was neither cruel nor mad” (212). Yet, in dismissing this alternative reading of herself as distracted, she evokes this exact interpretative possibility, much like Lockwood raises the possibility of “unquiet slumbers” (WH 337) in the closing lines of Wuthering Heights. In the governess’ ensuing conversation with the housekeeper, it turns out that at least her assumption that Miss Jessel “was there” (212) for Mrs Grose was false, which undermines the premise of her argument that she cannot merely have imagined the apparition. 14  Rimmon has claimed that James’s short story “has been so firmly linked with ambiguity that even people who have not read it know that it is somehow supposed to be ambiguous” (116). For discussions of the ambiguity of The Turn of the Screw, compare for instance Brandt, Dry and Kucinkas, Jeanne Allen, and Deledalle-Rhodes.

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While there are thus similarities in the type of ambiguities that occur in Wuthering Heights and The Turn of the Screw, the passage analysed here is only one of a handful of local ambiguities in James’s story, all of which can be subsumed under what Rimmon has called the “central enigma” (122) or the “central permanent gap” (126) of James’s story, namely the question “whether the ghosts are objective supernatural evil beings which appear to the governess and children alike or whether they are hallucinations of the governess’s deranged mind” (131). According to Rimmon, The Turn of the Screw is organized into two “mutually exclusive systems of clues designed to fill [this gap]” (126), a structure which for her is constitutive for ambiguous works in general (13). The narrative ambiguity of James’s short story thus hinges on one interpretative key: [I]n The Turn of the Screw […] the reliability of the first-person narrator becomes a central issue. Take the governess as a reliable interpreter of events, and you have one story. Take her as an unreliable neurotic fabricator of non-existent ‘ghosts of the mind’ and you are reading a diametrically opposed narrative. (119)

The ambiguities of Wuthering Heights are much more complex than those in James’s story in that they cannot be subsumed as parts of two “mutually exclusive systems” (Rimmon 126). Instead, global ambiguities that emerge as a result of interdependent local ambiguities in Wuthering Heights go far beyond the question whether or not ghosts exist or if one character has been deluded into believing in them; they address a number of fundamental assumptions about how the world is known and perceived, about the nature of the narrated world as such, as well as about the means to communicate about it. As a result, problems of ambiguity are much more pervasive in Wuthering Heights than in The Turn of the Screw: they leave us wondering not only about knowledge, narration and the world we live in but also about the way these features of the novel are related. In that way, they even transcend epistemic scepticism and narrative fallibility, as they make it possible to assume that the world is different from our general assumptions about it. Unlike in the case of The Turn of the Screw, genre assignation does not help us arrive at a sufficient explanation in Wuthering Heights (compare chapter 4.1).15 Brontë’s novel could be regarded 15  Rimmon notes about The Turn of the Screw that “[t]he endless debates as to whether the ghosts are objective supernatural evil beings which appear to the governess and children alike or whether they are hallucinations of the governess’s deranged mind can now be said to hinge on whether we classify the story as merveilleux or étrange. Or, in fact, the other way round: the genre to which the story belongs is determined by the degree and kind of substantiality attached to the ghosts” (119).

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as much more radical, and in this sense more modern than James’s story (although written and published more than sixty years earlier) in that it challenges fundamental assumptions about the nature of its own world and that of the reader, turning it into a reflection on epistemology, narratology, and ontology. The pervasiveness of ambiguities in Wuthering Heights as a structural key element and a thematic focus is singular and may contribute to the impression of uniqueness of Brontë’s novel that has been noted time and again since its publication in 1847. The critic in the Eclectic Magazine in 1878, who has called it “one of the most extraordinary and powerful productions in the whole range of English literature” (“The Brontës” 297), turns out to be only a case in point.

chapter 1

Ambiguities of Perception in Wuthering Heights He […] rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest, that he stopped breathing, during half a minute together. […] ‘Mr Heathcliff! master!’ I cried. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake, stare as if you saw an unearthly vision.’ ‘Don’t, for God’s sake, shout so loud,’ he replied. ‘Turn round, and tell me, are we by ourselves?’ ‘Of course,’ was my answer, ‘of course, we are!’ Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a sweep of his hand, he cleared a vacant space in front among the breakfast things, and leant forward to gaze more at his ease. Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall, for when I regarded him alone, it seemed, exactly, that he gazed at something within two yards distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes, at least, the anguished, yet raptured expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The fancied object was not fixed, either; his eyes pursued it with unwearied vigilance; and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. (WH 330–31; my emphasis)

Nelly’s description of Heathcliff’s peculiar behaviour in his final days contains a multitude of verbs of visual perception: looking, surveying, staring, seeing, gazing, perceiving and regarding. They illustrate two separate processes of seeing, one of which is embedded in the other: Nelly watches Heathcliff as he appears to perceive something. The way in which she observes Heathcliff is almost scientific: she notes what she can see, step by step, as it occurs, before she draws conclusions from it. The objects of her study are Heathcliff’s line of vision and his facial expressions from which she attempts to find out more about his sensory perceptions: Nelly “suppose[s]” that what Heathcliff “look[s] at” is a “particular portion” of the wall but he “stare[s] as if [he] saw an unearthly vision.” She soon revises her initial assumptions based on what she “perceive[s]” afterwards: from what she “regards” she assumes that he “gazed at something within two yards distance” and the “expression of his countenance” leaves her to conclude that this object of Heathcliff’s gaze causes him “both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes.” The entangled visual processes in the text passage lie at the root of two types of ambiguities of perception: the first addresses if something is perceived

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2020 | doi:10.30965/9783657704958_002

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at all. Heathcliff seems to see something that Nelly cannot discern and which she accordingly calls a “fancied object.” Furthermore, what Nelly and Heathcliff perceive is likewise ambiguous (type 2). Is Nelly’s conclusion that Heathcliff believes to observe a “fancied object” correct? After all, her assumptions are based on her own interpretations of what she perceives. Markers like “as I supposed,” “it seemed,” “apparently,” and “suggested that idea” foreground the subjectivity of her inferences and she herself corrects her first supposition that he was looking “at the wall.” Furthermore, the nature of the object Heathcliff believes to see is implicitly addressed in the narrative. Even though there is no explicit reference to the possibility that Catherine might appear to Heathcliff in this instance, Nelly’s interpretation of Heathcliff’s facial expression facilitates an inference that it must be Catherine – after all, no other subject has been presented in the novel as giving him throughout “both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes.” Accordingly, the question arises if Catherine, though invisible to Nelly, is indeed present at the Heights, or if Heathcliff is under an illusion, possibly because of a mental illness as caused by his extreme love for Catherine. Both readings are compatible with the linguistic material and for both support can be found in the text passage itself and in the wider co-text of the novel. The two types of ambiguities of perception that address the relationships between perception and reality (type 1), and perception and appearance (type 2), are intricately connected in the text passage, which can especially be observed in the following two sentences: Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall, for when I regarded him alone, it seemed, exactly, that he gazed at something within two yards distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes, at least, the anguished, yet raptured expression of his countenance suggested that idea. (WH 331; my emphases)

The epistemic adverb “apparently” and the epistemic verb “seems” are both ambiguous. The former can either mean “evidently or manifestly to the understanding” (OED, “apparently, adv.” 2.) or “to external appearance; seemingly” (OED 3.). The verb “seem” can similarly either convey the speaker’s belief that what appears to be is indeed the case or that outward appearance does not reflect reality.1 Both expressions result in structural ambiguities: “it seemed” in 1  O ED, “seem, verb” II.: “To have a semblance or appearance. Normally with indirect object of the person to whom the appearance is presented; where no object is expressed one may ordinarily be supplied. In the present tense, ‘seems’ is often equivalent to ‘seems to me’, which expresses belief in the truth of the appearance predicated. Where the object expressed or

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the first sentence either modifies “he gazed” or “he gazed at something within two yards distance” and accordingly either the process of perception or the interpretation of what Heathcliff is looking at. In the second sentence, Nelly either expresses that “it communicated, apparently” or that “it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes.” The latter ambiguity can be connected to that of the “fancied object,” which either denotates something “existing only in the fancy; imaginary” (OED “fancied, adj.” 1.) or “that one has taken a liking or fancy for” (OED 3.), with the former representing Nelly’s perspective and the latter Heathcliff’s. The different readings that emerge for the ambiguities of perception in this passage can be tied to a phenomenon that has sparked philosophical debates for centuries and is described by eighteenth century philosopher John Berkeley at the beginning of his Of the Principles of Human Knowledge in the following way: It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually (1) imprinted on the senses, or else such as are (2) perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas (3) formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways (113).

What Berkeley describes is a potential for ambiguity inherent in processes of perception. Since all of our sensations are only accessible through the mind, we may not be able to distinguish between actual sensory perceptions and images that originate in our mind. In the text passage from Nelly’s narrative as quoted above this potential is realised; the ambiguity hinges on the question if what Heathcliff appears to see is a sensory perception and is thus “actually […] imprinted on the senses” as he himself seems to believe or if is merely “perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or […] formed by help of memory and imagination.” John Berkeley’s approach to sense perceptions gained new prominence during the Romantic era,2 and was influential among epistemologists in the

implied is not in the first person, or where the verb is in the past tense, there is usually, on the other hand, the notion of mere appearance as opposed to fact.” 2  For a discussion of Berkeley’s influence on the Romantics compare Prickett (12–13), who argues that “[i]gnored by his own century, Berkeley was re-discovered by the Romantics because indirectly, he pointed to the way in which such phenomena of light as the rainbow could be used as a scientific model for the imagination as a perceptual relationship between man and nature” (13).

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1840s.3 His theory is heavily based on John Locke’s pervasive and detailed account on the sources of human knowledge in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.4 Both Locke and Berkeley regard “sensations” as the primary sources of knowledge, with Berkeley even going so far as to claim that “nothing can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving [it]” (114). This was not uncontested in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which proponents of idealism like Berkley clashed with those of realism. In his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge comments: Now these essential prejudices are all reducible to the one fundamental presumption, THAT THERE EXIST THINGS WITHOUT US. […] If to destroy the reality of all, that we actually behold, be idealism, what can be more egregiously so, than the system of modern metaphysics, which banishes us to a land of shadows, surrounds us with apparitions, and distinguishes truth from illusion only by the majority of those who dream the same dream? “I asserted that the world was mad,” exclaimed poor Lee, “and the world said, that I was mad, and confound them, they outvoted me.” (177)

The epistemic ambiguity between a “realist” and an “idealist” position is represented mimetically in Brontë’s novel; it is made poignant by the fact that what is beheld is a reality unlike the one explicable by established laws of nature. For the reader of Wuthering Heights, the only evidence she has is the text itself, in which Nelly’s and Heathcliff’s (narrated) sense perceptions are depicted. The tension between the significance of the senses and the lack of evidence for the existence of anything beyond them is deepened as vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste can be deluded. This constitutes a prominent philosophical problem, which Crane and French summarize in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as follows:

3  Smajić (5–6) discusses how Berkeley’s approach of conceptualizing the observer as a reader is adapted by Victorian epistemologists, such as William Whewell and John Stuart Mills, among whom he describes a tendency of “secularization of Berkeley’s theory” (6). According to Smajić, Berkeley’s An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision is “the touchstone for empiricist theories of vision in the nineteenth century” (73) and even anticipates de Saussure’s theory of the arbitrariness of linguistic signifiers (73). Lions remarks that Berkeley’s influence has diminished today: “Idealism has a few contemporary defenders (e.g., Foster 2008, Hoffman 2009), though it is nowhere near the dominant view that it had been for almost two centuries after Berkeley. Most responses to PEW in the last century have endorsed some kind of realism instead, insisting that ordinary objects are indeed mind-independent.” 4  Compare Mackie (51–55) and Lindsay (vii–xxiv) for detailed accounts of the similarities and differences between Locke and Berkeley.

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One pervasive and traditional problem, sometimes called “the Problem of Perception,” is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perception be what we ordinarily understand it to be, an openness to and awareness of the world?

While the ‘Problem of Perception’ “has been a central focus in philosophy throughout its history” (3), as Brewer notes, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represent a time in which it was discussed quite prominently within philosophy as well as beyond it. This renewed interest was partly a result of new scientific discoveries and theories in the fields of Optics5 and Neurology since the late seventeenth century as well as the rise of psychiatry.6 Whether the characters’ perceptions in Wuthering Heights grant direct access to the reality of the narrated world is not only relevant for the ambiguities in this passage but for a number of ambiguities of perception throughout Brontë’s novel. Each of the arrows in the following graph details major interconnected ambiguities of perception as they are distributed across the chapters of Wuthering Heights:

Fig. 1

Does Lockwood, for instance, actually see, hear, and feel a child in front of his window (arrow 1), and does Nelly see one at the signpost (arrow 2)? Does Catherine indeed see a “clothes-press” from her old room and “a face” haunting this room (arrow 3)? All of these passages question the relationship between sensory perception and reality, but they vary in another regard: each of them evokes different explanatory frameworks the characters resort to as a means to rationalize their experiences. When Nelly observes Heathcliff looking at “the

5  Jonathan Crary’s Techniques of the Observer provides detailed insights into the development of Optics in the nineteenth century. 6  S.S.  Schmucker’s Psychology or Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy, for instance, appeared in 1842. Compare Alexander and Shelton’s A History of Psychology in Western Civilization and Berrios’s A History of Clinical Psychiatry for detailed discussions of the rise of psychology and neurology in the nineteenth century following the discovery of the nervous system in the eighteenth century.

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fancied object,” she raises the possibility that he might suffer from a mental illness that may trigger hallucinations: [H]e was neither in danger of losing his senses, nor dying, according to my judgment he was quite strong and healthy; and, as to his reason, from childhood, he had a delight in dwelling on dark things, and entertaining odd fancies – he might have had a monomania on the subject of his departed idol; but on every other point his wits were as sound as mine. (WH 324)

The short-lived concept of monomania, which was coined in the early nineteenth century,7 describes the idea of a partial insanity, consisting in the influence or dominion of some special illusion, which generates one train of thought, or fixes attention to a single object; whereas, when otherwise directed, the intellectual powers seem unimpaired. (“Mental Diseases,” 585)

In raising the various ways in which the senses may be tricked, such as mental illness in the present text passage, Wuthering Heights evokes contemporary discourses targeting a specific sub-problem of the ‘problem of perception’, namely the question how stories of ghostly apparitions and other supernatural incidents could be explained as results of different forms of sensory delusions. The ‘spectral illusion theory’ emerged in Great Britain in the early nineteenth century (Henson 45–46). Numerous volumes listing ‘natural’ explanations of dreams, mental and physical illnesses, and vivid memories, emerged in quick succession in the 1820s and 1830s, with physician John Abercrombie’s Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth (1830)8 and author Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830)9 among the most popular.10 7  The term monomania was introduced by the psychiatrist Jean-Etiénne Esquirol in 1810 (Berrios 361). 8  Scottish physician John Abercrombie’s Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth was immensely popular in the first half of the nineteenth century. “[N]umerous editions” of the volume were published as Hervey notes and extracts and reviews appeared in magazines and journals, such as The Edinburgh Literary Journal (Volume 105. 13 Nov 1830). 9  Many of these works refer to mental illness as a possible explanation for spectral illusion such as Scott: “Unfortunately, however, as is now universally known and admitted, there certainly exists more than one disorder known to professional men, of which one important symptom is a disposition to see apparitions” (Letters 16). 10  The works of the spectral illusion theory were reviewed and discussed extensively in newspapers and journals in the 1830s. As avid readers of newspapers since childhood

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Wuthering Heights makes use of the potential for ambiguity that is inherent in epistemic problems11 by listing several different experiences that can be explained as figments of the characters’ imagination, but also evokes interpretative alternatives. Accordingly, the crucial role of perceptions themselves and their problematic nature is foregrounded in the novel. In each of these text passages, several converging ambiguities of perception are triggered as new sensory perceptions are depicted, while contrasting patterns of explanation are introduced. Each ambiguity becomes a context for the subsequent ones, which generates global ambiguity. To do justice to the dynamic nature of this phenomenon, these passages are analysed in the order in which they appear in the text (chronologically on the level of discourse). 1.1

Dreaming and Ghostly Apparitions in Lockwood’s Narrative of His “Terrible Night” I […] turned and dozed, and dreamt again; if possible, still more disagreeably than before. This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but, it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured

(Shattock), the Brontës may very well have come across these debates if they did not read the works themselves. In the “Noctes Ambrosianae,” published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1830), which Charlotte Brontë called “the most able periodical there is” (“The History of the Year” 3), the shepherd comments on On Demonology and Witchcraft in 1830: “a puir byeuckon Demonology and Witchcraft by Sir Walter. Poor in matter and in manner – in substance and in style. And yet the paid paltry press are at this moment all pawing it with their praise” (sic.; 854–855). Compare Shattock for a discussion of the role of this magazine in the Brontë household. 11  Smajić notes in his book-length study on ghost-seeing in the Nineteenth Century that “nineteenth-century debates on ghost-seeing enable us to approach contemporary ghost stories from a contextualist perspective” (4). One significant context that he proposes are the works of the spectral illusion theory. He shows for Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber” that “a direct link to contemporary theories of ghost-seeing” is established in the ghost story (22). Scott included the following passage in his story when he published a second version: “Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances, as wild vagaries of the fancy or deceptions of the optic nerves. On the contrary, he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard” (9–10).

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chapter 1 to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me, when awake, but forgotten. ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but, the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]. (WH 24–25)

The first instances of the pervasive ambiguities of perception in Wuthering Heights occur in the third chapter, in which Lockwood’s details his encounter with a child in front of his window (cf. fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Phyllis Bentley has described the striking effect of this text passage as “so powerful that cold shudders run down your spine” (82). The ontological status of the “hand” Lockwood feels, the “voice” he hears and the “child’s face” he sees is ambiguous: does he actually see, hear, and feel a child, or are these sensations a product of his own brain in a dream? Lockwood’s narrative in this instance foregrounds the perceptions of his experiencing self, which are listed in the narrative one by one, seemingly as they emerge in his mind at the time: the “little, ice-cold hand” is suggested by the touch of “[his] fingers clos[ing] on [its] fingers” and his “arm” to which it “cl[i]ng[s]”; which is followed by the sound of a “most melancholy voice;” finally, he “discern[s], obscurely, a child’s face” (WH 25). The adjectives and adverbs Lockwood employs emphasize the role of separate senses, as they highlight tactile (“little, ice-cold”), auditory (“melancholy”), and visual (“obscurely”) properties of what the experiencing self appears to perceive. The image of the child thus only gradually emerges as different fragmented parts (hand, voice, face) are depicted in isolation and are only in time combined to a complete entity. The first time in the narrative

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that Lockwood refers to the overall entity in these fragments is the expression “child’s face,” which presupposes12 that there is a child.13 The fragmented portrayal of perception in this text passage can be related to Berkeley’s observations in Of the Principles of Human Knowledge (see also above): It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually (1) imprinted on the senses, or else such as are (2) perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas (3) formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. […] By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things (113).

The ‘child’ in Wuthering Heights could be regarded as an “idea” in Berkeley’s sense that Lockwood infers from the collection of ideas which are gradually suggested by the sense of touch (idea of the “hand”), the sense of hearing (idea of the voice), and the sense of vision (idea of the face).14 12  Potts defines presuppositions in the Handbook of Contemporary Semantics in the following way: “The presuppositions of an utterance are the pieces of information that the speaker assumes (or acts as if she assumes) in order for her utterance to be meaningful in the current context” (168). 13  Lockwood’s comment on his unsuccessful attempt at “shaking the creature off” (WH 25) is the only time in his narrative of his encounter with Catherine where he linguistically combines the single elements he perceives to a complete entity. The figure he sees is thus only rarely addressed as a whole; instead, the fragments he can detect through different sense impressions are depicted in isolation. It is significant that Lockwood at first only speaks of Catherine’s hand. For Jennifer Bann, this is part of a larger tendency in nineteenth-century fiction of using ghostly hands as a trope of agency (670). A more obvious function of having Lockwood first encounter the “little ice-cold hand” (WH 25) might be that Brontë thus manages to create tension as she first describes the sound of the scene (the wind and the snow; the sound of the fir-bough knocking against the window), then Lockwood feels something (the cold hand) and only then can he actually see what is going on. 14  See also Matthias Bauer’s Das Leben als Geschichte (60–63; 87–88), which examines Berkeley’s theories as a context for Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. As Bauer (60–61) notes, the narrating self David Copperfield also addresses the connection of different

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Contrasting patterns of explanation are evoked in the novel to account for Lockwood’s experience. The narrating self Lockwood employs a retrospective strategy of rationalization throughout the text passage by recurring to the possibility of sensory delusions in dreams. He introduces his depiction of his encounter with Catherine with a remark that he “dreamt” the following (WH 24). The proponents of the spectral illusion theory in the nineteenth century name dreams as one of the most important rational explanations for what appear to be ghostly apparitions.15 John Abercrombie, for instance, writes in his Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth (1830): A person, under the influence of some strong mental impression, drops asleep for a few seconds, – perhaps without being sensible of it: some scene or person connected with the impression appears in a dream, and he starts up under the conviction that it was a spectral appearance. I have formerly proposed a conjecture, by which some of the most authentic stories of second sight may be referred to this principle. (363)

Abercrombie’s use of the term “may” in the last sentence is significant: these stories can be explained by recurring to dreams. Indeed, the concept of nightmare is evoked even earlier in his narrative when the narrating self Lockwood wonders what could account for his experiences of the night: […] I sank back in bed, and fell asleep. Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! what else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night? I don’t remember another that I can at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering. (WH 22)

Lockwood’s reference to “bad tea and bad temper” recalls contemporary theories about dreaming which consider the events of the previous day or days and digestive problems after a heavy or unhealthy meal as prominent causes for nightmares (Bown; “What is the Stuff that Dreams Are Made of?” 161).16 A sense impressions by the narrator in his following comment on Mr Murdstone: “I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me” (DC 26). 15  Evoking the concept of dreams as a strategy to rationalize sense impressions indeed goes back to antiquity. An early representative of this technique is Lucretius. For comprehensive treatments of this topic see Holowchak’s “Lucretius on the Gates of Horn and Ivory” and Scioli’s Dream, Fantasy and Visual Art. 16  Jennifer Windt, who traces back the concepts of indigestion and external sources of dreams to Aristotle, similarly argues that “[a]ppeals to the bodily sources of dreaming became especially popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, claims

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case in point is the entry on “Night-Mare” in Thomas Graham’s popular Modern Domestic Medicine (1826), Patrick Brontë’s heavily annotated “secular Bible” (Shuttleworth 27): It appears most frequently in persons of an irritable or nervous temperament, and of a weakly constitution; particularly among those who are predisposed to low-spirits. Others, indeed, are occasionally affected by it, but more rarely, and perhaps in a lesser degree. The most usual exciting causes are, great fatigue of body or mind; indigestible food; and long-continued disorder of the stomach and bowels. (425)

Lockwood’s reference to a bad meal and “bad temper” because of his journey and the events of the previous night may be regarded as an evocation of triggers for nightmares, which nineteenth-century readers might have been familiar with through factual sources like Graham’s medical book or through literary texts. The notion that “indigestible food” can cause nightmares is also prominently featured in nineteenth-century ghost stories.17 In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, published four years before Wuthering Heights,18 Scrooge also tries to rationalize a ghostly apparition as a dream: ‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost. ‘I don’t,’ said Scrooge. ‘What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge. ‘Why do you doubt your senses?’ ‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’ (21)

Scrooge cannot give Marley’s ghost a satisfactory answer about what evidence could convince him that he is real, and yet, he insists that “a little thing” may affect his senses (21), summarizing that “there’s more of gravy than of grave”

about the external (as opposed to wholly internal, or brain-based) sources of dreaming are also more clearly connected to the claim that sensory and in particular bodily experiences in dreams are distorted perceptions of external objects.” 17  Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert have called the ghost story “as typically part of the cultural and literary fabric of the [Victorian] age as imperialist confidence or the novel of social realism” (1). 18  A Christmas Carol was first published in 1843 and was immediately very popular in Britain (Kullmann, “Charles Dickens: A Christams Carol”); thus, even early readers of Wuthering Heights might have been aware of it.

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about the ghost.19 Scrooge’s wordplay results in a sort of comic relief, which points to a crucial difference between him and Lockwood: we are to believe in the ghost of Marley in A Christmas Carol and Scrooge’s denial of its reality is ridiculed, while Lockwood’s attempts at rationalization are neither dismissed nor privileged over an alternative reading as a ghostly encounter. The way in which Lockwood introduces the notions of “bad tea and bad temper” reveals whether they can provide a rational explanation for his experiences of the night. Lockwood’s ensuing question of “what else [it] could be that made [him] pass such a terrible night” (WH 22) admits the possibility that there might have been other reasons. Indeed, the context of ghost stories provides a contrasting pattern of explanation, namely that he might indeed have encountered a ghostly apparition: [T]hat minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called – she must have been a changeling – wicked little soul. She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years: a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt! (WH 27)

Lockwood thus calls the wanderings of Catherine on the earth “a just punishment,” which presupposes that Catherine’s apparition was real. His reference to Catherine’s “mortal transgressions” furthermore evokes an explanation conventionally given and frequently found in literary texts for the existence of ghosts: a punishment for deeds they committed in life.20 The two patterns of explanation Lockwood evokes in the third chapter, namely nightmare or ghostly apparition, are intricately tied to questions of perception. Reading Lockwood’s experience as an encounter with the ghost of Catherine entails that he indeed feels, hears, and sees a child that exists in the physical world. Yet, if Lockwood’s strategy of rationalization is accepted (“bad 19  Compare M.E. Braddon’s “The Shadow in the Corner” for another example of how “indigestion” is used as strategy of rationalization for possible ghostly appearance by a character in a ghost story. Its protagonist, the scientist Michael Bascombe, refers to indigestion as a “very likely” trigger of what he and his housemaid perceive as a spectral presence (65). Braddon’s story is set in “Wildheath Grange” and contains several other intertextual references to Wuthering Heights. 20  In Sir Walter Scott’s ghost story “The Tapestried Chamber,” for instance, a young gentleman accounts for the spectral presence of his ancestor in a room, with the “incest and unnatural murder” she committed there (12). For a parody of the motif of a ghost forced to remain on the earth after his death as a punishment for his sins see for instance Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost,” in which Sir Simon haunts an old English manor house now inhabited by an American family due to the murder of his wife. Towards the end of the story, Wilde’s humoristic treatment of the ghost turns more serious, ending in the ghost’s redemption through the actions of an innocent girl.

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tea and bad temper”; WH 22), the child originates in his mind during a nightmare and only exists there.

“[T]he air swarmed with Catherines”: The Beginning of the Third Chapter References to the two contrasting patterns of explanation – dreaming and ghostly apparitions – appear most prominently during and after the description of Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine, but the groundwork for the ambiguities of perception is laid early on in the third chapter. At its very beginning, Lockwood is led to a bedroom that is rarely used and connected to a secret, a familiar trope in ghost stories:21 While leading the way upstairs, [Zillah] recommended that I should hide the candle, and not make a noise, for her master had an odd notion about the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered; she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious. (WH 19)

The connection to ghost stories, in which characters frequently face ghostly apparitions when they have to sleep in such a mysterious room in an unfamiliar house, may thus make readers wonder if Lockwood will be faced with an apparition as well. Zillah’s warning to hide the candle and to “not make a noise” (WH 19), increases this effect and furthermore introduces the topic in the first sentences that is to dominate the chapter as a whole: the role of perceptions of the senses such as sight and hearing. Only shortly after Zillah has left, epistemic uncertainty is portrayed for the first time in the chapter, when Lockwood discovers letters on the ledge in the corner of the bed that have an unsettling effect on him: The ledge [….] was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small – Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw – Heathcliff – Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as 21  The concept of the haunted room that the newcomer is warned about in advance can be linked back to the ghost story as well as Gothic conventions. In Eliza Parsons’s Novel Castle of Wolfenbach, for instance, the heroine is first warned by Jacqueline (3), then by Bertha (5). Similar techniques can be found in M.E. Braddon’s “The Shadow in the Corner” and Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber.”

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chapter 1 vivid as spectres – the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin. (WH 19–20)

The writing on the ledge introduces the name of the owner of the “little, icecold hand” (WH 25) in a memorable way, by repeating it in different varieties with different surnames. Lockwood’s visual perceptions of these letters are foregrounded when he remarks on their materiality: the writing is “scratched on the paint” and is rendered “in all kinds of characters, large and small” (WH 19). After Lockwood’s eyes are “closed,” the names nevertheless reappear in the form of “a glare of white letters start[ing] from the dark, as vivid as spectres” (WH 20). A curious tension emerges in Lockwood’s words as the connotation of “vivid” as living and animate clashes with the term “spectres”: after all, spectres are dead. The image of the “glare of white letters” Lockwood seems to perceive does not originate from his sense of vision, since Lockwood can no longer see the letters. The act of spelling over the different names is not only reported but the repetition of the names and their rendering as single items divided by dashes results in an iconic representation of Lockwood’s visual experience in the text, through which the reader becomes a witness to the writing.22 Lockwood’s experience is rendered in detail, from his visual impressions of the “writing scratched on the paint” (WH 19), to his spelling over the name, to his seeing the “white” letters once more, “start[ing] from the dark, as vivid as spectres” (WH 20). Lockwood’s wording is ambiguous in that it leaves open whether the letters appear during or after he closes his eyes, even if the exact measuring of time points to the latter. The image thus seems to be the result of a delusion of his sense of vision.23 Lockwood’s rendering of this experience anticipates the later ambiguities in already associating the concept of “spectres” or ghosts with the name of Catherine. The letters of the name are personified in that they first “start,” then “swarm,” and finally become “as vivid as spectres” (WH 20). The string of letters forming her name (“Catherine;” WH 20) that Lockwood sees with his eyes closed is likened to spectres in this instance and 22  The “writing” Lockwood discovers on the ledge (WH 19) may be related to the proverbial “writing on the wall” in the sense of “warning signs of impending disaster, misfortune, etc” (OED, “writing, n.” II.6.) that alludes to Daniel 5 and 25–28. It thus may anticipate the following events of Lockwood’s “terrible night” (WH 22). 23  Visual impressions pertaining even though they can no longer be seen is one of the forms of sensory delusions that Abercrombie describes in his Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers. His depiction of this phenomenon can in its details be connected to Lockwood’s experience. Abercrombie mentions that they are “generally accompanied by some remarkable change in the colour of the objects” (61), which can be connected to the glaring whiteness Lockwood mentions (WH 20).

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later the person Catherine may appear as a literal spectre. At the same time, they present the first step in establishing a possible explanation for a nightmare of Lockwood’s by presenting the name Catherine in such a memorable manner to him. As Lockwood’s narrative progresses, the technique of foregrounding sensory perceptions is continued, when an olfactory impression is linked to Lockwood’s discovery of Catherine’s background story. On rousing himself to “dispel the obtrusive name” (WH 20), which precedes the intrusive child Lockwood is later faced with, he becomes aware of a strong smell, namely his candle wick burning the books, which draws his attention to the singed volumes themselves. Lockwood now detects a sort of diary in the form of annotations in the margins of the volumes of sermons,24 which allows him to learn more about the mysterious Catherine that is to appear to Lockwood shortly later. Lockwood’s Unambiguous Dream about Jabes Branderham On the verge of falling asleep in the process of reading, Lockwood’s attention is drawn to the text of the actual sermons, which is shown to trigger an explicit instance of a dream that is not ambiguous: I began to nod drowsily over the dim page; my eye wandered from manuscript to print. I saw a red ornamented title … ‘Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy First. A Pious Discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabes Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.’ And while I was, half consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabes Branderham would make of his subject, I sank back in bed, and fell asleep. Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! what else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night? I don’t remember another that I can at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering. I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. The snow lay yards deep in our road; if possible; and, I thought, we floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim’s staff: telling me I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood to be so denominated.

24  The form of Catherine’s diary as a set of annotations to another work could be read as a hint to the literary nature of Catherine’s experience. Catherine initially appears as a string of letters in Wuthering Heights, then in another form of writing (her diary in the margins of the sermons), and then either as a dream spectre on the basis of these writings or as a ghostly apparition. Even when her character itself appears in the novel, the name “Catherine” is still as much a string of letters to the reader of the text as a referent for the character.

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chapter 1 For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence. Then, a new idea flashed across me. I was not going there; we were journeying to hear the famous Jabes Branderham preach from the text – ‘Seventy Times Seven;’ and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the ‘First of the Seventy First,’ and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated. (WH 23)

The dream combines the text proper of the volume he reads, i.e. “Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy First”25 with Catherine’s story as detailed in its margins (WH 23).26 The excursion with Joseph to see Jabes Branderham in 25  For discussions of the significance of this unambiguous instance of a dream and its connections to Catherine’s apparition, see for instance Fine, Shannon, Ruth Adams, and Madden. Adams reads the inclusion of the “seventy times seven” in the dream as an allusion to Genesis, in which Lamech, the descendant of Cain, thus claimed immunity for his crimes. She argues that Lockwood’s dream of Jabes Branderham functions as a form of instruction for the novel’s readers about the kind of world they are to enter, namely one that is like the “land east of Eden” in the Bible: “Wuthering Heights, then, is a book without conventional ethics or morality. Emily Brontë, aware of the adjustment such a pattern demanded of her readers, undertook to assist them from the very beginning. Thus, with Lockwood’s dream of Branderham’s sermon, she indicated that readers were to travel east of Eden, in the company of those alienated from God and paradoxically protected by him against the punishing consequences of their deeds” (62). Madden takes the concept of “seventy-times seven” to refer to the New Testament rather than to Genesis as Adams suggested, namely to Mt 12 31–32 and thus regards it as “a command to practice unlimited forgiveness.” He argues that “Emily Brontë makes it clear that for her the unforgivable sin consists in judging the human offenses of others as unforgivable” (131). For him, the significance of the dream is centred on the character and central but destructive role of Joseph in the novel that sparks the unhealthy tendency of Heathcliff and Catherine for revenge and can only be overcome by the morality of the second generation. The dream reveals both the character of Lockwood as that of a “cold-hearted, shallow, guilt-ridden man who suspects everyone is against him and who represses this fear behind a disguise of urbane self-assurance, [which makes him] peculiarly vulnerable to Joseph’s moral assaults” (130) and that “evil, in the guise of Joseph’s malignity, existed in that world prior to Heathcliff’s arrival, indeed, for Emily Brontë, is always present in the world. The story of the first generation indicates that rebellion against the radical perversion of spiritual values represented by Joseph is insufficient. Only when his malignity and its disruptive effects are confronted and subdued is peace restored to the individual and to society” (147). 26  Lockwood’s description of his behaviour during Jabes Branderham’s service evokes Catherine’s depiction of Joseph’s long service not only thematically, but also in Lockwood’s reaction to it: “Oh, how weary I grew. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would ever have done! I was condemned to hear all out” (WH 23–24). In her diary, Catherine notes about Joseph’s sermon: “we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours” (WH 20–21).

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his dream takes a violent turn when the pilgrims that listen to his sermon attack each other: Every man’s hand was against his neighbour; and Branderham, unwilling to remain idle, poured forth his zeal in a shower of loud taps on the boards of the pulpit, which responded so smartly that, at last, to my unspeakable relief, they woke me. (WH 24)

Lockwood’s dream could easily be regarded as a direct consequence of his wearisome day before and his last impression before falling asleep. Abercrombie, for instance, mentions among the triggers of nightmares “recent events, and recent mental emotions, mingled up into one continuous series, with each other, or with old events, – by means of some feeling which had been to a greater or lesser degree allied to each other, though in other respects they were entirely unconnected” as well as “[t]rains of images brought up by association with bodily sensations” (263). Lockwood himself explicitly refers to the last aspect mentioned by Abercrombie when he describes the sound of “the branch of a fir-tree that touched [his] lattice, as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes” as having “played Jabes’s part in the row” (WH 24). Lockwood thus draws a connection between an actual sensory impression which has reached him in his sleep and the sounds that are transformed into a visual image that produces sounds.27 The sensory perception of the bough knocking against the window then also forms the transition to the next occurrences, which Lockwood explicitly introduces as part of another dream (see also above): I listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, then turned and dozed, and dreamt again; if possible, still more disagreeably than before. This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause; but, it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible […] (WH 24–25).

Linguistically, a connection is created to the dream about Jabes Branderham through the phrasing “dreamt again” (WH 24), which presupposes that he has already dreamt and thus evokes the earlier dream explicitly. Similarly, the expression “This time” (WH 24) creates a link to the earlier event, while at the same time introducing a contrast to it. Indeed, the same knocking sound 27  According to Nicola Bown, the notion that “sleep does not prevent perception, and that dreams are caused by sense-impressions reaching the mind from the external world during sleep” is “one of the major theories of dreaming” (160) in the nineteenth century.

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plays a decisive, though very different, role in both instances: while Lockwood first dreams of “rappings and counter-rappings” and a “shower of loud taps” (WH 24) and then realizes that it was “the branch of a fir-tree” that “played Jabes’s part in the row” (WH 24), he then “hear[s] […] the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound” (WH 25) and, in contrast to the earlier instance, as he tells the reader, “ascribe[s] it to the right cause” (WH 25). He likewise hears all the other sounds he has heard when he was sure of being awake: “the gusty wind” and “the driving of the snow” (WH 25). In spite of hearing what he has heard when awake and even “ascrib[ing] it to the right cause,” and thus interpreting these sounds correctly, the narrating self Lockwood is convinced that he was “dream[ing] again” (WH 24) at this point: [A]nd, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me, when awake, but forgotten. (WH 25; my emphases)

The embedded clauses “I thought” and “when awake” denote the narrating self’s conviction that he is indeed dreaming and that the action of trying to open the window originates in and is restricted to his mind (WH 25). While the integration of sensory perceptions into a dream is congruent with nineteenthcentury discourses on dreaming (see above), the ascription of cause and effect that is implied by “ascrib[ing] [the sounds] to the right cause” is rather curious for a dream (WH 25). If the incidents are indeed regarded as a part of Lockwood’s dream, then he seems at this point to dream of being awake. Similar dream markers to those that the narrating self Lockwood introduces at this point can be found in the first dream: (1) I thought it was morning […]. (WH 23; my emphasis) (2) […] I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice […]. (WH 23; my emphasis) (3) However, in my dream, Jabes had a full and attentive congregation […]. (WH 23; my emphasis)

Yet, there is a decisive difference between the dream about Jabes Branderham and the incidents Lockwood describes now as regards their content. In the earlier dream, Lockwood finds himself suddenly at a different place at a completely different time of day from where and when he fell asleep: I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. (WH 23)

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Only shortly later, again not unusually for a dream, the incidents abruptly take a very different turn: For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon [i.e. a cudgel] to gain admittance into my own residence. Then, a new idea flashed across me. I was not going there; we were journeying to hear the famous Jabes Branderham preach from the text – ‘Seventy Times Seven;’ and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the ‘First of the Seventy First,’ and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated. (WH 23)

The action of being “publicly exposed and excommunicated” (WH 23) seems highly incongruent with the storyline so far. In contrast to this, Lockwood explicitly refers to dreaming when he gets up to “silence” (WH 25) the sound of the bough knocking against the window (presumably by breaking the wood to ensure that it is not long enough to reach the window), but the action itself is much more rational and consistent than those in the earlier dream, which points towards a state of waking. While the narrating self thus continues his attempts to rationalize the experiences as a dream, the actions of the experiencing self do not necessarily support this assumption. All of the disruptions in Lockwood’s dream about Jabes Branderham indicate an incoherence of time, place, and plot that is at an end when Lockwood wakes up: it is night again, he is once more in Catherine’s old room, and Joseph, Jabes Branderham, and the rest of the assembly are gone.

“[T]he fingers of a little, ice-cold hand”: Lockwood’s Encounter with Catherine In contrast to this, the incidents that Lockwood claims are part of a second dream take place at the same location (“I remembered I was lying in the oak closet”, WH 24) and during night. This does, of course, not exclude the possibility that he is indeed dreaming at this point; yet, it is at least an option that he is not, which makes it much less obvious than in the earlier instance why Lockwood should come to this conclusion. Thematically and formally, the knocking that has been so prevalent throughout the chapter and especially in the first dream is picked up once more, as Lockwood tries to silence it: ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! (WH 25)

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In Lockwood’s description, the alliteration “knocking my knuckles” (WH 25) iconically represents the sound. The presence of the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) is then suggested by the sense of touch. Since this hand appears at an upper-story window in an isolated house during a snowstorm, only two interpretations in the form of two possible referents for the “little ice-cold hand” (WH 25) seem probable at this instance: that Lockwood is indeed dreaming and his sense of touch is thus deluded, or that he is in the presence of a ghostly entity, an experience which he tries to rationalize. Accordingly, an ambiguity is established at this point, which is upheld as Lockwood’s experience continues and more sensory impressions of the child are depicted (see above). Lockwood’s depiction of his encounter with Catherine again evokes both notions of dreaming and ghosts: The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but, the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window – Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear. ‘How can I?’ I said at length. ‘Let me go, if you want me to let you in!’ The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour, yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on! ‘Begone!’ I shouted, ‘I’ll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years!’ ‘It’s twenty years,’ mourned the voice, ‘twenty years, I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’ Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward. I tried to jump up; but, could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright. To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal. (WH 25–26)

Lockwood describes the effect of the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) with a reference to dreaming by calling it the “intense horror of nightmare” (WH 25). The genitive in his phrase makes it ambiguous in that he either specifies that, within his nightmare, he now feels the emotions conventionally connected to it, or that he retrospectively likens the impact of what he experiences at this instance to that of a nightmare, independent of whether it is one or not. The

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events themselves that lead to this effect seem much less absurd and in this sense dream-like than the earlier events. In addition to the temporal and spatial continuity of the present events, both a dream of Catherine’s ghost and its actual apparition are coherent with the plot, unlike Lockwood’s encounter with Jabes Branderham. Lockwood’s uneasiness if he has indeed merely experienced a dream again resurfaces in the form of a remark of the narrating self in parentheses: “(why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton)” (WH 25). Lockwood’s phrasing indicates that his mind created the child who calls herself Catherine Linton (“why did I think of Linton”) from what he has “read” earlier, which can be regarded as consistent with his strategy of rationalization. Yet Lockwood’s rhetorical question28 undermines his attempts at dismissing the possibility that the person “Catherine Linton” may exist in the physical world surrounding him at this point and is not only a product of his mind, which supports the underlying ambiguity of the passage. Furthermore, the interjection draws attention to the surname “Linton,” which – as it turns out later in the novel – was indeed Catherine’s surname at the time of her death (and accordingly the name her ghost should have).29 The final part of Lockwood’s narrative of his encounter with Catherine contains two hints that maintain the ambiguity of the passage since each of them supports one of the possible contrasting interpretations of a dream or an actual encounter with a ghost. Firstly, Lockwood uses the verb “wail” (WH 25) to describe Catherine’s voice, a verb he has earlier used for the sound of the wind he hears that night (“blast wailed by;” WH 24). Catherine’s wailing could thus be interpreted as yet another instance of sense impressions being perceived while dreaming and being embedded in a dream. Such a reading can also be supported by the sound of the phrase “let me in” which is repeated four times in the passage and in its rhythmic qualities is reminiscent of the branches knocking against the window. At the same time, the reference to “wailing” may also be read as the evocation of a prominent form of a ghost as described in folklore and literature: the banshee.30 Catherine’s emphasis that she “ha[s] been a waif for twenty years” (WH 25, my emphasis) may (at least in 28  Compare the discussion of Lockwood’s first rhetorical question (“What else could have made me pass such a terrible night?”; WH 22) above. 29  Compare chapter 3.4 for a discussion of the curious circumstance that Catherine here appears in the form of her child but uses the name of the adult (married) Catherine. 30  Paula Krebs discussed the influence of the tradition of Irish banshee motif on Wuthering Heights. Krebs notes that Catherine’s appearance in the third chapter “bears some striking resemblances” to this motif since it refers to a female ghost who wails in front of a window (47). It has to be noted, though, that the banshee in Irish tradition announces a death in the family, which does not seem to be the case in Wuthering Heights.

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retrospect) also support her notion that Lockwood has indeed met her ghost, since she died seventeen years before, which is quite close to the twenty years the ghost mentions. Still, Lockwood is the first to refer to the number in their conversation – Catherine merely echoes it and the number is wide enough off the mark to complicate matters. The end of what the narrating self Lockwood calls a dream again presents a strong contrast to his dream about Jabes Branderham, both on the level of content and of his use of language. While the earlier incident’s end is clearly defined with the loud sounds of the fir tree, “w[aking]” him “to [his] unspeakable relief” (WH 24), his later experience with Catherine ends rather more confusedly: I tried to jump up; but, could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright. To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal. (WH 26)

Lockwood’s use of the term “ideal,” which can mean “of, relating to, or of the nature of an idea, mental image, or conception” (OED “ideal, adj.” 3.a.) implies that at least the “yell” was not a product of his mind, a fact that leads to “confusion” (later, we also learn that Heathcliff has heard him scream). Not only the narrating self but also the experiencing self Lockwood seem to be puzzled by the incident. The experiencing self seems to have believed himself to be dreaming, while he actually, “to his confusion” (WH 26), was awake. This poses the question whether he has woken up before and not realized it, or whether he has not dreamt at all. The narrating self Lockwood does not clarify this either, and thus no clear line is drawn between the states of dreaming and being awake, which again makes it questionable if he has been asleep at all. During Lockwood’s subsequent discussion with Heathcliff, who, alarmed by Lockwood’s scream enters and angrily demands an explanation, the underlying ambiguity of perception is maintained. Different interpretations of the events are provided by the two speakers, between the narrating and the experiencing self Lockwood, and discrepancies may even be found among different utterances of the same speaker. During the interaction between Lockwood and Heathcliff both contexts are again evoked: the experiencing self Lockwood calls the events in turn a “frightful nightmare” (WH 26) or a dream and claims that the room is “haunted” and he was nearly “strangled” by the child, who has been “walking the earth for twenty years” as a punishment for her sins (WH 27). Heathcliff clearly believes in the reality of the apparition and appeals to her to “Come in! come in” (WH 28), which is reminiscent of Catherine’s “Let me in – let me in!” (WH 25). Heathcliff’s passionate appeal is immediately commented

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on ironically by the narrating subject Lockwood: “The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being […]” (WH 28–29).31 The use of irony serves here to ridicule the mere notion that ghosts might exist.32 Two discrete interpretations of Lockwood’s perceptions of “the little, icecold hand,” the “melancholy voice,” and the “face” are thus established in the passage, both of which are coherent with the text: either Lockwood has indeed perceived the ghost of a young Catherine or the child originated in his mind as a part of his dream (WH 25). This juxtaposition of different patterns of explanation contributes considerably to the ambiguity of the passage as can be observed in the remarkably divided scholarly debate. While its significance has been generally acknowledged33 and widely discussed by critics, a tendency to disambiguate this problematic passage in interpretations can be observed.34 A balance between those two discrete interpretations is established in this passage through assumptions about the nature of the incident and consequently about the nature of the world of Wuthering Heights that are affirmed, rejected, and juxtaposed with other assumptions.35 Lockwood’s uneasiness about the nature of his experience and, accordingly, the ontological status of the child, manifests itself in the ambiguities in his depiction of the events. Like Lockwood, a reader may find himself on shifting ground as regards the interpretation of this passage. Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine furthermore gains significance because it not only questions the nature of the fictional world but also introduces an ambiguity that is to linger for the rest of the novel: are problematic sensory perceptions at the root of the notions of Catherine’s (and Heathcliff’s) afterlife as ghosts, or do ghosts indeed roam the heath in the world of Wuthering Heights? 31  Lockwood’s phrasing is curious in that he refers to not “g[i]v[ing] a sign of being” as the “ordinary” behaviour of a spectre. He thus ironically rejects the notion that “spectre[s]” might exist by relating to a characteristic of the species – namely, not to appear. 32  McCarthy takes Lockwood’s irony to be another proof of the “cold, unconcerned objectivity and scepticism” he attributes to him, which characterizes him as “shallow and out of place” (50). 33  See, for instance, Edgar Shannon, who calls the first chapters and especially Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine “[a]t once prologue and raison d’être for the primary narrative” (95) and Martin Willis, who believes this to be a key passage because it brings the reader “over the edge into supernatural experience” (24). 34  Compare chapter 4.2 for the scholarly debate surrounding the ambiguity of the third chapter of Wuthering Heights. 35  The wish to disambiguate this key passage as witnessed in the scholarly debate on Wuthering Heights is understandable in that the ambiguity concerns the larger question of the nature of the fictional world its characters inhabit. See chapter 3 on the “Ambiguous World of Wuthering Heights” for a more detailed discussion of this topic.

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1.2

“My bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief”: Sensory Delusion and Memory in Nelly’s Narrative of Her Experience at the Signpost

Lockwood’s encounter with the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) is only the first in a row of passages in the novel in which the sensory perceptions of the characters are fundamental for the ambiguities depicted in them. Nelly’s narrative of the events prior to Lockwood’s arrival at the Heights in the eleventh chapter (compare the dark arrow in fig. 3) addresses an experience of a similar nature in that the possibility of veridical perception is juxtaposed with the possibility that what she appears to see might originate in her mind as a result of yet another source of sensory delusions: vivid memories.

Fig. 3

Furthermore, the question if perceptions represent an access to reality is in this instance intertwined with the question of the relationship between appearance and reality, which anticipates the ambiguities of perception in the final chapter in which Nelly observes Heathcliff observing (see above). Standing at the signpost between the Heights and the Grange in 1783, she appears to see her “early playmate” Hindley, who is already an adult at this point of the story: The sun shone yellow on [the] grey head [of the signpost], reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108; my emphasis)

This description of Nelly’s is only the first in a series of converging ambiguities surrounding the possible apparition of a child resembling Hindley on her walk to the Heights. In contrast to Lockwood, Nelly is clearly awake; accordingly, she cannot rationalize the apparition of the child as a nightmare as Lockwood attempts to do when faced with Catherine’s “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25). Yet,

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another interpretative possibility that is introduced in the text passage might serve as an explanation: is it possible that Nelly merely recalls the past image of her “early playmate” from memory? Nelly’s own use of the term “reminding” (WH 108) evokes the concept of memory, as do her explicit references to her childhood years throughout the chapter (see below). The notion of strong mental images of absent objects appearing like actual sensory perceptions of present objects was among those proposed in contemporary debates as explanations for ‘spectral illusions,’ for instance by Abercrombie, who mentions intense mental conceptions so strongly impressed upon the mind as, for the moment, to be believed to have a real existence. This takes place, when, along with the mental emotion, the individual is placed in circumstances in which external impressions are very slight, – as solitude, faint light, and quiescence of body. It is a state closely bordering upon dreaming, though the vision occurs while the person is in the waking state. (364)

The ambiguities of Nelly’s narrative of her experience at the signpost in 1783 hinge on the distinction between conception and perception (much like those in the third chapter): is Nelly’s conception of her “early playmate” (WH 108) based on the perception of an actual person, be it a ghostly apparition, or a regular child? Or is it only produced by and only exists within Nelly’s mind?36 As the text passage unfolds, a series of ambiguities of perception is introduced, and contrasting interpretative possibilities for them are gradually established.

Foregrounding Perception as a Basis for Narrating: The Beginning of Nelly’s Narrative At the beginning of the chapter, the foundation is laid for the ambiguity that is established a few passages later, as the decisive role of sensory perceptions for Nelly’s narrative is foregrounded: One time, I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my narrative has reached – a bright, frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry. I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W.H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T.G. It serves as a guide-post to the Grange, and Heights, and village.

36  In addition to a sensory delusion and an actual apparition of Hindley’s ghost a third possible interpretation is introduced later in the chapter, namely that Nelly encountered Hindley’s son Hareton.

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chapter 1 The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. (WH 108; my emphases)

A detailed rendering of her experience as such follows Nelly’s meta-narrative contextualization of the events (“about the period that my narrative has reached;” WH 108).37 Her use of adjectives that refer to visual and tactile properties of the objects of her description (“bright,” “frosty,” “bare,” “hard,” “dry,” “rough,” “yellow,” “grey”) foregrounds the (narrated) sensory perceptions on which her narrative is based in the fictional construct of the novel.38 This meticulous description of the scenery on Nelly’s walk in the winter of 1783 is followed by a depiction of the effect these perceptions of the signpost and its surroundings on a sunny winter day produce on the adult Nelly: they spark memories of her childhood days spent there with Hindley. The “sun sh[ining] yellow” on the signpost reminds her of a summer spent with him at this “favourite spot” of theirs “twenty years before” (WH 108). This reference to her childhood in the 1760s introduces a third temporal level in the text passage (besides the time of narration in 1801 and the time of Nelly’s experience 1783), which becomes crucial for the ambiguity that is to follow shortly afterwards.39 Nelly does not merely remember playing at the signpost in the 1760s but “all at once, a gush of child’s sensations” directly “flo[ws] into [her] heart” (WH 108). The entanglement of different temporal levels is continued in the following, as Nelly further explicitly connects her childhood in the 1760s with her sensory perceptions in 1783. Her narrative now follows her line of vision on her walk: I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108)

The sudden “gush” of memories seems to trigger a lengthy and meticulous observation of her surroundings. This is depicted in the narrative in a series 37  Due to the geographic location of the signpost as described in the novel, it must be passed on every walk between the Grange and the Heights as well as on every trip between Gimmerton and either of the houses. Such expeditions of Nelly are constantly mentioned in the novel (see e.g. WH 44, 221). At the beginning of the chapter discussed here, Nelly explicitly describes how she frequently went from the Grange to the Heights in the winter of 1783 (108). 38  Compare chapter 2.2 for a detailed discussion of how the narrative technique of foregrounding the character’s experience at the time contributes to the ambiguities of perception. 39  A more detailed discussion of the overall narrative structure of Wuthering Heights as regards ambiguity in the novel can be found in chapter 2 on “Ambiguity and Narration.”

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of phrases that are introduced with verbs of visual perception, namely “gaze,” “perceive,” and later “beheld” (WH 108). All of these phrases are syntactically remarkably similar and foreground the process of seeing:40 (1) “I gazed long at the weather-worn block” (WH 108; my emphasis) (2) “I […] perceived a hole near the bottom” (WH 108; my emphasis) (3) “I beheld my early playmate” (WH 108; my emphasis)

In spite of these structural parallels, there is a decisive difference between the three objects in question, namely the block, the hole, and the “early playmate”: only one of them is ontologically ambiguous in the narrative. Nelly presents both the “weather-worn block” and the “hole” in it as facts (WH 108). There are no indications in the text that cast any doubt that they are objects in the outside physical world that Nelly perceives; accordingly, for the story to work, the “hole near the bottom” (WH 108) has to be taken to refer to an existing entity in the fictional world of the novel:

Fig. 4 40  The OED entries for the verbs “perceive” and “gaze,” as well as for “behold,” which appears later in the sentence, stress that the process of perception is foregrounded (“perceive, v.” 2.a.; “gaze, v.” 1.a.; “behold, v.” 7.) and for the last two also that a certain duration is implied. The extent to which the process of perception is stressed in this text passage becomes even more apparent when it is compared to instances in the novel where perception is also addressed but its product is foregrounded, as in the following sentence taken from the end of the previous chapter: “I [i.e. Nelly] saw him smile to himself—grin rather— and lapse into ominous musing whenever Mrs. Linton had occasion to be absent from the apartment” (107).

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This presents a contrast to the “early playmate” (WH 108), whose ontological status in the fictional world is less clear. Should the child be assumed to be an element of the world around Nelly that she perceives, just like the “hole […] full of snail-shells and pebbles” (WH 108)? Or is her “early playmate” (WH 108) merely an image presenting itself to her mind?41 Accordingly, only the third phrase is ambiguous:

Fig. 5

The result of presenting two possible referents for the same expressions and accordingly two discrete interpretations for the same aspect of the text is ambiguity.42

41  As the text passage unfolds, the ambiguity becomes more complex (see below): If Nelly indeed perceives a child that exists in the physical world, is it a ghostly apparition or an actual (living) child? If the conception of the “early playmate” is only produced by and only exists in Nelly’s mind, does it have an inherent semiotic quality or is it merely a vivid representation of a memory? 42  The dash between the description of what Nelly sees around and in the signpost on the one hand, and the apposition “as fresh as reality” on the other hand, may be taken to mark a fundamental difference between the ontological status of the objects she perceives before and after it. While the first part of her depictions has to be assumed to be real in the fictional world, the ambiguity afterwards both allows for the “early playmate” to be an element of the fictional world in some form or to be merely a figment of Nelly’s mind.

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“[I]t appeared that I beheld my early playmate”: Nelly’s Perception of the Child on the Heath Several factors come together to generate the striking effect of ambiguity, not the least the connection of these different objects to different periods in time evoked in the text passage. Three different entangled temporal layers are referenced in Nelly’s narration; the 1760s (her childhood), 1773 (the walk), and 1801 (the act of narration). While these layers can easily coexist in the narrative, the experiencing self Nelly in 1783 should only be able to see (in the sense of perceive what exists in the physical world) objects that are part of her reality in 1783. The signpost that she “gaze[s]” at (WH 108) can be assumed to have already existed in the 1760s and to still do so in 1783. The “snail-shells and pebbles” she “perceive[s]” (WH 108) are relicts of her and Hindley’s childhood that she can “still” see in 1783; the absence of the “perishable things” (WH 108) that were stored alongside them but have disappeared by 1783 constitute a clear indication that the visual image she describes of the contents of the hole is indeed part of the reality of the experiencing self. Nelly’s reference to the passing of time43 that the absence of the “perishable things” (WH 108) indicates is followed by an apposition that rather seems to constitute a clear reference to the present of the experiencing self: I […] perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108; my emphasis)

The phrase “as fresh as reality” (WH 108) seems to introduce an object which has not perished at all; instead, the adjective “fresh” with its temporal connotation could be taken to ground the element that the apposition refers to in the present of the experiencing self on her walk on the heath.44 Yet, the visual 43  The transience of time that the loss of the “perishable things” implies is also taken up when the signpost is called “weather-worn” and, later in the sentence, the turf “withered” (108). These elements thus foreground the natural progression of time, while the notion of Hindley appearing as a child in 1783, when he is already an adult, suggests a reverse temporal movement. The concept of adults becoming children appears frequently in the novel (compare, for instance, Catherine appearing to Lockwood as a child in the passage discussed above), as do other elements, which suggest a transcendence of temporal levels. See chapter 3 (“The Ambiguous World of Wuthering Heights”) for an in-depth analysis of this topic. 44  The adjective “fresh” is here understood in the sense of “[r]etaining its original qualities; not deteriorated or changed by lapse of time” (OED “fresh, adj.” 7.) or “[h]aving the signs of newness” (OED “fresh, adj.” 4.).

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image (or conception) which is modified by this description seems to be as much a part of the past as the vanished “perishable things:” her “early playmate” (WH 108). “Early” in the sense in which it is used in Nelly’s utterance relates to her childhood and thus the past (OED 5). Its temporal connotation seems to contradict that of “fresh” with its connotation of newness. The “early playmate” seems to refer to the same entity in the fictional world as “Hindley” who is mentioned only a few sentences earlier as having played together with Nelly. Like her, he “held [the signpost] a favourite spot twenty years before” and must be an adult at this point (WH 108). While a signpost standing at the road is an element of the fictional world that is easy to accept for Nelly since it is consistent with her basic assumptions about it, the adult Hindley appearing as a child may cause some irritation since the laws of nature appear to be suspended. Indeed, the immediate co-text of this passage with its evocation of memories of a childhood spent with Hindley provides a plausible alternative to an encounter with an apparition: vivid memories may cause a sensory delusion at a place that still contains remnants of this shared past. The possibility is thus evoked that she has seen this exact image of “[her] early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate” (WH 108) at an earlier time. Being reminded of another time at this emotionally charged place might lead her mind to reproduce these impressions.45 The image of the “early playmate” (WH 108) that Nelly relates could thus be counted among the “[i]ntense mental conceptions so strongly impressed upon the mind as, for the moment, to be believed to have a real existence” (364) that Abercrombie describes (see above). The conditions that might trigger such a state, according to Abercrombie, include “mental emotion” and “solitude” (364). In the light of Nelly’s distress about Hindley’s situation on her solitary walk and the intensity of her memories of their childhood days spent at this exact spot, it does not seem far-fetched to interpret the text passage as an instance of vivid images from this past time overpowering Nelly. Even though this can be regarded as one likely reading of the events, the alternative explanation that a 45  The concept that strong and emotional memories can trick the “bodily eye” as the organ of sight, so that memories appear as present objects to be seen, is especially prominent in the writings of the Romantics. Compare, for instance, Coleridge’s notion of “fancy” as “a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space” (Biographia Literaria Ch. XIII). William Wordsworth’s “The Brothers” contains an example of a literary treatment of the concept: “he thus by feverish passion overcome / Even with the organs of the bodily eye / Below him, in the bosom of the deep [i.e. the sea] / Saw mountains, saw the forms of sheep that grazed / on verdant hills […]” (59–63).

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child actually sits on the heath in 1783 that Nelly perceives is likewise consistent with the textual evidence. The co-text of the novel up to this point provides a concept that can strengthen such a reading: In the third chapter of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood has also encountered a child in curious circumstances. An intratextual reference to Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine is established once more as a “little hand” (WH 108) mirrors the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) that seems to grasp Lockwood’s arm and the “dark, square head” (WH 108) Nelly “beh[o]ld[s]” (WH 108) can be connected to the “child’s face” (WH 25) that appears to Lockwood. Furthermore, both passages likewise foreground sensory perceptions and contain expressions that question the reality of the objects the narrator perceives. These two contrasting patterns of explanation – ghostly apparitions and vivid memories that can delude the senses – contribute largely to the ambiguity of the passage. Its linguistic triggers lie in the grammatically and lexically complex embedding of the “early playmate” (WH 108): I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108; my emphasis)

The complex sentence structure and wording marks a crucial difference of this new object of her description to the road and the signpost. The predicate of the phrase, namely the verb “appea[r]” (WH 108) is itself polysemous and its different meanings indeed encapsulate the ambiguity of perception in a condensed form. A meaning of “appear” in the sense of a supernatural being showing itself (OED “appear, v.” 2.) may initially be evoked but disappears as the utterance progresses since it is then no longer consistent with the sentence structure: it appeared that I beheld.46 Secondly, “appear” can be understood as “[t]o be to the mind, or in one’s opinion; to be taken as, to seem” (OED “appear, v” 10.). This reading of “appear” indicates the presence of a conception about whose ties to the external reality the narrator is not sure. The modification of Nelly’s observation (“I beheld”) with “appear” in this sense results in a semantically weaker construction than her previous phrases about the signpost she “gaze[s]” at and 46  In spite of the grammatical constrictions of the sentence as a whole, which do not allow for a reading of “it appeared” as “some object or subject revealed its physical presence” the concept of a supernatural apparition is evoked through the wording of the sentence and is evoked once more when Nelly later in the chapter notes that “[t]he apparition had outstripped [her]” (WH 109).

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the hole she “perceive[s]:”: stating that it only “appears” that she beheld the boy implicates that she both believes that it is possible that she indeed “beheld [her] early playmate seated on the withered turf” and that it is possible that this is not the case (WH 108). Her use of language thus indicates that Nelly considers different possibilities of what she could have experienced at this point and that she has doubts if her observation obtains and there really is such an entity in the world around her.47 This effect is even strengthened because of the apposition “as fresh as reality.” It likewise comments on the outward “appearance” and questions if she really has perceived “her early playmate, sitting on the heath” (WH 108). Content-wise, representing something as comparable to reality at least evokes the question if what is to follow is to be regarded as real,48 and in this sense presents a contrast rather than a continuity to what she has described so far. Two possibilities are thus upheld through the interaction of the apposition with the ambiguous phrase “it appears”: what appears to be like reality could really be reality and what appears to be reality could also not be reality.49 The simile “as fresh as reality” (WH 108) also reveals that the image she sees is not faded or blurry. This addresses another meaning of the adjective “fresh” besides the “newness” discussed above, namely the quality of “[n]ot [being] sullied or tarnished; bright and pure in colour; blooming, gay” (OED “fresh, adj.” 9.a.). Accordingly, the difference she appears to make between the child she sees now and the objects she has seen earlier does not seem to be based on their surface appearance. Both the stress on the process of visual perception and the apposition draw attention to what is subsequently described. 47  Compare Levinson’s Neo-Gricean theory of implicatures. Levinson claims that the choice of a semantically weaker construction that does not provide new information but rather qualifies the statement Q-implicates that the speaker does not know whether the embedded statement obtains. The result are two opposing implicatures (108–111). 48  Nelly’s evocation of the notoriously difficult concept “reality” raises the question of what kind of “reality” is questioned at this point. The co-text suggests that her intended meaning of the term is either a “[r]eal existence; what is real rather than imagined or desired (OED “reality, n.” 1.) or “[t]hat which constitutes the actual thing, as distinguished from what is merely apparent or external” (OED 5.a.). By this time, a reader of the novel has already encountered several instances in which appearances are contrasted with what “really” happened. Compare, for instance Lockwood’s depiction of his dream about Jabes Branderham: “We came to the chapel. I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice; it lies in a hollow, between two hills” (23). 49  For an unambiguous instance of a comparison to reality compare the following passage in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “[a]ll looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality” (18).

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As the sentence continues, it becomes clear that the apposition has to be interpreted as belonging to a new main clause with the pronoun “it” (WH 109)50 as a subject, whose semantic properties allow for a certain flexibility of interpretation. This makes it a notorious source of ambiguity,51 even more so in in a novel where the pronoun, usually reserved for inanimate objects, has up to this point already been used prominently for children twice: for the apparition at the window of Lockwood’s chamber at the Heights (WH 25), and for the young Heathcliff when he first arrives at the Earnshaw’s (WH 36; cf. chapter 3.5). The intratextual connections to Lockwood’s experience may evoke notions of a supernatural entity (“it”) appearing to Nelly. Thirdly, “appear” can mean “[t]o seem, as distinguished from to be” (OED 11). The sentence in (2) would then indicate that in Nelly’s opinion she merely imagined a child.52 This meaning might be the one intended by the retrospective narrator in an attempt to rationalize her experience as a delusion of the senses; yet, the co-text suggests that Nelly is indeed uneasy about the nature of her experience in spite of her protestations to the contrary (see below). Nelly’s account furthermore contains a structural ambiguity. The phrase “it appeared that” could be taken to refer either to the process of perception (“beheld”) or to her interpretation of the image as her early playmate Hindley (“I beheld my early playmate;” WH 108). Accordingly, Nelly could either be assumed to question if the conception of the child originated in the mind and was not actually seen by her or to wonder if what she sees could indeed be interpreted as Hindley:

50  At this point of the comparatively short text passage, the pronoun “it” has appeared four times. 51  The poetry of Emily Dickinson can serve to illustrate this. In “There’s a Certain Slant of Light,” the “it” in the line “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –” (l. 5) can be taken to refer to the “Slant of light” (l.1) or to the “Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes” (l. 3–4). For “it” as a source of referential ambiguity in Dickinson’s poetry see also Dörge and Bade and Chapter 1.2 in Linguistics Meets Literature: More on the Grammar of Emily Dickinson (Bauer/Beck et al.). 52  Again, this meaning has a precedent in the novel that may be evoked when reading Nelly’s account. In another prominent text passage earlier in the text, Nelly comments on the consequences of Hindley’s abuse of Heathcliff as a child: “And, truly, it appeared as if the lad [i.e. Heathcliff] were possessed of something diabolical at that period” (WH 66). This is one of several instances in which Nelly expresses some extent of uncertainty as regards Heathcliff’s humanity, which represents another major ambiguity in the novel. For a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon see chapter 3.5.

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Fig. 6

As a result of its complex phrasing, the utterance allows for different meanings and can accordingly evoke different versions of the event,53 some of which appear more likely than others in the context of the text passage and the novel as a whole.54 As the narrative continues, this ambiguity is not resolved, but rather upheld and varied when the apparition is addressed once more: I started – my bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared straight into mine! It vanished in a twinkling; but, immediately, I felt an irresistible yearning to be at the Heights. Superstition urged me to comply with this impulse – supposing he should be dead! I thought – or should die soon! – supposing it were a sign of death! (WH 109; my emphasis)

The child now appears to interact with the experiencing self Nelly, which causes her to “star[t]” (WH 109). This new development makes it unlikely that she merely remembers a past scene. While memories represent a mere reproduction of the images of another time, the child in Nelly’s account seems either 53  It is important to note that all of these meanings are consistent with the textual evidence and can be evoked in the reading process, but that this does not mean that every reader recognizes all of these possible readings. 54  In the course of the text passage, the respective likelihood of the different interpretations of Nelly’s encounter may change as new information is provided.

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to be part of the present or at least to interact with it. Thus, the entanglement of temporal levels in the present chapter is taken to a new level. This new description of what she seems to see (“the child lift[ing] its face and star[ing] straight into [hers];” WH 109) is again embedded into a complex syntactic construction that qualifies the observation itself. In contrast to her earlier utterance about “[her] early playmate” (WH 108), this phrasing does not implicate any doubts on her part as regards the process of perception or the reality of the image she describes. Instead, she clearly affirms that her “bodily eye,” and thus her senses, are “cheated” into “a momentary belief,” which implies that she is convinced that she merely imagined this (WH 109).55 Furthermore, the sentence presupposes that at least the image of a child is accepted as a reality at this point and she has not merely remembered her childhood days with Hindley. This statement of Nelly’s might therefore be regarded as an attempt at disambiguation. However, in the very act of dismissing the possibility of having actually perceived a child, Nelly’s strange use of language rather reinforces the notion of other entities being involved in the experience at the signpost. Her choice of the word “cheated” (WH 109) instead of the more neutral “tricked” at least linguistically introduces an external agent who presents the image to her, which evokes another possible version of the events: the mental image of the child Hindley could be imposed on her by a supernatural agent. Yet another referential ambiguity of “it” is introduced at this point. In “[i]t vanished in a twinkling”, “it” could either refer to the child (in this case, her use of language is dehumanizing), or to “her momentary belief,” but her ensuing emotional reaction counteracts her statement in this case. Furthermore, she curiously attributes the “momentary belief” in a child interacting with her on the heath to her “bodily eye”56 and thus to an entity which usually perceives rather than 55  In his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Sir Walter Scott describes the following episode in which a gentleman sees “the exact representation of the departed friend, whose recollection had been so strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped for a single moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with which fancy had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and posture of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion, he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy of the resemblance” (38–39). 56  The distinction between a “bodily eye” and a contrasting “mental” or “spiritual eye” can be found in Plato’s Republic in his explication of the allegory of the cave. The use of this specific term in English versions of the Republic depends on the translation: While Jowett (1871) uses it, Waterfield does not. The term can also be found in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: “The eye is of two kinds, namely the bodily eye properly so-called, and the intellectual eye, so-called by similitude. But Christ’s body as it is in this sacrament cannot be seen by any bodily eye” (2454). Both authors stress the unreliability of the

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holds opinions (WH 109).57 Nelly’s strange choice of words thus undermines her attempt to dismiss the notion that her experience might have been more than a vivid memory. The ambiguity regarding the existence and identity of the child at the signpost is thus not resolved.

“The apparition had outstripped me”: Nelly’s Interaction with Hareton Nelly’s attempt at disambiguation is furthermore undermined by her experiencing self’s evaluation of and her reaction to the events at the signpost in 1784.58 “[U]rged” by the concern that what she has seen is to be regarded as “a sign of death,” she rushes to the Heights (WH 109). This action presupposes that she at least for a moment believes that what has happened is not just a memory but a meaningful “sign.” Faced with a situation in which the playmate of her past seems to interact with her in the present (1783),59 the experiencing self Nelly considers two different concepts of seeing apparitions she is familiar with that may turn her experience into a meaningful “sign” (WH 109). She firstly wonders if Hindley “should be dead” (WH 109), which evokes the figure of the departing ghost traditionally conceived of as appearing to the living “at the moment of death, making its way from this world to the next” (Bowyer 178).60 organ. The concept of the “bodily eye” was also picked up by the Romantics, who stressed the power of mental image to influence it. Compare 30n45. 57  In an attempt to explain Nelly’s strange choice of words, Pamela Law claims that “Nelly is carefully placing this as a psychological phenomenon producing an apparent effect on the senses […]” (52) and addresses the Romantic concept of “[t]he mind to produc[ing] sense impressions, ‘both what we half-perceive and what create’ as Wordsworth says” (52). While the latter is certainly a valid point, this does not explain why Nelly affirms that her ‘bodily eye’ was made to believe in something. 58  For a more detailed discussion of the role the overall narrative structure of Wuthering Heights plays as regards ambiguity in the novel see chapter 2 on “Ambiguity and Narration.” 59  Like Catherine in the third chapter, Hindley appears as a child. For the significance of childhood in the novel and its connection to death compare chapter 3.4. 60  The concept of the departing ghost can already be found in Pope Gregory the Great’s sixth century Dialogues, where he reports King Theodoric to have been seen at the exact day of his death by a hermit at a remote island as he was led by “Pope John and the patrician Symmachus […], disrobed and barefoot, with his hands in chains, to the brink of a neighbouring volcano and cast [by them] into its flaming abyss” (228). The figure was still widely known in the nineteenth century, when it is for instance discussed by Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile in his 1874 collection of ghost beliefs (Apparitions: A Narrative of Facts; 146). This type of ghost also plays a prominent figure in literary ghost stories of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, such as “A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal” (1706), usually attributed to Daniel Defoe. Its status as either a factual account of an apparition or a fictional story is notoriously ambiguous and has been debated widely,

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Alternatively, she contemplates if he “should die soon” (WH 109), addressing the concept of apparitions as premonitions of death.61 Faced with uncertainty, Nelly thus considers different patterns she might know from literature and oral tradition that might help to explain what happened to her. When these concepts are thus implicitly evoked in the text, they also become available to the reader on the external level as possible explanations for the ambiguous text passage she reads. Both the experiencing self Nelly and the reader lack the information at this point if Hindley is dead or about to die, which forms a prerequisite for her having seen his departing ghost or an apparition as a premonition of his death. The possibility that Nelly’s experience at the signpost is indeed to be regarded as a meaningful “sign of death” is thus upheld.62 Yet, the alternative of a sensory delusion without any prophetic significance is not excluded. This position is embodied in the text by the narrating self Nelly, who dismisses her former notion of a “sign” as a “superstition” (WH 108). Nevertheless, the perspective of regarding the apparition as meaningful does not disappear from the text but is rather foregrounded in the same sentence in the form of direct quotations of the thoughts of the experiencing self Nelly in 1783, whose emotional agitation furthermore seems to be reflected in short clauses, dashes and quotation marks:

which has led Shane McCorristine to call it “[p]erhaps the paradigmatic factual ghost story” (17). Indeed, the story itself insists on its factuality: it begins by emphasizing the “good authority” on which it is based, and claims that “[i]t is fit to gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer” (1). 61  Different forms of ghosts as premonitions have been known in different regions of the British Isles, most prominently the Irish Ban-shee and the Scottish Bodach-Glas. Both figures are frequently described by nineteenth century authors. According to Savile’s Apparitions: A Narrative of Facts (1874), the Bodach-Glas was believed to be a “dark grey man […] said to herald the approach of death to certain clans in Scotland” (146–47) while a Ban-Shee is a female “harbinger of death in certain families of ancient decent” in Ireland (149). Sir Walter Scott likewise provides a description of the Banshee figure in his On Demonology and Witchcraft (351). 62  In her discussion of the passage, Simpson, for instance, argues that “[t]he apparition does forebode Hindley’s doom” since he is “irrevocably on the road to ruin and death, even if death itself only occurs a year later” (56). Paula Krebs refutes this line of argumentation (51n8), but still claims that the apparition is to be regarded as a “wraith” and thus a ghost (49). Krebs continues to argue that this episode thus has “no strong narrative function as such an event might in a Gothic novel, where it would warn of upcoming death. Instead, the narrator’s memorat of the child’s appearance is a folklore form interpolated into a work of fiction” (49). This position is problematic in that a foreboding of death is not the only imaginable “narrative function” of this passage.

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chapter 1 Superstition urged me to comply with this impulse – supposing he should be dead! I thought – or should die soon! – supposing it were a sign of death! (WH 109)

This use of language deviates considerably from the more polished narrative style Nelly usually displays when telling Lockwood about the history of the Heights and its occupants. This juxtaposition of the perspectives of the experiencing self and the narrating self and their diverging evaluations of the same experience contributes significantly to the underlying ambiguity of the text passage.63 At this point in Nelly’s account, several possibilities of how Nelly’s sensory perceptions at the signpost are to be interpreted are thus evoked in the text: there might indeed be a supernatural entity sitting on the heath that Nelly encounters, for instance the departing ghost of the dead Hindley. Nevertheless, the child may merely be an image in Nelly’s mind, either in the form of a sensory delusion or as a result of a supernatural influence:

Fig. 7

63  Simpson recognizes the equilibrium of interpretations in the passage when she points out that the “wording is carefully ambiguous” regarding the question if “the figure [is] imaginary or […] Hindley’s wraith” (56), but nevertheless argues that “[o]n balance, it seems Emily Brontë meant the reader to understand that Nelly had a genuine psychic experience, however swiftly she suppressed it” (56). Simpson neither explains what a “genuine psychic experience” constitutes nor does she provide textual evidence for her claim.

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As Nelly’s account continues with her arrival at the Heights, she is once more faced with a child that looks like young Hindley: The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew: and on catching sight of it, I trembled every limb. The apparition had outstripped me; it stood looking through the gate. (WH 109)

The last part of Nelly’s utterance presupposes that the speaker is convinced of the reality of “[t]he apparition” (WH 109). Yet, the next sentences reveal that this comment rather represents Nelly’s self-ironic rendering of the assumptions of her younger self: That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him ten months since. ‘God bless thee, darling!’ I cried, forgetting instantaneously my foolish fears. (WH 109)

The effect of this text passage could be likened to that of a syntactic gardenpath structure64 in that the reader is led down one path of meaning before she has to reinterpret the utterance. The child unambiguously turns out to be Hindley’s son Hareton, who then enters into a conversation with Nelly. Like a garden-path construction, this passage is not ambiguous in the sense that two meanings exist simultaneously, but one interpretation is rather replaced by another reading.65 It is not the semantic content of the utterance that is questioned in the course of this text passage but rather its ontological status: at first it appears as if this claim is made by the narrator Nelly years after the events took place, taking into account later occurrences and reflections. It then turns out that this was rather the fleeting thought of an agitated experiencing self Nelly, which is cancelled by the following events. This development of the plot introduces the possibility that Nelly’s senses might not have been tricked, but instead have actually shown her a living child who looks like her “early playmate” Hindley (WH 108), i.e. his son Hareton who indeed “outstripped” (WH 109) Nelly on her way from the signpost to the Heights. Nelly’s comment about the “foolish fears” she forgets when recognizing Hareton at the gate might be taken to include her reflections about a “sign 64  A classic example of a garden-path structure is the following sentence, in which “ran” is first likely to be interpreted as the predicate, only to then turn out to be a participle form that is part of a relative clause: “The horse ran past the barn fell.” 65  It has to be noted, though, that Nelly’s phrasing that “[f]urther reflection suggested” again points to processes of inferences rather than to an unambiguous portrayal of facts.

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of death” (WH 109) at the signpost; even more so since her initial thought that “[t]he apparition had outstripped [her]” (WH 109; my emphasis) reveals that she at least for some time believes that the two children are identical. Yet, the way in which the narrating self Nelly phrased her earlier observations in spite of knowing in 1801 that the child at the gate would turn out to be Hareton, may point in another direction. When she tells Lockwood that “[her] bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face” (WH 109), she clearly conveys her conviction that her senses were tricked, potentially by a supernatural agent, when she saw a child at the signpost.66 Therefore, it is ambiguous in the novel whether the two instances of seeing a child are related or not. This means that the ambiguity regarding the child at the signpost is not resolved, but instead, another possible version of the events is introduced: there was indeed a child at the signpost who looks like Hindley, namely his son Hareton. In this complex text passage, linguistic and narratological factors trigger an epistemological ambiguity concerning Nelly’s perceptions at the signpost, which is intertwined with another local ambiguity (i.e. the “apparition” at the gate). The question that is raised early on in the novel in Lockwood’s ambiguous encounter with Catherine – whether the nature of the fictional world of Wuthering Heights allows for the existence of supernatural entities or if the problematic nature of perception is rather to be held accountable – is thus not only evoked again but persists beyond this text passage, even though it is not explicitly addressed for some time in the novel. 1.3

“Don’t you see that face?” Catherine’s Vision(s) before Her Death

Perception is once more prominently foregrounded at the transition from volume I to volume II of Wuthering Heights, in which Catherine’s final illness and death are described (see the dark arrow in fig. 8).

Fig. 8

66  Note that she does not say “Hindley” in this sentence but “the child.”

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Different ways of “seeing” (in literal as well as figurative senses of the word) lie at the root of several converging ambiguities that address the relationship between the present, the past, and the future. Catherine appears to see first Nelly as a “withered hag” (WH 123), then “a face” in her room (WH 123), and finally sees her and Heathcliff’s journey through death towards their reunion. In each of these cases, doubt is created as to the ontological status of the images she “sees” (WH 122–4). The possibility of prophetic visions is introduced and counterbalanced with yet another pattern of explanation that can serve to rationalize a character’s sensory perceptions: “brain fever”, an illness which may cause hallucination. Catherine’s state of health becomes a thematic focus of the chapter even before the ambiguities are introduced. She is at this point of the story visibly altered after days of fasting. Nelly comments on her “ghastly countenance, and strange exaggerated manner” (WH 121) and Catherine herself insists on the precarious state of her health from the moment at which she finally opens her door after having spent days locked in her room: Mrs Linton, on the third day, unbarred her door; and having finished the water in her pitcher and decanter, desired a renewed supply, and a basin of gruel, for she believed she was dying. That I set down as a speech meant for Edgar’s ears; I believed no such thing, so I kept it to myself, and brought her some tea and dry toast. (WH 120)

In their ensuing conversation, Catherine continues to evoke the notion of her own impending death. She remarks that she is “dying” and “on the brink of the grave” (WH 121) and twice threatens to end her own life. Having been led to believe by Nelly that her husband does not care about her state of health, she announces that “if it be not too late” at this point, which presumably refers to the possibility that she will die, she will decide on one of two possibilities: [A]s soon as I learn how he feels, I’ll choose between these two – either to starve, at once, that would be no punishment unless he had a heart – or to recover and leave the country. […]’ […] ‘If I were only sure it would kill him,’ she interrupted, ‘I’d kill myself directly! […]’ (WH 121)

While Catherine thus elaborately discusses her own illness, her description also contains a subtle evocation of the context of ghostly apparitions. Describing the “three awful nights” (WH 121), during which she asserts to “never [have] closed [her] lids,” she claims to have been “tormented” and “haunted” (WH 121–22).

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Nelly seems to be torn between contrasting assumptions about her mistress’ health, i.e. that she might indeed be sick, or that she may intentionally exaggerate her state. She insinuates that Edgar Linton does not care about his wife’s health but adds in her narrative to Lockwood: I should not have spoken so, if had known her true condition [sic], but I could not get rid of the notion that she acted part of her disorder. (WH 121)

Nelly’s utterance is ambiguous, since it could either indicate Catherine’s dangerous state of health, or refer to her pregnancy, both of which are revealed to the reader shortly later. Her reference to acting is reminiscent of Catherine’s first illness after Heathcliff’s disappearance, which Nelly describes to Lockwood at the time in the following way: “I shall never forget what a scene she acted. […] It terrified me – I thought she was going mad. […] It proved to be the commencement of delirium” (88). Even though Nelly herself speaks of “delirium” and Dr Kenneth indeed “pronounce[s] her dangerously ill,” the narrating self Nelly still describes Catherine’s behaviour to Lockwood in terms of theatre and playacting. Catherine’s ensuing behaviour then lets Nelly wonder if she might indeed be ill and that her mental state might be affected by her condition. She notes that “[t]ossing around, [Catherine] increased her feverish bewilderment to madness” and “t[ears] the pillow with her teeth, then raising herself up all burning”. This “beg[ins] to alarm” Nelly “terribly” and “br[ings] to [her] recollection [Catherine’s] former illness” (122). She thus explicitly refers to Catherine’s first illness. The oscillation between notions of “madness” and of playacting in this chapter is supported by a curious intertextual reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A minute previously she was violent; now, supported on one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey her, she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to their different species: her mind had strayed to other associations. ‘That’s a turkey’s,’ she murmured to herself; ‘and this is a wildduck’s; and this is a pigeon’s. Ah, they put pigeons’ feathers in the pillows – no wonder I couldn’t die! Let me take care to throw it on the floor when I lie down. And here is a moorcock’s; and this – I should know it among a thousand – it’s a lapwing’s. Bonny bird; wheeling over our heads in the middle of the moor. It wanted to get to its nest, for the clouds touched the swells, and it felt rain coming. This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot – we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones dare not come. I made him promise he’d never shoot a lapwing, after that, and he didn’t. Yes, here are more! Did he shoot my lapwings, Nelly? Are they red, any of them? Let me look.’ (WH 122–23)

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The abstracted manner in which Catherine sorts the feathers recalls a distracted Ophelia shortly before her death.67 Ophelia is famously delusional when she sorts and names flowers,68 but there is also another character in Shakespeare’s play who (at least initially) feigns madness, namely Hamlet himself. Catherine could be strategically evoking Ophelia to appear distracted. Throughout her conversation with Nelly, Catherine tries to persuade the housekeeper to convey to her husband the seriousness of her condition, as when she pleads with her to “tell him I will [let myself die of hunger] […] persuade him – speak of your own mind – say you are certain I will!” (WH 121). Accordingly, a display of a confused mind might convince Nelly of the severe nature of her illness and thus serve her purposes. If Catherine is, however, read as another Ophelia in the sense that her mind is indeed “wandering” (WH 123), then the intertextual reference to Ophelia’s counting of the flowers is Emily Brontë’s and not her own. Despite Nelly’s “recollection” of Catherine’s “former illness” (WH 122), her ambivalent attitude towards her mistress continues. She responds to the sorting of the feathers by demanding: “Give over with that baby-work! […] Lie down and shut your eyes, you’re wandering” (WH 123). The command in the first part of this sentence reveals her critical attitude that Catherine may only playact and can thus be simply asked to stop her actions. Yet, the verb “wandering”69 (WH 123) seems to indicate a belief that Catherine is indeed ill and, as a result, not rational at this point, which may make her unable to control her actions.70 67  The following scene, in which Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet counts flowers, is set directly before she drowns:  O PHELIA: There’s rosemary: that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there’s pansies: that’s for thoughts.  L AERTES: A document in madness – thoughts and remembrance fitted!  O PHELIA: There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o’Sundays. You may wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. They say ‘a made a good end. [Sings] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. (Hamlet 4.5.169–179) 68  Gezari notes that “Catherine’s rambling identification of different species of birds whose feathers fill her pillow is saner than Ophelia’s speech and culminates in one of her most important memories of her childhood with Heathcliff” (188n6). 69  According to the OED, “wander” can refer either to a delusional state of mind, or merely a confused one: “To be unsettled, or incoherent, in mind, purpose, etc. Hence, later, to be temporarily disordered in mind, as from illness or exhaustion affecting the brain; to be delirious, or (with especial reference to the resulting incoherence of speech) to ramble, rave, talk wildly” (“wander, v.” 4.). 70  Mental illnesses are discussed widely in nineteenth-century discourses on problems of perception. Abercrombie names “[e]rroneus impressions connected with bodily disease, generally disease in the brain” (391) as one of the main causes of spectral illusions.

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“I see in you, Nelly”: Catherine’s First Vision The first of Catherine’s ambiguous vision(s) appears in the narrative directly after Nelly has once again raised doubt about Catherine’s mental state: ‘Lie down and shut your eyes, you’re wandering. There’s a mess! The down is flying about like snow!’ I went here and there collecting it. ‘I see in you, Nelly,’ she continued, dreamily, ‘an aged woman – you have grey hair, and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. […]’ (WH 123)

The text offers several possibilities for the reader to interpret the image Catherine describes. This ambiguity is initially triggered at the beginning of Catherine’s speech when she uses the polysemous verb “to see” (WH 122). Firstly (and most straightforwardly), “see” can be interpreted literally as perceiving an object or state with the senses (cf. OED “see, v.” 1.a.) and “in” accordingly as indicating the corresponding location. While the expression “see in” can be used in a spatial sense with inanimate objects, it can also be figuratively used to indicate recognizing something in another item (e.g. ‘I see an elephant in a cloud’),71 which seems more likely in the context (“I see in you, Nelly,” WH 123).72 Alternatively, ‘Seeing in’ might be interpreted in this context as a phrasal verb, taking on the meaning of recognizing a certain quality, aspect or characteristic in a person.73 In this case, Catherine’s comment that she sees an old woman in Nelly might be taken to be a reflection on Nelly’s character. 71  Compare a similar use of the pronoun “in” when Heathcliff comments on Isabella’s misconception of him: “‘She abandoned [the luxuries of her former life] under a delusion,’ [Heathcliff] answered; ‘picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished” (149; my emphasis). 72  The strange image of an old woman within Nelly that Catherine recognizes might evoke a similarly curious sentence at the beginning of the same chapter. Vexed by the situation at the Grange after the violent encounter between Catherine, Heathcliff, and Edgar and the discordance between Isabella and her brother, Nelly claims that she was “convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and that lodged in [her] body” (120). The image of the soul living in the body is rather conventional, but the soul as a “lodger” is a quite unconventional way of expressing this. A similar expression can be found in English translations of Plutarch’s Moralia (LCL 429:42–43), but rarely elsewhere. The chiastic juxtaposition of Nelly’s body and its lodger, her soul, with the Grange and its inhabitants in this sentence reinforces the literal component of the metaphor. 73  Compare OED “see, v.” 3.h.: “To perceive (good or attractive qualities) in a person or thing, often in an interrogative clause; to perceive (a certain characteristic or type) in a person or thing.”

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In the text, Catherine’s manner of speaking is at this point described as “dreamily” (WH 123). This adverb indicates that she speaks “[i]n the manner of a dream; hazily, ethereally” (OED “dreamily”), which can be connected to Nelly’s earlier comment about her “wandering” (WH 123) mind. Therefore, this phrasing may evoke the possibility that Catherine believes that she is perceiving something with her eyes but is indeed hallucinating. In a novel in which dreams play a crucial role, the term “dreamily” (WH 123) also creates an intratextual link to another important conversation between the two women earlier in the novel about the significance and prophetic nature of dreams. Discussing Edgar Linton’s marriage proposal with Nelly, Catherine shows herself to be convinced of the powerful nature of dreams: I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (WH 80)

Nelly’s rather passionate reaction to this is in some ways even more memorable and striking than Catherine’s poetic utterance:74 ‘Oh! don’t, Miss Catherine!’ I cried. ‘We’re dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts, and visions to perplex us. Come, come, be merry, and like yourself!’ (WH 80)

When Catherine nevertheless continues, she responds, “hastily” (WH 80), “I won’t hear it, I won’t hear it! […] I tell you I won’t harken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed” (WH 80). The vehemence with which Nelly refuses to hear about a dream seems strangely inadequate. In her own words, she used to be “superstitious about dreams then, and still [is]” (WH 80). Once again, Nelly’s ambivalent attitude towards phenomena that seem to surpass what she assumes to be rationally possible in the world is revealed as she demonstrates her belief that dreams can be significant signs and simultaneously labels her own assumptions as “superstition.”75 This is reminiscent of her earlier 74  Nelly’s style of speech in this passage can be frequently found in the novel in Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s utterances, but is rather uncharacteristic of Nelly. 75  By choosing the word “superstitious” with its negative connotations, which it already had in Victorian times (OED “superstitious”), Nelly signals that she is aware that her belief might be perceived as irrational and that she may even think it to be irrational herself, but she nevertheless maintains that this is how she felt and still feels. This attitude may not have been unusual at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as Nicola Bown argues (158). Based on her analysis of contemporary written and pictorial depictions of dreams, she thinks it likely that “interest and belief in the supernatural and prophetic power of dreams was not limited to the uneducated who were the main readers of dream books, but that it was widespread in the middle class” (158). The issue of the nature of dreams

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depiction of how the apparition of her early playmate Hindley seemed meaningful to her at the time (namely as “a sign of death”; WH 109), a notion which she retrospectively regards as “superstition” (WH 109; cf. Chapter 1.2 above). Catherine’s behaviour when she tells her about the dream of heaven after her engagement causes her concern, as she relates to Lockwood: “Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and foresee a fearful catastrophe” (WH 80). This indicates what is at the root of Nelly’s uneasiness about dreams in general and this dream in particular: their prophetic quality. This points to yet another possible way of “seeing” Nelly as an old woman, namely prophetic visions of the future. The polysemy of “see” in the phrase “I see in you, Nelly” (WH 123) and the comment that she speaks these words “dreamily” (WH 123) leads to four different (though not mutually exclusive) ways in which ‘seeing’ can be understood in this text passage: Catherine might indeed describe something she perceives with her visual organ, she might only believe to do so but indeed be hallucinating, she might be about to make a comment about Nelly’s character, or make a (prophetic) prediction about the future. The image that Catherine describes ‘dreamily’ ( 123) contributes to the ambiguity, as it transforms elements of the scenery and the situation in different ways:76 ‘I see in you, Nelly,’ she continued, dreamily, ‘an aged woman – you have grey hair, and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. […]’ (WH 123)

A reader may at this point easily believe that Catherine indeed sees Nelly who actually stands before the bed and picks up objects from the floor because it is consistent with what she has learned about the situation and the setting so was highly debated and an increasing number of people, including the intellectuals Robert MacNish and G. H. Lewes challenged those “superstitious” beliefs and tried to “replace them with an empirically-based materialist theory of mind,” as Bown notes (164–65). Nelly’s choice of the word “superstitious” marks her awareness of the differing opinions on this topic. 76  As this passage is situated roughly in the middle of the novel at the end of the first book, the two houses and their inhabitants have already been described in some detail. The beginning of the chapter discussed here (volume I, chapter 12), furthermore contains information about the scenery and the situation, for instance that Nelly is at this point picking up feathers Catherine has spread over the room (123). This knowledge forms a basis for a reader’s interpretation and evaluation of Catherine’s words.

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far. Each of these components is, however, changed in Catherine’s depiction in a way that makes it seem much less consistent with her pre-existent knowledge about the time, place, and storyline – much like in the case of Lockwood’s dream of Jabes Branderham (cf. chapter 1.1). Firstly, Nelly appears as a much older woman than she should be in 1783. At 27 years of age, it seems unlikely that she is “aged”, has “grey hair” and “bent shoulders” (WH 123). Similarly, the description of the physical surroundings contains an element which is definitely not part of the room at the Grange: “This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crag” (WH 123; my emphasis). Penistone Crag is a long way from the Grange but Catherine seems to see the bed as the cave. In Catherine’s words, a shift from “seeing” to “being” (and thus from perception to knowledge/existence) occurs at this point, as the bed and the cave77 are linguistically connected in a way that indicates that they are transformed (either actually or in Catherine’s imagination). The notion of pretending (or acting) is then explicitly addressed in the second part of the sentence, which attributes a specific role to Nelly in this imagined setting. This is a feature reminiscent of the spontaneous play of children: “you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending while I am near, that they are only locks of wool” (WH 123). Catherine’s phrasing in this sentence (“This bed is the fairy cave;” WH 123) recalls the language of childhood pretend plays.78 Yet, Catherine’s words not only indicate a transformation of the bed into the fairy cave and of Nelly into an old woman, but also a double transformation of her actions: The reader has learned about Nelly going “here and there collecting [feathers]” (WH 123) a few sentences earlier; now she is “gathering elf-bolts”79 to hurt the cows at the fairy cave while “pretending” to 77  Catherine’s daughter Cathy, who is kept by her father as “a perfect recluse” (190) at the Grange, will later prove fascinated with this cave under Penistone Crag, which she can only see from afar from her nursery window (190). Nelly describes the place to her in the following way: “bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree. […] [T]hey are a great deal higher up than [the Grange] [….] you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and, deep into summer, I have found snow under that black hollow on the northeast side” (190). Having been told about the “Fairy cave” (191), she takes off on her own on an excursion, which will lead to her first visit at the Heights and her first encounter with Hareton (195–198). 78  Greta Fein defines pretend plays in the following way: “In pretend plays, one object is used as if it were another, one person behaves as if she were another, and an immediate time and place are treated as if they were otherwise and elsewhere” (283); see Angelika Zirker Der Pilger als Kind, which discusses playing and games and their significance in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (102- 111). 79  In the north of England and Scotland, the term “elf-bolts” referred to Neolithic arrowheads (Gezari 188n6). Heather Glen comments that: “Catherine, in her delirium, invokes a

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pick up “locks of wool”80 (WH 123). Based on the textual evidence up to this point in the novel, it seems unlikely that elf-bolts or a fairy cave are indeed part of the fictional reality immediately surrounding Catherine and Nelly during their conversation; consequently, a reader might rule out the possibility that she indeed sees these elements. Still, several possible interpretations of Catherine’s words remain: 1. Catherine might believe that she sees this with her own eyes, while her senses are tricking her, because she is “wandering” (WH 123) as a result of her illness. The co-text of the chapter so far with the description of Catherine’s curious behaviour and the adjective “dreamily” (WH 123) supports this, as does the implied intertextual reference to Ophelia in Hamlet. 2. Catherine might dreamily play a game of imagination, a reading which can be supported by Nelly’s and Catherine’s own repeated reference to Catherine as a child.81 The references to a possible transformation of Catherine into a child during her final illness also establish an intratextual reference to the third chapter of Wuthering Heights, where Catherine Linton appears to Lockwood in the form of a child even though – as a reader knows when she reads about Catherine’s visions – she died as a married adult.82 3. Catherine might merely pretend that she sees Nelly collecting “elf-bolts” to make it seem like she is mentally ill, a meaning which is compatible with the reading outlined in (2). Nelly’s suspicion that she is playacting might contribute to this, and in this light the intertextual reference to Hamlet might also point to Hamlet’s strategic play with madness. 4. If “see in” (WH 123) is interpreted as a phrasal verb, Catherine’s description of an old Nelly at the fairy cave could also be regarded as a comment on Nelly’s character expressed in figurative language. The action of whole series of Yorkshire superstitions: that pigeons’ feathers in the bed prevent the soul from leaving the dying body, that if a sick person looks into a mirror his or her soul can pass into the reflection, that the prehistoric stone arrowheads to be found in the hills are ‘elf-bolts’ left by the fairies, that a window must be opened to allow the spirit of a dying person to leave” (“Introduction” 27). 80  In contrast to child pretend-plays, Nelly pretends by using harmless and ordinary items to cover up dangerous and possibly magic tools. 81  Connections between Catherine’s behaviour and that of children are made frequently in the early part of the chapter discussed here. Catherine herself tells Nelly that Edgar “imagines [her] in a pet – in play, perhaps” (121), and Nelly comments that Catherine “seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents” (122) and orders her to “[g]ive over with that baby-work” (123). 82  Compare chapters 3.2 and 3.4 for the significance of childhood in Wuthering Heights.

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pretending to “collect locks of wool,” a soft material and a rather harmless occupation, while really “gathering elf-bolts,” a hard and violent material connected to the supernatural, to hurt cows might be taken to express a certain duplicity in Nelly’s character (WH 123). Furthermore, the passage contains a wordplay on “wool-gathering,” a nineteenth-century figurative expression meaning “to indulge in wandering fancies or purposeless thinking; to be in a dreamy or absent-minded state” (OED n. 2.a.).83 Catherine’s image might thus portray Nelly as pretending to be daydreaming while indeed planning to harm Catherine. Both the literal meaning of wool-gathering and the figurative meaning are activated in this text passage. The co-text may provide support for this reading: Catherine has found out immediately before that Nelly might not like her (WH 122). Furthermore, Nelly is manipulating her at this point into believing that her husband is indifferent to her state while keeping him unaware of it.84 When Catherine later (at the end of the same conversation) finds out about this, she links this discovery back to her earlier utterances, exclaiming: “Ah! Nelly has played traitor, […] Nelly is my hidden enemy – you witch! So you do seek elf-bolts to hurt us!” (WH 128–29).85 83  If a reading of this passage as a strategic display of mental instability on Catherine’s part is adopted, then the wordplay can be regarded as Catherine’s. 84  Nelly knows that Edgar is extremely unhappy about their dispute and that he “shut himself up among his books he never opened” (120). She presents this situation to Catherine in a way which implicates that he is indifferent instead: “He’s tolerably well, I think, though his studies occupy him rather more than they ought; he is continually among his books, since he has no other society” (121). She does not even reveal the real state of matters when she observes Catherine’s violent reaction to this: “She could not bear the notion which I had put into her head of Mr Linton’s philosophical resignation. Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth” (122). Her rather harsh treatment of Catherine presents a stark contrast to the way in which she speaks about her to Edgar immediately afterwards: “My poor mistress […] was eating scarcely anything” (127). 85  The image of the “witch” collecting “elf-bolts” connects Nelly both to notions of duplicity and (figuratively) to the demonic. This could be regarded as establishing a counternarrative to Nelly’s narrative, in which she constantly accuses Catherine of duplicity and connects Heathcliff to notions of the demonic. Compare Hafley’s “The Villain in Wuthering Heights” and Shunami’s “(Dys) Function in the Moors: Everyone’s a Villain in Wuthering Heights” for such a reading of Nelly’s character in the novel. A possible biblical allusion in the passage might support this interpretation: The combination of notions of pretence and harming others with “locks of wool” is reminiscent of Mt 7,12: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” The beginning of Mt 7 contains a longer passage on judging others for faults one might be guilty of oneself: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you

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5.

Finally, based on the concept of meaningful and prophetic dreams established early on in Wuthering Heights, the image Catherine describes “dreamily” (WH 123) might be taken to be a (prophetic) vision of the future expressed in figurative terms, a notion which is confirmed immediately afterwards, when Catherine tells Nelly: “That’s what you’ll come to fifty years hence” (WH 123). All these meanings can be supported by textual evidence, which results in ambiguity. Yet, as Catherine’s speech continues, she seemingly resolves this ambiguity herself: That’s what you’ll come to fifty years hence; I know you are not so now. I’m not wandering, you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Penistone Crag […]. (WH 123)

Catherine thus claims that she has made a prediction of Nelly’s future. Indeed, a “grey hair” and “bent shoulders” are consistent with a 77-year-old Nelly (“fifty years hence”), as is her being in a different location than the room at the Grange. Catherine explicitly denies that she is “wandering,” and consequently affirms that she can tell (fictional) reality from her imagination, claiming that she otherwise “should believe that you really were that withered hag, and [she] should think [she] was under Penistone Crag” (WH 123). “I see a face in it!”: Catherine’s Vision of Herself Catherine continues her attempts to demonstrate that she is capable of judging between what is real and what is not by describing her room: […] I’m conscious it’s night, and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine like jet. (WH 123)

The reader knows that it is night at this point and might accordingly assume the candles and the “black press” (WH 123) to also be real in the fictional world since these are objects consistent with a bedroom. As the text continues, this conclusion is, however, immediately put to the test when a puzzled Nelly asks Catherine: ‘The black press? Where is that? […] You are talking in your sleep!’ (WH 123) again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or whilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

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Nelly’s utterance suggests that the clothes-press should not be regarded as an element of the fictional reality but rather as a figment of Catherine’s imagination. The reader has been led down a garden path, a process that is continued in the passage. Catherine herself insists that the press is in the room – “against the wall, as it always is” (WH 123) but acknowledges that something is indeed strange: It does appear odd – I see a face in it! (WH 123)

Since a reader at this point likely has concluded that the press is not really in her bedroom, the face which Catherine sees “in it” can likewise be presumed to be merely imagined by Catherine; indeed, Nelly in her response once more confirms that “[t]here is no press in the room, and never was” (WH 123). Like in Nelly’s depiction of her experience at the signpost (cf. 1.2), the polysemous verb “appear” (WH 123) marks a point in the narrative at which a character’s doubt is introduced if she really sees “a face” (WH 123). An intratextual link to another passage might provide an explanation as to why Catherine would be seeing a clothes-press. The only other time such an item has been mentioned in the novel so far is in the memorable ambiguous instance of Lockwood’s “terrible night” (WH 22) in Catherine’s former room at the Heights, whose furniture consists of nothing but “a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case” (WH 19). At this point, an inference can already be drawn by an alert reader that Catherine may see parts of her old room at the Heights. In the present passage, Catherine does not merely claim to see the press, but additionally a “face in it,” a point which might evoke her earlier claims about what she “see[s] in” Nelly (WH 123). The housekeeper ignores the “face” (WH 123) in her response but insists on the complete absence of such a piece of furniture in the room. Thus, it might be concluded at this point that the face is merely a figment of Catherine’s imagination. Yet, Nelly’s narrative reveals that even if the press may not be real, the face certainly is: ‘Don’t you see that face?’ she enquired, gazing earnestly at the mirror. (WH 123)

Since Catherine is “gazing earnestly at the mirror” (WH 123) it can immediately be inferred that she does not merely see a face but more specifically her own, which again potentially results in a reinterpretation. In a passage reminiscent of a young Jane Eyre’s fears in front of the mirror in the red room,86 Catherine 86  Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre likewise contains two important scenes with a face in a mirror: the child Jane is similarly terrified by her own image in the mirror: “[a]ll looked colder

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herself does not seem to be able to recognize this and instead believes the room to be “haunted”: And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl. ‘It’s behind there still!’ she pursued, anxiously. ‘And it stirred. Who is it? I hope it will not come out when you are gone! Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted! I’m afraid of being alone!’ I took her hand in mine, and bid her be composed, for a succession of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze towards the glass. ‘There’s nobody here!’ I insisted. ‘It was yourself, Mrs Linton; you knew it a while since.’ (WH 123)

In spite of “straining her gaze towards the glass” (WH 123) and perceiving a face in it, Catherine thus seems unable to interpret her sensory perceptions correctly. When she finally accepts that she has really been looking at an image of herself, she is shocked and covers her eyes: ‘Myself,’ she gasped, ‘and the clock is striking twelve! It’s true, then; that’s dreadful!’ Her fingers clutched the clothes, and gathered them over her eyes. I attempted to steal to the door with an intention of calling her husband; but I was summoned back by a piercing shriek. The shawl had dropped from the frame. ‘Why, what is the matter?’ cried I. ‘Who is coward now? Wake up! That is the glass – the mirror, Mrs Linton; and you see yourself in it, and there am I too by your side.’ (WH 123–24)

Instead of feeling relief of when she recognizes herself in the mirror, Catherine instead perceives it to be “dreadful” that “[i]t” is true (WH 123). What the pronoun refers to in her utterance is, however, ambiguous. The novel, up to this point, provides different possible explanations for Catherine’s shocked reaction. Firstly, her exclamation might be led back to her extremely altered appearance, which both she and Nelly have commented on earlier in the same chapter (WH 121). Furthermore, the mere shock of realizing that she might be hallucinating as a result of her illness might be “dreadful” (WH 123); after all, she seemed to be sure that she is “not wandering” (WH 123). There is a third possibility that would indicate a prophetic form of “seeing” in and darker in that visionary hollow [i.e. the looking glass] than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit” (18). Later in the novel, Jane sees the “reflection of the visage and features” of Bertha Mason in a mirror (326).

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this instance as well: the room she claims to perceive – namely her old bedroom at the Heights is indeed “haunted” (WH 123) by her own “face” (WH 123) if Catherine is assumed to have appeared to Lockwood in the third chapter. Accordingly, she may anticipate her own fate after death (cf. chapter 3.4 for a more detailed discussion of this issue). Her immediate physical reaction of blocking out perception by “clutch[ing] the clothes, and gather[ing] them over her eyes” (WH 124)87 does not resolve the ambiguity. On being confronted again with her own image on account of the shawl dropping from the mirror, Catherine reacts with a “piercing shriek” (WH 124), which Nelly explains by assuming that she once more does not recognize herself. Yet, Catherine’s explanation points into a different direction: Trembling and bewildered, she held me fast, but the horror gradually passed from her countenance; its paleness gave place to a glow of shame. ‘Oh, dear! I thought I was at home,’ she sighed. ‘I thought I was lying in my chamber at Wuthering Heights. Because I’m weak, my brain got confused, and I screamed unconsciously. Don’t say anything; but stay with me. I dread sleeping, my dreams appal me.’ ‘A sound sleep would do you good, ma’am,’ I answered; ‘and I hope this suffering will prevent your trying starving again.’ (WH 124)

Catherine thus claims that her “brain got confused” because she thought she was “at home,” i.e. in “[her] chamber at Wuthering Heights” (WH 124). The phrase “at home” is ambiguous in this instance: Catherine is by now the mistress of Thrushcross Grange, which should thus be her home, but she uses the phrase to refer to her childhood home as soon becomes clear. At this point, Catherine therefore seems to believe that her illness affects her mental capacities. Catherine’s following utterances also contain a clue as to why she might not have recognized herself in the mirror. Explaining to Nelly how she has spent the first days of her illness, she describes how she not only believed herself to be in a different place, but also in a different time – during her childhood at the Heights: Before I recovered sufficiently to see and hear, it began to be dawn; and, Nelly, I’ll tell you what I thought, and what has kept recurring and recurring till I feared for my reason – I thought as I lay there with my head against that table leg, and 87  Catherine’s putting the bedclothes to her face might also be regarded as an attempt to hide tears, but since there is no indication of her crying in this passage and shame of displaying emotions is hardly a reaction congruent with the overall portrayal of her character, this seems rather unlikely.

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chapter 1 my eyes dimly discerning the grey square of the window, that I was enclosed in the oak-panelled bed at home; and my heart ached with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect – I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be; and most strangely, the whole last seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been at all. I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff – I was laid alone, for the first time, and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping – I lifted my hand to push the panels aside, it struck the table-top! I swept it along the carpet, and then memory burst in – my late anguish was swallowed in a paroxysm of despair – I cannot say why I felt so wildly wretched – it must have been temporary derangement for there is scarcely cause – But, supposing at twelve years old, I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at that time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger; an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world – You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled! (WH 125)

The face of the married adult might as well have been unrecognizable to Catherine while believing she was still a child. The number of intratextual connections between Catherine’s visions and Lockwood’s encounter with the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) at the beginning of the novel88 also establish another possible reading of Catherine’s visions of her old room: in the world of Wuthering Heights, the boundaries between different spaces and layers of time might be permeable, allowing for Catherine to physically “see” her old room (WH 124; compare chapter 3.4 for a detailed analysis of this issue).

“Look! […] that’s my room, with the candle in it”: Catherine’s Vison of Her Afterlife With this ambiguous passage freshly evoked, Nelly’s next utterances paradoxically point to a possible upcoming ambiguity even while they seem to be bound to prevent any ambiguity. Firstly, Nelly asserts that Catherine is delirious in a comment in parentheses, addressing the following events: I entreated, and finally attempted to force her to retire. But I soon found her delirious strength much surpassed mine (she was delirious, I became convinced by her subsequent actions, and ravings.) (WH 126) 88  Catherine’s disembodied face appears in both passages (25; 123), “that wind sounding in the firs by the lattice” (124) appears again, and the inability to be at her old home turns Catherine (in Nelly’s eyes) into “no better than a wailing child” (124), a phrasing which is reminiscent of Lockwood’s narrative of the child Catherine “wail[ing], ‘Let me in!’” Furthermore, as a result of discovering Catherine’s face in a glass (a window in the first case, a mirror in the second), both Lockwood in volume I, chapter III and Catherine in the currently discussed passage scream (cf. chapter 3.4 for a detailed discussion).

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In a next step, Nelly also points out that the sensory perceptions, which Catherine assumes to have afterwards, are not based on external reality: There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness; not a light gleamed from any house, far or near; all had been extinguished long ago; and those at Wuthering Heights were never visible … still she asserted she caught their shining. (WH 126)

It is only after these preventive measures by Nelly that Catherine’s utterances are quoted in her narrative: ‘Look!’ she cried eagerly, ‘that’s my room, with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it … and the other candle is in Joseph’s garret … Joseph sits up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate … Well, he’ll wait a while yet. It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come … […]’ (WH 126)89

Catherine’s words make clear that she is convinced that she actually sees “[her] room, with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it” as well as the “candle […] in Joseph’s garret” (WH 126). Her call to Nelly to “[l]ook” (WH 126) furthermore makes it clear that she believes that she can see them as well. Her next words are directly addressed to Heathcliff: ‘[…] But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will!’ She paused, and resumed with a strange smile. ‘He’s considering … he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! Not through that Kirkyard … You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!’ (WH 126) 90 89  For a detailed discussion of the significance of Catherine’s vision of her death and afterlife in this instance, compare chapter 3.2. 90  Jane Eyre contains a similar passage in that Jane also evokes the image of her and Rochester passing through the grave, but in the form of a counterfactual: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; – it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are” (292). There is a significant difference between this passage and Catherine’s vision in Wuthering Heights: Jane’s words are figurative (“just as if”) and indicate that she and Rochester are both God’s creatures and, in this sense, equal despite their social differences. Catherine’s vision, however, refers to a literal reunification on earth through the means of death.

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What Catherine describes to see is unambiguously not based on what she truly sees as Nelly’s introductory words have shown us. Catherine sounds like a narrator in this instance, observing the events unfolding and commenting on them simultaneously in the present tense. From the context of her words, a reader can easily derive that Joseph cannot be waiting for Catherine, who is no longer an inhabitant of the Heights, and that Heathcliff is not present but has, at this point, just eloped with Isabella. Therefore, this potential plot development is inconsistent with the developments of the narrative, even though they might prophetically anticipate future developments. The curious form of Catherine’s words, together with the evocations of prophetic visions earlier in the same chapter, suggest that they are not merely the “ravings” of a “delirious” woman, as Nelly claims (WH 126), but indeed prophetic. This interpretation of Catherine’s vision is furthermore strengthened due to intratextual references. Lockwood’s encounter with the “little, ice-cold hand” (WH 25) happens much later on the level of story but is already known to the reader as a result of the complex temporal structure of the novel. The connection to this earlier passage, already quite strongly present in the chapter, is now made more explicit, as several important elements of this scene recur. Catherine now ‘sees’ a candle in her bedroom window, the “trees swaying before it” (WH 126), both of which played an important role in the earlier passage, as did Gimmerton Kirk (WH 22–26) and Catherine now thinks they must pass on their journey (WH 126). Both passages furthermore address the possibility of Catherine’s afterlife as a ghost. If this notion of Catherine not resting in her grave had not been brought about in the earlier ambiguous passage, which is strongly evoked at this point, Catherine’s words in this instance might only seem like a description of delusions caused by illness. The repetition of so many common elements in connection with the same notion, namely Catherine’s haunting the earth after her death, opens the possibility that her hallucinations are prophetic. Reciprocally, the two potentially prophetic instances, earlier on the level of story, may shift the weights in the interpretation of Lockwood’s encounter with the “little icecold hand” (WH 25) and strengthen the notion that an actual ghostly visitation has taken place.91 Since the earlier passage is, however, ambiguous as regards Catherine’s appearance as a ghost, an alternative interpretation of Catherine’s visions as mere hallucinations caused by her illness is still upheld. This notion is once more proposed by Nelly, when she claims, immediately after Catherine’s 91  Compare chapter 2.4 for a discussion of the two-way reading process that these ambiguities may cause.

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utterances, that she “[p]erceiv[s] it vain to argue against [Catherine’s] insanity” (WH 126). When Dr Kenneth, who is consulted about Catherine’s illness, subsequently enquires about an “extra cause” (WH 129) for it, Nelly again confirms her opinion: ‘The master will inform you,’ I answered; ‘but you are acquainted with the Earnshaws’ violent dispositions, and Mrs Linton caps them all. I may say this; it commenced in a quarrel. She was struck during a tempest of passion with a kind of fit. That’s her account, at least; for she flew off in the height of it, and locked herself up. Afterwards, she refused to eat, and now she alternately raves, and remains in a half dream, knowing those about her, but having her mind filled with all sorts of strange ideas and illusions.’ (WH 130)

Nelly thus declares Catherine’s series of visual perceptions as “all sorts of strange ideas and illusions” (WH 130). Dr Kenneth’s diagnosis confirms that Catherine is indeed severely ill, though the form in which Nelly conveys this intelligence seems rather curious: “in those two months, Mrs Linton encountered and conquered the worst shock of what was denominated a brain fever” (WH 134; my emphasis).92 Nelly’s words again point to the underlying converging ambiguities surrounding Catherine’s ‘visions’. Some of these ambiguities, such as the identity of the face Catherine sees, are temporary. This leads to constant reinterpretations on the reader’s part which mirror Catherine’s confusion about what is real in her fictional world and what is not. The ambiguity regarding the prophetic nature of what Catherine sees, in its interplay with the preceding and the following ambiguous passages, contributes to the global ambiguity of Wuthering Heights regarding the question of Catherine’s afterlife as a ghost. 1.4

“I could almost see her, and yet I could not!”: Misperceptions in Heathcliff’s Hypodiegetic Narrative

The question of Catherine’s afterlife lingers from this point on for some time without any explicit references,93 except for Nelly’s claim that Catherine’s dead 92  The term ‘brain fever’ was used until the early nineteenth century to distinguish “conventional madness” from delusions caused by fever, thus categorizing it as a physical rather than a mental form of illness (Berrios 4). For an overview of the use of the concept ‘brain fever’ in nineteenth century literature, compare Peterson. 93  Implicitly, the concept of ghosts is evoked through figurative uses of language. In Isabella’s letter to Nelly, for instance, the former comments that “[Hindley’s] eyes, too, were like a ghostly Catherine’s” (138). The issue of the problematic nature of perception

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body “asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitants” (WH 167).94 Yet, when Nelly’s narrative finally arrives at the events of 1801, the year of Lockwood’s “terrible night” at the Heights (WH 22), another set of converging ambiguities related to this issue occurs in the novel. They address the misinterpretation of auditive and tactile sense impressions and show how the characters’ wishes may be father to their thoughts and influence how they interpret what they hear and feel. When Nelly recounts a conversation she had with Heathcliff a few months before Lockwood arrives at the Heights on the evening of Edgar Linton’s funeral, sensory perceptions are once again connected to the question of the nature of afterlife in the novel.

Fig. 9

Nelly’s reproach that Heathcliff has “disturb[ed] the dead” (WH 289) when he took the opportunity of Edgar Linton’s funeral to have the sexton remove Catherine’s coffin lid, prompts the following reply from Heathcliff: I disturbed nobody, Nelly,[…] and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly – till yesternight – and yesternight, I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers. (WH 289)

Heathcliff thus describes his newly found ‘tranquillity’, which he believes to be caused by seeing her face, which, curiously, “is hers yet” (WH 288). He claims briefly re-emerges as a temporary ambiguity at the end of volume I, when Nelly sees “something white mov[ing] irregularly, evidently by another agent than the wind” (129). Upon examining it closely to prevent herself from “ever after […] hav[ing] the conviction impressed on [her] imagination that it was a creature of the other world” (129) she recognizes Isabella’s dog Fanny, curiously “by touch more than vision” (129). The ambiguity is thus immediately resolved again, but the text passage nevertheless serves to once more foreground perception. 94  For a detailed discussion of Catherine’s death and Nelly’s observations of it, including the curious phrasing of the “inhabitants” of Catherine’s body, which was amended as singular “inhabitant” by most modern editors, compare chapter 3.1.

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that after eighteen years in the grave, Catherine thus shows no sign of decomposition.95 While he shows himself convinced that he would not have been repulsed by her rotting flesh and would have still dreamt of “dissolving with her, and being more happy still!’” (WH 289), he still stresses the importance of having been able to see her again: [U]nless I had received a distinct impression of her passionless features, that strange feeling would hardly have been removed. (WH 289; my emphasis)

His subsequent hypodiegetic narrative of what triggered this “strange feeling” (WH 289) in the first place, continues the thematic focal point on visual evidence of Catherine’s after her death.

“It seemed that I heard a sigh”: Auditory and Tactile Evidence of Catherine’s Presence at Her Grave Heathcliff begins his tale about the evening of Catherine’s funeral by evoking the concept of an afterlife as a ghost for Catherine, which prepares one possible reading of the ambiguous passage that is to follow: It began oddly. You know, I was wild after she died, and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me – her spirit – I have a strong faith in ghosts; I have a conviction that they can, and do exist, among us! (WH 289)

The actual narrative of his experience then starts with a depiction of the scenery that is typical of the novel and evokes Lockwood’s “terrible night” (WH 22): he finds himself “solitar[ily]” at night with a wind “bl[owing] bleak as winter,” “a fall of snow” (WH 289) and in a peculiar mindset: ‘Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself – ‘I’ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.” (WH 289)

The beginning of Heathcliff’s account thus not only evokes the concept of ghosts but likewise alerts the reader to his willingness to betray himself out of a desperate need to be reunited with Catherine. He anticipates certain sense impressions that could indicate that she is indeed dead and introduces an alternative explanation for them beforehand. 95  Compare chapter 3.2 for a discussion of the peculiar lack of decomposition of Catherine’s corpse.

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Heathcliff’s introductory words thus form the basis of the ambiguous description of his possible encounter with Catherine at the night of her funeral: […] I was on the point of attaining my object [the coffin], when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. – “If I can only get this off;” I muttered, “I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!” and I wrenched at it more desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. (WH 289–90; my emphases)

Based on the textual evidence in this passage, the reader is left to wonder if there is indeed someone at the grave who sighs; after all, Heathcliff himself seems to have his doubts: his choice of the verb ‘seem’ implicates that he is not sure if he indeed heard a sigh. Like in the case of “appear,” as discussed in 1.2, “seem” indicates that the narrator assumes two different interpretations to be possible: in the case of Heathcliff that he has heard an actual sigh, and that he has not. Yet, Heathcliff then goes on to claim that “there was another sigh” (WH 290), a statement which presupposes that there truly was a sigh before. Thus, the implicature of his first statement about the sound he hears clashes with the presupposition of his second statement, resulting in ambiguity. It is not only the sound that leads Heathcliff to wonder if somebody might be present with him at the grave. Another of his senses seems to provide further indications: when Heathcliff, as he claims, hears “another sigh, close at [his] ear,” he also “appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleetladen wind” (WH 290). Yet, this new sensory impression is once more embedded in a construction with the predicate “appear,” which implicates that he is not sure about its actual ontological status (“I appeared to feel”; WH 290). Heathcliff’s complex use of language again contributes to the ambiguity when he explains why he is convinced that Catherine is above the grave: I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by – but as certainly as you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there, not under me, but on the earth. (WH 290)

He thus uses a complicated construction to strengthen his claim and affirm his degree of certainty. Employing the comparison “as certainly as”, his certainty becomes, however, dependent on the acceptance of the first condition: that “the approach to some substantial body in the dark” can be felt even if it is not seen, an assumption that could be challenged. Like Lockwood and Nelly before, Heathcliff is accordingly faced with the possibility that he is in the presence of an apparition. This notion has a strong

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emotional effect on him, as it did on the other characters in these earlier instances, though Heathcliff’s feelings are very far from the terror and fear Lockwood (WH 22–24) and Nelly (WH 119–21) feel: A sudden sense of relief flowed, from my heart, through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once, unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me; it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. (WH 290; my emphases)

In contrast to the negative emotions the other characters displayed, Heathcliff is thus “relie[ved]” and “consoled” (WH 290). Yet, another parallel to Nelly’s experience at the signpost emerges as Heathcliff feels that he is “led […] home” (WH 290), and thus to the Heights by the apparition, much like Nelly, who feels “an irresistible yearning to be at the Heights” (WH 109) as a result of her encounter with the child. This “yearning” (WH 109) and the “agitation” (WH 109) she feels is echoed in Heathcliff’s growing longing to be at the Heights: You may laugh, if you will, but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her. ‘Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; and, I remember, that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying upstairs, to my room, and hers – I looked round impatiently – I felt her by me – I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! […]’ (WH 290)

Heathcliff’s words here reveal that although he once more insists that he “felt her by [him]” (WH 290), he yearns to not only feel her and hear her, but to see her. His “fervour” (WH 290) for visual evidence is addressed explicitly and also revealed by the paratactic structure, the dashes, the emphases and exclamations, as well as by the striking image of “sweat[ing] blood” (WH 290).96 “I had not one [glimpse]”: The Absence of Visual Evidence Heathcliff’s insistence on visual evidence for Catherine’s presence in addition to the sounds and tactile impressions can be linked to the prominent notion of 96  This might be a reference to Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as described in Luke 22:44: “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Heathcliff has indeed been read as a saviour figure, for instance by Marsden in Vain are the Thousand Creeds. Compare chapter 3.2 on a discussion of Marsden’s take on religion and the afterlife in Wuthering Heights.

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the “hierarchy of the senses,” according to which vision has traditionally been regarded as the primary,97 most reliable sense that is directly connected to knowledge.98 Its influence can also be observed in the wording of Heathcliff’s narrative: while he “feels” that Catherine is there with him, he “kn[ows] no living thing in flesh and blood [is] by” (WH 290), because he cannot see anybody. Heathcliff’s violent yearning is, however, disappointed: “I had not one [glimpse]. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me!” (WH 290). Heathcliff’s utterance contains a curious temporary ambiguity concerning the question of visual evidence. Considering its preceding co-text, whose very topic is the question if Catherine’s ghost will finally visibly appear, the phrase “[s]he showed herself” (WH 290) may initially suggest to a reader that Heathcliff does indeed see her at this point.99 Yet, the second part of the sentence reveals that the syntactic structure demands a reanalysis: the verb “show” has to be reinterpreted as “display[ing] a quality” (OED IV. 18.a.) with “a devil” being its complement.100 The temporary ambiguity (“She showed herself […] a devil to me!”; WH 290) stresses the fact that there is no visual evidence at all for Catherine’s presence, even though Heathcliff reports to have been “sure [he] should see her [at the Heights]” (WH 290). Instead, his conviction that Catherine’s apparition was 97  Heathcliff’s initial doubts if Catherine lives on in the realm of the living after her death gives way to a belief in her existence and a feeling of consolation after he appears to hear her voice without having any visual evidence. This might represent an evocation of religious contexts of listening to the Word of God, as in Romans 10:17: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”. Heathcliff’s wish to see originates from what he hears, but in its ardent nature may be related to another part of the New Testament, namely to the account of Thomas who needs to see in order to believe in John 20:24–29, in which Thomas claims that he “will not believe” until he “shall see in his in his hands the print of the nails” to which Jesus replies that “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” 98  Compare, for instance, Marita Amm on the hierarchy of senses. She notes that “[i]n a history of the senses, [the nineteenth] century can be designated as the century of the eye” due to scientific developments and as well as the influence of the Romantics (225). Drawing on this prevalent hierarchy, Shane McCorrestine’s study of ghosts and ghostbeliefs in the nineteenth century is focused almost entirely on the sense of vision (6), as is Srdjan Smajić’s study. 99  See chapter 2.4 for a discussion of the phrase “she showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me”. 100  The effect here can be related to Nelly’s utterance that “[t]he apparition had outstripped [her]” (109) in that both primarily generate ambiguity on the extradiegetic level of communication. In this instance, a supernatural element is ironically reintroduced (at least linguistically) in the disambiguation. Compare chapter 2.3 for a detailed analysis of this phrase as an example for the dynamic nature of ambiguity in the novel.

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present at her grave is based on what he hears and feels.101 Yet, this tactile and acoustic evidence can also easily be attributed to the wind howling around the grave. Misinterpretation of non-visual sense-impressions as a source of ‘spectral illusions’ appears frequently in contemporary discourses, as in Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft: the eye is the organ most essential to the purpose of realizing to our mind the appearance of external objects[.] […] Yet the other senses or organs, in their turn, and to the extent of their power, are as ready, in their various departments, as the sight itself, to retain false or doubtful impressions, which mislead, instead of informing, the party to whom they are addressed. Thus, in regard to the ear, the next organ in importance to the eye, we are repeatedly deceived by such sounds as are imperfectly gathered up and erroneously apprehended. (40)

The possibility of misinterpretation of sensory evidence introduces another dimension to the ambiguity: it is not only ambiguous if the sound and the gush of air are objectively real in the fictional world, but also if they provide sufficient evidence that there is indeed an apparition present. After all, Heathcliff himself has expressed his willingness to deceive himself when it comes to any form of reunion with Catherine and the sounds and tactile impressions he describes could easily be interpreted otherwise. Lockwood’s earlier narrative of his “terrible night” (WH 22) already aligned the “wail[ing]” (WH 24) wind and Catherine’s “wailing” (WH 124). The wind is likewise described to be blowing at the graveyard, which might provide an alternative explanation for the sound Heathcliff hears. Still, the connection to volume I, chapter III might also serve to support Heathcliff’s own interpretation in his conversation with Nelly. After all, Lockwood did not have any previous knowledge about Heathcliff’s wish for Catherine to appear after her death, but has an experience that can be interpreted as an encounter with her ghost. Taking place earlier in the discourse, but later in the story, this possible apparition of Catherine’s occurs in the same room in which Heathcliff suspected to see her earlier. Furthermore, Heathcliff’s 101  Laura Inman takes the absence of visual evidence in this passage to be a clear indication that Catherine is not really present at the grave: “His communion with Catherine’s ghost is a sensation, not a sighting […] which indicate[s] that Heathcliff’s tormented imagination is at work” (196). For her, “[t]he point of the scene is to introduce the reader to Heathcliff’s anguish over the dead Catherine and, thematically, to introduce the idea of wishing for reunion with the dead by a ghost contact” (196). It seems highly unlikely that this is indeed “[t]he point of the scene” (196), taking into account that Heathcliff’s desperation to be reunited with Catherine is constantly referred to in the novel and is, indeed, introduced as early as in the third chapter with Heathcliff’s passionate sobs for Catherine’s ghost to come “once more” (28).

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luckless attempt at seeing Catherine again in this passage may be regarded as being prophesized by Catherine in her ‘vision’ before her death, in which she “dare[s]” Heathcliff to follow her, only to then tell him that the way to her is “not through that Kirkyard …” (WH 126). These intratextual references thus may serve to counterbalance an interpretation of Heathcliff merely deceiving himself. As the novel continues, at least Heathcliff seems to become more and more convinced that Catherine does live on as a ghost. Towards the end of his life, he finally seems to be convinced that he is able to see her again, as Nelly tells Lockwood during his second visit at the Grange in 1802. 1.5

“[I]t seemed, exactly, that he gazed”: Nelly’s Perception of Heathcliff before His Death

Another network of converging ambiguities of perception before Heathcliff’s death once again juxtaposes the possibility that a character can veridically perceive the dead with the possibility that their senses are tricked into believing so. This question is more intricately connected to the relationship between appearance and reality than ever before in the novel as Nelly observes Heathcliff observing what might be Catherine’s apparition.102

Fig. 10

Yet another source of sensory delusions is broached in this instance: mental illness that does not originate from physical disease like Catherine’s “brain fever”. Two layers of perceptions are superimposed in a row of ambiguous text passages in which Nelly describes her visual impression of Heathcliff, who might finally see Catherine: Now, I perceived he [i.e. Heathcliff] was not looking at the wall, for when I regarded him alone, it seemed, exactly, that he gazed at something within two yards distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes, at least, the anguished, yet raptured expression of his countenance suggested that idea. (WH 331; my emphasis) 102  Compare also the introduction to the present chapter above for a discussion of this text passage.

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The ambiguities of perception in this chapter are thus marked by a distinction between the character who might see a ghostly apparition, and the character who narrates this experience based on her own perceptions. Does Heathcliff indeed “gaz[e] at something within two yards distance,” or does it merely “see[m]” like this is the case for Nelly (WH 331)? If he does gaze at this object, does Nelly interpret correctly what he believes to perceive based on her visual perceptions? If she does, do his senses really represent to him an object in the physical world or does the image merely originate in his mind? These entangled questions run through large parts of the final chapter of Wuthering Heights, questiong the relationship between perception and reality and reality and appearance to extremes. Yet another pattern of explanation is introduced (in the second to last chapter of Wuthering Heights) which might account for Heathcliff’s belief to be in the presence of a ghostly apparition: Heathcliff’s growing fixation on Catherine evokes the possibility of a mental illness.

“[A] monomania on the subject of his departed idol”: Mental Illness and Catherine’s Presence in Heathcliff’s Final Days At this point in the novel, even Heathcliff’s formerly driving passion of revenge is gone. After he sees a reflection of Catherine’s eyes in those of her daughter and her nephew, he confesses to Nelly that he is “los[ing] the faculty of enjoying” (WH 323) his revenge:103 ‘Nelly, there is a strange change approaching – I’m in its shadow at present – I take so little interest in my daily life, that I hardly remember to eat, and drink – Those two, who have left the room, are the only objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me; and, that appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About her I won’t speak; and I don’t desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible – her presence invokes only maddening sensations. He moves me differently; and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I’d never see him again! You’ll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,’ he added, making an effort to smile, ‘if I try to describe the thousand forms of past associations, and ideas he awakens; or embodies – But you’ll not talk of what I tell you, and my mind is so eternally secluded in itself, it is tempting, at last, to turn it out to another. Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a human being – I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally. 103  This confession is preceded by a passage in which he is, uncharacteristically, no longer furious when seeing Cathy and Hareton reading together, a reaction which Nelly leads back to their eyes’ striking resemblance to those of Catherine, which she “suppose[s] […] disarmed Mr Heathcliff” (322).

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chapter 1 ‘In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her – That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least – for what is not connected with her to me? And what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features – mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her! Well, Hareton’s aspect was the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish – […]’ (WH 323–24).

While Heathcliff here insinuates that Nelly might believe him to become “insane” (WH 323), she assures her intrafictional narratee Lockwood of her belief in his sanity. Yet in doing so, she associates Heathcliff’s behaviour with a nineteenth-century concept allowing for mental problems regarding a specific issue: ‘But what do you mean by a change, Mr Heathcliff?’ I said, alarmed at his manner, though he was neither in danger of losing his senses, nor dying, according to my judgment he was quite strong and healthy; and, as to his reason, from childhood, he had a delight in dwelling on dark things, and entertaining odd fancies – he might have had a monomania on the subject of his departed idol; but on every other point his wits were as sound as mine. (WH 324)

Nelly’s suspicion of Heathcliff’s monomania “on the subject of his departed idol,” Catherine, could be supported by his own words to Nelly only shortly before, in which he professed her image to be in every visual perception of his, and in which he claimed to see her image everywhere and Hareton’s image to be “the ghost of [his] immortal love” (WH 324).104 As their conversation continues, Heathcliff even emphasizes this point more strongly: […] I have to remind myself to breathe – almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring … it is by compulsion, that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought, and by compulsion, that I notice anything alive, or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea … I have a single wish, and my whole being, and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be reached – and soon – because it has devoured my existence – I am swallowed in the anticipation of its fulfilment. (WH 324–25)

104  Again, the concept of ghosts is first evoked figuratively, then literally in this passage.

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Even before the term monomania was coined, extreme passions, such as hatred or love, were regarded as possible causes for ‘insanity’ in the newly emerging field of psychiatry in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.105 The evocation of mental illness as connected to Heathcliff is highly relevant for the ambiguities of the text passage, since it has been regarded as a prominent source of sensory delusion. In his Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention, of Insanity (1806), Thomas Arnold, for instance, remarks: [i]deal insanity is that state of mind in which a person imagines he sees, hears, or otherwise perceives, or converses with, persons or things, which either have no external existence to his senses at that time; – or have no such external existence as they are then conceived to have; or, if he perceives external objects as they really exist, has yet erroneous and absurd ideas of his own form, and other sensible qualities: – such a state of mind continuing for a considerable time; and being unaccompanied with any violent or adequate degree of fever. (vol. 1; 55–56)

Arnold describes what Berkeley had called ideas “perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind” rather than “ideas actually […] imprinted on the senses” (113) in his Of the Principles of Human Knowledge.106 The evocation of mental illness once again draws attention to the significance of where supposed sensory perception originates – in the mind or in the external world. Heathcliff’s considerable change indeed becomes the thematic focal point of the next chapter (II.XX), in which the other inhabitants of the Heights comment on his difference in behaviour and appearance: Nelly notices his paleness and trembling, and his “strange joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the aspect of his whole face” (WH 327). Cathy similarly remarks to Nelly and Hareton that “he looked so different from his usual look that [she] stopped a moment to stare at him” (WH 326), and then details that the ever brooding Heathcliff 105  William Cullen, M.D., for instance, notes in his First Lines of the Practice of Physic (1791) that violent emotions may cause “mania” (151–52). Thomas Graham’s Modern Domestic Medicine, which the Brontës annotated and consulted regularly, (see above), makes a similar connection between mental illnesses and emotions: “The causes of this disease [i.e. “insanity”] are a changeable climate, subject to great atmospherical vicissitudes; extremes of heat and cold; intense study, especially where the efforts of the mind are exclusively directed in one channel […], the excessive ascendency of the factitious passions, as self-interest, ambition, pride, avarice, […]. The passions and emotions most productive of this complaint are love, fear, fright, rage, ambition, reverses of fortune, and the greatest of all, domestic chagrin, or family dissention. The combination of moral and physical causes is much more commonly the origin of insanity, than either of them singly” (392). 106  For a discussion of John Berkeley’s Of the Principles of Human Knowledge compare the introduction to the present chapter.

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seemed “almost bright and cheerful – No, almost nothing – very much excited, and wild and glad!” (WH 327). This cheerful mood constitutes a considerable change from Heathcliff’s usual behaviour and mood throughout the novel, and a conversation between him and Nelly creates even more suspense as regards its cause. Nelly first questions him on his “unnatural” (WH 328) behaviour, enquiring if he “heard any good news” (WH 328). On hearing Heathcliff’s strange reply, which makes matters even more obscure, she finally insists on a satisfying answer: ‘Tell me why you are so queer, Mr Heathcliff? Where were you last night? I’m not putting the question through idle curiosity, but –’ ‘You are putting the question through very idle curiosity,’ he interrupted, with a laugh. ‘Yet, I’ll answer it. Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven – I have my eyes on it – hardly three feet to sever me! […]’ (WH 328)

Heathcliff’s comment that he is “within sight” (WH 328) of what he calls “[his] heaven” (WH 328) might at first be understood as a figurative comment on being within reach of what he is aspiring for.107 Yet, his next remark rather evokes a literal reading by rephrasing his utterance as “hav[ing] [his] eyes on it,”108 thus again using an expression drawn from the semantic field of sight, an effect which is strengthened when he names a very specific distance to what he has his “eyes on” (WH 328). Heathcliff’s “heaven” (WH 328) in this light appears to be a concrete object that he can actually see in a specific place. In itself, the expression “my heaven” (WH 328) might appear to be rather vague, denoting something Heathcliff desires. Heathcliff’s declaration in the previous chapters that all his thoughts are about Catherine and that he is “surrounded with her image” (WH 324) now might take on a very concrete form: Catherine could be what he sees and from whom there are “hardly three feet to sever [him]” (WH 328).109 Heathcliff’s 107  In the context of Heathcliff’s overall characterization in the novel, it seems unlikely that he indeed literally aspires to heaven in the conventional Christian sense; instead Catherine constitutes his heaven (compare chapter 3.2 for a detailed analysis of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s concept of afterlife). 108  The phrase “having one’s eyes on” could also be understood figuratively as “to keep (also have) one’s eyes on the prize, to keep (also have) one’s (also an) eye on (also †to) the prize and variants: to remain focused on the main aim of one’s activities or efforts” (OED “eye, n.” P2.l.c.). Yet, in its combination with the earlier expression “within sight” and the specific number of “hardly three feet” severing him from “it”, this figurative reading can hardly be kept up, resulting in a possible effect of reanalysis. 109  Compare chapter 3.2 for a discussion of Catherine as Heathcliff’s “heaven.”

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utterances thus may already point towards his belief that he can see Catherine’s apparition, as is made clear later. Heathcliff adds a warning to Nelly that she had “better go” as she would “neither see nor hear anything to frighten [her], if [she] refrain[ed] from prying” (WH 329). Before the idea of Heathcliff’s visual perception of something he calls his “heaven” (WH 328) is picked up again, an interlude is inserted in which Nelly indeed receives a “terrible start” (WH 329) and is led to wonder if he might be “a ghoul, or a vampire” (WH 330).110

Two Layers of Perception: Nelly’s Observation of Heathcliff’s Perceptions Yet, shortly afterwards, the text returns to the question of Heathcliff’s sensory perceptions, which again seem to result in the same “unnatural” (WH 328) appearance of his face: On my re-entrance, I found Mr Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited expression, even more exaggerated. (WH 330)

Nelly describes her own observation that Heathcliff “turned his head continually aside,” which seems to indicate an object within his sight calls for his attention. Again, she thus perceives him in the process of perceiving, which is connected to “the same excited expression” she noted in his face earlier (see above). As the chapter continues, the object of Heathcliff’s gaze seems to become more and more concrete for Nelly, who continues to watch his behaviour: [He] rested his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest, that he stopped breathing, during half a minute together. ‘Come now,’ I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand. ‘Eat and drink that, while it is hot. It has been waiting near an hour.’ He didn’t notice me, and yet he smiled. I’d rather have seen him gnash his teeth than smile so. ‘Mr Heathcliff! master!’ I cried. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake, stare as if you saw an unearthly vision.’ (WH 331)

110  For a more detailed discussion of Nelly’s reflection if Heathcliff might be “a ghoul or a vampire” compare Chapter 3.5.

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Nelly notes that Heathcliff “look[s] at the opposite wall” only to then modify her observation with the apposition “as I supposed” indicating her own uncertainty. She nevertheless continues to specify the “particular portion” of the wall that Heathcliff must discern by raising and lowering his eyes. The “eager interest” and her remark that “he stopped breathing” (WH 331) for a considerable time, seem, however, to belie her assumption that Heathcliff is merely looking at a wall. Her own exclamation that Heathcliff should stop “star[ing] as if [he] saw an unearthly vision” (WH 331) then explicitly introduces the possibility that he might actually see an apparition. This effect is immediately strengthened by their ensuing conversation. In its course, Heathcliff asks Nelly to “[t]urn round, and tell [him], [if they] are by [them]selves” (WH 331), which Nelly emphatically confirms, but, nevertheless, “involuntarily obeyed him, as if [she] were not quite sure” (WH 331). Heathcliff’s utterance might at first be understood as making sure that they are alone before confiding in her. Yet, he does not begin a conversation with Nelly but rather “cleared a vacant space in front among the breakfast things, and leant forward to gaze more at his ease” (WH 331). Thus, Heathcliff seems to believe somebody to be in the room, whom Nelly is not able to see. Much like in the cases detailed above, the groundwork for the ambiguities of perception in the final chapters of Wuthering Heights is laid long before the ambiguities themselves are introduced. At the point at which readers get to wonder whether Heathcliff does indeed perceive something that Nelly cannot see (“the fancied object”; WH 331), they have been made familiar with a possible ‘rational’ explanation for Heathcliff’s sensory delusions (his “monomania”) but are likewise aware of all the other ambiguous passages in the novel that revolve around apparitions. Moreover, Nelly’s struggle to adequately interpret what she observes has been brought to the forefront once again, this leaves them with the question if she is right in her conclusions about what Heathcliff may believe in this instance despite all the markers of doubt in her narrative (“as I supposed,” “it seemed,” “apparently,” and “suggested that idea” WH 330–331).111 As the chapter continues, the notion that Heathcliff may believe to see Catherine, is more and more strongly suggested. Nelly remarks that the “fancied object” moves around the room: The fancied object was not fixed, either; his eyes pursued it with unwearied vigilance; and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. (WH 331) 111  Compare the introduction of this chapter for an in-depth analysis of the ambiguities of perception in volume I, chapter XX of Wuthering Heights.

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Catherine’s name is finally explicitly associated with Heathcliff’s perceptions, based on what Nelly hears the same night: [Heathcliff] returned after midnight, and, instead of going to bed, shut himself into the room beneath. I listened, and tossed about; and, finally, dressed, and descended. It was too irksome to lie up there, harassing my brain with a hundred idle misgivings. I distinguished Mr Heathcliff’s step, restlessly measuring the floor; and he frequently broke the silence by a deep inspiration, resembling a groan. He muttered detached words, also; the only one I could catch was the name of Catherine, coupled with some wild term of endearment, or suffering; and spoken as one would speak to a person present – low and earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul. (WH 332)

Heathcliff now seems to be talking to somebody and Nelly can discern the name Catherine. Even if we assume Heathcliff to be convinced of Catherine’s presence, the ambiguity is maintained: Is his belief justified or is it rather based on wishful thinking, as the ambiguity of the term “fancied object” suggests, or is it the result of his “monomania”? Both versions are compatible with the linguistic material of the passage and for both, support can be found in the passage itself and in the wider co-text of the novel. Heathcliff’s behaviour, which is minutely described in the last chapters of Wuthering Heights, might be regarded as a depiction of symptoms of a mental illness caused by the extremity of his passions112 and his own comments strikingly display how his thoughts are fixed on Catherine. Together with the explicit evocation of the concept “monomania” (WH 324), these textual clues may provide support for an interpretation of Heathcliff’s sensory perceptions of Catherine as a delusion caused by mental illness. If the passage is regarded in isolation, this might seem like a perfectly satisfying interpretation. Yet, the co-text and the intratextual references create strong links to other passages in which Catherine’s ghost may have appeared to Lockwood and Heathcliff, which provides support for an alternative reading of another ghostly apparition in this instance. Early on in the passage, a connection to Lockwood’s “terrible night” at the Heights (WH 22) is established when Nelly remarks that Heathcliff is going into the room “with the panelled bed” (WH 329), and his “mutter[ing] detached words” (WH 332). 112  Nelly comments on Heathcliff’s “night-walking” (327) and subsequently describes his behaviour in the following way: “I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food; if he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched, before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim.” (331)

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The oak-panelled bed as well as the notion of Catherine haunting Heathcliff also create links to Catherine’s vision. Another part of what might be regarded as a prophecy could now be fulfilled: ‘[…] But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will!’ She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, ‘He’s considering … he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! Not through that Kirkyard … You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!’ (WH 126)

That she might “not rest” has been established much earlier (in the third chapter); her possible presence at her grave, where Heathcliff’s desire to see her was not fulfilled and her “torment[ing]” Heathcliff , as he calls it (WH 122), might now be interpreted as her “dar[ing] [him]” (WH 126). As the reader at this point knows,113 Heathcliff will shortly afterwards follow her to her grave after an interval of eighteen years, which might be regarded as being “slow” (WH 126) in following Catherine. The idea of Catherine as a ghost, introduced through the experience of somebody other than Heathcliff early on in the novel, has been alluded to frequently; moreover, an appearance of Catherine at this point, “dar[ing]” (WH 126) Heathcliff to follow her into death might be regarded as a fulfilment of her earlier potentially prophetic vision. Again, contrasting hypotheses are thus maintained in the novel and the ambiguities of perception in the final chapters of Wuthering Heights remain unresolved. 1.6

Wuthering Heights as an Epistemological Reflection

Converging ambiguities of perception run through Wuthering Heights from its third chapter to its last. They are never resolved and strongly interlinked through intratextual references, which contributes significantly to the global ambiguity of the novel. Two connected types of ambiguities of perception can be discerned: the first addresses the question if something was perceived at all and the second the question how what is perceived is to be interpreted. In both cases, the epistemic verbs “seem” and “appear,” which occur in different forms in almost every one of the text passages discussed in this chapter, encapsulate these ambiguities as they reveal the narrators’ epistemic uncertainty. They 113  Nelly tells Lockwood about Heathcliff’s death when he arrives at the Grange again in 1802 and only afterwards provides the details of how he died.

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implicate that the speakers believe it to be possible that what appears to be the case is, but also consider that it might not be. Wuthering Heights is far from the only literary text in the nineteenth century that contains ambiguities of perception, even if it is exceptionally radical in that it addresses the question if there is a reliable way of knowing others and the world. Smajić has called “[a]mbiguity and undecidability […] critical features of the Victorian ghost story” (61). His own analysis as well as Rimmon’s of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw (cf. I Introduction), and Zirker’s of Charles Dickens’s “To be Taken with a Grain of Salt” confirm the dominance of phenomena of ambiguity in ghost stories.114 Smajić’s reading of Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber” demonstrates a decisive difference regarding the effect of these ambiguities in many ghost stories and in Wuthering Heights: the one ambiguity that emerges from Scott’s story is, according to Smajić, if “Browne really [did] see a ghost” (22). This leaves the reader with one interpretative key for all its ambiguities. Wuthering Heights does not offer one such key for its ambiguities of perception. Establishing one character’s unreliability, mental impairment or sensory delusion cannot serve to disambiguate them since each set of converging ambiguities concerns yet another character’s sensory perceptions (cf. fig. 11).

Fig. 11

Furthermore, a number of possible alternative explanations are introduced for experiences that seem to go beyond established laws of nature and reality (cf. fig 12.).

114  Ghost stories were extremely popular in the nineteenth century. Cox and Gilbert argue that “[g]host stories were something at which the Victorians excelled. They were as typically part of the culture and literary fabric of the age as imperial confidence or the novel of social realism” (x).

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Fig. 12

Lockwood might have dreamt his encounter with Catherine; Nelly’s sense of vision might have been deluded by vivid memories into seeing the child Hindley, or she might have simply met his son Hareton instead; Heathcliff might have been led by his fervent wish to see Catherine into misinterpreting sensory evidence; Catherine might have had fever-induced hallucinations without any prophetic significance; and Heathcliff might likewise have had hallucinatory visions of her triggered by mental illness towards the end of his life. In each of these passages, different patterns of explanation that the characters and narrators resort to for peculiar experiences are implicitly or explicitly proposed. The variety of phenomena addressed in the novel when it comes to its ambiguities of perception is quite striking, especially if compared to other literary texts. They are not tied to one specific space (e.g. a “haunted” room as in M.E. Braddon’s “The Shadow in the Corner”), or to a specific character (as in James’s The Turn of the Screw), and they are not confined to one sense but rather address vision, hearing, and touch. The emerging catalogue of patterns of disambiguation evoked in Wuthering Heights is rather reminiscent of the non-fiction works of the popular spectral illusion theory than of ghost stories. A typical representative of this genre is Sir Walter Scott’s On Demonology and Witchcraft. It contains a collection of accounts that might be interpreted as ghostly apparitions and then lists possible alternative interpretations for them, namely a vivid imagination (6), dreams (7), mental disorders (16), and hallucinations caused by bodily illnesses (18).115 Assembling all these possible ways in which ghostly apparitions can be 115  Similar techniques of listing a variety of potential ways to rationalize ghostly appearances including those addressed in Wuthering Heights can, for instance, be found in David Brewster’s Letters on Natural Magic, Samuel Hibbert’s Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions and Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth by John Abercrombie.

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rationalized constitutes the major strategy in these works (compare the introduction of this chapter). In the end, the apparitions can all be explained as problems of perception. While Wuthering Heights does to some extent mimic the structure of such works (evoking one possible concept after another), it parodies them in turning around their purpose, creating ambiguity instead of resolving it. In factual works, the enumeration of a variety of alternative explanations may serve as a disambiguating force, but the same technique may achieve the opposite effect of generating ambiguity in a literary text. The factual collection of several stories to illustrate different ways in which ghostly apparitions can be rationalized highlights how many possible explanations exist for such phenomena. In Wuthering Heights, they all appear in one coherent narrative and happen to different characters, and accordingly, each ambiguity has to be resolved locally as, e.g. a nightmare, a result of mental or bodily illness, or as a misinterpretation of sensory perceptions. This variety within one narrative results in the lack of a global interpretative key that can resolve all ambiguities. The many unresolved ambiguities of perception in Wuthering Heights turn Brontë’s novel into an epistemological reflection on the nature of perception and appearance. They shed light on questions that have occupied philosophers since antiquity and have sparked the ongoing tension between idealism and realism:116 Do sensory perceptions grant an access to reality if they can be deluded in so many ways? Are appearances connected to reality? By drawing attention to these issues without resolving its ambiguities Wuthering Heights reveals the potential for ambiguity that matters of perception represent. Brontë’s novel thus transcends the effect that Uri Margolin has discussed for narrative texts in “(Mis-)perceiving to Good Aesthetic and Cognitive Effect”: Once perception is portrayed as daunting task for a story-world participant, it loses its air of familiarity and obviousness for the reader observing this activity. Instead, it becomes the object of readerly puzzlement. […] Now at this point it is perception itself, our most basic mode of contact with the world, rather than any of its objects, that gets problematized, highlighted, foregrounded and is rendered, hence, highly perceptible. The point of the exercise is to make perception itself the central object of readerly perception. (66)

Wuthering Heights goes beyond what Margolin describes in that it not only makes perception a central object but also makes epistemic problems visible and tangible.

116  Compare the introduction to this chapter.

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Readers furthermore never gain a direct access to the sense perceptions themselves. Wuthering Heights imitates the fact that human perception is only ever accessible through the mind in the form of what John Berkeley has called “ideas”. In a narrative text with homodiegetic narrators, all these perceptions are only available to readers and intrafictional addressees through the filter of narrating, which can further contribute to a text’s ambiguities. From the very beginning, Wuthering Heights foregrounds this issue and shows perception and narration to be intricately connected. The first chapter of Wuthering Heights frequently contains statements by Lockwood that provide his assumptions and conclusions alongside the evidence he has for them, marking interpretations explicitly as epistemic as in the following cases: (1)

‘Joseph, take Mr Lockwood’s horse; and bring up some wine.’ ‘Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,’ was the reflection, suggested by this compound order [of Heathcliff]. (WH 4; my emphasis) (2) Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. (WH 4; my emphasis) (3) It includes kitchen and parlor, generally, but I believe at Wuthering Heights the kitchen is forced to retreat altogether into another quarter, at least I distinguished a chatter of tongues, and a clatter of culinary utensils, deep within; and I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fire-place (WH 5; my emphasis)

All three passages contain facts that we have to accept as true for the fiction to work if there is no indication to the contrary (compare Bauer and Beck). These include the existence of Lockwood’s landlord Heathcliff and his servant Joseph in (1), of some trees close to the house in (2) and the fireplace in (3). In addition to these facts, some elements of these sentences are shown explicitly to be based on sensory perceptions of the narrator through the use of epistemic verbs such as “distinguish” (in the sense of hear) and “observe” in (3). Moreover, other elements are implicitly characterized as perceived by the description of specific features, such as the appearance of the vegetation in (2), and the use of adjectives (“excessive”, “stunted”/“gaunt”). The personification of the thorns additionally conveys the narrator’s attitude towards his observations. Lockwood clearly marks the conclusions he draws from his perceptions as such. The “reflection” that Joseph must be the only servant is “suggested” by the order Heathcliff gives, and the phrase “I suppose” furthermore indicates

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that this is a belief. The modal “must” conveys the subjectivity of Lockwood’s assumption about the continuous presence of strong winds at the Heights, and the “power of the north wind”, he argues, can be “guess[ed]” on the basis of the thinness and “slant” of the trees. The style of Wuthering Heights thus makes transparent that many parts of the narrative are epistemically marked, which means that they can be juxtaposed with contrasting assumptions, which may be equally valid. Lockwood must reinterpret and re-evaluate continuously in the novel from its first page. He learns, for instance, that what he took to be cats is indeed “a heap of dead rabbits” (WH 11), that Cathy may appear to be Heathcliff’s wife but is his daughter in law, and that Hareton may look and behave like a servant but is indeed the youngest member of the Earnshaw family. Even though each of these situations is resolved soon after, the potential for ambiguity inherent in both perception and narrative mediation already becomes apparent. By the time Lockwood deduces in the novel’s final sentence quiet slumbers for Heathcliff and Catherine from the “quiet earth” (337), Brontë’s novel has made it abundantly clear that the relationship between appearance and reality is much more complex than Lockwood suggests and that his interpretations are not necessarily authoritative. A “problem of narration” analogous to the problem of perception emerges in Wuthering Heights as narrating as the only other source of knowledge is shown to be potentially fallible.

chapter 2

Ambiguities of Narration in Wuthering Heights […] I was on the point of attaining my object when it seemed that I heard a sigh from someone above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. […] There was another sigh, close at my ear. […]. I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by – but as certainly as you perceive the approach of some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there, not under me, but on the earth. ‘A sudden sense of relief flowed, from my heart, through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once, unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me; it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh, if you will, but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her. Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. […] I looked round impatiently – I felt her by me – I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! […]’ (WH 290)

Heathcliff’s ambiguous narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral shows the crucial role narration plays for the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights, especially as regards three aspects of narrative transmission: multiperspectivity, embedding, and time.1 Two interpretative possibilities are juxtaposed in this text passage: either Catherine is present at the grave and Heathcliff indeed hears and feels her or she is not. These different versions are proposed by voices in the text itself, namely by the narrating self Heathcliff, his younger experiencing self and, implicitly, through the evocation of his intrafictional narratee Nelly in the phrase “you may laugh, if you will”. Immediately before the text passage, the narrating self Heathcliff explains to Nelly that he has “a strong faith in ghosts” and that Catherine “has disturbed [him]” since the night of the funeral (WH 289). He also shows himself convinced that “[h]er presence was with [him]” during the night in question (WH 290). In contrast to this, the experiencing self is doubtful as his desperate pledge to delude himself before he begins to dig up her corpse reveals: “I’ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep” (WH 289). His initial reaction to the sound he hears at the grave is accordingly rather tentative: “it seemed that I heard a 1  Compare Chapter 2.3 for a more detailed analysis of the ambiguity of this passage.

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2020 | doi:10.30965/9783657704958_003

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sigh” (WH 290). While the interpretation of the experiencing and the narrating self eventually converge, the phrase “you may laugh, if you will” (290) indicates that Heathcliff’s assertion of her presence could be dismissed as ridiculous, though we do not learn whether Nelly really does laugh at his utterance or not. The result of this technique is multiperspectivity, a narratological concept that refers to the co-existence of discrete “perspectives,” i.e. directly or indirectly conveyed interpretations by narrators and characters that relate to one aspect of the narration. For a discussion of narrative ambiguities, multiperspectivity is more productive than polyphony, a related concept that was introduced by Bakthin. Both describe a plurality of voices in narrative texts, but multiperspectivity has, especially in recent years, taken on a much more specific meaning, describing a distinct phenomenon emerging in some literary texts rather than a characteristic of all texts of a specific period. While the term has been employed broadly,2 several critics have noted that existence of different voices or perspectives in one novel is not enough for multiperspectivity, but that it is necessary that there are various perspectives on one issue, such as Nünning and Nünning (18), Wolf (86) and Buschmann (260). Multiperspectivity in this narrower sense of the term, which calls for the co-existence of contrasting perspectives in the text, contributes significantly to the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights. In the present text passage, for instance, the reader is offered several interpretative possibilities by means of the contrasting perspectives of the narrating self Heathcliff, the experiencing self, and of Nelly. As a result of narrative embedding, different perspectives in Wuthering Heights are frequently presented as nested within each other rather than juxtaposed. Multiperspectivity is thus closely connected to narrative embedding in the novel. Following Buschmann I take multiperspectivity to refer to the voices of characters as well as to those of narrators (259), and I will consider the separate perspectives of the experiencing and the narrating self. While Bakthin’s notion of polyphony is less relevant for the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights than multiperspectivity, the development of Bakthin’s concept by French linguist Oswald Ducrot provides an excellent tool for analysing the co-presence of nested voices in a literary text. Ducrot’s terminology can help to pinpoint where multiperspectivity comes in in Wuthering Heights. Ducrot distinguishes 2  In his overview of narratological debates about “multiperspectivity”, Hartner notes that “[i]n the study of narrative the term ‘multiperspectivity’ is employed in a variety of different and often incongruous ways. Nevertheless, the arguably most common usages of the term refer to multiperspectivity either as a basic aspect of narration or as a mode of storytelling in which multiple and often discrepant viewpoints are employed for the presentation and evaluation of a story and its storyworld.” Compare also Surkamp (9–16) for a concise discussion of approaches to narrative multiperspectivity.

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several dimensions of speakers in the same utterances – sujet parlant (empirical author of what is said or written), locuteur (who is responsible for utterance act) and enonciateur, who is the subject of the utterance.3 While the narrating self Heathcliff is the locuteur of the narrative quoted above, the experiencing self frequently also appears as an enonciateur of utterances and it is this distinction that generates multiperspectivity. For multiperspectivity to result in ambiguity it is crucial that contrasting interpretations are not only offered in the text, but that a balance between them is also created: while none is authoritative, none can be dismissed outright. There are several techniques in the novel that ensure such a balance. In his narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral, for instance, Heathcliff expresses his conviction that what he hears and feels must be Catherine by means of a complex construction, which seems to be intended to strengthen his claim. However, the comparison he employs makes the degree of certainty that Catherine was indeed present dependent on the degree of certainty with which “the approach to some substantial body in the dark” can be perceived, an assumption that is not necessarily true. Heathcliff’s narratorial comment is thus shown to be objectively ambiguous. In contrast to him, Nelly was not a witness at the grave, so she cannot possibly asses the sensory evidence of Catherine’s presence adequately. The phrase “you may laugh, if you will” (290) generates ambiguity in yet another sense. Heathcliff is the only visible narrator in the text passage, but in the fictional construct of the novel his account is what Lockwood writes down about what Nelly told him of what she heard Heathcliff say. The presence of two additional narrative layers – that of Nelly’s and that of Lockwood’s narrative – has up to this point not been acknowledged for quite some time. Even though there are several intermediaries, the experience appears to be conveyed directly until Nelly is addressed and the reader is reminded that several layers of narration lie between the events and the narrative they read. Accordingly, the unstable status of Heathcliff’s narrative is foregrounded: every word in the novel is mediated through Lockwood’s extradiegetic narrative, and Heathcliff’s oral narrative is furthermore included in Nelly’s intradiegetic narrative. Each of these layers can furthermore be split into the perspectives of the experiencing self and the narrating self. This technique of narrative embedding creates the potential for embedding ambiguities in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s depiction of the night after Catherine’s funeral is an example of one type of narrative style in Wuthering 3  Compare Andrea Landvogt’s Discours cité for a detailed discussion of Oswald Ducrot’s theory of polyphony and its merits for the analysis of literary texts.

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Heights in which the perspective of the experiencing self is foregrounded, and layers of narration recede to the background. There are other parts of the text in which the reader is made very much aware of narrative embedding, which results in a specific kind of narrative rhythm. While the former type of passage seemingly grants direct access to the characters’ sensory perceptions, the latter type reminds the reader of the layers of mediation that lie between them and accordingly the unstable status of the embedded narratives. As a result of this narrative design, the answer to Genette’s question “who speaks?” frequently leads to ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. At times, it is not transparent which of the narrators or characters speaks and whether several instances in the narrative speak simultaneously, an effect which can be described as embedding ambiguity. A case in point is the sentence “[t]here was another sigh, close at my ear” in Heathcliff’s narrative. It presupposes that there was a sigh before, which conveys either the thoughts of the experiencing self or is a comment by the narrating self. Although both perspectives can be attributed to Heathcliff, a considerable time has passed since he was actually standing at the grave, and much has happened since. Accordingly, the narrating and the experiencing self emerge as two very distinct entities. The text allows for both readings, but the distinction between them has consequences for the interpretation of the text passage. After all, the implicature of the preceding statement “it seemed that I heard a sigh” (namely that the speaker is unsure if he heard a sigh) clashes with the presupposition of this sentence. Accordingly, the presupposition either shows the discrepancy between the experiencing self’s doubts and the narrating self’s conviction that Catherine is there, or it marks the point at which the experiencing self is converted to this belief. More than a decade frequently lies between the experience of a character and the narrative acts in which the events themselves or the narration of the events are recounted and the order in which these events appear often deviates significantly from the chronology of the story. Time thus becomes another significant factor for the constitution of ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. Ambiguity is a dynamic phenomenon in the novel, which can be observed both on the microlevel of sentences and text passages and the macrolevel of the complete text. Heathcliff’s narrative above is preceded by several passages that already address the question if Catherine walks the earth after her death (e.g. Lockwood’s encounter with the child in the third chapter). These text passages are linked by means of repetition. How often a word, phrase, or motif appears in the novel that also has an impact on the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights. The intratextual interplay with earlier instances but also with others to follow influences the ambiguities in each text passage, for instance by

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making Heathcliff’s belief in an afterlife on earth for Catherine in his narrative more credible; together these interlinked text passages gradually generate global ambiguity in the novel. The dynamic quality of ambiguities on a microlevel becomes especially poignant in the sentence “[s]he showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me!” in Heathcliff’s narrative (WH 290). It leads its readers down a garden path by first implying and then revoking the assumption that Catherine actually shows herself to Heathcliff. Like multiperspectivity and narrative embedding, time thus becomes a crucial factor for the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights, and each of these aspects of narration is in turn foregrounded and reflected through ambiguities in the novel. 2.1

Multiperspectivity and Ambiguity

Nelly’s overview of thoughts and beliefs about Heathcliff’s afterlife in the last chapter of Wuthering Heights shows in a condensed fashion the major role multiperspectivity plays for the constitution of ambiguity in Brontë’s novel: [A]t present [Heathcliff’s grave] is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds – and I hope its tenant sleeps as soundly. But the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their Bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house – Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night, since his death – and an odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one evening – a dark evening threatening thunder – and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him, he was crying terribly, and I supposed the lambs were skittish, and would not be guided. ‘What is the matter, my little man?’ I asked. ‘They’s Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t’ Nab,’ he blubbered, ‘un’ Aw darnut pass ’em.’ I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him take the road lower down. He probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his parents and companions repeat – yet still, I don’t like being out in the dark, now – and I don’t like being left by myself in this grim house – I cannot help it, I shall be glad when they leave it, and shift to the Grange! (WH 336)

Nelly is clearly the text passage’s narrator, but several perspectives on the question if Catherine and Heathcliff still roam the earth are introduced: the “country folks[‘s]”, Joseph’s (“that old man by the kitchen fire”), the little shepherd boy’s, Lockwood’s (implicitly: “idle tales, you’ll say”) and not the least Nelly‘s

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own. All of their voices appear distinctly if entangled in Nelly’s narrative, which contributes significantly to the ambiguity of the passage.4 Nelly’s narrative in the final chapter not only juxtaposes different opinions, but introduces contrasting perspectives. Her overview begins with an expression of “hope” that Heathcliff “sleeps as soundly” as the “smooth and verdant” surface of the grave suggests (WH 336). This can be related to Lockwood’s later claim that the “sleepers in that quiet earth” (WH 337) must sleep equally quietly. Nelly thus attempts to convey that the rumours about his death are false, but her own use of language continuously undermines her assurances. The term “hope”, for instance, implies that she is not sure that Heathcliff does “slee[p] soundly”. While her phrase can be read as a conventional pious wish for the dead, she continually uses markers of doubt in her following utterances. The contrastive conjunction “but,” which she employs immediately afterwards to introduce the opinion of “the country folks,” indicates that there is still some dispute over the question; after all they “would swear on their Bible that [Heathcliff] walks” (WH 336). Accordingly, the perspectives of the locuteur Nelly (to employ Ducrot’s terminology) and the enonciateurs – the country folks, whose opinions she conveys – clash here. Nelly, who demonstrates throughout the novel that she may be prone to what she calls “superstition” herself even if she manages to rationalize and dismiss such thoughts, then immediately counters this belief with a comment to Lockwood: “Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I” (WH 336). Indeed, as Nelly has told Lockwood before, Heathcliff has been buried “to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood” (WH 336), which might provide a basis for gossip. In addressing the intrafictional narratee Lockwood directly, she takes up a technique that can be found in other significant passages in the novel, where opinions are attributed to narratees,5 and aligns her own position with that of Lockwood. However, she continues her narrative with another contrastive conjunction which introduces an opposing opinion of another enonciateur: “Yet that old man by the kitchen fire [i.e. Joseph] affirms he has seen two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night, since his death” (WH 336). Joseph’s position is strengthened through an intratextual link. During Catherine’s visions before her death she not only sees a candle and a branch 4  For a discussion of this passage, see also McCarthy (62–63). 5  Similar instances of narrators suggesting opinions of their addressees are for example the phrase “you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things; at least, you’ll think you will and that’s the same” (WH 185) and “you may laugh if you will” (WH 290; see chapter 2.2 for a discussion of both text passages).

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in her own window (which connects them to the third chapter of Wuthering Heights) but also Joseph looking for her at night after her death: the other candle is in Joseph’s garret … Joseph sits up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate … Well, he’ll wait a while yet. (WH 126)

If Catherine’s utterances are taken to have prophetic qualities, then one might indeed say that Joseph had to “wait a while yet”, namely nearly twenty years, before he sees Heathcliff and Catherine at night through his window. Nelly also relates an “odd thing” (WH 336), which seems to cause her some doubts. She herself encountered a “little boy with a sheep and two lambs” on the heath to whom Catherine and Heathcliff seem to have appeared. The boy, yet another enonciateur in this text passage, insists that “[t]hey’s Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t’ Nab” (WH 336). Nelly cannot see them but neither the child nor the lambs – both common symbols of innocence – are willing to go on. She immediately provides a rational explanation: “He probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his parents and companions repeat” (WH 336). There are indeed rumours among the country population, so her assumption could be regarded as valid, but once more Nelly inserts a contrastive conjunction: “[Y]et still, I don’t like being out in the dark, now – and I don’t like being left by myself in this grim house – I cannot help it” (WH 336). While she seems to be reluctant to believe on a rational level that Catherine and Heathcliff wander the earth after their death, she still cannot deny feeling some uneasiness, which is congruent with her attitude throughout the novel. Accordingly, she reacts to Lockwood’s ironic comment that Wuthering Heights will be left “[f]or the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it” by saying: “I believe the dead are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with levity” (WH 337). Even though Nelly is the only overt narrator of this text passage, several other voices are therefore introduced in the form of several enonciateurs and the intrafictional narrate Lockwood (who is also the de facto if invisible narrator of this passage). This plurality of voices leads to ambiguity because they all offer contrasting perspectives on one aspect of the narration (Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s afterlife). Furthermore, none of them can be outright dismissed as there is additional support within the text passage and beyond for several of them. Such a balance between different voices in the narrative, none of which emerges as authoritative, is crucial for multiperspectivity to result in ambiguity. In Wuthering Heights, several techniques ensure this balance.

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Ambiguity and the Balance between Narrative Voices in Wuthering Heights About halfway through the novel, a striking comment by Nelly addresses the question of narrative authority in the novel: I used to draw a comparison between [Edgar Linton], and Hindley Earnshaw, and perplex myself to explain satisfactorily, why their conduct was so opposite in similar circumstances. […] One hoped, and the other despaired: they chose their own lots, and were righteously doomed to endure them. But you’ll not want to hear my moralizing, Mr Lockwood: you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things; at least, you’ll think you will and that’s the same. (WH 185)

The phrase “you’ll judge as well as I can” draws attention to the abilities and limits of the two primary narrators of Wuthering Heights. The comparison suggests a balance between how well Lockwood and Nelly can “judge”. The verb itself has a moral and an epistemic meaning to it, both of which are significant for the narrating of Nelly and Lockwood. They not only relate the events they have witnessed but also assess them6 and pass judgement on them quite strongly,7 as Nelly does in the present passage, even if she concludes that Lockwood will “not want to hear [her] moralizing”. Nelly’s claim that Lockwood can “judge as well as [she] can” can mean that he is, like herself, quite capable of judgement. After all, her statement implies that he is as qualified in this respect and she thinks highly of herself in this capacity. In her narrative about Catherine’s and Edgar’s quarrel, for instance, she insists that “the one sensible soul” at the Grange “lodge[s] in [her own] body” (WH 120). When Catherine tells her subsequently that she “believe[s] she [is] dying,” Nelly comments: “That I set down as a speech meant for Edgar’s ears; I believed no such thing” (WH 120). Yet, the following events prove her completely wrong in that respect and call into question her ability to “judge” in more than one way. She does not seem to be able to assess, and in this sense judge, Catherine’s state of health based on the evidence available to her such as the “ghastly countenance,” “strange exaggerated manner”, and “wasted face” 6  A case in point is Nelly’s comment to Catherine when learning about her engagement, in which Nelly’s prefatory denial is followed by a harsh judgement: “though I’m hardly a judge, I think that’s the worst motive you’ve given yet for being the wife of young Linton” (WH 82). 7  The verb judge in the sense of “form an opinion or conclusion about (a person or thing), esp. following careful consideration or deliberation; to assess, evaluate, or appraise (OED “judge, v.” I.1.a.) can be found several times in Wuthering Heights, for instance in the last chapter in which Lockwood “judge[s]” “from the conversation” of Cathy and Hareton that they are about to go for a walk (WH 308) and in Isabella’s narrative in which she “judge[s]” from the position of the sun that it must be six o’clock (WH 137) .

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(WH 121) she herself describes. Instead of reading these signs correctly, she implicitly accuses Catherine of lying to deceive her husband, and thus morally judges her, all the while manipulating her through a lie of omission into falsely believing that Edgar does not care about her.8 This passage echoes an earlier instance in Nelly’s narrative. When Hindley’s new wife Frances tells her about her fears of death she comments: I imagined her as little likely to die as myself. She was rather thin, but young, and fresh complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick, that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but, I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathize with her. We don’t in general take to foreigners here, Mr Lockwood, unless they take to us first. (WH 45–46)

Like Catherine, Frances Earnshaw dies shortly after. In both cases, Nelly admits at least implicitly with the superior knowledge of the narrating self that she was wrong about dismissing the danger to the lives of the two women but nevertheless passes judgement on both, calling Frances’s fear of death “hysterical” (WH 45) and accusing Catherine of overly dramatic and manipulative behaviour (WH 120–21).9 Nelly’s judgement, both in the sense of assessing information available to her and in a moral sense, is thus shown to be subjective and fallible. Furthermore, both passages contain reminders that the events depicted in Nelly’s narrative are filtered not only through one but through two layers of subjective narrating in the form of direct addresses to the extradiegetic narrator Lockwood, who has been virtually invisible for a significant time. Another meaning of Nelly’s claim that Lockwood “[wi]ll judge as well as [she] can” emerges beyond the one we can assume to be intended by her when we take into account her misinterpretations: the judgement of both characters is in some ways equally subjective and prone to errors. This additional reading 8  According to the OED, judge can also mean “[t]o pronounce an opinion about; to pass judgement upon; to criticize; esp. to express, or indicate that one holds, an unfavourable view of; to condemn, censure” (“judge, v.” I.3.). 9  Fraser defends Nelly’s misinterpretations and somewhat curiously aligns her mindset with that of Emily Brontë: “It is easy for the disengaged reader to see that at times she judges wrongly-that Cathy is far sicker than she supposes, for instance, and that young Catherine’s feelings for Linton are such as to be strengthened rather than undermined by the second, and clandestine, visit to the Heights. But I suggest that predominantly she chooses justly and intervenes rightly, that her general set of mind in relation to other people is closer to Emily Brontë’s (as displayed in the novel) than is generally supposed, and that her dilemmas epitomize those that most of us face when having to judge other people and act on that judgment” (226).

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can be supported by the latter part of Nelly’s utterance. Firstly, the phrase “judge as well as I can all these things” (my emphasis) might be taken to refer to the specific case of the behaviour of Edgar and Hindley but might as well mean Nelly’s narrative in general. The final part of her utterance is even more striking: you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things; at least, you’ll think you will and that’s the same. (WH 185; my emphasis)

The expression “at least” and the epistemic verb “think” qualify the earlier part of the statement and trigger the implicature that he cannot judge as well or at least that Nelly is not sure if he can. This statement calls into question Lockwood’s ability to adequately interpret and evaluate what he experiences and hears about. Moreover, the claim “that’s the same” equates reality and appearance, and thus takes up the question of the relationship between them that runs through the novel up to its very last sentence, in which the quietness of the outside of the protagonists’ graves is named as evidence for their peaceful state after death. Lockwood is shown to be equally prone to mistakes of judgement. He is a homodiegetic witness-narrator who lacks knowledge about the world he is thrown into. Indeed, Genette mentions Lockwood as an example of a type of homodiegetic narrators who “pla[y] only a secondary role, which almost always turns out to be a role as observer and witness” (Narrative Discourse 245). Many of Lockwood’s struggles to make sense of what he experiences in the novel can be led back to this outsider perspective. His attempts to figure out the exact constellation of the “pleasant family circle” (WH 14) at the Heights in the first chapters are a case in point. He initially assumes that Hareton is a labourer, but soon “beg[ins] to doubt whether he were a servant or not” (WH 11). Two possible interpretations regarding Hareton’s identity are thus juxtaposed. Lockwood is unable to come to a conclusion since his outward appearance points to a position of a servant (“his dress and speech were both rude, […] his thick, brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroached bearishly over his cheeks, and his hands were embrowned like those of a common labourer”), but “still his bearing was free, almost haughty, and he showed none of a domestic’s assiduity in attending on the lady of the house” (WH 12; my emphasis). Accordingly, Lockwood resorts to calling Hareton “he of the shabby coat” and “the rustic youth” (WH 12). While Lockwood notes “the absence of clear proofs of [Hareton’s] condition” (WH 12), he is still firmly convinced that Cathy must be Heathcliff’s wife,

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the “amiable lady as the presiding genius over [his] home and heart” (WH 13).10 As a result of Heathcliff’s sarcastic inquiry about the whereabouts of the “amiable lady”, Lockwood specifies that he “mean[t]” the phrase to refer to “Mrs Heathcliff, your wife” and only after yet another comment by Heathcliff realizes that the “Mrs Heathcliff” who sits at the dinner table is not the same person as “Mrs Heathcliff, your wife.” Finding out about this referential ambiguity leads him to reflect how his mistake came about: Perceiving myself in a blunder, I attempted to correct it. I might have seen there was too great a disparity between the ages of the parties to make it likely that they were man and wife. One was about forty; a period of mental vigour at which men seldom cherish the delusion of being married for love, by girls: that dream is reserved for the solace of our declining years. The other did not look seventeen. (WH 13)

His analysis of what might have led him to the right interpretation includes their age difference (“I might have seen”; WH 13) connected with general knowledge about men of this age and their thoughts about marriage (“seldom cherish the delusion of being married for love, by girls”; WH 13; my emphasis), from which a conclusion based on probability should have followed (“too great a disparity […] to make it likely”; WH 13). This passage shows that Lockwood’s interpretations are not always correct but that he does not conceal this. Despite these insights, he immediately makes the next faulty assumption – that Hareton must be Heathcliff’s son and Cathy’s husband, which leads Heathcliff to call him “[u]nhappy in [his] conjectures” (WH 13–14). Throughout the novel, Lockwood is shown to make transparent that his interpretations may not always be adequate. His first evaluation of his landlord Heathcliff, with whom he initially strongly identifies, is qualified with the admission [n]o, I’m running on too fast – I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. Mr Heathcliff may have entirely dissimilar reasons for keeping his hand out of the way, when he meets a would-be acquaintance, to those which actuate me. (WH 6)

This utterance and Lockwood’s frequent admissions that he is unsure or has make a mistake have two crucial effects: They weaken the claims he makes to 10  A layer of irony underlies the passage in that Lockwood intends the expression “amiable lady” to refer to Cathy but clearly does not regard her as such as his earlier ironic comment on Cathy as “amiable hostess” shows.

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some extent, but they also strengthen his credibility as a narrator. After all, he includes his reservation about his own judgements in the narrative. Lockwood is thus not an unreliable narrator,11 as for instance Shunami and Viswanathan have argued, and neither is Nelly.12 He fulfils certain criteria that have been mentioned in narratological debates, such as inconsistencies in his narrative,13 but he does not fit the moral dimension frequently associated with the concept. Whereas he is shown to misinterpret circumstances and experiences from the outset of the novel, there are no indications that he is intentionally deceptive. Neither are there any hints at any point in the narrative that he is mentally impaired or lying to himself. While there are types of unreliability mentioned in narratological debates that could be applied to Lockwood, such as Greta Olson’s category of the fallible narrator,14 the concept 11  The concept of narrative unreliability was proposed by Wayne C. Booth, who defined the phenomenon in the following way: “I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say, the implied author’s norms), unreliable when he does not” (The Rhetoric of Fiction 158–59). Three prominent schools of thought about narrative unreliability have since emerged in narratological debates. Rhetoric approaches such Chatman’s and Phelan’s follow Wayne C. Booth. Nünning is a prominent representatives of cognitive theories on unreliablity. Greta Olson has criticized the assumed divide between these positions, claiming that “Nünning […] ignores the structural similarities between his and Booth’s models” (93) and Nünning has in the meantime indeed adopted an intermediate position. Compare Menhard (13–19) and Shen for concise overviews of the narratological debates on unreliable narrators. For a discussion of mentally impaired unreliable narrators, see, for instance, Allrath. 12  In contrast to Shunami, Horatschek, and Viswanathan, McCarthy regards Lockwood as an incompetent rather than an unreliable narrator. The question if Nelly can be considered an unreliable has likewise been debated in secondary literature. Horatscheck sees Nelly’s narrative not merely as subjective but calls the housekeeper a prime example of an unreliable narrator. Compare also Mathison, who argues that “Nelly is an admirable woman whose point of view, I believe, the reader must reject” (107). Brick has claimed that Nelly is more competent as a narrator than Lockwood due to her familiarity with the region: “Nelly Dean is a far more essential and profound perceiving subject than Lockwood, is a perceiver far closer to a full understanding of the mysteries of Wuthering Heights. And yet even she is not the ultimate I. As her story unfolds, the reader feels an increasing need to draw away from the cheerful Mrs. Dean-to get his own view of her views” (84). Caroll similarly notes that her familiarity with the manners of the area “enable her to mediate between Lockwood and the primary actors in the story” (248) whereas Jordan comments on a problematic dimension of Nelly Dean’s strong connection to the inhabitants of the Heights and the Grange: “Nelly Dean, on the other hand, partly because she is closer to the story and partly because she is less sophisticated, displays in the narrative of her inner box less conscious irony. When she does recognize or countenance an ironical discrepancy between appearance and reality, she does so with little of Lockwood’s flippancy” (7). 13  Compare, for instance, Booth (95), Nünning (96) and Zipfel (120). 14  Olson defines fallible narrators in the following way: “external circumstances appear to cause the narrator’s misperceptions rather than inherent characteristics. Readers may

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of narrative unreliability as such is not without its problems,15 and in the first chapters of Wuthering Heights, it is not the narrator but the act of narrating that is foregrounded. What is crucial for the ambiguities of Brontë’s novel is not whether we can trust Lockwood or Nelly, but rather that they “can judge as well as” each other (WH 185). Not the competence of the narrators themselves but rather what they narrate is thus foregrounded. The novel’s multiperspectivity can therefore result in valid contrasting interpretations that are juxtaposed. Neither Nelly nor Lockwood emerges as an authoritative narrator that can trump all other voices in the novel and could thus act as a disambiguating force.

Ambiguity and the Division between the Experiencing Self and the Narrating Self Multiperspectivity contributes to many ambiguities in Wuthering Heights. Frequently, the narrative voices that propose conflicting interpretations do not belong to different characters, as in Nelly’s overview of beliefs about Heathcliff’s afterlife, but rather to one character split into a narrating and an experiencing self. A case in point is Lockwood’s “terrible night” in the third chapter. Two interpretations of his experience emerge in the text about the ontological status of the child he seems to perceive, one of which can be tied to the experiencing self and the other to the narrating self.16 The text passage is mostly focalized through the experiencing self Lockwood whose actions, thoughts and perceptions we follow step by step. He shows himself convinced that he veridically sees, hears, and feels the child in front of his window.: I […] turned and dozed, and dreamt again; if possible, still more disagreeably than before. This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but, it annoyed me so much, justify the failings of fallible narrators – just as they would tend to justify their own similar mistakes – on the basis of circumstances that impede them rather than on their intellectual or ethical deficiencies” (102). 15  Moral failings of narrators and unintentional misinterpretation and misreporting have been mixed in approaches of narrative unreliability from the beginning. Both Olson and Kindt note that this already concerns Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction. Several attempts have been made to solve this problem by means of typologies of unreliable narrators such as by Olson, Cohn, Lanser, as well as Phelan and Martin. Nevertheless, the concept of unreliability as such has been criticized, for instance by Fludernik. 16  Compare chapter 1.1 for an analysis of this chapter as regards ambiguities of perception.

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chapter 2 that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me, when awake, but forgotten. ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but, the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]. (WH 24–25)

Lockwood asserts the presence of the “little, ice-cold hand” he touches and presupposes that “the hand” exists.17 Furthermore, he engages with the child: he talks to her, violently tries to break free and denies her access to the room (WH 24–25).18 The perspective of the experiencing self is entangled with that of the narrating self who conveys the events in his narrative and at times shifts to the foreground. He clearly and explicitly indicates from the beginning of the ambiguous passage that he considers the child to have been part of a nightmare. Accordingly, he introduces his narration of these incidents by stating that he “dreamt again” (WH 24), and thereby establishes an analogy to his earlier dream about Jabes Branderham. Subsequently, he includes other linguistic markers which show that he considers his perceptions at the time to have originated in his mind during a nightmare. His apposition “I thought” implicates that he merely believed that he got up, while he indeed was still lying in his bed and sleeping. Similarly, the phrase “observed by me, when awake, but forgotten” introduces a contrast between a state in which he was not sleeping and the situation he narrates, again implicating that he was not awake at this point. Moreover, his description of “[t]he intense horror of nightmare” again points to his belief that he was merely dreaming. Both the narrating and the experiencing self Lockwood accordingly appear as distinct, if entangled, voices in the novel. This technique contributes 17  The existence of the “hand” is presupposed by virtue of the definite description. 18  At no point during his interaction with Catherine does Lockwood question her existence as Scrooge does, for instance, in Dickens’s famous ghost story. See chapter 1.1 for a discussion of the connection between A Christmas Carol and Wuthering Heights.

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significantly to the ambiguity of the text passage. The seemingly strict dichotomy between their interpretations of the events becomes, however, more and more complex in the third chapter. Firstly, the position of the narrating self is subtly undermined through an insertion that displays his own uneasiness: “(Why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton)” (WH 25). A reader may at this point also recall an earlier question in the same chapter, which likewise shows uncertainty: “Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! what else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night?” (WH 22). These instances undermine the narrating self’s attempts at rationalization. Similarly, the experiencing self, who never raised the possibility that he might be dreaming, is suddenly surprised that his scream is not part of a dream: I tried to jump up; but, could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright. To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal. (WH 26; my emphasis)

The yell represents the end of the ambiguous passage. There are no diverging interpretations of Lockwood screaming within the text and no other indications whatsoever that it is not to be regarded as an actual event in the fictional world. Multiperspectivity resulting from the division between an experiencing self and a narrating self whose interpretations clash contribute to several ambiguities in Brontë’s novel. Examples are Nelly’s narrative of her encounter with a child at the signpost that looks like her “early playmate” Hindley (WH 108; cf. chapter 1.2), and her reflection’s towards the end of the novel if Heathcliff could be “a ghoul, or a vampire” (WH 330; cf. chapter 3.5). In each instance, the narrating self suggests a different interpretation than the experiencing self and neither position emerges as authoritative. Such a balance is not a given in narrative texts with a strong division between the experiencing and the narrating self. The latter is frequently shown to have acquired additional knowledge and experience in the meantime. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for instance, the child Jane sees a strange light “gleam[ing] on the wall” of the red room, where she has been locked in as a punishment. The child is afraid of a supernatural occurrence, but the narrating self immediately provides an authoritative alternative explanation: I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. (18)

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In spite of expressions like “conjecture” and “likelihood,” the disambiguating force of the narrating self is quite strong in this passage, whereas the perspective of Lockwood’s experiencing self in the third chapter of Wuthering Heights and of Nelly’s experiencing self when she wonders if Heathcliff could be a “ghoul or a vampire” (WH 330; cf. chapter 3.5) are as much supported by the co-text as that of their respective narrating selves. In the third chapter of Wuthering Heights yet another voice is eventually introduced that contributes to the text passage’s ambiguity. Lockwood’s scream drives Heathcliff into the room, who, in an inversion of Lockwood’s interpretation of the events so far, believes to be in the presence of an apparition: At last, he said in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, ‘Is any one here?’ I considered it best to confess my presence, for I knew Heathcliff’s accents, and feared he might search further, if I kept quiet. With this intention, I turned and opened the panels – I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced. Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leaped from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme, that he could hardly pick it up. (WH 26)

Since this part of the third chapter is still focalized through Lockwood, no ambiguity ensues; yet, the extreme effect on Heathcliff shows that he believes in the possibility that the dead may appear to the living. Heathcliff has yet another take on Lockwood’s experiences. Their dialogue begins with a statement of the experiencing self Lockwood, who explicitly tells Heathcliff that he has been dreaming: ‘It is only your guest, sir,’ I called out, desirous to spare him the humiliation of exposing his cowardice further. ‘I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’ (WH 26)

Like the narrating self, the experiencing self Lockwood now rationalizes the events. Questioned by Heathcliff about how he ended up in this room, though, he suddenly reverts to his earlier opinion: I suppose that [Zillah] wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at my expense – Well, it is – swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you. No one will thank you for a doze in such a den! (WH 26–27)

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His response to Heathcliff’s query of “What do you mean” affirms this: ‘If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have strangled me!’ I returned. ‘I’m not going to endure the persecutions of your hospitable ancestors again – Was not the Reverend Jabes Branderham akin to you on the mother’s side? And that minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called – she must have been a changeling – wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years: a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt!’ (WH 27)

Again, the experiencing self Lockwood presupposes that a child in actuality appeared in front of his window when he speaks of “the little fiend” and “the prosecutions of [Heathcliff’s] hospitable ancestors”. He even suggests that the apparition would have harmed him and evokes the notion of a ghostly afterlife as a form of punishment. Yet, to make matters even more complicated, Lockwood mentions the “prosecutions” of Catherine side by side with those of Jabes Branderham, whose actions have unambiguously been depicted as part of a dream (cf. chapter 1.1). While his belief in the former may support the notion that the child exists in the physical world and not only in his mind, the reference to Branderham again points to the possibility that it could have been a dream. The depiction of the shifting position of the experiencing self is intertwined with comments by the narrating self, who continues his strategy of rationalization. The latter renders his reaction to Heathcliff’s ensuing “savage vehemence” at the time in indirect speech: I did not know whether to resent this language, or pursue my explanation; but he seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity and proceeded with my dreams; affirming I had never heard the appellation of ‘Catherine Linton’ before, but, reading it often over produced an impression which personified itself when I had no longer my imagination under control. (WH 27–28)

Curiously, the phrase “proceeded with my dreams” presupposes that the experiencing self has never related anything but dreams, which clashes with the propositions and presuppositions of the experiencing self. The explanations and dashes of the instances of direct speech in which Lockwood addressed the “haunted” (WH 27) place and “the little fiend” (WH 27) have at this point given way again to the polished and refined expressions of the narrating self. He glosses over the fact that his explanations to Heathcliff at the time have revealed a torn and puzzled experiencing self who is unsure how to interpret and evaluate what he has experienced.

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Heathcliff’s actions after Lockwood has left the room make it clear that he believes that he has not merely dreamt, but that Catherine can and does walk among the living after her death: ‘Come in! come in!’ he sobbed. ‘Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! my heart’s darling, hear me this time – Catherine, at last!’ (WH 28).

Heathcliff’s utterance implies that this is not the first time he has pleaded with her to appear to him and his appeal to her to come “once more” presupposes that she has come to him before. It is not clear at this point whether this refers to another apparition that he has witnessed or to her earthly existence, but his demeanour suggests that he is convinced that she may come to him; after all, he directly addresses Catherine. In any case, Lockwood’s experience seems not to have been the initial trigger of his belief. The notion of Catherine walking the earth in the afterlife is thus shown to precede Lockwood’s experience, which may support a reading of the ambiguous text passage as an actual appearance of Catherine in the physical world. Yet, this interpretation of the events is again counteracted by the narrating self Lockwood, who ironically comments on Heathcliff’s passionate appeal: “The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being” (WH 28–29). The use of irony serves here to ridicule the notion of the existence of ghosts.19 Lockwood clearly distances himself from Heathcliff’s reaction to the incidents: “I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord, which belied, oddly, his apparent sense” (WH 28). Heathcliff’s belief in the “spectre” is thus not compatible for Lockwood with the reasonable gentleman he has taken Heathcliff to be. “Superstition” clearly has a negative connotation as does “folly,” a term which Lockwood likewise employs with respect to Heathcliff’s belief in the reality of the apparition (WH 29): There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare (WH 29)

Lockwood’s rendering of his thoughts at the time clearly shows that the experiencing self by then believes the events to have been merely part of a “ridiculous nightmare” (WH 29). 19  McCarthy takes Lockwood’s irony to be another proof of the “cold, unconcerned objectivity and scepticism” he attributes to him, which characterizes him as “shallow and out of place” (50).

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Accordingly, Wuthering Heights includes three contrasting interpretations of the very same events in its third chapter. Heathcliff apparently firmly believes in the appearance of the ghost, while the narrating self Lockwood retrospectively ridicules the very idea and seems sure that he merely dreamt. Directly after the event, the experiencing self Lockwood assumes that Catherine indeed appeared to him, which might, however, be lead back to a state of confusion after he has woken from a nightmare. The three perspectives are thus truly juxtaposed. In Wuthering Heights, multiperspectivity not only contributes locally to the ambiguity of text passages but is also crucial for the global ambiguity of the text. Multiperspectivity regarding specific issues such as the nature of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s afterlife is established as narrators and other characters offer their contrasting opinions throughout the text. By the time at which Nelly gives Lockwood an overview of beliefs about their afterlife, readers have already learnt about Lockwood’s and Heathcliff’s interpretations of the child in front of Lockwood’s window, as well as about Catherine’s own prophecies and claims about her life on the earth after death, about Nelly’s counterarguments, and Heathcliff’s claims that he was able to hear and feel her after her funeral.20 Similarly, when Nelly wonders if Heathcliff may be a “ghoul or a vampire” (WH 330), readers are familiar with the “superstitions” Nelly has felt since Heathcliff’s curious entrance into life at the Heights, with Isabella’s repeated claims that her husband is a demonic creature and Nelly’s dismissal of her fears.21 The characters’ attempts at explanation and interpretation within the novel thus jointly contribute to global ambiguities by means of multiperspectivity. A comparison between the form of multiperspectivity in Wuthering Heights and that in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, a frequently cited example of the phenomenon,22 shows why the technique results in ambiguity in the former novel, but not in the latter. Both texts are similar in that they contain a number of narrative voices and embedded narratives. Furthermore, there is a strong emphasis on the perspective of the experiencing selves in The Moonstone since it is the premise of the novel that the focus lies on the characters’ experience at the time and that they do not mention anything that is learned later. In that, the crucial difference between the two novels lies: in The Moonstone, an authoritative account emerges over time, and the mysteries are solved. In 20  Compare chapter 3.2 for a detailed discussion of the nature of afterlife as portrayed in the novel. 21  Compare chapter 3.5 on the question of Heathcliff’s humanity. 22  For a discussion of multiperspectivity in The Moonstone compare, for instance, Lonoff.

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contrast to this, in Wuthering Heights, none of the voices are privileged over the others. Instead, interpretative possibilities coexist. In Wuthering Heights, the interpretation of the narrating self and that of the experiencing self and of characters embedded in this narrative can all co-exist as valid interpretations throughout the novel, all of which might be true or might not be true. This equilibrium between different voices in the novel is established because each character in the novel is shown to, more or less, be able “judge as well as” (WH 185) everyone else. 2.2

Narrative Embedding and Ambiguity The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew: and on catching sight of it, I trembled every limb. The apparition had outstripped me; it stood looking through the gate. (WH 109)

Nelly’s narrative of her walk to the Heights leads its readers down a garden path: at a first glance it seems to contain the admission of the narrating self that she is faced with an apparition; after all, the utterance “[t]he apparition had outstripped me” presupposes that the speaker believes in its existence. Yet, the ensuing sentences of the novel point in another direction: That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since. (WH 109)

Accordingly, “[t]he apparition had outstripped me” does not convey the narrating self’s belief but rather represents Nelly’s self-ironic rendering of the thoughts of her younger self. The effect of this text passage could be likened to that of a syntactic garden-path structure in that the reader is led down one path of meaning before she has to reinterpret; yet, in this case it is not the utterance itself that takes on a new meaning but the question “who speaks”23 must be assigned a new response.24 Accordingly, it is not the content but another 23  In her analysis of narrative embedding that takes Wuthering Heights as a prime example, Mieke Bal productively extends Genette’s original theory and proposes that all voices in Brontë’s novel, including those of focalizers, should be taken into account in discussions of embedding. 24  Compare Reboul, who has classified utterances “which can be interpreted […] as either sentences of narration or the represented speech or thought of a given character” (257; emphasis in the original) as pragmatic ambiguity.

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property of the utterance, the speaker, that is ambiguous. Employing Oswald Ducrot’s terms, the ambiguity hinges on whether the narrating self Nelly is not only the locuteur (i.e. responsible for the utterance act) but also the enonciateur (the subject of the utterance; compare the introduction of this chapter). This effect is temporary in this instance as it becomes clear in the following sentence that the experiencing self is indeed the enonciateur.25 The phenomenon of embedding ambiguity, in which several layers of voices could all be responsible for the same utterance can be found throughout Brontë’s novel. Indeed, the narrative situation in this passage is more complex than might appear at first: the narrating self and the experiencing self Nelly are not the only candidates for the question of “who speaks”: what we read about the possible apparition Nelly is faced with (WH 108) is actually (in the fictional construct of the novel) Lockwood’s written narrative that conveys Nelly’s oral narrative of what happened to her seventeen years earlier. Such a layering of voices, which is typical for Wuthering Heights, is a prerequisite for embedding ambiguity. Wuthering Heights contains several nested narratives with different narrators as represented in figure 13 below. In the fictional construct of the novel, every sentence of the text is part of Lockwood’s extradiegetic narrative (represented as “EN” in fig. 13),26 in whose narrative Nelly’s intradiegetic narratives (“IN”) and several hypodiegetic narratives (“HN”) are introduced. In figure 13, dark grey areas denote who overtly narrates in these parts of the text while light grey areas refer to embedding narrators that mostly recede into the background but are nevertheless part of their narratives. Nevertheless, they never truly disappear and are in intervals referred to explicitly and implicitly. The graph furthermore shows how frequently the narrative situation changes in Wuthering Heights. Lockwood regularly reappears as an overt narrator and Nelly’s narratives are frequently interrupted by hypodiegetic narratives. 25  Compare Nelly’s following statement about Heathcliff as a child, in which a similar ambiguity is not temporary: “And, truly, it appeared as if the lad were possessed of something diabolical at that period” (WH 66). In this case, the embedding ambiguity is not resolved. We never learn if the experiencing self or the narrating self is the enonciateur. Both possibilities coexist in the novel. Compare chapter 3.5 for further analyses of this utterance. 26  Calling Lockwood an extradiegetic narrator follows the terminology of Gérard Genette: “[A]ny event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which the narrating act producing this narrative is placed […]. The narrating instance of a first narrative is therefore extradiegetic by definition” (228–29). Shlomith RimmonKenan (Narrative Fiction 96–97) calls Lockwood an intradiegetic narrator because he is no “higher narrational authority”, i.e. he has no additional knowledge about the events and characters (in contrast to Pip in Great Expectation, who narrates as an adult and has gained such knowledge in the aftermath as she argues).

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Narrative Embedding and Global Ambiguity Wuthering Heights not only contains three layers of narrative embedding, but the status of embedding narrators in the intradiegetic and hypodiegetic narratives is quite complex. Through a number of narrative techniques, Brontë’s novel manages to convey the impression of simultaneously being highly mediated and not mediated at all, which results in embedding ambiguities. Nelly’s extensive narrative is conveyed orally which raises questions about how accurately Lockwood can have transcribed her words27. Lockwood himself ensures the reader about the authenticity of Nelly’s account as included in his narrative, albeit in a paradoxical manner: Another week over – and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I have now heard my neighbour’s history, at different sittings, as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations. I’ll continue in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole, a very fair narrator and I don’t think I could improve her style. (WH 157; my emphasis)

Can Lockwood both “continue in her own words” and present a narrative that is “a little condensed”?28 Even if he indeed attempts to render Nelly’s words verbatim, is it really possible for such a long oral narrative to be remembered word by word? Lockwood’s comment appears in a prominent place in the novel, namely at the very beginning of the second volume of Wuthering Heights and the tension it expresses between a verbatim account of embedded narratives and the influence of Lockwood has sparked a number of critical responses. Jacqueline Viswanathan, for example, has claimed that Lockwood functions like a “perfect tape-recorder” in instances, an argument which has been taken up by Franz K. Stanzel in his A Theory of Narrative. Building on Viswanathan’s analysis of Wuthering Heights, Doctor Faustus and Under Western Eyes he remarks: The […] limited insight [of the first-person narrator] into the true state of affairs, is most clearly evident when he avails himself of the privilege of reproducing dialogues of the characters in great detail, as practically all first-person narrators do. Under such circumstances the mediacy of this particular narrative situation is almost completely suppressed. This technique results in an impression of direct scenic presentation, and the reader loses sight of the narrator. […] In the 27  Genette suggests that the narrator Marcel in Sodome et Gomorrhe merely recopies a sentence that was spoken by the character – “there is no difference between the statement present in the text and the sentence purportedly spoken by the hero other than what derives form the transition from oral language to written” ( 169). 28  For discussions of Nelly’s intradiegetic narrative and Lockwood’s role in it compare, for instance, Goślicka, Grove and Collins.

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chapter 2 words of Viswanathan: “While the narrator’s subjective bias is very apparent in the narrative parts, in the scenes they […] function as perfect tape-recorders” (207).

Several critics disagree with Viswanathan and have drawn attention to the instable nature of oral language as rendered by Lockwood’s written account in Wuthering Heights. Margaret Homans, for instance, observes that a reader must “maintain a constant scepticism about the alterations Nelly must have made in the remembered speeches of her characters and also about the alterations Lockwood may have made in his transmission of Nelly’s report” (“Repressions” 10). Collin Wilson furthermore questions if the suspension of disbelief goes so far that we merely accept Nelly’s narrative as a verbatim account of what she has told him (226). Indeed, passages in the novel such as Lockwood’s comment above actually seem to suggest that it is part of the narrative strategy to explicitly address the unstable status of embedded narratives. Wuthering Heights regularly reminds its readers of the co-presence of several voices through a peculiar narrative rhythm, which in turn foregrounds the layers of narration and lets them recede into the background. Passages that seemingly allow for a direct access to the narrated world and the temporary illusion that Lockwood (and Nelly for the hypodiegetic narratives) indeed function “as perfect tape recorders” of e.g. Heathcliff’s or Isabella’s narratives are interspersed with parts of the narrative in which narrative mediation is highlighted. As a result of this, Genette’s famous question “who speaks” frequently merits several answers at the same time in Wuthering Heights. Ambiguity and the Illusion of Immediacy in Wuthering Heights Despite the frequent reminders that Nelly’s narratives are doubly mediated there are strikingly some passages in which not only Lockwood recedes into the background but even Nelly’s narrating self. The beginning of the episode of her encounter with her “early playmate”, which ends with the garden path effect discussed above is a case in point: I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108)

The layers of narrative mediation are barely visible in her account and become less and less so as the chapter progresses, which seems to allow for a direct

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access to the fictional world of the novel.29 At this point in the narrative in Wuthering Heights, Lockwood as an extradiegetic narrator or even as a narratee has not been alluded to in any way since one of his interpolations(sixteen pages earlier in the Penguin edition of the novel), in which he convinces Nelly once more to continue her narrative (WH 89–92). Nelly’s presence as a narrating instance likewise gradually fades into the background. The chapter commences with a summary of Nelly’s concerns at the time in the form of iterative narrative, which contextualizes the events of the “bright, frosty afternoon” (WH 108) at the signpost seventeen years before she tells Lockwood about it:30 Sometimes, while meditating on these things in solitude, I’ve got up in a sudden terror, and put on my bonnet to go see how all was at the farm; I’ve persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways; and then I’ve recollected his confirmed bad habits, and, hopeless of benefiting him, have flinched from re-entering the dismal house, doubting if I could bear to be taken at my word. (WH 108; my emphases)

In one paragraph, several weeks or months are thus covered in the narrative in which she tries on multiple occasions to visit the Heights (“Sometimes”) but each time “flinched from re-entering the dismal house” (WH 108) in spite of her intentions (“persuaded my conscience”; WH 108). Immediately afterwards, the narrative speed slows down considerably as one specific incident is now rendered in detail: One time, I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my narrative has reached – a bright, frosty afternoon; the ground bare, and the road hard and dry. (WH 108)

Nelly now narrates singulatively (“One time”), places this event in the chronology of story time, albeit rather vaguely (“about the period that my narrative has reached”; WH 108) and provides details for the scenery on this day: it is “afternoon,” it is “bright” and “frosty”, the ground is “bare” and the road is “hard and dry” (WH 108). Nelly’s narrative has thus moved from the more general to the events of a particular moment in time. The slower narrative speed and higher degree of detail (or “information” in Genette’s terms) in the text passage as well 29  Genette (166) argues that narrative layers have to become invisible for an effect of mimesis. 30  The term “iterative” follows Genette’s terminology (113–14).

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as the invisibility of narrative layers (“a minimum of the informer”)31 coincide with two criteria Genette mentions for how an illusion of immediacy in a narrative can be achieved (166).32 From this point onwards, the narrative is almost exclusively focalized through the experiencing self. Her sensory perceptions, thoughts and emotions are rendered in the narrative step by step, in the order of experience. Firstly, the guidepost triggers memories of her childhood from “twenty years before,” the point of reference being the time of this experience, and a “gush of child’s sensations flow[s] into [her] heart”. The pebbles and snail-shells she discovers then, again spark memories of “twenty years before”. Subsequently, her visual perception of her childhood friend Hindley is depicted, which can either be interpreted as actual perceptions or a sensory delusion caused by the intensity of her memories. Nelly’s immediate reaction to this image is then given in the form of an exclamation, followed by another physical reaction when the apparition or delusion changes: she “start[s]” (WH 109). Her resulting thoughts on her way to the Heights, namely if this event is to be regarded as a warning sign, are then rendered directly and her growing agitation at this point is not only explicitly remarked on but also shown in the language (compare chapter 1.2). Accordingly, the experiencing self becomes as much of a plausible enonciateur for the utterance “[t]he apparition had outstripped me; it stood looking through the gate” (WH 109) as the narrating self (see above), which contributes significantly to the embedding ambiguity. Despite the presence of two layers of narrative mediation by homodiegetic narrators, a technique can thus be found in chapter XII of Wuthering Heights that is reminiscent of what Friedman describes in his discussion of the showing/telling dichotomy for “third person” narratives with internal focalization: In this way the reader perceives the action as it filters through the consciousness of one of the characters involved, yet perceives it directly as it impinges upon that consciousness, thus avoiding that removal to a distance necessitated by retrospective first-person. (1164)

Nelly’s narrative of her experience at the signpost is not rendered “directly as it impinges upon that consciousness,” but the “removal to a distance” that Friedman regards as a necessary consequence of homodiegetic narrators is avoided because it is depicted as if she directly experienced it at this point. 31  Compare also Chatman (32, 146). 32  Genette proposes and opposition between a “narrative of events” and “a narrative of words” (164ff). The former can, according to Genette, only truly achieve “degrees of diegesis” and not mimesis (164).

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The thoughts and interpretation of the narrating self rarely appear and those of Lockwood never enter the narrative. This represents a contrast to novels with a strong discrepancy between the narrating and the experiencing self as discussed above with regard to the episode in the red room in Jane Eyre. Any indication of retrospection is limited to subtle evaluative commentary even though this part of the text is supposedly a part of a diary entry of Lockwood, who is told about the events of twenty years ago by his housekeeper. Both narrators should thus know about the outcome of the events, should have reflected on it, and accordingly have formed an opinion – in short, this narrative should have a retrospective quality to it. Instead, an experience and the immediate response to it are rendered directly as the events unfold. The debate around the question how an effect of immediacy or evidentia33 can be achieved in narrative fiction, a genre which is defined by its mediatedness, goes back to antiquity34 and has been a matter of lively narratological debate for decades (Klauk and Köppe), sometimes under the terms of mimesis versus diegesis, sometimes under those of showing versus telling. One major focus of literary scholars in this context has been to define textual features that may lead to the impression of a direct access to the fictional world, or “the illusion of mimesis” (Genette 164) even though actual ‘showing’ is generally illusory in narrative texts (Genette 164). Many of the textual features postulated in this debate can be found in text passages in Wuthering Heights that contain ambiguities which are based on epistemic uncertainty,35 like the episode discussed above, since this phenomenon that is highly dependent on foregrounding the experience of the character without presenting disambiguating commentary by authoritative, retrospective narrators. The narrative technique of pushing the visible presence of layers of narrating to the background plays a significant role in opening the potential for ambiguities of perception in Wuthering Heights. It is closely linked to multiperspectivity in that the voices of the experiencing self and the narrating self are truly juxtaposed instead of superimposed, which grants the readers access to sensory perceptions at the time and ensures that distinct interpretative possibilities for the ambiguity are maintained. 33  For discussion of evidentia in Cicero and Quintillian see Berndt (Ambiguity 50). 34  Plato contrasts pure narrative/diegesis and imitation/mimesis in his Republic (Book 3, 392c-395). According to Genette (163) Aristotle “somewhat neutralized” the contrast between Plato’s diegesis and mimesis. Compare Aristotle, Poetics 1448a). 35  A curious criterion raised in the debate of the “showing”/ “telling” distinction, namely the “impression on the reader’s side” that he “somehow witnesses” the events, seems to rather describe an effect than a textual feature (Klauk and Köppe). This aspect is, for instance, raised by Martínez and Scheffel 50 and Stanzel (13).

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Even though Nelly is the overt narrator of large parts of the novel (see figure 13 above), her narratives are interspersed with passages in which Lockwood takes over as a narrator for a short time, as well as by hypodiegetic narratives. Lockwood’s interpolations do not contain any additional level of mediation and are in this sense much more immediate than Nelly’s narrative of her experience at the signpost. Furthermore, they consist almost exclusively of dialogue between the characters, which might convey an impression of immediacy.36 Yet, their thematic focus is Nelly’s story and her narrating and they thus foreground how highly mediated the passages in between are. This contributes to embedding ambiguity in the novel because it serves to maintain the overall impression that the novel is simultaneously highly mediated and not mediated at all. Lockwood’s first interpolation is a case in point. When Nelly “interrupt[s] herself” (WH 62), after noting that “these tales cannot divert you [i.e. Lockwood]” (WH 61), a passage ensues that almost entirely consists of dialogue. After Lockwood’s brief description of the interruption itself, 633 of the remaining 650 words of his interpolation are rendered in the form of direct speech by Nelly and Lockwood. They are interrupted only by four instances of verba dicendi with subjects (“I cried,” “I responded,” “observed Mrs Dean,” and “she said”; WH 62–63), and two short description of Nelly’s reactions to Lockwood’s comments.37 The showing or mimetic mode should prevail accordingly. Following Plato,38 Genette has argued that “mimesis in words can only be mimesis of words. Other than that, all we have is degrees of diegesis” (164). Still, this very passage as well as Lockwood’s other interpolations are associated with indirectness and distance in the scholarly debate of the novel. Terence McCarthy, for instance, comments that “Lockwood is too far away to see even with objectivity” (59). Yet, terms like distance or closeness as well as mediacy or immediacy always express a quality in relation to an object. In Wuthering Heights, there are indeed different possible overlapping plot strands, including the acts of narration themselves, towards which “distance” or “immediacy” can be attained. With regard to narrative levels, there is the narrated matter of the frame narrative itself including the interaction between Nelly and Lockwood on his visits .

36  Chatman (32) among others proposes that the presence of dialogue is an important textual criterion for a prevalence of a mode of showing or immediacy. 37  Lockwood describes Nelly’s reactions twice: “observed Mrs Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech” and “Mrs Dean laughed” (WH 63). 38  According to Plato, dialogue is the purest form of mimetic representation (Republic book 3 392c to 395).

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to Thrushcross Grange and her act of narrating and there is the narrated content of Nelly’s narrative and that of the hypodiegetic narratives. Lockwood’s interpolations indeed constantly reflect on these embedded narratives, which turns them into the thematic focus of these parts of the novel. The following brief passage from one of his interpolations, for instance, contains elaborate meta-narrative reflections on Nelly’s narrative style, her use of language, and the question of how detailed her account should be: ‘Sit still, Mrs Dean,’ I cried, ‘do sit still, another half hour! You’ve done just right to tell the story leisurely. That is the method I like; and you must finish in the same style. I am interested in every character you have mentioned, more or less.’ […] ‘[…] Well, you must allow me to leap over some three years; during that space, Mrs Earnshaw –’ ‘No, no, I’ll allow nothing of the sort! Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?’ ‘A terribly lazy mood, I should say.’ ‘On the contrary, a tiresomely active one. It is mine, at present […].’ (WH 62)

While Nelly’s narrative at times completely backgrounds the mediation process and thus allows for an illusion of immediacy, the very mediacy of the same narrative is thus constantly reflected on and highlighted in the passages in between. This excerpt from one of Lockwood’s interpolations is indeed quite a typical example in that it mostly addresses the process of narrating itself. They frequently consist of dialogues between the two narrators taking place in the months in which Nelly gradually tells Lockwood the story of the inhabitants of the Heights. Thematically, they tend to foreground the role of mediation as a filter between the reader and the embedded narratives and the story they recount by discussing Nelly’s narrative style, the narrative speed, metaphorical approaches to narrating and abound with meta-narrative language. Reflection about the process of narrating and the embedded narratives is not only the prevalent theme of these text passages, but a mode of reflection also seems to characterize Lockwood’s style. Even the supposedly directly mediated language in his dialogue with Nelly seems highly stylized. His utterances are marked by complex syntactical structures and elevated diction. Commenting on Nelly’s use of language, Lockwood remarks, for instance: “Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners which I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class.” His following comment on the inhabitants of the Grange and the Heights consist of one sentence containing 81 words:

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chapter 2 I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year’s standing – one state resembles setting a hungry man down to a single dish on which he may concentrate his entire appetite, and do it justice – the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks; he can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from the whole, but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance. (WH 62–63)

These sentences do not give the impression of spontaneous reactions to an experience but rather seem like carefully considered evaluations. They thus form a strong contrast to the linguistic style in the earlier text passage on Nelly’s experience at the signpost, which is marked by short sentences, dashes and similar stylistic means that create an impression of orality, as in the following passage: Superstition urged me to comply with this impulse – supposing he should be dead! I thought – or should die soon! – supposing it were a sign of death! The nearer I got to the house the more agitated I grew: and on catching sight of it, I trembled every limb. The apparition had outstripped me; it stood looking through the gate. (WH 109)

There are scholars such as Woodring who claim that Lockwood is merely a narrator, not really a part of the story excepting the mediating process. However, Lockwood meets most of the characters in the story personally39 (possibly even Catherine during his “terrible night”; WH 22), he lives at the Grange for months and makes several visits to the Heights, and he is involved in one of the major events of the novel: his encounter with Catherine (as a ghost or in a nightmare). Why then does he seem, to use McCarthy’s words, “too far away to see even with objectivity”? (59). Throughout Lockwood’s interpolations, techniques of distancing can be found despite his personal acquaintance with most of the characters. He describes his own role, for instance, as that of the “looker-on,” which is presented in opposition to “the people in these regions” (WH 62).40 Even more striking is his constant use of terms taken from the source domain of fiction. For instance, he describes the people in Nelly’s embedded narrative as “characters”: “I am interested in every character you have mentioned, more or less”(WH 62). 39  Lockwood does not meet those characters that are already dead at the time of his visit (with the possible exception of Catherine), most notably Isabella and Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff, as well as Mr and Mrs Earnshaw and Frances Earnshaw. 40  Beth Newman takes Lockwood’s comment of his situation as the “looker-on” as the starting point for her reading of the connection between gender and narration in Wuthering Heights.

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This is not merely one curious word choice, but rather part of an overall linguistic pattern.41 Even when he has just been into contact with the “characters” themselves, he describes them in fictional terms. His depiction of Heathcliff’s visit to his sickbed is followed by a reference to Heathcliff as the “hero” of Mrs Dean’s tale a few sentences later without acknowledging the referential identity of the two in any way. Together with his much commented on use of irony,42 the overall impression is one of emotional and intellectual detachment. A rather extreme expression of this overall strategy of creating distance is the following dialogue with Nelly; ‘[… .] I want to finish my business with your master, because I don’t think of having another opportunity in a hurry.’ ‘What business, sir?’ said Nelly, conducting me into the house. ‘He’s gone out, at present, and won’t return soon.’ ‘About the rent,’ I answered. ‘Oh! then it is with Mrs Heathcliff you must settle,’ she observed, ‘or rather with me. She has not learnt to manage her affairs yet, and I act for her; there’s nobody else.’ I looked surprised. ‘Ah! you have not heard of Heathcliff’s death, I see!’ she continued. (WH 309)

The narrating self Lockwood describes himself in the form of his experiencing self, as “looking surprised” strangely making it seem like he is witnessing the scene from a position outside of his body. Lockwood thus takes on the role of a quasi-heterodiegetic narrator, whose presence as a mediating instance in Nelly’s intradiegetic narrative is emphasized regularly in the novel. Ambiguity and Distance: Lockwood’s Presence in Nelly’s Narratives In addition to Lockwood’s interpolations, his presence as an intrafictional narratee in Nelly’s narrative is regularly referred to in Wuthering Heights.43 Lockwood is addressed directly thirteen times in Nelly’s narrative, using either the pronoun “you,” “sir” or his proper name as in the following dialogue 41  Berlinger also remarks on Lockwood’s fictionalization of the embedded narratives: “Though clearly intrigued, Lockwood tries to mitigate the story’s impact by casting it as a literary fiction: I can recollect its chief incidents […] her hero had run off and never been heard of for three years: and the heroine was married […]” (190). 42  Compare, for instance, Krupat who argues that “[h]owever inappropriate his comment, Lockwood is rarely without one; nor are his words ever without at least the possibility of irony” (275). 43  Gérard Genette has remarked that “the existence of an intradiegetic narratee has the effect of keeping us at a distance, since it is always interposed between the narrator and us” (260).

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between Heathcliff and herself in which he convinces her to allow him access to a terminally ill Catherine: ‘[…] Let us settle it at once; will you stay here, and am I to fight my way to Catherine over Linton, and his footmen? Or will you be my friend, as you have been hitherto, and do what I request? Decide! because there is no reason for my lingering another minute, if you persist in your stubborn ill-nature!’ Well, Mr Lockwood, I argued, and complained, and flatly refused him fifty times; but in the long run he forced me to an agreement – I engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next absence from home, when he might come, and get in as he was able – I wouldn’t be there, and my fellow servants should be equally out of the way. (WH 152–53)

Most of these instances are situated directly before or after a change of narrator occurs, with eight of the set directly before or after Lockwood’s interpolations, such as the following: But, Mr Lockwood, I forget these tales cannot divert you. I’m annoyed how I should dream of chattering on at such a rate; and your gruel cold, and you nodding for bed! I could have told Heathcliff’s history, all that you need hear, in halfa-dozen words. (WH 61–62)

Nelly’s comments on her narrative, which on the extratextual level can be taken to ironically reflect on Lockwood’s eagerness to hear her story, are set almost directly before he takes over once again. Accordingly, references like this to Lockwood’s embedding might be explained as elements that smooth the transition between narratives. In some other cases, Lockwood is explicitly addressed before or after hypodiegetic narratives embedded in Nelly’s narrative. In these cases, evoking Lockwood as an intrafictional narratee serves as a reminder that these narratives are not only embedded once but twice. Shortly before Heathcliff’s hypodiegetic narrative about his excursion with Catherine to the Grange (WH 48–51), Nelly for instance integrates the following comment in the midst of her narrative: “We don’t in general take to foreigners here, Mr Lockwood, unless they take to us first” (WH 46). Accordingly, Lockwood’s presence is recalled briefly before a portion of the narrative is rendered in Heathcliff’s words and we are thus reminded that this section is part of an oral narrative retold by another narrator almost twenty years later and then integrated into a written narrative. Like direct references to the fictional addressee, references to the place at which the act of narrating takes place serve as reminders of multiple mediation. Nelly’s comment in the midst of her depiction of Hindley’s cruelty and Edgar’s courtship of Catherine, for instance, takes the reader back from the

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youth of the protagonists at the Heights to the parlour at the Grange in 1801, where Nelly tells a sick Lockwood the background story of Heathcliff: [Catherine] had a wondrous constancy to old attachments; even Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably, and young Linton, with all his superiority, found it difficult to make an equally deep impression. He was my late master; that is his portrait over the fireplace. It used to bang on one side, and his wife’s on the other; but hers has been removed, or else you might see something of what she was. Can you make that out? (WH 66–67)

While the deictic centre of the first part of her utterance is the time at which Edgar Linton courted Catherine, in the second part of the narrative it is Nelly’s and Lockwood’s conversation at his sickbed at a time at which both Edgar and Catherine have already died. These two narrative layers are thus visibly juxtaposed. Later on in the first book of Wuthering Heights, Nelly again refers to the setting of the frame narrative: “To obviate the fatigue of mounting and descending the stairs, we fitted up this, where you lie at present, on the same floor with the parlour” (WH 135; my emphasis). Again, this serves as a reminder that in the fictional construct of the novel, several layers of narration are superimposed. There are other, more subtle references to the overall narrative situation in the form of Nelly’s comments to Lockwood in parentheses, such as the following: […] ‘What are you doing there, Nelly?’ ‘My work, Miss,’ I replied. (Mr Hindley had given me directions to make a third party in any private visits Linton chose to pay.) She stepped behind me and whispered crossly, ‘Take yourself and your dusters off! […]’ (WH 70–71) I can’t follow it, though – (those words are underlined) – they need not expect me, and they may draw what conclusions they please […]. (WH 136)

While the first example serves to explain Nelly’s actions to Lockwood, the second addresses the materiality of Isabella’s writing. This latter instance is curious in that it establishes a link between three narrative levels. In the middle of Isabella’s letter (and accordingly her hypodiegetic narrative), Nelly asserts her own presence as a narrator by addressing the fictional addressee Lockwood, the narrator of the frame narrative.44

44  Nelly’s meta-narrative comments, such as “[t]his, however, is not making progress with my story” (WH 198) again point towards the frame narrative.

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Thematically, some of these reminders are meta-narrative in nature, thus again foregrounding the high degree of mediacy, while others actually tie Lockwood’s experiences at the Heights and the relationships he forms with the people there to Nelly’s story, thus connecting the narrative present of the novel to the past. These instances contain references to what might be regarded as the ‘comic subplot’ of Lockwood’s possible romantic relationship with Cathy and to the physical surroundings of the conversation between Nelly and Lockwood and thus the narrating itself. One of them takes the form of a curiously ambiguous reference to Lockwood’s experiences as described in the first chapters: About twelve o’clock, that night, was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights […]. (WH 166)

Lockwood indeed encountered two Catherines at the Heights: Cathy, who was born during the night that Nelly describes, and Catherine, whose ghost might be said to have come into existence at the time (cf. 3.4). Nothing in the novel indicates that this second meaning is the one intended by Nelly. Yet, this might be regarded as an instance of a meta-narrative comment playing with ambiguity and addressing the reader instead of the intrafictional narratee Lockwood. This meta-narrative quality can be detected frequently when Nelly addresses Lockwood directly. Not only does Lockwood serve as an interpretative filter for embedded narratives in Wuthering Heights but Nelly does as well for several hypodiegetic narratives in the novel. In a very similar passage in Nelly’s narrative, in which the appearance of Catherine’s dead body and its connection to her ontological state is addressed, Lockwood’s outermost layer of narrative is also foregrounded: My mind was never in a holier frame, than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered, a few hours before. ‘Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!’ I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break; and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter – the Eternity they have entered […] I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr Linton’s, when he so regretted Catherine’s blessed release! To be sure one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection, but not then, in the presence of her corpse.

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It asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitants. ‘Do you believe such people are happy in the other world, sir? I’d give a great deal to know.’ I declined answering Mrs Dean’s question, which struck me as something heterodox. She proceeded: ‘Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to think she is: but we’ll leave her with her Maker.’ (WH 166–67; my emphases)

Nelly’s description draws attention both to the problematic nature of her ability to judge epistemically and to judge morally. Her assumption that Catherine lives on in heaven is based on the peaceful exterior of her body, which reveals a tendency to judge by the surface appearance of things that she shares with Lockwood and is shown to be problematic throughout the novel (cf. chapter 1.6). Furthermore, it contains strong moral overtones as she wonders if Catherine “merit[s]” this form of afterlife even though Catherine herself specifically expressed her wish not to go to heaven (cf. chapter 3.2). The tension between her claim that Edgar is selfish and the comment she made shortly before that it would be “[f]ar better that [Catherine] should be dead, than a lingering burden, and a misery-maker to all about her” (WH 164) further reflects ironically on Nelly’s abilities as a moral judge.45 Curiously, her enquiry to Lockwood, the person who can “judge as well as [she] can” (WH 185), results in judgement being passed on Nelly46 (“Mrs Dean’s question […] struck me as something heterodox”; WH 167). Since Lockwood briefly takes over as a narrator here and is not Nelly’s addressee, this passage might be regarded as an actual interpolation. The very shortness of this occasion, when he only briefly comments on Nelly’s narrative before he has Nelly take over as overt narrator once more foregrounds the fact that everything 45  Graeme Tytler has a rather extreme take on the moral dimension of ‘judging’ in Nelly’s narrative: “we should be […] cautious in our responses to Nelly’s character judgments in general” (177). 46  Nelly similarly judges the narrators of the narrative embedded in her own. Isabella actually pleads with Nelly: “I’m afraid, Ellen, you’ll set me down as really wicked – but you don’t know all, so don’t judge!” (WH 178). A curious tendency to morally judge Nelly has emerged in the secondary literature of Wuthering Heights, starting with Charlotte Brontë’s warm praise of Nelly in her Preface to the 1850 edition of the novel. Fraser similarly claims that Nelly is “confronted by various kinds of wickedness and must act resolutely against them for the good of others” (224). Hafley regards her as the “villain” of Wuthering Heights, which Schapiro refutes resolutely: “While Nelly is not, as James Hafley argues […], a malicious and calculating villain, neither is she a product of a wish-fulfilling fantasy. Rather, she is a reflection of Brontë’s internalized experience of a mother who was not merely absent, but absent while present – distant, unemphatic, unable to meet and affirm the child’s instinctual and affective life, particularly her angry and aggressive feelings” (41).

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Nelly supposedly speaks as a narrator is actually, in the fictional construct, also spoken by him and thus generates embedding ambiguity. As in Lockwood’s extradiegetic narrative, narrative mediation is thus foregrounded in Nelly’s intradiegetic narratives as interpretation and subjective and her voice is thus not privileged over other characters’ speech. The equilibrium between narrators and narratives establishes a peculiar narrative rhythm in Wuthering Heights. As a result of this, global ambiguity is generated in that the very same passages in the novel are both highly mediated and not mediated at all at the same time. Because of this embedding ambiguity, no hierarchy is established between the several layers of narration. The embedding ambiguity in Wuthering Heights is different from the kind of ambiguity Rimmon-Kenan has described for the novel Thru: The type of ambiguity I am concerned with here is one arising from the interchangeability of narrative levels. […] [Thru] collapses – through reversibility – the very distinction between outside and inside, container and contained, narrating subject and narrated object, higher and lower level. (“Ambiguity and Narrative Levels,” 22)

In Wuthering Heights, narrative levels are not interchangeable, but they are juxtaposed rather than privileged over one another. This is as true for the hypodiegetic narratives as for the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic narratives, as the case of Heathcliff’s narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral shows. Ambiguity and Embedding in Heathcliff’s Hypodiegetic Narrative During the first part of Heathcliff’s narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral, there are no explicit references to either Nelly’s or Lockwood’s embedding narratives. Instead, the reader gets to share the emotions, the information level, and, most importantly, the perceptions of Heathcliff on March 24, 1784 while he digs up Catherine’s coffin. The illusion of direct access to the events that this narrative technique creates is counterbalanced by an astoundingly complex narrative setting in the fictional construct of the novel. Heathcliff’s sensory impressions, which he interprets as Catherine’s “sigh[s]” and her “warm breath” (WH 290), are conveyed to Nelly seventeen years later, in September 1801, as he remembers them at this point. His narrative then becomes part of Nelly’s account of the occupants of the Heights, told over “various sittings” between December 1801 and January 1802 to a curious intrafictional narratee Lockwood. Finally, they are incorporated in Lockwood’s narrative which he writes in January 1802. What appears to be Heathcliff’s verbatim account of his memories, is therefore (in the fictional construct of the novel) Lockwood’s narrative of what Nelly told him earlier about what she

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remembers of what Heathcliff has told her about what he remembers about an event that happened to him nearly two decades earlier. The number of narrative filters between the reader and the events at the grave and the time that passes between the three different acts of narration are not the only factor that have the potential to render Heathcliff’s account unstable. Two of the narratives are conveyed orally, which may make it seem even unlikelier that Heathcliff’s words directly match the events as they occurred and are then conveyed verbatim via Nelly and then Lockwood. As Heathcliff’s narrative begins, its problematic status is not addressed at all. Indeed, by the time the local ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s sensory impressions is introduced, the explicit presence of every narrative filter has been withdrawn, allowing for an impression of immediacy. Lockwood’s presence as a primary narrator has last been made explicit 32 pages earlier47 in the form of a brief dialogical interlude between Lockwood and Nelly about the portrait of the younger Catherine. From this point onwards, Nelly is the only visible narrator until Heathcliff takes over the role as overt narrator (WH 289). The transition to Heathcliff’s narrative is gradual and seemingly organic. A heated discussion between Nelly and Heathcliff on the question if Heathcliff has “disturb[ed] the dead” when he opened Catherine’s coffin once more introduces the topic of the possibility of Catherine’s afterlife as a ghost into the narrative (WH 289). After a reference to the strange fact that Catherine’s face “is hers yet” (WH 288) after eighteen years in the ground, Heathcliff turns Nelly’s conventional phrase of “disturb[ing] the dead” around: ‘I disturbed nobody, Nelly,’ he replied; ‘and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly – till yesternight – and yesternight, I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers.’ (WH 289)

Heathcliff thus not only attributes agency to the dead Catherine but refers to the possibility that he could become a ghost as well. He discusses his newly found tranquility and introduces a time span (“eighteen years”) during which he claims to have been haunted by Catherine. He claims that seeing Catherine’s unchanged face has ended this period of haunting. His narrative sets in immediately after these comments and sheds light on how Catherine began to “distur[b] [him]” (WH 289) eighteen years ago:

47  In the Penguin edition these are pp. 256–288/89.

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chapter 2 It began oddly. You know, I was wild after she died, and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me – her spirit – I have a strong faith in ghosts; I have a conviction that they can, and do exist, among us! (WH 289; my emphasis)

His initial sentences still strongly focus on the narrating self Heathcliff and the narrative situation. He explicitly addresses Nelly as his intrafictional narratee (“you know”) and reminds her (in the present tense) of his frame of mind at the time of Catherine’s death (in the past tense). Finally, he again returns to the present tense to affirm his “strong faith” in the existence of ghosts and, in a rather repetitive manner, his “conviction” in the existence of ghosts. These introductory remarks give way to a form of narrative in which the intrafictional narratee vanishes completely and the focus on the perspective of the narrating self Heathcliff entirely gives way to the thoughts, feelings, knowledge and sensory perceptions of the experiencing self Heathcliff: ‘The day she was buried there came a fall of snow. In the evening I went to the churchyard. It blew bleak as winter – all round was solitary: I didn’t fear that her fool of a husband would wander up the den so late – and no one else had business to bring them there. ‘Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself – ‘“I’ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.” […]’ (WH 289)

The thoughts of the experiencing self Heathcliff, which are presented in direct speech, establish a contrast to the narrating self’s confirmed belief in ghosts in general (“strong faith”/“conviction”; WH 289) and Catherine’s ghost specifically (“she has disturbed me”; WH 289). Heathcliff’s conditional sentences (“If she be cold”/ “if she be motionless”; WH 289) expose his willingness to deceive himself into believing that Catherine is still there in some form. Standing at her grave in 1784, Heathcliff does seem to deem it necessary to delude himself, which presupposes that he is at this point not at all sure if she is still to be found on earth. Indeed, the experiencing self Heathcliff seems to be too preoccupied with his attempt at self-deception to even properly notice the first sign that Catherine’s ghost might be present: I got a spade from the tool house, and began to delve with all my might – it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws, I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. – “If I can only get this off;” I muttered, “I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!” and I wrenched at it more desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleetladen wind. […] (WH 289–90).

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Heathcliff continues to try “desperately” to open the coffin, even though it already “seemed that [he] heard a sigh”. While “it seemed that I heard a sigh” implicates that he is not sure if there was a sigh, “[t]here was another sigh” presupposes not only that there was a sound in the first place but that it indeed was a sigh.48 This results in a local embedding ambiguity because we can either attribute the implicature to the experiencing self and the presuppostion to the narrating self, marking their discrepant beliefs, or attribute both to the experiencing self (as well as the narrating self) turning this into an example of a conversion experience. An analogous case can be found towards the end of Wuthering Heights when Nelly finds Heathcliff’s corpse: I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes – to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not shut – they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips, and sharp, white teeth sneered too! (WH 335)

Again, an implicature (“seemed to sneer”) and a presupposition (“sneered, too”) clash and, again, this clash can be resolved by attributing the implicature to one instance and the presupposition to both or by interpreting the passage as showing how one instance or both gradually become convinced that he did indeed sneer. Both interpretative possibilities coexist in the text, which results in embedding ambiguity. In Heathcliff’s narrative, the attitude of the experiencing self and the narrating self towards the existence of Catherine on earth finally converge, and thus seemingly leave the reader with one consistent interpretation of the events: Heathcliff indeed encounters Catherine at her grave. Accordingly, the experiencing self experiences “relief”, is “unspeakably consoled” (WH 290) and presuppositions and implicatures support his conviction in Catherine’s afterlife as a ghost. The narrative technique employed in this part of the novel hides its layers of narrative transmission and instead establishes a focus on Heathcliff’s perceptions and his experience. In contrast to the depiction of Nelly’s experience at the signpost, which shares some of the same traits including the focus on the experience of the character, the narrating instance Heathcliff does not offer a contrasting interpretation of the subjective sensory perceptions. Ambiguity and the Re-Emergence of Nelly Nonetheless, this convergence of opinions between the narrating and the experiencing subject does not result in a disambiguation of this text passage.

48  Compare chapter 1 for a more detailed discussion of this passage.

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This effect can to a great extent be led back to the reappearance of yet another contrasting perspective immediately afterwards, namely Nelly’s:49 A sudden sense of relief flowed, from my heart, through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once, unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me; it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh, if you will, but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her. […] (WH 290; my emphasis)

Heathcliff’s explicit reference to Nelly (“you”) at this point is the first time since the beginning of his narrative that her presence as an intrafictional narratee is acknowledged and it remains the only reference to her until the end of his narrative. Nonetheless, the six word construction he uses to address her (“You may laugh, if you will”) has a powerful effect on the ambiguity of the passage in three different ways. Firstly, it re-establishes multiperspectivity. The initial case of multiperspectivity caused by the division of Heathcliff’s narrating and experiencing self has vanished, but immediately afterwards a new position is introduced implicitly: “[y]ou may laugh.” As the contrastive conjunction “but” indicates, Heathcliff here introduces a contrast between his own position on the question if Catherine’s ghost exists and Nelly’s. Heathcliff’s utterance is ambiguous in that it could either be interpreted as a reaction to her actual laughter at this moment or as a mere anticipation of her possible reaction. In any case, Heathcliff attributes a contrasting position to Nelly in that she is supposed to find the notion that the dead Catherine will be at the Heights ridiculous.50 As a result of the complex technique of Heathcliff’s narrative, it is clearly doubly embedded in the fictional construct of the novel, but at the same time appears to be not embedded at all as the mediating levels have all but disappeared in the narrative itself. A reader of this passage has to process this question and, in some way, may be nudged to question his own evaluation of what Heathcliff believes. Once more, attention is drawn to the fact that Heathcliff’s narrative gives the reader on the one hand seemingly a direct access to the events in the fictional world and simultaneously draws attention to the multiple layers of 49  Compare chapter 1.4 for a discussion of Heathcliff’s use of language in this instance. 50  Furthermore, the “you” in Heathcliff’s address might be regarded as a case of referential ambiguity, since it could be taken to refer to Lockwood and the reader as well as to Nelly. Nelly is of course Heathcliff’s direct intrafictional narratee, but she is not the only possible addressee of the pronoun “you.” These different meanings (i.e. different referents) are not mutually exclusive (it would be hard to argue that Nelly is not addressed), but several meanings can be true at the same time.

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embedding. If the status of Nelly’s oral narrative in Lockwood’s narrative is already a precarious one – at least in theory (see above) – then how much more precarious should Heathcliff’s oral narrative as conveyed in Nelly’s oral narrative as embedded in Lockwood’s narrative be? Yet, through the narrative technique employed in Heathcliff’s narrative, an effect of immediacy is achieved nevertheless. While Nelly is explicitly addressed in Heathcliff’s narrative, Lockwood’s presence is implicitly evoked through intratextual references with the third chapter of the novel and another striking similarity: the last time before Heathcliff’s narrative when Lockwood appears explicitly is a discussion between him and Nelly about his feelings towards the younger Catherine: ‘[…] You’re too young to rest always contented, living by yourself; and I some way fancy, no one could see Catherine Linton, and not love her. You smile; but why do you look so lively and interested when I talk about her – and why have you asked me to hang her picture over your fireplace? And why –’ ‘Stop, my good friend!’ I cried. ‘It may be very possible that I should love her; but would she love me? I doubt it too much to venture my tranquillity, by running into temptation; and then my home is not here. […].’ (256; my emphases)

Directly after this exchange, Nelly takes over as a narrator. The next time that the narrator changes in Wuthering Heights is the transition between Nelly and Heathcliff, which is preceded by their discussion about the portrait of the older Catherine: He bid me be silent, and then, for the first time, allowed himself a glance round the room, and a look at the pictures. Having studied Mrs Linton, he said – ‘I shall have that at home. Not because I need it, but –’ He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile – ‘I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again – it is hers yet – […]’ ‘You were very wicked, Mr Heathcliff!’ I exclaimed; ‘were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?’ ‘I disturbed nobody, Nelly,’ he replied; ‘and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly – till yesternight – and yesternight, I was tranquil. […]’ (WH 288–89)

Both Lockwood and Heathcliff talk to Nelly about a portrait of a Catherine that was/is to be moved, both men are shown to smile, both men’s feelings to the respective Catherine are addressed, as well as the fact that their tranquillity may

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depend on it. Accordingly, even if Lockwood does not explicitly appear as a narrator, his presence is strongly evoked implicitly directly before Heathcliff’s narrative. The explicit evocation of Nelly and the implicit evocation of Lockwood in Heathcliff’s narrative contribute to the ambiguity in the text passage by juxtaposing Heathcliff’s firm belief that he has indeed encountered Catherine with the evaluation of Nelly and Lockwood, who at least claim to find the very notion of the appearance of ghosts ridiculous. Heathcliff is the single witness to the actual events (“the breath” and “the sighs”), which is crucial for the ambiguity to work, but as a result of narrative embedding, several other instances can still be present and multiperspectivity can nevertheless be achieved. While Heathcliff has a more direct access to the events as such (he witnessed them directly), he is also more emotionally involved and his narrative is doubly embedded. The result is a balance between different interpretations in the fictional world (multiperspectivity) that leads to the ambiguity of the text passage. The intratextual links to two structurally and thematically very similar text passages (i.e. Lockwood’s “terrible night” and Nelly’s experience at the signpost) furthermore connect this passage to other instances of ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s narrative about the night after Catherine’s funeral illustrates three ways in which narrative embedding may contribute to ambiguity. Firstly, narrative embedding is linked with multiperspectivity, as contrasting interpretations of an element of the fictional world are depicted in the text and tied to different narrative voices. These interpretative possibilities within the text become available for the reader of the text, which generates ambiguity.51 Heathcliff’s hypodiegetic narrative juxtaposes a narrating self that is convinced of the existence of ghosts with an experiencing self that desperately wishes Catherine to appear to him, but at first displays doubt, which in the course of the passage gives way to a belief that she is actually there with him. This constitutes a reversal of Lockwood’s night at the Heights and Nelly’s encounter with her “early playmate” (WH 108), where the respective narrating selves reject the possibility that they have witnessed and apparition and try to rationalize their sensory perceptions accordingly. Heathcliff’s comment “[y]ou may laugh, if you will” (WH 290) evokes the position of Nelly and Lockwood, which presents an interpretative alternative to Heathcliff’s belief that he has actually heard and felt Catherine at the grave. While the experiencing self Heathcliff is closest to the event itself as he experiences the sensory perceptions in question, the precarious status of Heathcliff’s embedded narrative in Wuthering Heights 51  See also Wolf for a discussion of narrative embedding and multiperspectivity.

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results in an equilibrium between the different readings that are suggested in the text passage. Despite the nested narrative structure of Wuthering Heights, none of the narratives is privileged over the other, but they are rather juxtaposed. Passages that seem to allow for the highest degree of immediacy allow for ambiguities to be located in the perception of the characters; yet, the very same passages are among the most highly mediated parts of the narrative and frequent reminders of this fact are interspersed through the novel. Embedding ambiguity is established in Wuthering Heights as the novel evokes the overall impression that large parts of it are both highly mediated and not mediated at all. To quote Lockwood’s description, Nelly’s intradiegetic narrative is indeed rendered “in her own words” (WH 157) – she “speaks” in Genette’s terms, as do the hypodiegetic narrators of Wuthering Heights; at the same time, readers are, at well-defined intervals, reminded that whenever Nelly and the hypodiegetic narrators speak, the embedding instances may be said to do so as well. 2.3

Ambiguity and Time in Wuthering Heights She showed herself,

as she often was in life,

a devil to me! (WH 290)

Heathcliff’s ambiguous utterance at the end of a hypodiegetic narrative which is focused on his yearning to see Catherine again after her death shows how crucial time is for ambiguities of Wuthering Heights. His description of the night after Catherine’s funeral abounds with references to the question if she will indeed appear to him. When he is finally convinced to perceive her presence, he rushes to the Heights because he “was sure [he] should see her there” (290). Having arrived there, he looked round impatiently – I felt her by me - I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning, from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! (290)

The phrase “[s]he showed herself” at first seems to resolve the ambiguity if Catherine will appear. The second part of the sentence, “as she often was in life,” can be taken to confirm such a reading: Catherine’s apparition may very

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well closely resemble how she “was” in life. It is only when a reader arrives at the third part of the sentence, “a devil to me,” that it becomes clear that Catherine has not shown herself at all. The reader has been led down a garden path. This effect comes about because a reading of “show” in the sense of “appear” (OED 11a) is common and fits the context perfectly. The contradiction that emerges between this meaning and the preceding sentence (“I had not one [glimpse]”) can be easily resolved by assuming that she now finally does show herself. Yet, the phrase “a devil to me” renders such an interpretation grammatically impossible. Syntactically, this phrase must be a complement of the verb “show,” which then takes on the much rarer meaning of “exhibit[ing] or portray[ing] oneself in a specified light or character; manifest[ing] or exemplify[ing] a specified quality, etc., in one’s behaviour” (OED 25.a.). “Devil” is ambiguous in this instance as it could be understood literally or figuratively. In any case, the second part of the sentence, “as she often was in life,” must then be taken to refer to character traits rather than looks. Instead of resolving the text passage’s ambiguity, this short sentence is thus full of ambiguities and paradoxically again foregrounds the global ambiguity regarding Catherine’s afterlife.52 The syntactic structure of the sentence forces the reader to reinterpret, which mirrors Heathcliff’s mental processes in the night after Catherine’s funeral: first, he is unsure, then convinced that she will show herself only to then be disappointed. Similarly, readers first encounter the text passage’s ambiguity, then the phrase “she showed herself” that seems to confirm that she appears (or that Heathcliff at least claims so), only to be finally forced to reinterpret the utterance with the text passage’s ambiguity still unresolved. This process foregrounds the dynamic quality of ambiguities in Wuthering Heights. The stark contrast between the two readings – first “Catherine has finally appeared” then “Catherine has not appeared” – and the fact that this exact difference is what the ambiguity of the whole text passage hinges on heightens the effect of reinterpretation. While the ambiguity of “show” is temporary, which leads to a striking effect on the local level, it helps to maintain the global ambiguity regarding the nature of Heathcliff’s death, which – like most ambiguities in Wuthering Heights, remains unresolved (compare chapter 2.2). This global ambiguity only emerges because the text gradually introduces local ambiguities that are connected through repetitions of words and concepts. Time can generally be regarded as a crucial characteristic of narratives and frequently features prominently in influential narratological works, such as 52  See chapter 4.2 (subchapter “ambiguity and paradox”) for a discussion of the link between the two phenomena in Wuthering Heights.

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Seymour Chatman’s Story and Discourse or Gérard Genette’s seminal Narrative Discourse, in which time is addressed as the first of three fundamental aspects of narration. Scheffel, Weixler, and Werner have summarized the importance of time for narrative texts in the following way: “narratives – understood as representations of event-sequences – are defined and differentiated by their temporality.” Many scholars such as Todorov (“The Two Principles of Narrative”) regard it as the defining feature of narrativity.53 In Wuthering Heights, the temporal dimension of narratives is foregrounded through its dynamic ambiguities. Especially two of Genette’s three aspects of time described in Narrative Discourse play a major role, namely order and frequency.54

Ambiguity and Order I’ll not lie there [at the graveyard] by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will! (WH 126; my emphasis)

Catherine’s utterances during her final illness epitomize the importance of the temporal order of Wuthering Heights for the novel’s ambiguities. She makes these predictions about life after death in 1783, and thus almost two decades before Lockwood visits the Heights for the second time and may or may not encounter her in her old room. Yet, on the level of discourse, this text passage is set after roughly a third of the novel, and thus long after the novel’s readers have learned about Lockwood’s experience in the third chapter. Her claim that she “won’t rest” evokes not only this earlier text passage, but also the ambiguity regarding her afterlife which was then memorably introduced into the narrative but has receded into the background for nine chapters as Nelly’s story covers the childhood and young adulthood of Heathcliff and Catherine. Catherine’s prediction can be regarded as a lynchpin in the novel as it contains strong intratextual connections to the most important local ambiguities regarding her and Heathcliff’s afterlife in linking back to the third chapter of the novel and anticipating several ambiguities to follow up until the novel’s final sentence.

53  See Abbot for a detailed discussion of narrativity. 54  Genette’s third aspect of time, duration, also influences the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights to some extent in that the lower pace of narration in text passages characterized by an effect of immediacy allows for detailed accounts of the narrators’ perception at the time, which are crucial for the epistemic ambiguities of Wuthering Heights (compare chapter 1 on “Ambiguities of Perception” and chapter 2.2 on the effect of immediacy).

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The discrepancy between the order in which the text passages referred to in Catherine’s predictions appear in the narrative (“discourse”) and the chronological order of the events depicted in them (“story”) contribute significantly to their ambiguity.55 If the time of Catherine’s utterance in the narrated world (1784) is taken as the temporal “centre of orientation” (Weber), her life after death lies in the future, which is indicated in her choice of verb tense (willfuture). Yet, there is a competing time sequence to the “story time,” according to which Catherine’s death lies in the past.56 Due to the novel’s anachronic structure, her words can be read as prophetic; after all, Catherine has been introduced into the narrative in the form of a possible ghostly apparition after her death in the third chapter, so they are already acquainted with the possibility that Catherine might not rest quietly in her grave after her death.57 Simultaneously, Catherine’s prediction can retrospectively support a reading of Lockwood’s experience at the Heights as a ghostly apparition. In addition to its interplay with the ambiguities of the third chapter of Wuthering Heights, the lexical and syntactic ambiguity of Catherine’s sentence itself anticipate what is yet to come since they also address Heathcliff’s fate after death: I’ll not lie there [at the graveyard] by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will! (WH 126; my emphasis)

55  For attempts to reconstruct the chronology of Wuthering Heights compare Daley, Power, Sanger and Snow. More recently, Michael Weber has discussed the issue in detail in his Die Chronologie von Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which contains a revised chronology that Weber has established with a detailed analysis of all references to time in the novel. The dates referred to in this study follow Weber’s chronology. 56  Time or “tense” constitutes one of the three main categories in Genette’s approach to the study of narrative. Genette describes two competing systems of time in a narrative text: “story time” and “discourse time”/narrative time. Both are problematic in their own way as Genette notes. While story time is a mere projection of the text that can be reconstructed, discourse time actually refers to space in the form of words and pages, and is accordingly rather “pseudo time” (Genette 34). Scheffel, Weixler, and Werner analyse the three dimensions of time as postulated in the narratological debate in the following way: firstly, “story time turns out to be a relative category rather than a fixed one: it is formed by the interplay with other elements of the narrated world […]. Second, ‘discourse time’ is the time of telling which is fixed by the text […]. And thirdly, ‘narrating time’ is the time of the narrating act which describes the spatiotemporal position of the narrative voice.” 57  Nevertheless, the text passage remains ambiguous since a reading of Catherine’s words as part of fever hallucination rather than a prophecy persists (compare chapter 1.3).

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The lexically ambiguous term “rest” can either be read as referring to finding peace in death or as a part of the idiomatic phrase “will not rest until,” which the OED defines as “to continue without a break or to be uneasy or not content until an end is reached, process completed, goal achieved, etc.” (“rest, v.” P1.). Because of this, Catherine’s utterance can either be read as a prediction that she will live on as a ghost after her death until she is reunited with Heathcliff, or that she will continuously and relentlessly pursue this goal. Both point towards the future both on the level of discourse and of story: by the time at which she utters this, readers have been made aware of the possibility that she might lead quite an active afterlife, but we do not know in how far this still might affect Heathcliff and his death. The meaning of “rest” as finding peace in death is strongly supported by the co-text since it is part of an utterance spoken by a severely ill character who is first introduced in the narrative as Lockwood’s “ghostly Catherine” (WH 138) in a passage whose thematic focus is death and life after death. This reference to the nature of Catherine’s afterlife establishes a link to Lockwood’s encounter with the child Catherine who has been a waif for “twenty years” and thus connects it with the global ambiguity established in this earlier passage: Does Catherine rest peacefully in her grave, or does she live on as a ghost? At the same time, the second meaning of “rest” as part of the idiomatic phrase “will not rest until” is likewise supported by the co-text since a goal that Catherine wants to pursue is named: a reunion with Heathcliff (“I won’t rest till you are with me;” WH 126; my emphasis). Furthermore, the predicates of Catherine’s preceding sentences also indicate the active role she intends to play: But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me […]. (WH 126; my emphases)

The ambiguity of “rest” thus brings together the notions of “death” and afterlife with the active pursuit of a goal. The second meaning of “rest” implies that haunting the earth as a ghost after her death might truly be a desirable means to an end for Catherine. The question of why she might have become a ghost has only been hinted at in the novel before Catherine’s visions. In the third chapter Lockwood claims he has “no doubt” that this constitutes “a just punishment for her mortal transgressions” (WH 27). Yet, it is a thematic focal point of the chapters that describe Catherine’s final illness, her death and its aftermath, and, will once be foregrounded, towards the end of the novel shortly

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before Heathcliff’s death, in which several ambiguous passages suggest that Catherine may appear to Heathcliff as a ghost (cf. chapters 1.4 and 1.5).58 A syntactic ambiguity in Catherine’s prediction which is connected to the lexical ambiguity of “rest” anticipates the ambiguity regarding the duration of her possible afterlife as a ghost. The conflict between the two adverbs “till” and “never” poses the question if Catherine will “rest” in both senses of the word once Heathcliff joins her. Catherine first announces in her prediction that she won’t rest till you are with me (WH 126; my emphasis).

Accordingly, she indicates a specific point in time that might end the state or her pursuit. Catherine’s utterance implicates that she will “rest” then. The next sentence, however, addresses rather a concept of eternity: I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will. (WH 126; my emphasis)

Depending on how the elliptic construction “I never will” is interpreted, three ways emerge of how the contradiction between “never” and “till” can be resolved. Firstly, “never” can take on the meaning of “not at all” or “without interruption;” the second phrase can then be read as an affirmation of what has been said before in the sense of “I never will [rest till you are with me].” Secondly, the latter part of Catherine’s utterance can be understood to cancel the first part in the sense of “I won’t rest till you are with me. [Actually,] I never will.” Finally, the contradiction between “till” and “never” can be regarded as a paradox. This aspect of Catherine’s prediction becomes quite significant in the closing words of the novel, when Lockwood suggests that both of them now “slumber” quietly; but Joseph, among others, claims to have seen both of them “on every rainy night since [Heathcliff’s] death” (WH 336). Accordingly, the dynamics of ambiguity again become visible on the microlevel here as the second part of the phrase may be taken to contradict, confirm or modify the first part. As in Heathcliff’s comment that Catherine “showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to [him]” (WH 290), these dynamic ambiguities on the structural level go along with a thematic focus on temporality. As a result of two interconnected ambiguities in Catherine’s statement – the lexical ambiguity of “rest,” and a syntactic ambiguity triggered by the elliptical construction – her comments on “rest” after death thus connect this 58  Compare chapter 3.2 for an analysis of all the instances in which Catherine and Heathcliff express their desire that Catherine may roam the earth after her death as a means of reunion with Heathcliff.

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utterance with other local ambiguities, some of which lie before, some after Catherine’s visions on the level of narrative discourse. As these local ambiguities become interconnected, global ambiguity regarding Catherine’s death and afterlife gradually emerges in the novel. Catherine’s prediction is not only ambiguous in itself, to no small extent as a result of temporal arrangement, but also serves as a “lynchpin,” which ties most local ambiguities regarding her and Heathcliff’s afterlife together and contributes to the ambiguity of these other text passages, e.g. by rendering the appearance of a sobbing “Catherine Linton” who claims to have “been a waif for twenty years” (WH 25) at Lockwood’s window more probable. While her prediction once more foregrounds the pending ambiguity regarding the nature of Catherine’s death, it also introduces new thematic focal points and anticipates ambiguities that will appear later in the novel. The full significance of Catherine’s vision can therefore only be recognized retrospectively, or upon re-reading the novel, which highlights the dynamics of the constitution of meaning in Wuthering Heights. While the order of the text passages as they appear in the narrative is thus crucial for the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights, the way in which they are connected evokes another of Genette’s aspects of time: frequency. Ambiguity and Frequency The intratextual references that connect the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights are frequently established through repetitions. In his excellent analysis of the novel, J. Hillis Miller has noted the significance of repetitions and of the necessity to establish connections between different text passages for an overall effect of what he understands as central enigmas of Wuthering Heights. The reader, who is turned into a sort of detective figure, has to gradually construct meaning in the text: Wuthering Heights incorporates the reader in the process of understanding which the text mimes in Lockwood’s narration. It forces him to repeat in his own way an effort of understanding that the text expresses, and to repeat also the baffling of that effort. (53)

He suggests that there are several ways in which readers might undertake this journey of understanding in the novel. One of them is tied to Lockwood’s walk back home after his night spent at the Heights;59 it nicely illustrates the significance of Catherine’s visions in the novel: 59  J.  Hillis Miller’s suggestions that are quoted above are based on this text passage from the third chapter of Wuthering Heights: “I had remarked on one side of the road, at intervals of six or seven yards, a line of upright stones, continued through the whole length of the

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chapter 2 If the reader follows Lockwood’s example and considers every detail as possibly a clue to the whole and to what stands behind or beneath the whole, then the passage suggests that the novel is made of discrete units which follow one another in a series with spaces between. The reader’s business is to draw lines between the units. He must make a pattern, like the child’s game in which a duck or a rabbit is magically drawn by tracing lines between numbered dots. (57)

The rabbit-or-duck figure Hillis Miller describes as a “child’s game” is frequently connected to ambiguity in literary scholarship, for instance in Norman Rabkin’s analysis of Henry V60 and in the preface of Shlomith Rimmon’s study The Concept of Ambiguity (ix). Even though the rabbit-duck figure shares the trait with ambiguity that several interpretations co-exist, there are several problems with treating it as an example of ambiguity or an analogy for it. Firstly, it does not do justice to complex ambiguities in literary texts like those of Wuthering Heights, which cannot be neatly subsumed in the form of two competing patterns.61 Furthermore, the rabbit-duck image calls for mutually exclusive meanings. The rabbit and the duck cannot both be perceived at the same time. In contrast to this, the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights are frequently not mutually exclusive but both meanings coexist simultaneously. An example for this is the lexical ambiguity of “rest” as discussed above. Catherine may very well not lie peacefully in her grave and not stop her endeavours. The significant factor in Hillis Miller’s analysis is not the rabbit-duck figure but the aspect of dynamics: the reader of Wuthering Heights must gradually make sense of text passages that can be understood in different ways. Catherine’s visions before her death provide a point in the novel that encourages the connection between different ambiguous passages, frequently by means of the repetition of certain elements. If each of them is read in a way barren: these were erected, and daubed with lime on purpose to serve as guides in the dark, and also, when a fall, like the present, confounded the deep swamps on either hand with the firmer path: but, excepting a dirty dot pointing up, here and there, all traces of their existence had vanished; and my companion found it necessary to warn me frequently to steer to the right, or left, when I imagined I was following, correctly, the windings of the road” (31). 60  Rabkin describes the connection between ambiguity and the rabbit-and-duck image in the following way: “in Henry V Shakespeare creates a work whose ultimate power is precisely the fact that it points in two opposite directions, virtually daring us to choose one of the two opposed interpretations it requires of us. In this deceptively simple play Shakespeare experiments, perhaps more shockingly than elsewhere, with a structure like the gestaltist’s familiar drawing of a rare beast [i.e. the rabit-duck image]” (278–79). 61  Compare the introduction of this study for an analysis of why Rimmon’s concept of ambiguity that can be related to the rabbit-duck image cannot do justice to complex forms of ambiguity.

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which suggests a permeability between the living and the dead, Catherine first actually appears to Lockwood in the third chapter, then to herself in the twelfth chapter (compare chapter 3.2), then to Heathcliff, and to Joseph and the little boy. Catherine’s prediction that she “won’t rest” is indeed only part of a longer vision that can be read like a summary of these connected passages: ‘Look!’ she cried eagerly, ‘that’s my room, with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it … and the other candle is in Joseph’s garret … Joseph sits up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate … Well, he’ll wait a while yet. It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come … But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will!’ She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, ‘He’s considering … he’d rather I’d come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard … You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!’ (WH 126)

The first part of her vision establishes a close connection to the third chapter, which even first-time readers know about at this point of the novel, by means of several repetitions: the location (her old room), the candle, and “the trees swaying before it,” all of which are important elements of Lockwood’s memorable night at the Heights. This image is then connected to another one that is to be echoed at the very end of the novel: Joseph sitting at his window late at night, looking out for Catherine. As Nelly tells Lockwood in the final chapter: that old man by the kitchen fire [i.e. Joseph] affirms he has seen two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night, since his death […]. (WH 336)

Catherine’s remark that “he’ll wait a while yet” could be read as predicting that it will take a long time before this image actually comes true in different senses: Joseph will only claim to have seen them from his window at night 210 pages (in the Penguin edition) afterwards and 18 years later in the chronology of the story. The “rough journey” via “Gimmerton Kirk” can be read as indicating the long and hard years of separation that await Catherine and Heathcliff,62 who both have to die before they can possibly be reunited and be seen by Joseph. 62  Shortly before his death, Heathcliff comments: “It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hair-breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope, through eighteen years!” (WH 291).

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The “sad heart” refers to Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s desperation about this, evoking all the instances in which they express their desperation about being separated.63 The motif of Catherine’s “dar[ing]” Heathcliff and “[not] rest[ing]” (WH 126) until she has reached her goal appears again in Heathcliff’s later claims that “she has disturbed [him], night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly” (WH 289). He utters these words shortly before he describes his futile attempt to be reunited with Catherine by digging up her grave, which evokes Catherine’s exclamation that the “way” he has to find does not lead “through that Kirkyard” (WH 126). Heathcliff is still alive 17 years after Catherine’s vision (in 1801) as readers have known from the beginning of the novel; therefore, her final remark that Heathcliff is “slow” (WH 126) could be regarded as having already been realized. As motifs, words, and plot elements are repeated in the novel, intratextual links between Catherine’s vision and text passages throughout the novel from the third to the final chapter are established. All these local ambiguities in the text can be connected to form an underlying complete image of a special world, in which Catherine can strive for her goal of a reunion with Heathcliff by crossing the permeable boundary between the living and the dead and in which the two of them may roam the earth even after both have died. Yet, connecting all these text passages may also result in a different image. Catherine’s words are vague enough that certain conclusions can be drawn in order to arrive at the picture, or not – she does, for instance, not specifically say that Heathcliff will die 18 years after her, but that “he’ll wait a while” on his “rough journey” (WH 126).64 Furthermore, an explanation for what Catherine sees as a mere fever-induced and thus non-prophetic hallucination is offered as an interpretative possibility in the novel (compare chapter 1.3). Thus, different images can emerge, as the very same “dots” in the narrative are connected 63  Compare, for instance, Heathcliff’s desperate pleas to Catherine when he learns about her death: “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not-like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears” (WH 169). For a detailed discussion of the numerous passages in which Catherine and Heathcliff talk about the existential nature of their relationship for them compare chapter 3.1. 64  See Olga Springer’s Ambiguity in Charlotte Brontë’s Vilette, especially chapter IV (“Bad or good? Endeavours at Oracular Prediction”) for a discussion of the link between ambiguity and prophecy in Vilette. Compare Römer on oracles in Classical Antiquity, who argues that “mythical and semi-historical oracle statements” are “often vague or ambiguous.”

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that result in very different underlying assumptions about the nature of death in the world of Wuthering Heights. This technique of establishing an underlying pattern between ambiguous passages through the repetition of elements at several points in the narrative discourse results in very different assumptions about the nature of the narrated world and is not restricted to the nature of death. Another prominent example in the novel is the ambiguity regarding the nature of the relationship between the natural environment and its human inhabitants which is also generated through a network of intratextual connections established through the repetition of elements such as the term “wailing” (compare chapter 3.3).65 Even entire text passages at times seem to echo earlier text passages as elements are repeated and varied, a technique which again contributes to the novel’s ambiguities. Heathcliff’s narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral (see above), for instance, strongly evokes the third chapter of Wuthering Heights. As Heathcliff arrives at the Heights in Catherine’s old room where he “was sure [he would] see her” (WH 290),66 his feelings of “relief” and “unspeakably consol[ation]” give way to an “anguish of […] yearning.” His “fervor of […] supplications to have but one glimpse” (WH 290) is, however, disappointed and he attributes Nelly with an attitude of ridiculing his assumption when he comments that “you may laugh, if you will” (WH 290). This sequence of events is strongly reminiscent of what happens in the third chapter of Wuthering Heights. In this instance, Heathcliff also rushes to the same room after hearing Lockwood’s scream, has a similar emotional reaction, which Lockwood considers to be ridiculous.67 This passage is set much earlier in the discourse than Heathcliff’s narrative of the events of March 1784, but takes place later in the chronology of the story, namely in 1801. Accordingly, the reader is yet again already familiar with the events of Lockwood’s “terrible night” (WH 22), when Heathcliff’s possible encounter with Catherine after her death is told. The intratextual connection between these two passages may serve to clarify certain parts of Heathcliff’s reaction in the third chapter that presented a mystery to Lockwood (and the reader) at this point of the novel:

65  For another interesting case of ambiguity as established through repetition see 3.2, in which ambiguity is established in the interplay of two unambiguous uses of the phrase “beyond and above” for Catherine’s afterlife (WH 162). 66  Heathcliff’s use of the narrative past tense allows for two meanings, namely “I was sure back then, but I am no longer so” and “I was (and still am) sure.” 67  “There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare” (WH 29).

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chapter 2 I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony [in Heathcliff]; though why, was beyond my comprehension. (WH 29)

Indeed, there are hints to the events depicted later in Heathcliff’s narrative in the language used by Heathcliff in the third chapter after he has sent Lockwood out of Catherine’s old room: ‘Come in! come in!’ he sobbed. ‘Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! my heart’s darling, hear me this time – Catherine, at last!’ (WH 28)

Heathcliff’s expressions “once more” and “this time” implicates that something similar has occurred before. At this point of the novel, there are no more indications of what exactly happened. Only Heathcliff’s narrative in volume II, chapter XV of the novel can fill this gap and accordingly establishes a connection between these passages.68 In both passages (volume I, chapter III and volume II, chapter XV), Heathcliff’s firm belief in Catherine’s existence after death is counteracted by a reaction of ridiculing exactly this assumption, which results in multiperspectivity. In the latter passage, Heathcliff comments “[y]ou may laugh, if you will” (WH 290) and thus attributes this reaction to Nelly. Lockwood’s similar behaviour is much more explicit. He speaks of his “ridiculous nightmare” (WH 29) and Heathcliff’s “folly” to believe in it (WH 29). To him, Heathcliff’s reaction is “a piece of superstition […] which belied, oddly, his apparent sense” (WH 28). When Catherine does not appear to Heathcliff at the end of the third chapter, he comments ironically that “The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being” (WH 28–29). Lockwood’s statement seemingly attributes agency to Catherine’s ghost (it “show[s] caprice;” WH 28), but his addition that this “caprice” which is “ordinary” for spectres consists in “g[iving] no sign of being” (WH 28–29) ridicules the belief in ghosts. At the end of Heathcliff’s narrative, he similarly describes how Catherine does not answer his desperate pleas to show herself. In contrast to Lockwood, Heathcliff in volume II, chapter XV, attributes this to the ghost’s agenda to disturb him: “She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me” (WH 290). The difference between Heathcliff’s sincerity and Lockwood’s irony serves to underline the crucial divide between their positions. 68  Chronologically, Heathcliff’s tells Nelly about this experience only two months before Lockwood’s “terrible night” (WH 22) as described in the third chapter takes place. Heathcliff’s reaction in the latter instance contradicts his assertion to Nelly that he has now found tranquillity (WH 173).

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The Dynamics of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights Throughout Brontë’s novel, ambiguity is shown to be a dynamic phenomenon. Catherine’s ambiguous predictions are striking in the way in which they unveil the dynamics of establishing meaning and generating ambiguity. There are elements of what Catherine describes that link back to earlier parts of the text which are intertwined with others that anticipate text passages that are yet to come. First time readers will only be able to recognize the former type and may be left to wonder if other parts of Catherine’s vision might come true. The second type of intratextual references that link it to text passages which are yet to follow can be recognized retrospectively or by those who re-read the novel. While only a part of the pattern of connected text passages is thus visible for those who are not familiar with the remaining part of the novel, the remaining elements can be filled in retrospectively, or are already visible at this point for those who re-read the novel. Regarding the constitution of ambiguity not as a product but as a dynamic process reveals how significant the deviation between the order of how the story unfolds on the discourse level and the underlying chronology of the story is for the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights. Gérard Genette regarded this aspect as one of the three crucial areas of “tense;” he developed a technique of making it visible by alphabetically assigning letters to events as they occur in the narrative and numbers to indicate their chronological order in the narrated world (Genette 37). Applying this technique to significant ambiguities regarding the nature of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s afterlife that are connected through intratextual references renders this effect visible. Lockwood’s night at the Heights is assigned the letter A as the first to appear in the narrative, and the number 3 as only the third to occur chronologically (1801), Catherine’s visions would, following the same logic, be assigned the combination B1 (1784), Heathcliff digging up Catherine’s body after her funeral C2 (1784; a few days later), Heathcliff’s visions of Catherine before his death D4 (spring 1802), Joseph’s and the little boy’s sightings of Catherine and Heathcliff E5 (between spring and September 1802), and Lockwood lingering among their graves F6 (September 1802). The following pattern thus emerges: A3 – B1 – C2 – D4 – E5 – F6

Catherine’s visions (B1) serve as a lynchpin which connects passages that are set earlier and later on the level of discourse. The ambiguity of this passage depends on the order illustrated above, since the reading of her utterances as prophetic that counterbalances the assumption that Catherine is merely hallucinating only emerges since A3 has appeared earlier in the discourse. As a

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reader arrives at B1, this new passage may retrospectively contribute to the ambiguity of A3, making a reading as a ghostly apparition more likely. A two-way reading process thus emerges that is continued with the remaining passages indicated above: A knowledge of C2, D4, E5, and F6, all of which are evoked through intratextual references, may make a reading of A3 and B1 as a prophetic prediction and an actual apparition of Catherine in front of Lockwood’s window more likely. In turn, A1 and B2 render it more probable that Catherine is indeed present as a ghost in C2, D4, E5, and F6 since one consistent underlying assumption can explain all these separate ambiguous passages: the world of Wuthering Heights allows for a permeability between life and death. Accordingly, as the number of ambiguous passages a reader is familiar with grows, the nature of the narrated world is increasingly questioned, which may result in a process of ambiguation. At the same time, every one of these passages contains a contrasting interpretative possibility, and if such a reading is adopted in each of them, the world of Wuthering Heights can still be assumed to not allow for such an interaction between the living and the dead. Accordingly, an equilibrium between them is gradually established in the novel that results in an ontological ambiguity regarding the nature of death in the world of the novel since neither reading of the world can be entirely rejected based on the textual evidence. 2.4

Wuthering Heights as a Narratological Reflection

In Brontë’s novel, ambiguities of narration draw attention to features of narrative mediation. These features mimetically represent problems readers may encounter in the actual world, such as the subjectivity of the narrative act, contradictory reports on the same issue by different speakers, or hearsay. Franz K. Stanzel has called it “the most important use which the mediacy of narration has” that it may “reveal the biased nature of our experience of reality” (10–11). In addition to unlocking the potential for ambiguity the “problem of perception” presents (cf. chapter 1), Wuthering Heights demonstrates a similarly powerful potential that the “problem of narration” constitutes. Its ambiguities of narration foreground the effects of clashing perspectives between speakers or between speakers’ assumptions over time and thus foreground the subjective nature of narration, which is presented as perception of the world conveyed in narrative. Throughout the novel, several contrasting interpretations of the same event or feature of the narrative world can co-exist without one being privileged over another. Additionally, processes of ambiguation, for instance through the connection of local ambiguities, as well as temporary

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ambiguity, highlight the significance of time for narratives and the fact that the creation of meaning is a process. Emily Brontë not only shows in her only novel “a deep interest in the question of narrative,” as Madran notes (220), but through its ambiguities reflects fundamental features of narrative mediation. Embedding ambiguities in Wuthering Heights, which address conventions of narrative embedding, are especially poignant in this respect. Wuthering Heights consists of a complex set of interpolated narratives, a feature that becomes an expressive device in the novel. A peculiar narrative rhythm emerges between passages in which narrative mediation fades into the background and others that once again highlight that layers of narration are frequently superimposed. Narratives that for a time seem to provide a direct access to an experience are intermittently exposed as having undergone processes of telling and re-telling with decades between experience and narration or between oral narratives of the same event. Vivid narratives like that of Heathcliff’s desperate attempts to be reunited with Catherine at her grave are, for example, shown to be a written re-telling of two embedded oral narratives after the lapse of a significant time, which are presented to the reader in Nelly’s “own words, only a little condensed” (WH 157) as Lockwood somewhat paradoxically ensures us. The literary convention of presenting narratives embedded in others as if they were conveyed by homodiegetic narrators who “function as perfect taperecorders” (43), as Viswanathan has curiously claimed for the intradiegetic and hypodiegetic narratives of Wuthering Heights, is thus rendered visible and questioned. As several of these embedded voices are sometimes presented as possible speakers of the very same utterance, this effect is heightened. Brontë’s text is accordingly not only “a novel in which complex embedding is particularly striking and significant” as Mieke Bal has argued (47), but directly addresses conventions of narrative embedding. The ambiguities of narration in Wuthering Heights not only render structural features of narrative texts visible, but also have crucial consequences for the portrayal of the narrated world. As readers, our only access to this world is what the narrators tell us about it. Their narratives are based on their sensory perceptions but are also heavily influenced by their assumptions about laws of nature and causality. The plurality of narrators in Wuthering Heights goes along with equally varied competing world views that manifest themselves in narrative styles and specifically in word choices. Lockwood, whose assumptions about the world can be considered closest to those of contemporary readers, soon calls his curious experiences of the night spent at the Heights, which he rationalizes as a nightmare, “ridiculous” (29). He accordingly regards Heathcliff’s belief that Lockwood might have indeed encountered Catherine in this instance as “folly” (29), another term with negative connotations that

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clearly indicates that he regards such an interpretation of the events as entirely impossible. Nelly frequently assures Lockwood that she is of a similar mind-set, for instance when she anticipates his dismissal of the stories of those who claim to have seen Catherine and Heathcliff after their death: “Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I” (336). She also labels her own belief that the appearance of the child at the signpost to her “bodily eye” could be significant as “[s]uperstition” (107), but, in a typical fashion for her, she nevertheless professes that she acted on these forebodings at the time. Shortly before the end of the novel, she begins to wonder if Heathcliff can be human, though she labels the idea that he may not be “superstition” and “nonsense” (WH 330). While she admits to being “superstitious about dreams” (80), she calls Catherine’s professions of her entangled identity with Heathcliff, which she partly bases on a dream, “nonsense” (83). In contrast to this, Catherine and Heathcliff openly challenge fundamental assumptions about the world, even if they at times show awareness that Nelly does not share these notions. Heathcliff’s comment that Nelly “may laugh, if [she] will,” but that this does not change his certainty that Catherine was with him (290) is a case in point. Contrary to Sheila Smith’s claim that “the supernatural […] in Wuthering Heights, […] is totally convincing because in the world of the novel, as in that of the ballad, it is a constant and accepted element of life” (499), contrasting worldviews thus abound in the novel, which considerably influences the portrayal of the narrated world and create a potential for the ontological ambiguities of Wuthering Heights.

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The Ambiguous World of Wuthering Heights Mr Heathcliff was there – laid on his back. His eyes met mine so keen, and fierce, I started; and then, he seemed to smile. I could not think him dead – but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill – no blood trickled from the broken skin, and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more – he was dead and stark! I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes – to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not shut – they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips, and sharp, white teeth sneered too! (WH 335)

Some elements in Nelly’s description of Heathcliff’s corpse in the final chapter of Wuthering Heights suggest that the corpse of Heathcliff and especially his eyes interact with her despite his being “perfectly still” and “dead and stark.” Heathcliff’s gaze is called “life-like,” which can mean “resembling life” (OED 1.) but according to the OED also still carried the meaning of “[h]ealthy, vigorous, well” (2.) in the nineteenth-century. This lexical ambiguity poignantly captures the thematic focus of this passage: do Heathcliff’s eyes merely appear like they are animate to Nelly as a result of her sensory perceptions or her narrating but are inanimate or can the dead Heathcliff actually interact with the living Nelly in this instance? There is some textual evidence in the text passage that indicates that Nelly’s use of language may reflect the realities of the narrated world. First, Nelly mentions that Heathcliff’s eyes “met” hers, which not only turns them into the grammatical subject of the sentence but implicates that he actively and intentionally brings about eye contact with her. The emotions his eyes seem to express (“keen,” “fierce”) are so intense that Nelly “start[s].” She tries but fails at “extinguish[ing], if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation” by closing them; instead, Heathcliff’s eyes “seemed to sneer at [her] attempts” (my emphasis), which implicates that Nelly is not sure if he did indeed do so and allows for the possibility that it merely appeared to be the case. Yet, her next clause presupposes that he indeed does sneer: “his parted lips, and sharp, white teeth sneered, too.”1 Once again, the clash between an implicature and a 1  Compare Karttunen for a concise overview over which constructions result in presuppositions.

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presupposition points out two discrepant readings of an ambiguous text passage. It might be only Heathcliff’s appearance that resembles that of a living body; accordingly, any indication in Nelly’s narrative that proposes reactions by the corpse could be regarded as mere manifestations of epistemic problems or of a curious wording. Yet, the sheer number of expressions both in this text passage and throughout the novel that suggest that the dead can and do interact with the living allow for another conclusion: the boundary between the realms of the living and the dead may indeed be permeable in Wuthering Heights. A network of interdependent ontological ambiguities in the novel, some of which are evoked in Nelly’s description of Heathcliff’s death suggests that the world of Wuthering may deviate from our expectations in other ways, as well. Nelly’s reference to Heathcliff’s “parted lips, and sharp, white teeth” (WH 335) as well as the “frightful” (WH 335) look in his eyes recalls several ambiguous passages in the novel that address the question if Heathcliff might be regarded as a demonic creature, which questions the fundamental ontological category of “humanness.” Furthermore, the open window in his chamber through which the rain drenches a smiling Heathcliff evokes his and Catherine’s vision of heaven as a reunification in afterlife with each other and the natural environment. Accordingly, the boundary between humans and the natural environment may also be permeable, which may enable Heathcliff to blend into a tree, and the weather to react to his flight from the Heights (cf. chapter 3.3). Other text passages question if Catherine can be Heathcliff (“I am Heathcliff;” cf. chapter 3.1) and if the laws of time and space in the world of Wuthering Heights allow for layers of time and places to overlap as when “the […] last seven years of [Catherine’s] life gr[o]w a blank” and she “[i]s a child” at her old room at the Heights while she simultaneously is the wife of Edgar Linton who lies sick at her room at the Grange (WH 125). Ambiguity is a basic structural principle of this world in which entities can be both separate and not separate at the same time, as can layers of time and spaces, and categories such as human can simultaneously apply and not apply. The world of Wuthering Heights defies the established categories and expectations of readers and narrators alike and the boundaries between humans and nature, as well as between life and death seem to become permeable. If Catherine roams the earth after her death only concerns this fictional world, but the novel’s ambiguities raise questions that go very much beyond such issues. They make us wonder not only about the ontology of this world but maybe even about that of our own; they put under scrutiny the only sources of knowledge that are available to the characters in the novel and to us – what we perceive and what we are told about.

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The Permeability between Humans in Wuthering Heights Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as my own being (WH 82)

Catherine’s declaration “I am Heathcliff” is, as Janet Gezari points out, “the simplest kind of sentence one can speak in English, yet it has puzzled generations of readers” (142n13). This striking effect of a phrase that can be counted among the most famous quotations from Brontë’s novel,2 is achieved through a central tension that generates ambiguity. Two referents coincide in the personal pronoun “I,” which violates rules of grammar. The singular is encoded into the semantic content of the term “I” (Bühring 987), which reflects the central ontological assumption that each human being is a separate embodied subject in the word. The first person singular pronoun “I” must in general only take one entity as a referent; in Catherine’s utterance it takes two since the copula “be” expresses a relationship of identity between the subject (Catherine) and the object (Heathcliff) of the sentence. A semantic mismatch thus ensues, which can be resolved in two ways. As a consequence, ambiguity is generated. The utterance “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82) can be accommodated to preexisting assumptions about the world by reinterpreting it as figurative. The predicate “be” can in this case be taken to express the similarity of their personalities and the entire phrase then means that Catherine is very much like Heathcliff. The pronoun “I” accordingly no longer refers to two entities but only to the speaker. Yet, the phrase can also be read literally in this context as an ontological statement about identity which entails that the narrated world must allow for referents to coincide and thus for Catherine and Heathcliff to be conceptualized as one. A world in which the assertion is true that two individuals are literally each other and in this sense one so that the singular “I” can refer to both at the same time must allow for the boundaries between individuals to become permeable. Another local ambiguity in the same sentence has the same ontological implications about identity. Catherine’s claim that Heathcliff is “always, always in [her] mind […] as [her] own being” (WH 82), can either be read as indicating that she thinks as much about him as about herself or as denoting that he is in her mind in the form of Catherine’s own being (depending

2  Barbara Schapiro notes that “[p]erhaps no line from Wuthering Heights has been quoted more often than Catherine’s exclamation, ‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff’” (37). A recent collection of short stories inspired by Wuthering Heights adopts the phrase as its title ( I am Heathcliff, published 2018). Furthermore, several critics have included the quotation in the titles of their articles such as Manette Berlinger, Daniel Cottom, and Graeme Tytler.

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on the interpretation of the ambiguous adverb “as”).3 While each of the two local ambiguities offers the possibility to reconcile the ambiguous phrase with the assumption of a narrated world like our own, in their interaction the other possible meaning which challenges this notion is strengthened.4 In the course of the novel, many other local ambiguities likewise suggest that the boundary between Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s selves might be permeable and that their minds, hearts, and souls are as intricately connected so that their relationship has an existential quality for them. Global ambiguity is generated regarding the question if the narrated world allows for such a merging of the identities of Catherine and Heathcliff as each of these interdependent local ambiguities can also be read in a way that does not entail a revision of assumptions about the nature of the narrated world.5 Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s perception that their selves are merged is supported in the novel 3  “As” can be read in the sense of “[i]n the character, capacity, or function of (OED 11.a.), which leads to an interpretation of Heathlcliff being in Catherine’s mind in the character of her own being; “as” as indicating a comparison (OED 3.) expresses that she thinks about him to the same degree that she thinks about herself. 4  The ambiguity of “I am Heathcliff” is reflected in the divided reaction to the phrase in secondary literature. Only few critics like Graeme Tytler doubt that Catherine means her statement to be read figuratively. Tytler claims that Catherine’s “somewhat cryptic utterance” (167) is a case of strategic vagueness on her part, using “extravagant metaphors” instead of “plain language” as a means to be evasive and in this more or less adopts Nelly’s stance who regards Catherine’s reflections about her special connection to Heathcliff as “nonsense” (169). Most critics agree that Catherine means her radical words literally. Pauline Nestor speaks of the “tension with the boundaries of identity,” which Catherine’s words entail, noting that “she is clearly challenging conventional notions of selfhood and individuality” (“Introduction,” xxvi). Joseph Caroll notes that “self-love and affiliative sociality have fused into a single motive that transforms the unique integrity of the individual identity into a dyadic relation” (251). 5  Barbara Schapiro, for instance, claims that “the fused identity of these two characters – Catherine’s assertion that ‘he’s more myself than I am’ (72) and Heathcliff’s furious lament over Catherine’s dead body, ‘I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’ (139) – sparks the central psychological current of the novel. One’s interpretation of this fused relationship will indeed affect one’s reading of the novel as a whole” (37). Various critics have commented on the intricately connected identities of Catherine and Heathcliff. Bersani argues that “[i]n Wuthering Heights and Les Chants de Maldoror we no longer have coherent, individuated, intelligible structures of personality; in a sense, we no longer even have a locatable self” (189–90). For Schapiro, Catherine and Heathcliff […] are projections of a single, but deeply divided self (38) whereas Seichepine claims that “[t]he wish for symbiosis that Catherine thus expresses appears to be very close to the infant’s state of ‘non-differentiation’ ” (211). Van Ghent notes that “[i]mpassioned by their brother-and-sisterlike identity of kind they can only destroy each other, for it is impossible for two persons to be each other (as Catherine says she “is” Heathcliff) without destruction of the physical limitations that individualize and separate” (The English Novel 162).

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as a series of obstacles to their relationship – including death – have serious repercussions but nevertheless do not seem to cause a separation between them.

Ontological Ambiguities in Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s Reflections on their Relationship One of these obstacles is Catherine’s engagement with Edgar Linton, which she discusses in a conversation with Nelly that includes Catherine’s declaration “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82). Her feelings for her fiancé serve as a foil for her reflections on the special nature of her bond with Heathcliff which abound with ontological ambiguities. Put through Nelly’s “catechism” (WH 78) on why she would want to marry Edgar, Catherine acknowledges that the love she has for Edgar is based on his good looks (“handsome,” “young”), on the fact that he is “pleasant to be with” and “cheerful,” that he “loves [her]” (WH 78), and that he is able to grant Catherine a good social position (WH 78–79). Nelly’s further inquiries unveil that he is the only available candidate to fulfil these criteria: “If there be any [other handsome, rich men], they are out of my way – I’ve seen none like Edgar” (WH 79). Confronted with the fleeting nature of all these features, Catherine remarks that in marrying him she “ha[s] only to do with the present” (WH 79). Despite the social and monetary advantages of this marriage and the lack of any resistance from either family, Catherine explains that her decision to marry Edgar Linton seems to go against her very nature.6 Taking Nelly’s question of “where” the obstacle lies rather literally, she points to “her forehead” and “her breast” and tells her: “[i]n whichever place the soul lives – in my soul, and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!” (WH 80). When Nelly responds 6  Terry Eagleton has related Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar Linton to economic structures “In a crucial act of self-betrayal and bad faith, Catherine rejects Heathcliff as a suitor because he is socially inferior to Linton; and it is from this that the train of destruction follows” (Myths of Power 118–19). For Eagleton, “ ‘I am Heathcliff!’ is dramatically arresting, but it is also a way of keeping the outcast at arm’s length, evading the challenge he offers. If Catherine is Heathcliff – if identity rather than relationship is in question – then their estrangement is inconceivable, and Catherine can therefore turn to others without violating the timeless metaphysical idea Heathcliff embodies. She finds in him an integrity of being denied or diluted in routine social relations; but to preserve that ideal means reifying him to a Hegelian essence, sublimely untainted by empirical fact. Heathcliff, understandably, refuses to settle for this: he would rather enact his essence in existence by becoming Catherine’s lover. He can, it seems, be endowed with impressive ontological status only at the price of being nullified as a person” (118). Mengham regards Catherine’s dilemma about marrying Edgar as “the reflection of a profound division within her own self, the insuperable ‘doubleness’ that Nelly’s description spells out” (37). Catherine “loves Heathcliff for himself and, Linton only for what he represents;” at the same time, Heathcliff can fulfil her “childhood itch for superiority” that he sees represented in the whip she requests from her father (37).

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that she finds this “very strange” and “cannot make it out,” Catherine recounts a dream that has “altered the colour of [her] mind” to give her “a feeling of how [she] feel[s]” because she cannot “explain it […] distinctly” (WH 80). In this dream, Catherine pleads to be expelled from heaven because it “did not seem to be [her] home;” her wish is granted, and she returns to the earth (WH 81). Catherine connects her feeling of alienation on this occasion with her reluctance to marry Edgar: That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. (WH 81)

Catherine’s words point to a fundamental connection between Heathcliff and herself that concerns the very material of their souls. She claims that “his and [her soul] are the same,” another ontological ambiguity that anticipates her assertion of “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82). Again, Catherine’s words can either be read literally to indicate that there is a permeability between their souls that allows for them to be regarded as one or figuratively as indicating their similarity. Catherine draws on elemental forces of nature to emphasize the difference of their soul(s) from Edgar’s, first on the contrast between “frost” and “fire” that points towards their ability to feel passionately and then on the more unconventional imagery of moonbeams and lightning. Unlike frost, which actively emits coldness, moonbeams are neither hot nor cold and are a natural source of light, just like lightning is. Yet, they are on different ends of the scale when it comes to the intensity of their light: moonlight is a faint reflection of the light of the sun and thus fundamentally different from lightning, which is extremely bright, extremely hot and powerful in its impact. Catherine’s reflections on her relationship of identity with Heathcliff go beyond the claim that their souls “are the same” (WH 81) and leaves her to declare that “he’s more myself than I am” (WH 81), another ambiguous phrase which anticipates “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82). The clash between the third-person pronoun “he” and the reflexive first-person pronoun “myself” in Catherine’s utterance leads to a violation of the presuppositions of identity connected with the two pronouns.7

7  Compare chapter 4.2 for a detailed discussion of this phrase.

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Four ontological ambiguities thus address the nature of the connection between Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s selves in her conversation with Nelly namely “he’s more myself than I am” (WH 81), “his [soul] and mine are the same” (81), “I am Heathcliff” (82) and “he’s always, always in my mind […] as my own being” (WH 82). The number of assertions of a similar nature and the lengthy reflections on love and identity indicate that Catherine intends her radical declarations to be taken literally. Especially the last part of her discourse with Nelly expresses the existential nature her relationship with Heathcliff takes on for Catherine: [Heathcliff] comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees – my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as my own being – so don’t talk of our separation again – it is impracticable (WH 82–83).

Catherine accordingly argues that her place in the universe is dependent on Heathcliff whom she implicates to be “[her] existence of [hers] beyond [her]” (WH 82). This claim can again be tied in with the notion that their selves are merged, as can her rhetorical question of “[w]hat […] the use of [her] creation if [she] were entirely contained here” (WH 82), which implies that her connection with Heathcliff is the purpose of her existence.8 Catherine seems to assume that the permeable boundary between their selves, which a literal reading of Heathcliff as an “existence of [Catherine’s] beyond [herself]” entails, goes along with a union of their minds; Heathcliff is “always, always in [her] mind, as [her] own being” (s. above) and another local ambiguity suggests that her emotions and thoughts are also shared by Heathcliff: the verb “comprehends” can either be read in the sense of “understands” (OED “comprehend v.” II.) or as “contains” (OED “comprehend v.” III.). 8  Compare Dörr’s discussion of Wuthering Heights in the context of Romanticism: “Indem Catherine ihre Liebesbeziehung zu Heathcliff in den Kontext unvergänglichen Lebens stellt [if all else perished etc], verleiht sie ihr religiöse, geradezu apokalyptische Züge“ (213).

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Accordingly, Heathcliff either understands Catherine’s “feelings to Edgar and [her]self” or they are contained “in his person” (WH 82).9 Catherine’s famous utterance “I am Heathcliff” is thus part of a co-text that extensively treats the notion of the merging of selves. As a result of their entangled existence, her love for Heathcliff is “necessary” (WH 82) to the point that her connection to the whole “Universe” (WH 82) depends on it. Her relationship with Heathcliff is everlasting like the “eternal rocks beneath” while her love for Edgar is fleeting like the “foliage in the woods” (WH 82).10 The contrast between her relationships with Edgar and Heathcliff becomes especially apparent when her powerful poetic expressions about Heathcliff are compared to her description of her love for Edgar in the same conversation: ‘[…] And, now, say how you love him?’ ‘As every body loves – You’re silly, Nelly.’ ‘Not at all – Answer.’ ‘I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says – I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely, and altogether. There now!’ (WH 79)

Catherine’s use of clichés reflects her claim that she loves Edgar “[a]s every body loves” (WH 79). Her reluctance to comment on the nature of her love in this instance is curious, especially when contrasted with her willingness

9  See Marsden for an analysis of the christological language Catherine and Heathcliff use to describe their connection. Marsden reads Heathcliff as fulfilling the role of Christ, but acknowledges at the same time that Wuthering Heights is “a novel that has little place for a Christian redeemer” but rather “undermines dualities such as God/Satan, Christ/antiChrist and heaven/hell” (246). 10  For Durbach, Catherine does not choose “between Civilization and Eros, the attractions of society and the demands of soul” but rather between “imperishable bliss or moral passion, the absolute necessity for a symbol of immortality or the compelling lure of the flesh” (69). He claims that “love which is visible and delightful and pleasurable is also organic and mutable, subject to the laws of time and change” and that “the Romantic lover will seek for that which is necessary rather than delightful, eternal rather than temporal, and rocklike rather than organic. Heathcliff, like Wordsworth’s Lucy, is given a ‘thingness’ without motion and without force – the very quest for deathlessness ironically creating merely petrified and lifeless forms as its solution to decay. It is not clear to me whether Emily Brontë intends this paradox, this fallacy of Romantic logic. […] what this ultimately amounts to is a form of sterile self-worship in which the possibility of a genuinely human connection is eliminated; for one does not mate with one’s surrogate brother just as one cannot mate with oneself” (70). He argues that mortality and proceation are constitutive for love and that Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s relationship thus constitutes a “life-denying perversity” (71).

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to keep speaking about her relationship with Heathcliff despite Nelly’s reluctance (WH 80–81) and her difficulties to put it into words. Curiously, Catherine presents the radical thoughts on her bond with Heathcliff that challenge fundamental notions of identity as if they were generally accepted ideas even if they are hard to put into words: “I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you” (WH 82). However, Catherine’s poetic explanations of her concept of the permeability between selves are counterbalanced by Nelly’s opinion, who dismisses them altogether: ‘If I can make any sense of your nonsense, Miss,’ I said, ‘it only goes to convince me that you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else, that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl. […]’ (WH 83)

Nelly clearly does not have “a notion […] of an existence of [hers] beyond [herself]” (WH 82). The “sense” she appears to find in what she regards as “nonsense” is that Catherine will not give up Heathcliff after her marriage, which makes her either “ignorant” or “wicked” in her eyes. An equilibrium is thus established as regards the question whether the narrated world of Wuthering Heights allows for a permeability between selves, as Catherine claims, or if it does not. In the latter case, Catherine’s reflections must either be reinterpreted or dismissed as “nonsense,” as Nelly suggests. Even though Catherine regards the possibility of an “existence of yours beyond you” (WH 82) as a given, she nevertheless tries to convince herself that Heathcliff “has no notion of these things” (WH 81). Yet, her own admission that she wants to “cheat [her] uncomfortable conscience” into believing this might be true (WH 81) implicates that she knows that he does. Indeed, Heathcliff’s own reflections about the nature of his connection with Catherine are strikingly similar to hers; he likewise conceptualizes their relationship as an existential union of minds, souls and heart. Echoing Catherine’s earlier claim that he is “always, always in [her] mind” (WH 82), Heathcliff tells Catherine that he “could as soon forget [her] as [his] existence” (161).11 Accordingly, his very being does not only depend on a consciousness of himself in his mind, but the awareness of his own existence depends on him thinking of her.12 He attributes the same features to Catherine’s mind when he 11  Gezari (231n8) notes that “when he says that he could as soon forget her as ‘[his] existence,’ Heathcliff comes close to Catherine’s ‘I-am-Heathcliff’ formulation of their relation to each other.” 12  The concept of thinking and awareness as constituting being can be related to Descartes famous phrase “cogito ergo sum.” On the connection between Descartes and Emily

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dismisses Nelly’s claim that Catherine has “nearly forgotten” him: “Oh Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me!” (WH 148). After previously addressing the similarity of the “material” of their souls (WH 81), she now claims that Heathcliff is indeed to be found in her soul: Oh, you see, Nelly! he would not relent a moment, to keep me out of the grave! That is how I’m loved! Well, never mind! That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me – he’s in my soul. (WH 161)

Heathcliff takes up the same notion when he rhetorically asks her: Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave? (WH 163)

Once more their choice of pronouns is curious. Catherine distinguishes between the Heathcliff who stands before her and “my” Heathcliff, who is in her soul. A figurative reading of her statement can easily resolve the problem of the coexistence of two Heathcliffs and the location of one in Catherine’s soul. For instance, her utterance can be reinterpreted as affirming the strength of her own feelings towards the image of Heathcliff as she likes to regard him. Yet, Heathcliff’s statement makes a direct reference to the soul as situated in Catherine’s grave that echoes the concept of “tak[ing] him with [her].” This similarity supports a literal reading of both sentences instead of a figurative interpretation. Heathcliff’s use of the possessive pronoun “your” is ambiguous as it is unclear whose soul he refers to. Is it living without Catherine’s soul that he cannot imagine? Or does he believe that his own soul will go to the grave with her? The latter reading suggests that their souls are so intricately connected that they can be regarded as one. This notion is reminiscent of John Donne’s concept of the souls of the lovers in “The Extasie:” But as all severall soules containe Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe again, And makes both one, each this and that. (33–36)

Brontë see Daniel Cottom’s article “I think, therefore I am Heathcliff.” Cottom claims that “Descartes’s Meditations can be said to have laid the foundations not only for modern philosophy but also for influential works like Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and their revisionary successors such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)” (1068).

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Catherine and Heathcliff can thus indeed be regarded as “soul-mates” (Shannon 102)13 in a very literal sense of the term in that they share one soul. This can furthermore be supported by Catherine’s earlier ambiguous claim: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” (81; see above). The ensuing chapter of Nelly’s narrative can further reinforce such an interpretation as she remarks that Catherine’s corpse “asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitants” (167). Most modern editions have changed the plural “inhabitants,” a form which can be found in the first two editions of Wuthering Heights, to the singular “inhabitant” (Nestor, “Notes,” 351). This tendency is striking since the plural is “richly suggestive of the shared identity of Catherine and Heathcliff” as Nestor (351) rightly notes. The phrase suggests that the soul Catherine’s body used to contain consists of two intermingled souls, which echoes Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s statements in the previous chapter and again recalls “The Extasie.” If this assumption is accepted, then the consequences of Catherine’s death for Heathcliff are indeed fundamental: with his soul in the grave, only his bodily shell would be left on earth. Heathcliff’s desperate pleas to Catherine when he learns about her death take up this notion: Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! (WH 169)

Heathcliff’s words entail that he has lost both his life and his soul with Catherine’s death. Again, the pronoun “my,” which grammatically refers to himself, could in the context refer to Catherine – after all, it is her whom he has lost. Nelly’s comment about the “former inhabitants” of Catherine’s body offers another interpretation for the connection between Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s souls that could be related to the last two stanzas of Goethe’s poem “Ginkgo Biloba”:14 13  Shannon’s use of the hyphen may make this more visible to modern readers. However, it is not clear if this was his intention. The first example the OED lists for a non-hyphenated form of soulmates is 1976; Shannon wrote his article in 1959. 14  Maggie Allen suggests that Emily Brontë was influenced by German poets, including Goethe. She bases her argument on thematic connections between Brontë’s works and specific works of German writers, among them Goethe, on her knowledge of German, on which Elizabeth Gaskell, for instance, comments in her Life of Charlotte Brontë, and on the “great influx of German literature coming into England in the early decades of the nineteenth century” (7), as a result of which the works of German writers including Goethe could be found in Blackwood’s and Fraser’s. Furthermore, the Brontës are known

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chapter 3 Ist es ein lebendig Wesen? Das sich in sich selbst getrennt; Sind es Zwey? die sich erlesen, Dass man sie als Eines kennt.

Is it one living being That divides itself into itself? Are there two who have chosen each other, So that they are known as one?

Solche Frage zu erwidern Fand ich wohl den rechten Sinn; Fühlst du nicht an meinen Liedern, Dass ich Eins und doppelt bin?

To reply to such a question I found, I think, the condign sense. Do you not feel that in my poems I am single and twofold? (qtd. inUnseld 43)15

The conclusion of the speaker in “Ginkgo Biloba” that he is “Eins und doppelt,” “single and twofold,”16 could also be regarded as an adequate description of the nature of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship. There is a boundary between their selves, but it is permeable. Each of them has their own emotions and each of them acts in ways the other one does not agree with; Catherine’s love for Edgar Linton and her marriage to him is a prime example for this. But nevertheless, the boundary between them is permeable enough that Catherine can take Heathcliff with her to the grave in the form of their shared soul.

“Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo!”: Identity and Separation Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s assertions about their interlinked identity go along with claims about the existentiality of their union for both. Catherine’s words that “the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger” (WH 82) if Heathcliff ceased to be find their equivalent in his following utterance:

to have at least possessed the complete works of Schiller (cf. Allen 8). While Allen detects “no single definitive factor links Emily Brontë directly to the German poets” (10), it can thus be considered likely that she has encountered works by Goethe (10). Conger describes similarities between metaphors for the “irrational, magnetic attraction between Catherine and Heathcliff” and those employed by Goethe in his Elective Affinities (1003). 15  Translation by Kenneth J. Northcott as found in Unseld. Compare Unseld for a detailed discussion of the poem “Ginkgo Biloba” and the significance of the Gingko for Goethe’s life and work. 16  Carsten Rohde argues that the concept expressed in Gingko Biloba of being “Eins und doppelt” lies at the heart of Goethe’s conception of the nature of love in his love poetry: “[D]ie Goethe’sche ›poiesis‹ der Liebe [ist] zugleich eine Poetik der Übergänglichkeit […]. Dido und Aeneas, Hero und Leander, Romeo und Julia, Hatem und Suleika. Es ist dies das Mittelfeld, die Lücke zwischen eins und zwei, dem Basisverhältnis des Augenblicks der Liebe. Von ihm ist in Gingo biloba die Rede, einem der berühmtesten Liebesgedichte Goethes“ (377).

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And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future – death and hell – existence, after losing her, would be hell. (WH 148)

This emphasizes once more that Heathcliff like Catherine regards their union as fundamental necessity and the threat to their very existence that separation poses. In the course of the novel, a series of obstacles and barriers nevertheless emerge between them that put their assertions to the test. The first of these obstacles in Catherine’s engagement to Edgar. When Nelly learns about it, she prophecies that this will mean a separation from Heathcliff: As soon as you become Mrs Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all! Have you considered how you’ll bear the separation, and how he’ll bear to be quite deserted in the world? (WH 82)

An enraged Catherine insists that they cannot be separated: ‘He quite deserted! we separated!’ she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. ‘Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen – for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing, before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. (WH 82)

In the course of their conversation, Catherine ties the impossibility of their separation to their merged selves: Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind –not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as my own being – so, don’t talk of our separation again – it is impracticable […]. (WH 82–83)

Catherine thus argues that the union between them prohibits any separation and that anyone who attempts to do so will “meet the fate of Milo.” Several critics17 have noted that the reference is very likely to the Olympic wrestling champion Milo, whose death is described by the Greek historian Strabo in the following way: They relate that at a banquet of the philosophers, when one of the pillars in the hall gave way, Milo sustained the ceiling while they all escaped, and afterwards saved himself. It is likely that, trusting to the same strength, he met his fate as related by some, for whilst making his way through a thick wood, he strayed considerably out of the path, when finding a great log with wedges in it, he thrust 17  See, for instance, Helen Small in a note to the Oxford Edition of Wuthering Heights (328n72) and David Cole.

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chapter 3 both his hands and feet into the fissure, intending to split it completely, but was only able to force it enough to let the wedges fall out, when the gaping log presently closed on him, and he, being taken as in a snare, was devoured by wild beasts. (vi.i.395)

Milo’s attempt to separate the tree which may be split to some extent but still holds together at the base is thus severely punished with a slow and gruesome death. The ensuing events prove Nelly right in so far that Catherine’s engagement causes a spatial separation from Heathcliff, who leaves the Heights when he learns about it. On the very same day on which Catherine predicts that the “fate of Milo” will await those who are to separate them, Heathcliff leaves, and there is “a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building” (WH 85). The splitting of a tree is either attributed to the wind or to a bolt of lightning and thus to the very element Catherine chooses to explain the material of both their souls with. Catherine, who might be regarded as responsible for their quarrel becomes seriously ill. Heathcliff soon returns and the joy both display on this occasion exceeds any they are shown to experience elsewhere in the novel. Catherine describes it as “too great to be real” (WH 96) and experiences its impact as fundamental: The event of this evening has reconciled me to God, and humanity! I had risen in angry rebellion against providence – Oh, I’ve endured very, very bitter misery, Nelly! If that creature knew how bitter, he’d be ashamed to cloud its removal with idle petulance – It was kindness for him which induced me to bear it alone: had I expressed the agony I frequently felt, he would have been taught to long for its alleviation as ardently as I – However, it’s over, and I’ll take no revenge on his folly – I can afford to suffer anything, hereafter! Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it – and, as a proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly – Good night – I’m an angel!’ (WH 100)

Catherine thus describes the effect of Heathcliff’s parting not only as a source of “very, very bitter misery” but as the cause for an alienation from providence, which mirrors her earlier claims that “the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger” without Heathcliff (WH 82). His return has resulted in a reconciliation with “God, and humanity,” a phrasing which again highlights the existential importance of their bond for Catherine. Yet, their reunion only lasts for a brief time. Catherine still fully expects it to be possible to maintain a relationship with both men at the same time, which she illustrates with a gesture of joining their hands: “she seized Linton’s reluctant fingers and crushed them into [Heathcliff’s]” (WH 96). The violence

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she has to resort to unite their hands already forebodes the coming catastrophe. While Edgar is generally compliant to Catherine’s every wish (WH 92), he breaks this pattern when he forces her to make a decision between them: Will you give up Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you to be my friend, and his at the same time; and I absolutely require to know which you choose. (WH 117)

Despite Heathcliff’s loathing of Edgar, he could not have made Catherine bear his rival’s loss as he explains to Nelly: ‘I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss. The fear that she would restrains me; and there you see the distinction between our feelings – Had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society, as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood! But, till then – if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me –till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!’ (WH 147–48)

Heathcliff’s reluctance to hurt Edgar despite his hatred for him is based on the intricate connection of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s hearts, which Catherine tries to exploit. While Catherine is still convinced that she can make Edgar Linton comply with her wishes, she already outlines the “deed to be reserved for a forlorn hope” (WH 116–117): Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend – if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity! (WH 116)

Edgar’s insistence on a decision ultimately leads to Catherine’s death, as a confrontation between him and his wife causes a second fit of illness from which Catherine never recovers. Catherine’s own prediction and expression of her intent has sparked a discussion if her death is to be regarded as a suicide and thus the result of an act of free will,18 or as a punishment for the separation she has caused from Heathcliff through her marriage. Cole is a representative of the second position and argues that the second part of “the fate of Milo” as described in Strabo, namely being “devoured by wild beasts” (vi.i.395) after the tree is split, does not literally happen to Catherine, though her fate might 18  For a discussion of notions of suicide in Wuthering Heights compare, for instance, Gates.

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be compared to Milo’s on a figurative level in that she falls prey to her own decisions and, as a result, dies.19 Heathcliff indeed blames Catherine for their separation through her death and again refers to the notion that their hearts, like their souls, are one: Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort – you deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears. They’ll blight you – they’ll damn you. You loved me – then what right had you to leave me? What right – answer me – for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart – you have broken it – and in breaking it, you have broken mine. (WH 162–63).

If Heathcliff’s words are read literally20 then one heart breaking directly results in the other heart breaking, which implies an intricate connection between the two hearts.21 The final encounter of Catherine and Heathcliff before her death is overshadowed by the threat of separation and depicts them as locked in a violent 19  In his article, Cole also mentions the attack of the Linton’s bulldog on Catherine and Lockwood’s attempts to shake her off as instances of a fulfilment of “the fate of Milo” (25). This is, however, rather unconvincing, as the former happened before Catherine’s utterance and the latter, though more probable (if it is not assumed to be simply part of a dream), is not directly connected to the separation between them. In the light of Cole’s convincing reference to Byron it is striking that he does not mention the split tree in the novel, which would support this line of argumentation, but then goes on to claim that “Catherine most clearly recalls a different Milo, however,” namely Titus Anias Milo, a Roman politician who was exiled and died while trying to fight his way back (25). Catherine describes herself as an “exile” at Thrushcross Grange (WH 125). An association with Titus Anias Milo might be assumed, but the allusions to the Greek wrestler Milo seem much stronger in the text. Cole then mentions other Milos (26), but none of them fit the co-text of Catherine’s statement of “meeting the fate of Milo” as a punishment for the separation between the lovers. 20  Compare Romans 8:38–9: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” See also Marsden on the connection between Wuthering Heights and Romans (247). 21  Gezari notes that this image of breaking hearts may refer to Byron’s “I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name”: “But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,/ And man shall not break it – whatever thou mayst”. She argues that “Brontë’s formulation is more complicated than Byron’s. Catherine hasn’t just broken Heathcliff’s heart (as only she could): she’s broken her own heart, and his breaks because of it” (233n10).

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embrace. What might be regarded as the actual separation in the lines of “till death do us part,” however, turns out to be paradoxically the possibility for a reunion. 3.2

The Permeability between Life and Death in Wuthering Heights ‘You were very wicked, Mr Heathcliff!’ I exclaimed; ‘were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?’ ‘I disturbed nobody, Nelly,’ he replied; ‘and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly – till yesternight – and yesternight, I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper, with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers.’ ‘And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?’ I said. ‘Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!’ he answered. (WH 289)

Three interdependent local ambiguities in Heathcliff’s response to Nelly’s reproach address an issue that runs almost through the entire novel: the nature of death and afterlife. Each of the three variants of the term sleep in the polyptoton “sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper” literally refers to the unconscious state living beings regularly undergo, but they are also highly lexicalized metaphorical expressions relating to death. According to the OED, sleeping can denotate the state of “l[ying] in death” (I.2.), “sleeper” can refer to “a dead person” (I.2.a.), and the noun “sleep” to “the repose of death” (4.), a meaning which is strengthened through the adjective “last.” Referring to death in terms of sleep, a concept that is much more familiar and easier to grasp, is conventionalized to such a degree that expressions of it have not only entered dictionaries, but can be found on tombstones, in prayers and in everyday discourse.22 Their presence in Heathcliff’s reflections on death and the afterlife is thus not unusual, even if his approach to death is: this part of the conversation between Heathcliff and Nelly is set between descriptions of the two occasions on which Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s corpse to be close to her. Yet, the literal meanings of “sleeping,” “sleep,” and “sleeper” are strongly evoked in this instance through several different techniques that unearth the potential for ambiguity 22  For a discussion of metaphors of death see Sexton, who argues that “[t]he number of metaphors for human mortality that in some way relate it to sleep is too great to be coincidental” (343).

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inherent in these conventional expressions. Firstly, the repetition of terms with the same root foregrounds the original concept “sleep” that serves as a source domain for the conventionalized metaphors. Furthermore, Heathcliff’s inversion of Nelly’s claim that he has “disturb[ed] the dead” attributes a curiously active role to the “sleeper:” Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years – incessantly – remorselessly […]. (WH 289)

The ability to “disturb” someone “remorselessly” indicates agency and intent, characteristics that are not usually attributed to a dead person; they rather constitute a difference between the living who sleep, but can wake up, and the dead who cannot. Heathcliff’s utterance can be reinterpreted in the sense that the memory of Catherine and the pain of having lost her, metonymically expressed by “she,” have troubled him since her death; however, the adverb “remorselessly” is hard to integrate into such a reading and makes it more probable that Heathcliff intends his utterance to be taken literally. Furthermore, he broaches the same concept of the dead as potentially active forces in the previous sentence as well: “you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground” (WH 289). If the dead are agentive and can interact with the living, then they are in this sense closer to actual (living) sleepers. Heathcliff’s words, nevertheless, do not propose that Catherine is alive and merely sleeping. The kind of “sleep” that he envisions next to the “sleeper” Catherine is the “last sleep” with “[his] heart stopped and [his] cheek frozen against hers” (WH 289). Heathcliff’s vision of the afterlife grants the “sleeper[s]” an active role on earth and an interaction with the living and thus Catherine can indeed “distur[b] [him]” remorselessly after her death. Adopting Heathcliff’s stance of a sleep-like death and afterlife entails that assumptions about the nature of the narrated world must be adapted to allow for the possibility of a permeability between the living and the dead and an agency of the latter on earth. The local ambiguities of “sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper” and “she has disturbed me” are connected to other local ambiguities throughout the novel. Some of these ambiguities are likewise based on the connection between sleep and death, while others address the question where afterlife takes place, and some ambiguous passages depict events that can be read as interactions between the dead and the living. These local ambiguities are connected in the novel to a global ambiguity regarding death.

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“[A]lmost as death-like”: The Juxtaposition of Catherine’s Corpse and Her Sleeping Husband The close relationship between sleep and death has been noted at least since antiquity23 and persists in conventionalized metaphors like “eternal sleep.” In Wuthering Heights, the connection between sleep and death is not only addressed in lexical ambiguities, but sleep and death are also juxtaposed literally in the form of Catherine’s corpse and the body of her sleeping husband next to her: [Edgar Linton’s] young and fair features were almost as death-like as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed; but his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile. No angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared; and I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay. My mind was never in a holier frame, than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. (WH 166)

Catherine’s death is set almost exactly in the middle of the novel and constitutes a major milestone in Wuthering Heights. Nelly calls Catherine’s corpse an “untroubled image of Divine rest” thirteen chapters after Lockwood encounters “[his] ghostly Catherine” and after Catherine herself has insisted that she “won’t rest” (WH 126) and will “not be at peace” (WH 161). Her corpse and the sleeping Edgar Linton are now portrayed as looking strikingly similar. The “features” of Catherine’s husband look “almost as death-like” and “almost as fixed” as hers do, on Nelly’s account. Her description draws attention to a crucial similarity between the two concepts that are so frequently combined in language in the form of metaphors of death: corpses and sleepers look very much alike. Nelly’s use of the adverb “almost” implies that the degree of stillness and fixedness in Edgar Linton is somewhat smaller than that in his dead wife. Yet, the diametrically opposed sources she attributes to their “hush” seem to fall into the realm of interpretation rather than observation: “his was the hush of exhausted anguish, and hers of perfect peace” (WH 166). Nelly derives the conclusion that Catherine must lie in “perfect peace” and Divine rest on the sensory evidence of her corpse. This ties in with Evangelical ideas at the time as Lutz notes.24 Yet, even if the conclusiveness of such 23  In Greek and Roman mythology, Hypnos (Somnus) and Thanatos, the gods of sleep and death, are twin brothers (see Stenger). 24  Lutz comments that Nelly’s conclusion of peaceful rest for Catherine on the basis of the appearance of her body “prove her to be an evangelical of a moderate stripe” and that her conviction that Catherine’s body provides a window into the “shadowless hereafter” comes from the evangelical belief in the “good death,” based on Catholic tradition (65).

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evidence is accepted, most of the ascriptions of peacefulness and infinite rest in the text passage are derived from generalized observations of the dead: I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break; and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter – the Eternity they have entered – where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr Linton’s, when he so regretted Catherine’s blessed release! (WH 167)

Her claim that she “see[s] a repose that neither earth nor hell can break” refers to several occasions of “watching in the chamber of death,” not to Catherine’s corpse specifically. While she uses verbs of perception like “see,” what is described rather seem to be based on underlying assumptions. This tendency continues in the latter part of this sentence in which she again uses a sensory verb: she claims to “feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter – the Eternity they have entered – where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness.” It is hard to imagine how the notion of infinity can be observed visually, and even more so the infinite “sympathy” of love and the “fulness” of joy, and these claims are moreover derived from other corpses, not that of Catherine. Returning to the specific “occasion” of Catherine’s death, Nelly furthermore specifically introduces doubts about the nature of Catherine’s afterlife: To be sure one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection but not then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitants. (WH 167)

“[S]easons of cold reflection” (WH 167), which give rise to considerations if she “merits” heaven are juxtaposed with the immediate presence of the supposedly peaceful corpse, who is described in a strangely active way: the corpse “assert[s]” his tranquillity and this then constitutes a “pledge” for the peacefulness of the soul, turning it at least grammatically into an agentive subject with intentions and beliefs. The notion of an active afterlife closer to actual sleep, which allows for an interaction between the living and the dead, is thus already subtly present in the description of Catherine’s dead body and that of her sleeping husband next to her.

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Nelly’s discovery of Heathcliff’s corpse at the end of the novel (see above) recalls and inverts this image. While the living Edgar Linton was attributed a “death-like” quality, Heathcliff’s eyes seem to be “life-like” in death (WH 335). The appearance of Heathcliff’s body provides no indication of “a repose that neither hell nor earth can break” (167) that Nelly has claimed to generally see in corpses. He is “perfectly still” in spite of the rain, has a wound that does not bleed, and the rigor mortis has set in (“dead and stark”) which convinces Nelly that he has passed away, but several ambiguities suggest that he interacts with Nelly.25 Like Catherine, Heathcliff appears to smile, but on this occasion his facial expression does not prompt comparison to an “angel in heaven” (WH 167); instead Nelly has what she calls “another fit of cowardice” (WH 335) and calls for Joseph, who comments that Heathcliff is “girnning at death” (WH 335) and concludes from this that “Th’ divil’s harried off his soul” (WH 335).26 Yet, the only significant difference between his corpse and Catherine’s seems to be that his eyes are open and hers were closed, which leaves the question if hers might also have displayed a similarly “life-like” look. “[I]ncomparably beyond and above”: Catherine’s Abode in Afterlife The blatant differences between Catherine and Heathcliff’s notions of death and the more conventional and traditional concepts Nelly believes in not only concern the nature of the afterlife but also its place. Several ambiguous passages in the novel suggest that Catherine and Heathcliff envision afterlife to take place on earth rather than in Christian heaven, which allows for the realms of the living and the dead to overlap and the boundaries between them to become permeable. This concept of afterlife seems highly desirable to both – more so than traditional Christian notions of afterlife. Faced with the prospect of her approaching death, Catherine accordingly dismisses Nelly’s pity: Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength – you are sorry for me – very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. (WH 162; my emphasis)

After Catherine’s death, Nelly claims to quote Catherine’s own words:

25  Compare the introduction to this chapter above for a detailed analysis of this passage. 26  The living Joseph is shown to mirror the dead Heathcliff in this instance much as the living Edgar mirrors the dead corpse of Catherine (WH 166).

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chapter 3 I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered, a few hours before: ‘Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!’ (WH 166–67; my emphasis)

The phrase “beyond and above us all” is not employed in an ambiguous way in either text passage, but a different meaning emerges for it in each co-text; the phrase itself is thus ambiguated in the interplay between them. In Nelly’s utterance, “beyond and above” is specified to refer to Christian heaven in a context rife with Christian concepts: [N]o angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared. And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay. my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered, a few hours before: ‘Incomparably beyond, and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!’ (WH 166–67)

Nelly compares Catherine’s beauty in death with that of an “angel in heaven,” speaks of the “hol[y] frame” of her mind in the presence of the “infinite calm,” and “the untroubled image of Divine rest.” Moreover, Nelly explicates the phrase “beyond, and above” by adding an afterthought that fleshes out its meaning. When she says that “[w]hether still on earth or now in heaven, her [Catherine’s] spirit is at home with God,” she asserts that she believes Catherine to be in the realm of God, which is traditionally imagined to be above the earth and outside the reach of the living and in this sense “beyond.” The context of Catherine’s utterance that Nelly claims to merely “ech[o]” (WH 166) indicates that she had a very different concept of afterlife in mind: [T]he thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength – you are sorry for me – very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. (WH 161–62)

Instead of the explicit references to “heaven” and “God,” metaphorical expressions dominate Catherine’s reflections on life after death, such as “this shattered prison,”27 which she is “enclosed” in, and the “glorious world” she 27  Gezari (232n9) notes that “Brontë’s poems frequently represent death as an enlargement of a spirit that is confined by the body during life” and specifically names “The Prisoner” and “Aye, there it is! It wakes tonight” as examples.

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“wearies” to escape into. These expressions serve as reference points for deictic expressions like “there” and “it” in the following sentences. In contrast to Nelly in her comments on Catherine’s death, Catherine herself does not clearly specify the phrase “incomparably beyond and above you all” in its immediate verbal context. Accordingly, Catherine’s expression might at a first glance be taken to refer to a Christian afterlife in heaven, as well. After all, the image of the body as a prison, from which the soul longs to escape, is not unusual in Christian discourses on death and the attribute “glory” or “glorious” is frequently applied to heaven in the Bible.28 However, the image of the body as a prison also appears in non-Christian texts such as in Plato’s Phaedo, and the “glorious world” is sometimes employed as a metaphor for heaven in literary and non-literary publications in the 1830s and 1840s, but in other texts denotes entirely different issues.29 Considering the wider co-text of the novel up to this paragraph, it seems highly unlikely that the Christian heaven could have been the meaning Catherine intended for “beyond and above.” Catherine “yearn[s]” to be there and will be “sorry for [them]” once she is (WH 162), with “above” also taking on a connotation of superiority. In general, heaven might be regarded just as a place to long for and the proximity to God might be associated with superiority towards those still living on earth. However, the novel so far has shown that an afterlife in heaven is not something Catherine strives for, but which she rejects. Only a few paragraphs earlier, the reader has been reminded of a memorable passage that made Catherine’s attitude to heaven explicit. A shocked Nelly comments on Catherine’s continued attachment to Heathcliff despite her marriage to Edgar Linton by stating: “[w]ell might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her” (160). This recalls Catherine’s dream of being ejected from heaven before her marriage because she did not feel at home there: ‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’ ‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’ ‘But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.’ […] ‘[H]eaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out 28  Compare, for instance, Hab 3,3 (“God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.”) and Apg 7,55 (“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.”) 29  Nathaniel Parker Willis, for instance, describes the “glorious world of fancy” (271) sought by many through alcohol or drugs in the new edition of his Pencillings by the Way (1842).

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chapter 3 into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. […] I have no more business to marry Edgar Linton than to be in heaven; […]. (WH 80–81)

Catherine thus makes it very clear that she does not want to be in heaven and not because she is “not fit to go there” as Nelly assumes. In her dream, she is “sobbing for joy” when she is expelled from heaven and sent back to earth. While Nelly later assumes Catherine to be “at home with God” after her death, Catherine here remarks that heaven “did not seem to be [her] home.” Instead, she wants to be “flung back to the heath,” and thus to earth; Catherine’s longing for the “heath” and for “Heathcliff” are as intricately connected in the novel as the name “Heathcliff” suggests. Catherine continues to display a dismissive attitude towards heaven and a yearning to be united with Heathcliff and nature as she approaches her death.30 Already deadly ill, Catherine has the following vision: ‘Look!’ she cried eagerly, ‘that’s my room, with the candle in it and the trees swaying before it […] Joseph sit’s up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate … Well he’ll wait a while yet. It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come … But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me; but I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will!’ (WH 126)

Catherine does not seek “Divine rest,” (WH 166) but rather shows herself convinced that not even “throw[ing] the church down over [her]” will tame her. She contemplates “dar[ing]” Heathcliff to follow her to the grave and proclaims that she will not “rest” until they are reunited, a phrase which combines a reading of not finding peace up to this moment and actively striving for this goal. In the light of her own utterances about heaven and “rest” after death, it thus seems highly unlikely that the “beyond and above” Catherine “yearn[s] for […] through the walls of an aching heart” (WH 162) is Christian heaven. Instead, there is a place she constantly expresses a longing for during her final illness, namely the heath surrounding the Heights. Catherine “wish[es] [she] were out of doors” instead of an “exile, and outcast” that being Mrs Linton signifies for 30  Shortly after her claim that she will soon be “beyond and above” the others, Catherine tells Heathcliff: “I shall not be at peace […] I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff! I only wish us never to be parted – and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground” (WH 161).

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her and shows herself “sure [she] should be [her]self were [she] once among the heather on those hills” (WH 125–126). In her ensuing visions, Catherine details a journey she and Heathcliff must take “by Gimmerton Kirk” (WH 126) to be finally reunited at Wuthering Heights.31 This evokes the physical or situational context of Catherine’s utterance about how she yearns to be “beyond and above” (WH 162): she is at Thrushcross Grange, and seen from there, Wuthering Heights is situated above, on the hills, which lie beyond Gimmerton valley, in which the graveyard is situated. This reveals a geographical meaning of the phrase “beyond and above,” namely the literal dimension of vertical and horizontal directions. While “beyond and above” in Nelly’s words refers to a Christian heaven, the same phrase in Catherine’s reflections on the afterlife can be read as indicating Wuthering Heights and the hills surrounding it:32 [T]he thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it. Nelly, you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength – you are sorry for me – very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. (WH 161–62; my emphasis)

Such a reading can be supported by the ambiguity of “glorious world,” which could denotate Christian heaven (OED “heaven, n.” I.1.b.); yet, “world” can also refer to earth or the natural environment (OED II.), and the adjective “glorious” is frequently employed to designate nature as well, specifically in Emily Brontë’s poetry.33 Another passage set directly before Catherine’s words anticipates the ambiguity of “beyond and above” as referring either to heaven or to the Heights and the natural environment surrounding it. In the final days of Catherine’s 31  Compare chapter 2.3 for a detailed analysis of Catherine’s vision before her death. 32  At the same time, being in these places that are literally “above and beyond” when seen from the Grange offer Catherine an opportunity to finally be beyond the reach of Edgar, Nelly, and the other inhabitants of the Grange, as she herself has declared before her death: “You mention that name [i.e. Heathcliff] and I end the matter, instantly, by a spring from the window! What you touch at present, you may have; but my soul will be on that hill-top before you lay hands on me again.” (WH 128) 33  In Emily Brontë’s poems, “glorious” is frequently employed with regard to elements of nature such as the sky (“A Death Scene,” 9; “lines,” 98), the sun (“My Comforter, 30; “A Farewell to Alexandria”, 106). The stars (“That wind I used to hear it swelling” 118) the, sea (“Tell me tell me smiling child,” 33), light (A. G. A. to A. S., 68) and wind (“Aye there it is! lt wakes tonight,” 131; “On the Fall of Zalona,” 143).

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life, Nelly describes Catherine’s gaze, which she first assumes to be directed to heaven and then to the Heights: Her appearance was altered, as I had told Heathcliff, but when she was calm, there seemed unearthly beauty in the change. The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness: they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her; they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond – you would have said out of this world. […] Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days, following a great thaw, or a season of steady rain – and, of Wuthering Heights, Catherine was thinking as she listened; that is, if she thought, or listened, at all; but she had the vague, distant look, mentioned before, which expressed no recognition of material things either by ear or eye. (WH 158)

Curiously, Nelly attributes the notion that Catherine gazes “out of this world” and thus towards heaven to Lockwood. The ambiguity of the phrase “beyond and above you all” (WH 162) that is generated through its different usage in the two passages points to a striking discrepancy between Catherine’s vision of life and the afterlife, on the one hand, and the more traditional notions Nelly and Lockwood embody, on the other hand.34 An implicit criticism of Nelly’s narrow-mindedness might even be detected in the way in which she echoes Catherine’s words and reinterprets them. After all, it is made clear in this instance that she either cannot or does not want to understand Catherine.

“I have nearly attained my heaven”: The Ambiguity of “Heaven” in Wuthering Heights Heathcliff’s reflections on afterlife resemble Catherine. As in the matter of the merging of their selves, similar ambiguities can be found in Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s thoughts and a common concept of the nature of this aspect of the narrated world emerges.35 After Catherine’s death, Nelly repeats her belief that 34  In the light of the very different meanings the phrase “beyond and above” takes on in Nelly’s and Catherine’s utterances, it seems unlikely that “Nelly’s words mirror Catherine’s hopes for death - plenitude, a filled-up joy” as Lutz argues (65). 35  Catherine and Heathcliff are shown to reflect on heaven and afterlife early on. Nelly describes how they console each other when Mr Earnshaw has died: “I saw they had never laid down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on; no parson in the world ever pictured Heaven so beautifully as they did,

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Catherine now resides in Christian heaven to Heathcliff, but his opinion on the matter differs quite considerably from hers: ‘Yes, she’s dead! […] Gone to heaven, I hope, where we may, everyone, join her, if we take due warning, and leave our evil ways to follow good! ‘ […] ‘Her senses never returned – she recognised nobody from the time you left her,’ I said. ‘She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream – may she wake as kindly in the other world!’ ‘May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there – not in heaven – not perished – where? Oh! You said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe – I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! (WH 168–69)

The thematic focus of this text passage are Catherine’s whereabouts after death as epitomized in Heathcliff’s exclamation whose rhythmic quality and internal rhymes render them poetic: Where is she? Not there - not in heaven – not perished – where?

Heathcliff thus explicitly rejects the notion that Catherine could be in heaven. He takes up Nelly’s phrase that Catherine may “wake […] kindly in the other world,” inverts it, and thus once again evokes the literal meaning of a conventionalized phrase about the dead that is expressed in terms of sleep. He implicitly expresses his passionate wish that she may “wake” on earth, as actual sleepers do, when he pleads with Catherine not to “rest as long as [he] is living” but instead to “haunt” him (WH 169). As Heathcliff’s own death approaches in the narrative, he ambiguates the term heaven, which no longer exclusively refers to Christian notions of afterlife, but rather his own vision of afterlife and his union with Catherine. Shortly before his death, Heathcliff claims that: Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven – I have my eyes on it – hardly three feet to sever me! (WH 328)

in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed, and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together“(WH 44).

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His remark that he “was on the threshold of hell” the day before recalls his prediction when Catherine’s death is imminent that he “shall writhe in the torments of hell” without her (WH 161).36 Hell is being separated from Catherine and heaven – specifically “my heaven” – is a reunion with her.37 As becomes subsequently clear he believes himself to be literally “within sight of [his] heaven.” His heaven is Catherine whom he now seems to veridically see “within two yards distance” (WH 331), the equivalent of the depth of a grave. He thus connects the metaphorical proximity to his “heaven” with the distance he needs to bridge in order to join Catherine, which is the distance that separates his body from Catherine’s. A reunion with Catherine may mean that he joins her in death, or it may refer to his body being laid next to hers. Heathcliff’s use of the noun “heaven” in this instance is not to be taken metaphorically, in the sense of something that would bring great joy to him, but reveals its literal meaning shortly afterwards, when Nelly proposes the visit of a priest to enable him to enter heaven after death: ‘You are aware, Mr Heathcliff,’ I said, ‘that from the time you were thirteen years old, you have lived a selfish unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands, during all that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one – some minister of any denomination, it does not matter which, to explain it, and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts, and how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before you die?’ […] ‘[…] No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me – I tell you, I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued, and uncoveted by me!’ (WH 333)

It is telling that Nelly does not speak of “heaven” as a unique concept but firmly connects it to the “precepts” of “any denomination” by rendering the word with the possessive “its” – “heaven” in Wuthering Heights, it seems, is not one place for everyone. Heathcliff emphasises this when he refutes her suggestion and talks of “my heaven” and distinguishes it from “that of others” for which he does not care. The ambiguity of the term “heaven” therefore does not derive from the discrepancy of the figurative and literal meanings of the word elsewhere, but because it can refer to different “heavens” for different people in 36  Gezari notes that “Heathcliff’s concept of hell as life without Catherine owes something to Byron’s idea of the hell he and his half-sister Augusta inhabited when they were separated from each other. Byron’s famous poem about his exile from her, “Stanzas to Augusta,” was first published in Moore’s Life of Byron” (231n8). 37  Gilbert and Gubar argue that Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s notion of heaven and hell result in a fall from hell to heaven. Compare also Thormählen’s rather moralistic view of this issue.

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Wuthering Heights. Christian heaven, which Nelly and Lockwood believe in, is “altogether unvalued, and uncoveted” by Heathcliff (WH 333) and Catherine thinks she “should be extremely miserable” there (WH 80). Accordingly, neither denies that this version of afterlife exists but they rather juxtapose it with their own notions that they desire. In contrast to this, Christianity and its representatives Nelly and Lockwood propose two different places of afterlife, namely Christian heaven and hell, one of which is a reward and the other a punishment. According to Nelly, it is dubious whether Catherine “merited a haven of peace” (WH 167) anyways, as she is “not fit to go there” (WH 80). The logical consequence of applying Christian doctrine to her own estimation of Catherine’s character clashes for her with the visual evidence of the peaceful body she describes. As a consequence of this tension, Nelly addresses her intrafictional narrate Lockwood, asking him if he believes that “such people are happy in the other world,” a question which strikes Lockwood as “somewhat heterodox” (WH 167). For him, Christian doctrine is not to be shaken. If Catherine must indeed linger on earth after her death, then her own actions must be to blame according to Lockwood. In the third chapter, he refers to Catherine’s “walking the earth” as “a just punishment for her mortal transgressions” (WH 27).38 Heathcliff adopts these frameworks of different versions of afterlife as a reward or a punishment that Catherine and him dismiss elsewhere in the novel at the desperate moment when he learns of Catherine’s death; he claims that “[t]he murdered do haunt their murderers” (WH 169). Catherine, however, insists that the problem is not that she cannot go to heaven but that she does not want to go there. Both the attitudes of Catherine and Heathcliff to such an existence on earth challenge the traditional notions of punishment and reward. Their desire first and foremost is continued interaction with each other beyond death.39 The novel, by supporting the ambiguity of “heaven” as not one distinct place but rather as malleable to the individual and their desires, suggests that Heathcliff and Catherine are able to achieve their own notion of afterlife, detached from Christian doctrine.

38  Compare chapter 1.1 for a detailed discussion of the third chapter of Wuthering Heights including common notions of ghosts that are evoked in this instance. 39  Shannon indeed regards Catherine’s afterlife as a punishment. He argues that Lockwood’s two dreams in the third chapter alert the reader to the “ethical eye of the storm,” namely an unpardonable sin that has caused Catherine’s state as a waif (99). For Shannon, Catherine’s sin is not her adultery but “her sin is marrying Edgar Linton, when she loves Heathcliff with a love that springs from a natural and elemental affinity between them” (100).

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Even if Heathcliff and Catherine repeatedly express their desire to be reunited on earth in death, the question remains whether this notion of the afterlife is only wishful thinking. However, the text supports such a reading, since the world of the living and the world of the dead are shown to coincide at times. A network of interdependent local ambiguities in which characters may encounter Catherine and Heathcliff after their death may be taken to confirm the possibility of a permeable boundary between the realm of the living and that of the dead. This idea is introduced early on in Lockwood’s famous encounter with Catherine’s “little, ice-cold hand,” which can be seen as part of a dream or as an actual encounter with Catherine after her death (WH 25). Throughout the main part of the novel the issue is still evoked continually. An intricate web of passages is connected to this first ambiguous passage (compare 1.3) as dreams and visions about Catherine’s afterlife are related and discussed.40 In the last third of the novel, characters claim to encounter the dead again (such as Heathcliff when he digs up Catherine’s corpse). After Heathcliff’s death, the question if there is a permeability between life and death in the world of Wuthering Heights is extended from Catherine to Heathcliff as well, and others claim to have seen the two of them together. Both the little boy Nelly meets accompanied by his lambs and Joseph claim to have seen Catherine and Heathcliff, Joseph even repeatedly “on every rainy night since [Heathcliff’s] death” (WH 336).

“[U]nquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”: The Global Ambiguity Regarding the Nature of Death At the end of the novel, both Catherine and Heathcliff are dead, but the other characters of Wuthering Heights are still left to wonder about their fate, as are 40  See for instance the dream Catherine relates to a reluctant Nelly, who likens talking about dreams to “conjuring up ghosts and visions” (70) and admits that she was “superstitious about dreams then, and [is] still” regarding their prophetic nature (71). Catherine has dreamed about her death and afterlife: “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem my home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy” (70). The ambiguous character of the earlier passage may charge this dream with additional meaning: Catherine’s apparition in the beginning of the novel presents at least the possibility that Catherine may live on earth after her death. With this in mind, the reader may well attribute a prophetic quality to Catherine’s dream. The earlier passage thus may add credibility to the otherwise rather weak claim of its prophetic quality proposed by Nelly. A similar mechanism may be found with regards to Catherine’s hallucination shortly before her death in which she “dare[s] Heathcliff to follow her over the courtyard” (111f). For a more detailed discussion see chapter 2.3.

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the novel’s readers. The ambiguity regarding the nature of their afterlife is never resolved in the novel. Further evocations of the terms of sleep for death, which have been ambiguated over the course of the novel, contribute to this effect. Nelly comments on Heathcliff’s grave that “at present it is as smooth and verdant as its companion mounds – and I hope its tenant sleeps as soundly” (WH 336). She thus derives from the surface of the grave the state of “its tenant,” much like she has aligned the appearance of Catherine’s corpse to that of its former “inhabitants” (see above). The verb Nelly choses for Heathcliff’s state, “sleep,” could be taken to be a mere instance of a very conventionalized metaphor – sleep as death. Yet in Nelly’s expression, the inherent potential for ambiguity of the conventionalized metaphor is yet again realized. Her phrase juxtaposes the more conventional sense of a dead person “sleeping” as a corpse lying in the grave with its soul departed to the other realm according to early nineteenth-century Christian doctrine with a more literal reading of “sleep” in this instance. The adverb “soundly” refers to aspects that distinguish literal sleep and death: Sleep is finite while death can be assumed to never end. If Nelly thus expresses her “hope” that Heathcliff “sleeps […] soundly,” her utterance implicates that she is not sure if he might wake up from this sleep and thus if his state is indeed permanent. The ambiguity of Nelly’s expression is echoed in Lockwood’s closing words, in which his use of the word “slumber” in “I […] wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth” (WH 337) evokes the juxtapositions of sleep and death in the novel and the gradual literalization of “sleep” as death. The connotations of light sleep for the term “slumber,” supported by the adjective “unquiet,” once more evoke literal notions of death. Even though Lockwood apparently intends to convey that Catherine and Heathcliff are indeed dead, his wording once more suggests that they are anything but slumbering.41 The “quiet” appearance of the grave represents the only evidence on which he bases his argument that Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s death cannot be otherwise than quiet. Consequently, he judges the content of the grave by its surface, which is not enough to counteract the overall effect achieved throughout the novel that suggests an ontological connection between sleep and death that goes beyond the mere outward similarity of the sleeping and the dead. The final sentence of Wuthering Heights suggests that the narrated world may allow for a permeability between the realm of the living and the dead and that Heathcliff and Catherine may indeed have been reunited on earth. Throughout the novel, expressions like “beyond and above,” “heaven,” “sleeper,” or “slumber,” can be reinterpreted as metaphorical 41  Compare the introduction of this study for a detailed discussion of Lockwood’s closing lines.

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and made to fit in with the conventional assumptions made by Nelly and Lockwood, but they can likewise be taken literally. If we accept Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s notions of afterlife, the “last sleep” takes place on earth; “sleepers” are agentive; and “sleeping” can be read as a state in which the “sleepers” can roam the earth and interact with the living. 3.3

The Permeability between Humans and Nature in Wuthering Heights I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor – the middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. (WH 337)

In the final sentence of Wuthering Heights, the union in death of the “sleepers in that quiet earth” is intricately connected to the natural environment. Lockwood portrays the scenery surrounding the graves in detail commenting on the “slope next the moor,” the “turf” and the “moss” on the graves, the “sky,” the “heath” and “hare-bells,” the “grass” and the “wind”. While its serenity provides him with an argument for the equally “quiet” afterlife, his own depiction of nature is curiously anthropomorphised. The turf and the moss “cree[p] up” Edgar Linton’s grave and the sound of the wind in the grass is described as “breathing.” Lockwood’s words can be read as a pathetic fallacy, a poetic personification of inanimate entities; yet, as in the case of “sleep,” a more literal reading is likewise possible and the connection to the ambiguous terms “sleepers” and “slumbers” support such an interpretation. The ability to breathe constitutes a major difference between the dead and the living who merely sleep. While Heathcliff and Catherine do not breathe in this instance, the wind can be regarded as breathing with the “sleepers.” If such a reading is adopted, Catherine and Heathcliff are not only reunited with each other but are also united with nature in their afterlife. A number of ambiguous passages in the novel can be connected to the ambiguity of “breathing,” all of which suggest that this boundary can be and is regularly transcended in the novel as human emotions seem to be linked to those of animate nature and characters appear to merge with the natural environment. Ambiguity is generated in this instance as Wuthering Heights provides a context for a literal reading of “breathing.” If the wind is indeed accepted to

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breathe with the “sleepers,”, then nature has to be regarded as animate in the narrated world and the boundary between the natural environment and its human inhabitants as permeable.42 The Agentive Natural Environment of Wuthering Heights In the course of Wuthering Heights, the heightened emotions of Catherine and Heathcliff coincide with violent weather phenomena that are depicted with local ambiguities in the form of ascriptions of emotions to nature. Like in the case of “breathing” each of these ambiguities can be read literally or as a pathetic fallacy. The first instance of natural phenomena corresponding with the main character’s emotions in the novel can be found in Catherine’s brief diaryfragment Lockwood discovers in the margins of one of the books in her old room. She describes of the hardships of life after Mr Earnshaw’s death for her and Heathcliff addresses a separation between the two that Hindley enforces. Despite the bleak weather (“All day had been flooding with rain;” WH 20), Catherine and Heathcliff undertake “a scamper on the moors” (WH 22). Their escape to nature does have consequences for the children, though, as Lockwood learns in the second part of Catherine’s entry: Hindley reduces Heathcliff to a servant’s place. Catherine is deeply shaken by this punishment: ‘How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!’ she wrote. ‘My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow; and still I can’t give over. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders. ‘He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place –’ (WH 22)

The emotional upheaval of Catherine and presumably Heathcliff goes along with uproar in weather,43 as Catherine’s tears mirror the rain outside. 42  Compare Lutz, who in her discussion of death in Wuthering Heights also connects it with nature: “The wind speaks Cathy when she dies, as do the ‘moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells’ (312). Being absorbed into nature means infusing the daily objects of life with the presence of death” (72). 43  While Catherine describes the events leading up to their excursion to the moors and the ensuing forced separation between them in detail, the time they spent together in nature is curiously absent in Catherine’s writings. Lockwood can only “suppose [that] Catherine fulfilled her project” of escaping outside with Heathcliff in an interjection. Margaret Homans has pointed to the significance of this omission in a widely-read article (“Repression and Sublimation”), arguing that Catherine’s diary fragment “serves as an opening statement of the relation between nature and writing in the novel,” which can be taken to be “[a] synecdoche for the narrative as a whole,” and “like the rest [of the text],

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This juxtaposition of an uproar in the weather with emotional upheaval for Catherine and Heathcliff is continued throughout the novel and gradually gains significance.44 Lockwood reads Catherine’s writings when he is trapped at the Heights due to a “snow-storm” (WH 12) and only a few pages later, this storm is connected to the emotions first of Catherine and then of Heathcliff. The storm before Lockwood’s window “wail[s] by” (WH 24) and Catherine, who appears to Lockwood either in a nightmare or as an apparition, is soon described to be “wail[ing]” (WH 25), as well. The desperate cries of the child to be “let […] in” (WH 25) are soon followed by Heathcliff’s pleas to “[c]ome in! come in!,” which are accompanied by an “uncontrollable passion of tears” (WH 28). Lockwood does not perceive any “sign of being” from “[t]he spectre” but again, Heathcliff’s emotions are parallelized by the weather that Lockwood describes: [B]ut the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light. There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly. (WH 29)

Heathcliff’s desperation is described in terms that are commonly used both for human expressions of emotions and, in a figurative sense, for weather phenomena, namely “raving”45 and a “gush” of grief.46 The similarity of these concepts and the weather in this instance is striking: Heathcliff is “raving” and the wind “whirled wildly,” Heathcliff’s “gush of grief,” according to the OED a “sudden and violent outbreak” of emotion, finds its equivalent in a gush of wind strong enough to blow out Lockwood’s candle. An implicit connection is thus established between Heathcliff and the weather, which mirrors the close relationship between the “wail[ing]” of the wind and the “wail[ing]” of averts its eyes from nature” (10–11). The passage is indeed typical as regards its absence of events that are actually set in nature. Homans recognizes that despite the significance of nature in Wuthering Heights “[t]here are, [..] very few scenes in the novel that are actually set out-of-doors. With a few exceptions, the crucial events take place in one or the other of the two houses. Cathy and Heathcliff, the characters whose relations to nature would seem to be the strongest and the most important to the novel, are never presented on the moors, together or apart, in either of the two major narrative layers” (9). See also Kullmann (Vermenschlichte Natur 303). 44  Compare van de Laar, who remarks that “all great changes in the lives of the principle characters are preceded or accompanied by atmospheric tumult” (26). 45  O ED “rave, v.” 1.1.a “to speak or declaim wildly, irrationally, or incoherently.”; 2.a “Of the sea, the wind, a storm, etc.: to rage; to rush or roar furiously.” 46  O ED “gush, n” 2. “A sudden and violent outbreak; a ‘burst’. a. Of physical phenomena: A gust or rush of wind b. Of feeling and its expression, of action, condition, etc.”

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Catherine’s voice shortly before.47 Even the inhabitants of the Heights, who are used to bleak weather and continuous wind, comment on the extremity of the weather (WH 16–17) during a night in which Lockwood is struck by the violence of emotions he encounters. This pattern of aligning weather phenomena with the emotions of Catherine and Heathcliff is continued throughout the novel. Kullmann, who gives a thorough and detailed account of the parallelization of weather and human emotions in Wuthering Heights in his Vermenschlichte Natur, argues that the weather has a symbolic function on the extratextual level, serving for instance as means for characterization. Kullmann rejects the notion that it could instead be caused by an organic link between humans and an agentive natural environment even though he acknowledges that there are textual features that suggest just such a reading; nevertheless, he insists that there is no unambiguous clue to this effect (“eindeutiger Hinweis;” 317). In fact, due to the ambiguity of these passages, the fact that natural phenomena and human emotions coincide can either be read as a symbolic device that is not caused by the special nature of the narrated world as Kullmann does, or as a manifestation of the intricate connection between Catherine and Heathcliff and nature. Kullmann’s own choice of words in his analysis is revealing in that they implicitly reflect the ambiguity: in at least three instances in his chapter on Wuthering Heights does he speak of the “sympathy” of nature with human emotions.48 A key passage in Wuthering Heights that illustrates this ambiguity is the depiction of the stormy night after Heathcliff’s flight from the Heights: It was a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appeared inclined to thunder, and I said we had better all sit down; the approaching rain would be certain to bring him home without further trouble. However, Catherine would not be persuaded into tranquillity. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose, and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road; where, heedless of my expostulations, and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good, passionate fit of crying. About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the 47  O ED, “wail, v.” 2.a.: “Of birds, inanimate things: To give forth mournful sounds; 1 a. intr. To express pain or sorrow by prolonged piteous cries.” 48  Kullmann remarks that the weather after Catherine’s death can be read “als ‘Sympathie der Natur’” (320), comments on the “durch die Jahreszeit ausgedrückte ‚Sympathie‘ der Natur mit Cathy“ (323) and remarks: “[d]as Wetter ‚sympathisiert‘ mit Cathy’s Betroffenheit“ (324).

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chapter 3 other split a tree off at the corner of the building; a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen fire. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us, and Joseph swung onto his knees, beseeching the Lord to remember the Patriarchs Noah and Lot; and, as in former times, spare the righteous, though he smote the ungodly. I felt some sentiment that it must be a judgment on us also. The Jonah, in my mind, was Mr Earnshaw, and I shook the handle of his den that I might ascertain if he were yet living. He replied audibly enough, in a fashion which made my companion vociferate more clamorously than before that a wide distinction might be drawn between saints like himself and sinners like his master. But, the uproar passed away in twenty minutes, leaving us all unharmed, excepting Cathy, who got thoroughly drenched for her obstinacy in refusing to take shelter, and standing bonnetless and shawlless to catch as much water as she could with her hair and clothes. (WH 84–85)

As in the passages discussed above, the word choices of Nelly attribute feelings to the wind that can be related to the emotions of the characters: the “growling” of the thunder and the “full fury” of the wind can again either be read as pathetic fallacies or figurative descriptions literally displaying nature’s anger at the separation of Heathcliff and Catherine.49 This time, characters in the novel actively reflect on the meaning of the weather.50 Both Joseph and Nelly wonder if the storm could be regarded as a divine “judgment” on them.51 Their thought processes as depicted in the text may lead the novel’s readers likewise to question the significance of the thunderstorm. As the passage unfolds, nature seems to cry with Catherine as “the great drops […] began to plash around her” (WH 85) and Catherine is finally “thoroughly drenched” in them (WH 85). An echo of this image can be found towards the middle of the novel in the depiction of the morning after Catherine’s death. Nelly discovers Heathcliff in the park, “his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him.” (WH 168), which is reminiscent of tears.52 Heathcliff’s ensuing protests against Nelly’s expression of mourning significantly emphasizes the pronoun and not the expression of grief itself: “Damn you all! She wants none of your tears!” (WH 168). Heathcliff has already 49  Shannon regards the thunderstorm as “nature’s adumbration of this calamitous severance of selves” (101). 50  Compare also Kullmann (316). 51  Gezari notes that the choice of the term “bolt” is significant in this instance because it denotates “[a] flash of lightning imagined as a hot solid body and often interpreted as a sign of divine vengeance” (145n19). 52  Homans notes that “a symbol for tears lurks in the image of [the dew on Heathcliff’s head]” (“Repression and Sublimation” 14).

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cried for Catherine when he recognizes the inevitability of death approaching (WH 163), and now nature seems to similarly shed tears in sympathy. The weather turns dramatically after Catherine’s funeral, a fact which is, unusually for Brontë’s novel, described by three different narrators. Nelly first reports that the day of the funeral made the last of our fine days, for a month. In the evening, the weather broke; the wind shifted from south to north-east, and brought rain, first, and then sleet, and snow. On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts: the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened – And dreary, and chill, and dismal that morrow did creep over! (171)

The “morrow” in Nelly’s description is anthropomorphised: it “creep[s] over,” is “dreary,” and “dismal.” Once more, the personification of natural phenomena is ambiguous in that it can either be read as a rhetorical device or as a manifestation of the animate nature of Wuthering Heights, which reacts to Catherine’s death. The silence of the larks, the trees in what could be regarded as mourning dresses of “smitten and blackened” leaves and the gay spring flowers covered by snow can likewise be regarded as signs of nature grieving. Isabella comments on the same night, remarking how “dismal” the night was with “the wild snow blowing outside;” (WH 175) and “the moaning wind” (WH 176; my emphasis), noting that “it seemed as if all joy had vanished from the world, never to be restored” (WH 176). Much later in the novel, Heathcliff’s narrative again returns to this night, describing the “fall of snow,” the wind “bl[owing] bleak as winter” and the “sleet-laden wind” (WH 290) surrounding him while he digs up Catherine’s grave. Like Catherine’s death, Heathcliff’s passing also coincides with heavy rain; yet, there is a decisive difference between the two passages in that there is no attribution of human emotions to the weather in this instance: The following evening was very wet, indeed it poured down, till day-dawn and, as I took my morning walk round the house, I observed the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in. He cannot be in bed, I thought, those showers would drench him through! (WH 334)

There is no personifying element in Nelly’s description of the weather and neither is there any depiction of the grief or fury of one of the characters when the body is discovered. Nelly is afraid of the strange looking corpse and Joseph expresses satisfaction that the “divil’s harried off [Heathcliff’s] soul” (WH 335).

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Hareton seems to be “the only one that suffered much” as Nelly remarks. He “s[its] by the corpse all night, weeping in bitter earnest” (WH 335). While the rain could be said to mirror Hareton’s weeping, there is no suggestion of an interaction between nature and human emotions in the narrated world at this point: there are no instances of parallelisation in the language, either by choosing the same words for weather and humans, such as wailing, or by any anthropomorphic terms for the natural environment (“in fury”), nor are there any physical similarities between the rain and Hareton’s tears suggested as in the “great drops that […] plash” around the weeping Catherine when she realizes that Heathcliff has left the Heights. This suggests that nature in the narrated world is primarily influenced by the emotions of Catherine and Heathcliff. A notable exception provides a clear indication that uproar in nature does not simply function as a “backdrop” to scenes of mourning in the novel. When Frances Earnshaw dies (WH 66), her husband Hindley is distracted with grief, but Catherine and Heathcliff are not and indeed there is no change whatsoever in the summer weather. Yet, Mr Earnshaw’s death is preceded by a “high wind bluster[ing] round the house, and roar[ing] in the chimney: it sounded wild and stormy” (WH 43).53 After his death, the “wind and rain” (WH 44) find their equivalent in the “wail” of Nelly, Heathcliff and Catherine, evoking the “wail[ing]” wind and child in the third chapter (WH 25). Hareton’s weeping coincides with the rain, but like in the case of Frances Earnshaw’s death, the natural environment does not seem to be completely in uproar. Heathcliff and Catherine Blend into Nature Another network of local ambiguities suggests that Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s intricate connection with nature may cause the alignment of human emotions with nature. There are several instances in which they seem to merge with elements of the natural environment such as trees, the earth and rain. Nelly’s depiction of Heathcliff’s behaviour the morning after Catherine’s death is a case in point: He was there – at least a few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing, scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach (WH 168) 53  See van de Laar (26) for a discussion of weather phenomena on the occasion of Mr Earnshaw’s death.

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For the ousels, Heathcliff becomes “a piece of timber” (WH 168).54 This is not the only passage in the novel in which Heathcliff is connected to trees.55 He himself choses them to describe the formation of his character and that of Hareton, when he wonders “if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it” (WH 187). His utterance remains on the symbolic plain, but it evokes the “excessive slant of a few, stunted firs” and the “range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way”56 standing next to the Heights (4). While this personification in the first chapter is likewise employed as a rhetorical device by Lockwood, in the third chapter of the novel these very firs seem to merge with Catherine when Lockwood “[s]tretch[es] an arm out to seize the importunate branch [of a fir tree]” and his fingers instead “clos[e] on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!” (WH 25).57 During the night of Catherine’s death, Heathcliff not only blends into the trees but in an almost chiasmic exchange of fluids the “dew that had gathered on the budded branches […] f[alls] pattering round him” (WH 168) until he is “soaked with dew” (WH 168) while “splashes of [his] blood” can be found on “the bark of the tree” and on “his hand and forehead” (WH 169) after he has repeatedly “dashed his head against the knotted trunk” (WH 169). When Heathcliff has died, water appears to have indeed replaced is blood: I could not think him dead - but his face and throat were washed with rain; the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still. The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill- no blood trickled from the broken skin and when I put my fingers to it, I could doubt no more – he was dead and stark! (WH 335)

The image of the drenched Heathcliff and the connection between water and blood evokes other occasions on which either Heathcliff, Catherine or both 54  In the same passage, Nelly perceives Heathcliff not as human, but rather as part of nature, when she describes that he “howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast” (WH 169). 55  Several critics have remarked upon the strong connection between the thorns as Lockwood describes them in the novel’s first chapter (4) and Heathcliff’s character, such as Kullmann (304) and Schorer (44). 56  According to the OED, “gaunt” can mean “abnormally lean, as from hunger” (2.a). There are no indications whatsoever in the first passage that Lockwood means this ascription of desire and intent to the thorn trees literally and neither is there any indication that we as readers are to assume them to be. Instead, Lockwood employs the personification as a rhetorical device that underlines the hostility of the natural environment. 57  Catherine is twice metaphorically connected to trees as well when Heathcliff likens her existence as the wife of Edgar Linton to that of “an oak in a flower-pot” (WH 152) and when Nelly describes the Linton’s behaviour towards Catherine as that of “the honeysuckles embracing the thorn (WH 92).

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are drenched in rain or tears.58 Their union is connected to water from the moment at which both appear together for the first time in the novel on a day that “had been flooding with rain” (WH 20), first “damp,” then out on “a scamper on the moors […] in the rain” (WH 22) until the final pages of the novel when Joseph claims that he has seen them both outside “on every rainy night, since [Heathcliff’s] death” (WH 336). Furthermore, Catherine is “thoroughly drenched” when Heathcliff leaves the Heights after “standing bonnetless and shawlless to catch as much water as she could with her hair and clothes” (WH 84–85). Their deaths are also connected to a much more literal merging with nature, namely with decomposition. For Heathcliff, “dissolv[ing] into earth” is a positive notion as it signifies a union of Catherine in “dissolving with her” (WH 289). Heathcliff actively strives for such an intermingling of flesh in death, and thus a union of their bodies with and in nature. He uses the opportunity of Edgar Linton’s funeral to “str[ike] one side of [Catherine’s] coffin loose” and “bribe[s] the sexton to pull it away, when [he is] laid there, and slide [his] out to” (WH 288). The motivation for this proceeding is the ultimate union of their bodies in the earth: “by the time Linton gets to us, he’ll not know which is which” (WH 288). Catherine likewise seeks a union with nature in death. Instead of being buried in the tomb of the Lintons, Catherine insists on being buried at the border of the churchyard and indeed nature soon takes over. Nelly notes that her wish was granted and that “heath and bilberry plants have climbed over [the wall] from the moor” onto her grave (WH 170) and Lockwood later similarly remarks that it is “half buried in heath” (WH 337). Nelly’s comment on Cathy’s rapid progress after her mother’s death contains a curious ambiguity as regards the state of Catherine’s corpse in her grave: [Cathy] could walk and talk too, in her own way, before the heath blossomed a second time over Mrs Linton’s dust. (WH 189)

Two years have passed since Catherine’s death, and accordingly her corpse should at this point be “dust” not only in its figurative sense of a dead human body (OED 3.b.), a reading which follows Genesis 3:19,59 but also in the sense of 58  In a debate in PMLA between Margaret Homans and Sidney Conger, the latter rejects Homan’s proposal that “nature is absent” in Wuthering Heights (1003) because the action of the novel is rarely set in nature and instead claims that “[t]he rain-soaked corpse of Heathcliff will do, thank you” (1003). 59  “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen 3:19).

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decayed organic matter (OED 3.a.). As becomes subsequently clear, however, Catherine’s corpse shows no indication of decomposition at this point. When Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s body years later, he claims that her face “is hers yet” (WH 288), which can be explained by the “peaty moisture” of the earth, which according to Lockwood, “is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there” (WH 23). This lack of decay can, on the other hand, also be related to Catherine as merely slumbering beneath the heath. Even if Heathcliff dreams of “dissolving” with Catherine in the earth, he is “better pleased” that Catherine’s decomposition “should not commence till [he] share[s] it” (WH 289). The closing lines of the novel in which the wind is described as “breathing” through the grass above the “sleepers” (WH 337) is thus only the last of several text passages that indicate that the boundary between humans and nature in the novel may be permeable. The global ambiguity of the novel allows for a reading of Heathcliff and Catherine having “escape[d] into that glorious world” of the natural environment together and of now being “really with it, and in it” (WH 162). If such an interpretation is adopted, their reunification with and in nature does not only consist of the dissolution of their mortal frames in the earth but rather entails an intricate bond between conscious, agentive sleepers and an agentive natural environment. While Heathcliff and Catherine may “slumber” during Lockwood’s visit to the Heights, they may be waking regularly to roam the heath. Joseph’s suggestion that they do so on “every rainy night” (WH 336) indicates that their “sleep” after death follows the rhythms of nature. 3.4

Transcending Boundaries of Time and Space in Wuthering Heights ‘I see in you, Nelly,’ she continued, dreamily, ‘an aged woman – you have grey hair, and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under Penistone Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers; pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. That’s what you’ll come to fifty years hence; I know you are not so now. I’m not wandering, you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really were that withered hag, and I should think I was under Penistone Crag, and I’m conscious it’s night, and there are two candles on the table making the black press shine like jet.’ ‘The black press? where is that?’ I asked. ‘You are talking in your sleep!’ ‘It’s against the wall, as it always is,’ she replied. ‘It does appear odd – I see a face in it!’ ‘There is no press in the room, and never was,’ said I, resuming my seat, and looping up the curtain that I might watch her. ‘Don’t you see that face?’ she enquired, gazing earnestly at the mirror.

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chapter 3 And say what I could, I was incapable of making her comprehend it to be her own; so I rose and covered it with a shawl. ‘It’s behind there still!’ she pursued, anxiously. ‘And it stirred. Who is it? I hope it will not come out when you are gone! Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted! […]’ (WH 123)

During Catherine’s final illness, her room at the Grange where she resides as the wife of Edgar Linton seems to merge with her old room at the Heights. For Catherine the boundary between those spaces that are miles apart seems to become permeable as she seems to perceive the “black press” in the former, even though it is situated in the latter and Nelly assures her that it is not visible. This discrepancy between Catherine’s and Nelly’s claims can be explained by referring to epistemic problems – Catherine is severely ill and might hallucinate – but another reading emerges in the novel if we assume both Nelly’s and Catherine’s perceptions to be veridical. Ontological ambiguities in the novel challenge the boundaries between human beings, between the living and the dead, and between humans and the natural environment, which suggests that the laws of nature in the narrated world may not match the expectations of Nelly and Lockwood and those of the readers. Laws of time and space may analogously be presumed to work differently in Wuthering Heights. Considering a radical breach of fundamental laws of nature that the merging of separate spaces demands only becomes plausible as an assumption in the novel because it is supported through intratextual links to other passages, which similarly challenge laws of time and space. Catherine is not the only one to see “a face” that turns out to be her own, in her old room at the Heights. When Lockwood spends a night there, he describes it as “haunted” (WH 27) because he similarly encounters Catherine’s “face” there – as part of a nightmare or an apparition (WH 25). Catherine’s insistence during her final illness that there is “a face” (WH 123) in the black press is counteracted by Nelly’s claim that she merely sees herself in the mirror; through the intratextual connection, Catherine’s interpretation of the face carries significance since it proposes that she might not only be able to truly see her childhood chamber but to see it as it is at another time: nearly twenty years later “a face” that turns out to be hers again appears in the same room. Due to this intratextual link, observant readers may already be aware that there is a “press” at the Heights when Nelly insists that such a piece of furniture is not “in the room; and never was.” Catherine herself eventually confirms this link to her childhood home:60 60  Lockwood describes the room as containing nothing but a “chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top, resembling coach windows” (WH 19).

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‘Oh, dear! I thought I was at home,’ she sighed. ‘I thought I was lying in my chamber at Wuthering Heights. Because I’m weak, my brain got confused, and I screamed unconsciously. […]’ (WH 124)

She soon tells Nelly that this has not been the only time in the three days she has spent shut up in her room at the Grange in which it seemed to her to be her old room at the Heights. This blending of spaces “has kept recurring and recurring till [she] feared for [her] reason” (WH 125) and has coincided with a blending of time periods: […] I thought as I lay there, with my head against that table leg, and my eyes dimly discerning the grey square of the window, that I was enclosed in the oakpanelled bed at home; and my heart ached with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect – I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be, and, most strangely, the whole last seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been at all. I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff – I was laid alone, for the first time; and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping – I lifted my hand to push the panels aside, it struck the table-top! I swept it along the carpet, and then, memory burst in – my late anguish was swallowed in a paroxysm of despair. (WH 125)

Catherine thus describes how she is taken back to her childhood, both spatially and emotionally. She believes to be in the oak-panelled bed at the Heights and is not only reminded of childhood sensations but “[her] heart ache[s] with some great grief” (WH 125), and her mind is also taken back to her childhood. She describes that the seven years between her enforced separation from Heathcliff and the narrative present “grew a blank”; she “did not recall that they had been at all” (WH 125).61 The “anguish” of childhood is replaced by a “paroxysm of despair” (WH 125) when she finds herself afterwards to again be “Mrs Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger; an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world” (WH 125). Whenever laws of time and space seem to be challenged in Wuthering Heights, a return to childhood is referred to. In the third chapter, Lockwood does not 61  For Catherine, who has jumped seven years backwards and forwards, it seems as if “it must be more” (WH 124) than the three days in the present during which all this has happened to her. Lockwood also comments on a strange perception of time during his night spent at the Heights: “time stagnates here” (WH 28). Homans takes a psychological approach to this passage, arguing that Catherine might have “repressed” the memory (“Repression and Sublimation of Nature in Wuthering Heights,” 17). Stewart instead poignantly comments that “[w]hat she calls the ‘temporary derangement’ whereby she forgets the past seven years of her life – her life with Edgar – is a temporal derangement” (186).

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encounter the apparition of an adult Catherine as she died but instead perceives her as a child. In keeping with Lockwood’s rationalization of the events as a nightmare, an explanation for this is provided in the form of her childhood diary that he reads before falling asleep. Still, a return to childhood in death is also shown to be what Heathcliff and Catherine strive for along with a union with each other and nature. Even though Catherine has relived the “anguish” of her childhood during her illness, as she tells Nelly, she still wants to return to it. She wishes to be “in [her] own bed in the old house” (WH 124) “a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free” (WH 125).62 Indeed, she longs for the “wind sounding in the firs by the lattice” (WH 124) and wants the window to be opened. The intratextual connection to the third chapter of Wuthering Heights is thus strengthened. Therein, a “shivering[…]” (WH 25) child Catherine with an “ice-cold hand” (WH 25) tries with all means (speaking as well as physical force) to get Lockwood to open the window to “[l]et [her] in,” while nine chapters later the adult Catherine, who is feverish and “burning” now tries with similar methods to get Nelly to “let [her]” feel the wind through the open the window (WH 126). Nelly reports that Catherine is “no better than a wailing child” (WH 124) in this instance, which evokes the memorable “wail[ing]” child Catherine that Lockwood encounters in front of his window (WH 25).63 The intratextual link between the two chapters suggests that Catherine’s wish was granted and there is a possibility for her to return to childhood, even if it occurs after death. If we assume the child Catherine to have appeared to Lockwood at the window of her old room, it seems as if not only the present and the past enter Catherine’s room at the Grange, but the future as well and not only in the form of her vision of Nelly as “withered hag”(WH 123):64 she sees the black press, which is actually a feature of her old room at the Heights, and “a face” in it (WH 123), believing the room to be “haunted” (WH 123). Lockwood echoes this claim later in the chronology of the novel but earlier in the discourse when he accuses Zillah of trying to “get another proof” (WH 27)

62  Leavis draws a connection to Romanticism and the image of childhood it propagated, arguing that “Heathcliff and Catherine are idyllically and innocently happy together […] roaming the countryside as hardy, primitive Wordsworthian children, ‘half savage and hardy and free’” (27). 63  Compare chapter 1.4 for a detailed discussion of the intratextual references between chapter XII, in which Catherine’s visions are described, and chapter III, in which Lockwood’s ambiguous encounter at the Heights is depicted. 64  Compare chapter 1.4 for a discussion of Catherine’s visions in chapter XII, including an analysis of the image of Nelly as a “withered hag” (123).

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that the chamber her employer has an “odd notion about” (WH 19) is indeed “haunted” (27) after seeing Catherine’s face there. When Catherine is told by Nelly that the “face,” she sees during her illness is her own (WH 123), she is not pacified at all: ‘Myself,’ she gasped, ‘and the clock is striking twelve! It’s true, then; that’s dreadful!’ (WH 123)

Catherine’s utterance is ambiguous since “[i]t” could refer to different circumstances; it can be taken to confirm that she recognizes that she is losing her grasp on reality as Nelly has suggested all along (“you’re wandering;” WH 123) and as she herself has feared (“feared for my reason;” WH 125). Yet, whatever is “true” is related to “the clock […] striking twelve” (WH 123). Midnight, also known as the “witching hour,” is connected to “the belief that witches are active and magic takes place at that time” and more generally that “bad or sinister things are […] most likely to happen” (OED, “witching hour, n.” 1.). There has been a reference to a witch in the immediately preceding co-text, i.e. Catherine’s vision of Nelly as “a withered hag” who is “gathering elf-bolts” (WH 123). Her claim that “[i]t’s true” may thus be taken to confirm her impression of Nelly. Towards the end of the chapter, Catherine learns about Nelly’s role in her quarrel with Edgar and exclaims: “Nelly is my hidden enemy – you witch! So you do seek elf-bolts to hurt us!” (WH 128–29). There is another explanation for what she now considers to be “true” that can be connected to the significance she attributes to the midnight hour as well as to seeing her own face.65 “It” can be taken to refer to her own approaching death and her afterlife as well, as she recognizes that her own face “haunt[s]” (WH 123) the room at the Heights. Considering the intratextual connection to the third chapter, Catherine not only encounters her past but her future as well, and both relate to childhood; after all Lockwood encounters the face of the child Catherine in the third chapter. Nelly’s description of Catherine’s death may support such a reading. She not only records that Catherine’s “latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days” (WH 169), but responds to Heathcliff’s question of how she died that “[s]he drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep” (WH 168). While Nelly clearly employs the image as a simile, both Catherine “sinking to sleep” and the “child reviving” (WH 168) can be read literally in Wuthering Heights. If Lockwood’s 65  The OED notes in its entry for midnight as “the witching hour” an allusion to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (3.2.377): “Tis now the very witching time of night, When Churchyards yawne, and hell it selfe breakes out Contagion to this world.”

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experience in the third chapter is read as an actual encounter with Catherine as a child, then her death does constitute the reviving of the child Catherine into a “sleep” from which she awakes “on every rainy night” (WH 336).66 Another ambiguity in an utterance of Nelly about Catherine’s death points in a similar direction. Addressing Lockwood, Nelly reports that “[a]bout twelve o’clock, that night, was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights” (WH 166). Strictly speaking, Lockwood has seen two Catherines at the Heights: Cathy (Catherine’s daughter) and, as he calls her, “my ghostly Catherine” (WH 34). While Nelly’s ensuing remarks make clear that she means to refer to Cathy, the utterance itself may evoke the question if the “ghostly Catherine” who roams the earth as a child (WH 34) may have been born the same night that Catherine died.

The Past and the Present in Nelly’s Depiction of Her Experience at the Signpost As is frequently the case for the ontological ambiguities of Wuthering Heights, the experiences of several characters as depicted in ambiguous text passages address the same features of the narrated world. Like Catherine, Nelly describes an experience at Wuthering Heights that can be read as a return to childhood: I came to a stone where the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand; a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W.H. cut on its north side, on the east, G., and on the south-west, T.G. It serves as a guide-post to the Grange, and Heights, and village. The sun shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of summer; and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favourite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things – and, as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. ‘Poor Hindley!’ I exclaimed, involuntarily. I started – my bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared straight into mine! (WH 108–109)

When Nelly arrives at the signpost between the Grange and the Heights in 1783, she finds remnants of her childhood days spent there with Hindley in the 1760s in the form of snail-shells and pebbles. Their lasting presence signifies a 66  For strategies of literalization of the term “sleep” for Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s afterlife, see chapter 3.2.

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continuity between her past and the present while the absence of the “more perishable things” they stored in the signpost alongside them serves as a reminder of the time that has passed since the 1760s. It is in no way unusual that stones and shells survive the time and it is also not unusual to be “remind[ed]” of the past by them, but for Nelly, the emotions of childhood are not only recalled but relived on her walk in 1783: “I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child’s sensations flowed into my heart.” The use of the genitive in this instance suggests that the “sensations” belong to her younger self, the “child,” but they nevertheless “flo[w]” into her adult heart and through this become part of her reality at that time, much like the “misery” of childhood becomes Catherine’s emotional state before her death (see above).67 All of a sudden,68 the temporal boundary between Nelly’s childhood and her present seems to have become permeable, as it later does for Catherine. Not only Nelly’s emotions seem to transcend this boundary but she may actually see the past in the form of a child, as another ambiguous passage suggests: as fresh as reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf; his dark, square head bent forward, and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of slate. (WH 108; my emphasis)

The appearance of her “early playmate” represents an intrusion into the present of something which has as little place there as the “perishable things” that have disappeared. The ambiguous text passage allows for a reading of these events 67  Bette London likewise recognizes the transcending of temporal levels, but argues that Nelly “finds herself thrust back into the past” (42) in a passage that she understands as containing “perhaps the strongest argument for th[e] submerged text” of Nelly’s passionate love for Hindley” (41). However, her analysis does not convincingly show that Nelly seeing Hindley as a child of roughly five years (the age of Hareton, whom Nelly later assumes to be the apparition, in 1783) indicates her romantic feelings towards Hindley rather than the attachment of a foster sister (if the apparition is taken to reveal Nelly’s underlying feelings for Hindley at all). Likewise, Pamela Law’s claim that Nelly seeing the child Hindley at the signpost is the result of the childless woman’s longing for motherhood does not seem convincing in the light of the textual evidence. The most plausible argument for why the apparition of Hindley could be taken as an “image embodying [Nelly’s] mental distress” is proposed by Sheila Smith, who argues that her “foreboding, concerning Hindley’s degeneration after his wife’s death and the state of the old house with Heathcliff in control, finds concrete expression in the guide-stone which points to the Heights, no longer Nelly’s home since she migrated to the Grange at the time of Catherine’s marriage to Edgar Linton. The stones and shells call up the young Hindley ‘as fresh as reality’” (505). 68  Compare her wording: “all at once,” “flow,” and “gush.” According to the OED a “gush” of feeling is “[a] sudden and violent outbreak; a ‘burst’” (2).

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that does not contest the laws of time operating in the world of Wuthering Heights in the same way as they do in a reader’s actual world. Nelly’s sensory perception could have been tricked by vivid memories or she could have mistaken Hindley’s son Hareton for “her early playmate.”69 Yet, the child appears to interact with the adult Nelly when it “lift[s] its face and stare[s] straight into [hers]” (WH 109). Accordingly, Nelly’s own choice of words suggests that she does not merely recall the past, but that the boundary between the past and the present has actually become permeable, enabling an interaction between Nelly in 1783 and Hindley in their childhood. Such an interpretation of Nelly’s experience can be supported by the interplay of the ambiguities in this passage with several other ambiguities in the novel which similarly suggest that in the special world of Wuthering Heights, time is not strictly linear but that a co-presence of distinct but connected temporal layers is possible. The place at which Nelly’s encounter with her “early playmate” takes place is also significant: situated at the intersection between the Grange and the Heights, the signpost can be regarded as a symbol for the boundary between the two major settings of nearly every event in the novel.70 The contrast between these two houses and their inhabitants and its structural significance for Wuthering Heights has been much commented by critics. Kullmann, for instance, calls the Grange and the Heights “a pair of symbolic opposites representing fundamental states of being” (“Nature and Psychology” 104) and Homans claims that “the novel is organized by the two opposing principles embodied in the two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange” (“Repression and Sublimation” 12).71

“[A] personification of my youth, not a human being”: Heathcliff’s Return to Childhood In the final period of his life, Heathcliff is transported to the past in an echo of Catherine’s returns to childhood before her death.72 He is haunted by 69  Compare chapter 1.2 for a detailed discussion of the ambiguity of this passage. 70  Homans notes that “[w]ith a few exceptions, the crucial events take place in one or the other of the two houses” (Repression and Sublimation 9). All passages that are not set in the houses or the garden/park surrounding them are set in the wider area surrounding the two houses such as at the graveyard at Gimmerton chapel or on the moors. Fittingly, the helpful map in The Annotated Wuthering Heights has the caption “world of Wuthering Heights.” 71  Compare also van de Laar who argues that “[t]he world of the novel is divided into the two rival camps of Edgar and Heathcliff, Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights” (9), as well as Cecil, and Mengel. 72  For discussion of the significance of notions of childhood in Wuthering Heights compare Seichepine, Homans (Dreaming of Children), Nestor, van Ghent (The Window Figure).

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Catherine’s and his own younger selves, embodied by Hareton and Cathy who both strikingly resemble Catherine, especially as regards their eyes. For Heathcliff, this similarity seems to increase with time: “But, when I look for [Hareton’s] father in his face, I find her every day more! How the devil is he so like? I can hardly bear to see him” (WH 303). He is “reminded by [Catherine’s] voice and glance” by Cathy to such an extent, that he has to be “recalled […] to the present” (WH 270), which presupposes that he has before been in the past.73 When he realizes that Hareton and Cathy have fallen in love, this effect seems to be even more heightened: They lifted their eyes together, to encounter Mr Heathcliff – perhaps, you have never remarked that their eyes are precisely similar, and they are those of Catherine Earnshaw. The present Catherine has no other likeness to her, except a breadth of forehead, and a certain arch of the nostril that makes her appear rather haughty, whether she will, or not. With Hareton the resemblance is carried farther: it is singular, at all times – then it was particularly striking: because his senses were alert, and his mental faculties wakened to unwonted activity. I suppose this resemblance disarmed Mr Heathcliff: he walked to the hearth in evident agitation, but it quickly subsided, as he looked at the young man; or, I should say, altered its character, for it was there yet. (WH 322)

Heathcliff explains the significance of this event shortly afterwards to Nelly: ‘Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed a personification of my youth, not a human being – I felt to him in such a variety of ways, that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally. ‘In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her – […] Well, Hareton’s aspect was the ghost of my immortal love, of my wild endeavours to hold my right, my degradation, my pride, my happiness, and my anguish – […]’ (WH 323–24)

Only days after he has met the “ghost of [his] immortal love” in Hareton, who unites characteristics of Catherine and Heathcliff, the latter dies in a passage that evokes the novel’s third chapter. Like the hand of the child outside Lockwood’s window (WH 25), Heathcliff’s hand is hurt by the window: “The lattice, flapping to and fro, had grazed one hand that rested on the sill” (WH 335). Yet, while the window was shut for the child Catherine who wishes to be “let in” (WH 25) and only briefly opened for the adult Catherine in spite 73  Kosofsky Sedgwick argues that the “intrusive relationship between past and present is what shapes the novel’s narrative structure” and that “Catherine’s ghost represents the unquiet past that has not found its continuity with the present” (99).

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of her pleas during her final illness (WH 126), the window in Heathcliff’s room is wide open.74 3.5

Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature [I]t struck me, that [Heathcliff] plotted another midnight excursion, which he had rather we had no suspicion of. ‘Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?’ I mused. I had read of such hideous, incarnate demons. And then, I set myself to reflect, how I had tended him in infancy; and watched him grow to youth; and followed him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. ‘But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?’ muttered superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with imaging some fit parentage for him; and repeating my waking meditations, I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations; at last, picturing his death and funeral; of which, all I can remember is, being exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription for his monument, and consulting the sexton about it; and, as he had no surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to content ourselves with the single word, ‘Heathcliff.’ That came true; we were. If you enter the kirkyard, you’ll read on his headstone only that, and the date of his death. Dawn restored me to common sense. (WH 330)

Nelly’s bewildered reflection on her employer in the last chapter of Wuthering Heights prominently addresses yet another global ambiguity that runs through the entire novel: how to categorize Heathcliff. Thematically, it is based on the characters’ fundamental uncertainty about how to explain Heathcliff’s extreme character, behaviour, and appearance. Nelly’s question “Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?” juxtaposes several distinct possibilities: Heathcliff could be a ghoul, a vampire, or – and this is crucial for this ontological ambiguity – none of the above. So far in the novel, various attempts at finding the right category that Heathcliff fits in have been made, none of which has been successful. Two diametrically opposed positions enter into a dialogue in Nelly’s reflections: that Heathcliff might be a ghoul or a vampire and thus a demonic creature is attributed to the personified “superstition,” whereas “common sense” rejects the possibility that Heathcliff might not be human. The names Nelly has chosen for these opposing forces within her highlight the significance of Nelly’s basic assumptions about the nature of the world she lives in: whereas “common sense” represents a world view according to which non-human 74  Compare van Ghent (The English Novel 158) for a discussion of the significance of windows in Wuthering Heights.

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entities like demons cannot exist, “superstition” would allow for such a possibility.75 The positive connotations for the former term and the negative connotations of the latter indicate a hierarchy in the eyes of the narrating self, who at least claims to reject the notions of “superstition.” Both positions are supported with arguments in the text passage. After the idea that Heathcliff might be a “ghoul” or a “vampire” first enters her considerations,76 Nelly “set[s] [her]self to reflect” how she witnessed Heathcliff’s “grow to youth” and generally “almost through his whole course.” She has thus seen Heathcliff undergo various stations of life. Yet, her use of the adverb “almost” is significant in this context, since it points to two major gaps in Heathcliff’s life that neither Nelly nor the reader have any specific knowledge about: his birth and childhood up to when Mr Earnshaw finds him in Liverpool (WH 36), as well as the years after Cathy’s engagement before his return to the Heights. The personified superstition is quick to point out this flaw in the line of argumentation: But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane? (WH 330)

This question once more unearths issues that have troubled characters throughout the novel: Heathcliff’s unknown origin, all the more mysterious to the characters because of his dark outward appearance (“the little dark thing;” my emphasis), which is as bewildering to them as his destructive behaviour, is implicitly addressed by Nelly in her claim that the older Mr Earnshaw has “harboured [Heathcliff] to his bane” (my emphasis). The first gap in Heathcliff’s life 75  Marsden is concerned with intertextual relationship between Wuthering Heights and the Bible and Brontë’s interaction with concepts of Christianity in the nineteenth century. One example he gives for the co-presence of “polarities” in Wuthering Heights is Heathcliff, whom he regards as representing “Christ or Satan […] predicated upon the notion that these are not mutually exclusive categories. Heathcliff is able to act in the redeemer role, as defined by Schleiermacher, for Catherine alone: to other characters he frequently appears demonic. Heathcliff, unlike the more conventionally pious Edgar Linton, Nelly Dean and Lockwood, is able to reject systematised beliefs or doctrines and be consistent to his personal consciousness: he is the only character in the novel who is able to say that ‘I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!’ […]. This, perhaps, is the message of Wuthering Heights that some will hear but never understand: spiritual truth lies not in external systems of meaning or doctrine but in fidelity to one’s inner consciousness” (247–48). 76  It is significant that Nelly tries out different concepts from the realm of demonic creatures. Her reflections are representative of similar tendencies that can be found throughout Wuthering Heights, which display the character’s fundamental uncertainty about Heathcliff. See below for a detailed discussion of this issue.

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(“but where did he come from;” my emphasis) troubles Nelly and leads to a process of trying out different ways to fill it. She “wear[ies] [her]self” by “imagining some fit parentage” for Heathcliff, coming up with “grim variations” while repeating the process “over again” (WH 330). The end of Heathcliff’s life proves as puzzling for her as the beginning since “picturing” (WH 330) his funeral and the difficulties of choosing an inscription for his monument again confronts her with the uncertainty of his origin. Nelly’s bewilderment points out the underlying ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s nature in the novel. While the narrating self Nelly claims that the issue is resolved for her when “[d]awn restore[s] [her] to common sense” (WH 330), displacing all her troubling thoughts into the realm of the night and dreams,77 the co-text of the novel up to this point presents this ambiguity as a fundamental one that does not vanish with the approach of daylight. Even the immediate problems Nelly sees herself confronted with are not actually resolved by the approach of dawn as she claims, which becomes apparent when she remarks that it came “true” that they had difficulties deciding on an inscription for Heathcliff’s monument (WH 330). Heathcliff’s mysterious origin and behaviour challenge categories from the beginning to the end of Nelly’s intradiegetic narrative. He is throughout connected to different concepts from the realm of the demonic, which are first employed figuratively only to then be gradually ambiguated. Wuthering Heights begins with a chapter in which Heathcliff, seen through a stranger’s (i.e. Lockwood’s) eyes upon first meeting him, becomes as much of a thematic focal point as the peculiar house. The first appearance of Heathcliff on the level of discourse depicts him as an adult and the owner of the Heights who at first does not puzzle Lockwood greatly, even though he forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman – that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss, with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure – and rather morose […]. (WH 5)

The “singular contrast” Lockwood remarks on seems to be based both on Heathcliff’s unusual skin tone and on his gentlemanlike overall appearance in a place that is rather neglected and devoid of servants. Heathcliff’s character proves to be even harder to read for Lockwood than his looks. Over the course 77  The association of the irrational and the unexplained with night and darkness is common in nineteenth century fictional and factual discourses. Manifestations of this can be found in the titles of Catherine Crowe’s extremely successful book The Night Side of Human Nature (1848) and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story cycle Nachtstücke (“Night Pieces;” 1815–1817).

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of the first three chapters, he seems to become more and more peculiar in his tenant’s eyes. Lockwood initially calls Heathcliff a “capital fellow” (WH 3), but soon revises his judgement claiming that he has a “genuine bad nature” (WH 12). Lockwood’s inquiries about the background history of Heathcliff then trigger Nelly’s first embedded narrative, which details Heathcliff’s origins and his life story up to the point of Lockwood’s visit. Nelly makes the notable gaps in her narrative about his background explicit early on: ‘[Heathcliff] must have had some ups and downs in life to make him such a churl. Do you know anything of his history?’ ‘It’s a cuckoo’s, sir – I know all about it; except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money, at first […]!’ […] ‘Well, Mrs Dean, it will be a charitable deed to tell me something of my neighbours […].’ (WH 35)

There is a striking tension between Nelly’s claim that she “know[s] all about” Heathcliff’s “history” and the exceptions she admits to from the start. Firstly, she is not familiar with the beginning of Heathcliff’s life and his parentage, which marks the prototypical start of a (auto)biography.78 Secondly, she does not know how the orphan Heathcliff ended up in his current position as a wealthy landowner. Lockwood (and, in turn, the reader) is thus to be presented with a complete “history” of Heathcliff, which can neither account for his origin, nor his current place in society. Mysteries surrounding a character’s origin and riches are common literary tropes. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century Literature abounds with orphans whose heritage is discovered, such as in Eliza Parson’s Gothic Novel The Castle of Wolfenbach.79 Contrary to literary tradition, any expectation that Heathcliff’s parentage will be discovered is thwarted in the novel. Nelly’s narrative begins at the beginning of what she knows about Heathcliff’s story: his spectacular arrival at the Heights in Mr Earnshaw’s great coat “[o]ne fine summer morning:”

78  In one of the most famous opening passages in English literature, namely that of Charles Dickens’s fictional autobiography David Copperfield, for instance, we learn much about David’s life and parentage right away, as the novels begins ab ovo: “To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. […] I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘thereby,’ as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it” (13–14; my emphasis). 79  Other examples of novels in which a character’s heritage is disclosed include George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Bleak House.

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chapter 3 [Mr Earnshaw] threw himself into a chair, laughing and groaning, and bid them all stand off, for he was nearly killed – he would not have such another walk for the three kingdoms. ‘And at the end of it, to be flighted to death!’ he said, opening his great-coat, which he held – bundled up in his arms, ‘See here, wife; I was never so beaten with anything in my life; but you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil.’ (WH 36)

The Earnshaw household soon discovers several curious circumstances about the foundling besides his abrupt arrival. Firstly, Heathcliff’s origins are unknown. Mr Earnshaw claims to have found him “starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb in the streets of Liverpool” (WH 37), where “[n]ot a soul knew to whom it belonged” (WH 37). He also does not seem to have a name, which is why he is christened after a diseased brother of Catherine’s, with Heathcliff “serv[ing] him ever since, both for Christian and surname” as Nelly reports (WH 38). This fact haunts her in her sleepless night in the final chapter of Wuthering Heights in which she wonders if Heathcliff could be “a ghoul or a vampire” (WH 330). Furthermore, the child, whom Nelly estimates to be older than Catherine (WH 36), who is about six at the time, does not seem to speak English and instead “repeat[s] over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand” (WH 36–37). Finally, Heathcliff is dark-skinned, a fact that Lockwood comments on in the third chapter and Mr Earnshaw now stresses as well. Nelly’s narrative does not provide any concrete suggestion of Heathcliff’s origins, but there are subtle hints that point at alternative explanations for his ancestry. Firstly, the city of Liverpool as a slave trading port at the time together with Heathcliff’s dark skin and Mr Earnshaw’s inquiries about his “owner” (WH 37) might indicate a background in slavery. Liverpool at the time also hosted victims of the Irish famine, who frequently only spoke Erse, which Nelly might mistake for “gibberish” (345n7 in WH). Mrs Earnshaw’s comment on Heathcliff as a “gypsy brat” (WH 37) may point towards a Romani heritage. Mr Earnshaw’s first words about Heathcliff furthermore contain a reference to Heathcliff’s origins that seems to be only a figure of speech but is retrospectively ambiguated in the context of the novel as a whole: Heathcliff is “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (WH 36). This passage constitutes the first of all in all 49 occasions in the novel in which terms from the domain of the demonic are taken to refer to Heathcliff, his behaviour, or his origin. This absolute number is already quite impressive in a novel of 337 pages (Penguin edition). The distribution of these 49 instances over the course of the novel is quite significant, as well:

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Chapters of the novel in which the demonic is referred to regarding Heathcliff usually contain more than one such instance with the exceptions of Heathcliff’s introduction into the Earnshaw household in chapter IV, chapter II,II (the 16th chapter in the novel), and Nelly’s depiction of Heathcliff’s “fiendish laugh” (WH 219) about his plan of destruction for Hareton (chapter II,7; the 21st chapter). The first half of the novel sees a gradual, intermittent80 rise in the phenomenon, which peaks in volume I, chapter XVII – right in the middle of the novel – with twelve references in a single chapter. The second half of Wuthering Heights, in which the story of the second generation at the Heights is foregrounded, contains almost no references at all up to the 27th chapter. Three chapters with five instances in total (27th to the 29th) are followed by three chapters without any instances before a sharp rise in the last two chapters with the very last pages of the novel representing the second highest rate of occurrence in the novel, namely six times. The figure illustrates another striking phenomenon: references to the demonic seem to nearly always occur in clusters at significant points of the novel, such as exactly mid-way through it and in its final chapters. In the first of these instances, namely Mr Earnshaw’s reference to Heathcliff being “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (WH 36), nothing in the narrative points towards him being an actual demonic being at this point in the novel; yet, the characters’ reaction to the child is universally one of fear and loathing. Even though Mr Earnshaw regards Heathcliff as a “gift of God” (WH 36) by the time of his arrival at the Heights, he admits to having been “flighted to death” at first (WH 36). Nelly is “frightened” and Mrs Earnshaw “ready to fling it out of doors” (WH 37); Catherine “showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing” and both she and Hindley “entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room” (WH 37). Nelly, as she admits to Lockwood, “had no more sense, so, [she] put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow” (WH 37). Despite this similar reaction from all characters81 only the servant girl Nelly, who is of the same age as Hindley Earnshaw, is sent away for her “inhumanity” ( 37). In the course of the novel, not Nelly’s but Heathcliff’s lack of humanity in both senses of the term becomes a focus of the narrative and manifests itself in first metaphorical and then literal references to Heathcliff as a demonic creature. 80  Chapters I, II, III, V, VI, IX, XII, and volume II, chapter I contain no references. 81  Immediate, inexplicable dislike or disgust often marks the monstrous; compare, for instance, Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which Mr Utterson feels “hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear” (15) upon meeting Mr Hyde for the first time (15); similarly, Victor Frankenstein is revolted by the sight of his Creature, calling it a “catastrophe,” “wretch,” and expressing his “breathless horror and disgust” (Frankenstein 50).

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“Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?” Metaphors and the Ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s Nature The master’s bad ways and bad companions formed a pretty example for Catherine and Heathcliff. His treatment of the latter was enough to make a fiend of a saint. And, truly, it appeared as if the lad were possessed of something diabolical at that period. He delighted to witness Hindley degrading himself past redemption; and became daily more notable for savage sullenness and ferocity. I could not half tell what an infernal house we had. (WH 66)

Nelly’s description of Heathcliff’s behaviour when Hindley takes over as a proprietor of the Heights marks a striking metaphorical shift from a purely figurative use of the demonic to an ambiguous one that foregrounds both literal and figurative meanings of the demonic. In the first part of the novel, there are no indications that any references to the demonic are intended to be taken literally by the speakers of these utterances. A case in point is Nelly’s remark to Heathcliff that he should try to appear happier to impress Catherine, calling his eyes “that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies” (WH 57). There is no hint in Nelly’s initial comments on the influence of “[t]he master’s bad ways” that she intends “fiend” (WH 66) to be read literally as demon. Catherine and Heathcliff have in her eyes never been “saint[s]” (WH 66) to begin with and could thus hardly undergo a literal transformation from a saint to a demon. Instead, the demonic and the saintly are employed to underline the drastic extent of Hindley’s treatment of the children, hinting at the effects of such a behaviour on their character. Yet, her following utterance takes up the source domain of her earlier comment, the demonic, and explains that to all appearances Heathcliff at this point did actually display traits of being “possessed of something diabolical” (WH 66), pointing at an underlying truth beneath the metaphor.82 The phrase “it appeared as if” (WH 66) is typical for Nelly, who quite often uses verbs like “appear” and “seem” that indicate her insecurity, frequently in ambiguous passages in the novel.83 In the course of volume I of Wuthering Heights, expressions that relate Heathcliff to the domain of the demonic increase in number and can frequently be read literally as well as metaphorically. Volume I, chapter XVII, which is situated exactly in the middle of the novel, contains twelve such instances. 82  While “infernal” is clearly used metaphorically here, the combination of several terms from the domain of the demonic further contributes to the activation of the literal meaning of “diabolical” (WH 66). 83  Compare chapter 4.2 for a detailed discussion of the role of “seem” and “appear” for the ambiguities in Wuthering Heights.

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Isabella’s depiction of her marriage with Heathcliff is interspersed with references to various types of the demonic, as in the following dialogue with Nelly: ‘[…] Even if he had doted on me, the devilish nature would have revealed its existence, somehow. Catherine bad an awfully perverted taste to esteem him so dearly, knowing him so well – Monster! would that he could be blotted out of creation, and out of my memory!’ ‘Hush, hush! He’s a human being,’ I said. ‘Be more charitable; there are worse men than he is yet!’ ‘He’s not a human being,’ she retorted […]. (WH 174; my emphases)

Heathcliff is not only described as “devilish” and a “monster” in volume I, chapter XVII, but as fiendish, ghoulish, as a goblin, and as originating from hell. The references to Heathcliff in terms of the demonic tend to become more and more literal in the novel, and yet this does not lead to a disambiguation of his nature in Wuthering Heights. The variety of different concepts that are used for Heathcliff throughout the novel, up to Nelly’s musings if he is “a ghoul or a vampire” (WH 330) in the final chapter, points to the excessive difficulty Heathcliff poses for categorization of any kind.

“Is Mr Heathcliff a Man?”: Questions and Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature Indeed, characters begin to explicitly question how Heathcliff could be categorized in the second half of the novel and in their puzzlement resort to various concepts of demonic creatures. While questions regarding Heathcliff’s nature are not necessarily ambiguous themselves, they point out and contribute to the global ambiguity, because they presuppose that characters in the novel consider it both to be possible that he is human and that he is not, as in Isabella’s letter to Nelly: The remainder of the letter is for yourself, alone. I want to ask you two questions: the first is, How did you contrive to preserve the common sympathies of human nature when you resided here? I cannot recognise any sentiment which those around share with me. The second question, I have great interest in; it is this – Is Mr Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I shan’t tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but, I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married – that is, when you call to see me; and you must call, Ellen, very soon. (WH 136; my emphasis)

Isabella’s question about Heathcliff’s humanness presupposes that he could either be human, or not. Accordingly, it challenges a very basic assumption

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about Heathcliff, namely his status as a human being. Her subsequent questions render this implicit juxtaposition of alternatives (human vs. non-human) explicit by elaborating on each of these possibilities and connecting them with specific features of a human Heathcliff (madness), or a non-human Heathcliff (“devil”). While her first question might still have been reinterpreted as figurative, e.g. in the lines of is he a humane person, both alternatives take on very concrete forms in the subsequent questions.84 Isabella’s letter evokes the matter of Heathcliff’s humanness, which is addressed in her first question. It suggests that the milieu of the Heights may lead to a deterioration of “the common sympathies of human nature” (WH 136). Accordingly, notions of innate evilness in the form of the demonic are juxtaposed with the possibility that humans can be made inhumane, which evokes the philosophical context of nature versus nurture debates.85 This dichotomy can also be connected to Nelly’s earlier musings if Hindley’s bad influence might have turned Heathcliff into the person he is (see above). The significance of the question of what exactly Heathcliff is for Isabella is stressed throughout the paragraph with her remarking on her “great interest” in Nelly’s answer and her word choice of “beseech[ing]” her for an explanation (WH 136). This emphasis highlights the ambiguity on the level of language. Isabella’s question if Heathcliff is “a devil” in this instance is echoed toward the end of Wuthering Heights in Nelly’s musings if Heathcliff is “a ghoul” or “a vampire” (WH 330). By this time, it is not only Heathcliff’s immoral behaviour that challenges the other characters’ assumptions about human nature, but his strange behaviour including his “midnight excursion[s],” his laughter, and eating habits that remind Nelly of the “incarnate demons” in her reading (WH 330).86 84  Leo Bersani argues that “[t]he mythic limit of questions about human identity is a question about the necessity of being human at all. […] [This] passage[e] raise[s] precisely this possibility of a human body concealing or switching to non-human identities. We are probably not meant to take Isabella’s questions in Wuthering Heights literally. They express her moral horror of Heathcliff’s nature rather than a serious inquiry about whether or not he incarnates a real devil” (189). 85  In “Repression and Sublimation of Nature in Wuthering Heights,” Homans proposes that Heathcliff is inherently evil, and supports this argument with the lapwing-episode. According to Homans, it “reveals acutely what the reader suspected but never could verify from previous episodes: that Heathcliff was as sadistic in his relatively happy childhood as he is as adult” (18). If Heathcliff’s childhood could indeed be considered “relatively happy” is, however, rather doubtful. 86  The question if Heathcliff can be regarded as human is also frequently explicitly addressed in statements as in “He’s a lying fiend, a monster, and not a human being!” (WH 150–51); “he’s only half a man – not so much” (WH 181); “He’s not a human being”

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“I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married”: The Problem of Categorizing Heathcliff’s Ambiguous Nature The problem of categorizing Heathcliff manifests itself in the character’s grammar, specifically the choice of pronouns. Isabella’s letter to Nelly, for instance, not only questions Heathcliff’s humanness explicitly, but the ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s nature also influences her grammatical choices: “I beseech you to explain, if you can,” Isabella writes, “what I have married” (WH 136; my emphasis). Pronouns, such as “what” in Isabella’s utterance, can generally be regarded as a rich source of ambiguity as a result of the flexibility of this deictic expressions, which could easily refer to several entities in a given context. Yet, in Wuthering Heights, it is indeed their limited semantic content (cf. Büring 971) instead of their deictic characteristics that becomes productive for ambiguity. In Isabella’s letter, the interrogative pronoun “what” clearly refers to Heathcliff, since there is no other referent she has married, so there is no referential ambiguity whatsoever in her utterance. Nevertheless, her choice of the pronoun “what,” which is usually reserved for non-human entities, for somebody who is supposedly human generates ambiguity in the text. The use of a pronoun by a speaker presupposes specific semantic features of the entity it refers to.87 The difference between the pronoun “what,” which Isabella uses, and the pronoun expected when referring to somebody who has married the speaker, namely “whom,” lies in one semantic feature: non-human versus human. Accordingly, Isabella’s utterance presupposes that Heathcliff is not human. Up to this point in the text, Isabella has used only pronouns for Heathcliff whose encoded semantic content require a reference to human entities, such as “he.” Her choice of the interrogative pronoun “what” as referring to Heathcliff thus constitutes a reanalysis on her part as regards the fundamental category to which her husband belongs. While the co-text of her utterances shows that she considers both alternatives – Heathcliff as human and Heathcliff as non-human – to be possible, the presupposition of her utterance strengthens the seemingly weaker latter reading of Heathcliff. Isabella’s fundamental uncertainty about her husband’s humanness and the linguistic features in which this manifests itself contribute to the ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s nature in Wuthering Heights. Isabella’s curious grammatical choice in her letter is not the only time in the novel in which pronouns that are generally used for non-human entities refer (WH 174); “you’re a cruel man, but you’re not a fiend” (WH 275); “I believe you think me a fiend” (WH 334). 87  Pronouns require referents with specific properties such as “human” or “male” in order for utterances to be felitious (Büring 987).

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to Heathcliff. His first appearance on the level of story, namely his introduction into the Earnshaw household as narrated by Nelly, abounds with references to him as “it.” Mr Earnshaw urges his family about the child he has found in Liverpool that “you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (WH 36). The pronoun “it” can refer to small children, though it is quite unusual. It is still used continually by Nelly in her narrative up to the point of his christening: They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room, and I had no more sense, so, I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr Earnshaw’s door and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house. This was Heathcliff’s first introduction to the family: on corning back a few days afterwards, for I did not consider my banishment perpetual, I found they had christened him ‘Heathcliff’ […]. (WH 37–38; my emphases)

From this point onwards, Heathcliff is described throughout with pronouns that denotate human beings up until Isabella’s letter, which echoes the depiction of Heathcliff’s arrival at the Heights not only in its use of pronouns associated with non-human entities but also with her musing if the same person that Mr Earnshaw calls “as dark almost as though it came from the devil” might indeed be “a devil” (WH 345). Both the pronouns and the figurative reference to the demonic are slightly unusual but do not actually challenge the category of “human” in the earlier passage. The shift towards a more literal challenge to Heathcliff’s humanity occurs later in the novel and may in turn retrospectively render earlier instances ambiguous as well. The rising challenge to grammatical categories as regards Heathcliff thus analogously occurs with an ambiguation of metaphorical utterances and more and more explicit questions about Heathcliff’s ontological status.

“A man’s shape animated by demon life”: The Reception of Heathcliff’s Character The character of Heathcliff not only puzzles characters in the novel, but also its readers and critics from the outset of the publications of Wuthering Heights. The effects of the ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s nature can be observed in the contrasting readings of his characters that mirror positions taken by characters of Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë’s sister Charlotte, for instance, claims in her Preface to the second edition of Wuthering Heights that Heathcliff is indeed to be regarded as a demonic creature:

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chapter 3 [W]e should say [Heathcliff] was child neither of Lascar nor gipsy, but a man’s shape animated by demon life – a Ghoul – an Afreet. (liii)

Several adaptations of the novel are likewise based on this reading of Wuthering Heights such as Sarah Gray’s Wuthering Bites. In contrast to this, Helen Stoddard has argued that Heathcliff is not an example of a Satanic character but of “certain Satanic characteristics […] projected onto evil human characters” (117). Her approach shows how intricately readings of Heathcliff’s nature are tied to the question of morality and the evaluation of his character.88 Carlisle, for instance, argues that Heathcliff is not vengeful by nature, but is made to be so by the environment at the Heights and the mistreatment he is subjected to there.89 Heathcliff himself seems to believe in the latter possibility. His ‘experiment’ of raising Hareton like himself appears to be designed to prove how he was made into the man he is: Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it! (WH 187)

Nelly likewise comments on Hindley’s deteriorating influence on Heathcliff (WH 22; WH 46–48). John Bowen is among the few scholars who have acknowledged the ambiguity of Heathcliff’s character,90 even if he does not use 88  See also Bataille who comments that Heathcliff is “a character […] totally devoted to Evil” while Catherine for him is “absolutely moral. She is so moral that she dies of not being able to detach herself from the man she loved when she was a child” (21). It is questionable if Catherine’s continued attachment to Heathcliff can indeed be regarded as evidence of her morality, especially when Heathcliff’s love for her is not. 89  Przybylowicz comments that “Brontë surely means to test our ideas of nature vs. nurture, as Heathcliff keeps pushing the limits” (10), but generally proposes as her subtitle indicates that “Everybody is a Villain in Wuthering Heights” and that it is only “the Nelly/ Lockwood narration frame, which causes him to appear to exceed the villainy of other characters” (7). 90  See also Pauline Nestor’s reading of Heathcliff: “It is the mystery surrounding Heathcliff – his lack of a personal history, his sullen uncommunicativeness, his almost magical capacity to remake himself during his absence from Wuthering Heights – which makes him such a suitable focus for others’ projections. Heathcliff is the ‘cuckoo’ without a history, an enigma so unsettling that Nelly is inclined, as indeed some critics have been subsequently, to invent a past for him” (xxiii). Kermode comments on Heathcliff’s constant “betweenness,” which to him “certainly cannot be explained by any generic formula (‘Byronic’ or ‘Gothic’)” (43). Andrea Arnold’s recent film adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2011) does credit to the ambiguity regarding Heathcliff’s nature with visual imagery. On the one hand, the image of scars that seem to stem from whip lashes on the back of James Howson, the Black actor who plays Heathcliff, suggest a background in slavery that the reference to Liverpool as a place of origin for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights hints at. On

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the term itself, but he likewise ties the question of Heathcliff’s nature to the morality of his behaviour: Heathcliff is one of the greatest enigmas in all of English literature. When we ask what seems a simple question of Wuthering Heights – why, for example, is Heathcliff so appallingly vengeful to those such as Hareton Earnshaw who have done him no harm? – we can find explanations in the terrible misfortunes of his life: he is an orphan; he is brutalised by Hindley; he is relegated to the status of a servant; Catherine marries Edgar. But the novel matches these kinds of social or psychological explanations by quite other ones: by the suggestion (as Charlotte believed) that he may be diabolical, a vampire or a ghoul. The novel gives us both kinds of understanding together; neither is allowed to trump the other. (209)

Yet, the question of Heathcliff’s ontological status goes beyond the cause for and degree of his destructive behaviour. The reflections of the characters in Wuthering Heights are led to wonder about Heathcliff’s nature as a result of his unknown heritage and his curious death. Especially the latter aspect ties this ambiguity to other underlying ambiguities in the world of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s ambiguous nature evades any attempt at categorization and consequently foregrounds significant questions that are relevant beyond the novel, such as what constitutes humanness.91 Wuthering Heights is not merely underspecified as regards Heathcliff’s origin, along the lines of the famous question of how many children Lady Macbeth has.92 Neither is this a case of vagueness in the novel. Instead, the fundamental uncertainty the characters of the novel experience with regard to Heathcliff’s nature is regularly addressed in Wuthering Heights from its outset, and frequently manifests itself in local ambiguities that are triggered by explicit rhetorical and non-rhetorical questions. Several discrete possibilities of how to make sense of this issue are suggested in the text, all of which are compatible with the novel as a whole. The way in which Heathcliff’s character throughout evades categorization manifests itself in ambiguities and poses a fundamental problem for the characters themselves. Heathcliff does not seem to fit into any one category: he seems to be to excessive or strange to fit the category “human.” As a result, either concepts of humanness have to be adapted the other hand, imagery of sucking blood hint at Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s vampiric nature. 91  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is concerned with similar questions of humanness and humanity. While the monster in her novel becomes more human by reading, thus furthering his intellectual and emotional development, his vengefulness eventually undermines his efforts. 92  Compare L.C. Knights (How Many Children had Lady Macbeth?).

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or he must be regarded as a non-human entity, which challenges general assumptions about the nature of the narrated world. Furthermore, no specific category of the demonic seems to be applicable to him as well and characters rather try out anything from a demon, a goblin, a basilisk, a devil, a fiend, a monster, a vampire and a ghoul, but none of these concepts seem to present an obvious solution either. If he is accepted as human, then the category of humanness needs to be accepted to include creatures like Heathcliff, which seems to trouble many of the characters as well. As a result of the novel’s ambiguities, Heathcliff emerges as a quasi-mythic creature who evades any category that is proposed for him in the novel. 3.6

Wuthering Heights as an Ontological Reflection

The interconnected global ambiguities of Wuthering Heights turn the novel into an ontological reflection, a critical examination of basic assumptions about the world. Each of the ontological ambiguities in the text can locally be explained as emerging through problems of perception and narration, but the more ambiguities occur and the more they are interlinked as the novel progresses, fundamental laws of nature and causality are increasingly challenged. Throughout Wuthering Heights, ambiguities indicate that Catherine may be Heathcliff, that the two of them may be reunited in afterlife with and in nature in a world in which limits of time and space can be transcended. Not only readers are left to wonder about the nature of the narrated world, but a fundamental uncertainty emerges for some characters in the novel as epitomized in Nelly’s words in the final chapter: [T]he country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their Bible that he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the church, and on the moor, and even within this house – Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night, since his death – and an odd thing happened to me about a month ago. I was going to the Grange one evening – a dark evening threatening thunder – and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him, he was crying terribly, and I supposed the lambs were skittish, and would not be guided. ‘What is the matter, my little man?’ I asked. ‘They’s Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t’ Nab,’ he blubbered, ‘un’ Aw darnut pass ’em.’ I saw nothing; but neither the sheep nor he would go on, so I bid him take the road lower down.

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He probably raised the phantoms from thinking, as he traversed the moors alone, on the nonsense he had heard his parents and companions repeat – yet still, I don’t like being out in the dark, now – and I don’t like being left by myself in this grim house – I cannot help it, I shall be glad when they leave it, and shift to the Grange! (WH 336)

Even if Nelly provides a possible rational explanation for each strange circumstance or observation, she still cannot help but show her uncertainty at the end of the passage. She calls the assumption that Catherine and Heathcliff roam the earth after their death “nonsense” and “idle tales,” a belief which she attributes to Lockwood as well: “Idle tales, you’ll say, and so say I” (WH 336), echoing Heathcliff’s expression of expectant ridicule before (“you may laugh, if you will;” WH 290). Both her use of language93 and her admission that she “do[es] not like being out in the dark, now” and neither “do[es] [she] like being left by [her]self” at the Heights nevertheless point at underlying doubts if the “country folk” who “would swear on their Bible that [Heathcliff] walks” (WH 336) might indeed be right. Nelly thus takes up an intermediate position between them and Lockwood who at least claims to firmly believe in eternal rest for “the sleepers in that quiet earth” (WH 337), even if the way in which he phrases this claim once again show his own underlying doubts.94 The assumption that the world represented may be different from what we as readers and some of the characters expected it to be, and is indeed ambiguous in nature, suggests itself. There are several other passages in the novel that challenge the characters’ assumptions about the nature of the world they inhabit, beginning early on with Lockwood’s possible ghostly encounter; over the course of the novel, this uncertainty is shown to grow as a greater number of characters all express the same kinds of uncertainties. The discourse regarding Heathcliff’s nature is a good example of this tendency. While Isabella claims in volume I, chapter X that “Mr Heathcliff is not a fiend; he has an honourable soul, and a true one” (WH 103),95 she insists four chapters later and thus midway through the novel that he is a “monster” and that “[he]’s not a human being.” Yet, Nelly is at this point still convinced that “[h]e’s a human being” (WH 174). Towards the end of Wuthering Heights Nelly herself is left to wonder: “Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?” (WH 330). 93  See chapter 2.5 for a detailed analysis of this passage including Nelly’s use of contrastive conjunctions such as “yet still.” 94  Even Lockwood at times expresses doubts about the nature of the narrated world. Compare chapter 2.2 and chapter 2.6. 95  At this point, the demonic is used only in the figurative sense.

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Nelly, Isabella Linton and the other inhabitants of the Grange and the Heights are time and again confronted with ontological questions. Their uncertainty and clashing assumptions manifest themselves in the text’s ambiguities from the beginning of the novel to its final sentence. The reader similarly has to come to terms with the ambiguity and must strive to get an idea of the narrated world beneath the layers of perception and narration in the text. Each ambiguous passage presents the reader with a choice: they can dismiss the ambiguity as a result of epistemological problems – after all, perception and narration are constantly presented as problematic in the novel. Yet, the novel also offers one consistent explanation to account for all of these passages that are ambiguous or contribute to ambiguity: that the world of Wuthering Heights itself becomes a source of uncertainty for the characters that inhabit it. This uncertainty manifests itself in the novel’s ambiguities. The world that can be reconstructed from the textual evidence is one in which the laws of nature and of causality that we assume to apply in our own “actual” world may not apply in certain areas. Whereas maximal similarity to our (the readers’) world96 – a viewpoint more or less embodied by Lockwood in the novel – seems to presuppose clear boundaries between life and death as well as between human nature and between human beings, this very assumption is questioned when these boundaries appear to become permeable in the world of Wuthering Heights. All of Wuthering Heights is fiction and therefore counterfactually independent, but it has been suggested that our point of access to fictional texts is to accept their laws of nature and causality as maximally similar to our own, unless otherwise indicated or even contradicted.97 Whenever the laws of nature are challenged within a fictional world, it is a strategy of rationalization for readers to assume that we are dealing with a fantastic world (such as MiddleEarth in The Lord of the Rings, in which immortality is possible for some races) that is further removed from our own. Genres are frequently tied to specific assumptions about the laws of nature and causality in narrated worlds as well

96  A reader’s world in 1801 vs. a reader’s world in 2018 are, figuratively speaking, worlds apart; the distinction requires more nuanced discussion in a different context. However, for the purpose of the present argument, many fundamental assumptions remain the same or at least similar enough that the comparison can be made. 97  See especially Lewis’s (philosophical) work on possible worlds, in which he discusses an example from the Sherlock Holmes novels (“Truth in Fiction”); for an approach more geared towards the discipline of literary studies, see Marie-Laure Ryan’s Possible Worlds. The idea that there is a relation between the fictional world and the actual world because they are similar in some ways (though not necessarily all) is also an important feature of the analysis in Bauer and Beck.

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as to the relationship to the actual world.98 Speaking birds are, for instance, perfectly normal in a beast fable or speaking trees in the world of Lord of the Rings, but not at all in a sensation novel like Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. For Wuthering Heights, this clear distinction is not made: there are no indications in the text that the narrated world is to be regarded as a thoroughly fantastic one, but it is rather shown to be maximally similar to our own. This becomes possible through the global ambiguities that the text suggests.99 The unresolved ambiguities of Wuthering Heights may make Brontë’s novel seem like a prime example of the fantastic according to Tzevtan Todorov. In his influential monograph The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, he considers texts for which the principle “[t]he book closed, the ambiguity persists” (43) holds true (such as James’s The Turn of the Screw) as clear cases of the fantastic, because a resolution of ambiguities in a text would lead away from the fantastic into the genres of the marvelous or the uncanny.100 Yet, his focus lies not on the ambiguities as such but on a state of uncertainty readers experience, which is usually resolved by the end of the text. Todorov argues that [t]he fantastic […] lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from “reality” as it exists in the common opinion. At the story’s end, the reader makes a decision even if the character does not; he opts for one solution or the other, and thereby emerges from the fantastic. If he decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the work belongs to another genre: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous. (41)

There are other major differences between what Todorov describes for the fantastic with its dichotomy natural/supernatural and the complex ambiguities of Wuthering Heights. 98  For a formal account of the relation between the fictional world and the actual world, see Bauer and Beck, who suggest that the meaning of fictional texts is accessed by readers through the accessibility relation R. 99  Compare Lewis: “We depart from actuality as far as we must to reach a possible world where the counterfactual supposition comes true […]. But we do not make gratuitous changes. We hold fixed the features of actuality that do not have to be changed as part of the least disruptive way of making the supposition true” (269). See also Ryan, who calls this the principle of minimal departure, and Walton’s notion of the reality principle. 100  Todorov’s definition of genre differs somewhat from common approaches to genres (compare chapter 4.1). Todorov admits that “[w]e may ask how valid a definition of gerne may be if it permits a work to ‘change genre’ by a simple sentence like: ‘At this moment, he awakened and saw the walls of his room …;” nevertheless, he claims, “there is no reason not to think of the fantastic as an evanescent genre” (42).

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Todorov regards a particular kind of ambiguity as crucial for the fantastic: the text must oblige its readers to wonder whether unusual events are to be interpreted naturally or supernaturally. This hesitation is constitutive for the fantastic; as a “definition of the genre” he proposes that the fantastic is based essentially on a hesitation of the reader – a reader who identifies with the chief character – as to the nature of an uncanny event. This hesitation may be resolved so that the event is acknowledged as reality, or so that the event is identified as the fruit of imagination or the result of an illusion; in other words, we may decide that the event is or is not. (157)

Accordingly, all such ambiguities can be subsumed under questions like: Is the narrator mentally ill (natural explanation) or do ghosts exist in the world of the novel (supernatural)? Is the narrator lying (natural explanation) or does he really interact with demonic creatures (supernatural)? This is very close to the concept of ambiguity Shlomith Rimmon, who likewise analyses the The Turn of the Screw, has developed.101 Wuthering Heights contains many instances of what Todorov would consider “uncanny events,” but they happen to several characters, are reported on by multiple narrators and the novel contains a collection of rationalizations ranging from dreaming to fever-induced hallucinations (compare chapter 1.6). Indeed, the variety of such phenomena in Wuthering Heights is in some ways similar to the one that Todorov has compiled for his entire corpus. The ambiguities of Brontë’s novel draw attention not to one aspect of this narrated world or to the genre of the text but rather to the nature of perception and narration itself as well as to features of the world that lie beneath these layers. The question if Catherine roams the earth after her death, for instance, only concerns this fictional world, but the novel’s ambiguities raise questions that go very much beyond such issues. They make us wonder not only about the ontology of this world but maybe even about that of our own in putting under scrutiny the only sources of knowledge that are available to the characters in the novel and to us – what we perceive and what we are told about. The effects of the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights thus go far beyond the functions of the fantastic according to Todorov: First, the fantastic produces a particular effect on the reader – fear, or horror, or simply curiosity – which the other genres or literary forms cannot provoke. Second, the fantastic serves the narration, maintains suspense: the presence of fantastic elements permits a particularly dense organization of the plot. Third, 101  Compare the introduction of this study for a detailed discussion of Rimmon’s approach to ambiguity.

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the fantastic has what a first glance appears to be a tautological function: it permits the description of a fantastic universe, one that has no reality outside language; the description and what is described are not of a different nature. (92)

Todorov insisits that “three and only three functions (at this level of generality)” (92) of the fantastic exist (namely those quoted above), but there is more to the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights than creating emotions like horror or suspense and the “universe” it describes seems uncannily familiar rather than “having no reality outside language,” even if the novel is, of course, fictional. Instead, its ambiguities suggest that the narrated world represents a possible version of our own ambiguous world and that we may even have to adapt our expectations about it. The generic ambiguity of Wuthering Heights, as described in chapter 4.1, is crucial for this effect.

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Conclusion: Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights: A Global View 4.1

Ambiguity and Genre

Wuthering Heights not only represents a challenge to categories and assumptions about the world depicted in the text; Brontë’s ambiguous novel also constantly defies categories of texts as it evokes generic patters only to undermine them and to juxtapose them with others. Specifying the genre of Wuthering Heights has proved difficult for critics.1 In their influential study of Wuthering Heights in The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar likewise comment on the ongoing “quarrels about the novel’s genre and style” (258), concluding that “[t]he world of Wuthering Heights […] is one where what seems to be the most unlikely opposites coexist” (259). Queenie Leavis described her puzzling reading experience of the novel in the following way: some things in [Wuthering Heights] are incompatible with the rest, so much so that one seems at times to find oneself in really different novels. (25)

Scholarly debate since the publication of Leavis’s article in 1969 has so far not been able to account for this effect. Lyn Pykett concludes twenty years later, quoting Leavis’s impression of Brontë’s novel: “Wuthering Heights has proved impossible to categorise, and continues to confront its readers with a sometimes alarming sense of disorientation, a feeling of finding themselves in ‘really different novels’” (74). She suggests that this “sense of disorientation” in the reading process and the “impossib[ility] to categorize” the novel can be led back to a “generic mix” (73) between features of the Gothic and the Domestic novel in Wuthering Heights. In challenging categories of genre, Wuthering Heights evokes a lively contemporary debate. Rebecca Newman argues in her discussion of genre and the early Victorian Novel that one “might […] conclude with some accuracy that no age but the mid-19th century was so distinguished by acts of literary 1  Various critics have discussed generic features in Wuthering Heights, such as Sheila Smith and Colin Wilcockson who discuss the connection between Brontë’s novel and the ballad tradition.

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categorization and a public discourse on the genre” (74). She points out the significant role magazines played in this development: In many magazines throughout the 1830s, reviews of contemporary novels were routinely preceded by genealogies of the form, tracing a line of practitioners and texts against which to evaluate the contemporary novel in question. As a result, magazines effectively offered to their readership a practical demonstration of what ‘genre’ might be: the productive reading of an individual case to determine typology and the necessary understanding of typology to read each singular instance. (67)

Contemporary readers might thus have been very much aware of literary genres and their significance, both from criticism in magazines2 and from their own reading experience.3 Despite widespread demands for a “necessary ‘purity’ and ‘legitimacy’ of genre” in magazine publications (Newman 70),4 novelists were still prone to 2  Compare, for example, the contemporary criticism of the Gothic in magazines like the Monthly Magazine as compiled by Angela Wright in Gothic Fiction. 3  Readers in 1847 would have been familiar with generic patterns because they had the opportunity to read extensively. This includes conventions of the Gothic novel (which Wuthering Heights evokes throughout) even if this genre was seemingly old-fashioned by the middle of the nineteenth century. Cannon Schmitt claims that “by the 1830s, itself thought of as belonging to a bygone era, the Gothic remains haunting later literary forms […] in the shape of an anachronism” (305). Gothic novels were still widely read in the Victorian age because they were available in the cheap format of the “blue book” from 1800 onwards (St Clair 36). William St Clair notes that: “[i]n traditional literary history, which is often conventionally arranged as a chronological parade of canonical authors, and which usually presents works of literature as autonomous objects of aesthetic appreciation, the literature written by one generation is presented as succeeding its immediate predecessor. A history of reading, by contrast, shows instead a reading nation in which different layers of readers interacted with texts of differing degrees of modernity and obsolescence within their economic circumstances and cultural horizons” (33). Novels older than 28 years could be printed at considerably smaller costs after copyright regulations, known as the “Act of Queen Anne” (1774), were introduced (St Clair 23). As a result, a process of canon formation began and most readers would have been familiar with not only Gothic novels but also with other works from the eighteenth century, for instance by Tobias Smollett, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and others, which would have been included in cheap collections (St Clair 30). Due to these developments and the high number of commercial circulating libraries (by the 1820s, 1,500 already existed in Britain; St Clair 37), access to novels increased immensely even if public libraries were still a novelty (most were only introduced after the Public Libraries Act of 1851; Rose 36). Availability of literature furthermore increased as servants were frequently permitted to use their employer’s libraries and there were small libraries owned by religious institutions such as Sunday Schools (Rose 37). 4  Newman argues that new magazines emerging in the 1820s and 30s such as the New Monthly, Blackwood’s, the London, Athenaeum, the Metropolitan, and Fraser’s are distinguished by

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mix generic patterns in their novels. Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, for instance, contains features of the Gothic and of realism,5 as does Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. Yet, neither of them seems to lead to an equally strange effect of disorientation as it has been described for Wuthering Heights. Accordingly, it is not the combination of various generic patterns in one novel – Pykett’s “generic mix” - but the specific way in which these patterns are evoked, undermined and combined in Wuthering Heights that seems to be responsible for the effect of disorientation. This technique foregrounds narrated perception and thereby addresses the question of the nature of the narrated world in a way that makes it hard to simply dismiss it as completely unlike our own or belonging to the realm of allegory even if it deviates from our expectations about the world. The interaction between distinct generic patterns that are made interdependent in Wuthering Heights leads to an effect that could be termed genre ambiguity in that the novel can at the same time be regarded as a typical member of a category and not a member of the category. The evocation of the Gothic6 in Wuthering Heights, which is undermined and counteracted by generic features of travel literature, is a case in point. Both its prevalence in the novel7 and its formulaic nature make it a good example to show the ways in which generic ambiguity is generated. Contemporary criticism already ridiculed the fixed formula for Gothic fiction, for instance in an open letter to the editor of the Monthly Magazine, published in 1797, whose author satirically claims that he “can lay down a few plain and simple rules, by observing which any man or maid, I mean, ladies’ maid, may be able to compose from four to six uncommonly interesting volumes, that shall claim the admiration of all true believers in the marvelous” (103).8 Recent scholarly debate on their “spirited mix” of literature and critical commentary and contain extensive commentary on generic rules of novels in the 1830s and 40s (70–71). 5  Compare, for example, Jarrett for a discussion of Gothic features in Little Dorrit. 6  The term “Gothic” has especially been used in contemporary debates of the genre. E.J. Clery notes that “[t]he attachment of the term Gothic to the literature of terror is quite a recent development – and almost entirely accidental” (21). It should be noted, however, that Horace Walpole adopted the subtitle “A Gothic Story” for the Castle of Otranto. 7  Wuthering Heights is discussed in virtually all important handbooks and companions to the Gothic, for instance in Blackwell’s A New Companion to the Gothic (ed. David Punter), in The Routledge Companion to Gothic (ed. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy), in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (ed. Jerrold Hogle), as well as in The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (ed. Andrew Smith). 8  Compare Wright who regards this text as “satirically pinpoint[ing] the formulaic nature of the Gothic novel” (24). Imitations of this article soon appeared (24), one of which proposes a “recipe” for composing Gothic novels and wishes that as “[e]very absurdity ha[s] an end […], the insipid repetition of the same bugbears will at length work a cure” (qtd. in Wright 25).

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the Gothic in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century comes to a similar conclusion. In her influential study The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick claims that “[s]urely no other modern literary form as influential as the Gothic novel has also been as pervasively conventional. Once you know that a novel is of the Gothic kind (and you can tell that from the title), you can predict its contents with unnerving certainty” (9).9 This formulaic nature of the Gothic is the reason why it makes sense to spak of genre ambiguity instead of a genre mix. 4.1.1 Genre Ambiguity Established: the Paratext of Wuthering Heights Genre ambiguity is introduced from the very beginning of Wuthering Heights by evoking and undermining generic patterns of Gothic Literature. Kososky Sedgwick’s claim that one “can tell […] from the title” (9) if one is faced with a Gothic novel, points out the importance of the beginning for generic markers of the Gothic. While this may particularly be true for this specific genre (see below), the beginning of a text, including the paratext,10 is crucial for genre expectations in general. Readers (at least first-time readers) access texts 9  In his monograph Gothic Literature, Andrew Smith points out that “it is important to acknowledge that the early Gothic appears to be highly formulaic” but that “these stories are not as stereotyped as they may seem” (3). While this is certainly true, the genre is still formulaic enough to derive clear generic patterns from works of eighteenth and early nineteenth century Gothic fiction. In the introduction to The Routledge Companion to Gothic, Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy point out that an exploration of the Gothic as a genre should not neglect later developments of the Gothic as has frequently been the case in scholarly debate (1). This is certainly true; as the present study does not strive to provide a conclusive overview of Wuthering Heights within developments of the Gothic but rather examines how genre ambiguity is created strategically by evoking and undermining conventional generic features of the Gothic, primary works of Gothic fiction published after Wuthering Heights are not considered. Delia da Sousa Correa has similarly argued for the usefulness of such an approach in her article on genre in Jane Eyre: “As present-day readers, we need to explore, as far as we are able, how the novel relates to contexts available to readers at the time of publication. We can of course, never achieve a perfect reconstruction of the literary, not to mention the social and ideological, contexts within which [Charlotte] Brontë’s original readers encountered the novel. Moreover, we need to see as valid what the novel means to us as readers now. None the less, an attempt to appreciate the expectations the novel would have roused in its nineteenth-century readership can only enrich our own reading” (94). See Katie Halsey’s article “Gothic and the History of Reading, 1764–1830” for an overview of contemporary reactions to the Gothic. 10  Frow (105) mentions the importance of paratext and also the “ambiguity” concerning its status (106): on the one hand paratexts consist of “a set of cues that ‘surround’ or ‘accompany’ the text” (105), but they are also “part of the text” (105); Gérard Genette (Paratexts 262) calls this a “threshold.”

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chronologically and, from the beginning, they approach the text with generic expectations. Indeed, genre theorists point out the importance of beginnings for readers. Fowler remarks that [t]he generic markers that cluster at the beginning of a work have a strategic role in guiding the reader. They help to establish, as soon as possible, an appropriate mental “set” that allows the work’s generic codes to be read” (88).

John Frow similarly notes that the “anticipatory structure [of the reading process] is […] based on the cues we receive when we first encounter a text” (104). The very first thing we perceive when beginning to read a novel is the title page.11 The first edition of Wuthering Heights presented its reader with the title alongside the subtitle “A Novel.” According to Fowler, clear titling conventions emerged early on and could still be detected in the nineteenth century (93): “With some exceptions […], full personal names are preferred for verisimilar novels, place names for romances” (Fowler 93).12 Fowler’s examples for these conventions are, strikingly, David Copperfield and Wuthering Heights.13 A quick overview of influential eighteenth century novels indeed shows such tendencies when it comes to the conventionality of titles.14 While many verisimilar novels of the eighteenth century are named after characters in the novel,15 11  The name of the author on the title page of the first edition, namely Brontë’s penname Ellis Bell, would not have raised any genre expectations for its contemporary readers, since Wuthering Heights was Brontë’s first novel. The only other work to have been published under the name of Ellis Bell was a rather unsuccessful collection of poetry published with Acton and Currer Bell (the pennames of the other Brontë sisters) of which two copies were sold in the first year after the collection was published (Gezari xv). 12  Fowler contrasts “romance,” which most prominently includes Gothic fiction, to novels. He is, however, not consistent in this, as he later on discusses the same works of fiction, now calling them “Gothic novels” (163). In this study, the term Gothic novel or Gothic fiction is preferred. Fowler adds that the preference for place names as titles “may have something to do with the special function of mis-en-scène in romance” (93; emphasis in original). 13  He also discusses Jane Eyre which he regards as a “romantic novel” and thus as a generic hybrid whose “novel element” is “apparently […] enough to carry the full-name title” (93) usually reserved for romances. These reflections make it seem like the title is a label that is automatically or at least compulsorily attached to a text if genre elements of one category are strong enough. What Fowler entirely ignores here is the possibility of strategically using genre conventions, such as expectations raised by the title. 14  William St Clair’s article on “Publishing, Authorship, and Reading” provides a useful overview of the most influential works of literature for eighteenth and early nineteenth century audiences. 15  Compare, for instance, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones,

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most Gothic texts, such as Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Romance of the Forest, have place names in their titles. In his quantitative analysis of the titles of novels published between 1740 and 1850, Franco Moretti concludes that “space is really the cornerstone of the [Gothic] convention: place names are much more frequent than human proper names; spatial nouns like castle, abbey, forest, cave, and so on show up in 50 percent of the cases” (156–57).16 While there are exceptions to the rule,17 this convention seems to have been strong enough for Jane Austen to pick it up in Northanger Abbey. There are novels in the nineteenth century with “neutral” titles that do not reflect any of the traditions indicated by Fowler, such as Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Instead, Wuthering Heights follows the convention in having a title that serves as a strong genre signal for contemporary readers, who would accordingly most likely expect to read a Gothic novel.18 Still, this does not automatically make Wuthering Heights a “romance” as Fowler seems to imply. While the title reflects titling conventions of Gothic literature, the subtitle of the first edition points in a different direction: “A Novel.”19 This represents a contrast to subtitling conventions of Gothic novels: Ann Radcliff’s Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, for instance, were all published with the subtitle “A Romance.” In contrast to this, the subtitle “A Novel” can be found on the title pages of prose works in an entirely different tradition such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.20 While the title of Wuthering Heights thus Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random and Fanny Burney’s Evelina. 16  Moretti continues: “Nothing is as typical of gothic titles as this fixation with space; and of course this is true not just of titles, but of gothic novels: where space is dark, labyrinthine, cold; it imprisons, it terrifies, it kills” (157). 17  Examples of Gothic novels without place names in their titles include Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and William Godwin’s Caleb Williams. 18  On the title of Wuthering Heights as a generic signal of the Gothic compare also David Punter and Glennis Byron. 19  It should be noted that far from all early and mid-nineteenth century works of fiction were published with a subtitle. The first editions of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall, for instance, did not have a subtitle. 20  Compare Rebecca Newman on the development of the genre and the term of the novel in early Victorian literature. Newman notes that “a controversy familiar in the late 18th and early 19th centuries between the forms of the romance and the novel […] had particular currency in early Victorian literature” (74–75). Nevertheless, the strict division between these two categories began to weaken by the 1830s as the inclusion of the “Romantic” novel in the style of Radcliffe in a categorization of novel types published in the Gazette in 1831 shows (73).

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clearly evokes the Gothic, the subtitle does at least not support this notion and may even counteract it. The Gothic and Travel Narratives in the Opening Chapters of Wuthering Heights The next part of the novel that a reader encounters, namely the beginning of the text proper, is as notably absent from discussions of Wuthering Heights and the Gothic as the subtitle. It seems as if most critics agree with Lyn Pykett who writes that “[t]he appearance of Catherine’s ghost and Heathcliff’s passionate response take the novel into the literary genre of the Gothic” (“Gender and Genre” 89), and merely focus on Lockwood’s encounter with the dead Catherine, which Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls the “locus classicus of Gothic structure” in the novel (97; emphasis in the original), and subsequent parts of the text. The contemporary English setting that is established in the first lines of Wuthering Heights might partly present an explanation for why it is rarely discussed with regard to the Gothic. The novel specifies a date and a place in its first lines: 4.1.2

1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. (1)

In contrast to this, Gothic novels are mostly set long before the year of the publication in foreign regions. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, for instance, starts with the “Abbey Bell” of a Capuchin church in medieval Madrid (7) and Ann Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho “[o]n the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony […] in the year 1584” (1).21 The remoteness of the location and the “solitary neighbour” do evoke Gothic conventions in Wuthering Heights to some extent. The Heights is a bleak, hostile and rather oppressive building. While the novel is not set in an exotic Southern European location, it is still stressed in the very beginning that it is the remotest place possible in England. Lockwood comments that “in all England, [he] do[es] not believe that [he] could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society” (1). Even within this remote 21  Verisimilar novels contrast with eighteenth century Gothic novels frequently set in Great Britain. Smollett’s Roderick Random and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, in the respective eponymous novels, report their birth in the northern parts of England. Many verisimilar novels such as Richardson’s Pamela and Defoe’s Moll Flanders do not mention time and place explicitly in the first lines, but are set in (roughly) contemporary England, as well.

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corner of the country, Wuthering Heights has a singularly isolated position on the top of a hill, far away from both the next estate, Thrushcross Grange, and the next town, Gimmerton.22 The design and condition of the building, the wildness of the surrounding landscape and even its name evoke the Gothic. Lockwood informs the reader that “wuthering” is “a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (2). This evokes a crucial generic feature of Gothic novels: wild and dangerous weather.23 The building itself seems indeed to be influenced by the weather on this bleak hill top. Its “narrow windows” which are “deeply set in the wall” and its “large jutting stones” are reminiscent of a fortress rather than a farm house (2). Lockwood attributes these characteristics to the “foresight” of the architect (2) to protect the house from its wild environment.24 The “wuthering” wind seems indeed strong enough to shape the trees surrounding the building. The personification of the thorns underlines the threatening nature of the environment: the thorns are “gaunt”25 and their “limbs” are shaped “as if craving alms of the sun” (2). The connection of these elements creates an image of poverty

22  Cannon Schmitt also comments on isolation as a common element of Gothic fiction and the novels of the Brontë sisters. She connects their settings to other forms of isolation in these novels: “[T]he isolated settings that characteristically play such a large role in the work of Radcliffe and her contemporaries have their own avatars in the Victorian Era. Indeed, one way to understand the appeal of such authors as Emily and Charlotte Brontë is to note the degree to which isolation at once constitutes, precipitates, and resolves the crisis of their heroines” (307). 23  Spooner and McEvoy (The Routledge Companion to Gothic), for instance, include “atmospheric weather” (1) in their list of essential criteria of Gothic novels. Kullmann similarly comments that “[o]ne of the outstanding features of Gothic novels is the frequent descriptions of landscape and weather, including depictions of grand and violent nature, of huge mountains, and thunderstorms” (“Nature and Psychology in Melmoth the Wanderer and Wuthering Heights,” 99). Compare also the first sentence of Lawrence Flammenberg’s Gothic novel The Necromancer: “The hurricane was howling, the hailstones beat against the windows, the hoarse croaking of the raven bidding adieu to autumn, and the weathercock’s dismal creaking joined with the mournful dirge of the solitary owl, when Herrman [sic] and Hellfried, who had been united by the strongest bonds of friendship from their youthful days, were seated by the cheering fire side, hailing the approach of winter.” (8) 24  The Heights is furthermore in a state of neglect, as Lockwood describes, with “grass grow[ing] up between the flags, and cattle [as] the only hedge-cutters” (2). It is not a ruined castle, but still it comes close to the “dilapidated buildings” Spooner and McEvoy (“Introduction,” 1) identify as an essential component of Gothic novels and to Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “oppressive ruins” (9). 25  According to the OED, “gaunt” can mean “abnormally lean, as from hunger” (2.a).

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and malnourishment and underlines the hostility of the natural environment.26 The anthropomorphic images in Lockwood’s description thus implicitly contain an evaluation of nature as dangerous and even life-threatening. Yet, the narrative style in which this setting is rendered counterbalances Gothic elements from the beginning of the novel as in Lockwood’s comments on the building: Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling, “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had the foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones. (2)

While notions of the Gothic are evoked in the subject matter and its wording, the style of the narrator’s evaluation and emotional attitude towards it are rather reminiscent of travel narratives, especially of a particular strand of travel writing prevalent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which was concerned with lesser known areas of Great Britain.27 A prime example of this genre is Samuel Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, whose style is frequently similar to Lockwood’s. A case in point is Johnson’s following description of a monastery: The monastery of Aberbrothick is of great renown in the history of Scotland. Its ruins afford ample testimony of its ancient magnificence: its extent might, I suppose, easily be found following the walls among the grass and weeds, and its 26  Not only the wildness of the weather, but also the (related) wildness of the landscape is a generic feature of the Gothic (cf. Kosofsky Sedgwick 9). 27  Travel narrative as a genre is very heterogeneous and notoriously difficult to define as Youngs (1–2) has pointed out. For some scholars, such as Youngs (4–5) factuality is a decisive criterion while Korte (10–11) argues that fictional and factual works should be considered together because the line between them is frequently blurred and any difference usually does not lie in the text itself. Hooper has analysed in detail the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century trend of travelling to lesser known parts of Great Britain, such as Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the attempts to find the ancient and exotic in these regions after centuries in which travel writing frequently focused on much lesser known parts of the world. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, travelling to Europe and for some time even Scotland had become much harder due to the political situation (including the Napoleonic wars), which sparked this renewed interest in British destinations.

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chapter 4 height is known by some parts yet standing. The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. (40)

Both Lockwood and Johnson provide a very detailed description of a building unfamiliar to them in the form of complex syntactic constructions that seem aimed at capturing their impression of the place and providing relevant information. Whenever they go beyond what they see and make conjectures based on the evidence available to them, they make this transparent. The bleak building and its setting stand in remarkable contrast to the explicit conclusions Lockwood draws from what he perceives of the scenery: “pure, bracing ventilation they must have, up there, at all times, indeed” (2). He seems to attribute a strengthening or nurturing quality to the wind, which seems to blatantly contradict the previous description of the hostility of nature and rather seems to fit the characteristics of a watering place or the seaside. Both the threatening nature of the weather typical of Gothic novels and the traditional notion of the live-giving force of nature as featured for instance in Jane Austen’s novels28 is thus evoked, strikingly as contrasting evaluations of the very same scenery. Curiosity seems to be the reigning emotion in Lockwood’s exploration of the building and its surroundings. He approaches the building as a traveller might do. His descriptions contain explanations about local vocabulary and customs like in a travel narrative. He not only explains the term “Wuthering” to the reader, using syntax and diction which evokes travel literature (“a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of atmospheric tumult,” 2) but he also remarks that the “family sitting-room” has a special denomination in this region: “they call it here ‘the house’ preeminently” (2). He later comments on the typical occupant of such a house including his dress, manner, and occupation (3).29 28  Compare, for instance, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, in which the heroine Anne Eliot is revived by the sea wind at Lyme: “She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced” (97). 29  Compare Samuel Johnson’s description of a cottage in his Journey to the Western Islands, in which he likewise comments on the significance of architecture as a result of the climate and on local customs (54): “This was the first Highland hut that I had seen; and as our business was with life and manners, we were willing to visit it. To enter a habitation without leave, seems to be not considered here as rudeness or intrusion. The old laws of hospitality still give this licence to a stranger. A hut is constructed with loose stones, ranged for the most part with some tendency to circularity. It must be placed where the

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Faced with the very unusual gothic entrance to the building, he again rather shows curiosity than any sense of oppression, foreboding or awe. He “pause[s] to admire” the portal and successively would have made a few comments and requested a short history of the place from the surly owner, but his attitude at the door appeared to demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his impatience, previous to inspecting the penetralium. (2)

What prevents Lockwood from requesting more information is thus his even greater curiosity to enter the “penetralium” of the building.30 The contrast between Lockwood’s description of Wuthering Heights, which is marked mostly by a traveler’s curiosity, and the depiction of Emily St. Aubert’s arrival at the castle of Montoni in Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho is striking: Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Montoni’s; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark grey stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. (226–27)

This passage is internally focalized through Emily, whose “melancholy awe” is described. The heterodiegetic narrator furthermore comments on the “gothic greatness” of the features of the castle and the general impression of the castle as a “gloomy and sublime object.” The awe Emily feels is a typical reaction in Gothic novels when characters encounter oppressive buildings.31 It is one of the effects of a philosophical concept which is mentioned here explicitly by the narrator of Udolpho: the sublime. A notion which goes back to antiquity,32 wind cannot act upon it with violence, because it has no cement; and where the water will run easily away, because it has no floor but the naked ground.” 30  The word penetralium itself points to ambiguity. While Lockwood employs it in a mockmystery fashion, Keats (as quoted in the OED entry for the term) uses it to refer to mystery: “1817 Keats Lett. (1958) I. 194 Coleridge..would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge” (OED, “penetralium, n.”). 31  Not only the sensitive heroine but even the uninvolved figure of the traveler is associated with awe as well as with curiosity in another novel by Radcliffe, namely A Sicilian Romance, in which the “magnificent remains of a castle” are described as “impress[ing] the traveller with awe and curiosity” (1). The curiosity which is characteristic for the traveller is thus mingled with awe at the sight of “the sublimity and grandeur of the ruins” (1). See also Angela Wright’s comments on this passage (37). 32  The treatise Peri Hupsous (mostly translated as On the Sublime or merely Sublime and often attributed to Longinus) is dated around the 1st century CE (Duffy 2). For a discussion of

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the sublime became an important point of discussion among eighteenth century philosophers such as Shaftesbury and Burke.33 While both the sublime and the term “awe” appear frequently in Gothic novels, they are completely absent from Wuthering Heights. Lockwood’s first impression of the building implicitly evokes the hostility of nature around the Heights, and he is indeed soon trapped there due to a snow storm (14). The moors surrounding the building may seem less spectacular than Radcliffe’s mountains in The Mysteries of Udolpho or the arctic landscape in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Heathcliff’s comments to Lockwood make clear, however, that the moors are no less dangerous: I wonder you should select the thick of a snow-storm to ramble about in. Do you know that you run a risk of being lost in the marshes? People familiar with these moors often miss their road on such evenings […]. (9)

Lockwood recognizes the truth of Heathcliff’s words when he indeed crosses the moors the next day and is glad about Heathcliff’s company as the whole hill-back was one billowy, white ocean, the swells and falls not indicating corresponding rises and depressions in the ground- many pits, at least, were filled to a level; and entire ranges of mounds, the refuse of quarries, blotted from the chart which my yesterday’s walk left pictured in my mind […]. My companion found it necessary to warn me frequently to steer to the right or left, when I imagined I was following, correctly, the windings of the road. (26)

He compares the snowy moors to an ocean, a classic scene of the natural sublime.34 Yet, his narrative is devoid of references to the sublime or expressions the impact of the Peri Hupsous on later theoreticians such as Edmund Burke and on the reading public in the eighteenth century see Mishra (28–29). 33  The most influential work on the sublime in the context of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature in general and especially the Gothic was Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful. In this treatise, he describes the sublime in the following way: “The passions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances […]. Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime” (71). A central point of Burke’s theory is thus the “idea of pain and danger” without the actual occurrence of them. 34  The natural sublime, focusing on nature as a source of the sublime, was an important subtype of the concept of the sublime, emphasizing the forces of nature as uncontrollable by humans as well as the grandeur and infinity suggested by landscapes such as the sea or the mountains. See Vijay Mishra’s The Gothic Sublime and Andrew Smith (Gothic Literature; especially 10–13) for a discussion of the connection between the Gothic and theories of the sublime and of the role of Burke’s treatise in the development of the Gothic. Cian

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of awe, terror or even admiration even though he recognizes the vastness, isolation and hostility of the landscape. While Gothic fiction aims at conveying such emotions as part of its narrated perceptions, the beginning of Wuthering Heights presents us with a narrator whose focus on his perceptions and observations seem to strive for informativity and objectivity. Gothic Tropes and Emotions and the Narrative Voices of Wuthering Heights Throughout Wuthering Heights, Gothic tropes are presented by the two primary narrators Lockwood and Nelly, whose rational and at times ironic style counterbalances startling events and the heightened emotions of other characters. Their descriptions and evaluations do not seem to correspond to typical reactions of narrators and focalizers in Gothic novels to the sublime. A comparison of the frequency with which the word “awe” is used (and thus the concept is explicitly evoked) in Wuthering Heights, Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Lewis’s The Monk is revealing in this context. “Awe” appears only twice in Wuthering Heights and never in the context of nature or the sublime,35 but seventeen times in The Monk36 and 52 times in Udolpho.37 Even conventional Gothic plot elements clearly aimed at the evocation of such an emotional reaction, like the imprisonment of a young woman by an older man, rarely spark passionate responses by the narrators, who either do not recognize the severity of the situation or dismiss the behaviour of other characters. Cathy, who, according to Lockwood, is “scarcely past girlhood” (7) is clearly detained by force at the Heights. She tells him that Heathcliff and Joseph “wouldn’t let [her] go to the end of the garden-wall” (12). As her relationship with either of the men does not make it likely that this is a precaution 4.1.3

Duffy elaborately describes the natural sublime in his monograph The Landscapes of the Sublime, 1700–1830. Other natural phenomena typically associated with the natural sublime are the polar regions, the mountains, and the desert which combines vastness or even infinity with isolation. All of those are analyzed in detail as sources of the natural sublime by Duffy. While the moors are not a “classic” landscape associated with the concept, Lockwood’s description reveals the similarities with the ocean or the polar regions. Contemporary sources also discuss the sublimity of moors, such as Anna Eliza Bray who writes in her book on traditions and legends of Devonshire that “on the moor, the druid moved in the region of the vast and the sublime” (63). 35  “Awe” is mentioned once by Nelly in her description of Cathy’s reaction to the uncivilized Hareton (173) and again in Cathy’s comment to Linton Heathcliff that she is not “in awe of Mr Heathcliff” (233). 36  Both novels are comparable as regards length; Wuthering Heights has about 116000 words to The Monk’s 138000 words. 37  Udolpho is considerably longer than Wuthering Heights and The Monk at 291000 words.

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for her safety she thereby reveals her state of de facto imprisonment for the first time.38 Lockwood does not seem to recognize this but rather takes her words as an insult to his gallant attentions: “You! I should be sorry to ask you to cross the threshold, for my convenience, on such a night” (12; emphasis in the original). The topic then shifts back to the question of how Lockwood can get back to the Grange and no further reference is made by him to Cathy’s situation. Curiously, he does mention another traditional Gothic trope in a figurative expression: life burial. Struck by the beauty of Cathy whom he calls “a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in [his] eyes” he wonders about her relationship to the other members of this curious family circle: Then it flashed upon me—‘The clown at my elbow, who is drinking his tea out of a basin and eating his bread with unwashed hands, may be her husband: Heathcliff junior, of course. Here is the consequence of being buried alive: 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.’ (10)

Lockwood intends to express that Catherine’s living situation at a place “so completely removed from the stir of society” (3), can figuratively be described as being buried alive, which is the reason why she does not know about the advantageous marriage and the exciting life she could have with somebody like himself. Ironically, Catherine later chooses just this “clown” as her husband. The concept of live burial is evoked again later in Wuthering Heights in a more literal way when Heathcliff expresses his wish to lie next to Catherine’s corpse and when both of them seem to have become “sleepers” in their graves in a much more literal fashion than the term is conventionally employed. Yet again, this classic trope is varied to a considerable degree as live burial is not a punishment but rather a goal to strive for by Catherine and Heathcliff.39 In contrast to Cathy’s situation in Wuthering Heights, the first reference to Emily’s imprisonment in The Mysteries of Udolpho foregrounds the girl’s feelings about this situation in a passage that is focalized through her: As the carriage-wheels rolled heavily under the portcullis, Emily’s heart sunk, and she seemed, as if she was going into her prison; the gloomy court, into which she passed, served to confirm the idea, and her imagination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more terrors, than her reason could justify.

38  See also Lyn Pykett (Emily Brontë), who comments that Cathy is “effectively a household prisoner” (77). 39  Compare chapter 3.2 on variations of the motif of live burial in Wuthering Heights and Kosofsky Sedgwick for a discussion of the concept of live burial as a Gothic convention.

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Another gate delivered them into the second court, grass-grown, and more wild than the first, where, as she surveyed through the twilight its desolation— its lofty walls, overtopt with briony, moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers that rose above, —long-suffering and murder came to her thoughts. One of those instantaneous and unaccountable convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its horror. (227–28)

The “terrors” Emily perceives and the “horror” of the thoughts coming to her mind are described elaborately, and even though some of them are ascribed to her imagination, the reader is provided with an insight into the mind of a terrified young woman. Emily and the emotions her precarious situation causes are the focus of this passage, while Cathy’s imprisonment in Wuthering Heights is only conveyed implicitly, without any access to her feelings and in a passage mainly concerned with Lockwood’s worries of how to get home during bad weather. The dramatic effect of a very similar event is thus foregrounded in one novel and dismissed by the narrator in another. Plot elements such as live burial, imprisonment, and deadly revenge in Gothic fiction conventionally go along with passions of rage, jealousy, love, fear, terror, and desire, which are openly displayed by the characters.40 Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights fulfil these criteria, but the primary narrators throughout condemn emotional outbursts (3), a character trait which Lockwood also ascribes to his landlord Heathcliff: […] I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling – to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again – No, I’m running on too fast – I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him. (3)

Lockwood himself indicates in his utterance that he might just project his own patterns of behaviour onto Heathcliff and, indeed, throughout the novel, Heathcliff does everything but “love and hate equally under cover” (3). Lockwood’s early statement has a double function: it alerts the reader to the topic and at the same time introduces the discrepancy between the way in which Lockwood (and later Nelly) and the other characters, most prominently Catherine and Heathcliff, show and perceive feelings. Only a short time after Lockwood’s initial estimate of Heathcliff’s character, Lockwood experiences a specimen of such “showy displays of feeling” when he witnesses how Heathcliff appeals to Catherine to appear to him and comments on it disapprovingly: 40  See for instance the extreme passions which characterize Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.

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chapter 4 I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord, which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears: “Come in! come in!” he sobbed. “Cathy, do come. Oh do – once more! Oh! my heart’s darling, hear me this time – Catherine, at last!” (WH 24)

Lockwood clearly distances himself from Heathcliff’s display of emotions.41 He calls Heathcliff’s belief in the spectre “a piece of superstition,” which is incompatible with the character of the reasonable gentleman he has taken Heathcliff to be. Later, Lockwood makes his attitude even more clear when he speaks of the “folly” of Heathcliff’s “raving” (24). Not only Lockwood but also Nelly becomes the bewildered witness of passionate expressions of love and hate and treats them ironically and dismissively. This can, for instance, be observed in her description of Catherine’s realization that Heathcliff has fled: […] Catherine would not be persuaded into tranquillity. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose, and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road; where, heedless of my expostulations, and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright. She beat Hareton, or any child, at a good passionate fit of crying. […] But the uproar passed away in twenty minutes, leaving us all unharmed, excepting Cathy, who got thoroughly drenched for her obstinacy in refusing to take shelter, and standing bonnetless and shawl-less to catch as much water as she could with her hair and clothes. (75; emphasis in the original)

The stormy, even dangerous night corresponds here with the desperation of the heroine at a crucial and dramatic turning point for her: the loss of her lover. The discrepancy between the emotions of Catherine and sublime nature as a background for them on the one hand and Nelly’s rendering of it, marked by her sense of practicality and her disapproval of Catherine’s behaviour, on the other hand, is striking. Nelly is the closest Catherine has to a confidante but instead of comforting her or sympathizing with her desperation, she comments ironically that Catherine “beat[s] Hareton, or any child, at a good passionate fit of crying,” thus labelling her emotions as childish and overly dramatic. Catherine’s utter neglect of her own health, which is caused by her heightened 41  See also Roberts, who claims in his article on “Gothic and Horror Fiction” that “[i]n Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights family life and love receives a Byronic injection of Gothicized passion and terror in the form of Heathcliff” (31).

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emotions, is dismissed by Nelly as “obstinacy.” She even implies that Catherine endangers her health on purpose and seems to suspect an element of playacting when she says that Catherine does not wear a shawl or a bonnet “to catch as much water as she c[an] with her hair and clothes.” There is a visible contrast between this treatment of the heroine’s feelings by Nelly, and the way in which a character and the narrator react to and describe the weeping of the heroine in Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho: Emily’s tears flowed again, but a thousand sweet emotions mingled with them. The abbess suffered her to weep without interruption, and watched over her with a look of benignity, that might have characterized the countenance of a guardian angel. (Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho)

The abbess’s “look of benignity” is mirrored in this text passage by a similar attitude of the narrator towards Emily’s burst of feelings. While heightened passions are very much an integral part of the narrated world of the Mysteries of Udolpho and similar novels, Nelly’s comments make clear that, at least from her point of view, Catherine’s emotions are exaggerated and inappropriate. Neither Nelly nor Lockwood seem to undergo the emotions conventionally associated with Gothic tropes, such as awe, terror and horror.42 Instead, the Gothic setting mostly triggers curiosity in Lockwood and the dramatic events are commented on with irony if their full impact is recognized at all. This corresponds to the low frequency at which key words like “terror” and “horror,” whose constant explicit evocation is a significant stylistic feature of Gothic novels in the eighteenth century,43 appear in Wuthering Heights as compared to other works of Gothic fiction.44 Instead, distinct generic elements of the Gothic and of travel narratives are made interdependent in Wuthering Heights as Gothic tropes are represented in ways that are reminiscent of travel narratives in particular Lockwood’s rational and ironic tone. 42  Even in the brief moments where Nelly and Lockwood are portrayed as being subject to emotions like fear, the narrating subject steps in to rationalize or to provide ironic commentary; see, for instance, Lockwood’s encounter with the dead Catherine (18–21) and Nelly’s fear in the storm (75). 43  This might also be connected to the absence of the “trembling sensibility of the heroine” (Kosofsky Sedgwick 9). Compare the anonymous author of “The Terrorist System of Novel Writing,” an open letter to the editor of the Monthly Magazine in 1797, who writes about Gothic novels: “Whatever [the heroine] hears, sees, or thinks of, that is horrible and terrible, she must enquire into it again and again” (123). 44  While “terror” is mentioned only 14 times in Wuthering Heights, it appears 75 times in The Monk (a work of comparable length) and 140 times in The Mysteries of Udolpho. The numbers for “horror” are equally striking, with the word being included only twelve times in Wuthering Heights, but 62 times in the The Monk and 85 times in Udolpho.

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Critics have tended to draw a distinction between Nelly and Lockwood with regard to the degree of their reaction to the Gothic features in the novel. While Lockwood is regarded as detached from the reality at the Heights,45 Nelly’s role as a harmonizing force who mediates between discrepant elements is highlighted. Elizabeth Imlay, for instance, claims in The Handbook of the Gothic that the description of the narrated world of the novel “through the prosaic eyes of Nelly the servant […] serves to ground [the narrated world] in a believable narrative” (11). Similarly, Lyn Pykett argues that Nelly […] mediates between two of the novel’s formal modes – those of realism and romance. Nelly’s down-to-earth language, and the common-sense perspective of the hard-working woman, create a realistic framework for the Gothic events of the earlier part of her narrative, and for the romance elements of the concluding domestic idyll. (Emily Brontë 107)

The harmonizing effect Pykett and Imlay describe is led back to Nelly’s voice, which makes the narrative “believable” (Imlay) and “mediates” between different modes (Pykett). While Nelly is certainly more familiar with the world of Wuthering Heights and the characters who inhabit it, she is frequently no less alienated by it and shows similar reactions and strategies as a close analysis of the text reveals. Not only Lockwood is “rely[ing] on the distancing humor of the ironist” (Galef 242), but Nelly is likewise. A similar discrepancy between Gothic elements and narrative evaluation can be found in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, where the narrator comments on the protagonist’s “visions of Romance” (223) and the “extravagance of her late fancies” (223). There is, however, a significant difference between the two novels: The Gothic tendencies of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey are not only commented on ironically from the beginning but also shown as inadequate to the reality of the world she lives in, a fact even the heroine herself is forced to acknowledge at some point (223).46 In contrast to this, no clear hierarchy between the two different approaches to the world and human behaviour is established in Wuthering Heights. Instead, an equilibrium is created, which contributes to the genre ambiguity of the novel.

45  See, for instance, Grudin, who argues that he is “transported and transplanted into this tempestuous world into which he fits so incongruously” (402). 46  “The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened. Henry’s address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done” (223).

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4.1.4 The Gothic and Narrative Embedding While the narrators’ style clearly counterbalances elements of the Gothic in Wuthering Heights, its complex techniques of narrative embedding at once evoke and undermine generic conventions of the Gothic.47 In The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick claims that the narrative form of Gothic novels is “likely to be discontinuous and involuted, perhaps incorporating tales within tales, changes of narrators, and such framing devices as found manuscripts or interpolated histories” (9). She regards Wuthering Heights as a specimen embodying this generic feature, “a notoriously indirect book, both in its time sequence and its modes of narration” (100). A comparison of narrative embedding in Wuthering Heights and two widely known examples of Gothic fiction, Ann Radcliff’s The Romance of the Forest and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk48 indeed shows striking similarities as regards the number and the type of embedded narratives and the techniques of embedding. All three novels contain several layers of narration, and both The Monk and Wuthering Heights include several hypodiegetic narratives. The number of narrators in each novel and the frequency in which narrators change is quite striking. There are four narrators in The Romance and 14 changes of narrator in the novel, six narrators and 27 changes of narrator in Wuthering Heights, and seven narrators and 22 changes of narrator in the Monk. There are of course many verisimilar novels that also contain structures of embedding, such as Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone. Indeed, embedding by means of a fictional editor has long been a common feature of novels (see, for instance, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders). Embedding in Gothic novels, however, frequently means a number of involuted narratives rather than a collection of narratives assembled and edited by an extradiegetic or intradiegetic narrator as in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone or The Woman in White. Furthermore, oral narratives often play a large role in Gothic novels. Written and oral narratives are combined in The Monk, The Romance of the Forest and Wuthering Heights, as are extradiegetic, intradiegetic, and a number of hypodiegetic narratives. Each also contains narratives that explain the background story of a character in the form of an analepsis. In Wuthering Heights and The Monk, these oral narratives are quite extensive, frequently interspersed with interpolations of the extradiegetic narrator and with 47  Compare chapter 2.2 for a detailed discussion of embedding ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. 48  Ann Radcliff’s The Romance of the Forest and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk are comparable in length to Wuthering Heights and are popular representatives of two different influential types of Gothic fiction (see below).

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hypodiegetic narratives and take up most of the text of the respective novel. Nelly begins her narrative on the request of Lockwood, who wishes to “know [the] history” of the “pretty girl-widow” he has met (33) and of his landlord Heathcliff (34). Subsequently, she tells their stories chronologically from the beginning of Heathcliff’s life as she knows about it (36). Lockwood continually uses the phrase “history [of a character]” when referring to Nelly’s narrative (“the history of Mr Heathcliff”(91), “my neighbour’s history” (157)) as does Nelly (“Heathcliff’s history” (62)). The phrase “history of” can also be found in The Monk; two intradiegetic oral narratives actually contain the words “history of” in their titles, namely the “Conclusion of the History of Agnes de Medina” (309–320) and the “History of Don Raymond, Marquis de las Cisternas.”49 In The Romance of the Forest, the life story of the protagonist Adeline is also included in a separate “narration” (35) which begins with her early childhood (35–43). In addition to these longer oral narratives, shorter oral accounts of specific incidents are in included in all three novels, namely Louis’s story in The Romance, hypodiegtic narratives by Heathcliff, Cathy, and Isabella in Wuthering Heights and Leonella’s story of Antonia’s origins, Matilda’s story, Marguerite’s story, and the story of the bleeding nun in The Monk. Yet, there are decisive differences as regards the effect of these narrative structures: While in The Romance of the Forest and The Monk mysteries are first established and then resolved, for instance through the embedded histories, Wuthering Heights introduces mysteries like Heathcliff’s origin and never resolves them since the person who narrates his “history” has no knowledge about it either. Furthermore, Wuthering Heights is marked by frequent embedding ambiguities, in which several possible answers to Genette’s question of “who speaks” are simultaneously presented to the reader. The oral narratives in both classic Gothic novels are embedded in a narrative with a heterodiegetic narrator and their beginnings and endings clearly marked typographically, whereas Nelly’s oral narrative is rendered by Lockwood, who claims to have it “only a little condensed” (137). While Isabella’s letter in Wuthering Heights is included in Nelly’s oral narrative, the heterodiegetic narrator of The Monk takes over from Raymond only to describe how the letter is handed over and to present the letter to the reader (146–147). The narrative design of Wuthering Heights thus evokes Gothic genre conventions by including various interpolated narratives (including hypodiegetic narratives) and varies them in that these narratives do not fulfil the function of clearing up any mysteries. Instead,

49  “The History of Don Raymond, Marquis de las Cisternas” can be found in the Monk on pages 74–94; 97–99; 101–102; 102–134; 136–137; 137–144 and 147–148.

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even the narrative situation as such becomes unstable as a result of embedding ambiguities. 4.1.5 Genre, Global Ambiguity and the World of Wuthering Heights The generic ambiguity of Wuthering Heights is closely linked to the nature of its world. The way in which elements of Gothic fiction and travel narratives are evoked and undermined and eventually counterbalance each other influences the way in which the world of Wuthering Heights is presented and in which readers perceive its relationship with their own world. Among the conventions of the Gothic novel that Schneider and Hartner have proposed, “the occurrence of seemingly supernatural events” (387) seems to be one of the most crucial and stable ones. Even beyond the “classic” eighteenth and nineteenth century Gothic novel, this feature has proved to be one of “certain persistent features which constitute a distinctive aesthetic” of Gothic literature despite all its “national, formal, and generic mutations” as Andrew Smith argues (Gothic Literature 4). Especially ghosts are a common motif in Gothic novels.50 Wuthering Heights likewise introduces the possibility of an afterlife on earth for Catherine and Heathcliff, which evokes Gothic conventions.51 Yet, the novel again varies these typical patterns of Gothic fiction to a considerable degree. Wuthering Heights never disambiguates if Catherine and Heathcliff roam the heath after their death. While it is a conventional feature of Gothic novels to have the reader wonder if “supernatural” creatures such as ghosts exist in the narrated world, this question is eventually resolved, either by presenting a clearly supernatural world (in the tradition of Walpole and Lewis) or by first evoking the possibility only to then provide rational explanations (following Ann Radcliffe’s influential concept of the “explained supernatural”).52 Wuthering Heights follows neither tradition but instead carefully generates and upholds the ambiguity concerning the nature of the afterlife of its protagonists, even at the very end of the novel. 50  Compare for instance Hogle (2), Stoddart (117), and Punter (The Literature of Terror 1) on ghosts in Gothic fiction. 51  See chapter 3.2 for a detailed discussion of the ambiguity regarding death and afterlife in Wuthering Heights. 52  Sir Walter Scott describes the “explained supernatural” in the following way: “A principal characteristic of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances, is the rule which the author imposed upon herself, that all the circumstances of her narrative, however mysterious, and apparently superhuman, were to be accounted for on natural principles, at the winding up of the story” (“Biographical Memoirs,” 3: 441). For an extensive analysis of the “explained supernatural” in Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, see Miles (Ann Radcliffe 129–48). Miles (“Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis”) also provides an extensive overview of the writings of Lewis and Radcliffe and their influence on Gothic traditions.

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Furthermore, the ontological ambiguities of Brontë’s novel cannot be reduced to the dichotomy natural/supernatural. The world of Wuthering Heights defies the established categories and expectations of readers and the primary narrators Nelly and Lockwood alike. Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s concept of afterlife is much more complex than traditional notions of ghosts haunting the earth, for instance as a punishment of sins.53 They strive for a union with nature and with the person whose very being is intricately connected to their own.54 If we accept their vision of life and afterlife, the boundaries between the living and the dead must be assumed to be as permeable as those between human beings and between humans and nature in Wuthering Heights, but their worldview is juxtaposed in the novel with an alternative perception of the world, closer to that of the reader, as proposed by Nelly and Lockwood. Other ontological ambiguities in Wuthering Heights question Heathcliff’s humanity and yet again do not offer us a clear dichotomy human/demonic (and accordingly, natural/supernatural). The evocation of travel narratives alongside Gothic elements is crucial for establishing a balance between these diverging interpretations of the narrated world. Lockwood’s rational and investigative approach, which is reminiscent of enlightenment ideas and Johnson’s narrative style in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,55 prevents us from dismissing this world as fantastic or allegorical. In contrast to Gothic fiction, which is not to be read as realistic, Wuthering Heights seems much “closer to home” for its readers. The moment of irritation about the nature of the narrated world that Gothic elements are partly responsible for in Brontë’s novel is increased by the evocation of travel narratives with their claim to realism. At the beginning of Lockwood’s exploration of these unknown and remote regions of England, his approach to what he encounters can be regarded as similar to what Boswell describes as the motivation for the famous journey he undertook with Samuel Johnson to Scotland and the Hebrides which became the basis of their travel narratives:

53  See chapter 1.1 for a discussion of concepts and notions of ghosts as evoked in Wuthering Heights. 54  Compare chapters 3.1 and 3.3 for the permeability between humans and the permeability between humans and nature in Wuthering Heights. 55  See Hulme and Youngs for a discussion of the connection between travel literature and the enlightenment. They argue that both Locke and Rousseau were avid readers of travel writing (4). Especially Rousseau’s ideas influenced travel writers, including Boswell and Johnson, to search for “the primitive,” frequently in remote corners of Britain itself (6).

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Martin’s Account of those Islands had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. (Boswell 161)

Boswell speaks not only of a remote place as might be expected, but of a “remote time and place” (my emphasis), though he is most certainly not speaking of time travel in the literal sense, but instead about the search for “simplicity and wildness,” i.e. for people in an earlier stage of development.56 Travelling through space is thus conceptualized as travelling through time. Lockwood’s use of the term “indigenae” (34) for the inhabitants of the region he visits reveals a similar attitude to his journey as does his claim that “people in these regions […] do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things” (62). Like Johnson and Boswell, Lockwood is, however, disappointed to some extent in his attempts at exoticizing the inhabitants of this northern region (cf. Hulme and Youngs 6). A puzzled Nelly insists: “Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us” (63). The type of journey that Boswell and Johnson undertake does not literally take them back in time. In contrast to this, Lockwood gets more than he bargained for. What serves as a mere strategy of rationalization in Boswell’s and Johnson’s travel narrative thus becomes literalized in Wuthering Heights. Lockwood actually meets the past in the form of child Catherine, and ontological ambiguities in the novel suggest that even time may work differently in the narrated world than we commonly assume and would allow for an interaction with the past and an actual return to it. Yet, unlike in other works of fiction like Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, travelling to the past cannot be simply explained through genre in Brontë’s novel. Ambiguity is not a means to an end in Wuthering Heights. It does not merely inspire the reader with feelings like horror or fear, or create suspense, or permits the description of a universe that has no reality outside language, as Todorov has described fantastic literature;57 instead, genre does not provide a “way out” for the challenging ontological questions the novel poses. At the end of Wuthering Heights, its readers are left to wonder as much about the nature 56  Compare also the following passage in Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands: “The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder that a common highlander has no strong adherence to his native soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown” (105). 57  See the conclusion of chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of the difference between Todorov’s notion of the fantastic and Wuthering Heights.

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of the narrated world they have encountered as about its relationship to their own world, an effect to which the generic ambiguity of the novel contributes significantly. 4.2

The Constitution of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights The assured status of Wuthering Heights has a lot to do with its having been read in such radically different ways by so many readers. […] Over the course of a century and a half, Brontë’s novel has demonstrated its capacity to generate an unusual ‘plurality’ of readings, different for different times and readers, and not cancelling each other out. (Gezari, “Introduction,” 5)

Though the effect pointed out by Janet Gezari in her introduction to the Annotated Wuthering Heights is widely acknowledged,58 it is difficult to explain how it comes about. An analytical approach to Brontë’s novel that focuses on ambiguities provides a framework that enables us to simultaneously consider alternative readings and illuminate the connections between them and thus to explain this remarkable “capacity.” In Wuthering Heights, alternative meanings co-exist. Lockwood’s ambiguous words in the closing lines of the novel59 leave the novel’s readers with questions rather than answers, provoking reflections on the novel and its relation to our own world and a desire to re-read this elusive text. Ambiguity is such a significant meaning-making element of Wuthering Heights that the novel serves as an excellent case study for the phenomenon itself. The term “ambiguity,” however, has been used differently in various contexts, not all of which do justice to the phenomenon as it occurs in Wuthering Heights. The Ambiguities of Wuthering Heights and Approaches to Ambiguity in Literary Studies Ambiguity as it is examined in the scope of this study is not a generic feature of literary texts in general, but rather a specific feature of words, sentences, text passages or the whole text. All of the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights result from the co-existence of distinct readings as they gradually emerge in the discourse, as in the case of “sleepers,” “slumbers” and “breathing” at the end of Brontë’s novel (WH 337), which are ambiguous in themselves and in 4.2.1

58  For an overview of the novel’s critical reception regarding the “plurality” Gezari mentions and other concepts related to ambiguity, see the introduction of this study. 59  Compare the introduction of this study for a detailed discussion of the ambiguities of the closing lines of Brontë’s novel.

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their interplay with other ambiguities contribute to the global ambiguities of the novel. They can therefore be regarded as a result of specific conditions in the text. The term ambiguity is accordingly used in a much more narrow sense than it has frequently been used in literary debates, for instance by Christoph Bode who claims that “all literary texts […] are by definition ambiguous” (75). In his influential study Ästhetik der Ambiguität, Bode proposes that a general ambiguity stems from the auto-referentiality of literary texts which entails an oscillation between ordinary meanings and aesthetic meaning.60 Bode distinguishes this general ambiguity of literary texts which he calls ‘Ambiguity Mark I’ from ‘Ambiguity Mark II’, which he regards as a paradigm of Modernist literature.61 He acknowledges his broad use of the term himself, noting that he “use[s] the term ambiguity as an umbrella term which covers all sorts of linguistic and literary phenomena having more than one possible interpretation or meaning” (Aesthetics 73).62 While it is certainly true that literary texts are inherently open to interpretation, using the term ambiguity in such a broad sense carries the problem that specific phenomena within literary texts are harder to distinguish and analyse. Approaches to ambiguity that apply the term interchangeably with openness or plurality of meaning such as Bode’s or Empson’s in his Seven Types of Ambiguity, in which he claims that “any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language” (1) is ambiguous, run the risk of blurring the difference between distinct phenomena.63 60  Bode’s ‘Ambiguity Mark I’ is heavily based on the work of Roman Jakobson, Yuri Lotman, and Roland Barthes. 61  Bode’s approach to the plurality of meanings in Modernist literature follows Umberto Eco’s approach in The Open Work. Compare Bondanella for a discussion of Eco’s approach. For a concise discussion of ambiguity in the wide sense of the term compare Verena Krieger‘s “Modes of Aesthetic Ambiguity in Contemporary Art.“ Krieger discusses in detail the contributions of Barthes and Eco, among others, to the debate of the openness of literary works in general and ambiguity as a feature of modern literature in particular. 62  Domsch and Rennhak accept Bode’s broad definition of ambiguity but question if his Ambiguity Mark II is a phenomenon only to be found in Modern literature: “As it turns out, the historical demarcation line that Bode posits […] becomes increasingly blurred and seems to recede ever further into the past the closer one looks at the literary texts of that ‘prehistory of modernism’” (77). The aim of the volume they have edited with Christoph Reinfandt, Romantic Ambiguities, is to “look more closely at and probe deeper into the ‘little more’ that modernism’s pre-history has to say about ambiguity in general and about Bode’s ‘Ambiguity Mark II’ in particular” (2). 63  Rimmon notes that a broad notion of ambiguity that includes phenomena like indeterminacy poses the danger of “rendering the term so general that it becomes practically meaningless” (18). Compare also Bauer et al. (65), Mittelbach (10), and Berndt and Kammer (24) for a criticism of Bode’s concept of ambiguity.

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Other approaches to ambiguity in literary studies do justice to the distinction between ambiguity and related phenomena such as indeterminacy and vagueness. Shlomith Rimmon’s The Concept of Ambiguity, for instance, was ground-breaking in its precise definition of ambiguity and detailed discussion of microstructural as well as macrostructural elements that contribute to the overall ambiguity of a text. Yet, her definition of narrative ambiguity calls for ambiguous texts to be organized into two “mutually exclusive systems of clues designed to fill [a central gap]” (126). While ambiguity in this sense can be applied to ghost stories like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, they cannot account for the complex ambiguities found in Brontë’s novel.64 Jens Mittelbach’s more recent study Die Kunst des Widerspruchs, which discusses ambiguity in William Shakespeare’s Henry V and Julius Caesar and is heavily based on Rimmon’s theory, tries to mend the problem that her approach to narrative ambiguity calls for a high degree of stylization (“hohe[r] Grad der Stilisierung der dargestellten Objekte,” 17).65 Mittelbach’s textual ambiguity (“textuelle Ambiguität”) is marked by a co-existence of contradictory elements in a text. Because his objects of analysis are dramatic texts (and he therefore does not refer to features of narrative, such as narrative layers, as Rimmon does), the two approaches also differ in their application. Accordingly, Mittelbach’s concept of ambiguity is less useful for narrative texts. Despite these definitional differences, Mittelbach and Rimmon’s accounts furthermore both postulate a significant divide between literary and linguistic approaches to ambiguity. Rimmon distinguishes between “verbal ambiguity” of words or sentences and “narrative ambiguity” of a literary text, which is based on “the coexistence of mutually exclusive fabulas in one szujet” (41).66 How independent these concepts are for Rimmon is demonstrated by her claim that not a single verbal ambiguity is needed for textual ambiguity: The ambiguity of a given narrative need not imply the ambiguity of all or even some of its constituent units. Indeed, a narrative may be ambiguous even if it does not contain a single unit which is ambiguous in itself. This is so because narrative ambiguity is constructed around a central pivot which polarizes the data into two mutually exclusive systems. (42)

64  Compare the introduction of this study (chapter 1) for a detailed comparison of the ambiguities in The Turn of the Screw and Wuthering Heights. 65  See also Potysch (190–91) for a critique of Rimmon’s theory as regards the limited scope of texts it can be applied to. 66  The strict division Rimmon postulates between verbal and narrative ambiguity is all the more curious because her notion of “narrative ambiguity” is heavily influenced by Noam Chomsky’s linguistic take on ambiguity (40–41).

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Mittelbach similarly argues that the domain of linguistic ambiguity is firmly on the sentence level, while literary ambiguity concerns the level of the text as a whole and notes that his study is concerned with the latter type of ambiguity (7). However, for many literary texts, including Wuthering Heights, it is necessary to take into consideration how language and meaning are independent and interact, both on the micro-level of individual words, expressions, and sentences, as well as on the level of the whole text. Linguistic expertise provides valuable insights into how meaning comes about through form and function of linguistic composition, especially in relation to the communicative context of the literary text. The work of the RTG 1808: “Ambiguity – Production and Perception,” an interdisciplinary research project at the university of Tübingen in the context of which my study originated, has shown the usefulness of such a combined approach, which takes into account the microlevel of individual words and phrases as well as the whole text.67 Bauer et al., for instance, argue: [Es] zeigt sich allerdings, dass eine generalisierende Feststellung größtmöglicher Bedeutungsvielfalt von der Wort- bis zur Textebene nicht unbedingt zu einer angemessenen Interpretation [literarischer] Texte führt. Es erscheint sinnvoller, unter Rückgriff auf semantische, syntaktische, pragmatische und rhetorische Regularitäten die spezifische Kommunikationsleistung einzelner Werke zu bestimmen. Dabei tritt die Fähigkeit literarischer Texte hervor, an realen Kommunikationszusammenhängen teilzunehmen und sie uns gleichzeitig in ihren Eigenarten bewusst zu machen. (65)

Wuthering Heights contains a number of local ambiguities of words, phrases and sentences which are constitutive for the global ambiguities of the text. Accordingly, the novel provides evidence that questions the monolithic view postulated in literary studies and linguistics by Rimmon and Mittelbach between “verbal ambiguities” as belonging to the realm of linguistics and “narrative” or “textual ambiguities” that are the object of literary studies; linguistic methods can be made fruitful to describe its ambiguities, some of which are indeed a result of separate dictionary entries or two underlying sentence structures in the language system, but others only emerge in the discourse, as many in Wuthering Heights do.

67  See, for instance, Bauer and Zirker (“Dickens and Ambiguity”),“ and Zirker (“To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt”). For interdisciplinary publications (literary studies – linguistics), compare Winter-Froemel and Zirker (“Ambiguity in Speaker-Hearer-Interaction”; “Ambiguität in der Sprecher-Hörer Interaktion”), Berndt and Maienborn (“The Sucking Subject”) and Bauer et. al. (“Dimensionen der Ambiguität”).

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Even the semantic and syntactic ambiguities in Wuthering Heights only become functional in context; this is the case in the following example, taken from Heathcliff’s narrative of the night after Catherine’s funeral, in which semantic ambiguities and a temporary syntactic ambiguity are interlinked:68 She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! (WH 290; my emphases)

Both “showed” and “devil” are polysemous, and the syntactic properties of the sentence first allow for a reading of “show” in the sense of an appearance of Catherine’s ghost as consistent with the thematic focus of the preceding cotext only to then call for a reinterpretation of “showed” as a transitive verb denoting that Catherine displays a specific character trait in this instance. While the sentence structure and the polysemies create a potential for the ambiguities in this instance, they only become functional in the context of a text passage that juxtaposes two possibilities: that Catherine might show herself, which Heathcliff fiercely believes in, or that she might not, as Nelly is convinced. Analogous to this, a literal reading of “devil” is only evoked because notions of humanness are challenged throughout the novel. The narrators and characters of Wuthering Heights constantly propose, implicate or presuppose interpretative possibilities that are contrasted with discrepant takes on the same issues. Accordingly, pragmatic phenomena in addition to syntactic and semantic ones are crucial for the constitution of ambiguity in Brontë’s novel. Bringing together efforts in literary studies and linguistics provides the key to understanding a complex novel like Wuthering Heights. Here, the interdependence of phenomena on the word- and sentence-level and the intricate network created by their interplay is crucial for the resulting ambiguity of the discourse(compare the discussion of “pragmatic sources of ambiguity” below). The Contribution of the Concept of Ambiguity for the Study of Wuthering Heights Employing the concept of ambiguity as a basis of an analysis of Wuthering Heights cannot only explain how an “unusual ‘plurality’ of readings” of the novel can coexist but also why they do not, in Janet Gezari’s words, “cancel[l] each other out” (5). While Brontë’s novel keeps suggesting that its reader, confronted with uncertainty, think in alternatives, the scholarly debate on the novel has so far mostly attempted to disambiguate it. Lockwood’s curious 4.2.2

68  Compare chapter 2.3 of this study for a detailed analysis of this example.

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encounter with Catherine in the third chapter of Wuthering Heights is a case in point: I […] turned and dozed, and dreamt again; if possible, still more disagreeably than before. This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but, it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me, when awake, but forgotten. ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but, the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in - let me in!’ ‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. ‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]. (24–25)

This passage is ambiguous in that it juxtaposes a reading of the events as a nightmare and as an actual encounter with Catherine (compare chapter 1.1 of this study). Yet, while critics have widely discussed it and generally acknowledge its significance,69 interpretations vary considerably and usually propose one of the two readings while dismissing the other altogether. There are those who, like Edgar Shannon and Ronald Fine, insist that the child only exists in Lockwood’s mind. Shannon argues that “[Lockwood’s] two dreams, though immediately induced by his reading and the rapping branch, emotionally derive from the events of the past two days” (98). Ronald Fine minutely argues against the notion that it is not a “realistic” dream (17–18), a term which shows that some of his assumptions may be problematic. Apart from Fine’s rather far-fetched idea that the dreams are based on dreams Brontë had had herself, both critics convincingly argue that the nightly apparition might have been

69  See, for example, Edgar Shannon, who calls the first chapters and especially Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine “[a]t once prologue and raison d’être for the primary narrative” (95) and Martin Willis, who believes this to be a key passage because it brings the reader “over the edge into supernatural experience” (24).

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a dream, which does, however, not entail that it might not also have been a ghostly visitation, which is what a second group of scholars proposes.70 Eve Kosofsky Sedwick, for example, claims that “[Lockwood] will spend the remainder of the book learning enough about the Heights and Grange families to make it impossible for him simply to dismiss his apparition as a mere individual figment” (99) and Paula Krebs similarly rejects a reading of Lockwood’s encounter as a dream: Although he presents his ghost episode not as a straightforward encounter with the supernatural but as a dream, the dream contains information to which the dreamer could have had no access: the child at the window wails that she has been a waif for twenty years, lost on the moor; she calls herself Catherine Linton, the name Catherine had died with as an adult even though Lockwood “had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton” (30). Although the ghost’s story accords with what we and Lockwood later come to learn about Catherine’s life, at the time of the ghost’s appearance, Lockwood has not yet heard that story. (46)

Both interpretations are consistent with the text: Lockwood could have dreamt or encountered Catherine’s apparition. Yet, none of the approaches mentioned above can capture the text passage’s complexity, which challenges us to take into account both alternatives. Bauer and Brockmann have rightly noted that “tak[ing] [a] text seriously as a literary product” (343) encompasses acknowledging the coexistence of two or more related readings if all of them are compatible with and suggested by the text. In the critical debate on the third chapter of Wuthering Heights, however, a tendency to at least implicitly refer to both interpretative possibilities only to then disambiguate can be observed.71 Even those critics who recognize that several interpretations are possible frequently either claim that this effect is temporary72 or present one interpre70  See, for instance, Krebs (46). Peter Grudin somewhat vaguely argues that “[t]he dream is not a product of Lockwood’s subconscious, but a quality of the room in which he dreams” (393). He therefore does not seem to fully endorse the idea that a ghost appears but attributes a supernatural quality to the dream and argues against rational explanations. 71  Some critics do not clarify their position at all and sometimes speak about “the dream” only to then discuss the “ghost” while never acknowledging the ambiguity. Przybylowicz, for instance, first puts the term dreaming in quotation marks (“One moment is when Lockwood is ‘dreaming’ (as he believes he must have been) that Catherine is outside his window;” 7) and then claims a few sentence later that “[a]lthough only a dream and not real blood, the imagery in this passage is very strong and stays with the reader” (7). 72  Sheila Smith, for example, argues that “[t]he whole passage is a nice balance between nightmare and actuality” (501), but claims that the ambiguity is eventually resolved in the third chapter: “The fact that the visitation is shared by the superficial, conventional Lockwood who sums up the incident as ‘ridiculous nightmare’, and the taciturn, forbidding hill-farmer who is moved to tears and desperation by it, obviously rules out the

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tation as preferable, as Kermode does. While he acknowledges what he calls the text passage’s “indeterminacy” (47), he also claims that Heathcliff’s reaction “makes it obvious that of the two choices the text has so far allowed us, the more acceptable is that Lockwood was not dreaming at all” (46). It is not clear why we as readers are supposed to prioritize Heathcliff’s take on an event that he has not even witnessed over Lockwood’s. Indeed, the way in which their perspectives and those of the experiencing and narrating self Lockwood counterbalance each other in the text passage greatly contributes to the ambiguity. Analysing such techniques that generate ambiguity can explain why the text makes us think in alternatives in such instances. While the description of Lockwood’s encounter with Catherine at the Heights is one of the most prominent ambiguities in the text, it is far from the only one. Doing justice to the complexity of Wuthering Heights means taking into account the coexistence of readings for all the local and global ambiguities of the novel. What Bauer and Brockmann have noted for Emily Dickinson’s poem “This was a Poet –” (J448) is also true for Brontë’s novel: In order to find a consistent meaning of the poem as a whole, all instances of ambiguity have to be taken as contributing to several possible readings of the text which then have to be related to each other (338).

Interpretations of Wuthering Heights that acknowledge its ambiguities can fulfil the criteria that J. Hillis Miller has set for “the best readings” of a novel in which, he argues, “possible meanings […] are systematically interconnected [and] determined by the text” (51). Only those can do justice to Brontë’s text according to Hillis Miller that can “best account for the co-presence of multiple valid interpretations of the novel (51).73 If readers of Wuthering Heights accept thinking in alternatives throughout the novel when confronted with ambiguities, the text reveals its potential as regards the reflection about the fundamental categories perception, narration, and world, and equally about the interplay between these categories. In being challenged over and over again to consider various readings at the same time, possibility that it is simply a nightmare” (501). Indeed, the “visitation” is not “shared” by both men – Lockwood has an encounter with Catherine and Heathcliff only hears about it from him; this thus does not “obviously rule […] out the possibility” that Lockwood has indeed dreamed. Though Smith’s interpretation of this passage is not convincing, her article provides an interesting insight into the connection between Wuthering Heights and ballads and folklore. 73  Hillis Miller also believes that such readings should be “logically incompatible” (51), which is much more problematic since many of the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights are conjunctions rather than disjunctions.

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we arrive at the conclusion that the world of Wuthering Heights allows for permeabilities where we might assume clear boundaries to be in place – all the while not losing the link to our own world, which is invoked in the same vein as its identity with the world of Wuthering Heights is questioned. This tension is reflected in matters of narration and perception. (1) Perception The novel poses the question whether there is a connection between the mind and the world, and what role perception plays as a means to access reality.74 It frequently points to matters of the relationship between appearance and reality; this is explicitly referred to in the final sentence, in which Lockwood derives the quietness of the “slumbers” from the quietness of the grave’s surface, but also in a number of ambiguities of perception elsewhere; for instance in the following: Now, I perceived he was not looking at the wall, for when I regarded him alone, it seemed, exactly, that he gazed at something within two yards distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, both pleasure and pain, in exquisite extremes, at least, the anguished, yet raptured expression of his countenance suggested that idea. (WH 331)

The ambiguity that arises concerns the question whether Heathcliff really does see “something within two yards distance,” or whether he merely believes to do so; if he does, what is it that he sees? This passage points to the issue of appearance vs. reality, not the least by means of the ambiguities of the epistemic verb “seem” and the epistemic adverb “apparently.” Both of them question whether Heathcliff actually sees something or not, but are additionally structural ambiguities for which it is unclear how much of the sentence they modify.75 Epistemic uncertainty in Wuthering Heights is frequently foregrounded, and thus makes functional the potential for ambiguity inherent in processes of perception which are mimetically represented in the novel. (2) Narration Wuthering Heights makes clear that the narration of homodiegetic narrators is always to some degree an interpretation of their perception of the world and of the communication taking place therein. The novel is narrated by not only

74  Compare chapter 1 of this study for a detailed discussion of ambiguities of perception in Wuthering Heights. 75  Compare the introduction of chapter 1 for a detailed discussion of this example.

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one but many narrators whose narratives are embedded. Nelly’s following assertion to Lockwood captures this nicely: you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things (WH 185)

Nelly’s words are ambiguous by virtue of the epistemic and moral denotations of the word “judge.”76 Both Lockwood and Nelly are shown to constantly judge in all senses of the term throughout Wuthering Heights. Everything that we read about the narrated world is filtered through Lockwood’s narrating and much of it through Nelly’s and thus represents their respective interpretations of what they perceive. At times, these interpretations contradict one another but neither is privileged over the other as Nelly’s phrase “you’ll judge as well as I can” indicates.77 Furthermore, the narrative layering of the novel leads to cases of embedding ambiguity in which we are presented with several possible speakers for the same utterance, which contributes to other ambiguities in the novel. (3) World The ambiguities of Wuthering Heights suggest that the world depicted may deviate from our expectations about laws of nature and causality. It is presented as resisting the interpretation of narrators, characters and readers alike, whose access to it is complicated by difficulties of perception and narration, but not restricted to them.78 The ontological ambiguities of Wuthering Heights allow for a recursive view on the world and its natural laws despite problems of perception and mediation as in the following instance: It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. (WH 81) 76  According to the OED, “judge” can mean [t]o declare or pronounce authoritatively, esp. as being one’s opinion or conclusion following careful consideration or deliberation” (2.a.), “[t]o pronounce an opinion about; to pass judgement upon; to criticize; esp. to express, or indicate that one holds, an unfavourable view of; to condemn, censure” (3.), and “to form an opinion or conclusion about (a person or thing), esp. following careful consideration or deliberation; to assess, evaluate, or appraise” (1.a.). 77  Compare chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of ambiguities of narration and chapter 2.1 for an in-depth analysis of the phrase of “you’ll judge as well as I can, all these things” (WH 185). 78  Compare chapter 3 for an in-depth discussion of ontological ambiguities in Wuthering Heights.

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Catherine’s ambiguous phrase “he’s more myself than I am” is a prime example of how local ambiguities in Wuthering Heights challenge assumptions about fundamental ontological categories: we can either read the sentence literally and accept it as a proposition that reflects the nature of the narrated world in which humans can be each other or reinterpret it as figurative. In spite of its syntactic and semantic simplicity, a significant tension is created in her utterance as a result of her use of pronouns, which violates presuppositions of identity: the singular reflexive “myself” in this statement grammatically refers to two entities in the narrated world, namely Heathcliff (“he”) and Catherine (“I”). Neither “he” nor “I” are referentially ambiguous in this context: “I” has the strong association that only the speaker can be meant, and there is nothing in the co-text that would contradict this assumption; “he” refers to the only male entity mentioned in the co-text: Heathcliff. Yet, both the reflexive pronoun and the copula “be” implicates an equation between them. The clause can be reinterpreted as a figurative expression, denoting their similarity or ability to comprehend one another in terms of a relationship of identity. Yet, the context suggests that Catherine intends her words to be understood literally. In the very next sentence, she declares that “his [soul] and mine are the same” and only shortly later “I am Heathcliff” (82). Each of these phrases can also be reinterpreted, but the conglomeration of similar expressions of a connection between their selves evokes their literal meanings, as does the wider context of Catherine’s reflections on the nature of their relationship. A literal reading, however, entails a challenge to a basic law of grammar: the singular pronoun generally refers to one entity, a rule which represents basic assumptions about identity, namely that each human being has an identity of his or her own. Catherine’s use of different personal pronouns for herself (“I”) and Heathcliff (“he”) follows this basic rule, and acknowledges that they are two entities, but the referents of both coincide in the singular reflexive pronoun “myself,” which indicates that their selves are so intertwined that they are not only two but also one. Adopting such an assumption means that the narrated world of Wuthering Heights allows for the boundary between selves to become permeable; yet, this interpretation of the narrated world is juxtaposed in the novel by a contrasting one. While Catherine seems to regard the permeability between selves as a as generally accepted fact (“I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you,” 82), Nelly responds by condemning Catherine’s words as “nonsense” (83). She implies that Catherine might merely claim that Heathcliff and she cannot possibly be separated so that she is able to be with both Heathcliff and Edgar simultaneously despite her marriage to the latter.

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Even within the text, contrasting interpretations are thus juxtaposed that contribute to the ambiguity. The aspects perception, narration and world therefore not only all become sources of ambiguity, but they are intricately connected in Wuthering Heights. Epistemic problems only become available to the reader through narrative mediation and both perception and narration are reflected in the process. Contrasting interpretations of the narrated world are presented to the reader by different voices in the novel. As none of these narrative voices is privileged over the other, an equilibrium between different assumptions about this world is established, which renders the world itself ambiguous. The world of Wuthering Height thus seems to be marked by the conjunction of discrete elements, such as several human beings or the realm of the living and that of the dead, which do not seem to be distinct but permeable; all the while notions of the world that Nelly and Lockwood propose may be equally valid. It is not the mere presence of ambiguities in the novel that makes Wuthering Heights unique but their mimetic function. In its ambiguities, Wuthering Heights reveals the nature of perception and narration and challenges widely accepted assumptions about the nature of its own world and that of its readers. Wuthering Heights evokes questions that have occupied philosophers since antiquity and have a fundamental impact on our everyday lives. The great strength of the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights is not to provide answers but to make these timeless issues visible for its readers.79 Ambiguity may not be able to account for every reading of Wuthering Heights, but it can help to explain how so many discrepant readings, all of which are compatible with the text, can coexist – why, for instance, it is valid to read Heathcliff as demonic, or as the result of economic constraints, or as a half-hidden comment on slavery. The most productive way of approaching the text is thinking in alternatives, i.e. to accept both discrete readings, as the novel suggests. Wuthering Heights and its Implications for the Research on Ambiguity The structural and thematic pervasiveness of ambiguity that has sparked these varied interpretations also translates Wuthering Heights into an excellent case 4.2.3

79  In a recently published collections of short stories inspired by Wuthering Heights to honour the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth, author Kate Mosse notes that “like many others, [she] has gone back to [Wuthering Heights] in each decade of [her] life and found it subtly different each time” (5).

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study for the phenomenon itself, especially as it occurs in narrative texts. When considering the large number of interconnected ambiguities in Wuthering Heights, pragmatic ambiguity is more prevalent in the novel than semantic and syntactic ambiguities. This may seem surprising to some since pragmatics is still frequently excluded from studies of ambiguity both in literary studies and linguistics. Linguist Billy Clark’s definition of ambiguity as “the property of having more than one linguistically encoded meaning,” which does not encompass pragmatic ambiguities, is a case in point (3). Some literary scholars like Furniss and Bath80 have likewise adopted a restriction of the phenomenon of ambiguity to lexical and syntactic ambiguities. This line of argumentation goes back to the view that ambiguity is a phenomenon inherent in the language system and does not come into existence on the level of discourse. The members of the RTG 1808 “Ambiguity: Production and Perception” have challenged this assumption and consider both the language system and the discourse in their approach to ambiguity.81 Within the research group, Esme Winter-Froemel and Angelika Zirker have shown the significance of pragmatics for the study of ambiguity (“Ambiguity in Speaker-Hearer-Interaction”; “Ambiguität in der Sprecher-Hörer Interaktion”). The ambiguities of Wuthering Heights show the benefits of consolidating an analysis of the linguistic and narrative microstructure and macrostructure of the entire text and demonstrate that only an approach that also considers pragmatics can do justice to complex ambiguities in literary texts. In my analysis of Brontë’s novel, distinct patterns as regards linguistic sources of ambiguity (semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic) and the layers of the narrative text (perception, narration, world) that these ambiguities concern have emerged. This interaction points towards the fruitfulness of combining approaches and methods of literary studies and linguistics when studying ambiguity.

80  Furniss and Bath argue in their study on the analysis of poetry that “[t]here are two basic reasons why ambiguity is possible in language: first because syntax and grammatical structure can be open to different readings, and secondly because individual words can have more than one meaning” (279). 81  Compare the RTG 1808’s three-dimensional ambiguity model (Winkler 5–8). Linguist Susanne Winkler notes that in various disciplines, “research on ambiguity works with its own highly specialized theories and methodologies. At the same time, there will be no solution to the problem of ambiguity coming from just one area of study alone. Thus, the topic of ambiguity forces us to communicate findings over the language use versus language system divide” (5). The contributions in the volume Ambiguity: Language and Communication, edited by Winkler, explore such an approach to ambiguity further.

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Semantic and Syntactic Sources of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights For a novel that is characterized by ambiguity to such a degree there is a surprising absence of puns in Wuthering Heights. Instead, three types of complex ambiguities on the level of semantics appear in the text. Firstly, there are a number of conventionalized expressions whose literal dimension is foregrounded in Wuthering Heights alongside their figurative meanings. They concern three main areas: expressions from the semantic field of sleep that are conventionally used to describe death (e.g. “sleep,” “sleeper;” WH 289), expressions from the semantic field of the demonic that are not only conventionally employed as insults but also to mark extreme or deviant behaviour (e.g. “devilish,” “monster;” WH 174), and lexicalized expressions that personify nature (e.g. a storm “in full fury;” WH 84). These ambiguities actively challenge the assumptions about the narrated world. They suggest that this tension between figurative and literal meanings may reflect the nature of this world, indicating that death may indeed be close to actual sleep (compare chapter 3.2), questioning Heathcliff’s humanness (compare chapter 3.5), and proposing that humans and the natural environment are intricately connected and nature may be an agentive force (compare chapter 3.3). Another phenomenon that appears frequently in Wuthering Heights can again be tied to the ontological questions: the ambiguity of pronouns. Instead of classic cases of referential ambiguities in which one pronoun can refer to several entities, a semantic clash frequently comes about in Wuthering Heights as the very aspects codified in pronouns – singular/plural, human/non-human – are challenged in Wuthering Heights. In the novel, Heathcliff can, for instance, become in Catherine’s words “more myself than I am” (81), and Isabella Linton can wonder “what [she] ha[s] married” (236). Each of these ontological ambiguities, which address the possibility that the boundary between humans can be permeable in the narrated world (compare chapter 3.1) and again question Heathcliff’s humanity (compare chapter 3.5), leave the reader with two options: reinterpret the utterance as figurative or adapt their assumptions about the nature of the narrated world. These findings not only trigger reflection on the nature of perception, narration and the world that we may perceive and tell about but also show that Wuthering Heights is a valuable data source for further studies on the ambiguity of figurative expressions and pronouns. As to the latter, the novel presents us with specific contexts in which metaphors are actually ambiguous between literal and figurative meanings and in which pronouns literally make sense even though grammar suggests a coercion, i.e. a figurative reinterpretation. This shows the context-dependency of apparently unambiguous linguistic processes (compare also Bauer et al. (Linguistics Meets Literature)).

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Furthermore, there are lexical ambiguities of epistemic verbs (especially “seem” and “appear”) that are closely linked to questions of perception in the novel. They can either indicate that something merely “appears” or “seems” but is not, or that it “appears” or “seems” and is. The lexical ambiguity of “seems” and “appears” is quite common in literary texts (Paulina in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale 5.1., for example, says about the statue of Hermione: “it appears she lives”) but Wuthering Heights in particular shows that these ambiguous expressions are well suited to trigger and combine with other ambiguities. These ambiguities frequently co-occur with structural ambiguities that leave the reader to wonder which parts of the sentence are modified by these epistemic expressions and with pragmatic ambiguities (see below). The most notable syntactic ambiguities in Wuthering Heights are temporary ambiguities that are also triggered by epistemic verbs and achieve a garden path effect. They appear rarely in the novel, but their impact is crucial as in the sentence “[s]he showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me” (WH 290) as discussed above. The novel thus shows contexts in which garden path sentences may be not just temporarily ambiguous but keep the meaning first evoked alive. This is an issue relevant to syntactic-pragmatic investigations into garden path sentence.82 Pragmatic Sources of Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights contains a large number of pragmatic sources of ambiguity, especially in the form of three types: embedding ambiguities, implicatures that clash with presuppositions, and expressions that lead to opposing implicatures.83 Embedding ambiguities concern a crucial aspect of utterances: their speakers. In such cases, the context of an utterance suggests that at least two characters may each be responsible for a given utterance. In Wuthering Heights (as in many narrative texts), narrative embedding can result in a layering of narrative voices, which creates a potential for embedding ambiguity. In Brontë’s novel, these two possible speakers frequently are the experiencing self and the narrating self of the same character. The implications of assigning one or the other instance as a speaker to an utterance can be quite significant. A case in point is the following temporary embedding ambiguity: 82  See, for instance, Ferreira et al. for a discussion of garden-path sentences. 83  Another type that rarely occurs in Wuthering Heights are speech act ambiguities, as in the following example. When Cathy asks Lockwood “Were you asked to tea?”, he responds, by saying “I shall be glad to have a cup,” which prompts her to ask again, “[w]ere you asked?” (WH 11). Lockwood clearly takes her question to be an invitation in the form of an indirect speech act; while in the form of an indirect speech act, Catherine’s repetition reveals that she intended the question to be understood literally.

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The apparition had outstripped me; it stood looking through the gate. That was my first idea on observing an elf-locked, brown-eyed boy setting his ruddy countenance against the bars. Further reflection suggested this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since. (WH 109; my emphasis)

The context of these utterances first suggests that the speaker of the italicized phrase is the narrating self Nelly, but the following co-text shows that it is indeed the experiencing self. The difference is crucial, since the utterance presupposes that “[t]he apparition” indeed exists, a fact that the narrating self has so far denied while the experiencing self was doubtful. Embedding ambiguities frequently occur in combination with other types of pragmatic ambiguities, especially cases in which implicatures clash with presuppositions. When Heathcliff visits Catherine’s grave, for instance, we first learn that “it seemed that [he] heard a sigh” (289), which implicates that he is not sure, and shortly later that “[t]here was another sigh” (290), which presupposes that what he has heard the first time has already been a sigh. This clash can be resolved in two ways: either it can be read as a conversion experience, in which the speaker becomes eventually convinced of what he has heard, or – as a result of embedding ambiguity – the two utterances can be attributed to different speakers, namely the narrating and the experiencing self Heathcliff. In other cases, clashes between implicatures and presuppositions cannot be resolved in such a way. When Nelly finds Heathcliff’s corpse, she comments: I tried to close his eyes – to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not shut – they seemed to sneer at my attempts, and his parted lips, and sharp, white teeth sneered too! (WH 335)

In the course of the very same sentence, the speaker here first declares that the eyes of the corpse “seemed to sneer,” which implicates that she is unsure, only to then presuppose that they did so when she claims that the lips and teeth “sneered too.” Questions of perception and narration, and ontological considerations all come together in such cases: Narrators provide their beliefs about what they have seen or heard in the form of presuppositions, which indicate that they are convinced, or expressions that imply that they are unsure. The choice of the respective construction and its interpretation then has considerable consequences for ontological assumptions about the narrated world. Again we see that, in this novel, language is used in a way that from a purely systematic point of view might be regarded as impossible. Wuthering Heights thus implicitly questions and adapts linguistic rules, just as it serves to question and change world views.

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The third pragmatic source of ambiguity in the novel are embedded constructions that lead to conflicting implicatures, such as sentences beginning with “it appeared that” or “it seemed that.” According to Levinson’s Neo-Gricean theory of implicatures, the choice of a semantically weaker construction that does not provide new information but rather qualifies the statement (such as the embedding in a structure like “it appeared that”) Q-implicates that the speaker does not know whether the embedded statement obtains, resulting in two opposing implicatures (Levinson 108–111).84 Accordingly, utterances like “it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated on the withered turf (WH 108; my emphasis) implicate that the speaker both believes it to be possible that what she conveys in the embedded clause is the case and that it is not the case. While this does not automatically lead to ambiguity, such constructions contribute to epistemic ambiguities whenever both interpretative possibilities are supported by the co-text.85 Ambiguity and Related Phenomena in Wuthering Heights The ambiguities of Wuthering Heights not only reveal patterns between linguistic sources of ambiguity and layers of narrative texts, but also between ambiguities and related literary phenomena like paradox, metaphor, irony, and repetition. None of them automatically leads to ambiguity, but they frequently either create a potential for ambiguity in the right context or interact with ambiguities in the novel. In Wuthering Heights, ambiguity is frequently connected to paradox. A case in point is the temporary ambiguity of the phrase: “She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me!” (290; see above). At the end of an entire passage dedicated to the question if Catherine will show herself on earth after her death, this utterance first seems to indicate that she does indeed appear (“She showed herself”). Yet, the syntactic structure of the complete sentence is not compatible with such a reading; instead, the verb “show” has to be reinterpreted as transitive. This is where the paradox comes in: It is exactly by not appearing to him after death that Catherine proves, according to Heathcliff, that she is “a devil.” Another link between paradox and ambiguity can be found in Catherine’s following prediction before her death: I won’t rest till you are with me … I never will. (WH 126)

84  Compare also Huang (51). 85  See chapter 1.2 for a detailed discussion of the ambiguity of the example.

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Depending on how the elliptic construction “I never will” is interpret, three ways emerge of how the contradiction between “never” and “till” can be resolved. Firstly, “never” can take on the meaning of “not at all” or “without interruption;” the second phrase can then be read as an affirmation of what has been said before in the sense of “I never will [rest till you are with me].” Secondly, the latter part of Catherine’s utterance can be understood to cancel the first part in the sense of “I won’t rest till you are with me. [Actually,] I never will.” Finally, the contradiction between “till” and “never” can be regarded as a paradox. Paradox thus appears as a valid interpretive option of ambiguous utterances. While paradox is frequently regarded as a typically literary, rhetorical and philosophical device (cf. Behler), Wuthering Heights shows that it has a particularly unsettling effect on the narrated world when it is used seriously by a character. Metaphors cannot generally be explained in terms of ambiguity, but especially conventionalized metaphorical expressions have an inherent potential for ambiguity as they bring together two fields of understanding.86 This potential is realized frequently in Wuthering Heights (see the section on semantic ambiguities above). Such ambiguities not only foreground conventions of language use, but Brontë’s novel shows how they can also address complex ontological questions. A striking phenomenon in Wuthering Heights concerns a process of ambiguation of conventionalized metaphorical expressions, with instances that are clearly intended to be read figuratively at the beginning, which then give way to ambiguous expressions and then expressions from the same semantic fields (in particular sleep and the demonic) that can only be read literally. Even unambiguous conventional metaphors can thus contribute to ambiguity in Wuthering Heights as they become part of a process of ambiguation (compare chapters IV,2 and IV,5 for a more detailed discussion of this process). Wuthering Heights thus shows that metaphors are particularly apt to trigger processes of ambiguation in units of discourse. Like metaphors, ironical expressions can be related to ambiguity because they encompass two layers of meaning in the same utterance. Nevertheless, irony does not automatically result in ambiguity but rather represents a potential for ambiguity that is realized in Wuthering Heights.87 Especially Lockwood and at times Nelly resort to irony in the novel, for instance in Lockwood’s 86  See Wagner’s Idioms and Ambiguity in Context for a detailed study of ambiguous idioms. Like conventionalized metaphors, to which they are closely related, idioms create a potential for ambiguity due to their inherent figurative and literal dimensions. 87  Compare Bauer (“Ironie und Ambiguität”) for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between irony and ambiguity.

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comment on Heathcliff’s passionate pleas to Catherine: “The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being” (WH 28–29). While Lockwood intends his ironic utterance to ridicule the notion that ghosts may exist, his phrasing implicitly evokes just this possibility. This is supported by the curious phrase he uses, which turns not appearing into a characteristic of “spectre[s]”. Furthermore, and this is how irony is linked to multiperspectivity in the novel, his utterance is counterbalanced by his own earlier behaviour and Heathcliff’s beliefs, a technique that is typical for the novel. For the study of irony and ambiguity, it seems particularly relevant that irony, which can generally be seen as a sign of control by the speaker over his or her utterance, is used to show the very lack of that control in Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights furthermore shows two ways in which repetition can generate or contribute to ambiguity.88 Firstly, the repetition and recontextualization of an unambiguous phrase can lead to ambiguity, for instance when Nelly echoes Catherine’s prediction that she “shall be incomparably beyond and above [them] all” (WH 162). After Catherine’s death, Nelly insinuates that the phrase is to be understood as being in heaven, but while the expression “incomparably beyond and above” is somewhat vague, the context of Catherine’s original utterance makes it seem highly unlikely that this was the meaning intended by her (compare chapter 3.2 for a detailed analysis). Furthermore, repetitions of words, phrases, and concepts (e.g. the verb “wail”) create intratextual links in Wuthering Heights and through the interaction of such connected local ambiguities global ambiguity is generated (compare chapter 2.3 for a detailed analysis). Wuthering Heights thus shows repetition to be a significant factor in establishing ambiguous discourse. Local and Global Ambiguities The network of distinct but interdependent local ambiguities in Wuthering Heights that generate global ambiguities furthermore makes it a prime example of the interaction of ambiguities in a single text. This interplay between local ambiguities is paramount in Wuthering Heights because it contributes to the global ambiguities characteristic of the text. The phrase “he’s more myself than I am” (WH 81), which was discussed above as an instance of ontological ambiguity, is a case in point. It is not only ambiguous itself but interacts with other ambiguities in the novel and thereby addresses fundamental questions 88  See Nicolas Potysch’s study Wiederholt doppeldeutig in Bild und Schrift for a discussion of the connection between repetition and ambiguity. For an analysis of repetition in Wuthering Heights, compare the chapter on Brontë’s novel in Hillis Millers Fiction and Repetition.

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about the nature of the narrated world. Its interplay with phrases such as “his [soul] and mine are the same” (WH 81) and “I am Heathcliff” (WH 82) contributes to the ambiguity of each of them as it evokes their literal meanings that challenge assumptions about the world alongside figurative readings. Together, these distinct but interdependent local ambiguities generate global ambiguity regarding a specific feature of the narrated world: a literal reading of each of them entails a world that allows for a permeability between selves, whereas figurative reinterpretations are consistent with existing assumptions about laws of nature as reflected in the grammatical division between singular and plural pronouns. A number of local ambiguities throughout the novel address the same feature of the narrated world and likewise contribute to this global ambiguity, such as Heathcliff’s following declaration after Catherine’s death: “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” (WH 169). Other global ambiguities in Wuthering Heights equally come about as local ambiguities throughout the novel are connected. It is because of the interplay of all these local and global ambiguities that Wuthering Heights can be called an ambiguous text. Ambiguity as a Dynamic Phenomenon Ambiguity in the novel is not a static phenomenon, but can be regarded as a process, as many individual ambiguities emerge in the discourse, influencing the reading experience and priming the reader as she goes along. The individual ambiguities are either triggered and resolved at a later point or remain ambiguous throughout; passages may switch from one meaning to another when interacting with other ambiguities and fuel the process of ambiguation overall. This is true both for the microstructure and the macrostructure of the text. Temporary ambiguities like “[s]he showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me” (see above) demonstrate on the level of a single sentence how meaning is not stable, but interpretations may appear and even disappear during the reading process. Similarly, global ambiguities in Wuthering Heights emerge step by step as local ambiguities are introduced and then connected. The question if the world of Wuthering Heights allows for the boundaries between the living and the dead to become permeable, for instance, first emerges in the form of a local ambiguity in the third chapter of the novel, when Lockwood possibly encounters Catherine, who has at this point been dead for a long time (s. above). As the novel progresses, other local ambiguities that address the same issue emerge and become interdependent with the ambiguity of the third chapter. Simultaneously, this global ambiguity is interconnected to others in the novel, which equally come about gradually in Wuthering Heights.

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Ambiguity in Narrative Texts: Beyond Wuthering Heights Perception, Narration, and the Nature of the Narrated World become sources of ambiguity not only in Wuthering Heights but in many other novels. The approach to ambiguity undertaken in my study could be fruitful for the discussion of other literary texts, especially in cases where narration and perception play an exceptional role. Two works where such an approach might for instance be useful are Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace89 and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Devil’s Elixirs, both of which are marked by complex narrative situations and embedded narratives, address epistemic problems and challenge assumptions about the narrated world. The global ambiguity of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace emerges as a result of a number of interconnected local ambiguities that are tied to the layers of perception, narration, and world.90 Some of these ambiguities are reminiscent of similar phenomena in Wuthering Heights, such as in the description of Mary Whitney’s corpse in Alias Grace (“her eyes were open, and I could feel her looking back at me out of the corner of her eyes,” 204) and Heathcliff’s in Brontë’s novel (“His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I started; and then he seemed to smile;” 335). In both cases, the language suggests that the dead look directly at the living and the interpretative choices are similar: either the expressions are read as figurative or the state of the narrated world must allow for such an interaction, which can be tied to global ambiguities in both novels. Like in 89  Margaret Atwood herself has commented on the ambiguity of Alias Grace: “I will never ever answer [the] question [about Grace’s guilt and mental state] […] You have what I have to make up your mind […] and both sides of the case are argued. You have […] people who believe that she’s innocent and people who believe the opposite and both of them get their say in this book; so you can […] pretend you’re a juror […] and listen to both sides of the case and figure it out for yourself, and I’ve had people already who said ‘oh yes, I’m absolutely convinced that she is innocent’ and somebody else would say, ‘oh no I absolutely know that [she’s guilty]’” (“Margaret Atwood on her 1996 Novel Alias Grace,” 23:27–24:34). Indeed, Atwood insisted on the crucial nature of the ambiguity of her novel when preparing the Netflix adaptation together with author Sarah Polley as the latter has remarked in an interview: “Margaret Atwood’s only big real note was that we had to maintain the ambiguity, because it’s not fair historically or to the audience to make a decision about something that we’ll never know the answer to” (qtd. in Turchiano). In her afterword to the novel, Atwood links this phenomenon to what she calls a “contemporary ambiguity”: “Attitudes towards [Grace] reflected contemporary ambiguity about the nature of women: was Grace a female fiend and temptress, the instigator of the crime and the real murderer of Nancy Montgomory, or was she an unwilling victim, forced to keep silent by McDermott’s threats and by fear for her own life?” (538) 90  There are some intertextual links to Emily Brontë’s poetry and to Wuthering Heights in Alias Grace. Grace claims, for example to have heard the voice of Mary Whitney after her death, asking her to “[l]et me in” (207), which evokes the third chapter of Wuthering Heights in which Catherine asks the same of Lockwood.

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Wuthering Heights, the narrators themselves frequently introduce interpretative possibilities as in Dr. Jordan’s following comment: She could of course be insane, with the astonishingly devious plausibility of the experienced maniac. Some of her memories, especially those of the day of the murders, would suggest a fanaticism of the religious variety. However, those same recollections could as easily be interpreted as the naive superstitions and fears of a simple soul. (375)

Local ambiguities of narration that are characteristic of Alias Grace concern the status and truth of Grace’s narratives. Grace frequently employs phrases like “This is what I told Dr. Jordan, when we came to that part of the story” (7) and “or this is what I said” (343), which allow for different implicatures: they can either implicate that this is what she told him and this is also the truth or that this is the story based on what happened (even if she embellished it), or finally this is the invented story that she has told him. These instances can be linked to the global narrative ambiguity of the novel.91 The Devil’s Elixiers (Die Elixiere des Teufels) by E. T. A. Hoffmann, a representative of German Romanticism, is another novel in which ambiguity plays a dominant role.92 Like in Wuthering Heights, local ambiguities appear throughout the text for which several patterns of explanation are introduced. When the monk Medardus hears knocking and a voice that sounds like his own in his prison cell, for instance, we are presented with different possible 91  An important motif in Alias Grace is furthermore intricately linked to ambiguity, namely quilts. Grace notes on one particular quilt which is called Attic Windows that “it had a great many pieces, and if you looked at it one way it was closed boxes, and when you looked at it another way the boxes where open, and I suppose the closed boxes were the attics and the open ones were the windows; and that is the same with all quilts, you can see them two different ways, by looking at the dark pieces, or else the light” (187). When the suggestion is made in the novel that Mary Whitney does not inhabit Grace’s body, but that Grace instead may suffer from a personality disorder as a result of which “two distinct personalities […] may coexist in the same body” Reverend Verringer protests: “what becomes of the soul? We cannot be mere patchworks!” (471). Quilts appear throughout the text, both on a thematic level and as pictures at the beginning of the chapters. 92  Hoffmann’s novel was first translated to English in 1824 and a review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine appeared in the same year (Kremer 148). It has been argued in the past that Brontë was to some extent inspired by Hoffmann’s short story “Das Majorat” to write Wuthering Heights (compare, for instance, MacKay’s “Irish Heaths and German Cliffs”). While there is no evidence that Emily Brontë was familiar with works by Hoffmann (Allott 376n2), it is not unlikely that she came across his writings in German or English either directly or indirectly, e.g. through Blackwood’s. Queenie Leavis has furthermore claimed that “Emily is likely to have read Hoffmann when studying German at the Brussels boarding-school” (27).

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interpretations: Medardus may indeed hear a voice, either of a demonic force or of his double Victorin, but he might also dream or his mental health may be impaired (201–02). Similar instances of epistemic ambiguities that also have consequences for the nature of the narrated world can be found throughout the novel. Narrative embedding in The Devil’s Elixiers is also not only complex, but the status of the voice of the fictional editor in the intradiegetic and hypodiegetic narratives is as unstable as that of Lockwood, which has consequences for many of the ambiguities of the text. The fictional editor claims to merely have transcribed old manuscripts and documents that he has found, but indicates from the beginning that these sources were hard to read. Even reading the manuscripts, he tells us, was hard because of Medardus‘s illegible handwriting (“schwer genug […], da der Selige eine sehr kleine, unleserliche mönchische Handschrift geschrieben,“ 12).93 Even though, in Hoffmann’s novel, many of the ambiguities are resolved eventually, the methodology of tracing the dynamics of ambiguities by analysing how ambiguities that are maintained for at least a portion of the novel are triggered by ambiguous words, sentences and text passages, is useful; the same techniques can also be applied to show how they are eventually disambiguated. The examples of Alias Grace and The Devil’s Elixiers show that an analysis of ambiguities on the micro- and macrolevel with a focus on the structural layers of perception, narration and narrated world, could prove fruitful for narrative texts beyond Wuthering Heights. It can help to explain how complex ambiguities come about in novels and how such texts may encourage thinking in alternatives. Furthermore, such an approach may demonstrate how a whole novel can be called ambiguous. In Wuthering Heights, the pervasiveness of unresolved ambiguity on a thematic and structural level as a result of intricate connections between local ambiguities suggests that ambiguity can be regarded as a textual strategy.94 Even 93  Towards the end of the novel, a similar comment by the fictional editor appears on another manuscript that the novel is supposedly based on: “Hier wird, günstiger Leser! die halb erloschene Schrift des alten Malers so undeutlich, daß weitere etwas zu entziffern, ganz unmöglich ist“ (297). Compare also Kremer who has likewise pointed out that such text passages mark the intradiegetic narratives as transformations by the fictional editor rather than a mere reproduction of manuscripts (151). He has furthermore commented more generally on the ambiguity of Hoffmann’s novel: “Es verbinden sich [im Text] […] unterschiedliche Aspekte, Perspektiven und Interessen, die auch eine Lektüre des Romans nur als doppelte bzw. mehrfache zulässt“ (151). 94  Compare Bauer et al. for a discussion of ambiguity and strategy: “Ambiguität ist in Texten immer wieder der Fall. Das Besondere der Textebene ist allerdings, dass die Textproduzenten sich recht erfolgreich darum bemühen können, den Häufigkeitsgrad von Ambiguierungen mittels Formulierungsverfahren der Determinierung bzw. Nondeterminierung strategisch

Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights: A Global View

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though the assumption of such a strategy may look very much like a classic bugbear of literary criticism, authorial intention, it can be neutrally described as a relation of textual features and textual effects.95 While we cannot say with certainty that the historical Emily Brontë intended the novel to be ambiguous, the ambiguities of Wuthering Heights can be regarded as strategic based on the textual evidence of the novel.96 Emily Brontë’s powerful novel with its intricate network of distinct but interdependent ambiguities is thus not only a prime example for the study of the phenomenon, but interpretations of the novel can substantially profit from considering its ambiguity.

niedrig oder hoch zu halten“ (23). Mittelbach likewise regards ambiguity as “ein vom Autor bewußt eingesetztes gestalterisches Mittel” (251). 95  The term “strategy” may be regarded as controversial since it goes against the almost universally acknowledged assumption in literary theory going back to the New Critics and famously proclaimed by Roland Barthes under the heading of the “Death of the Author,” namely that authors’ intention should not be taken into account in the analysis of literary texts. While the benefits of an approach to literary texts that focuses on the text itself rather than merely on the question of what the author wanted to express with it are undeniable, more and more critics have in the recent decades proposed a “return of the author,” unveiling the weaknesses of auxiliary construct like Wayne C. Booth’s “implied author” such as Nünning, Kindt, Jannidis, Livingston, and Woodmansee and Jaszi. 96  References to Wuthering Heights as intricately and skilfully constructed text abound in the scholarly debate on the novel. John Bowen regards Wuthering Heights as a carefully planned novel (208), Madden comments on “the care which Emily Brontë has demonstrably taken with the […] details of the novel” (138); Kermode claims that “it also seems important to dissent from the opinion that such ‘classic’ texts as [Wuthering Heights] […] are essentially naive, and become in a measure plural only by accident” (45); Hillis Miller notes that “resistance to theoretical domination, both in the sense of clear-seeing and in the sense of conceptual formulation, is not accidental, nor is it without significance. It is not a result of Brontë’s inexperience [….]. The novel is not incoherent, confused, or flawed. It is a triumph of the novelist’s art. It uses the full resources of that art against the normal assumptions about character and about human life which are built into the conventions of realistic fiction” (52); and Krupat remarks on Wuthering Heights as an “extraordinarily intelligent and nearly perfect fiction […] [T]his strangeness we feel is the consequence of a technical decision” (271).

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Index ambiguity, structural 2–3, 33–35, 39, 44–49, 50–51, 62–63, 121–22, 124–27, 234, 238, 242, 243–44 ambiguity, lexical xi–xiii, 3, 44–49, 86–87, 121–22, 124–26, 128, 137, 139–40, 143, 234, 239, 242 ambiguity, embedding 81–82, 99–117, 121, 135, 226–27, 239, 244–45 ambiguity, pragmatic 59–60, 82, 98, 117, 137–38, 234, 242, 244–46 ambiguity, referential 33, 52, 53, 89, 240 ambivalence 43, 45 Abercrombie, John 3, 75 Aquinas, Thomas 35n56 Aristotle 10n16, 105n34 Arnold, Andrea Wuthering Heights (film) 198n90 Arnold, Thomas 67 Atwood, Margaret Alias Grace 250–52 Austen, Jane Northanger Abbey 212, 224 Persuasion 216n28 Berkeley, John 3–4, 9, 67, 76 Bode, Christoph xvii, 231 Boswell, James 228–29 Braddon, M.E. “The Shadow in the Corner” 12n19, 13n21, 74 Brewster, David 74n115 Brontë, Anne The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 212n19 Brontë, Emily Poetry 158n27, 161, 211n11, 250n90 Brontë, Charlotte 6n10, 113n46, 197, 212n19, 214n22 Jane Eyre 32n49, 51–52, 55n90, 93–94, 105, 209, 211n13 Villette 130n64 Burke, Edmund 217–18 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 4, 30n45 Collins, Wilkie The Moonstone 97, 203, 225

Crowe, Catherine 188 Cullen, William 67n105 Dickens, Charles A Christmas Carol 11–12, 92n18 David Copperfield 9n14, 189n78, 211 Little Dorrit 209 Old Curiosity Shop 212 The Pickwick Papers 212, 225 Dickinson, Emily 33n51, 237 Defoe, Daniel “A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal” 36n60 Moll Flanders 211n15, 213n21, 225 Descartes, René 145n12 Donne, John 146 Ducrot, Oswald 80–81, 84, 99 Flammenberg, Lawrence The Necromancer 214n23 Genette, Gérard 82, 98n23, 99n26, 101n27, 102–106, 109n43, 121, 123, 124n56 Gezari, Janet xix, 43n68, 139, 145n11, 152n21, 158n27, 164n36, 172n51, 230, 234 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 147–48 Graham, Thomas John 11, 67n105 Hibbert, Samuel 74n115 Hillis Miller, Joseph xn3, xix–xx, 127–28, 237, 248–88, 253n96 Hoffmann, E.T.A. “Das Majorat” 251n92 Die Elixiere des Teufels 251–52 Implicature 32, 49n84, 60, 72–73, 82, 88, 92, 117, 126, 132, 137–39, 143, 145, 167, 234, 240, 244–46, 251 Irony 22–23, 39, 85, 89n10, 62n100, 96, 98, 109–10, 113, 132, 219, 222–24, 246, 247–48 James, Henry The Turn of the Screw xx–xxii, 73–74, 203–04, 232

274 Johnson, Samuel Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 215–16, 228–29 Kullmann, Thomas xn3, 169n43, 171–72, 175n55, 184, 214n23 Lewis, Matthew The Monk 212–13, 219, 223n44, 225–26, 251 Locke, John 4, 228n55 Metaphor xi, 44, 107, 140, 147, 153–55, 158–59, 164, 167–68, 175n57, 192, 193–94, 197, 243, 246, 247 Multiperspectivity xvi, 79–81, 83–98, 105, 118, 120, 132, 248 Paradox 54, 101, 122, 126, 246–47 Parsons, Eliza Castle of Wolfenbach 13n21, 189 Plato 35n56, 105n34, 106, 159 Plutarch 44n72 Pope Gregory the Great 36n60 polyphony 80–81 presupposition 9, 12, 17, 35, 39, 60, 82, 92, 95–96, 98, 116–17, 137–38, 142, 185, 194, 196, 234, 240, 244–45 Radcliffe, Ann The Italian 212 The Mysteries of Udolpho 211–13, 217–23, 227n52 The Romance of the Forest 225–26 A Sicilian Romance 217n31

index Repetition 13–14, 21, 56, 82, 122, 127–34, 154, 158, 244n83, 246, 248 Rimmon, Shlomith xx–xxi, 73, 99n26, 114, 128, 204, 231–33 Savile, Rev. Bourchier Wrey 36n60, 37n61 Scott, Sir Walter 227n52 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft 6, 9, 35n55, 37n61, 63, 74 “The Tapestried Chamber” 7n11, 12n20, 13n21, 73 Shakespeare, William Hamlet 42–43, 48, 181n65 The Winter’s Tale 244 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein 192n81, 199n91, 212n17, 218 Stevenson, Robert Louis Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 192n81 Strabo 149–51 Tolkien, R.R. The Lord of the Rings 202–03 Todorov, Tzvetan 123, 203–05, 229 Walpole, Horace Castle of Otranto 209n6, 212, 221n40, 227 Wilde, Oscar “The Canterville Ghost” 12n20 Wordsworth, William 30n45, 36n57, 144n10, 180n62