full moon, leading to attempts to determine the date of the visit. According to the lunar calendar, there was a full moon on 25 and 26 July 1801. This is incompatible with Mr. Lockwood’s statement that his visit was not near August. Unless it was not a full moon. Halfmoon was on 18 July 1801, so theoretically a day between 18 and 26 July would also be possible (see Fig. 3). If this were the case, it would be an indication that the fictional calendar of 1801 corresponds with the real calendar, as in fact will be demonstrated in connection with Easter in the year 1801 (cf. Chap. III, ‘Daley’s almanacs’ and Chap. IV, Mr. Heathcliff’s biography). It should be mentioned that in 1802 the full moon was ten days earlier than in 1801 – on 15 July. This date fits much better with the words “had I seen it nearer August” and could be taken as evidence that 1802 is the correct year, not 1801, and that in 1802, not 1801, the fictional calendar and the real calendar correspond. Emily Brontë must have known all this and used it for her own purposes.
Regarding the lack of time and opportunity to write his report about his last visit to Wuthering Heights, it should be noted that Mr. Lockwood is only at the Grange for one day before going hunting with a friend on the moors (WH, 375). Neither during the visit, nor while on his hunting trip, can he spare the time needed to write his report. He therefore does not continue the diary until the following year, which explains why the second part of his report is under the year 1802, not under 1801.
These conclusions drawn from Mr. Lockwood’s behaviour in his five different roles in the novel prove that the last of the chronological hypotheses mentioned applies (namely, that 1778 is the year of Hareton Earnshaw’s birth and that 1801 ←41 | 42→is not the year of Mr. Lockwood’s visit). The following analysis of Ellen Dean’s dates will further prove this.
The Time Scheme of Ellen Dean’s Story
Before she begins her story, Ellen Dean answers Mr. Lockwood’s question
You have lived here a considerable time, […] did you not say sixteen years?
with
Eighteen, sir: I came, when the mistress was married, to wait on her; after she died, the master retained me for his housekeeper. (WH, 38)
At the time it is cold and misty; later, it even snows (WH, 8, 36). Readers inevitably associate this wintry weather with November or December 1801 because the novel, and therefore the beginning of Mr. Lockwood’s report, opens with the date 1801, and it is clear from the context that Mr. Lockwood arrives in late autumn. This naturally leads to the conclusion that the wedding and the move to Thrushcross Grange take place eighteen years earlier, in November or December 1783.
When a second retrospective time reference appears towards the end of the first part of the narrative, one again counts back from 1801 – in the assumption that Ellen Dean does exactly the same. Regarding the discovery of Cathy’s secret visits to Wuthering Heights, which take place one November, Ellen Dean states that:
These things happened last winter, sir, […] hardly more than a year ago. Last winter, I did not think, at another twelve months’ end, I should be amusing a stranger to the family with relating them! (WH, 315)
This dates Cathy’s visits to the year 1800 and the wedding and the move to 1783 because, according to the text, Cathy is sixteen years old at the time of the visits and she is born one year after the wedding (1801 - 1 = 1800, 1800 - 16 = 1784, 1784 - 1 = 1783). The year of the wedding and the move thus appears to be doubly confirmed from a chronological point of view and to be categorically incontrovertible. This is deceptive.
Just as the time scheme of Mr. Lockwood’s report contains an easily identifiable, extremely important and logical argument, hitherto unmentioned in Wuthering Heights-literature, that events from two different years cannot be dated with one and the same year, namely 1801, there is also an extremely important logical argument for the time scheme of Ellen Dean’s story. It argues against the assumption that 1801 can be used as the starting year for chronological calculations and that the year of the wedding and the move has been clearly established. ←42 | 43→Ellen Dean’s “eighteen” years and “hardly more than a year ago” cannot pertain to the year 1801, because the year comes from Mr. Lockwood’s report, not from her. How should Ellen Dean know in November what year Mr. Lockwood would write down the following January? There is no indication whatsoever that Mr. Lockwood lets Ellen Dean know of his intention to write a diary. Without explicitly mentioning the year, because of course for her it goes without saying, Ellen Dean’s comments pertain to the year in which Mr. Lockwood appears at Thrushcross Grange when she is required to take care of him. At the time of the narration, the two periods she mentions have no year of reference at all and therefore cannot be used to determine the year of the wedding and the move. The time spans on the timeline can be arbitrarily moved forwards or backwards; they have no value for the reader as far as the chronology of Ellen Dean’s story is concerned. This realisation is the third crucial step on the way to achieving the aim of this analysis – that of resolving the chronological muddle.
When it comes to chronologically analysing Ellen Dean’s references to time, Mr. Lockwood has an advantage over readers: he knows, of course, in which year Ellen Dean is telling him her story. Because it is year-independent, the only chronologically relevant information for readers is the time of year “winter”, which indicates that Ellen Dean begins her story in November or December.
Clay interprets Ellen Dean’s time span as “for eighteen years” when he writes: “[Ellen Dean] states that she had come to Thrushcross Grange eighteen years earlier” (1952, p. 101) – as do many other authors before and after him. In the text, however, there is neither an “earlier” nor a “for”. Neither does Mr. Lockwood ask whether Ellen Dean has lived at Thrushcross Grange “for 16 years”, as Chitham (1998, p. 164) assumes, quoting Mr. Lockwood inaccurately. In fact, Mr. Lockwood only says, “did you not say sixteen years?” Mr. Lockwood and readers are not yet able to recognise that Ellen Dean’s laconic “eighteen” (without the assumed “earlier”) does not specify a time span exact to the month, but only refers to the year of the move.
In this light, the time scheme of Ellen Dean’s story must be examined to see how consistent it is as a self-contained system, that is, it must be checked to see whether its year dates are coherent and in particular whether the year 1778 holds true both as Hareton Earnshaw’s birth year and as the reference year for the two time periods mentioned by Ellen Dean before she begins her story. Without using data from outside the self-contained system, which is a methodological must, it can be proved from the following difficult to detect time references that the dates are coherent and that, contrary to first appearances, Ellen Dean has lived at Thrushcross Grange since 1782, not since 1783.
←43 | 44→
Time references based on textual content (internal evidence)
Starting from the premise that 1778 is the year of Hareton Earnshaw’s birth, the major episode described above must have taken place in either 1779 or 1780. The course of events, that is the internal evidence, rules out a time before 1779 and after 1780. The three-year absence of Heathcliff specified by Ellen Dean establishes that three years elapse between the major episode and Catherine Earnshaw’s wedding and her move with Ellen Dean to Thrushcross Grange. Four years pass until Catherine’s death because the time between her wedding and her death amounts to one year (from one March to the next), as shown by the following details: Catherine is described as having “seasons of gloom and silence, now and then” after her marriage. Edgar Linton attributes the moods to her “perilous illness” (WH, 112) (after the major episode) and has a “deep-rooted fear of ruffling her humour” (WH, 111). He ensures that consideration is given to Catherine, and “for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire
