the trees already had buds, the blackbirds were beginning to build their nests and the primroses and crocuses were in bloom (WH, 193, 205, 209). Since Catherine, in view of the one-year span, dies exactly one year after her wedding, March is clearly the wedding month. Only with this knowledge can the relevance and validity of the two imprecise time references be analysed.
The first imprecise time reference is the “eighteen years” which Ellen Dean specifies rather generally as the duration of her time at Thrushcross Grange, without providing further details regarding the month. She makes this statement in November just before beginning her story, which could suggest to readers that the wedding takes place in November. Since the wedding actually takes place in spring, Ellen Dean should have said “eighteen years and seven months” or at least “for eighteen years”. From the beginning of the story until the time of the move, readers have absolutely no reason to think about or even question the implications of Ellen Dean’s time reference. It is only with the mention of the date 20 March that readers are reliably informed that the “eighteen years” reflects the number of years that Ellen Dean spends with Catherine and Cathy at Thrushcross Grange and that it does not mark the exact month of the wedding and the move, and thus not the month of Mr. Linton Snr’s death. For the following line of argument, it is important to keep in mind that November has ←51 | 52→not been proved to be the month of his death and that, due to the course of the disease, October is the most likely month in which he dies.
The second imprecise time reference is the “subsequent” used by Ellen Dean to date the death of Mr. Linton Snr, which readers understand as “after” and thereby conclude that Catherine marries in November 1783. However, the question is whether this interpretation is correct or whether the “three years subsequent to his father’s death” could be read in the sense of “in the course of the third year after…”. With regard to November and the March following the November, the “subsequent” would then mean two years and four months: November 1779 plus four months = March 1780, March 1780 plus two years = March 1782. There would then be coherence as to month and year, the contradiction with the theory that the wedding takes place in 1782 would be resolved and the hypothesis that 1783 is the wedding year would be refuted. Of course, these calculations apply not only to November, but also to October. Taking October as the month of Mr. Linton Snr’s death, “subsequent” means five months. In Chapter 17, much later, Ellen Dean uses the word “subsequent” again, this time in connection with the birth of Linton Heathcliff, which is “a few months subsequent to [Isabella’s] escape” (WH, 226). At this point, Mr. Lockwood and readers cannot yet know that Isabella flees Wuthering Heights on 25 April 1783 and that Linton Heathcliff is born in September 1783. In this case, “subsequent” stands for “five months after”. If this is applied to the “subsequent” regarding Catherine’s wedding, it follows – provided that Ellen Dean uses “subsequent” both times instead of the number five – that Edgar Linton’s father dies in October.
The time references “eighteen years” and “three years subsequent” are not in themselves incorrect, but they are misleading in their vagueness. The “temporal vagueness” of the two time spans is seven months each: the “eighteen years” are seven months too few, the “three years” seven months too many. The month “November” is undeniably correct, as month specifications in the text always are – but only as the month in which Ellen Dean begins her story, not as the month of Mr. Linton Snr’s death and not as the month of Catherine Earnshaw’s wedding.
The statement under discussion is itself imprecise, too. What does the “nearly” in “Hareton was nearly five years old” mean? According to standard language usage and sense of time, “nearly five years old” means less than five years and significantly more than just four years. Mathematically, “nearly” means less than half of the year in between, i.e. less than six months before the fifth year. Looking in the text of Wuthering Heights for other time references which are preceded by the word “nearly”, the phrase that stands out is “nearly twenty-three years ago”, which is mentioned in relation to the time span between the birth of Hareton ←52 | 53→Earnshaw and the beginning of Ellen Dean’s narration (WH, 75). In the phrase “nearly twenty-three years ago”, “nearly” means seven months less than twenty-three years. The chronological equation is: June 1778 to June 1800 = 22 years, June 1800 to November 1800 = 5 months. “[N];early” = 23 years less 22 years + 5 months = 7 months. Ellen Dean therefore uses “subsequent” synonymously for five months and “nearly” synonymously for seven months. Thus, she divides the span of a year into two sections of different lengths. She calls the first section of five months calculated additively from the beginning of the year “subsequent” and the second section of seven months subtracted from the end of the year “nearly”. She therefore contravenes common language usage and the readers’ sense of time with disastrous consequences for their understanding of the chronology. Assuming that the “nearly” in the phrase “nearly five years old” means seven months less than five years (instead of the usual “fewer than six months less than five years”), then Hareton’s age is four years and five months, and one arrives arithmetically at November 1782: June 1778 plus four years is June 1782, plus five months is November 1782. Therefore, with the calculation based on “ ‘nearly’ means ‘seven months less’ ”, one lands exactly in the November from the statement “three years subsequent to his father’s death” – however, this is the November of 1782, not that of 1783. This is no coincidence because the calculations from the two combined statements must end in the same month in order to be plausible. Assuming that “nearly” means the usual “fewer than six months less”, for example three months, one arrives in March 1783 – this would be correct as far as the month of the wedding is concerned, but wrong for the month of death, October. Since November is ruled out as the month of the wedding, the statement “nearly five years old” must also be wrong. When the move takes place in March 1782, Hareton is in fact, and in the generally accepted sense, nearly four years old: three years and nine months to be exact (there are three months until his fourth birthday). It is also no coincidence that the age “nearly five years old” is made in direct connection with the period “three years subsequent”. Their combination is to be understood as a warning sign that the dates need to be clarified before their chronological use and that Hareton’s age cannot be used to determine the year of the wedding and the move but is only correct for the alleged wedding month of November. This warning has not been recognised before, probably because the correct wedding month is mentioned long after the wedding (in Chapter 21) and in a completely different context, and the alleged wedding month very early, before the beginning of the story (in Chapter 4).
As with the determining of the year of the major episode, there are two aspects concerning Hareton’s physiological development that also suggest that the “nearly five years old” cannot be correct.
Ellen Dean supplies additional ←53 | 54→information regarding Hareton’s approximate age, which actually reveals his true age at the time of the move. Concerning that period, she says: “[…] and I had just begun to teach him his letters” (WH, 109). Children usually start to write letters at about the age of four, starting with their own name, with their “own letters”, as Ellen Dean puts it (Baumann, p. 394). At the time of Catherine’s wedding and the move, Hareton cannot have been nearly five years old, but only about four. The second aspect is that Hareton can no longer remember his foster mother Ellen Dean “ten months” after the wedding and the move (cf. Chap. IV, Hareton Earnshaw’s biography). If he had been over five years old at the time, he would have remembered her, but not as a younger child.
In view of all these facts, it cannot be mere coincidence that the age “nearly five years old” is in direct correlation with the period “three years subsequent”. The combination of the two time references is to be understood as a warning against using the dates uncritically. In Ellen Dean’s story, it is the narratological equivalent to the opening sentences of Chapter 1 and Chapter 32 in Mr. Lockwood’s report. They lead to false conclusions because they are ambiguous and contradictory in themselves. They are unsuitable for refuting the postulate that 1778 is correct as the year of Hareton’s birth and 1801 incorrect as the year of the first visit.
