that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. (WH, 1)
Right from the very start, it is possible to rule out the suggestion that Mr. Lockwood begins his diary immediately after his first visit because of the future form used in the first sentence. The “shall” of the second half of the sentence proves that the “trouble” is still to come but that it is already known at the beginning of the report. Since Mr. Lockwood can hardly have the gift of foresight, he cannot have started the report on the same day as his first visit – it must have been after his second visit at the earliest. After his first visit, there are no disappointments and there is no cause for concern. After the second visit, ←28 | 29→however, the situation is quite different – Mr. Lockwood is disappointed and depressed.
In her “critical comparison of two German translations of Wuthering Heights”, Elsbeth Ort actually considers Mr. Lockwood to be a clairvoyant. To explain the second half of the opening sentence and the “shall”, she writes:
Lockwood versucht darin, die unbekannte Zukunft, die vor ihm liegt, zusammenzufassen. Er tut dies aufgrund eines ersten Besuchs auf Wuthering Heights, von welchem er in der Folge berichten wird. So viel ist ihm klar: Heathcliff wird ihn beschäftigen. Lockwood ist in diesem Augenblick so ausschließlich auf die Zukunft ausgerichtet, dass die Gegenwart davor gänzlich in den Hintergrund rückt. Die einzige dieser Zukunftsbezogenheit gemäße Zeitform ist das Futurum. Es ist allerdings zu sagen, dass mit dem Zeitformwechsel die Wahl eines anderen Verbs einhergehen müsste. (Ort 1982, p. 89)4
This means she accuses the author of making a mistake with the change of tense. Whether the “I shall be troubled with” is to be translated as “mit dem ich beschäftigt sein werde” or rather “mit dem ich Ärger (oder Schwierigkeiten) haben werde” may be a matter of opinion, but anyway the connotation of trouble is always negative and it is clear that after the first visit the trouble is yet to happen. Ellen Dean will also use the word “troubles” in the same vein before she begins her story. Until his second visit, Mr. Lockwood is bowled over by Mr. Heathcliff: “A capital fellow! […] how my heart warmed towards him” (WH, 1). After his second visit, “capital fellow” has become “rough fellow”, a “churl” (WH, 40), which indicates that Mr. Lockwood cannot have recorded his experiences until after his second visit to Wuthering Heights at the earliest. Even Ort (1982, pp. 88f.) mentions this as a plausible way of explaining the change in tense but rejects it because she sees it as a threat to the “unity of the plot”. She does not realise the chronological relevance of the tense change nor the circumstances surrounding the writing of the report.
Just like Ort, Knoepflmacher (1994, p. 12) – who quite rightly considers the beginning of the novel to be a “brilliant opening” – simply deems Mr. Lockwood’s remarks “confused and ambivalent flounderings”, attaching no ←29 | 30→deeper, chronological importance to them. He writes (ibid., p. 13) in conspicuous agreement with Ort: “Does Lockwood anticipate, on the basis of this first visit, trouble from the ‘solitary neighbour’ […]?” However, this cannot be true: the first visit does not go smoothly, but there is no reason to believe that trouble is imminent. Had this been the case, Mr. Lockwood would hardly have been so quick to repeat his visit to Wuthering Heights of his own accord.
There is a second passage in Mr. Lockwood’s report which proves that he is reporting retrospectively and where he even admits to it, though with misleading information about the circumstances. The passage is also an opening sentence, this time to the original second volume of the novel, Chapter 15:
Another week over – and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I have now heard all my neighbour’s history […] I’ll continue it in her own words […]. (WH, 191)
Ellen Dean has arrived at the point in her story where she is describing Cathy’s wretchedness at Wuthering Heights and her own helplessness. Just like in the opening sentence of the novel, Mr. Lockwood’s formulation makes it appear as if he is reporting from the perspective of December when he hears the end of the story; he seems here to be communicating from the perspective of the experiencing or reporting I: “I have now heard […]”. Only comparing this with the final sentence of Chapter 30 when Mr. Lockwood returns to the end of Ellen Dean’s story does it become apparent that the previous sentence (“Another week over – and I am so many days nearer health, and spring!”) means that he is reporting from the perspective of the second week of January, which he actually names. This indicates the change from the reported to the reporting I and thus shows the retrospective character of the diary in rare clarity: “[…] and, though it be only the second week in January […]” (WH, 367). This will be discussed in more detail at the end of the next section in connection with Mr. Lockwood’s illness.
Mr. Lockwood gives the impression in a few other places that he is reporting in hindsight. This is down to the particular numbers he uses (such as the number twenty) and the seemingly unnecessary facts (such as the properties of peat), which readers can recognise as allusions to corresponding passages in Ellen Dean’s story long after they have been mentioned. Since their detection assumes that the content of Ellen Dean’s story is known and that her narrative strategy is clear, the allusions will be discussed later in Chapter VII, The Chronology as Practical Narratology, where it will also be explained why Emily Brontë needed to create Mr. Lockwood and have him report retrospectively.
←30 | 31→
Regarding Mr. Lockwood’s illness after his second visit to Wuthering Heights, it can be deduced from the text that he could not have started his diary while he was ill. His remarks make it clear that he did not put anything down on paper the night immediately after he returned to Wuthering Heights after his second visit:
At this point of the housekeeper’s story, she chanced to glance towards the time-piece over the chimney; and was in amazement on seeing the minute-hand measure half-past one. She would not hear of staying a second longer: in truth, I felt rather disposed to defer the sequel of her narrative myself. And now that she is vanished to her rest, and I have meditated for another hour or two, I shall summon courage to go, also, in spite of aching laziness of head and limbs. (WH, 109)
The question arises as to what causes Mr. Lockwood to brood for almost two hours. It cannot be anything other than Ellen Dean’s strange behaviour at the beginning of her story and the causes of this behaviour, i.e. the events preceding Catherine Earnshaw’s wedding. There is reason to believe that Mr. Lockwood already sees through Ellen Dean and her secretiveness and is thinking about how he will handle her.
In his own words, after this night Mr. Lockwood is too ill to undertake anything or to get anything done for four weeks (WH, 109). After these four weeks, he is still “too weak to read” (WH, 110) – and therefore to write. For him, it is “quite an easy interval” when Mr. Heathcliff pays him a visit and sits “at [his] bedside a good hour” at the end of his fourth week of illness. When this takes place can be calculated, as shown below, though finding a method of calculation for this chronologically extremely important date is difficult and is a prime example of Emily Brontë’s camouflage.
About seven days before the end of Mr. Lockwood’s fourth week of illness, Mr. Heathcliff sends him “a brace of grouse – the last of the season” (WH, 110). Sanger (1926, p. 13) states that, according to the Game Act of 1831, grouse could not be shot after 10 December. This law did not yet exist in the fictional year of 1800. From this, and from the fact that Ellen Dean sings a Danish song
