EMILY BRONTE: Wuthering Heights Examine the relationship between Lockwood and Heathcliff in the novel

Answer Details

In Wuthering Heights, Lockwood is the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange and Heathcliff is his landlord at Wuthering Heights. Their relationship, though brief, is important because it frames the whole narrative and reveals Heathcliff's character to the reader.

Landlord and tenant

• Lockwood rents the Grange from Heathcliff and calls at the Heights to pay his respects, so the two men are bound by a business tie.
• Lockwood, a self-satisfied gentleman from the fashionable world, imagines that he and the reserved Heathcliff are kindred spirits, both lovers of solitude. He is badly mistaken.

Cold and inhospitable treatment

• Heathcliff receives Lockwood with a rough, grudging manner. The household at the Heights is hostile, the dogs attack the visitor, and no one shows him ordinary courtesy.
• A snowstorm forces Lockwood to stay the night, where he suffers the terrifying dream of Catherine's ghost at the window, an experience that first hints at Heathcliff's buried passion.

Lockwood as narrator and audience

• Puzzled and fascinated by the strange, brooding household, Lockwood becomes curious about its history.
• Falling ill after his exposure to the storm, he asks the housekeeper Nelly Dean to tell him the story, and it is through her narration to Lockwood that the whole tale of Heathcliff and Catherine reaches us.
• Lockwood is thus the outer narrator and the reader's stand-in, an outsider whose ignorance lets Nelly explain everything.

Contrast of characters

• Lockwood's shallow, conventional gentility sets off Heathcliff's dark intensity, making the landlord's fierce, tormented nature all the more striking.

Conclusion

The relationship between Lockwood and Heathcliff is that of a curious, rather vain tenant and a grim, forbidding landlord. Its chief importance is structural: Heathcliff's harshness draws Lockwood into the mystery, and Lockwood's need to understand it provides the frame through which Nelly Dean unfolds the entire story.