Timelines in Emily Brontës «Wuthering Heights». Michael Weber
present and consigns “yesterday” to November 1800. By contrast, the “as I still am” is the real present.
What is important in this regard is that Mr. Lockwood states that on that November night after his second visit, when Ellen Dean concludes the first half of her story, he says that he “meditated for another hour or two” (WH, 109). There is no evidence to suggest that he then begins recording events. The change of tense, the parentheses and the adverb “still” prove that this is a reference to January 1801 – when Mr. Lockwood reports all this – and date the first two visits to Wuthering Heights to November 1800.
The same applies to the repeated use of the present tense after Mr. Heathcliff’s visit to the sick Mr. Lockwood:
This is quite an easy interval. I am too weak to read; yet I feel as if I could enjoy something interesting. Why not have up Mrs. Dean to finish her tale? […] Yes: I remember […]. I’ll ring: she’ll be delighted to find me capable of talking cheerfully. (WH, 110)
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This is followed by “Mrs. Dean came” in the past simple tense. The above is not real now-time, it is not the reporting present of the diary-writing I, but rather, once again, it is the historic present, the reported past of the experiencing I. Here, the report refers back to the time expression used at the beginning of the same chapter, where it says that all this happened four weeks after the visit to Wuthering Heights, meaning after Mr. Lockwood has been ill for four weeks and during which time Ellen Dean has not been able to continue with her story.
At the beginning of Chapter 15, the next passage in the present tense occurs. Regarding Ellen Dean’s qualities as narrator, Mr. Lockwood says:
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 […]. (WH, 191)
The tense of “[a];nother week over” cannot be clarified without a verb. He is probably referring to his state of health in January because Mr. Lockwood mentions spring and his recovery immediately afterwards. The “now” in the next sentence, on the other hand, most likely refers to 24 December 1800, when Ellen Dean concludes her story, and is therefore historical. Mr. Lockwood then announces the continuation of the report in January 1801, shortly before his third visit to Mr. Heathcliff – in the real present.
The fifth and last passage in the present tense appears at the end of Chapter 30 when Mr. Lockwood returns to the end of Ellen Dean’s story:
Thus ended Mrs. Dean’s story. Notwithstanding the doctor’s prophecy, I am rapidly recovering strength; and, though it be only the second week in January, I propose getting out on horseback in a day or two, and riding over to Wuthering Heights, to inform my landlord that I shall spend the next six months in London; and, if he likes, he may look out for another tenant to take the place, after October – I would not pass another winter here for much. (WH, 367)
From here on, it continues in the past tense: “Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as I proposed […]” (ibid.). Since it is not “I have already recovered” but “I am rapidly recovering strength”, the only conclusion possible is that Mr. Lockwood makes a quick recovery after the end of the story. This not only suggests that Ellen Dean has concluded her story by the end of December but that as far as the report is concerned “now-time” has been reached. The present tense used is the real not the historic. All this happens in the second week of January 1801. The triple change of tense (past – present – future – past) is unique in the text and is the basis for this line of argument. The change in tense can only mean that Mr. Lockwood chronicles his first two visits of November 1800 in the second week of January 1801 before his third visit to Wuthering Heights, and that he chronicles his third visit on the following day ←37 | 38→(“yesterday”). This “yesterday” has a completely different chronological meaning to the “to-day and yesterday” mentioned almost 400 pages earlier or the “yesterday afternoon” at the beginning of Chapter 2. Both are simply expressions of a historic present (WH, 8, 41).
Contrary to Miller’s opinion (1982, p. 72), the “present moment” does exist in Wuthering Heights: it is the reporting present condensed into the reporting moment and it lies in the second week of January 1801. Knoepflmacher (1994, p. 50) suspects that the second week in January could be particularly significant, without recognising the chronological facts. He correctly states that the “calendars” – by which he means Mr. Lockwood’s chronology (“Lockwood time”) and Ellen Dean’s “Earnshaw Chronicle” – converge in mid-January (“the calendars can be synchronized”).
For the grammatical reasons mentioned above, the present perfect tense used at the beginning of the first sentence of the novel could even arouse the suspicion that the visit to Wuthering Heights that is being referred to is the third one, the visit in January, rather than the first or second. From a linguistic point of view, however, this seems implausible because of the future used in the same sentence (“I shall be troubled”) and the temporal circumstances described in January 1801.
Comparing the two parts of the report, the beginning of the second part, preceded by the year 1802, is also composed in the past tense, though it is the past simple not the present perfect (WH, 375). In both parts, Mr. Lockwood reports retrospectively, but at a different distance from the past. In contrast to the invitation, the visit is not long ago. The tenses allow the conclusion to be drawn that the events (the visit and the invitation) lie in the past, before 1801 and 1802 respectively. The fact that the invitation is already one year old at the start of the journey and that the month “September” refers to when the invitation is made and not to the date of the journey is demonstrated below.
Mr. Lockwood states that he has rented Thrushcross Grange for twelve months in total and that he will inform Mr. Heathcliff that he intends to spend the next six months in London (WH, 367). Since Mr. Heathcliff does not release him from his tenancy agreement, Mr. Lockwood decides while on his new trip to the north six months later, in July 1801, that he “might as well pass the night under [his] own roof [Thrushcross Grange] as in an inn” (WH, 376). It is only in this light that the opening sentence of Chapter 32 makes sense:
1802.– This September, I was invited to devastate the moors of a friend, in the North […]. (WH, 375)
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This wording may give the impression that he arrives in September,9 but in fact he arrives in July. This sentence is just as ambiguous as the opening sentence of the novel and the opening sentence of Chapter 15. Since Chapter 32 was probably originally planned as the beginning of the third volume, it can be surmised that Emily Brontë systematically used the beginning of all three volumes to have Mr. Lockwood create chronological confusion. There is a certain narrative intent behind the use of the historic present at the beginning of these chapters and at the beginning of a narrative episode, which is thus relevant both narratologically and chronologically. Until the nineteenth century, the historic present usually functioned as an incipit of a plotline, marked the climax of an episode or the special involvement of the narrator in the events. After this time, it was just the typical stylistic phenomenon of a ‘written prose narrative’ (Fludernik 1991). Neither is in fact the case in Wuthering Heights. Formally and functionally, the historic present in Emily Brontë obviously plays a completely different role and, with it, a unique role in literary history.
The special character and significance of the opening of Wuthering Heights, with its alleged stylistic ineptitude, confirms that the key to the proper understanding of a novel is sometimes found on the first pages, if not in the first lines. Comparable to Wuthering Heights in German literature is not, as is often said, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Das Majorat, but Theodor Fontane’s crime story Unterm Birnbaum with its cryptic beginning. This parallel may seem strange and far-fetched, and it certainly only relates to certain aspects of the novel, but it makes sense because Wuthering Heights, as far as the time frame is concerned, must be read like a crime novel with the keen nose of a detective.
If one continues to treat the