Wuthering Heights (1847)

The opening to Wuthering Heights introduces a number of oppositions and contrasts. There is that between the Heights and the Grange, between 1801 and 1500, between misanthropy and sociability, between a heaven and a hell, and between Heathcliff and the narrator Lockwood. This last is not quickly perceived by Lockwood, who considers himself and Heathcliff ‘a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us’ (l.6). Lockwood is a city-dweller seeking rest from ‘the stir of society’ (ll.4–5) and imagines himself to be similar to his landlord. He soon finds, however, that his desire for temporary seclusion is different from Heathcliff’s refusal to ‘allow anyone to inconvenience me’ (l.20). Lockwood has called on his landlord ‘as soon as possible’ (l.15) after his arrival, suggesting a tendency to socialise at odds with his stated feeling that Heathcliff is the ‘solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with’ (l.2). Heathcliff is indeed ‘solitary’, but in a different sense, and Lockwood soon finds himself ‘interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself’ (ll.26–7).