The Rhetorical Effects Of Lockwood's Unreliable Narration In Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, which is created out of the imagination of the great British writer Emily Bronte, has fascinated numerous readers of different generations, especially scholars and critics in the academic sphere to explore its endless charm. While reading the book, we are greatly impressed by the storm-like love between Heathcliff and Catherline, the complicated and twisted personalities of the characters as well as the embedded narrative structure of this ever-lasting classic. Although it was greatly rejected and criticized upon its publication in 1947 by the critics in the Victorian Era owing to its overstaffed structure and the unconventional love and hatred depicts in the work, it has greatly amused the later generations, especially the modern readers. Many critics begin to show preference to this controversial work and endeavor to delve into the aesthetic value of this classic especially the employment of the double narrators in the narrative structure. However most of them focus their attention on the eye-witness narrator, Nelly Dean, while neglecting the other, Lockwood, whose narration changes from unreliable to reliable, which possessing great aesthetic values.In this thesis, the thesis author is going to explore the unreliability of Lockwood's narration in Wuthering Heights by adopting James Phelan's theory on the unreliability of the narrator to reveal the rhetorical effects of such narration on the ethical positioning of the real readers, implied author as well as the narrator himself.