A Queer Reading of Lockwood, Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

I am compelled to consider whether our narrator in Wuthering Heights, Mr Lockwood, may be a queer, potentially aromantic individual – let’s explore.

As a queer reader, it may seem commonplace for me to project a queer reading onto this semi-ambiguous character; queerness and the Gothic are symbiotic in their relationship, each informing the other as each genre develops through time. As mentioned in Uncanny Recognition: Queer Theory’s Debt to the Gothic, ‘Queer theorists recognise something powerfully compelling in the Gothic, something that keeps them returning to the genre for insights.’ Rigby, M. (2009)

Furthermore, in Queer Gothic (Haggerty – 2006), draws parallels between queer history and the Gothic, saying that the latter offers a ‘historical model of queer theory and politics, sexually coded and resistant to dominant ideology.’ In seeking a queer interpretation of Lockwood’s character in the Gothic, we are theorising how views of queerness at the time might have informed Bronte when building him.

In the context of 1847 when Wuthering Heights was first published, and in the late 18th Century where the novel is set, a single young man would not have been unusual, especially by comparison to a young unmarried woman, should he have desires to study, travel and/or eventually find a wife, of course. Therefore, I’d like to present some evidence for why I believe Lockwood to be a queer character but firstly, it is important we understand what we mean by queerness in reference to the Gothic.

To be queer, when taken outside of the sexual connotations of that term, is to be different…

Queerness, in this sense, is a quality which may be said to inflect a sense of difference not confined simply to sexual behaviour but which may equally inform a systematic stylistic deviance from perceived norms in personal style or artistic preference…

‌Hughes, W. and Smith, A. (2017) Queering the Gothic. Manchester University Press.

With this in mind, we can outline how Lockwood presents as a queer person through the ways in which he deviates from the expected norms of those surrounding him while hovering on the precipice of what it is to be non-queer ‘in a tense space between referential association with the normative and absolute separation from its morals and aesthetics’ (Hughes W. & Smith A. 2017)

What we know of Lockwood

Lockwood is a self-proclaimed misanthropist who expresses warm feelings for Heathcliff upon first sight, calling him a ‘capital fellow’, hoping that the two of them would be ‘a suitable pair to divide the desolation between [them].’Pg,1 Lockwood feels some kinship with Heathcliff, projecting his own ‘aversions to showy displays of feeling’ Pg.3 onto him, assuming that in private he would love or hate just as passionately, immediately distancing himself from society and the norms of love shown there.

We later hear Nelly likening a young Linton to Lockwood, saying he ‘pronounced his words as you do; that’s less gruff than we talk here, and softer.’ In doing so she is highlighting Lockwood’s demeanour to us as soft and different to the other, darker men of the Heights.

The most key information we receive about Lockwood’s past, his own mother saying his ‘constitution is most peculiar’ and he will ‘never have a comfortable home’ due to what he’d done the summer before which meant he ‘gained a reputation of deliberate heartlessness’. where he rejected a young woman after leading her on. Pg.3

‘…if looks had a language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was head over ears; she understood me at last, and looked a return – the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame – shrunk icily into myself like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; til finally the innocent was led to doubt her own senses…’

Lockwood, Wuthering Heights, Pg.3

Lockwood petitions the reader that he is alone in his understanding of how much he does not deserve his reputation of heartlessness, but despite his extended narration, never tells us precisely why. Could it be he was simply cowardly or shy? Maybe, but then he certainly does not seem so when addressing those he meets throughout the novel – even those he notes to be handsome or beautiful and therefore potentially intimidating to him. We know he doesn’t like society in his misanthropy- perhaps he is a recluse and does not seek the company of others… but then we know he keeps Nelly by his side in case he is alone and bored too long in his house. He doesn’t seem to want to be as isolated as he originally tells us he wishes to be.Pg.22.

The truth is we simply do not know why he would shrink away from a potential love match, especially since he seemed smitten with her. The integral difference between Lockwood and those he meets in the novel is that they are all isolated but desire marriage and company, and he is unmarried and does not. Through this difference, this queerness, we can start to pick out the ways in which Lockwood is unusual, even in this strange, desolate and macabre setting.

Descriptions of men and women

It may be bold but, I theorise that Lockwood has deeper feelings for men and the masculine than he does for women, whether that’s feelings of attraction or admiration. The passages in which he talks about men, or male features, use so much more flowery and poetic language compared to his relatively surface level reflections on women. The difference in the language used to describe men and women could of course, reflect Bronte’s outlook on what men desire from women… but then why is it she would specifically ensure Lockwood had a backstory involving his perceived heartlessness?

During one of the larger narrations we receive from Lockwood (that isn’t plagued with dreams or spiritual encounters) we are provided with a reflection on a portrait of Nelly’s former master, Mr Edgar Linton. Within this short interjection from Lockwood, he removes the gender of the subject when discussing Linton’s features while internally reflecting in depth about their loveliness.

It formed a sweet picture. The long light hair curled slightly on the temples; the eyes were large and serious; the figure almost too graceful. I did not marvel how Catherine Earnshaw could forget her first friend for such an individual.

Lockwood observing a portrait of Edgar Linton, Pg.46

Outwardly of course, Lockwood gives a very neutral response, calling it ‘a most agreeable portrait.’ Pg.47.

Lockwood’s views on finding love

Nelly is the primary narrator within the story, despite Lockwood being the first one we are introduced to. The volumes of text that follow do not provide any indication of Lockwood’s feelings other than his encouragement of Nelly to gossip to him about the history of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. The next inclination we get from him is that he is insistently aromantic, being a ‘fixed unbeliever in any love’, but saying that potentially he may grow to love a life here, in his new home. Pg.43. It is here that Lockwood expresses something interesting about his outlook on finding love.

One state resembles setting a hungry man down on a single dish, on which he may concentrate his entire appetite and do it justice; the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks; he can perhaps extract such enjoyment from the whole; but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance.

Lockwood on his new home Pg.43-44

Here he puzzles Nelly with his roundabout way of saying that a provincial life at the Heights and the Grange might heighten his capacity to accept love as it feels more ‘in earnest’ and less ‘in surface exchange, and frivolous external things.’Pg.43 He believes that his outlook on love is skewed because of these things and senses he might perhaps prefer this life, though the feeling is short-lived.

In Lockwood’s final visit to Cathy and Hareton at the Heights he passes on a message from Nelly to Cathy. When Hareton answers the door, Lockwood notes; ‘The fellow is as handsome and rustic as need be seen.’ Pg.216. He also makes comment on an unwelcoming Cathy upon entering saying ‘She’s a beauty, it is true, but not an angel.’ Pg.217. In passing the note he gets annoyed when it gets the attention of Hareton, making it clear that the note is from Nelly and he is ‘fearful lest it should be an imagined missive of my own.’ Quite funny, as it would not be unusual for him to try to court her, but either through fear of Heathcliff or something else, he cannot bear the thought of it.

As Lockwood rides away from the Grange, after ending his tenancy abruptly after learning of Heathcliff’s past and having to endure a long illness, he reflects on how if he had grown an attachment with Cathy ‘as her good nurse desired’ it would have been ‘something more romantic than a fairy tale’.Pg.221. Even after hearing the soul-crushing inter-generational torture that this family endured due to one exceptional, deeply passionate and destructive love, he still believes the entire notion of love to be fantastical and dismisses it.

Remembering the existence of queerness within the tense middle space between acceptance and the non-queer, we see a return to the status quo; an attempt to ensure that we all are aware that our narrator did not stray from society’s imposed norms. When Lockwood returns from a short time away from the moors to find Cathy and Hareton are courting, in true Gothic fashion, any perceived notions of queerness being acceptable or desirable are quickly eschewed, with Lockwood focusing on Cathy’s beauty now that he has missed his chance to wed her Pg.223, despite having no former desire to do so. Lockwood is determinedly of contextually ‘normal’ standard; he was simply misguided in his initial assessment of what it was he wanted.

References

Rigby, M. (2009). Uncanny Recognition: Queer Theory’s Debt to the Gothic. Gothic Studies, 11(1), pp.46–57. doi:https://doi.org/10.7227/gs.11.1.6.

‌G Haggerty (2006). Queer Gothic. Urbana, Il: University Of Illinois Press.

‌Hughes, W. and Smith, A. (2017). Queering the Gothic. Manchester University Press.

‌Brontë, E. and Nestor, P. (2003). Wuthering Heights. New York: Penguin Books.