『폭풍의 언덕』에 나타난 믿을 수 없는 화자와 기독교적 가치
Unreliable Narrators and Christian Values in Wuthering Heights
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Since Wayne Booth coined the term “unreliable narrator” in The Rhetoric of Fiction, many debates have been made on the issue of unreliable narration. Emily Brontë was a forerunner as a nineteenth-century novelist in using unreliable narrators, and her unique narrative technique has been analyzed and evaluated by many critics. This paper reexamines the unreliability of two narrators in Wuthering Heights, showing that the crucial source of their unreliability is their problematic value-scheme, and argues that Emily Bront presents Christian values, particularly mercy and forgiveness, as alternative values to readers at the height of Evagelicalism in mid nineteenth-century England. Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the narrators, who think of themselves as normal and right, but who are made unreliable by the author. Lockwood’s unreliability comes not only from his limited knowledge of the region and its people, but also from his value-scheme well represented by his three dreams in Catherine’s oak-panelled room. Especially, the second dream featuring Rev. Jabes Branderham’s sermon is crucial in exposing the judgmentalness and the lack of mercy and forgiveness of the English society which he embodies. Nelly’s unreliability comes not only from her personal involvement with the main characters, but more importantly from the lack of understanding of their enthusiastic character and love which chafe against their situation. Catherine and Heathcliff are almost always described critically by Nelly but readers are guided to see through her misrepresentation and narrow judgment, and come to understand and sympathize with their suffering. Readers are required not only to have aesthetic distance from the narrators but also to examine themselves, who are not unlike them, with objective distance. Subversively criticizing ethical and religious values of the society, Emily Bront does not preach Christian values through the authorial voice but by controlling the aesthetic distance from the unreliable narrators.
Abstract
Since Wayne Booth coined the term “unreliable narrator” in The Rhetoric of Fiction, many debates have been made on the issue of unreliable narration. Emily Brontë was a forerunner as a nineteenth-century novelist in using unreliable narrators, and her unique narrative technique has been analyzed and evaluated by many critics. This paper reexamines the unreliability of two narrators in Wuthering Heights, showing that the crucial source of their unreliability is their problematic value-scheme, and argues that Emily Bront presents Christian values, particularly mercy and forgiveness, as alternative values to readers at the height of Evagelicalism in mid nineteenth-century England. Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the narrators, who think of themselves as normal and right, but who are made unreliable by the author. Lockwood’s unreliability comes not only from his limited knowledge of the region and its people, but also from his value-scheme well represented by his three dreams in Catherine’s oak-panelled room. Especially, the second dream featuring Rev. Jabes Branderham’s sermon is crucial in exposing the judgmentalness and the lack of mercy and forgiveness of the English society which he embodies. Nelly’s unreliability comes not only from her personal involvement with the main characters, but more importantly from the lack of understanding of their enthusiastic character and love which chafe against their situation. Catherine and Heathcliff are almost always described critically by Nelly but readers are guided to see through her misrepresentation and narrow judgment, and come to understand and sympathize with their suffering. Readers are required not only to have aesthetic distance from the narrators but also to examine themselves, who are not unlike them, with objective distance. Subversively criticizing ethical and religious values of the society, Emily Bront does not preach Christian values through the authorial voice but by controlling the aesthetic distance from the unreliable narrators.
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