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Wuthering Heights



             They [ Catherine and Hindley entirely refused to have it [ Heathcliff] in bed with them, or even in their room, and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house. (37).
             Through the voice of Nelly as a narrator, we can also appreciate her reacting against him and see her scorn for Heathcliff. This was Heathcliff's first introduction to the family. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, he is made to feel an outsider from the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of his life.
             One of the reasons why Heathcliff is seen as an alien figure is because of the fact that the family is presented in the novel as a closed system. When Earnshaw brings Heathcliff into the system, like Jane Eyre, he is an intruding stranger. We notice that names are constantly repeated in the novel, as if there were no changes through the generations, or they were acting in the same way century after century. The concept of an almost impenetrable familiar circle is strongly remarked by the figure of Heathcliff. They give him a name that belongs to a child who died in his childhood, instead of a new name. This is, therefore, another repeated name. Moreover, they do not give him a family name, what does not satisfy his social integration. This idea of a closed family is increasingly seen throughout the novel. They become actively hostile with Lockwood. Instead of welcoming him, they refuse to help him when six dogs attacked him inside the house. The reader is also excluded with the almost unintelligible dialect of Joseph. Even members of the family at times find Joseph's "speech difficult to understand- when he got excited and "his jaws worked like those of a cow chewing its cud- (315).


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