Reading the Room: Seeing and Atmosphere in Wuthering Heights

In the very first chapter of Wuthering Heights, the reader is introduced to Lockwood and his excursion to
Wuthering Heights is narrated in full detail. The reader realizes that Lockwood, in his naivety, has seriously
misjudged his first visit and, contrary to Lockwood, finds the whole interaction with the residents of the
Heights quite strange. The reader, essentially, interprets the situation differently than Lockwood. It is this
very strangeness, that previous scholarship has alluded to but somehow failed to satisfactorily question
and assess, that is analyzed in this paper. Comparing and combining Gernot Böhme’s essay, “Atmosphere
as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics” with James Elkins book, The Object Stares Back: On the
Nature of Seeing, and finally applying the combination of the two theories to the first two chapters of
Wuthering Heights, this paper answers the following question: why is the atmosphere of the initial scene
of Wuthering Heights strange to the reader and not to Lockwood? The main claim of the paper is that the
reciprocally affectual relationship that connects seeing and atmosphere causes the discrepancy in the
respective gazes of the reader and Lockwood and makes reader-identification with Lockwood extremely
short. Böhme comments on the atmosphere that exists between the object and the subject and Elkins
theorizes about the active nature of seeing, and how there exists a connection between the object and
the subject, a connection that is dependent on both the object and subject, rendering both sides equally
active. The combination of the theories helps to assess the strangeness of the first two chapters of the
novel. Both theories are based on reciprocity and it is this very aspect that is examined and then applied
to Wuthering Heights in order to make sense of the pervading atmosphere in the initial scenes and its
receptance.