In Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights, narrative voice is used to uncover the plight of the impoverished, or those of a ‘lower class’ in Britain’s Victorian era, especially illuminating the often-hidden narratives of women. Through casting their gaze on the rural, ‘uncivilised’ spaces of Wuthering Heights or the Durbeyfields, Brontë and Hardy offer a social criticism of societal standards and tradition; whilst Hardy takes a more focused approach, his narrative offering a criticism on the effects of industrialisation and the persecution of women in an allegedly modern society, Brontë demonstrates the biting standards of Victorian society through depicting the madness, illness and death that surround the first generation, and showing the hopeful catharsis that may come from the future generations – Hareton and Catherine. Furthermore, the use of narrative voice allows for a deeper examination of the human condition in general, allowing the reader to examine the subjectivity and possible embellishments in the novel, allowing us insight not only into the characters, but also the narrators.
In Wuthering Heights, Brontë employs a Chinese Box narrative, enveloping the female ‘insider’ narrative of Nelly in the comically-subjective, male ‘outsider’ narrative of Lockwood, not only mirroring Emily Brontë own form of pseudonymous Chinese Box, using ‘Ellis Bell’ as her authorial pen name alongside her sisters, but also colouring her narrative with the male gaze – thus further demonstrating the female condition of Victorian England not only with her story, but with her narrative voices. As a nurse, ‘substitute mother’ figure, Nelly is depicted as a rational and moral narrator, suggesting that she is able to recount the plight of Cathy and Catherine due to her close, maternal role in the liminal space of Wuthering Heights: ‘You know, they both appeared in a measure my children: I had long been proud of one; and now, I was sure, the other would be a source of equal satisfaction’. Due to this maternal position, Nelly is able to exercise power over the events that play out – her narrative displays active involvement, and she is able to manipulative events to gain her ‘equal satisfaction’, such as keeping Cathy’s illness hidden from Edgar, or the union of Hareton and Catherine – ‘the crown of all [her] wishes’. Moreover, her position as a working woman allows her not only the ‘insider’ perspective on Wuthering Heights, but also on the plights of the women, herself seeing events through the female gaze. The sympathetic ‘female’/maternal gaze can be seen in some instances of Hardy’s sympathetic narrator, who mocks the ‘’Justice’’ enacted on Tess. In contrast, Lockwood is overtly an outsider, Heathcliff’s ‘tenant’, and he makes several clear mistakes, including mistaking Cathy for ‘Mrs Heathcliff’ – a mistake that also betrays patriarchal notions of the much younger woman being married to Heathcliff, and when Mr Lockwood is told this is not the case, he assumes she is married to Hareton – suggesting his bias against assuming she simply worked there. Tess, comparatively, faces a similar situation to Cathy who weds for social status and money, as she ‘claims kin’ to the D’Urbervilles, both women taking on responsibility for the family that eventually leads to their downfall. Considering that the National Education Act (1880), Married Women’s Property Act (1882) and Reform Acts had not yet been established for Brontë in 1847, in comparison to Hardy in 1891, her narrator of Lockwood represents the misgivings of her own patriarchal society. Additionally, his idolisation of the young Catherine, of Nelly’s story, also betrays his uncomfortable male gaze, and distance to the household, despite his many attempts at physically breaking the liminal barrier between him and Wuthering Heights, such as ‘passing the threshold’ and the ‘gate’.
Whilst being distinct opposite narrative voices, the subjective opposed to the objective, the narrative ‘male gaze’ of Lockwood resembles the ‘male gaze’ of Hardy’s omniscient narrator, perhaps even the ‘President of the Immortals’, in scenes where it appears that Hardy has fallen victim to looking upon Tess with the Victorian male gaze – despite his notable, and shocking, attempts to seek sympathy for Tess, having been published in a strict Victorian society. In contrast to Lockwood, however, the omniscient narrator does not make mistakes, as he is objective, and has access to both the inside thoughts of the characters, but also the ‘outside’ and societal outlook on the events that play out. Hardy’s narrator’s comment that ‘for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes, and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. Yet few knew, and still fewer considered this’ seems deeply ironic, and extremely uncomfortable – although ‘still fewer’ considered the sexualisation of Tess, the objective narrator still does, betraying the human aspects and instincts of the narrator and Hardy himself. In this way, the sexualisation of Tess, and her ‘throbbing life-force’ sets up the precedent for the novel: the plight of women in Victorian society. Despite Hardy’s attempt at distancing Tess from the blame traditionally placed on women, who are depicted as sexual, ‘temptress’ figures as well as a housewife/’angel in the house’ figures that are blamed for their own rape, Tess’s innocent and child-like dream-like states at the turning points of the novel, sleeping during Prince’s crash, and sleeping during a ‘hazy’ fog during her rape seem at odds with the sexual description of her ‘bouncing… womanliness’; perhaps not only highlighting the dual and contradictory expectations of women, but also betraying the contradictory male narrative gaze and male expectations of women – highlighting the almost infinite nature of Hardy’s omniscient narrator, able to be objective but also subjective, seeing the inside thoughts of Tess, Angel and Alec, but also the perceptions of society onto the characters.
Although Brontë and Hardy both place the suffering induced by the female condition of the Victorian era at the centrepoint of their narratives, the suffering of the impoverished, or rural, is also highlighted through the use of narrative voice – ‘insiders’ highlighting the problems faced by ‘insiders’ in the rural, or poor communities, and the ‘outsiders’ illuminating the misconceptions and biases that were exacerbated by society. Through Lockwood’s voice, Brontë shows how damaging female expectations were not just limited to the poorer area of Wuthering Heights and the richer, but similarly isolated, Thrushcross Grange. Lockwood was ‘thrown into the company of the most fascinating creature: a real goddess’ but he ‘confess[ed] with same’ that he never told his ‘love vocally’ which caused the ‘poor innocent to… doubt her own senses’ she was ‘overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake’ and was forced to ‘decamp’. Bronte shows how even cultivated women were at the mercy of this unjust expectation, although Lockwood makes the advances perhaps physically [not ‘vocally’], it was the woman’s ‘mistake’. Through Lockwood, Bronte shows how difficult the situation was for women, but she sympathises by calling her a ‘poor innocent’, it also suggests Lockwood understands the unjust situation yet he does not prevent her from decamping, implying that males do not fully comprehend the female predicament, he does not understand that her reputation would be tarnished. Hardy’s narrator, by contrast, is more didactic, and clearly more aligned to his own voice, and personal sympathies – highlighted by the almost paternal nature of his protection of Tess, but also his male gaze. The polarisation of Talbothays and Flintcomb Ash is demonstrative of Hardy’s own display of the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ confliction; the ‘ethereal’ Talbothays with its content dairy folk that saw a ‘decline in demand’ juxtaposed with the ‘wintry’ Flintcomb Ash where the ‘drum never stopped’. Hardy’s narrator looks over Tess and says ‘there was no respite for Tess’, she must keep working to supply the insatiable appetite, mirrored when Tess ‘mercilessly ripped her eyebrows’ as it ‘insured against aggressive admiration’ as she has to strip her beauty due to the insatiable lustful men that accompanied the industrialised bourgeois society, Hardy shows the nihilistic effect of industrialisation and he criticises the lustful men that accompany it. The infiltration is mirrored by Heathcliff who enters the ranks of gentry due to bourgeois society, he subverts power structures by usurping and enslaving Hareton so that both Brontë and Hardy also criticise bourgeois society that consumed men.
Overall, both Hardy and Brontë use their narrators to demonstrating polarising views, and to depict the misgivings of ‘outsider’, civilised society on the struggle of the impoverished, ‘insider’ rural society. Focusing more on the female condition during Victorian society, Nelly, Lockwood and Hardy’s omniscient narrator depict differing views, the narrators each being a different balance of insider, outsider, subjective and objective. The narrators are able to influence and manipulate the story, either in their active role, or in their recalling of the events – as such, narrative voice is the best depiction of the human condition in both novels, demonstrating different human desires and giving insight into the simple characters of the novel, acting as a bridge from the events to the Victorian or contemporary reader.