In Chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights, it's 1801, and the narrator, Mr. Lockwood, describes his first visit to the Wuthering Heights estate, located in the foggy English countryside. Giving only glancing insight into his character here at the novel's on- Mr. Lockwood has just met his new landlord, Heathcliff, owner of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the estate across the moors Mr. Lockwood is now renting. At the main entrance, Mr. Lockwood sees a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shaggy shameless little boys carved above the door, along with the date 1500 and the name Hairton Earnshaw. Mr. Lockwood describes Heathcliff as a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners, a gentleman. Mr. Lockwood notices a dog and her puppies, and when he pets the dog, she growls at him.
Left alone in the kitchen, Mr. Lockwood makes faces at the mother dog and two sheepdogs that appear, and the dogs attack him, bringing in even more dogs from other areas of the house that nip at his... his heels and pull on his coat. Heathcliff, along with two servants, Joseph and Zilla, rush out to rescue Mr. Lockwood from the dogs.
Mr. Lockwood is indignant about the attack, but Heathcliff scolds him, saying, the dogs do right to be vigilant. Heathcliff doesn't extend an invitation, but Mr. Lockwood decides to visit anyway. In Wuthering Heights, the setting reflects the character's violent emotions. Mr. Lockwood, one of the book's narrators, claims the bleak, isolated, and brooding Yorkshire countryside is a perfect hideaway for those who dislike other people and wish to avoid them.
Mr. Lockwood, who is a very good writer, is a very good writer. Lockwood imagines a sympathy of emotion between himself and the cold, hard Heathcliff. Property is power in the Victorian period, and Wuthering Heights, the estate itself, will play a central role in the plot. Mr. Lockwood observes the estate is aptly named Wuthering, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. The few stunted firs and range of gaunt thorns around the house suggested is not an easy place for living things to grow or survive.
Excessive storms and wind slant the trees, which will soon come to parallel the characters of Privilege as they are emotionally battered and twisted by violence. Nonetheless, the house has been built to withstand whatever wild weather and emotional states it encounters. Symbolic animals, like dogs, make an important appearance in this chapter.
When Mr. Lockwood attempts to pet a dog and its puppies in the kitchen, he quickly learns that his conventional expectations aren't going to apply to any of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights.