Ludic Economies of Wuthering Heights

In explaining why he says “nothing” about Wuthering Heights in The Great Tradition, Leavis actually gestures toward saying much more than he supposes. While the novel may become a sport by breaking with Victorian novelistic conventions as he suggests, Leavis encroaches upon a reading of the novel that has yet to receive serious attention in its critical tradition, namely the role that play assumes as an important narrative economy in it. Although Johann Huizinga writes how the nineteenth century “had lost many of the play-elements so characteristic of former ages” (195), it has become clear in recent years that the Victorians not so much lost the element or desire for play. Rather the Victorian era witnessed the restructuring of traditional and popular play activities and the introduction of new forms of play as a result of industrialism and the cementation of cities as cultural centers.1 Play, like work, emerges as an important discourse during the era, and as counter intuitive as it may seem at first glance, Bronte’s novel becomes a striking if unorthodox statement of the potential work that play could perform in a work of nineteenth-century fiction. In particular, the plot of Wuthering Heights and the narratorial interplay between Lockwood and Nelly emerge as respective expressions and alter-