Wuthering Heights opens as a diary; according to Steinitz (2000), this
             serves as a means to establish a frame through which the story can be told.
             Steinitz also suggests that Bronte uses a personal diary to "articulate
             her preoccupation with space by locating all of her family members
             precisely" (Steinitz, 2000:1). She notes the exact positioning for example
             of her sister Anne's foot on the floor; likewise her character Catherine
             uses a diary not to place people, but rather as a means to detail a "series
             of struggles which replace emplacement with displacement" (Steinitz,
             2000:1). The work goes on to discuss the displacement of a series of
             characters including the narrator, who rambles from time to time and seems
             to suffer from an "anxiety of place;" Lockwood, the narrator obviously
             uses the diary as a method of discourse, but also as a means perhaps to
             search for a space to put himself (Steinitz, 2000:1). These ideas are
             perhaps reflective of Ms. Bronte's own desire to find a place for herself.
             According to Gaskell (1857) Bronte's earliest years were passed amidst
             "peculiar forms of population and society" (p.9) whose impressions made
             upon her early life influenced her writing, including that in Wuthering
             Heights. Gaskell goes on to say that Bronte's observations of the
             "peculiar force of character which the Yorkshirement display" are evidenced
             in many of her characters, particularly Joseph in Wuthering Heights.
             Joseph is an individual that rarely requires the assistance of other; yet
             comes to depend upon them; he might be considered a member of the "short-
             sighted class" whose feelings are not easily roused, but "their duration is
             The characters in Bronte's Wuthering heights, primarily Heathcliff and
             Catherine Earnshaw, have been described as "psychologically strange" yet
             intelligible (Levy, 1996:1). Joyce Carol Oates commented that
             ...