Final answer:
Mr. Lockwood is a frame narrator in 'Wuthering Heights' who represents the audience's perspective and can be seen contextually as a Victorian-era reader encountering the more passionate elements of human nature.
Step-by-step explanation:
Mr. Lockwood in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights serves as a frame narrator and represents the audience's perspective, as he is an outsider to the intense and often violent world of the story's main characters.
His role in the narrative adds an element of realism to the Gothic romanticism of the tale, offering a contrast to the wild passions of characters like Heathcliff and Catherine.
Contextually, Lockwood can be seen as a figure of the Victorian reader, encountering and trying to make sense of the darker, more passionate elements of human nature, which were often repressed during that era.
The references to Heathcliff's 'smouldering sexuality' and his literary impact, as well as to Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, underscore these characters' lasting influence on the themes of romanticism and the Byronic hero archetype.
Much like the mentioned extract, Lockwood navigates the expressions of romance and rapture amidst the bleak and turbulent environment of the Yorkshire moors, which itself is a staple of the Gothic setting in literature.