Essay about Nelly in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Creating a haven from the cruel outside world, families ideally provide protection and support for each of their members. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, however, bitterness grows between the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Within these two families, siblings rival for power and parents fail to fulfill their roles as caregivers. The intertwining relationships of the Earnshaws and the Lintons are marked by physical abuse, degradation, and emotional negligence. These reduce each of the family members’ life to a lonely and meaningless journey though the cold and misty moors.

   "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff" (81)" These words, uttered by Catherine, in the novel Wuthering Heights are for me the starting point in my investigation into the themes of love and obsession in the novel. Catherine has just told her housekeeper that she has made up her mind to marry Edgar Linton, although she is well aware that her love for him is bound to change as time passes. That she is obsessed by her love for Heathcliff she confirms in the above quotation and by saying that she will never, ever be separated from him. Why does she not marry him then? Well, she has

Heathcliff cried vehemently, "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" Emily Brontë distorts many common elements in Wuthering Heights   to enhance the quality of her book. One of the distortions is Heathcliff's undying love for Catherine Earnshaw. Also, Brontë perverts the vindictive hatred that fills and runs Heathcliff's life after he loses Catherine. Finally, she prolongs death, making it even more distressing and insufferable.

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses the setting of the English Moors, a setting she is familiar with, to place two manors, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The first symbolizes man's dark side while the latter symbolizes an artificial utopia. This 19th century setting allows the reader to see the destructive nature of love when one loves the wrong person.

One of the most noticeable elements of this novel is within the structure and plot in which Janie goes on a quest to find herself as a person. Through Janie's struggles and happy moments throughout this story with numerous relationships, Janie grows as a woman and learns something new within each marriage. The third person narrator allows the reader to follow not only Janie's interpretation certain situations, but the thought process of the other characters too.

Hence, Austen’s protagonist Catherine Morland, is not the typical gothic heroine, she is an ordinary, gullible, and naïve young girl. However, stereotypically, to the gothic novels she reads, Catherine becomes absorbed with the metonymical language, and hackneyed fantasised events portrayed in this gothic fiction. Thus, Catherine’s ingenuousness disposition makes it difficult for her to differentiate between the fictitious gothic world, and real life-reality. Ultimately, she misunderstands situations, confuses friendships, and fails to distinguish between manipulative and genuine

As seen through Bronte's two characters, Nelly and Edgar, both victims of Catherine's emotional displays, each has a different belief about her . Edgar is quick to forgive his beloved's ugly outbursts because of his own inability to perceive such an impulse since he completely lacks that himself. Nelly, on the other hand, having been witness too many times to Catherine's outbursts, is jaded and intolerant. Their completely opposite reactions are due to the contrast in the type of relationships each shares with the protagonist , and because of the basic differences in their own

Harsh, wild and unforgiving; the Yorkshire moors on which Emily Brontë played, provided the backdrop and catalyst of turmoil in her most tragic book Wuthering Heights. Born in 1818 in rural England, Haworth she lived in the heart of these wild, desolate expanses which provided her an escape where she truly felt at home and where her imagination flourished. Along with her sisters and brother, the Brontë children in their pastimes would often create stories and poems largely based on their playful ramblings in this environment.

From this monologue analysis, it has been discovered that Catherine is a very dramatic and somewhat childish character as is shown because on page 91, Nelly says “…our fiery Catherine was no better than a wailing child!”(Bronte 91). Catherine acts very childish to shut herself in her room for several days because of argument with her husband. Also, her dramatic characteristic is shown because her monologue jumps around a lot in topics, from what happened when she entered her room to her anger at Edger to her sadness with grief, to her derangement, to again her anger at Edger. The knowledge of these characteristics can help perform the interpretation like how Catherine would act it out to Nelly, very dramatic and emotional. It can also be concluded

This parallel is ironic – the reader is not inclined to view Lockwood as a ‘hero’, yet the novel is seemingly framing him as if he invariably is one. This distorts our reading of the novel, as Lockwood’s cowardice and pomposity renders this reading nigh improbable. Therefore, the ironies present in this implied portrayal of our central narrator tends to bend our reading of Wuthering Heights more as a pastiche, rather than a direct addition to the pantheon of Gothic fiction. This is supported when other characters from the novel are scrutinised: the younger Cathy is interpreted by Lockwood as the typically virginal maid present in Gothic literature, and – adhering to the literary tradition – feels compelled to rescue her from the Heights and

Throughout the telling of the story Miss Winter often changes points of view from third to first person, from “they” to “we” to “I”. The first time she uses “I” is in the telling of Isabelle’s death and Charlie’s disappearance (Setterfield, 204). Whilst Nelly is telling the story, she more often is telling it in third person, but the telling of the story changes to first whenever it is a scene of which she is in. The telling of Wuthering Heights is a frame story with multi-layered, first – person narration (Tomlinson). The frame narrative is Lockwood’s tale as a traveler (outsider), he is hearing the family history through Ellen Dean (aka Nelly) without any background knowledge. The interior narrative is the history reiterated by Nelly (an insider with intimate knowledge) with help of other minor first-person narrators who are players in the Interior story and who break in occasionally (Tomlinson). Parts of the story that Nelly is sharing with Lockwood she heard from other characters through tertiary narration, and then later relays them to him [Lockwood] (Tomlinson). Tertiary narration is the recounting of eyewitness narrations by people who have played some part in the narration that is now being described (Tomlinson). There are a few scenes in which Catherine is conversing with Nelly. Nelly is reiterating what Catherine shared with her during those discussions. After Isabella runs away with Heathcliff to be married she writes a letter to Nelly explaining what is

The events in a child’s life mold who he or she will one day become; for Catherine this was the day she and Heathcliff snuck out to the Thurshcross Grange and she injured her ankle. During her early years, Catherine was free spirited and was unable to understand or relate to her father’s serious attitude. In attempt to provoke her father Catherine,

In the first three chapters of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood is forced to grapple with the mystery of Heathcliff’s cruelty, watching him do things from “[striking] his forehead with rage” and “savage vehemence” to threatening to physically assault his daughter-in-law (27). The narrative which the original text of Wuthering Heights provides, however, is not concerned with the emotional progression of the individual, assuming that Heathcliff’s savagery is simply characteristic of his very existence. It is through Catherine Earnshaw’s perspective, manifested through her diaries, that Heathcliff’s cruelty can be assessed, not only as a product of his social environment, but as something deeply entrenched in his racial differences. Catherine’s sympathy

Nelly represents not only the power and wisdom of women, but also her compliance to dominance of men. ‘Nelly Dean is a manipulative creature who will go to considerable lengths to maintain the status quo of male authority.’ (Whitley, 2000: xi) By adding this trait to Nelly’s character Brontë reminds the reader of the order of the world. Even though the characters are fighting and representing women’s rights, they still do live in a man’s world – that is the novel’s connection with the reality. The character of Nelly is a great support to the statement of de Beauvoir (1949: 324):

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. Any person can write a book, but to be able to write what you mean and affect your readers is very difficult. A writer simply can’t just drop dialogue into a character’s mouth without having any context of the dialogue. If an author has his or her character saying “I’m broke,” what does this really mean without any context? To Oprah Winfrey, being broke may mean she can’t buy a Silk Jet, a winery, or a country. To a middle- class American, being broke may mean they can’t buy a new pair of shoes that week, buy a new car, or get their hair