Gibbs 1 Natalie Gibbs English 103B 20 February 2013 Nelly Dean: Wuthering Heights’ Narrator or Storyteller? Wuthering Heights is one of the most critiqued and popular works of literature in the English language. This novel was written in the midpoint of the 19 th century by female author Emily Bronte under an assumed name, and the main ‘narrator’ of the story is a servant, Ellen “Nelly” Dean, who recalls the painful history behind the home in which she resides to a newcomer. But, since the story was written mostly in her point of view, how is her story to be verified – especially when most of the ‘characters’ within her own story are deceased? I see a similar demeanor between Emily Bronte and Nelly Dean, which leads to the conclusion that just as Bronte took on a different name to tell her story to the world, Nelly also represented herself as someone else in her story – not as just a servant but as a more important person with close connections to her ‘characters’. She tells the ‘story’ coldly yet in detail, as if it all happened recently and is therefore vividly clear to her memory. As a servant woman who has never been married, she looks upon Heathcliff with disdain and jealousy, and she uses her intelligence to sabotage the happiness of those around her. Nelly portrays Catherine as someone with her own self-centered personality and Heathcliff as a person who is able to act on the vengeance she feels. She sees Heathcliff as an orphan brought into an upper-class home and one treated better than she is, Catherine as abandoning their companionship for a connection with Heathcliff, and Hindley as a kindred spirit. Therefore, she tells the ‘history’ of Wuthering Heights with a ‘rose- colored’ memory.