Neilly In Wuthering Heights Essay

Nelly Dean and The Rebellion Against The Heirarchy Wurthering Heights rebelled against the belief at the time that servants are socially below their masters in the social hierarchy. Nelly, the servant of Thurcross Grange, proves to have more influence on the plot and her masters than many of those who are above her in the social hierarchy. The interdependence among the masters and the confided servant Nelly is an important part of Emily Brontë 's novel Wurthering Heights. Although Nelly is only a help to the other characters, she proves to have a strong influence on her masters and the decisions they make throughout the story. Like many novels during the Victorian era, the wealthy masters and mistresses were the key characters of their

Wurthering Heights, however, reverses this ideology and casts a servant as a character essential to major decisions in the story, "The reader of Wuthering Heights is made continually aware of the

Throughout the novel, Nelly acts as the voice of reason to many of her mistresses, although sometimes their actions have consequences. For example, Nelly encourages Isabella to renounce her love for Heathcliff. Nelly knows that Edgar would never approve of him as her husband, but Isabella disregards her advice and seals her elopement with Heathcliff anyway. Their marriage provoked the tension that had remained after Catherine 's decision to elope with Edgar rather than Heathcliff. Brontë scholars believe that Nelly is one of the only characters in Wurthering Heights that has the power to "shape the plot" by the fact that she has been a support to a handful of the characters throughout the novel. Graeme Tytler quotes in his essay: Masters and Servants in Wurthering Heights, "Nelly may be a servant, but she is nevertheless a tough disciplinarian, as may be gathered from her berating her subordinates at the slightest provocation — a practice that forcibly reminds us of her equally important role as nurse or nanny to Hindley, Catherine, Heathcliff, Hareton and