"Nelly" Dean is clearly the principal narrator of the story itself. She recounts the tale as a secondary party to her audience to hear in a passionate tale of suspense and actuality, using quotes from the involved parties and her own experiences. Overall, her sheer confidence in the reliability of her account overshadows all else and brings us live to the action from the past. However, Nelly has a distinct personality and bias in the plot, which cannot be disregarded. A more obvious bias would be in her initial opinion of Heathcliff that "Hindley hated him, and to say the truth I did the same" (Brontë 34). Having grown up in the community and experienced the crossfire firsthand, Nelly is biased--unconsciously or not--over details in the story. Her shifting loyalties are especially clear in the love triangle between Edgar Linton, Catherine Earnshaw, and Healthcliff and parrot in the relationship between Cathy Linton, Linton Heathcliff and Heathcliff. As displayed shown when Nelly confessed of Cathy's and Linton's relationship, when "Catherine [learns] of my betrayal of her confidence" (Brontë 234). Nelly's allegiance constantly shifts back and forth and inbetween the involved parties, and her intentions are obscure and unclear. As a narrator, these qualities have suspicious consequence on the apparent action of the story. Not the mention, as seen in her advice to young Heathcliff "who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week's income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together?...Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth," (Brontë 52-3) Nelly also seemed to love storytelling as much as she loved reading when she describe that she had "examined [all the books]...in Catherine's library" (Brontë 19) and that "You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into"(Brontë 57). These personality traits of Nelly must be kept in mind when reading her interpretation of the events.
Although Nelly is the main viewpoint the content itself comes from, the primary narrator of the novel itself is--peculiarly--the tertiary party: Lockwood. Lockwood narrates Nelly's narration through his own journal diaries, written a length after he initially heard the story from Nelly herself in the advent of 1801's winter. The mere fact that a year has passed between his recording of the story and Nelly's recount of it is alarming. Another clue that he isn't an especially reliable source is evident when he mistakenly identifies the people of the household upon first exposure, revealing himself to be a bit slow and blundering as he himself recognizes for a moment when he realizes that Catherine Linton is not Heathcliff's wife as "perceiving [himself] in a blunder" (Brontë 13). What Lockwood does not realize, however, is that he is probably always making false connections and assumptions much like this. Another hint is his quick assumption of characters by his first impression, as seen when he calls Heathcliff as a "capital fellow" only to change his opinion to an "unmannerly wretch" after he evaluates the situation longer (Brontë 1, 16). as readers we must take the hint from Brontë to note this indiscrepancy in viewpoint and true point. Not to mention the fact that Lockwood consistently sees himself as a potential suitor for Cathy II throughout the course of the story only highlights his own bias in the story--towards himself as he slightly demeans the other characters present to emphasize his own self-worth for his ego.
The small excerpts of primary information from Catherine Earnshaw's diaries and Isabella's Linton's letters provide slightly more insight into the actual occurrences of the tale, however they are then interpreted and filtered by both Nelly's and Lockwood's unconscious personal evaluations, and he words thereafter the accounts are not reliable. The obstructive nature of truth in the tale of Wuthering Heights contributes to the debatable factor of the book, and add depth and layers to the story itself.
Works Cited
