Ellen "Nelly" Dean
'She was not a gossip, I feared...'
Ellen “Nelly” Dean is introduced to us in Volume I: Chapter IV, when she brings in supper to Mr. Lockwood, the tenant of Thrushcross Grange.
He shares with us—the readers—he hopes she might prove to be ‘a regular gossip,’ as he is curious to learn more about his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff.
“You have lived here a considerable time,” I commenced; “did you not say sixteen years?”
“Eighteen, sir; I came, when the mistress was married, to wait on her; after she died, the master retained me for his house-keeper.”
For only a moment, Lockwood fears his probing is unsuccessful, but then Mrs. Dean begins her narration—The Story of Heathcliff—and the story begins to take shape.
Ellen Dean’s mother nursed Hindley Earnshaw and so, “Nelly,” who is Hindley’s age, got used to playing with the Earnshaw children.1 She tells Lockwood:
“I ran errands too, and helped to make hay, and hung about the farm ready for anything that anybody would set me to.”
She is called Ellen, Nell, Nelly and Mrs. Dean throughout the story—and she is what we call an unreliable narrator. Her story is remembered—the very gossip craved by Mr. Lockwood.
Borrowing from an entry published in the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Nelly Dean’s account of events can be characterized as potentially, ‘faulty, misleadingly biased, or otherwise distorted.’2
Nurturing sibling-like biases, often the only person in the room with two characters, and admittedly, stirring things up (as an agitator, not the cook), she is hardly reliable. Not to mention, her word-for-word memories of conversation (taking place over the vast period of eighteen years) is especially suspicious—but, her version of the story is all that we have, isn’t it? And so, Mrs. Dean will be our guide…
I wrote an essay touching on Nelly’s friendship with Hindley (includes spoilers).
Baldick, Chris. The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2015.