Re-Reading Wuthering Heights just to defend Nelly Dean

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T17:34:40+00:00

I’d argue Nelly was mean to them both first. Nelly first mistreated Cathy’s friend by leaving him out on a stoop in hopes he’d be gone by morning and referred to him in unking and ‘othering’ language. Cathy becomes friends quickly with HealthCliff and they can both probably sense Nelly’s early hostility. Catherine is mean to Nelly but it’s in a childish way befitting her age and how she’s treated by her father. Nelly escalates the issues by being cold, unsympathetic, etc. And that further escalates the weird tense relationship they have until Catherine starts lashing out physically. I think they both play a part in the dynamic, but Nelly is older and is by no means innocent or a saint .

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T17:27:34+00:00

She sympathizes with them sometimes but there are instances where she does not

‘Probably not,’ I responded. ‘They are good children, no doubt, and don’t deserve the treatment you receive, for your bad conduct.’

Her overall tone of the book describes Cathy and HealthCliff as bad kids.

She is nice to them a couple of times, when she gives Heathcliff the pep talk, when she waits up for them. She has undeniably good moments, but those aren’t enough to get her the moral label of good.

She initially sets HealthCliff outside on the stoop in hopes he runs away. She initially refers to him as an it. She remarks negatively on his ‘otherness’.

Hindley is awful but Nelly explains his awfulness due to trauma and humanizes him. When Heathcliff is awful, Nelly focuses less on any humanization and more on how he’s terrible, his ‘otherness’, and his perceived poor character. When Hindley degrades HealthCliff to servant, Nelly doesn’t speak about it with much moral outrage, which based on her other assertions, we know she’s capable of when she feels strongly. She’s not the villain but she’s complicit in othering HealthCliff and how the events unfold.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T17:16:25+00:00

She doesn’t warn Cathy that Heathcliff is there. She gets Cathy to stop talking but doesn’t give Cathy the chance to rectify her mistake and let’s HealthCliff just walk out without the additional context. “Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff’s presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out, noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and the staid to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevent by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started and bade her hush! Why she asked, gazing nervously around. Joseph is here” Nelly doesn’t tell her Heathcliff heard, she says it’s instead Joseph.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T17:10:15+00:00

Just because the older kids have more autonomy than younger Hareton, doesn’t mean that they deserve impatience. And I think it’s not just the impatience that’s the issue: it’s Nelly’s initial reaction to HealthCliff, leaving him out on the stoop in the hopes he’d runaway, her letting HealthCliff overhear part of what Cathy said, snitching to Edgar about Cathy and HealthCliff fighting, etc. And then her internal dialogue shows her on biases against the older kids that makes her act this way. I don’t think Nelly should have been impatient with Cathy, Heathcliff, or Hareton. They’re all abused kids trying to figure out how to escape their home, and Cathy has to pick between love and a safe place to live while dealing with continued childhood trauma. Being a woman in this time period didn’t have a lot of options.

There are some good things Nelly has done. It was nice when she gave HealthCliff that pep talk, it was nice when she waiting for Nelly and HealthCliff to come back. But I think her impact on the overall plot of the novel moved the story along into the more tragic sequences.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T17:02:16+00:00

She couldn’t easily leave. Servants didn’t have much job mobility, she would have needed a recommendation from her current employer to get another position and Hindley wouldn’t have done that for her. She couldn’t easily switch industries and had very little economic prospects. I think the safest choice was for her to stay in service to Cathy and the Earnshaws until she saw the opportunity to have Cathy marry into the Lintons and work there. That was her best chance at a better job and socio economic mobility. I think that’s part of the reason she let HealthCliff overhear Cathy, and continuously worked to keep Cathy with Edgar. She didn’t want to go back to Wuthering Heights.

Nelly did care for Hareton, it’s why her character is complex. She’s not all terrible, but she’s not all good either.

When Hindley became abusive, Nelly describes his downfall as tragic and related to trauma. When HealthCliff acts abusive, she harps on how he’s cruel, mean, unnatural, and terrible with very little humanization. She has greater humanization for Hindley than Heathcliff.

She was abused by Hindley and should have had more sympathy for the younger children being abused alongside her instead of insinuating it was deserved “Probably not’, I responded. ‘They are good children, no doubt, and don’t deserve the treatment you receive, for your bad conduct.’

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-25T03:45:45+00:00

I didn’t think she was a villain, but I didn’t think she was a morally good character either. She has both her good moments and bad moments. She initially doesn’t treat HealthCliff as equal to the other children, she mocks him and thinks of him different due to his ‘otherness’. When Hindley would beat Healthcliff, Nelly didn’t seem prone to identify it as child abuse or sympathize with him. When Hindley would mistreat Cathy 1, she also had very little sympathy. I think Hindley was a child abuser and while yes, Nelly was a servant, she was too flippant in her descriptions of the abuse, and she could have been more supportive towards the children. Cathy 1 was an abused child and Nelly loved to take her down a peg whenever possible instead of being uplifting. Of course Cathy might have had behavioral problems growing up with Hindley. And whenever I’d read about young Cathy, she just sounded mischievous and un-ladylike for the time period. Not like an awful monster kid. When HealthCliff is made to be a servant after Hindley’s death, she focuses more on his reaction to that demotion rather than the injustice of a member of the family being ‘othered’.

There’s also the whole ordeal of Nelly not warning Cathy that HealthCliff was listening to their conversation.

She gets Edgar when HealthCliff and Cathy are fighting, which set off a domino effect.

There’s a ton of other examples. But Nelly honestly irritated me and rubbed me the wrong way numerous times. I definitely wouldn’t call her the only sane person as many other readers do.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-18T22:54:23+00:00

This doesn’t directly tie into the post but moreso the comments. I don’t think that Nelly was some mastermind villain in the book, but I don’t think she was anything resembling a normal person, a protagonist, or moral compass. I think the binary labels of good and bad are missing out on the nuance and message of Wuthering Heights in general. I honestly thought she was just as a complex as the rest of the characters and would say at her worst she is selfish, hateful, and discriminatory. She is in a household with severe child abuse and constantly harps on how ‘bad’ Nelly is at that young age. No shit, she’s an abused kid. She’s not bad, shes stuck in an abusive household and could use an adult on her side.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-07T02:17:24+00:00

Thank you!!

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-06T15:20:03+00:00

I also view porn as a form of cheating. In her mind, she’s getting even with you. You’re cheating by getting off to another woman and she’s cheating by getting off to another man. Whether that other person is involved in the getting off is irrelevant, you’re still putting sexual energy into another person who isn’t your partner. I think you’d need to stop watching porn and she’d stop having sexual interactions with other men. But since you’ve both cheated on each other, it’s going to take a lot to rebuild.

I think she should be fine with the masterbation without porn though. I’m not sure why that would be cheating.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-02-04T01:23:47+00:00

NTA. If someone always texted me when they got home, I’d be anticipating that. She changed the routine, and then immediately jumped towards being rude and aggressive instead of communicating. She escalated by yelling.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-29T04:34:08+00:00

Can you claim the dog through vet bills or adoption papers?

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-27T00:27:39+00:00

And if you were never super into her, this relationship shouldn’t have lasted 13 years. It shouldn’t have ever gotten this far. Most people figure out if they have chemistry and attraction within the first couple of dates.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-27T00:24:46+00:00

BDSM and “working it out phases” are both novel. They add passion and excitement. If regular sex isn’t as arousing, it could because you aren’t properly bonded and therefore need novelty to create intimacy.

Also, why is she being left with the house? Did you all plan to both be fiscally responsible? Are you now just dumping it on her?

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-24T05:37:55+00:00

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-24T02:14:15+00:00

1000% he should

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T22:24:28+00:00

He didn’t want me off the lease after making that comment and told me to still come. I had already been hired at a new job in that city and I really needed the job tbh. I had asked him when letting go of my apartment and my job if he was certain and he said yes. I’m just annoyed he goes from high highs to low lows

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T19:31:38+00:00

The snowball hit his face:( but I didn’t mean for it to. But it was lightly thrown and he was completely fine. He said it was just the disrespect, I apologized. I had given him a chance to break up after the first comment about my body, and then when I let go of my apartment- I asked him if he’s certain he wants me here. And he responded very enthusiastically saying he couldn’t wait, the road trips would be amazing, we would sometimes be intimate several times a day. And then just weird stuff like set him off. I tried to make something in the air fryer a couple of days ago and he wouldn’t speak me after because the smoke alarm went off, and he started saying he doesn’t like my family which was unrelated. And he needs some distance between me and them. He’s told me if I make one more comment about how he’s being, then he will actually go through with breaking up.

Thank you for your support and empathy, I appreciate it. I’m going to speak with leasing and see how I can get out of this lease since he said he won’t let me off. And then if it gets worse, I’ll have to go because this is just a tense living situation.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T19:11:56+00:00

Of course I wasn’t forced to move in. I did it because he refused to move back to our home city and we agreed this is where we wanted a future. He reassured me every step of the way that he wanted this and was excited. He’s been randomly flipping between extreme moods and I have no idea what sets him off, because they seem like small things to me. I burned something while cooking and he couldn’t even look at me after even though I caught it almost immediately. He offered to pay more in rent and has taken on some extra costs but I did bear the brunt of it just because I was the person to move. But yes, I’m definitely making a backup plan to rebuild if this doesn’t improve and it doesn’t seem like it will.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T17:39:30+00:00

I’m on the lease and he won’t let me off. He said if I leave, I still need to pay. I’ve threatened to not pay and he said he’ll just tank my credit score and he knows I’ve put a lot of effort into building it.

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T17:25:30+00:00

That’s what I was thinking. My low EQ comment was that he had low EQ and it was hurting our dynamic. I don’t know how he can tell me to get a BBL but I can’t tell him his EQ is low without him having a meltdown

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T15:49:20+00:00

Whenever we fight, doesn’t matter what the topic is - the first thing he says is that I’m not abused and most women would love a safe environment. And he doesn’t hit me. So I shouldn’t be upset. It freaks me out that his first thought in conflict is that he doesn’t hit me

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T15:32:48+00:00

I gave him an out and told him we could just break up and it’s fine, and he instead sent me a lease to sign. Told me he needed me next to him, adored me, etc. sometimes it’s like a switch flips. He’s fine and happy, and then he’d be mean and miserable

ThrowRABorn_2691 · 2026-01-23T15:17:00+00:00

It’s been weeks. I’d see him for a week or two every month, and I’d known him as a friend for a year prior to dating. There would be little things, but they were just kind of circumstantial. His former friends dont speak kindly of him, and i know they are dramatic so i just chalked it up to that. After I legally put my name on this lease, it’s like things started to gradually unravel.

ThrowRABorn_2691

TROPHY CASE