Ellen Dean

Ellen, or Nelly Dean, is the housekeeper of Thrushcross Grange as the novel begins and is

the servant of both Catherines. She is often more of a friend or relative to the characters in the book than a servant. Consequently, she knows more of the story than anyone else so is able to fill Mr Lockwood in on events.

Lockwood refers to her as "Mrs Dean" in 1801 but there is no other mention of a husband. It is probably a polite term applied to all housekeepers. She is stout

When young, her mother was nurse to Hindley so Ellen acted as a servant-cum-companion to Hindley and Catherine, playing with them and running errands. Considered herself a foster-sister to Hindley and Catherine. when older, short of breath.

Came to Thrushcross Grange in 1783 to act as Catherine's maid. Stayed on after her death

as a housekeeper.

A stranger named Lockwood visits the household of Wuthering Heights at the beginning of the story, and is overcome with shock when he believes he has seen the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw at a window in one of the chambers of the Heights. Eager to know the story of the master of the Heights, Heathcliff, Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Grange, his own temporary residence, where he asks Nelly, the housekeeper, to tell him all that she knows.

Nelly's mother was a servant at the Heights, Nelly was thus a foster sister and servant to

Hindley and his sister, Catherine Earnshaw, at Wuthering Heights. Nelly is the same age as Hindley, about six years older than Cathy.

Catherine's death after childbirth causes Nelly to nurse another child, Catherine Linton. Nelly tenderly adores Cathy, and, fearing for her future, she and Edgar try desperately to keep the innocent yet curious girl from falling into Heathcliff's machinations. Heathcliff succeeds in spite of them, and Cathy is forced into a marriage with his weak and quickly-dying son Linton. Cathy's misery at Wuthering Heights is one of the few sequences of events that Nelly does not witness for herself: she has been ordered by Heathcliff to remain at the Grange, but, inveterate gossip that she is, she manages to hear of it from Zillah, the housekeeper at the Heights.

Nelly continues to fight to restore peace at Wuthering Heights and, at the conclusion of the novel, is asked by Heathcliff to come back to work there. She is the one who finds Heathcliff dead in his chamber, enabling the New Year's Day marriage of Cathy and Hareton. Despite Heathcliff's dreadful treatment of her erstwhile charges, Nelly is "stunned by the awful event; and my memory unavoidably recurred to former times with a sort of oppressive sadness."

Lucia Lopez Fuentes and Jorge Lin Kang