“…in dress and manners a gentleman…”
The narration switches between Lockwood and Nelly, she is the second and the dominant narrational voice in Wuthering Heights. She takes up the novel from Lockwood and gives it substance and the reader trusts the information she gives.
Lockwood is unable to read the signs of culture,
“Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits.”
And so cannot sustain the story, although it acts to remind us that all narrational voices are partial and the story is in the past.
Nelly Dean is a local and has known each generation of the Earnshaw and Linton families and therefore she is well placed to offer Lockwood a commentary upon the events she describes.
Her posistion as a servant differs from that of the other servants, both in terms of the fact that she appears to move effortlessly between the two houses, meditating between their differences. Nelly’s feelings towards events and characters influence the reader to agree with her.
Nelly acts as a surrogate mother to many of the motherless characters in this novel and this also encourages the reader to warm to Nelly and share the same attitudes towards character as she does.
Bronte can comment upon the nature of narratorial perspective by employing the use of double narratives and it allows her to put her views across.
Events are told as if they have been seen through a real person’s eyes and so the reader can fully understand the emotions and actions of characters,
“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath..”
It is through this that Bronte can create the tragedy, which she desires as she uses a character to retell a story and explain the feelings felt at the time, which draws the reader into the story and then aids them to feel the tragedy too almost like they were there as well.