Brontë Studies, Vol. 33, March 2008

© The Brontë Society 2008

doi:

10.1179/147489308X259587

MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

By Graeme Tytler

Wuthering Heights is unusual among masterpieces of fiction for its elaborate treatment
of the relationship between masters and servants. Such relationships play a significant
part both in developing the plot and in revealing character. Although masters (and
mistresses) ultimately have the upper hand of their servants, it is noteworthy how much
power servants exercise within the sphere of domination to which they are subject. The
tendency of servants to be insubordinate for one reason or another highlights the prob-
lem of a hierarchical society while raising certain questions of peculiar moral interest.
That the author herself seems to call the system of masters and servants in doubt is
hinted at throughout the narrative, and more especially through her presentation of
Hareton and the younger Catherine. Emily’s ingenious handling of this theme helps us to
recognize that her novel is concerned not merely with a singular love relationship but
with human relationships in general.

Keywords: Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, masters, servants, Nelly Dean

Wuthering Heights is exceptional among great works of fiction for its comprehensive
delineation of the relationship between masters and servants.

1 Such relationships consti-

tute a prominent aspect of an essentially hierarchical, class-conscious community in late
eighteenth-century England, reflecting in some measure the social differences between
the landed gentry and the yeomanry through the two households depicted in rural
Yorkshire. Whether or not Emily Brontë’s masters and servants reflect the England of,
say, the 1830s and 1840s rather better than the England of the late eighteenth century,
is perhaps a question that might well be asked, although it is one that appears to have
been scarcely raised by any Brontë scholar hitherto. There is, nevertheless, a certain
timelessness about the author’s treatment of this subject, partly because it shows little of
the perfunctoriness that generally colours relations between masters and servants in
nineteenth-century fiction.

2 This may be noted, for example, through the ways in which

the characters portrayed as masters or mistresses tell us something about themselves
by the uses or abuses of the power they have over others. And though it is plain from
the narrative that the servants of both households, so long as they remain, or wish to
remain, in service, are ultimately bound to submit to their employers, it is just as plain
that no master or mistress can exercise authority effectively without the co-operation of
their servants. And it is on the basis of the latter argument that much of the interest
of the action turns on the various freedoms that servants enjoy within the contexts of

Please address correspondence to: Graeme Tytler, 17 Dovehouse Close, Oxford OX2 8BG; email:
[e-mail]

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domination to which they are subject. Accordingly, whereas there is a certain predict-
ability about the behaviour of Emily’s masters and mistresses, there is a complexity
about her servants that makes their conduct especially worthy of discussion. Indeed, it
is by virtue of that very complexity that the author puts the question of masters and
servants, as it were, on the operating table, dealing with it not merely as a matter of
economics but as a means of adding to our understanding of human nature. In other
words, she invites us to consider, and perhaps even to question, a time-honoured system
whose workings she astutely takes apart and lays bare for us.

The reader of Wuthering Heights is made continually aware of the existence of

servants in both households through references to the sundry tasks they perform in the
house, in the grounds, on the farm, and others in or near Gimmerton, and even through
references to their attendance at church or chapel, presence at a funeral, participation
in the leisure pursuits of their superiors, and so on. Conspicuous among such references
are those made by Nelly Dean both to the housework she does and to the tasks she
delegates to other servants, as if she were eager to impress upon Lockwood the idea of
the prestige as well as the seriousness of her role as housekeeper. Nor does Nelly hesitate
to suggest that, though generally liked and respected by her staff, she is nevertheless
a tough disciplinarian, as may be gathered from her berating her subordinates at the
slightest provocation — a practice that forcibly reminds us of her equally important
role as nurse or nanny to Hindley, Catherine, Heathcliff, Hareton and Cathy. In this
connection, it is noteworthy how much power some servants, Nelly Dean and Joseph in
particular, are vested with in the upbringing of the children under their care. Joseph, for
example, as well as being chiefly responsible for instructing them in religious doctrine,
is now and then described as thrashing Heathcliff or boxing Catherine’s ears for their
respective misdemeanours. Accordingly, the idea that Joseph should also be said to
have ‘regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine’
(WH, p. 40) to Mr Earnshaw and to have ‘encouraged [the latter] to regard Hindley as
a reprobate’ (WH, p. 40) is scarcely less surprising than that he should report Catherine
and Heathcliff for their bad behaviour to Hindley when he is master of the Heights.

3

In view of Joseph’s delegated authority over the children at the Heights, to say

nothing of the supposed authority with which he is understood to ‘hector over tenants
and labourers’ (WH, p. 65), it is easy to understand why this elderly servant should
be treated by Mr Earnshaw as a kind of confidant, mainly with respect to religion and
education. Not that this is by any means unusual in a novel where almost all the main
characters come to confide in Nelly Dean about their private affairs or their troubles.
Reliance on servants for help in matters that have little to do with their domestic duties
ranges from their being used as messengers for the most trivial purposes to their being
resorted to for help in various household crises. One notable example of such reliance is
suggested when, in her letter to Nelly Dean, Isabella declares that, being unable to write
to Edgar or Catherine about her elopement, she ‘must write to somebody, and the only
choice left me is you’ (WH, p. 136). Nor should we forget that the bulk of the narrative
is made possible by the fact that Lockwood, in order to offset his loneliness while nurs-
ing a bad cold at Thrusheross Grange, obliges Nelly to keep him company and entertain
him with ‘Heathcliff’s history’ (WH, p. 60). This and other forms of dependency help to
explain why some servants are inclined to give their superiors advice of all kinds. It is
true that, forced as they are now and again into subservience against their will, both
Joseph and Nelly find their advice sometimes ignored or pooh-poohed. Yet when Nelly’s

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advice is acted on, it is almost always done so with unfortunate consequences. Thus, we
may think of the apple-sauce tureen incident in Chapter 7 as being partly the conse-
quence of the counsel she has only shortly beforehand given to Heathcliff about improv-
ing his physical appearance, taken in conjunction with her disparaging comments on
Hindley and Edgar. Similarly mistaken are Nelly’s attempts to encourage Isabella to
renounce her love for Heathcliff, and even her questioning, in Isabella’s very presence,
whether Edgar would approve of him as a husband, for it is thus that she unwittingly
seals Isabella’s relationship with Heathcliff. Almost certainly the main reason for the
elopement is the showdown between Heathcliff and Edgar, as induced by Nelly having
both informed and advised Edgar about Heathcliff’s amorous advances to Isabella and
his subsequent quarrel with Catherine.

What has just been said about Nelly Dean is a reminder of the extent to which ser-

vants influence events in the novel, and even shape its plot. To take two early instances:
it is partly owing to Joseph’s dilatoriness in fetching wine from the cellar that Lockwood
gets into a fight with the dogs in Chapter 1, just as it is partly owing to Joseph’s setting
the dogs on Lockwood at the end of Chapter 2 that Lockwood spends the night in
the oak-panelled room. Again, there is little doubt that Lockwood’s second visit to the
Heights is prompted principally by his finding a maid putting out his study fire at the
Grange. But even a remark made casually by a servant can have important consequences
for the plot. Thus Cathy’s first encounter with Hareton is primarily due to the fact that
‘one of the [Grange] maids mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite turned her head with a
desire to fulfil this project: [. . .]’ (WH, p. 189). Servants are also behind a good many of
the reports and rumours that make up parts of Nelly Dean’s narrative. Thus Nelly hears
of Hareton’s birth and the concomitant behaviour of his parents from the girl who
brings breakfasts to her and others working in a hayfield; of Hindley’s troubled relations
with Heathcliff, shortly after the latter’s return to Gimmerton, from Joseph; of Linton
Heathcliff’s conduct at the Heights from his father’s (unnamed) housekeeper; of Cathy’s
way of life there under Heathcliff’s guardianship from Zillah, prefacing her account,
significantly enough, by saying, ‘otherwise I should hardly know who was dead, and
who living’ (WH, p. 292). That servants are much given to gossip both loyal and disloyal
is evident when, despite Nelly’s refusal to tell him where Isabella lives in the South,
Heathcliff nevertheless ‘discovered, through some of the other servants, both her place
of residence and the existence of the child’ (WH, p. 182). By the same token, when Cathy
inadvertently informs the Heights housekeeper about her cousin Linton, Nelly has ‘no
doubt of Linton’s approaching arrival [. . .] being reported to Mr Heathcliff; [. . .]’ (WH,
p. 195); a certainty on Nelly’s part that proves to have been well-founded when Joseph
unexpectedly turns up at the Grange to fetch the newly-arrived Linton Heathcliff for his
father. Perhaps that is why, knowing as he does that, in their proclivity for gossip, some
servants even go so far as to threaten to report their superiors to the law, Heathcliff
makes sure that Joseph and Zillah are out of the way at the time he marries Linton to
Cathy.

The propensity of servants to talk to outsiders about the goings-on in their own

households may be seen as an expression of the insubordination they are liable to show
towards their superiors. There are, for example, occasions when Joseph is surly or
defiant, slack or sardonic, in his attitude and demeanour towards those who are not his
employers — Lockwood, Catherine, Edgar, Isabella, Cathy and Linton Heathcliff. He is

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sometimes even outspoken to his own master, as we note when, together with the curate,
he ‘reprimanded [Hindley’s] carelessness when [Catherine and Heathcliff] absented
themselves [from church on Sundays]’ (WH, p. 44). Nelly Dean herself, as well as now
and then ignoring their requests or showing a lack of concern for them, can be down-
right disrespectful towards her superiors. Thus, aside from directing outbursts of anger
against those belonging to other households, such as Heathcliff and his son Linton for
trapping her and Cathy at the Heights, Nelly scolds her master Hindley (in Chapter 9)
for his mistreatment of Hareton and is, we are told later, ‘many a time’ spoken to
‘sternly’ by Edgar at the Grange for her ‘pertness’ (WH, p. 91) to Catherine. But Edgar,
too, no less than Catherine, is subject not only to Nelly’s defiance, but also to her
disobedience, notable instances of which later occur during the time she is looking after
Cathy. Though some acts of disobedience on the part of servants may be adjudged rea-
sonable, as when Nelly ignores Hindley’s instruction to keep Catherine and Heathcliff
locked out for the night, it is nevertheless interesting to note how ready the servants are
to disobey their superiors when opportunity permits. There is, for example, the uncon-
scionable disobedience of the servants which Isabella has to put up with at the Grange
and which her son Linton is later to suffer at the Heights. Lockwood’s own subjection to
the vagaries of domestics in both households and, more particularly, to the domination
of his housekeeper Nelly Dean (as comically exemplified by her dictating the hours when
he may dine) is doubtless intended as a symbolic caricature of the conflicts that so often
arise in the novel between masters and servants.

Such conflicts seem due, at least in Nelly’s case, partly to her finding herself obliged

to be subservient to those to whom she was either an equal or over whom she had some
power at one time, and partly to an awareness shared by other servants, namely, that
the masters or mistresses served evince serious limitations of one kind or another. Thus
we think of Hindley as a tyrannical, incompetent master; of Heathcliff as someone who,
apart from being ‘a cruel hard landlord to his tenants; [. . .]’ (WH, p. 196), is greatly
feared as a master by all his servants, including the usually fearless Joseph; and of
Catherine as a ‘difficult’ mistress, whose domination of people at the Grange extends
even to allowing Isabella to ‘be nothing in the house’ (WH, p. 101). Moreover, in their
strong desire to domineer over other people, each of these three characters seems beset
by what might be termed a ‘master complex’. In her diary, Catherine tells of Hindley’s
bid to intimidate her and Heathcliff by saying, ‘You forget you have a master here’ (WH,
p. 19), and, on account of the fateful Sunday evening visit to the Grange, his swearing
that he ‘will reduce [Heathcliff] to his right place’ (WH, p. 20). Heathcliff’s ‘master com-
plex’ has more psychotic dimensions than Hindley’s, as we realize when he gloatingly
envisages his son’s eventual power over the Linton family: ‘I want the triumph of seeing
my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children, to till their
father’s lands for wages — ’ (WH, p. 208). Catherine’s ‘master complex’ is already mani-
fest in childhood, inasmuch as she ‘liked, exceedingly, to act the little mistress; using her
hands freely, and commanding her companions’ (WH, p. 40). It is also a perceptibly
class-conscious one, as we see when, reprimanding Nelly for doing housework in the
presence of herself and Edgar, she says: ‘When company are in the house, servants don’t
commence scouring and cleaning in the room where they are!’ (WH, p. 70). That
Catherine’s ‘master complex’ is especially conspicuous after she has returned from her
second convalescence at the Grange is evident both from her refusing to speak to

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Nelly ‘save in the relation of a mere servant’ and from her also putting Joseph ‘under a
ban’ for lecturing her ‘as if she were a little girl’ because, as Nelly adds, she ‘esteemed
herself a woman, and our mistress [. . .]’ (WH, p. 88). Noteworthy too, in this respect, is
Catherine’s angry response to Nelly’s having loudly voiced her objections to Heathcliff’s
amorous advances to Isabella: ‘To hear you, people might think you were the mistress!
[. . .] You want setting down in your right place!’ (WH, p. 111). At the other end of the
spectrum, however, are Mr Earnshaw and Edgar Linton, who, though spoken of respect-
fully and affectionately by Nelly, come across as too weak with, or too trusting of, their
subordinates, to be deemed exemplary masters.

If the tyrannical or ungracious or unreasonable conduct of a master or mistress may

be considered to be a factor underlying a servant’s insubordination, it is quite another
question whether servants should take advantage of kindly superiors. Although, for
example, Nelly Dean’s sundry acts of deceit and deception against Edgar Linton are in
large part a consequence of his extreme reliance on her, the reader may still wonder why
Nelly is not content to be an obedient servant by simply confining herself to her official
duties. No doubt, Nelly’s reluctance to be obedient has much to do with her character.
Consider, for example, several episodes in which she betrays her inherently violent
disposition, whether through her general vindictiveness or through her rough treatment
of some of the main characters, especially as youngsters. Consider too, how, for all her
skills as an observant and percipient narrator, Nelly betrays her limited intelligence not
only through her propensity to be slow-witted, uncomprehending, forgetful and self-
contradictory, but through the presumptuousness and fallaciousness of some of her
ideas and arguments.

4 Much more important, however, are the various references that

Nelly makes throughout her narrative to her lies, prevarications, false promises, secre-
tiveness, evasiveness and other forms of dishonesty, all of which amply underline her
lack of moral integrity. This is not to suggest that Nelly has no sense of the difference
between right and wrong but, rather, that she regards right and wrong as relative, and
not absolute, concepts; that is to say, concepts which she considers right or wrong
according to the particular circumstances she finds herself in. This may in turn account
for her somewhat fuzzy notions about truth. For example, when, on arriving at the
Heights in response to Isabella’s letter, she assures Heathcliff that she has brought noth-
ing for his wife, we note that, despite supplementing that detail with the words ‘thinking
it best to speak the truth at once’ (WH, p. 147), she goes on to give Isabella an utterly
garbled, if well-intended, version of Edgar’s actual message to her. It may also account
for the hypocrisy with which Nelly will give Edgar the impression of being ‘a faithful
servant’ (WH, p. 128) even while continuing to betray him. That is why it is especially
during the tryst between the two principal lovers that the reader does well to recall that,
in reaction to Heathcliff’s earlier insistence that she arrange such a meeting for him,
Nelly ‘protested against playing that treacherous part in [her] employer’s house’ (WH, p.
153). It is, therefore, little wonder that Nelly seems scarcely able to understand the
staunch loyalty which, for instance, Hareton consistently shows to Heathcliff, even
beyond the latter’s death.

At this juncture it might be asked whether Nelly’s moral and mental shortcomings do

not in some way derive from her role and function as a servant. It is interesting to note
that, although she has more or less drifted into service, she seems never to have wished
to be anything but a servant, and then only at the Heights or at the Grange. That

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Nelly might be said (like Joseph) to have a sort of vocation as a domestic is evident not
only from her recurrent and respectful use of phrases entailing ‘master’ or ‘mistress’ and
related terms such as ‘my young lady’, but from her apparent preference to live vicari-
ously through her employers rather than to lead a life of her own, let alone cherish
ambitions of any kind.

5 This is partly implicit in the passivity informing her attitudes

to her employers. For example, having told Lockwood that all the servants at the
Heights except herself and Joseph gave notice on account of Hindley’s ‘tyrannical and
evil conduct’, she somewhat blandly rationalizes her decision to stay on by declaring
that, having been his ‘foster sister’, she ‘excused his behaviour more readily than a
stranger would’ (WH, p. 65). Again, in spite of refusing at first to accompany Catherine
to the Grange on her marriage to Edgar, but then finding herself compelled to do so by
Hindley, she rationalizes her acceptance as follows: ‘And so, I had but one choice left, to
do as I was ordered — ’ (WH, p. 89).

6 Such passivity, unmistakable as it is for being

expressed here in the guise of a fallacy, may, however, be thought hardly to square with
the bold initiatives that Nelly takes in disregard of her employers’ expectations. At the
same time, Nelly seems to be well aware that the freedoms she permits herself are none
the less exercised within, even determined by, the safe and secure confines of her particu-
lar employment. This may explain why, in anxious moments with her superiors, Nelly is
quick to fall back on her role as servant, and even to take shelter in it. For example,
when to her utter dismay she hears Cathy telling her father about her cousin Linton at
the Heights, she recalls that, though ‘not altogether sorry’, she thought ‘the burden of
directing and warning would be more efficiently borne by [Edgar] than [herself]’ (WH,
p. 221). Similarly, we note how, having failed with her threatening language to make the
newly-wed Linton direct her to Cathy’s room in the Heights, she tries to win him round
by self-pityingly referring to herself as ‘an elderly woman, and a servant merely’ (WH,
p. 280).

It may, then, be deduced from the words just quoted that one reason why Nelly gives

scope to her character defects is that she (perhaps unconsciously) considers her social
status too abject to bother herself unduly with questions of morality. Such an apparent
lack of concern on her part seems confirmed by the fact that even her presentation as a
Christian who relies heavily on the Bible for advice to pass on to her superiors does little,
if anything, to deter her from her malpractices. In this connection, it is well to recollect
here that two servants notable for their religiosity and their chapel-going, namely,
Joseph and Zillah, come across as figures for whom morality is at best scarcely distin-
guishable from respectability. Certainly it would appear that Joseph has come to regard
his efficiency, reliability and loyalty as a servant over many years as an excuse for him to
overlook the basic principles of morality through his inveterate cantankerousness,
maliciousness and misanthropy. Yet even for the other servants portrayed in the novel
morality seems to have little relevance to their day-to-day existence. This is suggested to
some extent in the mercenary nature of their attitudes to service in such utterances as
‘I was never hired to serve you’ (WH, p. 195) or ‘[t]o mind your son is not my business’
(WH, p. 269), but also of their talk about money and wages. Perhaps nowhere in the
narrative, however, is this more pronounced than it is in Zillah, who is presented, appro-
priately enough, as a shallow, vindictive woman much given to wrong-headed ideas,
as we see primarily in her conversation with Nelly Dean in Chapter 30. One thinks

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particularly of the way in which, having predicted a bleak future for Cathy with a char-
acteristic fallacy, she goes on to say this to her interlocutor: ‘She’s as poor as you or I —
poorer, I’ll be bound, you’re saving — and I’m doing my little all, that road’ (WH,
p. 295). Such words clearly hint at Zillah’s inherently self-seeking attitude to her role as
Heathcliff’s housekeeper — an attitude well illustrated when, in his complaint to Cathy
about the slackness of the Height’s servants during his father’s absence, Linton tells of
Zillah’s ‘constantly gadding off to Gimmerton’ (WH, p. 237). But practised as they are
safely behind her master’s back, such acts of disloyalty none the less indirectly bespeak
a fear of Heathcliff deep enough to prevent her from defying him with any open act of
disobedience, even if that act were morally justifiable. That is why there is something
contemptible about the motives she gives for declining to help Cathy with the ailing
Linton, to wit, ‘for fear of being moved to interfere’ and, more especially, as she further
explains to Nelly Dean, ‘I didn’t wish to lose my place, you know!’ (WH, p. 293).

How far innate character or the hierarchical system is to blame for the unethical

demeanour and attitude of the servants discussed above is a question that perhaps can
only be answered tentatively. It is tempting, if not altogether justifiable, to conclude
from evidence shown hitherto that being a servant brings out the worst in a human
being, and that domestic service is likely to appeal most of all to the morally deficient.
No doubt, the relationship between servant and employer is, by its very nature, seldom
entirely disinterested or honourable. This idea is ironically confirmed by the presenta-
tion of a very minor figure in the novel, the groom Michael, through his willingness
to betray his master Edgar Linton in order to be rewarded by Cathy with ‘books and
pictures’ (WH, p. 247) for enabling her to make her illicit journeys to the Heights. Yet
at the same time as servants are liable to be disloyal to their employers, they cannot
but play an important part in the maintenance of a household that is governed by a
tyrannical head. Zillah, as we have already seen, is a striking case in point in that her
outward obedience of Heathcliff, motivated as it is solely by fear, helps to preserve a
fundamentally undesirable system of domination. Furthermore, we see how by working
in a well-ordered household some servants may come to emulate the outlook of their
masters and — as we may, for example, surmise from the vicious language with which
Mr Linton’s servant Robert addresses young Heathcliff in Chapter 6 — thereby learn to
exert over others the dominance to which they themselves have become habituated.

7

Another drawback of servants is that they tend to foster laziness and selfishness

in their masters and mistresses, and, as we see in Isabella’s case, to make them almost
helpless.

8 It is, accordingly, not without significance that Lockwood’s somewhat unsym-

pathetic presentation derives in some measure from his having apparently long taken
it for granted that servants are not only a necessary part of everyday life but an indis-
pensable luxury. This is ironically borne out when, for example, instead of finding out
for himself on his return to the North how to get to Gimmerton, he simply ‘directed [his]
servant to inquire the way to the village’ (WH, p. 305). Such a trifling use of a servant is
perhaps enough of itself to indicate that, rather like Hindley and Heathcliff, Lockwood
suffers from a ‘master complex’, and one which, towards the end of his narrative, may
have been compounded both by memories of the insubordination he has had to endure
from servants at the Heights and the Grange, and by his consciousness that he is after all
only a tenant.

9 Perhaps for that reason there is nothing quite so comical (among several

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other comical instances suggestive of his complex) as the occasion when, having quite
unexpectedly turned up at the Grange in September 1802, he answers the old woman,
who has just introduced herself as the person keeping the house, with this pompous
reply: ‘Well, I’m Mr Lockwood, the master’ (WH, p. 306).

In the light of the foregoing, it seems, therefore, utterly appropriate that having been

taken into the Heights on his second visit there by ‘a young man, without coat, and
shouldering a pitchfork’ (WH, p. 8), and then, shortly afterwards, noticed that the latter
has put on ‘a decidedly shabby upper garment’ and (in Cathy’s presence) is staring down
hard at him in front of the fire, Lockwood should begin to ‘doubt whether he were a
servant or not’. Thus, having at first inferred from his rough appearance and attire that
he is one, he goes on to make this observation: ‘[. . .] still his bearing was free, almost
haughty, and showed none of a domestic’s assiduity in attending on the lady of the
house’ (WH, p. 10). As well as betraying Lockwood’s deeply ingrained sense of social
hierarchy, this passage is notable for foreshadowing the idea that, notwithstanding
Nelly’s patronizing image of him as someone living ‘in his own house as a servant
deprived of the advantage of wages’ (WH, p. 187), Hareton is clearly reluctant to see
himself as a servant in the usual acceptance of that term.

10 Something of this is hinted at

in the episode (in Chapter 18) when, already incensed by Cathy’s assumption that, since
he is not Heathcliff’s son, he must therefore be a servant, and then, by dint of that
assumption, ordered by her to fetch her horse, Hareton retorts: ‘I’ll see thee damned,
before I be thy servant!’ (WH, p. 194). This is not to imply that Hareton is unwilling
to do jobs usually done by servants. Thus, quite apart from the fact that he is a diligent
and conscientious farm worker with hands, as Lockwood squeamishly observes,
‘embrowned like those of a common labourer’ (WH, p. 10), we see how, unlike the typi-
cal servant in the novel that is inclined to count the cost of services they render, Hareton
not only brings Cathy’s pony round to her presently, but even offers her a ‘terrier whelp’
to boot. And what has just been said of Hareton seems to be also true of Cathy, as we
may gather from the dialogue that Lockwood overhears in ‘the house’ between herself
and Heathcliff in Chapter 3. Thus to Heathcliff’s complaint to her for being ‘at [her] idle
tricks again’, that is, ‘reading a book’ by the light of the fire; his assertion that ‘[t]he rest
of them do earn their bread’ but that she ‘live[s] on [his] charity’; and then his ordering
her to ‘put [her] trash away, and find something to do’, Cathy replies: ‘I’ll put my trash
away, because you can make me, if I refuse, [. . .]. But I’ll not do anything, though
you should swear your tongue out, except what I please!’ (WH, p. 28). Yet expressive
as those words are of a kind of desperate egotism, Cathy’s stubborn refusal to be
Heathcliff’s servant belies what Nelly is later to reveal, that is, Cathy’s capacity (which
she has in common with Hareton) to offer all kinds of selfless and disinterested services
to others, especially to her father and to Linton Heathcliff.

It is, then, surely no coincidence that Cathy’s relationship with Hareton should end

happily at a time when, despite the latter’s change of status from farmhand to ‘the
lawful master’ (WH, p. 335) of Wuthering Heights, as skilfully foreshadowed in Chapter
1 when Lockwood notices ‘Hareton Earnshaw’ carved above ‘the principal door’ (WH,
p. 2) of the building, the old hierarchical system as practised hitherto at the Heights
and the Grange seems to be in marked abeyance. This is ironically underlined, first,
when asked by Lockwood on his return to the Grange whether she is the housekeeper,
the ‘dame’ (who, significantly enough, is smoking a pipe) replies: ‘Eea, Aw keep th’

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hahse’ (WH, p. 306), as if puzzled by his particular designation of her; and, soon after-
wards, when, on ordering her to get the place ready for him, Lockwood observes her re-
actions as follows: ‘She seemed willing to do her best; though she thrust the hearth-brush
into the grates in mistake for the poker, and mal-appropriated several other articles of
her craft; [. . .]’ (WH, p. 306). As a sort of ironic dig at the scrupulously house-proud
Nelly Dean, that detail seems symbolically to mark the dawn of an era in which, thanks
to a youthful master who has known, perhaps better than any of his predecessors, what
it is to be a servant in all but name, the relationship between masters and servants prom-
ises to become more wholesome than it is generally shown to have been so far in the
narrative. Still, there are moments when relations between Nelly Dean and some of
the main characters seem to evoke the charm that biographers have conveyed to us as to
the friendship that Emily and her family enjoyed at Haworth Parsonage with their
housekeeper Tabitha Aykroyd.

11 Perhaps it is with this knowledge in mind that some

readers might be readily disposed to look upon Nelly’s triumphant survival as a servant
at the end with no little sympathy and admiration.

Notes

1 To my knowledge, no Brontë scholar has so far dealt extensively with the relationship between masters and

servants in Wuthering Heights. Most of the research pertaining to that subject has centred on Nelly Dean’s role and
function as a domestic. There is, however, an interesting discussion on servants to be found in Tom Winnifrith, The
Brontës and their Background: Romance and Reality (London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 191–194. For
other references related to my topic, see Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, abr. &, introd. R. H. Durham (London:
Longman, 1959), pp. xi–xii; Jacqueline Viswanathan, ‘Point of View and Unreliability in Brontë’s Wuthering
Heights’, Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and Mann’s Doktor Faustus, Orbis Litterarum, 29 (1974), 54; Jay Ellis
McLemore, ‘Edgar Linton: Master of Thrushcross Grange’, R. E. Artes Liberales, 8 (1981), 13–26; and James
H. Kavanagh, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (Oxford; Blackwell, 1985), p. 54f.

2 Certainly relations between masters and servants in Charlotte Brontë’s fiction are usually perfunctory, despite the

strong individuality of such servants as Bessie and Mrs Fairfax in Jane Eyre and Rosine in Villette.

3 For quotations from the novel, see Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, ed. Ian Jack & Patsy Stoneman (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1998). The edition quoted from is the original 1998 impression of 372 pages, not the later
1998 impression of 330 pages. For the sake of convenience, the first Catherine will be referred to as ‘Catherine’, the
younger as ‘Cathy’.

4 For a discussion of Nelly Dean’s mental limitations, see Graeme Tytler, ‘The Parameters of Reason in Wuthering

Heights’, Brontë Studies 30.3 (2005), p. 234 and p. 241, note 4. For a striking instance of Nelly’s mediocrity, it is
enough to recall that Cathy and Linton Heathcliff’s illicit marriage would not have taken place had she acted on the
words she uttered earlier to Heathcliff: ‘[. . .] I’m resolved [Cathy] shall never approach your house with me again
[. . .]’ (WH, p. 215), not to say had she kept constantly in mind Heathcliff’s intention to marry the cousins.

5 Joseph’s sense of vocation as a servant is suggested when he prefaces his complaint to Heathcliff about the

uprooting of his currant bushes as follows: ‘Aw mun hev my wage, and Aw mun goa! Aw hed aimed tuh dee, wheare
Aw’d sarved fur sixty year; [. . .]’ (WH, p. 318).

6 One notes a similar rationalization when, hearing Zillah’s account of Cathy’s unhappy life at the Heights, Nelly

recalls reacting as follows: ‘I determined to leave my situation, take a cottage, and get Catherine to come and live
with me; but Mr. Heathcliff would as soon permit that, as he would set up Hareton in an independent house; [. . .]’
(WH, p. 298).

7 In this connection, it is interesting to note Mr and Mrs Linton’s domineering behaviour, first, when, on account

of Catherine and Heathcliff’s intrusion at the Grange, the former comes to the Heights and ‘read the young master
[Hindley] such a lecture on the road he guided his family, that he was stirred to look about him in earnest’ (WH,
p. 50); or when, referring to Catherine’s delirium, Nelly recalls that ‘[o]ld Mrs Linton paid us several visits, to be
sure, and set things to rights, and scolded and ordered us all; and when Catherine was convalescent, she insisted on
conveying her to Thrushcross Grange; [. . .]’ (WH, p. 88).

8 It should, however, be said to Isabella’s credit that, as Heathcliff’s neglected bride, she learns to become quite

independent of servants at the Heights, and apparently enough so to find the courage to leave Gimmerton for good
and start a new life in the South.

53

Masters and Servants in

W

UTHERING

H

EIGHTS

9 The idea that Lockwood is never to become a master of a household in the proper sense of the term is suggested

when he recalls his mother having predicted that he would ‘never have a comfortable home, [. . .]’ (WH, p. 4).
10 That Nelly herself may have sensed Hareton’s dislike of being taken for a servant is indirectly suggested in her
tentative reference to Heathcliff as ‘his master or guardian [. . .]’ (WH, p. 218).
11 For Tabitha Aykroyd’s influence on Wuthering Heights, see Winifred Gérin, Emily Brontë. A Biography (Oxford,
New York & Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 29, 60 and 225.

Biographical note

Graeme Tytler was born in Yorkshire, educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University and the University of
Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, and taught Modern Languages, English and Latin in England and the USA. His
publications include Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces & Fortunes (Princeton University Press, 1982) and
several articles on English, French and German literature. He has also co-edited a collection of essays entitled
Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture (University of Delaware Press, 2005).