Character Profile - Nelly Dean

Character Profile:

Who is Nelly Dean?

Nelly was born in Yorkshire in 1758, being 13/14 when Heathcliff first arrived at the heights. She has always been at Wuthering Heights hearing every word. Nelly Dean is a dutiful servant who began at Wuthering Heights and now resides at the Grange. Her mother was also a resident at the Heights, nursing to Mr and Mrs Earnshaw, so she was born into this world. Due to Mrs Earnshaw's passing Nelly Stepped in as a motherly figure to Cathy despite only being a few years older. She would help Cathy and Hindley with school, particularly Hindley.

Cathy's dependency made Nelly always around and obtaining information about them. Her mother no longer resides at the Heights but Nelly writes often keeping her up to date with the current affairs. Nelly's presence is nurturing and motherly as we see Cathy run to her for most advice. This presence still runs through when she is telling the story to Lockwood, particularly in the way she speaks about how Heathcliff and Cathy would act together. But there still are some issues in the way she tells the story and if it is a reliable account particularly when she admits to lying. At the beginning of the novel, Nelly Dean is the maid at Thrushcross Grange. She gives Lockwood the scoop on the history of both houses, the Grange and Wuthering Heights, as she's been at one of the two since she was a child. She's loyal to the Linton family of the Grange and to certain members of the Earnshaw family, the owners of Wuthering Heights. That loyalty influences her narration at times. Nelly is what's known as an unreliable narrator. She's telling the story of what happened at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, but she's telling her version of it. At other times, she's telling her version of what somebody else told her, too. Everything Lockwood hears about the history of these people and these two houses is filtered through Nelly.

Nelly makes many drastic decisions within the play that have a great impact of the other character's pathways. She is aware of this, but I do not yet know if she feels guilt or regret for some of the decisions she makes. She is prone to lying but also giving harsh truth, particularly when no one asked for her opinion. I am intrigued to discover and unveil Nelly's morals and centre core as she hides a lot and hides from truth.

Questions I Have About Nelly:

Is her story truthful?
Why is she really telling Lockwood this story?
Does she feel guilt?
Did she ever want Cathy and Heathcliff to be together?
Why did she see a soft-spot for Heathcliff?
When was the last time she spoke about Cathy?
Is she nosy?
Is she exaggerating?
Does she regret any of her decisions?

There are many questions I have about Nelly and intentions. These are some questions that I hope to unpack and explore throughout this process. I will maybe never answer some of them as the are to vast but this for me helps me find depth and detail within my character.

Creating a character playlist is really useful in establishing their aura and energy they give off. Songs can also act as stimulus for movement and lyrics can also help you look at your character from a different perspective and also understand them more. It's also interesting to think what music your character would listen to as that is quite personal and music is usually niche to the person. Many of the songs on my playlist have quite external views on love and are from an 'observers' perspective, which is exactly Nelly's role in the play.

Animal Work:

In rehearsal we did a lot of work on movement and what a role movement plays in characterisation. We did animal work to explore this movement in a non naturalistic way so it is easier to strip it back and subtly include the animal of choice movement. The animal I chose was a meerkat, because they always very aware of the surroundings and pop up out of nowhere looking around. Nelly in the play is always aware of what is happening, but still has an element of slyness, where she comes out of nowhere or makes her less visible. When exploring physicality you need to consider how you will merge this non naturalistic movement into your character. From moving and exploring the space as a Meerkat to Nelly, I kept the straight posture and having my chin up slightly, with the look of always listening. I have also merged the animal work with Laban efforts, as a meerkat moves with direction and discovered through Laban that Nelly also moves with direction. I did some research into Meerkats to see if I could draw more parallels that would contribute to my movement:

Meerkats never live alone
Active during the day
They spend their days foraging for food, caring for their young and guarding their territory.
They are immune to venom
Dig their own burrows and tunnels

What I found the most interesting is that Meerkats never live alone, and Nelly has also never lived alone. She has lived in a busy household with work to do, so does she have a fear of being alone? Are some of Nelly's actions in the play testament to her being afraid of being alone.

Laban Efforts:

With Nelly I was struggling to narrow it down as I saw her as using glide, press or float. But after experimenting with them all as Nelly I think she uses all three in combination, but one becomes more apparent depending on her objective. Intertwining with Laban efforts we had a look at Head, Heart, Gut and Groin and with what your character would lead with. After exploration I established that Nelly leads with either Head or Heart but it depends on the line and whether what she is saying is fact or opinion. As I am telling the story I have to carefully consider which lines Nelly is saying a truthful and what are biased opinions she has formed over time. In some lines it switches from Heart to Head and vice versa. A line that really plays into this is: 'Her spirits were always at high watermark - her tongue always going - singing, laughing, plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wick-slip, she was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent was to keep her separate from him.'

To help me remember and visualise all of the prop cues I made flashcards for each scene in the play so I knew in which scene what prop I had to use. This was helpful with characterisation as I had a deeper understanding of the story and was able to move the props with purpose and direction. A big worry for me was forgetting props and moving the props as Katrine rather than Nelly. So by making these they acted as support until I knew the play inside.

Overall Character Thoughts:

Discovering Nelly Dean over the past few months has been a grand journey. I battled with her guilt as well as her pride in controversial opinions and decisions. I found that she was more than a storyteller and rather an orchestrater. She held a lot of power in Wuthering Heights despite her low status. I did something a bit different in my character work this time and that was let Nelly guide herself, usually I derive my character's from ultra-specific materials and take heavy inspiration from outer sources. This time I wanted to discover Nelly Dean internally rather than externally. This was a different approach but one I think that greatly benefitted me. I also had the addition of an accent which provided so much characterisation that I didn't think was possible. I wanted to find Nelly's purpose and core in the play, in hopes of unlocking her true intentions of why she is telling Lockwood, a complete stranger, this story. The breakthrough of Nelly came once Sam and I had established our relationship and it made me realise the true need for Lockwood for Nelly's characterisation. Doing character exercises that I have written about in my rehearsal logs has had a great impact on my journey, particularly from doing it at the start of the process. As I was able to set a strong foundation for my characterisation and let the rehearsal process add more detail.

Immersing myself into particular tasks and elements of research allowed me find the detail in Nelly's daily life. Learning how to knit and creating a timetable for Nelly, provided context and intention for some of my lines in the play and it began to build her back story. Another element that I really focused on was storytelling and how central that is to Nelly. So part of my research for Nelly was to know the story inside out, so I looked at family trees and in depth timelines of the play as well as watching a production of Wuthering Heights. I had to be really knowledgable of all the happenings in the play otherwise I wouldn't be able to deliver the story with such confidence and clarity.

A part of Nelly that I really struggled unpacking and only really found when performing the actual show was her true intentions. What I mean by true intentions, is does she feel any regret over the decisions she made in her past and how it feels to rewatch them. The first part in this process was realising that Nelly is literally watching her life unfold before her eyes and reliving past trauma one could say for the first time in a while. This must have had an effect on her emotionally, and a few of her lines back this. But there were scenes in particular that I really had to delve into to find her true reaction. Act 1 Scene 10 I have always battled with if Nelly feels guilt for not telling Cathy about Heathcliff. And in the shows I came to the conclusion that she doesn't explicitly regret it but wishes she changed her thinking pattern. I don't think Nelly is someone who regrets but does think about her past actions a lot and overthink the different paths life could've gone. But never full blown regret, she is too stubborn for that. And also stands by a lot of her servant duties and not telling the the truth all the time was one of them, as she still had boundaries and rules to follow.

It has been interesting to think about some of my early opinions of Nelly and how those of changed, I remember some of my early opinions were of her being really nosy. And thinking about it now at the end of the process she didn't really chose to be so involved with the lives of those at the Heights, they were all so dependant on her due to the absence of parental figures. All the character's constantly ask for her opinion or create situations in which she has to step in as of servant duties. So can she really be blamed for her heavy involvement? And in addition with the obsession over gossip in the 1700/1800s. We can question her telling of events because of who she is, her status and relationship with characters, but she is the only one left by the end so her story is the one that has lived on and for that we can't question.

Page updated

Report abuse