| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 93 === Abstract
Wuthering Heights is a novel with strong and passionate love mixing with torment and joy together. Although it was published in 1848, written by Emily Brontë, it is still one of the top 50 best-sellers in today’s world. The great author Maugham says, “It [Wuthering Heights] is a very bad novel. It is a very good one. It is ugly. It has beauty.” Most people look upon Wuthering Heights as a book of love, jealousy, hatred, violence, and so on. It especially focuses on the strong passion between Catherine and Heathcliff, two main protagonists in the novel.
However, in this thesis, I play emphasis on the female narrator, Ellen Dean [Nelly]. By means of Abraham Maslow’s theory, I will explore Nelly’s deficiency and desire. Because of the deficiency and desire, Nelly behaves improperly and jealously throughout her story. With the benefit of being a narrator, Nelly not only tells the readers a touching story but also shows her competence as a housekeeper.
There are five chapters in the thesis. In Chapter One, I briefly introduce the narrative technique, Nelly’s background and some awkward behavior that Nelly exhibits. In Chapter Two, I further explore Nelly’s diverse roles that she plays in her story. First, I discuss Nelly’s multiple roles as various kinds of servants in different periods and then talk about her other roles, such as a playwright, an actress and a liar. Playing these diverse roles, Nelly reveals her multifarious characteristics through her storytelling. In Chapter Three, I talk about Nelly’s desire as a narrator and especially as a woman. In addition, I will examine Nelly’s deficiency in needs so as to discover why she can play quite easily so many distinct roles at a time in her story. In Chapter Four, I present Nelly’s jealous behavior, especially toward Catherine. In Chapter Five, I hope that through the discussion in this thesis, I have collected enough proof to reveal Nelly’s veil of mendacity and to support the viewpoint that Nelly is never a person with true benevolence and homely fidelity as Charlotte Brontë thought. On the contrary, with the veil of mendacity, Nelly is a real hypocrite full of jealousy and desires.
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