I always find it hilarious how often casting directors of Wuthering Heights film adaptations portray Ellen “Nelly” Dean as this elderly housekeeper next to Catherine Earnshaw, Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar Linton, and Isabella Linton because that’s not who she is in the book at all.
In actuality, she’s about the same age as Hindley Earnshaw, who was only around 27-28 years old when he died, due to alcoholism. She’s only roughly six years older than Heathcliff and eight years older than Catherine Earnshaw/Linton Sr. She was only 14 years old when Mr. Earnshaw brought Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights, and they met. She was only in between her early-mid 20s when Cathy Sr accepted Edgar Linton’s proposal, and Heathcliff ran away after overhearing about how “it would degrade [Catherine] to marry him.” She was only in her late-twenties when Cathy Sr and Hindley Earnshaw died.
By the time we get into the second generation coming of age, Nelly’s story to Mr. Lockwood about these fucked up people she’s known and worked for from these two families since she was a child, Edgar Linton’s death, Isabella Linton’s death, Heathcliff’s death, and Cathy Linton Jr’s and Hareton Earnshaw’s engagement/upcoming marriage, Nelly is between her early-mid 40s.
At the end of the novel, Nelly has still just barely approached the beginning of “middle age” by the time Heathcliff and all this family drama surrounding the Earnshaws and Lintons. It’s why it just cracks me up how she’s always portrayed as this much more cynical and mature elderly lady in nearly every film. I guess, her being everyone else’s caretaker/servant everyone else’s favorite confidant, and her practical makes her attitude and personality comes across as someone you’d expect to be much older than her actual years
Granted, they also have often cast actors and actresses who are between their late-twenties to mid-thirties to portray Heathcliff and Cathy Sr as teenagers to early twenties. Of course, it’s also not uncommon for many people between their late-twenties to thirties, and sometimes even early 40s, to still get physically mistaken for being between their late-teens to mid-twenties since those are still fairly young years in adulthood, too. Juliet Binoche looked to be her actual age of 28 years old when she played the much younger 14-18 year old Cathy Sr and Cathy Jr Earnshaw/Linton, though.
Ralph Fiennes is actually my favorite actor’s portrayal of Heathcliff. I think he captured the anger, the charisma, the instability, the moodiness, the mystery, the obsessiveness, and the vague underlying sense of sympathy in Heathcliff the best. Physically, Ralph Fiennes is a white Caucasian actor, but to the the costume/make up department’s credit, they did have him wear a black wig and tan his skin enough to make him come across as mixed Romani in descent for this movie. Yeah, Nelly says his skin is “blacker than the devil,” but we also know that England was a very racist country towards outsiders who were not of pure white Anglo Saxon British descent back then, so Heathcliff could have been a lighter shade of tan than she said or he could have been dark brown. We don’t get a clear answer.
I also do love this scene of him talking to Nelly about being tired of getting revenge at the end of the 1992 Wuthering Heights film adaptation. They both appear to be around the right ages from the book here, and I love Nelly’s exasperated “Oh, for God’s sake…Can you please, stop staring like that!” She is so over and done with Heathcliff’s crazy bullshit, and the actress portraying Nelly here portrays that so well!
