Read the following passage from Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights:
"Before I came to live here," she commenced, waiting no further invitation to her story, "I was almost always at Wuthering Heights, because my mother had nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that was Hareton’s father, and I used to run errands, and help to make hay, and work about the farm... One fine summer morning—it was the beginning of harvest, I remember—Mr. Earnshaw, the old master, came down-stairs, dressed for a journey; and, after he had told Joseph what was to be done during the day, he turned to Hindley, and Cathy, and me—for I sat eating my porridge with them—and he said, speaking to his son, 'Now, my bonny man, I’m going to Liverpool to-day, what shall I bring you? You may choose what you like: only let it be little, for I shall walk there and back: sixty miles each way, that is a long spell!'"
In the context of the novel's overall plot structure, which of the following best describes the narrative function of the shift from Lockwood’s initial frame narrative to Nelly Dean’s retrospective tale?
- AIt outlines how Mr. Earnshaw prepares Joseph for the farm work before embarking on his long journey to Liverpool to purchase toys for his children.
- BIt disrupts the chronology of the narrative to confuse the reader about whether Nelly's recollections occur before or after Lockwood's arrival.
- It transitions the novel from an immediate, outsider's perspective to a retrospective, insider's chronicle that contextualizes the origins of the current household conflict.Answer
- DIt establishes a simple moral contrast between the hardworking Nelly and the lazy Catherine and Hindley to simplify the source of future family tension.
- EIt functions as a theatrical soliloquy that allows Nelly to address the reader directly and break the narrative's fourth wall.