another year older ...

... and deeper in debt. (Once again, 10 points will be awarded to anyone who can tell me what song those lyrics are from , which are unfortunately true for me this year! An extra 5 points go to anyone who can name one movie the song is in. And I plan to actually start a score-board on my sidebar, so this is serious!)

So while I was showering this morning, I suddenly realized: I'm now 26. Weird.

Happy Birthday to me!!

Anyway ... I'm not really doing much today. I've been reading lots of Harry Potter, and I'm now feeling like I've wasted sufficient amounts of time this vacation that I now have to get back to work. So today I will be forcing myself to actually write things for my two papers that are due at the start of next term. And in between, I'll be working on some other productive things, like adding photos to my website, or updating parts of the Linguistics Lexicon I've been trying to build. Should be good.

I'll probably end up hanging out with some of the YSAs from the ward tonight. One of them called last night, saying that he was trying to find out if anyone was doing something interesting. I told him I wasn't -- at least not yet -- and asked him to call me back if he found anything going on. He has an old mission companion visiting, and he said if nothing else, I could come hang out with them.

Oh, and tomorrow I have plans to spend the day with one of the families in the ward. On reflection, I'm not too excited about that. It's an older couple, somewhere in their late 60s or (more likely) mid-70s, and they have a 30-something son who lives with them (and is an absolute bore, in the most polite terms I can think of), and they are all very ... proper. As one of the YSAs put it, "The Queen would be proud." Hmm. I hope this doesn't last too long tomorrow. I've been before, and it wasn't that bad ... but I did have help then, with one of the other university students being there with me. I also hope I don't sound too terrible here ... Honestly, they're a very nice family. Just not the kind of people I would normally choose to hang out with.

Well, best get going. Happy New Year to everyone!

Christmas and moons

I had a really fun Christmas. On Christmas Day I spent the day with a family in the ward. We had Christmas dinner and Christmas pudding, and then we played some games. I had a great time with the younger girls (aged 15 and 17), which was a little odd, since I already knew the older kids quite well -- they're all Young Single Adults in the ward, and I have talked to them several times and hung out with them and stuff. But, I guess it's because the younger girls were willing to play games, and most everyone else wanted to sit around and watch TV or nap.

Yesterday was Boxing Day, and again I spent the day with a family from the ward. They were way nice! I have known them since I got here and always liked them, but I had never been to their home yet. It's very nice -- quite roomy, and very elegant. We again had Christmas dinner and Christmas pudding, then we went for a walk down by the canal (where I got my shoes all muddy -- not to worry, though, I cleaned them when I got home), and then went back home and watched TV for hours on end. It was very relaxing, and I had a great time. I felt very comfortable with them, more so than with the other family, which is kind of odd, since I've done a lot more with the others. Anyway, they brought me home around 11:00, and I called Katie and had a super conversation with her.

I've become very interested in the moon lately. I don't know exactly why that is, but it's suddenly quite fascinating to me. So I found this little HTML application to add to my blog, which gives the current phase of the moon. Kind of cool. It's very easy to use if you want to check it out. Just click the moon in the picture, and it links to the website where it's hosted. You can get the HTML code from there. I also found out today that the day I was born, the moon was barely into the waxing crescent phase, by about two days (which would make it ... about 4% of full).

some stuff

Two Commercials

I was just looking at Paul's blog, as it's been a while since I hung out over there, and he has two recent posts with commercials in them. Take a look at both of them. They're pretty great.

IKEA: The Lamp. You may have to watch it twice to catch what the guy says at the end, as he's got this little (presumably) Swedish accent. Hilarious, though!
Honda: When everything works. Absolutely amazing. Be sure to check out the article from Snopes.com that Paul linked here.

Harry Potter Update

In case some of you don't know yet, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is now finished and will be published 16 July 2005. You can pre-order it now from Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com, and I'm sure you can order a copy at most any bookstore near you as well, if you want to be there for midnight madness and mayhem.

If anyone wants me to pre-order British editions over here, let me know and I'd be glad to do so. (You can either email me or just post a comment to this entry.)

Also, if you'd like a little more info on this, check out JKRowling.com, specifically the Rumour section and the News section. And if the Do Not Disturb door is still openable, you can find instructions on Mugglenet about how to get the clues. (I haven't been able to get it to work, personally, but be sure to give it a try.)

Fair Tax articles

I haven't heard much about the Fair Tax Initiative (House Resolution No. 25), but I read two great articles about it today. If any of you don't know anything about it yet, be sure to check out the official website, which you can get to from here, or by clicking the banner at the bottom of my sidebar. And then, if you're interested in hearing some more about it, check out these articles.

Walter E. Williams - National Sales Tax. Williams is an economics professor at George Mason University (if I remember correctly), and I've learned much more economics from him than I ever did in High School. He makes the point that while a national sales tax like HR 25 proposes might be a step in the right direction, there is still a much larger issue at stake that will not be solved by any kind of tax system.

Matt Towery - The 'Fair' Tax. Matt Towery supports the Fair Tax Initiative, and in this article he laments that it's creator and main advocate doesn't get the respect he deserves in Congress.

one more meme ... please help

Everybody, please help me find out what kind of pirate I am! I desperately need to know! :D

What kind of pirate am I? You decide!
You can also view a breakdown of results or put one of these on your own page!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

lots of memes

What's a meme, you may ask? Well, it's basically something in your blog that's about ... yourself. :) And it often refers to all those silly-yet-somehow-so-entertaining quizzes that tell you which character you are and stuff. Which is what it refers to here. I found several that I really liked, and was quite pleased with the results, so here you are.


'Tis a great mystery, but somehow you have come to
belong in Jane Eyre; a random world of love,
kindness, madness, bad luck and lunatic
ex-wives. There really isn't much to say about
the place you belong in. It's your place, and
though it seems far from reality largly due to
how random the events are, you seem to enjoy
it. You belong in a world where not too many
people understand you, and where you can be
somewhat of a recluse.


Which Classic Novel do You Belong In?
brought to you by Quizilla


Woo-hoo!! I belong in Jane Eyre!! :D


Hey, you're not OOC at all! You are... Canon
Snape! You have the dubious honor of being the
ugly, sarcastic, greasy git so many of us know
and love. Regardless of whether you're in a
het, slash, or gen fic, you are the
detention-giving bastard who would never even
dream of cuddling a fluffy bunny rabbit or
wearing purple leather. Even if you do
something that seems OOC, your writer is good
enough to explain it so that it seems
believable. Unfortunately, it's fairly rare to
find you in fanfiction, but for those authors
who write you... Ten points to Slytherin!


What Wildly Out-of-Character Fanfic Snape Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Warning: If you decide to take this quiz yourself (which I doubt most of you will, knowing you all as I do), be aware that it's PG-13, in my opinion, because of all the ridiculously out-of-character Snapes out there who apparently think about little other than sex. Happily, I've never read any of those fanfics.

My very British name is Amelia Garside.
Take The Very British Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

And last, but not least ...


Congratulations! You're a preposition! preposition
(prp-zshn)
n. Abbr. prep.
A word or phrase placed typically before a
substantive and indicating the relation of that
substantive to a verb, an adjective, or another
substantive, as English at, by, with, from, and
in regard to. HELL YEAH!


What Part of Speech are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

LOL! I thought the idea of finding out what part of speech you are was hilarious! And hey, I'm a preposition, how cool is that? You know, you can do lots of things with prepositions.

new quote

You may have noticed my new quote on the sidebar. If not, you should read it now. It's by Lemony Snicket, the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events. I just read the first book of the series yesterday and today, and I really enjoyed it. He has a fun style, and despite the mild plot and simple language, I had a great time with it. So I decided to see what more I could find about Lemony Snicket on the internet, and I came across an interview he did with Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). RIF asked him what activities he thought would encourage children to read more, and I loved his response. Not particularly funny, according to normal Snicket standards, but still a great quote.

Tonight was our second Stake Choir Christmas Concert, down in Chorley. It went quite well -- the tenors even remembered their entrance on For Unto Us a Child is Born! The local MP (Member of Parliament) was there as well, so that was kind of special.

I called Margo after getting home from there tonight, and we had a good 2-hour long, Nirvana-like conversation. It was wonderful talking to her, hearing her voice again, and discussing all of our issues and grievances, as well as good times. Though I think we did a lot more of grievances tonight, but it was quite cathartic. :)

Happy Birthday, Emma Jane!

I was wakened this morning around 6:30 by a phone call from my sister, informing me that she had had her baby! Emma Jane was, if I remember right, 7 pounds 2 ounces, and around 19 inches. That makes her the smallest of Wendy's children at birth, which rather surprised us, since she was almost a week overdue, and we rather thought she'd be quite a bit bigger than the others. Wendy said she has a very fair complexion, and doesn't look much like the other kids at all at this point. It'll be fun to watch her grow up!

Congratulations, Wendy and Bruce!!

Oh, and Bruce gets a second congrats for his college graduation that will take place this weekend. Way to go!

some exciting things

Exciting thing #1: I finally sent out Christmas packages. While I was unable to send them to absolutely _everyone_ I know and love, those of you who are expecting something (or have been told to expect something) can now look eagerly in your mailboxes. Well, I'd wait a week or so, actually, before getting too eager, but you get the drift.

Exciting thing #2: A few days ago I got an email informing me that my parents had signed me up for Rush Limbaugh 24/7, as a Christmas present. Yay! *small happy dance* That means I can now finally listen to Rush again, and it's been grand. The computer network I'm on over here doesn't allow me to live-stream audio or video, or I would sure have been listening avidly to him for the last few months. But with 24/7, I can download the audio and listen to it whenever I want. Exciting.

Exciting thing #3: Tonight I went to watch the movie "Phantom of the Opera". Wonderful! I've never seen it on stage, but I felt like the movie was perfectly done to match the music and the general tone of the story. Wow. JoAnna and I are still planning to go see it on the stage in London, though, probably sometime in January.

Exciting thing #4: Well, there isn't one, really. But here's something ... odd, I guess. Last night I had the strangest craving for a traditional English breakfast: dry toast, baked beans, sausage, and all. Strange, I know. But I went ahead and bought some beans and sausage today anyway. Hope it tastes good in the morning. :)

why do I do this to myself?

I'm not too sure what I was thinking, but I decided to go ahead and rent Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tonight. I honestly don't know why I do this to myself. I guess there was some hope that I might not find it as revolting this time -- that maybe it would grow on me. It didn't. It did the same thing it's done every time before. Namely, it made me mad and annoyed. Do either David Thewlis (Lupin) or Gary Oldman (Sirius) have any idea what it means to talk in a low voice? I don't believe they do. Either that, or Alfonso Cuaron thinks we're all deaf out here, and the only way to hear anything is for people on screen to shout it. Or -- which I consider most likely -- they don't understand that sometimes our emotions are better portrayed as we try to hide them, and that sometimes, hiding our emotions may be the best way to cope with them. Stan Shunpike was wonderful, of course, but that was it, really. And everything just feels so rushed!

Sorry to be ranting about this again -- I know most of you have heard it ten times over already. Once again, my conclusion is that I have to go read the book again. I can handle that. ;)

chopsticks pro, right here!

So tonight was our Linguistics Department Christmas Social, and we had Chinese food at one of the restaurants on campus. Ironic though it seems, the majority of the students there were Chinese ... Gotta love it! I'm constantly amazed at how they all seem to know me, especially the girls. Some of them who I honestly don't even remember meeting before know me by name. It's a bit weird, but nice in a way too.

Anyway, when I sat down with my food, I was surprised to see most of them using spoons to eat with, and they teasingly asked if I was going to use chopsticks. To which I replied that yes, I certainly was -- at least, I was going to try. The chopsticks were a lot longer than I'm used to, and they were plastic and didn't stick quite as well as the wooden ones I'm used to using in the States. And of course, the rice wasn't nearly sticky enough, but that's nothing that unusual for what I'm used to at home. Anyway, about halfway through our meal, one of the girls said that I use my chopsticks 'professionally'. ;D And they all were impressed that I done as well as I did with them. So there you are, you didn't even know it, most of you, but you are all acquainted with a professional chopstick user!

Many thanks to Sara, who used to eat Chinese with me all the time during our sophopmore year at Ricks College, where we used to have competitions to see who could make it the longest using only chopsticks!

friends are the greatest

Wow. I am so amazed. And humbled. And almost a little bit ashamed.

This evening I was sitting around in my room, reading random articles on the Harry Potter Lexicon (since I'm finished with my first assignment, I've decided to take some down time now), when my phone rang.

It was Sarah Hockley, one of 'the girls' -- meaning, one of the other on-campus students in Lancaster Ward. "We're at your door, and we have something for you," she informed me.

I made a brief attempt to clean up my room a little (it's been getting really terrible lately!), and then went down the corridor to open the flat door for them. Sarah and JoAnna stood there (Denise already went home, earlier today), and there they stood with a large, green-wrapping-papered Christmas present and a home-made stocking for me, along with a medium-ish brown envelope with my name written on it in red and green markers.

Apparently they did all of this on Sunday night, without telling me anything about it. They almost let it slip several times during Family Home Evening on Monday, they said -- especially with all that sugar in them, from eating brownies and pumpkin cookies and chocolate chip cookies at JoAnna's while making up my packages, repeated the next night as we baked holiday cookies for our activity.

They asked about my paper, and Sarah offered to let me use her printer if I was still having trouble with the labs the next morning. We chatted for a few minutes, and they said they couldn't stay because they had to go someplace. Just as they were leaving, I looked a little more closely at the stocking they had decorated for me and noticed that it had a potato-angel on top of the tree, singing at the top of its lungs (which I assume is a reference to fact that I like to sing, as they all know well). When they had left, I examined the stocking a little more closely and found that they had wrapped up several little presents to stuff inside it, along with the usual candy.

Earlier today, I had stopped by Denise's room to borrow her 3-foot Christmas tree. She had offered, even before it got here, to let me use it during the holidays, to lend some holiday cheer to my room. I had been intending all day to decorate it with the ornaments and tinsel she handed over with it, but I hadn't gotten to it yet -- maybe I just wasn't feeling the Christmas spirit yet.

But now, I will go decorate it right away and turn on the lights, so that I can put my stocking and other presents under it (including those that have arrived already from my sister). Good friends really are a wonderful thing to have.

nothing special

I don't have anything that special to talk about, but I thought I'd write a brief update and relieve you all from the dreaded thoughts of having to read my rants about Wuthering Heights and unreliable narrators.

I finished my first assignment tonight. That means that tomorrow I can take it to the computer lab and get it printed out, and maybe even hand it in that day. That would mean I'd have all Friday to just play! Happy, joy joy! (I will be posting the paper on my website, for those of you who might be interested in it.)

I think I'll be going to the movies this weekend. I really want to see "Phantom of the Opera", and I just learned today that it will be at our theater on Saturday! I didn't expect it to get here until after Christmas, really.

The last week or so I've been Harry Potter obsessing again. Yeah, I know ... I just may have to start re-reading the books from the library over Christmas vacation. I also am planning to send in an abstract for a possile presentation at the 2005 Harry Potter conference, which will take place in the UK this year. I know, it's pretty geeky, huh? Kind of like going to a Star Trek convention. But I don't plan on dressing up like anyone (although probably several others will), and I would be doing a presentation on a real, academic subject -- not just debating whether Hermione loves Ron or Harry! :) (BTW, my paper would be on characterisation in Harry Potter, particularly of James and Lily, since they get very little characterisation except through other characters.)

Welll, I guess that's it. I hope everyone is doing GREAT out there! I am almost ready to send out my Christmas packages, so be ready!

rambling post about Wuthering Heights

During the last week or so I read Wuthering Heights online. It's been quite an interesting read. I couldn't help but remember some comments I'd read earlier, explaining how many critics for several years claimed that WH must have been written by Branwell Bronte, as they couldn't conceive of a woman -- especially one who had been so secluded most of her life -- could possibly have written such a passtionate book. One even claimed that Emily, if she did write it, must have been an 'unsexed female' to be capable of something like this. At the time, I laughed to myself and thought, "Silly people, thinking that women are uncapable of passion! Little do they know ..." Well, when I read the book, I almost agreed with them! It wasn't the passion necessarily that surprised me, but the violence (which, in her day and age would have been referred to as passion). Wow.

And then, the whole way through the novel, I kept asking myself, "What the heck is wrong with these people? They've got major issues!" It wasn't just Heathcliff, but everyone else too: Catherine Earnshaw, Edgar and Isabella Linton, Hindley ... they all had such issues, and I just couldn't help but wonder what kind of freaks they were and how they got that way. Certainly, a lot of it has to do with the society they grew up in and the circumstances imposed on them: Catherine was spoiled from childhood, which makes her temper more virulent; Heathcliff usurps Mr Earnshaw's love from Hindley, which makes Hindley more jealous and cruel. But it seems that all of their flaws existed in each character before these external forces were inflicted on them -- what makes Catherine passionately tempermental in the first place? what disposes Hindley to jealousy and cruelty to begin with?

But one of the things that has really bothered me more than anything is the classification of Lockwood as an unreliable narrator. This really irks me, and I'll tell you why: it's because all the assertions of Lockwood's unreliability seem to rest on faulty reasoning.

One paper claimed that "Since both narrators [Lockwood and Mrs Dean] speak from their own, subjective point of view, they are necessarily unreliable." This is just plain absurd. This would mean that literally any first-person narrator is automatically unreliable, which is not the case. And we can even extend it to claim that any third-person narrator is also automatically unreliable. Of course, there's always an amount of unreliability in any narration -- narration is itself a subjective activity, and merely by choosing to tell us a particular story, or to tell us certain things about a certain character, or to note an otherwise un-noteworthy event, is a reflection of any narrator's subjectivity. But unreliability in a narrator is more than just subjectivity -- it is a question of whether or not the things presented in the text are believed by the reader to have actually happened, and to have happened as the narrator presents them. The narrator of Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is not unreliable merely because he is a first-person narrator (and thus, speaks subjectively), but because the reader learns that he has intentionally obscured facts from the reader. Furthermore, unreliability must depend on the actual text of the narration to create this doubt in the reader's mind. It is entirely conceivable that a reader might conclude that Jane, the first-person narrator of Jane Eyre, is deranged or delusional, and that nothing in the text ever really happened to her, but that she is in reality a warped, embittered old maid living by herself in her old age and pretending that all these things really happened to her. That's any reader's right to make such conclusions. But because such a doubt is not introduced in the text itself, Jane is not considered an unreliable narrator. There is no textual evidence to make the reader question the truth of what Jane tells us, although we know that it is all told from her 'own, subjective point of view'.

One commentary (by Cliffsnotes, even!) claims that Lockwood is unreliable because:

he mentions twice that Heathcliff does not extend a hand to him, yet Lockwood still considers Heathcliff a gentleman.

But, in these times (which by the way, are not Victorian times, but Enlightenment times, although they certainly reflect on Emily Bronte's Victorian society) a person's status as a gentleman really had nothing to do with their manners. It was a social position, determined mainly by the criterion of ownership: if you owned land, and especially if you owned lots of money, you were necessarily a gentleman (or a lady). Certainly, gentlemen and ladies were expected to behave in a more refined manner than other people, but that wasn't the main criterion. You could be the worst, rudest person in the world, and everyone around you could hate you, but they would still refer to you as a gentleman. So, Lockwood's conception of Heathcliff as a gentleman is entirely accurate, despite Heathcliff's obvious lack of courtesy.

The next point annoys me even more, since it is entirely text-based (as opposed to the last, which is based more on schemata and semantics). Cliffsnotes goes on to claim Lockwood's unreliability because:

Lockwood also notices that “grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedgecutters” but erroneously assumes that Heathcliff has a “whole establishment of domestics.”

But this is not at all what Lockwood has assumed. Look at the actual extract, from Chapter 1 of WH:

[Heathcliff] sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court, - 'Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine.'

'Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,' was the reflection suggested by this compound order. 'No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters.'

In other words, Lockwood has inferred, from Heathcliff's compound order, that Joseph is the only servant, 'the whole establishment of domestics'. This is a perfectly natural assumption for Lockwood to make, since if there were a whole score of servants at the Heights, Heathcliff would presumably order one servant to take care of the horse, and another to get the wine. Come on, Cliffsnotes! -- you're a published and respected establishment, please at least make an effort to get it right once in a while!

(NB: I should point out here the possible argument that Lockwood still seems to believe there is a score of servants at the Heights, since in Chapter 2 he repeatedly asks whether he could get a 'lad' to take him home to the Grange, and then send him back the next day. However, this is also a natural assumption for Lockwood. Since his conjecture about Joseph being the only servant, no one has explicitly told him how many servants there are -- indeed, it would be rather odd if someone did tell him. And, in addition to this lack of explicit knowledge, he has now seen Zillah (the 'lusty dame' in Chapter 1), and her presence there obviously contradicts Lockwood's previous assumption that Joseph is the only servant. Also, when he returns to the Heights in Chapter 2, Lockwood is introduced to Hareton Earnshaw, and he conjectures that the lad might be another servant, though he can't decide this for sure. All of this evidence seems to support what would no doubt be Lockwood's default assumption about the servants: namely, that a place as large as Wuthering Heights, with a master as rich as Mr Heathcliff, probably would have several servants.)

Again in the Cliffsnotes commentary, Lockwood's reliability is questioned on the basis of several of his actions, including the following:

[I]n an attempt to make polite conversation, Lockwood misidentifies a heap of rabbit pelts as pets and misidentifies the woman as Heathcliff’s wife. After being corrected by Heathcliff, Lockwood then mistakes Hareton as Heathcliff’s son. Lockwood’s inability to read people and situations make his narration suspect.

Once again, however, these misidentifications are not an indication that Lockwood is unreliable: there is no textual evidence that these things did not really happen, and merely being mistaken about someone or something does not mean that you are necessarily unreliable, no matter how many times you are mistaken. Rather, to me, Lockwood's mistakes in this chapter are an indication, not that he is unreliable, but that Wuthering Heights is an utterly incomprehensible place to him, as are its occupants. These blunders are not so much a reflection on Lockwood's character as they are on the character of Wuthering Heights and all who live there. This seems, to me at least, to be precisely what Emily Bronte was going for in the opening of her novel: she sets up a place and its inhabitants as being completely incomprehensible, and then proceeds to tell us their history so that at the end we do comprehend why they act in this strange way.

Of the two main narrators, I consider Ellen 'Nelly' Dean to be far less reliable than Lockwood. It is clear, for instance, that she wants Lockwood to marry Cathy Linton Heathcliff and take her away from Wuthering Heights. This desire may well drive her to present characters less reliably, in order to make Lockwood think that Cathy would be a desirable wife. The very fact that she does desire it, though, also seems to contribute to her unreliability as a narrator: I would expect, after all she has seen of the people at the Heights, that Nelly would know that such a marriage is hardly likely, considering Heathcliff's calculated plans for revenge, and his deceitful and powerful manipulation of so many others. If Lockwood ever did try to start up a courtship of the girl, Heathcliff would immediately be aware of it, and would never allow the marriage to take place (although he might possibly encourage the courtship, as a means to drive Hareton more passionately in love with Cathy in the face of jealousy, in the same way the he used Linton). Nelly's inability to foresee the consequences of her desire makes me wonder what other things she has had difficulty connecting. Is it possible that she is completely unaware that many of her own actions have encouraged some of these terrible events to proceed, or that Heathcliff had a calculated design in taking over Wuthering Heights, or that Cathy would inevitably fall in love with Linton purely on the basis of her not being allowed to see him? If she fails to see these connections, then it is entirely possible that she has drawn false assumptions about the causes and effects of events in the narration.

Furthermore, Nelly displays major hypocrisy throughout the narrative: she hates Heathcliff when he first comes to Wuthering Heights, then she begins to like him in comparison with Edgar Linton, then she prefers Edgar and despises Heathcliff when he returns after his three-year absence, then she seems to like him again at the end of the story when she is again housekeeper at the Heights; she first helps Cathy Linton to be naughty, allowing her to go out riding (where she first encounters the Heights) when her orders were to keep by her at all times, then she betrays Cathy's secrets by telling Edgar of her love letters to Linton and her visits to the Heights. This kind of inconsistent action on Nelly's part appears again and again througout the story. First she claims that it is not her place to meddle with anyone's affairs, and then she turns around and meddles with them all! This inconsistency may partly be due to a desire to make herself look good in Lockwood's eyes (after all, she is his housekeeper), or it may simply be due a terribly dual nature that makes her unable to decide where she stands, or to stand there when she has decided. In any case, though, it leads the reader (or at least it did me) to wonder whether she might not be displaying similar inconsistencies in her narration: maybe she's being more harsh to Catherine Earnshaw after her death than she was during Catherine's life; maybe she's being nicer about Linton in retrospect than she would have been in the present. Who knows? There is no absolute, definite point at which Nelly's narration is called into question (as there is, for example, in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), but you still have to wonder whether everything she tells us is really how it all happened in the first place.