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nelly dean a return to wuthering heights

If We Were Having Coffee: Another Hard Day’s Work

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Good day everyone! I hope you all are doing well this weekend and have had another wonderful week.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you it’s been another good, busy week at work. I forgot how busy our café gets, but it’s nice seeing all of the students again. Nice seeing familiar faces and becoming acquainted with some of the new student body. It’s nostalgic in some ways to me because of the times when I was at Columbia College.

Being on campus in this capacity makes it hard sometimes because I do miss college. I miss the environment I was accustomed to during my last four years of schooling, the learning, and all of the different discussions about texts in my classes we had. But at times, I don’t too. I don’t miss the amount of effort I put into getting my work complete, the amount of hours I spent working when I wished I could’ve spent more time with the small amount of friends I’d made at Columbia College. I reflect on these things, a little wishing I’d done things differently. But also knowing at this point I can’t turn back and that things worked out the way they were supposed to.

College made me realize how hard I have to work at things to get what I want out of life. As a student, I’ve always struggled with keeping my grades up to good standards. So I’ve always had to work at getting good grades, even when other aspects of life tried to hold me down. College made me appreciate my work ethic and helped me improve it in order to chase after my dreams.

So while I might not necessarily be content with my job, looking at it through this lens has helped make my life a little bit easier. Made me want to continue doing well at my job despite all the difficulties and stress I’ll continue to face while I’m there.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you there’s something I forgot to mention last weekend. I briefly realized it after posting last weekend’s coffee post. I know I’m late to the party in mentioning this because you all have probably already noticed it, but I’ve changed the look of my blog. It’s something I’d been meaning to do because I was discontent with the way it looked. I wanted to make it look more personal, more like something I would want to check out. Something that looks close to the way I want my blog design to look in the future.

So far, I really like it. I think it definitely looks more personal, is easier to grab a reader’s attention, and easier to access. Plus, it looks more personal to me too and I can’t seem to look at it enough. It’s very close to the way I want my blog design to look, minus a few little things here and there that can always be tweaked to my liking. But I definitely think it’s an improvement in comparison to my previous look of my blog. I definitely have an easier time seeing all of my other posts with it and think it’s very welcoming to every person who decides to visit. But what all do you think? Do you like it too? Or are there some ways it can improve? If you have the time, please let me know because I’d love some feedback on what all I can do to make my blog better.

Speaking of my blog and writing, I hope I’ve been doing a better job of keeping my blog updated with new posts. Now, I know I’m not going to always be able to write and publish something new for you all every day. But I do want to continuously keep my blog up to date as frequently as I can. Write as many posts to be published as I can whenever I have the chance. So I’m hoping that’ll continue in the weeks to come and that you’ll continue coming back to check out my posts.

If we were having coffee, I’d let you know I finished reading Nelly Dean this week. I found it to be a much more enjoyable read than I was expecting. Since it’s based off of Wuthering Heights, I wasn’t sure if I’d really enjoy it or not since I didn’t enjoy reading that book in college. But I did end up liking it just because of the way the narrator of the story portrayed the characters and the experiences she faced while living in that household. And now that I’m done reading that book, I’m starting to read The Dark End of the Street, which is a set of fictional stories about crime and sex and how they both go hand in hand. It’s been pretty good so far, though I’ve been facing some serious déjà vu while reading these stories. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I really feel like I’ve read this book before. Mostly because the stories I’ve read so far just seem very familiar to me for some reason. I don’t remember for certain if I have or not, but I’ll keep going and see what happens.

I would also tell you I’ve also been continuing to watch Pokémon Minecraft videos. I just finished the first series of the ones I was watching last night and started on another I think I’ll enjoy. It’s the same Youtuber, but a little different than the previous ones I was watching. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it as much as I did the other ones, but only time will tell.

If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you my older sister recommend an amazing podcast to me called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. It’s about looking through the chapters in the series as if we were reading a sacred text, like the Bible and other texts people tend to read in that way. But the two speakers in this podcast are taking each chapter in Harry Potter and having an open discussion about them with regards to a theme they follow and how they as readers can relate to what’s going on in the story and that particular theme.

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From what I’ve listened to of the podcast so far, it’s been nothing short of amazing. I’ve only listened to two of the podcasts, but what I’ve heard gives me hope that the discussions will continue to be more enlightening to me and continue opening me up to love reading Harry Potter more with each passing day. So I hope that as I continue listening to this podcast that I’ll continue enjoying Harry Potter as much as I have in the past.

I would also briefly like to mention my best friend and I are planning on going on walks together Saturday mornings. She had messaged me yesterday night while I was walking with Mom about going to one of the parks here and walking together.

We had briefly talked about doing something like that whenever we had gotten together for the cystic fibrosis walk a couple months ago. It was something we thought would be a whole lot of fun to do, but then never really talked about it again afterwards until yesterday. Since I enjoy walking and she’s been wanting to do more of it, when she brought it up yesterday, I was really excited about it. While Erin and I are really close friends, we don’t always hang out together very often. Mostly because her health isn’t always the best or because I was always working on weekends so I didn’t really get to see her as often as I’d have liked. So when she messaged me about this yesterday, I was really excited because it would give both of us the chance to hang out together a little more often than we normally do and now gives me something else to look forward to on weekends.

I would say I’ve had a good week, all things considered. Hope you all have been doing well and can’t wait to hear about what you’ve been up to this past week.

Book Review: Nelly Dean: A Return to Wuthering Heights

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Rating: 4 stars

Young Nelly Dean has been Hindley’s closest companion for as long as she can remember, living freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights. But when the benevolence of the master brings a wild child into the house, Nelly learns she must follow in her mother’s footsteps, be called “servant” and give herself over completely to the demands of the Earnshaw family.

But Nelly is not the only one who finds her life disrupted by this strange newcomer. As death, illness, and passion sweep through the house, Nelly suffers heartache and betrayals at the hands of those she cherishes most, tempting her to leave it all behind. But when a new heir is born, a reign of violence begins that will test even Nelly’s formidable spirit as she finds out what it is to know true sacrifice.

Nelly Dean is a wonderment of storytelling and an inspired accompaniment to Emily Bronte’s adored work. It is the story of a woman who is fated to bear the pain of a family she is unable to leave, and unable to save.

As someone who detested Wuthering Heights after reading it for an English Literature course at my college, I decided to give this book a try to see if it would be any better. Despite how much I didn’t enjoy this book’s inspiration, I found Nelly Dean redeemed the characters for me.

Told from the perspective of one of the servants at Wuthering Heights, this book truly depicts the plot of the original in a way that makes the story and characters seem not so terrible. This book made me view the characters in a different light, even sympathizing with some of them. I found myself better understanding Healthcliff’s predicament and why he hated most of the Earnshaw descendants so much.

Hearing this story from the perspective of Nelly also put a different twist on the story from what you hear in the original. You better understood her view of the following events that unfold as well as the part she plays in it. You discover secrets originally hidden in the original storyline and how important a role servants play in great houses like Wuthering Heights.

Another reason I enjoy this story so much better than Wuthering Heights is because of Nelly’s character. I sympathized with her so much while reading this book. She dealt with a lot of struggles with the Earnshaw family but yet still stayed at the house despite her life circumstances. I understood why she was conflicted to leave her service with this family despite her own mother leaving them behind.

The writing style of this story made it more enjoyable too. I like it because the story is told in letter format, though it doesn’t necessarily follow the style of a letter with each chapter. But you know all of the events being described are addressed directly to Mr. Lockwood, despite none of the letters being sent out. I find this to be interesting though, considering Mr. Lockwood is the narrator of the original book. So in many ways, I felt like Case did a good job of making it seem like he was passing the torch of telling the story to Nelly.

While I enjoy this book much better than the original, I still think a majority of the characters are awful. This book slightly lessened my dislike of the characters, but not by much. It definitely made it easier to sympathize with all of the characters by making them seem more human, but I still don’t like these residents. While I understood Nelly’s conviction to stay there, I also had moments where I thought she should leave them. I feel like her staying there just allowed the pain she experienced to never heal. I get being with a family that feels like your home, but I felt like it was unhealthy and caused her more harm than good. Considering she could’ve gotten a position somewhere else, I just didn’t see why she stayed for so long when she wasn’t happy.

But overall, I enjoyed reading Nelly Dean very much. To the point where I’m actually considering giving Wuthering Heights another chance.

 

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