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Overview
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a love novel set in the moors of northern England between 1757 and 1803. The novel was first published in 1847.
Character Summary:
Mr. Earnshaw is the owner of Wuthering Heights.
Catherine is his daughter.
Hindley is his son.
Heathcliff is an orphan.
Mr. Linton is the proprietor of Thrushcross Grange.
Mrs. Linton is his wife.
Isabella is their daughter.
Edgar is their son.
Frances Earnshaw is Hindley’s wife.
Hareton Earnshaw is Frances’ and Hindley’s son.
Catherine Linton is Catherine Eamshaw’s and Edgar Linton’s daughter.
Linton Heathcliff is Isabella Linton’s and Heathcliff’s son.
Ellen “Nelly” Dean is the housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange.
Mr. Lockwood is a tenant at Thrushcross Grange and narrator of the story.
Plot Summary of Wuthering Heights
In 1801, Mr. Lockwood became a tenant at Thrushcross Grange, an old farm owned by a Mr. Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights. In the early days of his tenancy, he made two calls on his landlord. On his first visit, he met Heathcliff, an abrupt, unsocial man who was surrounded by a pack of snarling, barking dogs. When he went to Wuthering Heights a second time, he met the other members of the strange household: a rude, unkempt but handsome young man named Hareton Earnshaw and a pretty young woman who was the widow of Heathcliff’s son.
During his visit, snow began to fall. It covered the moor paths and made travel impossible for a stranger in that bleak countryside. Heathcliff refused to let one of the servants go with him as a guide but said that if he stayed the night he could share Hareton’s bed or that of Joseph, a sour, canting old servant. When Mr. Lockwood tried to borrow Joseph’s lantern for the homeward journey, the old fellow set the dogs on him, to the amusement of Hareton and Heathcliff. The visitor was finally rescued by Zillah, the cook, who hid him in an unused chamber of the house.
That night, Mr. Lockwood had a strange dream. Thinking that a branch was rattling against the window, he broke the glass in his attempt to unhook the casement. As he reached out to break off the fir branch outside, his fingers closed on a small ice-cold hand, and a weeping voice begged to be let in. The unseen presence said that her name was Catherine Linton, and she tried to force a way through the broken casement; Mr. Lockwood screamed.
Heathcliff appeared in a state of great excitement and savagely ordered Mr. Lockwood out of the room. Then he threw himself upon the bed by the shattered pane and begged the spirit to come in out of the dark and the storm. The voice was, however, heard no more—only the hiss of swirling snow and the wailing of a cold wind that blew out the smoking candle.
The housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange, Ellen Dean, was able to satisfy part of Mr. Lockwood’s curiosity about the happenings of that night and the strange household at Wuthering Heights, for she had lived at Wuthering Heights as a child. Her story of the Earnshaws, Lintons, and Heathcliffs began years before, when old Mr. Earnshaw was living at Wuthering Heights with his wife and two children, Hindley and Catherine.
Once, on a trip to Liverpool, Mr. Earnshaw had found a starving and homeless orphan, a ragged, dirty, urchin, dark as a gypsy, whom he brought back with him to Wuthering Heights and christened Heathcliff—a name that was to serve the fourteen-year-old boy as both a given and a surname.
Gradually, the orphan began to usurp the affections of Mr. Earnshaw, whose health was failing. Wuthering Heights became riddled with petty jealousies; old Joseph, the servant, augmented the bickering, and Catherine was much too fond of Heathcliff. At last, Hindley was sent away to school. A short time later, Mr. Earnshaw died.
When Hindley Earnshaw returned home for his father’s funeral, he brought a wife with him. As the new master of Wuthering Heights, he revenged himself on Heathcliff by treating him like a servant. Catherine had become a wild and undisciplined hoyden who still continued to be fond of Heathcliff.
One night, Catherine and Heathcliff tramped through the moors to Thrushcross Grange, where they spied on their neighbors, the Lintons. Attacked by a watchdog, Catherine was taken into the house and stayed there as a guest for five weeks until she was able to walk again.
During that time, she became intimate with the pleasant family of Thrushcross Grange, Mr. and Mrs. Linton and their two children, Edgar and Isabella. Afterwards, the Lintons visited frequently at Wuthering Heights. As a result of Hindley’s ill-treatment and the arrogance of Edgar and Isabella, Heathcliff became jealous and morose. He vowed revenge on Hindley, whom he hated with all of his savage nature.
The next summer, Hindley’s consumptive wife, Frances, gave birth to a son, Hareton Earnshaw, and shortly thereafter she died. In his grief, Hindley became desperate, ferocious, and degenerate. In the meantime, Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton had become sweethearts. The girl confided to Ellen Dean that she really loved Heathcliff, but she felt it would be degrading for her to marry the penniless orphan. Heathcliff, who overheard this conversation, disappeared the same night and did not return for many years.
Edgar and Catherine married and lived at Thrushcross Grange with Ellen Dean as their housekeeper. There the pair lived happily until the return of Heathcliff, who was greatly improved in manners and appearance. He accepted Hindley’s invitation to live at Wuthering Heights, an invitation extended because Hindley found in Heathcliff a companion for card-playing and drinking, and because he hoped to recoup his own dwindling fortune from Heathcliff’s pockets.
Isabella Linton began to show a strong attraction to Heathcliff, much to the dismay of Edgar and Catherine. One night, Edgar and Heathcliff had a quarrel. Soon afterward, Heathcliff eloped with Isabella, obviously marrying her only to avenge himself and provoke Edgar. Catherine, an expectant mother, underwent a serious illness. When Isabella and Heathcliff returned to Wuthering Heights, Edgar refused to recognize his sister and forbade Heathcliff to enter his house. Despite this restriction, Heathcliff managed to have a tender interview with Catherine. Partly as a result of this meeting, her child, named Catherine Linton, was born prematurely, and she died a few hours later.
Isabella found life with Heathcliff unbearable and left him, going to London, where a few months later her child, Linton, was born. After Hindley’s death, Heathcliff the guest became the master of Wuthering Heights, for Hindley had mortgaged his estate to him. Hareton, the natural heir, was reduced to dependency on his father’s enemy.
When Isabella died, twelve years after leaving Heathcliff, her brother took her sickly child to live at Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff soon heard of the child’s arrival and demanded that Linton be sent to Wuthering Heights to live with his father. Young Catherine once visited Wuthering Heights and met her cousin Linton. Her father had tried to keep her in ignorance about the tenants of the place, but Heathcliff had let it be known that he wished the two children to be married.
About the time that Edgar Linton became seriously ill, Heathcliff persuaded Cathy to visit her little cousin, who was also in extremely bad health. Upon her arrival, Cathy was imprisoned for five days at Wuthering Heights and forced to marry her sickly cousin Linton before she was allowed to go home to see her father.
Although she was able to return to Thrushcross Grange before her father’s death, there was not enough time for Edgar Linton to alter his will. Thus his land and fortune went indirectly to Heathcliff. Weak, sickly Linton Heathcliff died soon after, leaving Cathy a widow and dependent on Heathcliff.
Mr. Lockwood went back to London in the spring without seeing Wuthering Heights or its people again. Travelling in the region the next autumn, he had a fancy to revisit Wuthering Heights. There, he found Catherine and Hareton in possession. From Ellen Dean, he heard that Heathcliff had died three months earlier, after deliberately starving himself for four days. He was a broken man, still disturbed by memories of the beautiful young Catherine Earnshaw. His death freed Catherine Heathcliff and Hareton from his tyranny, and Catherine was now teaching the ignorant boy to read and improving his rude manners.
Mr. Lockwood went to see Heathcliff’s grave. It was next to Catherine Earnshaw’s, on whose other side lay her husband. They lay under their three headstones: Catherine’s in the middle, weather-discolored and half-buried, Edgar’s partly moss-grown, Heathcliff’s still bare. In the surrounding countryside, there was a legend that they slept unquietly after their stormy, passionate lives. Shepherds and travelers at night claimed that they had seen Catherine and Heathcliff roaming the dark moors as they had done so often many years earlier.
Analysis of Wuthering Heights
Summary: The themes in Wuthering Heights are love, violence, vindictiveness, grief, financial ruin, death, destructive envy, loss, verbal abuse, marriage, hatred, and hope.
Related: Q & A: Discuss the theme of death in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”
Not only is Wuthering Heights a powerful love story and a compelling tale of the supernatural, it also offers readers insightful commentary on issues relating to class and morality. Emily Brontë’s novel is a complicated exploration of what happens when the established order of a community is thrown off balance. In the case of the Linton and Earnshaw families, it is the appearance of Heathcliff, the dark, mysterious orphan, that sets a chain of events in motion that destroy or threaten to destroy the lives of many of the characters. Although it is never clearly articulated, there is some reason to suspect that Heathcliff could be the illegitimate offspring of Mr. Earnshaw, who brings him into his home claiming to have found the child in Liverpool.
Heathcliff poses a threat to the Earnshaw family because he is dark-skinned (therefore different), wild, and possibly a half-sibling to the Earnshaw children, Catherine and Hindley. This complication adds a more frightening aspect to the physical, spiritual, and emotional attraction that develops between Catherine and Heathcliff. Added to the possibility of breaking the incest taboo is the problem of social class: Because of his suspect origins, Heathcliff could never fit into the life of the Earnshaw/Linton families.
Brontë employs great skill in making the landscape, the weather, the houses—even the dogs—reflect the opposing emotional climates of the Linton and Earnshaw homes. The Earnshaw residence, Wuthering Heights, is, as its name implies, subject to extremes in weather; winds, snow, and cold buffet the house and grounds.
By contrast, Thrushcross Grange, the home of the Lintons and later of Cathy and Edgar, is refined and filled with light, comfort, and opulence. Even the weather seems less severe there. The Grange stands in splendid contrast to the home shared by young Cathy, Hindley, and Heathcliff, a disjuncture made clear in the scene in which Catherine and Heathcliff spy on the Linton children from outside a window at the Grange.
The show of temper between Isabella and Linton as they fight over their delicate dog pales in contrast to the vehemence with which those at Wuthering Heights express their emotions. While Heathcliff is disdainful of these soft children, Catherine is captivated— metaphorically and literally. Significantly, from this chance encounter spring all of the troubles that Heathcliff and the Earnshaw and Linton children will endure. Whereas Catherine grows entranced with the soft life at the Grange and with Linton, Heathcliff falls victim to the destructive envy that will finally drive him to destroy everyone with whom he comes in contact. In his mind, the Lintons represent all that he can never be or have.
Yet it is, above all, the love and passionate attraction between Catherine and Heathcliff that destroys the two families. It is Heathcliff’s misunderstanding of the overheard conversation between Catherine and her nurse, Nelly Dean, that causes him to run away and eventually gives him the economic means to effect his revenge against the Earnshaws and the Lintons.
When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights after many years’ absence, he finds Catherine and Edgar married. Heathcliff’s anger damages everything it touches, from the ignorant child of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw, the wild Hareton, to Edgar Linton’s delicate sister, Isabella.
Heathcliff’s first overt act of revenge against Catherine and Edgar is to pursue and marry Isabella. From this point until he dies years later, Heathcliff’s anger at losing Catherine destroys everyone with whom he comes in contact, including Isabella, his own son, Linton, Catherine’s daughter, young Cathy, and her cousin, Hareton.
Even though both he and Catherine are married, Heathcliff does not leave her in peace. Not content simply to torture his own wife, Isabella, Heathcliff attacks Catherine verbally, and his violence causes her to fall ill and die soon after, while giving birth to young Cathy.
Heathcliff never recovers from the loss of Catherine, which remains the reason for his brutal treatment of everyone whom he associates with her. His anger also directly causes his own death. Yet, for all of his violence, hatred, and vindictiveness, Heathcliff does not attain peace of mind or release from grief. He only succeeds in bringing Hindley to financial ruin; capturing Edgar Linton’s fortune; and creating in young Hareton an untutored, violent beast.
As Heathcliff nears his own death, Brontë again uses the weather to mirror a character’s interior turmoil. Heathcliff dies alone while a storm rages around the Heights. He is later found, a window open, the implication being that Catherine finally came to claim him for her own. While this scene is a climax, it does not constitute the resolution of Wuthering Heights, for Brontë provides an ending that offers a ray of hope in the promised union of young Cathy with Hareton Earnshaw.
Not only does Cathy “tame” Hareton and teach him to read, she also learns to love and value him. The union of these two people represents a transformed version of the passions of Catherine and Heathcliff. The first Catherine could not have Heathcliff in this life, but her daughter can hope to build a satisfying life with Hareton. Although Heathcliff and Catherine’s passion could not survive in this life, Brontë implies that the two lovers are finally united beyond the grave.
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