Wuthering Heights recap

A tenant renting Thrushcross Grange hears from his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, the history of the neighboring house, Wuthering Heights. Years earlier, Mr. Earnshaw brought home an orphan, Heathcliff, who grew inseparable from his daughter Catherine but was tormented by his son Hindley. Catherine, though she loves Heathcliff, marries the gentle Edgar Linton for comfort and status, and Heathcliff runs away. He returns wealthy and set on revenge: he marries Edgar's sister Isabella to spite them, and Catherine, torn between the two men, falls ill and dies giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. Over the next generation Heathcliff ruins Hindley, degrades Hindley's son Hareton, and forces his own frail son Linton to marry young Cathy so that on their deaths he seizes both estates. His revenge complete, Heathcliff is consumed by longing for the dead Catherine, loses all will to live, and dies. Freed of him, Cathy and Hareton grow close and plan to marry, ending the long feud.

Mr. Lockwood, a city gentleman renting Thrushcross Grange, calls twice on his landlord, Heathcliff, at the bleak farmhouse called Wuthering Heights. He finds a hostile, comfortless household and, snowed in overnight, spends a frightening night in an old bedroom where he seems to encounter the ghost of a long-dead Catherine. Baffled by the strained, unhappy people he has met, Lockwood asks his housekeeper at the Grange, Nelly Dean, to explain the history of the two families. Nelly begins her account: years ago the master of Wuthering Heights, Mr. Earnshaw, returned from a journey carrying a ragged, dark-haired orphan boy he named Heathcliff and insisted on raising as his own, favoring him over his own children and sowing the resentment that would shape everything to come.

In Nelly's tale, Heathcliff and the Earnshaw daughter, Catherine, become inseparable playmates on the moors, while her brother Hindley grows to hate the favored foundling. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley returns as master and takes his revenge by degrading Heathcliff to a servant and denying him schooling. During a visit to the genteel Linton family at Thrushcross Grange, Catherine is charmed by their refined world and returns half a lady, torn between two lives. Though she loves Heathcliff deeply, she decides to marry the gentle, well-off Edgar Linton, telling Nelly it would lower her to marry Heathcliff. Heathcliff overhears just enough to be wounded and disappears without a word. Catherine, not knowing why he has gone, eventually marries Edgar, and the two settle at the Grange while Heathcliff remains absent and unaccounted for.

Heathcliff returns after several years, now wealthy, hardened, and bent on revenge. He installs himself with the dissipated Hindley at Wuthering Heights and unsettles Catherine's marriage by his renewed closeness to her. Edgar's sister Isabella becomes infatuated with him, and Heathcliff, to spite the Lintons, elopes with her and treats her cruelly. Catherine, caught between her husband and the man she cannot stop loving, is thrown into a violent illness. Heathcliff forces a final, passionate meeting with her, and shortly afterward Catherine dies giving birth to a daughter, also called Catherine. Heathcliff is left in grief and fury, begging her spirit to haunt him rather than leave him alone, and the first generation's tragedy reaches its climax with her death.

After Catherine's death the story moves into the next generation. Isabella escapes Heathcliff's cruelty, flees far away, and later gives birth to his son, Linton, before dying. Hindley drinks himself to death, and Heathcliff, now master of Wuthering Heights, keeps Hindley's neglected son Hareton in ignorance and servitude as part of his revenge. Years pass at Thrushcross Grange, where Edgar raises his sheltered daughter, young Cathy, in near seclusion. Growing curious about the world beyond the Grange, Cathy wanders toward Wuthering Heights and meets Hareton. When Isabella dies, her frail, spoiled son Linton is brought to the Grange, but Heathcliff quickly claims the boy and takes him to Wuthering Heights, drawing the two households together again for his own ends.

Heathcliff sets out to seize Thrushcross Grange through the next generation. He encourages a secret attachment between young Cathy and his sickly son Linton, and as Edgar Linton's health fails, he schemes to bind the two estates under his control. Cathy is drawn into clandestine visits and a coaxed correspondence with the fretful, manipulated Linton. When she and Nelly come to Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff imprisons them, using threats and force to compel Cathy to marry the dying Linton so that, on the deaths of both father and son, Heathcliff will inherit everything. Cathy is trapped, desperate to reach her dying father before it is too late, while Heathcliff's long revenge closes in on its final targets.

Cathy manages to reach her father only just before he dies, and after Edgar's death Heathcliff takes possession of Thrushcross Grange and keeps Cathy as a dependent at Wuthering Heights. Her young husband, Linton, always sickly and now useless to Heathcliff except as an heir, wastes away and dies soon after, leaving Cathy a widow with no property of her own and no means of escape. Heathcliff is now master of both houses and both fortunes, his scheme against the two families all but complete. Cathy, grieving and friendless, lives coldly alongside the degraded Hareton under Heathcliff's roof, and the household settles into a bleak, joyless routine dominated entirely by Heathcliff's will.

When Lockwood returns to the district months later, Nelly, now living at Wuthering Heights, tells him how the story ended. Trapped together under Heathcliff's rule, Cathy and Hareton slowly reconcile; she teaches him to read, and affection replaces her earlier contempt, healing the old family hatred. Meanwhile Heathcliff's revenge brings him no satisfaction. Increasingly obsessed with the memory of the elder Catherine and certain her spirit is near, he loses interest in his schemes, stops eating and sleeping, and after several strange days is found dead by an open window with a look of triumph on his face. He is buried beside Catherine. With Heathcliff gone, Cathy and Hareton plan to marry and move to the Grange, and Lockwood departs reflecting on the quiet of the graves on the moor, where locals claim Heathcliff and Catherine still walk.

Heathcliff's revenge succeeds but leaves him hollow. After Edgar Linton dies and his own son Linton dies soon after marrying young Cathy, Heathcliff controls both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, with Cathy his trapped, widowed dependent and Hareton reduced to an ignorant laborer. Yet possession brings him no peace. Haunted by the memory of the elder Catherine and convinced her spirit is near, he grows increasingly strange, abandons his schemes, refuses food and sleep, and after several days is found dead by an open window with an odd look of triumph on his face. He is buried beside Catherine as he wished. With Heathcliff gone, the surviving young pair he had kept apart draw together: Cathy teaches Hareton to read, their affection heals the old hatred between the families, and they plan to marry and move to the Grange, leaving the Heights largely to Joseph. Lockwood, revisiting the three graves on the moor, wonders whether the dead rest quietly, though local people claim to see Heathcliff and Catherine walking the hills together. The two estates pass to Hareton and Cathy, restoring the Earnshaw line and closing the cycle of cruelty Heathcliff began.