Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell. It concerns two extensive upland estates and their landowning families on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws' foster son, Heathcliff. Driven by themes of love, possession, revenge, and reconciliation, the novel is influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. It is considered a classic of English literature.
Wuthering Heights was accepted by publisher Thomas Newby along with Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey before the success of their sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, but Jane Eyre was published before the other two. The first American edition was published in April 1848 by Harper & Brothers of New York. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited a second edition of Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1850.
Though contemporaneous reviews were polarised, Wuthering Heights has come to be considered one of the greatest novels written in English. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality, religion, and the class system. It has inspired an array of adaptations across several types of media.
Story Opening
In 1801, Mr Lockwood, the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire, visits his landlord, Heathcliff, at his remote moorland estate, Wuthering Heights. There he meets a reserved young woman (later identified as Cathy Linton), Joseph, a sanctimonious, ill-tempered servant, and Hareton, an uneducated young man who appears to be a servant. Everyone is sullen and inhospitable. Snowed in for the night, Lockwood reads diary entries of the former inhabitant of his room, Catherine Earnshaw, and has a nightmare in which a ghostly Catherine begs to enter through the window. Awakened by Lockwood's yells, Heathcliff is distraught.
Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Grange and falls ill. While he recovers, Lockwood's housekeeper, Ellen "Nelly" Dean, tells a strange story about the Earnshaw family, who she once served.
Nelly's tale
Thirty years earlier, the Earnshaws live at Wuthering Heights with their two children, Hindley (aged fourteen) and Catherine (aged six), and their servant, Nelly. Returning from a trip to Liverpool, Earnshaw brings home an orphan whom he names Heathcliff. Heathcliff's origins are unclear but he is described as "like a gipsy" and, possibly, a Lascar or an American or Spanish castaway. Earnshaw treats the boy as his favourite and neglects his own children, especially after his wife dies. Hindley beats Heathcliff, who gradually becomes close friends with Catherine.
Hindley departs for university and returns three years later as the new master of Wuthering Heights after his father's death. He and his new wife, Frances, force Heathcliff to live as a servant.
Edgar Linton and his sister Isabella live nearby at Thrushcross Grange, and Heathcliff and Catherine spy on them after one of their rambles across the moors. When Catherine is attacked by their dog, the Lintons take her in but send Heathcliff home. When the Lintons visit, Hindley and Edgar make fun of Heathcliff, and a fight ensues. Heathcliff, banished to an attic, swears that he will one day have his revenge.
Frances dies after giving birth to a son, Hareton. Two years later, Catherine accepts Edgar's marriage proposal. She confesses to Nelly that she loves Heathcliff deeply but cannot marry him because of his low social status. Nelly warns against associating with Heathcliff. Heathcliff overhears part of the conversation and, misunderstanding Catherine's feelings, flees the household. Distraught, Catherine falls ill.
Three years after his departure, with Edgar and Catherine now married, Heathcliff returns unexpectedly, now mysteriously wealthy. He plays upon Isabella's infatuation as revenge on Edgar. Enraged by Heathcliff's presence at the Grange, Edgar banishes him. Distraught, Catherine locks herself in her room and refuses food for three days. At Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff exploits Hindley's gambling addiction and becomes mortgagee of the estate. Heathcliff tricks Isabella into eloping, but they soon return.
Heathcliff visits the gravely ill and pregnant Catherine in secret. She dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. Heathcliff rages, calling on Catherine's ghost to haunt him. Isabella, embittered by Heathcliff's obsession and having suffered mental and physical abuse, flees south where she gives birth to Heathcliff's son, a sickly boy named Linton. Hindley dies six months later of alcoholism, and Hareton inherits Wuthering Heights, although Heathcliff takes possession.
Twelve years later, after Isabella's death, the still-sickly Linton, prospective inheritor of Thrushcross Grange, is brought back to live there, but Heathcliff insists that his son must live with him. Cathy and Linton become friends. Heathcliff schemes to have them marry, hoping to control Cathy's inheritance. On Edgar's death the young couple go to live at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff becomes increasingly wild, revealing that he has opened Catherine's grave on two occasions. When Linton dies, Cathy, his widow, has no option but to remain at Wuthering Heights, where Heathcliff mistreats her.
Having reached the present day, Nelly's tale concludes.
Ending
Lockwood moves away, returning eight months later to pay his rent. Nelly, now the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights, updates him.
Cathy seeks Hareton's forgiveness – their reconciliation leading to love – and subsequently confronts Heathcliff with unlawfully taking both their properties. Declining physically, and increasingly fixated by the dead Catherine, Heathcliff avoids the young couple. He eventually stops eating, and some days later is found dead in Catherine's old room.
Hareton has reclaimed Wuthering Heights, and Cathy has been teaching him to read. They plan to marry and move to the Grange, of which she is now the undisputed owner, with Joseph having left to take care of Wuthering Heights. Locals report having seen the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff together on the moors. Lockwood seeks out the graves of Catherine, Edgar, and Heathcliff, side-by-side, and is convinced that all three are finally at peace.
Family tree
Characters Heathcliff A dark-featured, ethnically ambiguous foundling from Liverpool, who is taken by Earnshaw to Wuthering Heights, where he is reluctantly cared for by the family and spoiled by his adoptive father. He and Mr Earnshaw's daughter, Catherine, grow close, and their love and mutual possession is the central theme of the first volume. On discovering Catherine's engagement to marry Edgar, Heathcliff leaves, only to return three years later, having acquired both wealth and legal expertise, which he then applies with ruthlessness and great cruelty. His revenge against Edgar and Hindley, and its consequences, are the central theme of the second volume. Once both his enemies are dead, Heathcliff resolves to carry on his campaign of vengeance against their offspring, Cathy (whom he reviles), and Hareton (of whom he is personally fond). He is 20 when he marries Edgar's sister Isabella, and 38 when he dies intestate. Since he has then no next of kin, Heathcliff's estate will escheat to the crown; although, as Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights must revert to their true owners, and as his inheritance of Edgar's personal property through first Edgar's will and then that of his son Linton, could not by then both have completed probate, the bulk of the wealth he has amassed in Gimmerton is unlikely to be escheated. Heathcliff has been considered as a Byronic hero, but critics have pointed out that he reinvents himself at various points, making his character hard to fit into any single type. He has an ambiguous position in society, and his lack of status is underlined by the fact that "Heathcliff" is both his given name and his surname. The character of Heathcliff may have been inspired by Branwell Brontë. An alcoholic and an opium addict, he would have indeed terrorised Emily and her sister Charlotte during frequent crises of delirium tremens that affected him a few years before his death. Even though Heathcliff has no alcohol or drug problems, the influence of Branwell's character is likely. Catherine Earnshaw Addressed as Cathy by Heathcliff, and as Catherine by Edgar. First introduced to the reader after her death, through Lockwood's discovery of her diary and her carvings. As a child she is, like Heathcliff, wild and untameable; as she grows into adulthood, her behaviour may appear sociable and conventional, but wildness, self-centredness, and even cruelty are never deeply buried. She is 17 when she marries Edgar. The description of her life is confined almost entirely to the first volume, but her increasingly powerful possession of Heathcliff (both from beyond the grave and physically in it) becomes the driving force of the second volume. She seems unsure whether she is, or wants to become, more like Heathcliff or more like Edgar. Some critics argued that her decision to marry Edgar Linton is allegorically a rejection of nature and a surrender to culture, a choice with unfortunate, fateful consequences for all the other characters. She dies hours after giving birth to her daughter. Edgar Linton Introduced as a child in the Linton family, he resides at Thrushcross Grange and is, like his father, a leading figure in the local landed gentry and a magistrate. Edgar's style and manners are in sharp contrast to those of Heathcliff, who instantly dislikes him, and of Catherine, who is drawn to him. He is 21 when he weds Catherine, who marries him instead of Heathcliff because of his higher social status, with disastrous consequences for all the characters in the story. He dotes on his wife and later his daughter; but, as the Thrushcross Grange estate had been entailed in the male line by a strict settlement in his father's will, he proves unable to prevent his landed property from being inherited by Linton Heathcliff, and falling into the possession of Heathcliff; while his attempt to protect his personal property and Cathy's substantial marriage portion from Heathcliff by placing it in trust, fails when he is betrayed by his attorney, Mr Green. Consequently, Cathy, now married to Linton Heathcliff, remains at Edgar's death as the residual beneficiary of his personal property, and is implied to be the sole executor of his will. Ellen (Nelly) Dean Referred to as Nelly among those close to her. The main narrator of the novel, Nelly is a servant to three generations of the Earnshaws and two of the Linton family. Humbly born, she regards herself nevertheless as Hindley's foster-sister (they are the same age, and her mother is his nurse). She lives and works among the rough inhabitants of Wuthering Heights but is well-read, and she also experiences the more genteel manners of Thrushcross Grange. Both Catherine and Heathcliff confide in her, as does Isabella, but not Edgar. She arranges the burial of Hindley and then of Edgar alongside Catherine in accordance with his will. Heathcliff subsequently seeks Nelly's assurance that she will do the same service for him after his death. Critics have discussed how far her actions as an apparent bystander affect the other characters and how much her narrative can be relied on. In "The Villain in Wuthering Heights" (1958), James Hafley argues that Nelly seems to be the moral centre of the novel only because of the instability and violence of the world she describes. In his view, she is the true villain of the novel, as she drives the majority of the conflicts by selectively revealing or concealing what others are doing; and, at the end, is apparently in control of both houses. Isabella Linton