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Title:
Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Bronte
First Published in: 1847
Wuthering Heights, a novel by E. Bronte, published 1847.
The story is narrated by Lockwood, temporary tenant of
Thrushcross Grange, who has stumbled into the violent
world of Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord
Heathcliff. The narration is taken up by the housekeeper,
Nelly Dean, who had been witness of the interlocked
destinies of the original owners of the Heights, the
Earnshaw family, and of the Grange, the Linton family.
Events are set in motion by the arrival at the Heights of
Heath— cliff, picked up as a waif of unknown
parentage in the streets of Liverpool by the elder
Earnshaw, who brings him home to rear as one of his own
children. Bullied and humiliated after Eamshaw's death by
his son Hindley, Heathcliffs passionate and ferocious
nature finds its complement in Eamshaw's daughter
Catherine, but Heathcliff overhearing Catherine tell
Nelly that she cannot marry him because it would degrade
her, and failing to stay to hear her declare her passion
for him, leaves the house. He returns three years later,
mysteriously enriched, to find Catherine married to the
insignificant Edgar Linton. Heathcliff is welcomed by
Hindley, by now widowed with a son, Hareton. Heathcliff
marries Edgar's sister Isabella and cruelly ill—
treats her, hastens Catherine's death by his passion as
she is about to give birth to a daughter, Cathy, and
brings Hareton and Hindley under his power, brutalizing
the latter in revenge for Hindley's treatment of himself
as a child. Edgar Linton dies. Heathcliff forces a
marriage between Cathy and his son, the young Linton, in
order to secure the Linton property. Young Linton also
dies, and an affection springs up between her and the
ignorant Hareton, whom she does her best to educate.
Heathcliff now longs for the death that will reunite him
with Catherine; at his death there is a promise that the
two contrasting worlds and moral orders represented by the
Heights and the Grange will be united in the next generation,
in the union of Cathy and Hareton.
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