Summary Chp. 1



The year is 1801. The narrator, Lockwood, tells that he has just visited his landlord, Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights. Lockwood himself stays in Thrushcross Grange. At the sight of the house, Lockwood feels the name is as well, in addition to its owner’s personality. Dressed as a gentleman, Heathcliff can’t abandon altogether his underbred nature. He’s not very friendly either.

No one else is around except for the servant Joseph and several dogs. Inside the house is a mess. Lockwood notices a photograph of a beautiful woman hanged near the window, and having nothing said to him, tries to ease up by petting a dog nearby, only to receive an unwelcoming gnarl.

A short while after, Heathcliff and Joseph go down the cellar, leaving Lockwood alone with the dogs. Nervous, Lockwood starts making faces at the dogs, which provokes them to attack him. He cries for help, but neither Heathcliff nor Joseph seems to care. Fortunately a female servant comes from the kitchen with a pan and shoos the dogs away.

Although not injured, Lockwood has his share of sulking. Heathcliff tries to make up the incident by starting a conversation. At the end, Lockwood decides that although his landlord is solitary, he is still agreeable after all. But just then Heathcliff declines another visit from Lockwood.

Summary Chp. 2



Lockwood arrives at his home to find a servant cleaning up and decides to go to Wuthering Heights again. There, Joseph refuses to open the door, saying his master isn’t even home. The weather is chilly and snow has started to fall. Cold Lockwood can’t afford to walk back four miles to Thrushcross Grange now. Fortunately one young man eventually appears and opens the gate. He curses a lot and looks uneducated, but at the same time he doesn’t seem to be a servant.

Inside sits one young lady who Lockwood thinks is Heathcliff’s wife. He politely greets her but is ignored. Neither the young lady nor the young man makes a good company; Lockwood is glad when Heathcliff finally returns. All three act despicably to one another, making Lockwood wonders if his presence is the cause.

Soon after Heathcliff explains that the young lady is not his wife but his daughter-in-law. Automatically Lockwood assumes the young man to be her husband. Again Heathcliff corrects him, saying that his son is dead and that the young man, Hareton Earnshaw, is not his son. No further explanation is given.

As it gets dark, Lockwood wonders aloud how he should get home, but no one notices him. He then approaches Mrs. Heathcliff personally and asks if she knows the way to get home, which she answers unhelpfully by the same way he gets here. She complains that they won’t even let her pass the garden wall.

Finally Lockwood decides to stay over. He offers to sleep in the chair, but Heathcliff replies he can’t let a stranger sleep unsupervised. Offended, Lockwood grabs a lantern and then the door. He hasn’t walked a step out when two dogs attack him upon Joseph’s command for taking the lantern.

No one offers Lockwood any help. Fortunately there’s Zillah, the female servant from the other day. Clearly she’s the only one in that house who knows how to treat a guest.

Summary Chp. 3



Zillah shows Lockwood a chamber upstairs and warns him he better not make too much fuss because Heathcliff doesn’t like anyone’s using that room. She also adds that many queer things have happened in this house in the one to two years she’s lived there.

Near the window, Lockwood finds a small collection of books, including a bible that is also a diary that belongs to a girl named Catherine, who apparently had three different last names: Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Linton.

One entry tells of a Sunday soon after Catherine’s father died and replaced by Hindley. Catherine sounds like she disliked reading the Bible and would rather play outside with Heathcliff. She also seems to hate Hindley, his wife Frances, and Joseph—just about everyone but Heathcliff.

That same night Lockwood has two strange dreams. The first one concerns something about listening to a Reverend Jabes Branderham’s sermon. In the second dream, a ghost named Catherine Linton comes knocking on the window and begs to be let in. She says she’s been waiting for twenty years.

Lockwood gives a scream and realizes it may not be a dream after all because he never wakes up. Heathcliff is angry to find Lockwood in that room, but Lockwood is no less angry. Remembering Branderham to be a relative of Heathcliff’s, he now believes the house to be haunted. After he leaves, he hears Heathcliff wailing for the ghost Cathy to come back and can’t help feeling pity for him.

The sky is still dark outside. Lockwood waits until the sun is up before he hurriedly leaves, declining a polite offer for breakfast. He finds that everyone in Thrushcross Grange is actually worried about his not coming home last night.

Summary Chp. 4



From walking during a chilly weather the other day, Lockwood feels a little sick. Mrs. Dean, a servant since eighteen years earlier, comes to serve him supper. Thinking about the Wuthering Heights dwellers’ strange behaviors, Lockwood lures her into telling him what she knows about them.

Mrs. Dean says that she knows the Earnshaws well because her mother was also a servant to them. The two Earnshaw children she used to serve were Hindley and Cathy—short for Catherine. One day when Hindley was eighteen and Cathy six, Mr. Earnshaw went on a journey to the city. But upon his return, instead of bringing home a fiddle and a horsewhip as promised, he had with him a dirty gipsy child whom everyone instantly hated.

The child was named Heathcliff and only that. Within a few days, he had made friends with Cathy. Old Mr. Earnshaw for some reason liked him very much and showed it, which, needless to say, didn’t help improve the relationship between the real son and the adopted one. Heathcliff never fought back when Hindley beat him up, though, which earned him young Mrs. Dean’s sympathy.

However, seldom complaining as he was, Heathcliff was no angel. He was selfish and cunning. He knew he had Mr. Earnshaw’s favor and took advantage of it. Unless Hindley gave him what he wanted, he would show Mr. Earnshaw the bruises from the beating.

Summary Chp. 5



Old Mr. Earnshaw was dying. Hindley was partly excited because he couldn’t wait to take revenge on Heathcliff after his protector died. Unfortunately for him, his increasing bad temper sent him off to college, away from home.

Joseph the servant also loved the idea of gaining more power as soon as Mr. Earnshaw died. In fact, he was the one who kept the dying master up-to-date what Heathcliff and Cathy did wrong for the day. Knowing Heathcliff to be his master’s favorite child, he made sure to put a heavier blame on Cathy. As it was, Cathy really had not been a very good daughter. She was high-spirited to the point of wild. She didn’t even cry anymore after she received a scold.

One night Cathy, just healed from a minor illness, sat quietly beside her father. Mr. Earnshaw was pleased that she could act gentle and told her so. She laughed and then sang him to sleep. After a quiet hour, Joseph and young Mrs. Dean realized that Mr. Earnshaw was dead instead of asleep. They tried to hide it from the children for now, but Cathy found out right away as she was about to bid him good night.

Both of she and Heathcliff cried hard that night, but in the end they managed to comfort each other with better thoughts about the place Mr. Earnshaw was now in. Mrs. Dean adds that no one can describe heaven more beautifully than they did then.

Summary Chp. 6



Hindley came home for the funeral with a wife who looked too cheerful to be intelligent. Now in command of the house, he thrashed Cathy and Heathcliff—especially Heathcliff—every chance he could. As a result, Heathcliff and Cathy made a promise to each other to purposely misbehave. Soon punishment was nothing but an entertainment to them.

The two were missing for one supper. Nelly Dean waited awhile. Later on Heathcliff came back all by himself with the news that Cathy was at Thrushcross Grange. He then explained that he and Cathy happened to trespass there and witnessed a fighting scene between Edgar and Isabella Linton. The way the good-mannered children fought seemed so funny to them that they laughed, which made the Linton children aware of their presence and call for help. Heathcliff and Cathy tried to get away, but one dog caught hold of Cathy’s ankle. Heathcliff wouldn’t leave her and so the Lintons found both of them.

Recognizing the girl as Miss Earnshaw, the Lintons took her in to treat her ankle. They wouldn’t let Heathcliff in, though, because in their eyes he was only a gipsy boy. Heathcliff saw from the outside that they had cleaned up Cathy’s wild appearance.

Hindley didn’t thrash Heathcliff for this incident, but he threatened him to never speak to his sister again or he would be dismissed from Wuthering Heights.

Summary Chp. 7



Cathy lived with the Lintons for five weeks. She returned, looking and acting like an elegant lady should. Everyone was delighted at the change except for Heathcliff. It didn’t help that Cathy actually suggested, though good-humoredly, for Heathcliff to clean up his dirty self a bit.

Heathcliff avoided Cathy and sulked to Nelly. It turned out he was jealous and worried about Edgar Linton. He thought since Cathy was now more well-behaved than wild, she would like Edgar more than she would Heathcliff. Nelly convinced him to be proud of himself. For one thing, although younger, Heathcliff was tougher and stronger than Edgar was. Edgar would run to his mama whenever he encountered a problem.

Just then Hindley, Cathy, Edgar, and Isabella entered the kitchen. Upon seeing Heathcliff, Edgar couldn’t help making a remark which sounded like an insult. Heathcliff angrily smashed some apple sauce against Edgar’s face. As a punishment, Hindley gave him a beating and locked him in the garret that whole Christmas Day without any food.

Cathy seemed to be in purgatory that day. Later that night while everyone else listened to the carols, she sneaked in to see Heathcliff and had a long talk with him. The two made up.

Apparently Heathcliff had had enough of Hindley’s approach toward him. At the end of the day, he swore to Nelly that he would someday take revenge on Hindley.

Mrs. Dean now feels the story is inappropriate to entertain a guest and stops, followed by an argument whether or not this is true. Eventually, Lockwood manages to sweet-talk her into continuing the story, which she states happened twenty-three years ago.

Summary Chp. 8



Hindley’s wife Frances was giving birth and dying from it. The baby, Hareton, was to go under Nelly’s care. Frances’s death upset Hindley very much that he became even more tyrannical. All the servants except for Nelly and Joseph couldn’t stand him anymore and left.

Fifteen-year-old Catherine was now a haughty two-face. She was wild and spoiled as ever at home but acted polite and graceful where she needed to be. Nelly had come to dislike her. Heathcliff, too, had less affection toward her, she was that disagreeable. By then Edgar Linton had become her good acquaintance. To her credit, she knew enough not to let Edgar and Heathcliff meet.

One rainy day during her brother’s absence, Cathy planned to invite Edgar for tea. At the same time, Heathcliff wanted to spend some time with her. The two had a little argument. Edgar arrived right after Heathcliff left, which didn’t give Cathy’s temper enough time to wane, and so she couldn’t stop herself from showing her true nature and struck Edgar. Consequently he wanted to leave, but Cathy pleaded for him to excuse her temper, to which he finally gave in. Nelly thought to herself that he was basically doomed and couldn’t be saved.

Edgar and Cathy talked until they heard Hindley came home. Then Edgar rushed home while Cathy to her room.

Summary Chp. 9



Realizing Hindley was likely to be drunk, Nelly wanted to protect Hareton by keeping him out of sight. Hindley could still see him anyway, and, drunk as he was, he made a grab at him and asked for a kiss. In the meantime, Hareton desperately tried to escape from his own father. Then the sound of approaching footsteps came. Nelly knew it was Heathcliff and tried to signal him to go back. At that moment, Hindley’s grip loosened and Hareton fell down the stairs. Fortunately Heathcliff was there to catch the child.

Hindley, stunned, blamed Nelly for the accident, to which she returned with a harsh scold. Then with Hareton in her arms, she and Heathcliff went to the kitchen. She stayed there while Heathcliff left to be by himself
.
No sooner did Cathy show up. She asked first where Heathcliff was before she confided to Nelly that Edgar had asked her to marry him. She believed accepting it was the right thing to do, except for her soul and her heart were saying otherwise. She told Nelly of a dream she once had. In it she had died and gone to heaven, but she refused, preferring to run free in Wuthering Heights. She felt it was because Heathcliff was her soul mate.

Cathy didn’t realize that Heathcliff had been listening until she said at one point how it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff. Nelly, on the other hand, sensed his presence and told her to stop. They thought nothing of it until Heathcliff was discovered missing. It was then when Nelly suggested how Heathcliff may have eavesdropped. Panic, Cathy searched for him everywhere and even waited for him under the rain until past midnight. Heathcliff, however, never returned. Shortly after Cathy fell ill.

From then on, her attitude grew worse. She blamed Heathcliff’s missing on Nelly and stopped talking to her for awhile. Nevertheless, the marriage between Edgar and Cathy went on. Nelly was forced to come along although she felt reluctant to leave five-year-old Hareton alone in Wuthering Heights.

Mrs. Dean recognizes that the current Hareton has no memory of her at all and is saddened by it.

Summary Chp. 10



Lockwood’s condition worsens and he’s sick for four whole weeks. Heathcliff has actually come to visit. Lockwood feels too weak to read and therefore thinks listening to more of Mrs. Dean’s story will be as interesting.

The first thing Nelly noticed was that Edgar may have feared his own new wife. He himself was very kind, but he would not be as kind when something displeased Catherine.

Heathcliff, now tall and looked well-formed, came without warning to Thrushcross Grange. He asked Nelly to tell Cathy that someone from Gimmerton wanted to see her. Nelly did so. While Catherine went to see her guest, Nelly informed Edgar it was Heathcliff. Catherine was overjoyed when she found this out. She then set to admit Heathcliff in and asked Edgar to be polite for her sake.

Much to Nelly’s shock, Heathcliff announced that he was going to Wuthering Heights. He had called Hindley earlier that morning and received an invitation. Nelly wondered what Heathcliff was up to and whether he was a wicked man now.

Soon Heathcliff became a regular visitor to Thrushcross Grange. Edgar never came to love him, but his sister Isabella did. Catherine warned her that Heathcliff was no good, but Isabella shot back that Catherine was just being possessive of him. The two became hostile toward each other, and to get back at her sister-in-law, Catherine cruelly revealed right at Heathcliff’s presence the affection Isabella had for him.