CHAPTER 1
Lockwood visits Wuthering Heights in 1801
Meets the hostile Heathcliff and is attacked by dogs
Establishes the violent setting and Heathcliff’s harsh nature
CHAPTER 2
Lockwood pays a second visit, on which he is treated even more rudely.Cathy (young), Hareton, and Joseph
Social tensions and rudeness dominate
Lockwood decides to leave early due to discomfort
CHAPTER 3
Snow traps Lockwood at Wuthering Heights
He sleeps in an old room and reads Catherine Earnshaw’s diary
Ghost of Catherine appears, begging to be let in.
Lockwood rejects the waif’s entry into the house. On hearing his cries, Heathcliff enters and grieves for Catherine’s absence.
CHAPTER 4
Heathcliff is distressed by Catherine’s ghost
Lockwood falls ill and moves to Thrushcross Grange
Nelly Dean begins narrating the past; recounts the history of the Earnshaw and Linton families, beginning with Heathcliff’s entry into the family, and his mistreatment by Hindley and others.
CHAPTER 5
Heathcliff is mistreated but favoured by Mr. Earnshaw
Hindley grows jealous.
After Mrs. Earnshaw dies, Mr. Earnshaw ages swiftly, and quarrels with all the members of this family except Heathcliff. He repeatedly rejects Catherine’s advances; in a moment of partial truce, she sits with him as he dies.
CHAPTER 6
After his father’s death, Hindley marries a frivolous and frail wife. She shares her husband’s dislike for Heathcliff, and the latter is denied education and reduced to menial labor. Driven outdoors by hostility, Catherine and Heathcliff grow wild and inseparable. They roam the heath together and gaze into the windows of Thrushcross Grange. When a dog bites Catherine, the Lintons take her indoors, but Heathcliff is sternly rejected.
CHAPTER 7
Cathy returns refined and ladylike. Heathcliff feels inferior and excluded
Class division between them begins
When Catherine returns home, she criticizes Heathcliff for his appearance. He becomes anxious at her social contacts with the Lintons, and grooms himself more carefully.
Unfortunately Edgar insults him on a visit, and Heathcliff responds by throwing a tureen at the latter; later he tells Nellie of his desire to revenge himself on Hindley for the degradation which has severed Catherine from him.
The narrative is interrupted while Lockwood praises Nellie Dean’s sagacity and she notes that she is well-read, thus confirming the reliability of her account for the novel’s middle-class audience.
CHAPTER 8
Frances Earnshaw dies in giving birth to Hareton, and Hindley degenerates into alcoholism and violence.
Catherine insults Heathcliff for stupidity before a planned visit from Edgar.
During the ensuing visit she pinches Nellie when the later remains in the drawing room, then strikes Edgar when he defends Hareton for protesting.
To Nellie’s dismay, Edgar nonetheless forgives her and begins courtship. (Thus an ill-fated union begins inauspiciously with violence.)
CHAPTER 9
Hindley nearly kills his son Hareton; Catherine agrees to marry Edgar, but concurrently declares to Nellie her eternal identity with Heathcliff–“I am Heathcliff”–an emotion on which she doesn’t act.
Unaware of her “love” for him, Heathcliff flees, his departure signaled by the fall of a great tree.
Catherine sickens at his absence, then marries Edgar. Unwillingly Nellie accompanies her mistress to Thrushcross Grange, leaving an uncared-for Hareton.
CHAPTER 10
After an unexplained absence of 3 years, Heathcliff returns with a more cultivated manner, and settles at Wuthering Heights with the drunken Hindley.
Delighted by Heathcliff’s return, Catherine quarrels with her husband.
Isabella Linton is inexplicably attracted to Heathcliff, and Catherine humiliates her by informing him of her interest.
CHAPTER 11
Heathcliff sets Hareton against Hindley, and the latter loses his fortune through gambling at cards with Heathcliff.
On a visit to Catherine, Heathcliff for the first time complains that he has been ill-used.
When Nellie tells Edgar that the two have also discussed the possibility of his union with Isabella, Linton confronts him and the two fight.
Catherine resolves to punish both by becoming sick, foams at the mouth, and locks herself in her room.
Heathcliff meanwhile courts Isabella to gain revenge on Edgar, and because she is a potential heir to the latter’s fortune
CHAPTER 12
Nellie conceals from both men the severity of Catherine’s condition, and from Catherine the depth of Edgar’s concern for her.
As Catherine weakens she becomes frightened and depressed, terrified of the empty mirror and the face of death which she sees therein.
When they finally meet, both Edgar and Catherine blame Nellie for concealing her condition from him.
At this inopportune moment, Isabella elopes with Heathcliff, thus jeopardizing the estate as well as her happiness.
CHAPTER 13
Under Edgar’s attentions Catherine mends somewhat; she is pregnant, and the birth of a male heir is now necessary to secure Edgar’s lands from Heathcliff.
Isabella sends a pathetic letter recounting her husband’s brutality and refusal to share a room with his wife.
CHAPTER 14
Nellie visits Isabella, and learns from Heathcliff of his cruelty to her and his determination to visit Catherine.
Astoundingly Nellie consents to permit his entry, in part because “it might create a favorable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness.”
CHAPTER 15
Heathcliff visits Catherine, and after mutual complaints and recriminations the two embrace. As Edgar approaches, she collapses, and she dies soon afterwards.
Heathcliff is devastated and curses her peace
CHAPTER 16
Nellie walks outside to give the lingering Heathcliff a pious account of Catherine’s death.
In response he denies that she is in heaven, and prays that her spirit may haunt him (a prayer which is of course partially and painfully answered), and he dashes himself against a tree.
When Nellie opens a window so that he may visit Catherine’s corpse before burial, Heathcliff substitutes his own hair for Edgar’s in her burial locket.
Inexplicably Edgar buries his wife neither with the Linton nor Earnshaw families, but on a slope in the corner of the churchyard, where significantly, in accord with her character, the “wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor.”
CHAPTER 17
Isabella escapes Wuthering Heights for a brief visit to Nellie before fleeing her husband.
She recounts a violent scene in which Heathcliff had nearly killed Hindley, thrown her and Joseph to the floor, and hurled a knife at her. The scene had occurred when Hindley asked her to help him kill Heathcliff by remaining silent as he waited at the door to attack the latter; though she demurs and warns her husband, Hindley jumps outside, but is overpowered by Heathcliff, who beats him repeatedly even after he loses consciousness.
After abusing both Joseph and his wife, Heathcliff forces the latter to testify that he was assaulted (still a legal case against him could be made, for battering an unconscious man).
Isabella later tells Hindley what transpired, while Heathcliff weeps obliviously at the fireside (!), presumably mourning Catherine’s loss. Though relatively silent before, Isabella now taunts Heathcliff with Catherine’s memory until he throws a knife at her. As she runs out the door, Hindley attacks Heathcliff to enable her to escape.
Isabella bids Nellie farewell without visiting her estranged brother, and (in accord with her temperament), flees south to live near London.
Soon thereafter Linton Heathcliff is born, creating a legal heir for Thrushcross Grange and Edgar’s wealth; as a metaphor of the irreconcilable conflicts of the boy’s origins, he is an “ailing, peevish creature.”
Heathcliff threatens to retrieve him if Edgar claims Hareton; so Linton is permitted to remain with Isabella until her death twelve years later.
Meanwhile young Catherine grows to puberty in the care of an affectionate father and attentive Nellie. Hindley dies prematurely at 27, and though Nellie and Joseph suspect Heathcliff has hastened his death, no witnesses were present at the event.
Heathcliff raises Hareton to the same menial and uneducated life Hindley had forced on him.
Astoundingly, Edgar sends Nellie to the lawyer, who declares Hareton has been left penniless (but as we later learn, the lawyer is less than honest).
CHAPTER 18
Shortly before Isabella’s death, Catherine stops at Wuthering Heights in Nellie’s absence.
She meets the now fully-grown, handsome and sturdy Hareton, whom she dismisses as a servant. (In this book, first encounters are important, so it is important that she meets Hareton before Linton’s arrival.)
Nelly forces Catherine to promise she will make no more visits.
CHAPTER 19
Isabella’s death brings the frail and hypochondriacal Linton to Thrushcross Grange.
On the night of his arrival, Heathcliff threatens to retrieve him the following day.
CHAPTER 20
Nellie gives Linton a dishonestly sanguine account of his father’s character to persuade him to accompany her to Wuthering Heights before Catherine has risen; there he is immediately treated as one might expect.
He begs not to be deserted, but Nellie leaves him to his fate.
CHAPTER 21
When Catherine rises, she regrets Linton’s absence.
While walking she encounters Heathcliff, who persuades her to visit Linton. Despite the latter’s whiny frailty, Catherine is pleased by his relative education and his jokes at Hareton’s expense.
On her return, Edgar forbids further visits, and Catherine begins a correspondence with Linton until Nellie intervenes and forces her to burn his letters
CHAPTER 22
Catherine, now lonely, again encounters Heathcliff, who tells her that Linton is pining from her absence.
Despite her former opposition, Nellie agrees to accompany her on a visit.
CHAPTER 23
When Catherine visits Linton, after she disagrees with his account of their respective parents, he falls first into a paroxysm of coughing and later into a nervous fit.
Though he blames her for their quarrel, pity and duty prompt her return as soon as Edgar and Nellie (conveniently) both fall ill.
Amazingly, as she lies sick, Nellie “never considered what [Catherine] did with herself after tea.”
CHPATER 24
Catherine tells Nellie of her visits to Linton.
After Catherine had mocked Hareton’s efforts to learn to read, he attacked Linton, thus precipitating another fit.
Catherine had been forced to leave, and when she returned was startled that Linton blames her for the attack.
When from duty and pity she visits him again, he begs her to believe that he regrets his own distorted nature, and that he loves her for her kindness.
Catherine does her best by him until Nellie reports the visits; inexplicably, however, she fails to give Edgar crucial information about his nephew’s character and declining health.
