This isn’t an easy read but every well-read person should have a copy of this classic on their bookshelf. The story is largely told by the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, who has observed the long and sad tale of love, conflict, betrayal, and revenge, lived out in the tangled lives of the Earnshaw family of Wuthering Heights and the Linton family of Thrushcross Grange.
Three reasons to read this book
Read this book for the multidimensional characters.
Read this book to understand the self-destructive nature of unrestrained hatred and revenge.
Read this book to ponder the enduring power of love and the resilience of life itself.
The story
The saga begins with Mr. Earnshaw Sr. bringing home an orphaned child, Heathcliff, whom he raises with his two children, Hindley and Catherine. Hindley despises Heathcliff but Catherine adores him and an unmistakable and enduring bond of love grows between Heathcliff and Catherine.
When the senior Earnshaw dies, Hindley becomes the master of Wuthering Heights and sets about treating Heathcliff with brutal contempt, depriving him of both education and social opportunity. The Linton siblings, Edgar and Isabella, have a similar distain for their socially-inferior neighbor; meanwhile, the love between Catherine and Heathcliff grows ever stronger.
A moment of crisis comes when the young Edgar Linton, the future master of Thrushcross Grange, proposes to Catherine. She turns to Nelly for advice on whether she has done the right thing by accepting him to which Nelly, who perceives Catherine’s heart, informs her that:
“You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably, and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions” (p. 71).
In a moment of truth, Catherine declares to Nelly that she truly loves Heathcliff and that he is her soulmate but that she cannot marry him because of his degraded status, brought about by Hindley. Unbeknownst to her, Heathcliff is listening in on the conversation, and he subsequently leaves Wuthering Heights without further ado and without informing Catherine. Catherine, devasted at Heathcliff’s departure and her role in it, marries Edgar Linton and moves to Thrushcross Grange.
Some years hence, Heathcliff returns, now a gentleman of apparent standing. In short time he sets about exacting his revenge on both Hindley and Edgar. Hindley, now a drunken wreck after the death of his wife and an abusive father to his son Hareton, slowly gambles away his control of the Wuthering Heights estate. Despite his best efforts, Edgar fails to protect his sister Isabella from falling in love and marrying Heathcliff, who courts her until marriage — and then despises and crushes her in a bitter act of vengeance on her brother.
The march of time brings forth more of Heathcliff’s revenge. Catherine dies in childbirth, leaving Edgar to raise his new daughter, Cathy, alone. Hindley also comes to a lonely demise, leaving his son Hareton in the care of Heathcliff, who viciously exacts revenge by treating him as Hindley had treated Heathcliff — depriving him of education and training in the social graces.
Isabella, who fled from Heathcliff while pregnant with his son whom she named Linton, also dies, allowing Heathcliff to claim custody of the child he disdains. Ultimately, a forced marriage between Cathy and Linton, effected before the ailing Edgar Linton can change his will, places Heathcliff in the position of gaining control of the Thrushcross Grange estate.
With Edgar’s death, quickly followed by that of Linton, Heathcliff’s revenge is complete. He controls both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and he has reduced both Cathy and Hareton to a life of misery.
And yet it is at this moment that Heathcliff’s victory is exposed as being hollow and empty. A love begins to grow between Cathy and Hareton and Heathcliff cannot stop it. He sees in each of them the very eyes of his beloved Catherine (mother to one and aunt to the other), whom he has loved since childhood and for whom he has pined since the day she died.
Final moments
In his declining days, Heathcliff shares with Nelly that, although he could enact final revenge on his enemies, he no longer desires it. “I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction,” he tells her, “and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.”
The book concludes with Heathcliff’s death and the plans of the young couple to marry – on New Year’s Day – and to move to Thrushcross Grange. The circle is complete. Heathcliff is forgotten; the Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange estates are in the hands of the Earnshaws and Lintons. Love and life have triumphed over revenge, darkness and death.