Wuthering Heights (novel): Difference between revisions

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It is 1801. The foppish gentleman Mr. Lockwood has moved to Thrushcross Grange, a manor house in the windswept and desolate Yorkshire Moors, where he introduces himself to Heathcliff, his surly, ill-mannered and unwelcoming landlord and master of the nearby Wuthering Heights. Forced to stay at Wuthering Heights overnight, Lockwood suffers a nightmare about the ghost of a young woman desperately pleading to be let back into the house; intrigued, Lockwood asks his housekeeper Nelly Dean to [[Framing Device|tell him the story of Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights]].

Dean's story is one of a terrible, unchecked, all-consuming passion — that between Heathcliff, an orphaned foundling brought to Wuthering Heights as a child by the then-owner, and Catherine Earnshaw, his spoilt, flighty and wild foster sister, who became inseparable friends as children and later fell in love. Their love, though passionate, was cruelly thwarted, however, both by Hindley, Catherine's brother and Heathcliff's sworn enemy, who resented Heathcliff as an interloper in his father's affections and, upon inheriting the estate, spitefully turned Heathcliff into a downtrodden slave, and by Catherine's own desires for social mobility and class, which saw her marry the decent but seemingly weak Edgar Linton even as she insists that her one true love is and always will be Heathcliff.

Dean's story is one of a terrible, unchecked, all-consuming passion – that between Heathcliff, an orphaned foundling brought to Wuthering Heights as a child by the then-owner, and Catherine Earnshaw, his spoilt, flighty and wild foster sister, who became inseparable friends as children and later fell in love. Their love, though passionate, was cruelly thwarted, however, both by Hindley, Catherine's brother and Heathcliff's sworn enemy, who resented Heathcliff as an interloper in his father's affections and, upon inheriting the estate, spitefully turned Heathcliff into a downtrodden slave, and by Catherine's own desires for social mobility and class, which saw her marry the decent but seemingly weak Edgar Linton even as she insists that her one true love is and always will be Heathcliff.

Missing Catherine's declaration of eternal love, however, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights in bitterness, only to return several years later having made his fortune elsewhere and determined to crush entirely those who thwarted his one chance at happiness. This includes swindling control of Wuthering Heights away from the now-drunken and embittered Hindley, seducing Edgar's sister Isabella and then treating her in a cruel, abusive fashion once married, and generally scheming to take control of everything that belongs to Edgar and Hindley. Unfortunately, a tragedy occurs not long after that only spurs Heathcliff on to further depths of bitterness, as he determines to extend his vendetta and not only destroy his rivals, but their children...