Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 and tells a tale of love and revenge set against the backdrop of the wild Yorkshire moors. When Mr. Earnshaw brings home an orphaned boy named Heathcliff, his daughter, Catherine, develops a close bond with the young boy—but her brother, Hindley, resents and mistreats him. When Hindley later assumes his father’s authority after Mr. Earnshaw’s death, he does everything he can to keep Heathcliff and Catherine apart, thus instilling in Heathcliff a deep-seated desire for revenge. To Heathcliff’s dismay, Catherine ends up marrying the closest neighbor, Edgar Linton, thereby giving Heathcliff yet another person to exact vengeance upon. The novel traces Heathcliff’s painstaking pursuit of revenge, his and Catherine’s all-consuming love, and the intergenerational effects of both these things.