Resumen de Wuthering Heights

Idea clave 1 de 9

A stranger arrives at a hostile house

The novel opens in 1801. Lockwood, a young man seeking quiet, has rented Thrushcross Grange, a comfortable house in a lonely valley. He pays a call on his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, who lives at Wuthering Heights, a farmhouse on the hilltop. The name, Lockwood explains, describes the stormy weather that batters the place.

The welcome is cold. Heathcliff is dark, gruff and plainly dislikes company, though he is dressed like a gentleman. The house is bare and rough, and the dogs are fierce. Lockwood meets a sour old servant called Joseph, who talks mostly about religion and disapproval. He also meets a rough young man named Hareton and a sharp-tongued young woman, who is Heathcliff's daughter-in-law.

Lockwood misreads almost everyone. He guesses at the family ties and gets them wrong, and the household laughs at him or snaps at him. This matters, because the reader learns to doubt him. He is a polite outsider who sees only the surface and is often foolish about it.

A snowstorm forces Lockwood to stay the night. He is shown to an old room with a box bed, like a small wooden closet. On the window ledge he finds the name Catherine scratched many times, in three forms, Earnshaw, Heathcliff and Linton. Who was she, and why are the names so different?

He reads old books with her handwriting in the margins and falls into a restless sleep. A branch taps at the window, and Lockwood's dream becomes frightening. A child's cold hand seems to grasp his own from outside, and a voice begs to be let in. His cry wakes the house, and Heathcliff's reaction to the story is strange and wild. Lockwood leaves puzzled, and when illness keeps him at home, he asks Nelly Dean to explain.