it took awhile to get into this book for me, the language being old and so many people with similar names. it was an interesting love story though. the main character is heathcliff. while i was reading this heath ledger died, which was weird because his full name was heathcliff. his mother loved the book and named him after the main character. how strange to be named after a man who basically goes crazy. the plot is so complicated and intertwined that i don't even want to get into it. go read the book. i need to read it again someday for sure. i will try to be simple. there are two different narrators to the story: lockwood (who is renting from heathcliff) and nelly dean (housekeeper). basically lockwood meets heathcliff and makes nelly tell him the whole story behind the family.
nelly grew up as a servant for mr earnshaw and is about the same age as his children, hindley and catherine. one day mr earnshaw comes home from a trip with the orphan heathcliff and the children despise him. eventually catherine and heathcliff become inseparable playmates and mr earnshaw takes to him, so hindley becomes extremely jealous. mr earnshaw then dies, leaving hindley to resent heathcliff and treat him with disdain. he treats him very badly and as a servant. catherine goes to the linton house for 5 weeks to heal after getting bit by their dog. she becomes smitten with edgar linton and he asks her to marry him. she says yes.
it would degrade me to marry heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, nelly, but because he’s more myself than i am. whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.at that point heathcliff hears her and leaves. he is of a lower social standing than linton and so by marrying linton, catherine would become "the greatest woman of the neighborhood". she then goes on to explain more to nelly but heathcliff has already made his mind to leave.
my love for linton is like the foliage in the woods. time will change it, i'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - my love for heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary. nelly, i am heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than i am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being - so, don't talk of our separation again.catherine goes on and marries linton and heathcliff leaves. somehow he becomes wealthy and comes back to inherit the place when hindley dies following years of drinking. he comes back a brute man looking to exact revenge. eventually hareton (hindley's son) and linton (heathcliff's son) come to live with him. he treats them horribly. catherine and edgar have a daughter (cathy) and catherine dies in childbirth. years later cathy meets linton while playing and heathcliff devises a plan in which linton will marry cathy and heathcliff will get his revenge on edgar by inheriting his land. heathcliff treats sickly linton and all around him badly and cathy tells him:
mr. heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty rises from your greater misery! you are miserable, are you not? lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you, when you die! i wouldn't be you!eventually heathcliff goes mad. he speaks to the ghost of the elder catherine all the time and eventually stops eating, and dies. heathcliff was in love, treated badly, left for a man of higher class, returned for revenge, treated his own badly and never found love again. only hatred and madness.
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