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Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë · novel, 1847·9 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
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  • Lockwood's first visit turns into a dog attack. Heathcliff offers no warning before the household's half dozen dogs converge on his new tenant; over the door Lockwood spots a carved date, "1500," and the name "Hareton Earnshaw", a family history he cannot yet read.
  • Catherine tells Nelly why marrying Edgar would degrade her. She says marrying Edgar Linton would degrade her, then explains why: "he's more myself than I am... whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Heathcliff hears only the word "degrade" and walks out before the rest of the sentence.
  • Heathcliff's grief over Catherine's death is a physical assault on himself. He beats his head against an ash tree until Nelly finds blood on the bark, then howls a plea for haunting: "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"
  • He swaps Edgar's hair for his own in Catherine's locket. Nelly finds a curl of Edgar's light hair discarded on the floor and Heathcliff's black lock threaded into the locket in its place; she twists both locks together and puts them back.
  • Heathcliff starves for four days and dies almost joyful. He tells Nelly, "Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven," then is found dead in a rain-soaked bed with his eyes open and a sneer Nelly cannot close.
  • A shepherd boy refuses to walk past Heathcliff's grave. He says he saw "Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab" and will not walk on; Lockwood closes the book standing over the three quiet headstones, wondering how anyone could imagine "unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: Heathcliff asks explicitly to be haunted, seems to get his wish by the neighbors' account, and Brontë still lets Lockwood close the book insisting the graves are quiet.

Heathcliff and Catherine's love curdles into a revenge campaign that outlasts her death by a generation, and the neighbors still will not walk past his grave after dark.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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