94 pages • 3 hours read
Emily BrontëWuthering Heights
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1847A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 18-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Nelly reports that “[t]he twelve years[...]following that dismal period, were the happiest of [her] life” (137). She looks after young Cathy, who is growing up into “a real beauty in the face [...][and] [t]ill the age of thirteen, she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself” (137). Cathy has no knowledge of Wuthering Heights nor of Heathcliff, and her curiosity about her surroundings grows as she gets older.
Isabella, while dying, has written to Edgar, asking him to come to London, “for she had much to settle, and she wished to bid him adieu” (139). As well, she hopes that Edgar will take her 12-year-old son, Linton. Edgar leaves for three weeks, and, in his absence, Nelly allows Cathy “on travels round the grounds—now on foot, and now on a pony” and soon, Cathy is spotted by a laborer, “gallop[ping] out of sight” (139). Nelly rushes to Wuthering Heights, and a servant allows her in. Nelly “beheld [her]stray lamb seated on the hearth, rocking herself in a little chair that had been her mother’s when a child” (140), talking with Hareton comfortably. Nelly scolds Cathy for her betrayal of trust, and Hareton tries to defend her, explaining that Cathy was worried Nelly would “be uneasy” (141). Nelly ignores the servant, pushing Cathy to leave. In her impatience, she says, “Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is, you’d be glad enough to get out” (141). This comment causes Cathy to wonder about Hareton’s place at the house; she speaks to him like a servant when he admits the house does not belong to his father. Nelly reminds Cathy to be better-mannered as Hareton is her cousin, a fact that upsets Cathy. Hareton tries to be helpful, which upsets Cathy even more, but he accompanies them home to the Grange anyway. Nelly observes in Hareton “better qualities than his father ever possessed” (143), even though he is clearly uneducated and she sees no evidence of maltreatment at the hands of Heathcliff. According to “villagers, Heathcliff was near, and a cruel, hard landlord to his tenants; but the house inside, had regained its ancient aspect of comfort under female management” (143).
Chapter 19 Summary
Nelly receives a letter from Edgar, who is soon returning home to Thrushcross Grange from London with his nephew, Linton. Isabella has died. Edgar arrives to a warm greeting from his daughter while Nelly notices the “pale, delicate, effeminate boy, who might have been taken for [her]master’s younger brother, so strong was the resemblance” (145). Cathy feels sorry for the boy, who is tearful and exhausted, and her gentle kindness towards Linton “pleased him” (146). Edgar and Nelly discuss the benefits of keeping Linton at the Grange, but Joseph arrives from Wuthering Heights to announce that Heathcliff wants Linton home at Wuthering Heights. Edgar does not allow Linton to be moved until the next day.
Chapter 20 Summary
Edgar asks Nelly to take Linton to his father, lamenting that “we shall now have no influence over his destiny, good or bad” (148). Linton is reluctant to go:“Mamma never told me I had a father” (148), but he “finally got off with several delusive assurances that his absence should be short” (149). While riding with Nelly to Wuthering Heights, Linton asks many questions about his new home and his father.
Upon their arrival to Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is not impressed with the frail boy, exclaiming:“Thou art thy mother’s child, entirely!” (151). Nelly leaves Linton, asking Heathcliff to show him kindness; Heathcliff’s response is harsh: “I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives” (151). Heathcliff has hired a tutor to educate his son, and he desires that Linton become the “fairly lord of their estates” (151), referring to his plan to obtain Thrushcross Grange. Joseph tries to give Linton porridge, which Linton rejects, and Nelly advises what to give the boy to eat before making her exit.
Chapter 21 Summary
Cathy is sad and listless without Linton, so Edgar tries to soothe her with promises of his return, “‘if [he]can get him’” (153). When Nelly meets the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights in town, she learns that things are not going well at Wuthering Heights: “I never knew such a faint-hearted creature” (153). Linton resists Hareton’s attempts to amuse him and “the master would relish Earnshaw’s thrashing him to a mummy, if he were not his son” (153). Nelly concludes that Linton has been spoiled by the “utter lack of sympathy” (153) to be found at Wuthering Heights.
Cathy turns 16, and in honor of her birthday, she wants to spend the day on moors. Heathcliff and Hareton find her, “caught in the fact of plundering, or at least, hunting out the nests of the grouse” (155) in search of eggs. After learning Cathy’s identity, Heathcliff invites both Cathy and Nelly go to Wuthering Heights. Nelly is distressed when Cathy accepts, knowing that “‘her father would hate me if he found I suffered her to enter your house’” (156). In turn, Heathcliff explains to Nelly he wants Cathy and Linton to marry so that Linton will inherit Thrushcross Grange when Edgar dies. Heathcliff acts charmingly towards Cathy. And after she sees Linton, “his features pretty yet, and his eye and complexion brighter than [she] remembered them” (156), Heathcliff explains to Cathy that he and her father “quarrelled at one time of [their]lives, with unchristian ferocity” (157), advising Cathy to keep her visit to Wuthering Heights a secret.
Hareton enters the scene, and Heathcliff asks him to show Cathy around the farm. Heathcliff confides in Nelly that his revenge plan is underway.Hindley is dead, and Heathcliff delights in his influence on his former enemy’s son: “Hareton is damnably fond of me!” (159). Nelly and Cathy stay until the afternoon, and then upon their return home to Thrushcross Grange, Cathy tells her father about their visit to Wuthering Heights. Edgar tells her about Isabella and Heathcliff, explaining: “Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man” (161). Cathy tries to defend Heathcliff, but Edgar forbids her from going to Wuthering Heights and consorting with the family living there. This upsets Cathy because Linton is expecting to see her again. Nelly refuses to give Cathy permission to send him a note explaining her absence, but, within weeks, Nelly finds letters from Linton in Cathy’s books. Nelly burns them, for they developed into “copious love letters[...] yet with touches, here and there, which [she] thought were borrowed from a more experienced source” (164). The correspondence ends.
Chapter 22 Summary
Summer ends, and in the fall, Edgar is quiet, “worse than ordinary” (167), and his illness subdues Cathy as well as the rest of the household. Nelly and Cathy go for a walk, and Cathy gives in to her melancholy, worrying about the time “when papa and [Nelly]are dead” (168). Cathy drops her hat and climbs over a wall to find it, leaving Nelly on the other side and encountering Heathcliff on horseback. He scolds her for stopping her letters to Linton so abruptly, “making love in play[...] [and]breaking his heart at [her]fickleness” (169). Without realizing Nelly is within earshot, he suggests that she resume her letter-writing to revive his health, which infuriates Nelly. Heathcliff threatens to send her letters to Linton to her father while pressuring her to write to Linton. Cathy believes Heathcliff, insisting to Nelly that she must write to Linton, and Nelly agrees to take Cathy to Wuthering Heights the next day, “in the faint hope that Linton himself might prove, by his reception of us, how little of the tale was founded on fact” (171).
Chapters 18-22 Analysis
In these chapters, Cathy Linton becomes the focus of Nelly’s story, taking the place of her mother. Young Cathy has inherited qualities of both of her parents; she is headstrong and willful, like her mother, but yielding and tender, like her father. She has no awareness of her mother’s childhood home, Wuthering Heights, despite how close is it to her own home at Thrushcross Grange, until she becomes of an age old enough to become curious. Nelly’s attachment to young Cathy is clear; she dotes on the girl as if she were her mother, scolding her maternally and raising her to respect her father. As soon as Heathcliff makes his presence known to Cathy, Nelly is alert and protective, intuiting that Heathcliff’s attentions are sinister.
When Cathy and her cousin Linton become acquainted, Heathcliff immediately senses an opportunity to take revenge on Edgar. Nelly observes that the letters from Linton seem to have been written in a voice more experienced with the ways of love and romance than she would expect from a boy his age, and the subtext suggests that perhaps Heathcliff is the author of these letters. After all, it is in Heathcliff’s best interest that the two young cousins fall in love; if they marry, then through his son, Linton, Heathcliff will be able to own Thrushcross Grange in the event of Edgar Linton’s death. The character of Hareton Earnshaw begins to develop momentum in these chapters, especially when he and Cathy first meet and take to each other. Hareton’s fondness of the only father figure in his life is filled with pathos; Heathcliff is a cruel stand-in for a parent, but the only one Hareton has, so he seems to make the best of his situation by adoring Heathcliff. The innate openness of Hareton makes him a sympathetic character from the start, and Cathy’s rudeness to him for being uneducated seems unfair.
