Write your own Wuthering Heights story

Heathcliff

The dark, intensely private master of Wuthering Heights, described as gipsy-like in appearance yet dressed and mannered as a gentleman. He is deeply morose, suspicious of strangers, and prone to violent emotion kept tightly under cover. His anguished cry for the ghost of Catherine at the open window reveals a consuming, decades-long grief beneath his forbidding exterior.

Mr. Lockwood

The first-person narrator and new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, a self-described misanthrope from the south of England who ironically seeks isolation but is fascinated by the people he encounters. He is well-bred, somewhat self-deluding about his own heartlessness, and serves as the outsider lens through which the reader first glimpses Wuthering Heights. His nightmarish experience in the old bedchamber sets the supernatural tone of the novel.

Catherine (Cathy) Earnshaw

Appears primarily through her childhood diary scrawlings and as a ghostly presence in Lockwood's nightmare, identified by the names Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, and Catherine Linton scratched on the windowsill. Her diary reveals a spirited, rebellious girl who was deeply bonded with Heathcliff and at odds with her brother Hindley. She is implied to have died roughly twenty years before the story's present day, yet seems to haunt Wuthering Heights.

Hareton Earnshaw

A rough, bearish young man of haughty bearing who lives at Wuthering Heights, with thick brown curls and labourer's hands. He is proud of his name and ancestry—the name 'Hareton Earnshaw' and the date 1500 are carved above the door—yet his dress and speech are rude and uncultivated. His exact relationship to Heathcliff is ambiguous at first, and he nurses a sullen hostility toward strangers.

Mrs. Heathcliff (Young)

A slender, strikingly beautiful young woman with golden ringlets and an expression hovering between scorn and desperation, revealed to be Heathcliff's daughter-in-law whose husband is dead. She is sharp-tongued, contemptuous of everyone in the household, and passes her captive days reading and theatrically threatening Joseph with the Black Art. Her age and beauty contrast sharply with her grim surroundings.

Joseph

An elderly, deeply Calvinist manservant at Wuthering Heights who speaks in a thick Yorkshire dialect. He is sour, self-righteous, and perpetually muttering prayers or dire moral warnings at those around him. Despite his apparent piety he shows little genuine charity, and Mrs. Heathcliff delights in terrifying him with threats of witchcraft.

Zillah

The stout, energetic housekeeper at Wuthering Heights, more practical and humane than the other inhabitants. She intervenes to rescue Lockwood from the dog attack, nurses him after his nosebleed, and guides him to the forbidden bedchamber. She has only been at the Heights a year or two and finds its queer goings-on too numerous to investigate.

Nelly Dean

The housekeeper at Thrushcross Grange, described as a matronly lady taken as a fixture with the house. Lockwood turns to her at the end of Chapter IV to learn the history of Heathcliff and the Heights, making her the primary narrator of the embedded backstory. She is knowledgeable, sensible, and deeply embedded in the history of both households.

Hindley Earnshaw

Catherine's older brother, revealed through her diary as a tyrannical and cruel substitute master of the Heights after their father's death. He demoted Heathcliff from companion to social inferior, forbidding him to eat or play with the family. His wife Frances is briefly mentioned sitting on his knee while he enforced harsh Sunday rules.

Jabez Branderham

A preacher mentioned in a pamphlet Lockwood reads before sleep, and who then dominates his first nightmare as the deliverer of a monstrous four-hundred-and-ninety-part sermon on sin. His real-world chapel lies in a hollow between two hills near a swamp. He represents religious excess and the oppressive Calvinist atmosphere of the moorland community.

Wuthering Heights

A fortified stone farmhouse on a exposed hilltop on the Yorkshire moors, its name deriving from the provincial word for atmospheric tumult. Built in 1500 as attested by the carved date and name 'Hareton Earnshaw' above the principal door, it features narrow deeply-set windows, large jutting cornerstone, grotesque carved griffins, and a vast oak dresser stacked with pewter. It is guarded by packs of fierce dogs and emanates a dismal spiritual atmosphere despite its glowing fires.

Thrushcross Grange

A large estate about four miles from Wuthering Heights across the moors, owned by Heathcliff but tenanted by Lockwood. It is the more genteel and comfortable of the two households, staffed by a housekeeper and servants, and surrounded by Thrushcross Park. The distance from the park gate to the Grange itself is two miles through wooded grounds.

The Yorkshire Moors

The vast, wild upland landscape surrounding both houses, characterised by heather, bogs, snow-filled swamps, and sparse stunted vegetation. Travel across the moors in winter is genuinely dangerous, with deep drifts obliterating roads and lime-daubed guide-stones the only navigational aid. The landscape enforces the social isolation of all characters and mirrors the emotional extremity of the story.

Chapel of Gimmerden Sough

A small, dilapidated moorland chapel lying in a hollow between two hills near a peaty swamp, whose moisture is said to embalm the few corpses buried there. Its clergyman's stipend is only twenty pounds per annum and the building is barely maintained. It appears in Lockwood's nightmare as the site of Branderham's interminable sermon.

Catherine's Annotated Books

A small collection of mildewed religious and other volumes left on the ledge of the oak bed-closet, covered in Catherine Earnshaw's childhood handwriting. The annotations range from detached sentences to diary entries, including a caricature of Joseph, and record her resentment of Hindley and her bond with Heathcliff. They serve as the primary documentary evidence of Catherine's inner life and the backstory of the Heights.

The Carved Oak Bed-Closet

An unusual piece of furniture in the forbidden bedchamber: a large oak case with coach-window-shaped cut-outs forming a self-contained sleeping closet around a window ledge. It is here that Lockwood reads Catherine's diary and experiences his supernatural nightmare. Heathcliff's extreme distress at Lockwood sleeping in this room implies the closet has profound personal significance.

Pilgrim's Staff

In Lockwood's first nightmare, Joseph insists a pilgrim's staff is required to gain admittance to any house, and flourishes a heavy-headed cudgel he calls by that name. The assembled congregation at Branderham's sermon wield their staves as weapons. The staff functions as a symbol of religious authority and communal judgment within the dream logic.

The Haunting of the Forbidden Bedchamber

The room containing the oak bed-closet is one Heathcliff refuses to let anyone use willingly, for reasons his servants do not know. Lockwood's nightmare produces a ghostly child identifying herself as Catherine Linton, claiming to have wandered the moors for twenty years. Heathcliff's subsequent breakdown—flinging open the lattice and weeping for Cathy to come in—suggests he believes the room is genuinely haunted and longs for the ghost's return.

The Name Trinity: Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Linton

The three surnames scratched repeatedly on the windowsill—Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, Catherine Linton—encode the entire marital and social history of the novel's central triangle before it is narrated. They hint that Catherine moved between the identities of her birth family, her soul-bond with Heathcliff, and a formal marriage into the Linton family.

Yorkshire Moorland Survival Lore

Travel across the moors in winter requires intimate local knowledge: roads are buried in snow, bogs masquerade as level ground, and lines of lime-daubed upright stones serve as the only guides in darkness or blizzard. Even locals familiar with the terrain regularly lose their way. This practical danger enforces the isolation of both houses and makes the moors an active, hostile presence in the story.

Calvinist Religiosity of the Household

Joseph embodies a severe, joyless Calvinist piety that pervades the atmosphere of Wuthering Heights: mandatory three-hour Sunday services in the garret, condemnation of any play or levity, and constant invocations of damnation. Catherine's diary shows this oppression was resisted by her and Heathcliff from childhood. Mrs. Heathcliff weaponises Joseph's superstitious terror by threatening him with witchcraft and wax effigies.

Key Dates and Chronology

The house of Wuthering Heights was built or established in 1500, as carved above the door. Catherine's diary entries were written roughly a quarter-century before 1801, placing them around the mid-1770s, when she was a child. The ghost of Catherine claims to have wandered for twenty years, suggesting her death occurred around 1780. The novel's framing narrative is set in 1801.