Isabella Linton's Transformation

Traces Isabella from pampered Grange daughter through infatuation and abuse to a bitter survivor who flees the Heights forever.

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The Fanciful Miss

A Pretty Featherhead A Keen Temper Underneath Isabella Linton, younger than her brother and spoiled by a doting family, is witty and passionate beneath her infantile manners. Her life has been one of uninterrupted indulgence. A Heart Unprepared The arrival of Heathcliff, dangerous and mysterious, is the first real temptation she has ever encountered. Her sheltered imagination makes her incapable of recognizing a predator, and her growing attentions to him are a cat playing with a loaded gun.

The Besotted Wife

A Bride Undeceived The Honeymoon's End Within twenty-four hours of leaving the Grange, Isabella's heart has returned to her old home, but her body is chained to Wuthering Heights. She writes to Nelly that she is in hell, and asks whether Heathcliff is a man, a madman, or a devil. The Awakening of Hatred Her love curdles into terror and then into a focused, relentless hatred. She learns to find pleasure in exasperating him, and the spoilt child grows a spine of steel, planning to pay him back in kind.

The Tormentor's Pupil

A Course in Cruelty The Teacher of Pain Heathcliff spares Isabella no degradation, mocking her romantic folly and hanging her dog to test her submission. Yet his cruelty teaches her his own methods; she watches, remembers, and begins to plan. A Lover Turned Enemy She tells Nelly she would rather be hated than loved by him, and that she has no pity for him at all. The transformation from infatuated girl to vengeful wife is complete before she ever escapes.

The Escapee

A Bloody and Free Woman A Ring Smashed Isabella flees through a snowstorm, bleeding and bruised, and reaches the Grange to announce that she has left her husband forever. She smashes her wedding ring against the hearth and lets it burn, a precise symbolic divorce from her own folly. Exile Chosen She refuses to remain even at her brother's house, for fear of drawing Heathcliff there. Her escape is not a return to safety but the beginning of a lifelong displacement, and she carries with her only the education in hardness she has received.

The Stranger in the South

A Distant Life A Son Sent North Isabella lives out her shortened life in the south, bearing a son named Linton and reporting him ailing and peevish. She corresponds with Edgar and entrusts the boy to him upon her death, hoping to shield him from Heathcliff. A Ghost of the Heights Her death is a quiet removal from the story's stage, yet its consequences are immense: it places Linton Heathcliff in his father's path and gives Heathcliff his final weapon. Isabella, who once dreamed of romance, becomes in death a tool of the revenge she hated.

before Heathcliff's return, at eighteen

the first weeks after the elopement

the months of captivity at the Heights, before Catherine's death

the day after Catherine Earnshaw's funeral

the thirteen years between her escape and her death