Hareton and Cathy's Blossoming Love

Follows the romance of Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton (younger) from contempt to books to a wedding promise.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Scorn at First Sight

A Cousin in the Dirt An Accident of Blood The girl from the Grange and the youth of the Heights meet as strangers and enemies. Cathy orders Hareton about as a servant, and he answers with curses and insults, each recognizing in the other everything their world has taught them to despise. A Seed of Intimacy Despite her disgust, Cathy accepts his offer of a terrier pup, and he makes the first clumsy gesture of propitiation. The exchange stands at the opposite pole of their later love, a beginning defined by pride and injury.

The Hidden Books

The Secret Library Learning for Her Sake Hareton, stung by Cathy's mockery, has secretly collected books and taught himself to read, hiding his stock from the household. When Cathy discovers them, she laughs at his blunders, and the exposed ambition nearly breaks him. A Gentler Turn Her relentless teasing gives way to something like compunction when she sees the books burning. The humiliation, terrible as it is, has brought her into contact with a man trying to rise, and the contact has begun to humanize her.

The Kiss of Approach

An Overturned Enmity A Hand Offered, a Kiss Pressed Cathy breaks Hareton's pipe and asks for friendship, and when he refuses her hand, she presses a gentle kiss on his cheek. The gesture, witnessed by Nelly, is both a surrender and a conquest. A Treaty of Hearts Hareton's anger melts, and he bends over the book she has given him as if over a talisman. The kiss is the turning point of their story, the first gift of love that is not an injury.

The Reading Lessons

A School of Two The Teacher and the Taught Cathy tutors Hareton, her hand upon his shoulder as he stumbles over syllables, and the lessons become the medium of their courtship. Each correction is a caress, each improvement a gift given and received. A Mutual Shaping He learns to read and to plant gardens; she learns patience and forbearance. The rough edges of both are worn smooth in the daily friction of intimacy, and Nelly's maternal eye sees the good seed thriving at last.

An Engaged Future

The Moonlight and the Page A Marriage Announced Nelly reveals that the young people are to marry on New Year's Day and leave the Heights for the Grange. Lockwood, watching their departure into the moonlight, grumbles that together they would brave Satan and all his legions. The Healing Pair The union of Hareton and Cathy is the novel's only fully healthy love, born from injury but not defined by it. In them the blood feuds of the parents at last become a shared future.

Cathy's first visit to Wuthering Heights, 1784

the months before Heathcliff's death, 1801-1802

Easter Monday, 1802

the spring and summer of 1802

autumn 1802, when Lockwood observes them