Wuthering Heights Part IV

Young Catherine is content with a reclusive life, but when she is 16 she meets Linton again while out walking. She is drawn to him, as he seems gentle and weak. Edgar's health is declining, and both he and Nelly are ill and confined to bed. Cathy begins to sneak out and go to Wuthering Heights to see him. Heathcliff stays away, because he wants the 2 cousins to marry and he knows that Cathy won't come if he is there because her father hates him so much. As Edgar is getting sicker, Heathcliff kidnaps Cathy and pressures her to marry Linton. She is less in love with Linton now as she can see that he is a peevish unpleasant boy, but she is fond of him and finally agrees to the marriage. Nelly goes to the farm to try and get her back but Heathcliff locks her up. However Cathy manages to get away and goes to see Edgar on his deathbed. Nelly tells Lockwood that after Edgar had died, Heathcliff took Cathy back to the farm and planned to rent out the bigger house. He tells Nelly, when Edgar was buried, he bribed the sexton to let him see Cathy's dead body and when he dies, he wants to be buried beside her. She is shocked at his morbid fancies. A few months later, Linton also died of TB. He was little more than a child. Cathy is trapped now at the farm, keeping house for her father in law - who has inherited the Grange when it passed to his son. Nelly tells Lockwood that she wishes she could be with Cathy, but she has no choice. When he recovers from his chill, Lockwood decides to go back to the south, finding the cold of Yorkshire intolerable. He keeps up the rent but leaves and does not return to the area for a year. Finding himself near Gimmerton, he decides to go and visit Heathcliff and to discuss whether he will go on renting the Grange. But when he gets to Wuthering Heights, he finds that Nelly is living there. She tells him that Heathcliff has died recently and the Grange has reverted to Catherine who is going back to live there soon. She tells Lockwood what has happened while he was away. Linton dies of consumption, leaving Catherine a young widow of 17. Heathcliff asked Nelly to come back to the farm to keep house and to keep Catherine, whom he dislikes, out of his sight. Nelly finds Heathcliff even more reclusive than before, and gloomy, but she is pleased to be back with Catherine and is busy with the housekeeping. Hareton Earnshaw lives in the house and is attached to Heathcliff, even though the man has all but stolen his land.