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 32-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary
Months later, Lockwood visits a friend in the North and finds himself unexpectedly near Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He drops by the Grange looking for Nelly and learns that she is now living up at Wuthering Heights. When Lockwood arrives at Wuthering Heights, he notices “a fragrance of stocks and wall flowers, wafted on the air, from amongst the homely fruit trees” (222). Lockwood hears voices from an open window, and he eavesdrops, “being moved thereto by a mingled sense of curiosity, and envy that grew as [he] lingered” (223). Cathy, in her “smiting beauty” (223),is teaching Hareton to read; “[h]is handsome features glowed with pleasure” (223) under Cathy’s tutelage. Lockwood finds Nelly, and she tells him that Heathcliff has died.
Nelly tells him the whole story, beginning from two weeks after Nelly was left behind at the Grange. She had been summoned to Wuthering Heights, which she “obeyed joyfully, for Catherine’s sake” (225). Cathy was confined to the immediate premises at the time, and she was restless and unhappy, arguing with Joseph and ignoring Hareton or goading him with insults. Soon, Nelly notices that Cathy is “sorry for his persevering sulkiness and indolence” (226) and because she had bullied him into giving up on self-improvement, she set “her ingenuity[...]at work to remedy the injury” (226). She read aloud to Nelly,piquing Hareton’s interest in books. After Hareton hurts himself in a gun accident, Cathy engages him in conversation and insists he notice her. Nelly joins in to instruct him to “be friends with your cousin[...]since she repents of her sauciness” (227), and Cathy repeats her request to be forgiven. She suggests that she teach him to read, and he accepts. When Joseph comes home, he is “perfectly aghast at the spectacle of Catherine seated on the same bench with Hareton Earnshaw, leaning her hand on his shoulder” (229). Their closeness intensifies quickly, and Nelly announces that “it was easy enough [for Hareton] to win Mrs. Heathcliff’s heart[...]The crown of all my wishes will be the union of those two.’” (230).
Chapter 33 Summary
Nelly continues her story, describing Heathcliff’s chronic annoyance with Cathy and Hareton. Cathy is growing more impertinent with Heathcliff, provoking him with accusations and threats to tell Hareton “all about you” (232). Heathcliff puts his hands on Cathy, only to be held back by Hareton, and “all of a sudden, his fingers relaxed, he shifted his grasp” (233) and grew calm. Hareton and Cathy stay busy with their “occupations, of pupil, and of teacher” (233), and when Heathcliff interrupts them, he is startled to notice that they both have Catherine’s eyes. He acknowledges to Nelly that now, “when everything is ready, and in [his] power, [he] find[s] the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!’” (234). Heathcliff no longer desires revenge and loses his own will to live, “hardly remember[ing] to eat and drink” (235). He confesses that he longs for death: “I wish it were over!” (236).
Chapter 34 Summary
Heathcliff begins to avoid mealtimes and “to absent himself” (236). One night, Nelly hears him leave the house. He returns the next morning, “almost bright and cheerful [...] very much excited, and wild and glad” (237). He eats with the household, and Nelly asks him if he has received any good news, trying to discern the reason for this sudden improvement in his mood. He responds mysteriously: “You’ll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you, if you refrain from prying” (238). Another night soon after that meal, Heathcliff tells Nelly he plans to send for the lawyer to write his will, but he does not know to whom to leave his property, and he instructs Nelly as to the details of his funeral. He does not want a minister to preside over his burial, as he “[has] nearly attained [his] heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by [him]” (242).
The next morning, Heathcliff rejects the attentions of the doctor Nelly has summoned, and it rains that night. In the morning, while Nelly is walking, she notices “the master’s window swinging open, and the rain driving straight in” (243). She forces her way into his room, only to discover Heathcliff has died, with his eyes open, “so keen and fierce, [she]started; and then he seemed to smile” (243). Hareton, “the most wronged, was the only one that really suffered much” (244) as a result of Heathcliff’s death. The doctor cannot determine Heathcliff’s cause of death, and he is soon buried next to Catherine according to the instructions he left with Nelly. Although she saw him covered with sod herself, Nelly reveals that there are “country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their bible that he walks” (244), sometimes accompanied by a woman.
Nelly tells Lockwood that Hareton and Cathy are to be married on New Year’s Day, and they plan to live at Thrushcross Grange. Joseph will stay at Wuthering Heights. Lockwood leaves Wuthering Heights, and on his way back to the Grange, he passes “the three headstones on the slope next to the moor” (245), and he wonders “anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth” (245).
Chapters 32-34 Analysis
These final chapters make up the ending of the novel, and the supernatural elements of these chapters draw on the Gothic tradition to emphasize the unnaturally powerful connection between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Although they could not be together in life, they are joined in death, as the sightings of their ghosts attest. Heathcliff’s inexplicable high spirits just before his mysterious death suggests that he has communed somehow with Catherine, as he also mentions having “attained [his]heaven” (242) before he even dies.
The relationship between Hareton and Cathy has stabilized into a kindly and romantic union, and the reader, along with Nelly, can celebrate the end of a violent, vengeful era of high emotion and chaotic bad feelings. Wuthering Heights is at peace, as Hareton and Cathy plan to live at Thrushcross Grange. Even the moors are sedate as Lockwood describes his incredulity upon walking past the three graves in the final sentence of the novel; surely, the dead can rest as peacefully as the living from this point forward.
