# Wuthering Heights — Character guide

> Key figures in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

- [Catherine Linton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/catherine_linton.md): Cathy grows up at Thrushcross Grange as her widowed father's companion, bright, headstrong, and largely untested by the world beyond the park. When she finally meets her cousins at Wuthering Heights, her warm, impulsive 
- [Heathcliff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/heathcliff.md): Brought home from the streets by old Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff grows up half-sibling, half-outsider, adored by Catherine and despised by Hindley. His love for Catherine is absolute and possessive, and when she chooses Edg
- [Hareton Earnshaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/hareton_earnshaw.md): Hareton is Hindley's son, but Heathcliff has taken the estate and reduced the boy to a field hand who cannot read his own name carved over the door. Sullen, strong, and fiercely loyal to the man who degraded him, he bris
- [Joseph](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/joseph.md): Joseph has served the Earnshaws and then Heathcliff for decades, muttering judgments in thick Yorkshire dialect and finding sin in every pleasure. He scolds Catherine for late rambles, resents her followers, and treats a
- [Nelly Dean](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/nelly_dean.md): Nelly has watched the Earnshaws and Lintons for most of her life, nursing the sick, minding the children, and quietly disapproving of nearly everyone's choices. She is practical, opinionated, and not always kind, and her
- [Edgar Linton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/edgar_linton.md): Edgar is refined, kind, and utterly conventional, the opposite of everything Heathcliff represents. He loves Catherine with steady tenderness, but he cannot comprehend the wildness in her, and his jealousy and pride push
- [Hindley Earnshaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/hindley_earnshaw.md): Hindley inherits the Heights when his father dies, and he uses that power to demote Heathcliff to a servant and humiliate him at every turn. Grief for his wife Frances and his dependence on drink turn him from a favored 
- [Catherine Earnshaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/catherine_earnshaw.md): Catherine rules the Heights as a girl, bossing Heathcliff, mocking Joseph, and provoking her ailing father with the same delight she takes in being scolded. When she returns from Thrushcross Grange polished and laughing 
- [Linton Heathcliff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/linton_heathcliff.md): Linton arrives at Wuthering Heights as a sickly, complaining boy who has never heard of his father and would rather stay with his uncle Edgar. His frailty and self-pity make him an easy instrument for Heathcliff, who nee
- [Isabella Linton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/isabella_linton.md): Isabella grows up cosseted at Thrushcross Grange, imagining Heathcliff as a brooding hero rather than the man her brother warns her against. Her elopement with him becomes a lesson in how little she understood, and her l
- [Zillah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/zillah.md): A servant at Wuthering Heights who assists Nelly and Lockwood.
- [Mr. Lockwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/wuthering_heights_se/characters/mr_lockwood.md): Lockwood arrives from the city expecting a quiet moorland retreat and instead stumbles into a household of surly strangers and a ghostly dream at a latticed window. His curiosity about his landlord and his neighbors give

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