Wuthering Heights

On a bright, frosty day, Lockwood visits Wuthering Heights carrying a note from Nelly to Catherine. Hareton, now a handsome rustic who deliberately downplays his looks, unchains the jealous gate and serves as reluctant watchdog in Heathcliff's absence. Catherine prepares vegetables in the kitchen, sullen and spiritless, barely acknowledging Lockwood with the same disregard for politeness she showed before. When Lockwood tries to discreetly pass Nelly's note to Catherine, she asks loudly "What is that?" and throws it off. Hareton immediately seizes it, saying Heathcliff must see it first. Catherine's face turns away, tears streaming, and after struggling with his emotions, Hareton ungraciously flings the letter to her. Reading it, Catherine gazes toward the hills, mourning: "I should like to be riding Minny down there!... Oh! I'm tired—I'm stalled, Hareton!" She reveals Heathcliff destroyed all her books—she hasn't seen one in weeks. When she discovered Hareton's secret collection of Latin, Greek, poetry, and tales, she mocked him cruelly: "You gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing!" She ridicules his attempts to read, imitating his blunders. Hareton, deeply humiliated, hurls the books into her lap: "Take them! I never want to hear, or read, or think of them again!" Catherine refuses: "I won't have them now. I shall connect them with you, and hate them." She reads mockingly until Hareton physically checks her "saucy tongue." Then he throws all his beloved books—his path to education—into the fire, his face showing the anguish of sacrificing his dreams to wounded pride.