Summary Chp. 4

From walking during a chilly weather the other day, Lockwood feels a little sick. Mrs. Dean, a servant since eighteen years earlier, comes to serve him supper. Thinking about the Wuthering Heights dwellers’ strange behaviors, Lockwood lures her into telling him what she knows about them.

Mrs. Dean says that she knows the Earnshaws well because her mother was also a servant to them. The two Earnshaw children she used to serve were Hindley and Cathy—short for Catherine. One day when Hindley was eighteen and Cathy six, Mr. Earnshaw went on a journey to the city. But upon his return, instead of bringing home a fiddle and a horsewhip as promised, he had with him a dirty gipsy child whom everyone instantly hated.

The child was named Heathcliff and only that. Within a few days, he had made friends with Cathy. Old Mr. Earnshaw for some reason liked him very much and showed it, which, needless to say, didn’t help improve the relationship between the real son and the adopted one. Heathcliff never fought back when Hindley beat him up, though, which earned him young Mrs. Dean’s sympathy.

However, seldom complaining as he was, Heathcliff was no angel. He was selfish and cunning. He knew he had Mr. Earnshaw’s favor and took advantage of it. Unless Hindley gave him what he wanted, he would show Mr. Earnshaw the bruises from the beating.