Wuthering Heights Characters

Meet the Cast

Heathcliff

Heathcliff and His ReputationForget most of the romantic nonsense you have heard about Heathcliff. Sure he's in love with Catherine, and you can't question his loyalty, but he has a serious mean st...

Catherine Earnshaw Linton

We first see Catherine Earnshaw through a brief glimpse at the pages of her diary – "detached sentences [. . .] scrawled in an unformed, childish hand" (3.4). Soon after, we meet her ghost, l...

Hindley Earnshaw

Heathcliff may be savage at times, but Hindley is even less sympathetic. He's a jerk from the get-go, brutalizing Heathcliff out of sheer jealousy for the love he receives from Mr. Earnshaw.It's ha...

Hareton Earnshaw

While the name is greatly significant to the story (remember the carving from 1500 that Lockwood notices over the door at Wuthering Heights?), this son of Hindley and Frances is born with significa...

Catherine Linton Heathcliff

Cathy is the only child of Edgar Linton and Catherine Earnshaw Linton. She is a bit of a demanding, headstrong wild child, like her mother. Since she is born the day her mother dies, it's hard not...

Edgar Linton

Edgar is basically a decent and faithful guy, which for purposes of the story makes him a little boring. He is in essence, appearance, and stature Heathcliff's opposite; with "light hair and a fair...

Isabella Linton

Isabella is Edgar Linton's pampered and privileged sister whose upbringing stands in sharp contrast to Catherine's. When we first see her, she is fighting over a puppy with Edgar, and she never rea...

Ellen "Nelly" Dean

As Lockwood figures out pretty quickly, Nelly Dean has the inside scoop on the Earnshaw-Linton melodrama. She is trusted by the members of both houses, so she is a pretty good go-to for the story.A...

Lockwood

Lockwood is our primary narrator, but if you read closely, you can see that his judgment of a situation can be a little off. We soon realize that we will have to be careful about how we interpret t...

Joseph

Joseph is a pious, finger-pointing pain in the neck. A servant at Wuthering Heights, he seems to resent doing any real work. No one really likes him, but he keeps popping up in the background. He s...

Frances Earnshaw

Frances Earnshaw, Hindley's wife, is a strange one. Like Heathcliff, her background is a mystery, though that doesn't seem to bother Hindley, who meets her while he is off at college. She contribut...

Mr. Green

Mr. Green is Edgar Linton's lawyer, who sells out to Heathcliff. Instead of securing Edgar's will to prevent Heathcliff from inheriting Thrushcross Grange, he enables Heathcliff to gain control of...

Dr. Kenneth

Dr. Kenneth very well may be the busiest man in Gimmerton. Between delivering all the babies, diagnosing tuberculosis and dealing with hysteria and mental illness, he's on full time.

Zillah

Zillah, a "stout housewife" (2.104), is one of the few servants at Wuthering Heights, along with Nelly Dean and Joseph. She's often lurking in the background and serves to fill in some information...