Plot Summary
Zillah, the servant, leads Lockwood to a forbidden bedroom that Heathcliff never willingly allows anyone to use. Inside, Lockwood discovers an old-fashioned closet-bed with a window ledge covered in scratched writing: the name Catherine repeated as Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, and Catherine Linton. Among mildewed books, Lockwood finds a twenty-five-year-old diary belonging to young Catherine Earnshaw, describing life at Wuthering Heights after her father’s death. The diary reveals how her brother Hindley has become a cruel master, forcing Catherine and Heathcliff to endure Joseph’s endless sermons while he and his wife Frances enjoy the fire. When Catherine and Heathcliff rebel by throwing their religious books into the dog kennel, Hindley banishes them to the back kitchen, where Catherine writes her diary entry before escaping with Heathcliff onto the moors.
Lockwood then experiences two vivid nightmares. In the first, he attends a sermon by the Reverend Jabez Branderham that stretches to 490 parts, each cataloguing a different sin, until the congregation erupts into violence. In the second and far more disturbing dream, Lockwood reaches through the window to stop a branch tapping the glass, only to find his fingers grasped by an ice-cold child’s hand. The ghostly voice of Catherine Linton sobs, “Let me in — let me in! I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!” Lockwood cruelly rubs the ghost’s wrist on the broken glass and screams aloud, waking the household.
Heathcliff rushes in, furious that anyone has slept in this room. When Lockwood carelessly describes his nightmare, Heathcliff’s rage turns to anguish. After Lockwood leaves the room, he witnesses Heathcliff wrench open the window and sob desperately for Catherine to come to him. At dawn, Lockwood escapes the hostile household, struggles through deep snow back to Thrushcross Grange, and arrives exhausted after a four-hour journey through the drifts.
Character Development
This chapter deepens our understanding of Heathcliff’s character dramatically. His extreme reaction to the ghost dream — his sobbing plea, “Cathy, do come. Oh, do — once more!” — reveals a man consumed by grief and longing beneath his harsh exterior. Lockwood’s response to the ghost, rubbing its wrist on broken glass, exposes his own capacity for cruelty when frightened, undercutting his gentlemanly self-image. Through Catherine’s diary, we meet her as a spirited, rebellious child who allies with Heathcliff against the oppression of Hindley and the sanctimonious Joseph. The young Hareton Earnshaw and the defiant younger Mrs. Heathcliff also appear briefly, each trapped in their own way under Heathcliff’s domination.
Themes and Motifs
The supernatural and the Gothic pervade this chapter, from Catherine’s spectral appearance to the oppressive atmosphere of the Heights. The theme of the haunting past is central: Catherine’s ghost has wandered for twenty years, and Heathcliff’s grief shows the past is not dead but actively tormenting the present. The moors function as a symbol of freedom — in Catherine’s diary, escaping onto them represents liberation from Hindley’s tyranny. Class and power emerge through Hindley’s degradation of Heathcliff and, in the present, Heathcliff’s own tyranny over his household. The motif of names and identity appears in the triple inscription on the window ledge, foreshadowing Catherine’s fractured identity across her relationships.
Literary Devices
employs a nested narrative structure: Lockwood reads Catherine’s diary within his own account, creating layers of storytelling that bridge past and present. The dream sequences blend realism and the supernatural, leaving readers uncertain whether Catherine’s ghost is real or imagined. Symbolism saturates the chapter — the window separating Lockwood from the ghost represents the barrier between the living and the dead, while the books piled against it suggest rationality’s futile defense against the supernatural. Brontë uses dramatic irony when Lockwood unwittingly torments Heathcliff by describing the ghost, not realizing the depth of Heathcliff’s connection to Catherine. Joseph’s thick Yorkshire dialect provides both comic relief and authentic regional texture.