Plot Summary
Lockwood visits Wuthering Heights one last time before leaving the area, carrying a letter from Nelly Dean to young Catherine. When he arrives, Heathcliff is out, and Hareton Earnshaw admits him. Catherine is in the kitchen preparing vegetables, looking sulky and spiritless. Lockwood slips Nelly's note onto Catherine's knee, but she loudly draws attention to it, and Hareton seizes the letter, insisting Heathcliff must see it first. Catherine's tears soften Hareton, who relents and flings the letter back to her.
After reading the letter, Catherine expresses longing for her old life at Thrushcross Grange, sighing that she is "stalled" and tired. She tells Lockwood she cannot even write a reply because Heathcliff has destroyed all her books. This leads to a bitter exchange between Catherine and Hareton: she has discovered his secret collection of books, which he has been using to teach himself to read. Catherine mocks his stumbling attempts at literacy, ridiculing his pronunciation of Chevy Chase and his reliance on the dictionary.
Lockwood tries to mediate, explaining that Hareton is not envious but emulous of Catherine's learning. Catherine, however, continues her taunting, declaring that Hareton's clumsy readings profane the books she holds sacred. Mortified and enraged, Hareton throws all the books into Catherine's lap, telling her to take them. When she refuses and mocks him further, he strikes her and hurls the books into the fire, destroying them in a moment of anguished spite.
Heathcliff arrives home and encounters the distressed Hareton leaving. In a revealing aside, Heathcliff murmurs that he sees Catherine Earnshaw's face in Hareton more every day, and can "hardly bear to see him." Lockwood then informs Heathcliff he intends to leave Thrushcross Grange and return to London. Heathcliff, characteristically blunt, says he never relents on collecting rent. The chapter ends with Lockwood riding away, musing fancifully about what might have been had he and young Catherine formed an attachment.
Analysis
Chapter 31 marks a pivotal turning point in the second-generation plot of Wuthering Heights. The central conflict between Catherine and Hareton over books and literacy operates on multiple symbolic levels. Books represent not merely education but power, identity, and emotional connection. For Catherine, the books are "consecrated" by memories of her former life and her mother's world; for Hareton, they represent his desperate aspiration to rise above the degradation Heathcliff has imposed on him. The destruction of the books in the fire parallels the destructive cycles of the first generation, yet it also clears the ground for reconciliation: once pride and mockery are burned away, the two cousins will eventually find common ground.
The theme of education as liberation runs throughout this chapter. Hareton's secret self-education mirrors Heathcliff's own youthful exclusion from learning, but where Heathcliff channeled his humiliation into revenge, Hareton's nature bends toward gentleness. Lockwood's observation that Hareton is "emulous, not envious" captures the crucial difference between the two generations. Catherine's cruelty in mocking Hareton echoes her mother's occasional thoughtlessness, yet her capacity for remorse — hinted at by chapter's end — points toward the healing that the elder Catherine and Heathcliff never achieved.
Heathcliff's muttered confession that he sees "her" in Hareton's face reveals the psychological torment driving his waning grip on vengeance. The resemblance between Hareton and the first Catherine unsettles Heathcliff's scheme of degradation, foreshadowing his eventual surrender of control in the final chapters. Meanwhile, Lockwood's parting fantasy of a romance with young Catherine underscores his role as a superficial, unreliable narrator, whose sentimentality contrasts sharply with the raw emotional depths of life at the Heights.