Plot
A traveler named Lockwood is caught in the snow and stays at the estate of Wuthering Heights, despite the cold behavior of his host Heathcliff. Late that night, after being shown into an upstairs room that was once a bridal chamber, Lockwood is awakened by a cold draft and finds the window shutter flapping back and forth. Just as he is about to close it, he feels an icy hand clutching his and hears a woman outside calling, "Heathcliff, let me in! I'm lost in the moors. It's Cathy!" Lockwood calls Heathcliff and tells him what he saw, whereupon the enraged Heathcliff throws him out of the room. Once Lockwood is gone, Heathcliff frantically calls out to Cathy and runs down the stairs and into the snowstorm. Ellen, the housekeeper, tells the amazed Lockwood that he has seen the ghost of Cathy Earnshaw, Heathcliff's only great love, who died years ago. When Lockwood says that he doesn't believe in ghosts, Ellen tells him that he might if she told him the story of Cathy, and he asks her to do so, intrigued. The story is then shown as a flashback.
As a boy, Heathcliff is found on the streets of Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, who brings him home to live with his two children, Cathy and Hindley. At first reluctant, Cathy eventually welcomes Heathcliff, and they become very close, but Hindley treats him as an outcast, especially after Mr. Earnshaw dies. About ten years later, the now-grown Heathcliff and Cathy have fallen in love and are meeting secretly at Penistone Crags on the moors. Hindley has become dissolute and tyrannical towards Cathy and the servants and forces Heathcliff to be a stable boy out of hatred for him.
One night as Cathy and Heathcliff are out together, they hear music and realize that their neighbors, the Linton family, are having a party. The pair sneak inside the Lintons' estate by climbing over their garden wall, but the dogs are alerted and attack them. One of the dogs bites Cathy, and she suffers a severe leg injury. Heathcliff is forced to leave Cathy in their care. Enraged that the Lintons' glamor and wealth would so entrance Cathy, he blames the family for her injury and curses them all.
Cathy fully recuperates while staying for months with the Lintons, then returns home. Edgar Linton has fallen in love with Cathy and soon proposes; after Edgar takes her back to Wuthering Heights, she tells Ellen what has happened. Ellen reminds her about Heathcliff, but Cathy flippantly remarks that it would degrade her to marry him. Heathcliff overhears and leaves before he can hear Cathy realize aloud that she belongs with him, not Edgar, despite their class difference. When she discovers Heathcliff has overheard, she runs after him into the moors during a raging storm. Edgar finds her cold and ill. He summons the local doctor, Kenneth, who nurses her back to health. Soon after her recovery, Cathy and Edgar marry.
Heathcliff then disappears but returns years later, now wealthy and elegant. He has refined his appearance and manners to impress Cathy, and secretly buys Wuthering Heights from Hindley, whose gambling and heavy drinking have brought him to financial ruin. Cathy remains with Edgar despite Heathcliff's return and denies her love for him; to spite Cathy, Heathcliff begins courting Edgar's naïve sister, Isabella. Despite Cathy's objecting strongly to both Isabella and Heathcliff, the two eventually marry. A brokenhearted Cathy soon falls gravely ill. Heathcliff rushes to her side against the wishes of a now disillusioned and bitter Isabella. Cathy finally tells Heathcliff that she loves only him, and they reconcile, forgiving each other. At her request, Heathcliff carries Cathy to the window, so she can see the moors for the last time before dying in Heathcliff's arms. Heathcliff asks Cathy to haunt him until the day he dies.
As Ellen finishes her story, Dr. Kenneth arrives and tells Ellen and Lockwood that he saw Heathcliff on the moors with a woman, only to find Heathcliff's corpse alone in the snow. Ellen realizes that he saw the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy, who now haunt Penistone Crags together.
