Mr Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange (inhabited by the Lintons), visits his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, at Wuthering Heights (inhabited by the Earnshaws). He spends the night there because of a storm and he has a strange dream about a girl, Catherine, who is tapping on the window asking to be let in after 20 years of wandering on the moors. The next day, Mr Lockwood returns to Thurshcross Grange and Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, tells him the whole story of the family from the Heights:
Mr Earnshaw, the father of Hindley and Catherine, one day came back from Liverpool with a foundiling he called Heathcliff. Hindley ill-treated him but he got on well with Catherine, and while roaming the moors they promised they would stay together forever. When Catherine was bitten by one of the Linton's dogs and is forced to spend five weeks at Thrushcross Grange to recover. There, she meets Edgar and Isabella and appreciates their refined way of life. A few years later, Edgar proposes to her and she accepted.
Catherine said to Nelly Dean she would not marry Heathcliff because he was socially inferior, but Heathcliff overheard this conversation and disappeared. He returned 3 years later, handsome, rich and determined to take his revenge: he gains Wuthering Heights gambling with Hindley, now a drunkard, and married Isabella, Edgar's sister, to treat her like a servant. Meanwhile, Catherine died giving birth to her daughter Cathy. Years later Heathcliff kidnapps Cathy and obliged her to marry his spoilt son Linton: his revenge is complete when he became the owner of Thurshcross Grange. Nelly's narrative ends.
Mr Lockwood leaves Yorkshire and comes back after a year. He discovers that Linton and Heathcliff are dead, and Cathy and Hareton (Hindley's son) are going to get married to live in peace. Nelly tells Lockwood that according to some rumours the figures of a young man and a woman have been seen wandering together in the moors.