Wuthering Heights: Novel Summary: Chapters 3-4

Chapter 3: Lockwood falls off to sleep reading, and has a bad dream about Joseph in the chapel that ends with the entire congregation attacking him. He wakes up only to hear a fir-tree branch touching his window, and he dreams again. This time in the dream he hears the wind and goes to the window to get the fir-tree branch away from it only to be grabbed by a 'little, ice-cold hand'. He hears a voice telling him to let her in, saying she is Catherine Linton and that she has come home. He sees her face, and terrified, he tries to loose her grip on him. She tells him that she has been trying to get home for twenty years. He gets her to let go of him, and in his frenzy, yells, knocking the books over. He hears footsteps into his chamber and Heathcliff asking if anyone is there. Lockwood decides he had better admit his presence, and when he opens the door to the couch closet, he sees the look of shock on Heathcliff's face. He tries to explain what he is doing there and relates his dreams to Heathcliff, but Heathcliff gets quite angry and tells him to go to his room to finish the night. As Lockwood leaves, he hears Heathcliff saying, Come in! Come in!...Cathy, do come. Oh do--once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last! (32).
Lockwood goes down into the kitchen where he tries to rest and is soon interrupted by Joseph and then by Hareton, who shows him into another room in the house where he finds Zillah, Mrs. Heathcliff and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is telling his daughter-in-law that she is worthless and should do something, and she says that she will only do the things that he can make her do. They stop their fight when they see Lockwood, and at the first gleam of light Lockwood takes the opportunity to start for home. Heathcliff stops him, saying that he will accompany him for a while. They walk on, Lockwood glad for Heathcliff's company for he would have gotten lost many times without it. They exchange little conversation, and when Heathcliff leaves him, Lockwood tries to make it home, getting lost a few times to make his trip home twice as long as it should have been. The people in his house are glad to see him, and he changes clothes and tries to warm up.
Chapter 4: Mrs. Dean relates the story of the people at Wuthering Heights, and so becomes the narrator for a while. Before she came to Thrushcross Grange, Mrs. Dean was almost always at Wuthering Heights. She remembers playing with Hindley (Hareton's father) and Catherine Earnshaw, as her mother was their nurse. One day she remembers Mr. Earnshaw going on a journey and promising to bring back a fiddle for Hindley, a riding whip for Cathy and apples and pears for her. He is gone a long while, and when he comes back he has with him an orphan that he could not let starve in the street. The fiddle is crushed, and he has lost the whip, and the children and his wife do not like the dirty, ragged, black-haired child that he has brought home. He is named Heathcliff, and soon he and Cathy are good friends, but Hindley still hates him. Mr. Earnshaw thinks much of Heathcliff and raises him as part of the family, taking his side against his own son Hindley often. Hindley and Heathcliff fight often, but Heathcliff does not complain, making Mrs. Dean think that he is not vindictive. She learns that she has been deceived.