The family tree in Wuthering Heights

The Lintons live at Thrushcross Grange, the house that Mr Lockwood rents from Heathcliff in 1801, when the novel opens.¹ Their children are Edgar and Isabella, a year younger than Catherine.⁴

Mr Linton and Mrs Linton die of a fever caught from Catherine while she recovers at the Grange.⁶ Edgar marries Catherine three years after his father’s death. Before she accepts him, she tells Nelly Dean that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her and that she is Heathcliff. He hears the first part and leaves the Heights for three years.⁶

Isabella dies in the south, and Edgar brings her son to the Grange, but Heathcliff takes the boy to the Heights.¹⁰ Years later he holds Cathy there until she marries Linton, who is dying. She escapes in time to reach her father before he dies.¹¹

Linton dies soon after and leaves his property to his father, so Heathcliff holds both houses.¹² He dies at the Heights after four days without food, and Nelly tells Lockwood that Cathy and Hareton will marry on New Year’s Day.¹³

Heathcliff’s hold on the Grange came in two steps. Edgar meant to alter his will and put Cathy’s fortune in the hands of trustees, so that it could not fall to Heathcliff if Linton died, but the lawyer, Mr Green, had sold himself to Heathcliff and came too late.¹¹ Linton, being a minor, could not touch the lands, yet Heathcliff claimed and kept them in the right of Cathy and of his dead son.¹²