A man named Lockwood arrives at the Wuthering Heights estate to meet Mr. Heathcliff, his landlord, who has rented him a nearby village, the Farm of Thrush. The reception can not be colder. In the house also live the daughter-in-law of Heathcliff, Catherine, and the young Hareton. The three characters seem to Lockwood incomprehensibly sullen and bitter.

Mrs. Dean, who serves Lockwood at the Thrushcross Farm and looked after the protagonists as children, tells the story of the two families that live in the area, the Linton and the Earnshaw. Mr. Earnshaw, owner of Wuthering Heights, brought Heathcliff, an abandoned child, home one day to raise him as his own. Earnshaw's children received Heathcliff with surprise. With time, the daughter, Catherine, became a good friend of him, but the eldest son, Hindley, detested him and did not lose the opportunity to humiliate him ...