When the dark brooding orphan boy Heathcliff enters the Earnshaw household at Wuthering Heights, he is at first shunned by his new stepsiblings, Catherine and Hindley. Catherine eventually falls in love with Heathcliff, but Hindley's rivalry with Heathcliff only deepens, and when Hindley inherits the estate, he treats Heathcliff as little more than a servant. When Catherine later marries a neighboring landowner who can offer her social advancement, Heathcliff's humiliation is complete and he charts a course of revenge that will have tragic consequences for everyone.