Wuthering Heights

In 1771, a man is publicly hanged; his suffering and visible erection send spectators, including Catherine Earnshaw and her paid companion Nelly Dean, a lord's illegitimate daughter, into an ecstatic frenzy. Cathy's father, the abrasive, alcoholic Mr. Earnshaw, returns to his Gothic, windswept estate of Wuthering Heights on the Yorkshire Moors one day with a young boy he rescued off the Liverpool streets. He says the lad is to be Cathy's "pet".