Why I Won't Be Seeing "Wuthering Heights"

When I was in middle school, my grandmother gave me a copy of Wuthering Heights for my birthday or Christmas. She was pleased and encouraged by the fact that I read obsessively, but I think he wanted to curb my interest in trashy modern novels and improve my mind with the classics. I was young enough to have not heard of the book yet and I knew nothing about it. The synopsis on the back of the book wasn’t helpful. It merely said it was about the tumultuous romance between Catherine Earnshaw and the “swarthy Heathcliff”. It said the romance was complicated, but that’s all it told me.

This is the actual copy she gave me.

It took me a long time to decide I was willing to pick up this dense and mysterious novel, but once I did, I was caught in a world I didn’t expect. This love story wasn’t romantic. In fact, I couldn’t grasp its central characters at all given that I wasn’t inside their heads and I was only reading about their story through secondhand accounts. Then the story continued well beyond the doomed romance of Heathcliff and Cathy, and was filled with other characters who were collateral damage in this whole train wreck.

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, I am going to explain the story with a messy synopsis. I don’t care about “spoilers”. Chances are good if you are reading this post, you are a fellow book worm who already read the book. I would also guess if you haven’t read the book, you probably never will. I'm sure some of the details are sketchy or incorrect, but this book is so detailed and expansive, it's hard to remember everything that happened exactly as it happened.

The story begins with Mr. Lockwood, a city man who recently rented the country estate of Thrushcross Grange to escape the pressures greater society. He decides to pay a call on his landlord, the reclusive Heathcliff, at his home in the farmhouse of Wuthering Heights. When he arrives he finds the residents and staff surly and unwelcoming. However, the weather turns bad and it’s not safe to walk back to Thrushcross Grange, so he is forced to spend the night. He has a dream of a woman at his window named Catherine who begs to be let in. When he tells Heathcliff about the dream the next morning, Heathcliff becomes disturbed.

Lockwood returns home and asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean about why his landlord is so odd and what was the meaning of the dream. Nelly decides to tell him the story, so the reader is about to learn the story of Heathcliff and Catherine thirdhand.

The Earnshaw family occupied Wuthering Heights for many years. I guess one could describe Mr. Earnshaw as a gentleman farmer, comfortably well-to-do, but not wealthy. Nelly and her family have always worked for the Earnshaws and grows up with the Earnshaw children Catherine and Hindley.

One day Mr. Earnshaw takes a trip to Liverpool and returns with a young orphan boy he picked up on the streets. He has little explanation for doing so. The boy is dark-skinned, although it’s never explained how dark. He is sometimes described as a Gypsy or Lascar. The reader only knows he is not likely all white. He could be Romani. He could be Indian. He could be black or mixed race. It’s left to the reader’s imagination. Mr. Earnshaw names the child Heathcliff as both a first name and a last name. (Even though he raises the child as a son, he will not give him the family name.) He is fond of the boy and often favors him, raising Hindley’s ire.

(I read a fun novel years later that speculates that Heathcliff is the son of Edward and Bertha Rochester, which tracks given Bertha's racial ambiguity.)

Catherine is a spoiled brat who acts impulsively and doesn’t seem to care much for the needs of others, but she is drawn to Heathcliff, who acts like a sociopath right from the start. They develop a deep friendship and spend time exploring the moors together. Hindley goes away to school and marries a woman named Frances. Soon after Mr. Earnshaw dies. Hindley inherits the estate and is able to get his revenge on Heathcliff by making him a servant and banishing him to the stables.

Heathcliff and Catherine continue their friendship, although the reader only knows a small portion of what they do all day as we only see the relationship through Nelly's eyes. One of their favorite pastimes is to visit the nearby estate of Thrushcross Grange and spy on its inhabitants, the Linton Family. Catherine and Heathcliff are fascinated by their wealth and lifestyle. One day they are caught and the family sets the guard dogs on them. Heathcliff gets away, but one of the dogs bites Catherine on the ankle. The injury is severe, so the Lintons take pity on her, and take her in, and nurse her wounds at Thrushcross Grange until she recovers. Catherine becomes acquainted with the Linton children, Edgar and Isabella. Edgar is drawn to Catherine’s wild beauty and she is equally drawn to his genteel manners and his wealth. While she stays at Thrushcross Grange she gets a taste of a life she has only ever fantasized about.

Edgar begins courting Catherine and eventually asks her to marry him and she accepts. She tells Nelly about the proposal and asks for her opinion. She wants to know if Nelly thinks she did the right thing. Catherine says she knows Edgar loves her and he’s rich so it seems like the proper course of action. However, she loves Heathcliff. The problem is she wants to marry up, not down. She declares, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff.” Then she declares that despite his low position, she will never love anyone the way she loves Heathcliff. She dramatically declares, “I am Heathcliff.”

She doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Heathcliff has been listening. He hears her say it would degrade her to marry him and he runs away. He doesn’t hear her declare her passionate love. He runs off and disappears for three years. Catherine marries Edgar and settles into her comfortable life, missing Heathcliff the whole time.

Three years later Heathcliff returns. He has mysteriously acquired a fortune and is now a wealthy gentleman. It is never explained how he came by his money. In the interim Frances dies and leaves behind a son named Hareton. Hindley becomes depressed and falls prey to alcoholism and gambling. Heathcliff takes advantage of this and gets Hindley to sign Wuthering Heights over to him to pay off his gambling debts. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff keeps Hareton as a servant and has him grow up uneducated, coarse, and ignorant. 

In his quest for revenge on Catherine and Edgar, he seduces Isabella and marries her against her brother's wishes. She is infatuated and marries him despite the fact that Edgar disowns her. Heathcliff is emotionally and physically abusive to her. She eventually leaves him, but she also has his son.

Heathcliff tries to spend time with Catherine although Edgar forbids it. She is pregnant and her health is failing. She dies giving birth to a daughter. Heathcliff is distraught and begs to be haunted by her. He hovers around her grave at night. He vows to continue revenge against the Lintons and anyone else who has wronged him. Catherine's daughter, Cathy, grows up spoiled and headstrong, but she isn't quite as unpleasant as her mother (she has her father's genes and guidance). Nelly takes care of her and she grows up mostly ignorant of her family drama.

Isabella eventually dies and Edgar wants to her son Linton to live with him. Heathcliff insists his son stay with him. He is a frail and sickly child whom Heathcliff treats with contempt. Cathy becomes infatuated with him and over the course of three years visits him at Wuthering Heights often, although he can be demanding and difficult. He grows weaker and more sickly as time goes by. Edgar attempts to write to him and give him advice, but Heathcliff controls all correspondence. 

Edgar becomes ill and is close to death. At this point during one of Cathy's visits, Heathcliff locks her inside Wuthering Heights and forces her to marry Linton. She manages to escape and say goodbye to her father before he dies, but she returns to Wuthering Heights. Linton dies shortly afterwards, which gives Heathcliff control of the Linton property.

Nelly's story concludes here and Mr. Lockwood decides to return to the city. He's not sure he wants to be away from society after all.

Months later he is passing through the area and he returns to say hello to Nelly. Heathcliff is dead. He wasted away pining for Catherine and their ghosts still haunt the moors. Cathy has been educating Hareton and they are now in love. Thrushcross Grange is now legally hers and the plan is for them all to return there and abandon Wuthering Heights to the ghosts (and to the crusty old servant who has always been there). 

I had never read anything like it before. It don’t think I could explain how I felt about the story. There was no happy ending. There were no likeable characters (or at least none I could empathize with). I read it at a time in my life when I was used to linear narratives, reliable narrators, and happy endings. Wuthering Heights taught me what books could be and told me to stop demanding what they should be. I would have told you in those days that Wuthering Heights was one of my favorite books.

Several months later Grandma bought me a copy of Jane Eyre. That was a book with a linear love story, a narrator who was also the heroine of the story, and characters who were likeable – or at least redeemable. (It helped that I could easily relate to Jane as the story begins with her as a relentlessly bullied child.) One could argue that the romance of Jane Eyre isn’t much healthier than that of Wuthering Heights (the story features a man closing in on middle aged who takes advantage of a virtuous and naïve young woman who isn’t even out of her teens, then deliberately lies to her, and eventually ends up devoting her life to caring for him), but whatever the flaws of the characters or the creepiness of their love, it can’t be argued the two of them have genuine love for each other. Jane is a proto-feminist who values her self-reliance and independence as much as she loves her creep. Rochester sees the error of his ways. Jane Eyre become my new favorite book and I wouldn’t pick up Wuthering Heights for years, even though I would still consider it one of my Top Ten All-Time Favorites.

But then there were the movies. I have been someone who always wants to see the movie versions of the books I read, because I want to see the stories out of my head and presented to me in a low-effort way. However, I want to see the stories as they are written and not as someone else interprets it. That's why I will often be disappointed, and often angry, with the movie versions of books. I was eager to see Wuthering Heights on screen, especially given that the story is long and complex and seeing it would be easier than reading it. Unfortunately, I never saw a version that satisfied me. Every version I ever saw ended the story with Catherine's death. The story was always a romanticized fantasy of Catherine and Heathcliff without the complexities of the other characters and the themes of revenge and generational trauma. I even thought the beloved version withe Lawrence Olivier was terrible.

Then I saw the 2009 miniseries. It was the most faithful adaption I had seen so far. It told the story from start to finish. This renewed my interest in the book. Did the movie adaption capture the book? Was there anything in the book I didn't remember that the movie left out? I decided the book needed a rereading. I pulled out my old copy that Grandma gave me so many years ago.

Checking out the inscription Grandma put on the front page. I see now she gave it to me for Easter when I was 11. She always signed things as a happy face with her initials, CC, for eyes.

After I finished the reread, I realized something.

I don't like the book.

I still think it's a good book. It's a brilliant book. It is astonishing the daughter of a county vicar who rarely spent time outside the society of Haworth could write such a story. As a child I understood this instinctively, but I also read it trying to convince myself it was a romantic love story. It is not a romantic love story. It is a tragedy. If you want to call it a love story, then say it's about the doomed love of a narcissist and a sociopath and how the fallout poisoned everyone around them. 

I read Wuthering Heights as a teen in the same way I read Romeo and Juliet.  At the time I first read the play, I  thought it was the most romantic story ever. It's the same track as Wuthering Heights.. It was a tragedy about a pair of stupid reckless kids destroying their families with their mad romance. As an older and wiser adult, I realize a story about love isn't always a love story.

That is the problem with this new movie. It's not about what the book is about. Emerald Fennell admits this. She thought it was a romantic love story when she was a teen and that's the kind of movie she wants to make about it. She is writing the script as she wants to  remember the story. Note she stylizes the title with quotes. She is already saying it's not Wuthering Heights, merely inspired by it. The movie is fan fiction. This is why I know I can't watch this movie. She takes an unpleasant story and distorts everything that is interesting about it.

As crazy as it sounds, as I see the coming attractions and the critiques, I can only compare it to Bridgerton. 

Bridgerton is a series of bodice-ripper stories that take place in a pseudo-historic, anachronistic Regency-era fantasy world. It is erotica dressed up in period costumes and English accents to give it a respectable, literary, air. (I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this either. I watch it.) It is also visually sumptuous filled with beautiful women, chiseled handsome men, gorgeous costumes, resplendent scenery, and a quirky score. 

I feel as if this is what "Wuthering Heights"is. It's a heavily stylized erotic fantasy dressed in literary garb with vague references to a classic novel. It has a quirky score and beautiful, if historically inaccurate, costumes. It has dramatic scenery. It belongs in no place or time other than the one that exists in the director's mind. Because it's about Wuthering Heights, or at least adjacent to Wuthering Heights, audiences will take it seriously. The literary reference is license to be weird and smutty and still be considered high art.If Bridgerton is trying to dress up erotica for the Downton Abbey or Jane Austen, set, then “Wuthering Heights” is for lovers of 50 Shades of Grey who want to feel more sophisticated.

(For the record, 50 Shades ranks up there with Atlas Shrugged among the books I feel only belong on the shelves of the library in Hell.)

Is this wrong? Does it make the movie worthless? It has its fans among both critics and viewers, so there are viewers out there enjoying it. I can't imagine I will be one of them. I'll skip it and have a reread of Villette.