Wuthering Heights

In Wuthering Heights (a film adapted from the classic novel by Emily Bronte) a poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family. There him and his new foster sister, Cathy develop an intense and agonizing relationship that breaks and tries to reconvene completely vain and all too late.

I have never read the original book, but the new film released on the big screen this year apparently adds more twists to the already convoluted plot. Certainly the 1847 novel  a romance. Heathcliff and Cathy, raised as adopted siblings, fall in love but are torn apart by their agonized passion and a jealous brother, Hindley. They find solace on the desolate moors, but Cathy’s marriage to a wealthy neighbor, Edgar, turns Heathcliff bitter, and he disappears for years, returning a rich man but reconnecting too late, as Cathy dies after giving birth to a daughter. However, in the original story, Heathcliff was not a black man.

Heathcliff in this case is played by the actor James Howson, perhaps a reflection of scholarly arguments that Brontë was writing about race and class in addition to sexual inequality and the dangers of revenge. With such a complex plot, not to mention hundreds of pages of period language and social norms, I wonder what challenges the screenwriters had developing dialogue and characterization for the new Heathcliff.

Fascinating!