Wuthering Heights: A Journey from the Novel to the Movie

Lopamudra revisits Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, and its various film adaptations. She likes the 1992 version of the movie. A critique, exclusively for Different Truths.

A Gothic tale of passion, vengeance and the elemental conflict between man and his destiny. Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Emily Bronte, published in 1847. It remains one of the most haunting, critically acclaimed works of English literature. Over the years, the novel has been regarded as one of the most powerful works of art because of Bronte’s depiction of the passion and relationships, the physical and spiritual struggles between a couple of families living in the Yorkshire moors.

Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw have been regarded as the most fiercely passionate, deadly lover duo representing unrequited love and its longings that exist beyond the peripheries of life, not only in literature, but also when the novel has been adapted into cinema quite a few times. By the late 1900’s, critics unanimously began to appreciate Bronte’s stupendous literary craft, brilliant structure and the meticulous execution of the different themes of Wuthering Heights.

The Story

The narrative of the entire novel revolves around the all-encompassing, powerful, and passionate love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how their thwarted passion eventually ravages their lives as well as the lives of those surrounding them. Throughout the narrative, which critics have labeled as strange, powerful, and imaginative, there is an elemental clash between the two opposite forces, ‘storm’ and ‘calm’. 

Both Catherine and Heathcliff, while remaining closely connected to each other in a strange, inexplicable way, represent the elemental force of the storm. This strong, elemental force of the storm that Catherine and Heathcliff symbolise seek not only passionate love, but a stronger, higher spiritual existence that transcends mortality, even after Catherine’s painful death after childbirth. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Lintons represent the calm that is time and again invaded and consumed by the elemental storm of Catherine and Heathcliff’s presence. 

The narrative unfolds with the arrival of a tenant named Mr. Lockwood, who comes to visit his landlord Mr. Heathcliff at Thrushcross Grange and reads the diary of the young Catherine Earnshaw, learning that she had an intimate childhood relationship with Heathcliff. His terrifying dream of the ghost of a young girl begging to enter his room leads to a severe ill treatment meted out to him by Heathcliff and his subsequent interaction with Ms. Nelly Dean, an old housekeeper closely related to both the Earnshaw and Linton families. Ms. Dean then provides the secondary narrative embedded with Mr. Lockwood’s narrative and unfolds the plot bit by bit. 

The story begins thirty years earlier (in the narrative voice of Nelly Dean) when Heathcliff, a young gypsy boy, is introduced to the Earnshaw family by the Late Mr. Earnshaw. The plot then follows a long, winding path of resentment, childhood companionship, love, brutality, revenge, and abusive relationships that affects the lives of almost all the characters encompassing three generations. 

The constant physical and emotional struggles and the continuing tension between the characters Catherine and Edgar Linton (Catherine’s husband), Heathcliff and Hindley (Catherine’s brother), Heathcliff and Hareton (Hindley’s son), Heathcliff and Isabella (Linton’s sister) form the crux of a turbulent saga that ends in the death of Heathcliff. 

Passionate Chemistry between Heathcliff and Catherine

The center of the book, however, is the story of the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff, which unfolds in four stages in a back-and-forth narrative. While the first part depicts the close relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff and their common rebellion against Hindley at Wuthering Heights, the second part reveals Catherine’s betrayal towards Heathcliff, her marriage to Edgar Linton, and her subsequent death in childbirth. 

The third part covers the story of Heathcliff’s revenge and brutality at Thrushcross Grange. The fourth part unfolds itself some years back and tells the readers about the changes that come over Heathcliff and finally, narrates his inevitable death. The Catherine-Heathcliff spiritual union remains the dominant theme even in the last two parts, long after the death of Catherine, underlying all other plot developments. 

Film Adaptations 

In the course of time, there have been several film adaptations of the novel, the earliest being the 1939 period drama Wuthering Heights, directed by William Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as the romantic leads. The film in its monochromatic frames, depicts only 16 of the novel’s 34 chapters, eliminating the second generation of characters. The award-winning adaptation that won eight Academy Awards including the ones for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, went on to achieve a cult status in vintage years of Hollywood. 

In the 1960’s, Wuthering Heights was adapted by the BBC as a multi-episode miniseries that aired on television with pretty decent ratings and reviews. 

Starring Ian McShane and Angela Scoular as Heathcliff and Cathy, this BBC adaptation of the original novel attempted to follow the original text. It has received success overall, being a fine adaptation combining the elements of period drama, movie, and literary finesse, with some great acting by the protagonists. 

Film reviewers at IMDB say that the 1962 adaptation is the best Wuthering Heights movie in terms of its overall execution of the plot, the narrative, and the characterisation, although it couldn’t beat the sheer popularity of the 2009 version, starring Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy.

Biggest Drawback

The BBC television adaptation is shorter and focuses on the first half of the book more with some great performances by Claire Bloom as Cathy, Keith Mitchell as Heathcliff, and Patrick Troughton as Hindley. To my humble understanding, the biggest drawback of this adaption was that the scenes were mostly shot indoors with a minimalistic set, which opposes or contradicts the sheer presence of the ethereal Yorkshire moors, which plays an integral role in the novel, but nonetheless, it’s been considered a highly rated adaptation.

The 2009 version, starring Charlotte Riley and Tom Hardy, however popular it might have been, downplays the plot and the original narrative of the novel as too many changes and additions to Bronte’s story takes away the purity of the storytelling. Also, some iconic moments from the novel are left out, such as Cathy’s ghost at the window and Heathcliff overhearing her speech to Nelly, which were considered the high points in the narrative. However, the performances and strong histrionics of the lead characters have made the adaptation a strong one.

Among all the film adaptations of Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, I recently watched the Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes starrer (1992), where the raw passion and vulnerability of Catherine and her obsessed lover Heathcliff come across in a haunting way. A rather striking and unique aspect of the 1992 adaptation is the introduction and voiceover of Emily Brontë (played by Sinead O’Connor). In addition to this element, this adaptation is the only one to have the same actress (Juliet Binoche) play Senior Cathy and Catherine junior, her daughter. 

As the title music played on towards the end, I was once again engulfed in the melancholy and the gothic representation of the tale of revenge and most importantly, unrequited love that was a staple of my very young days as a student of English literature. I have seen a couple of other versions of the film earlier and want to know and understand why this particular version received negative reviews after its release. 

Unrequited Love 

According to my understanding, the film’s crux was more centered on the unrequited love between Catherine and Heathcliff and the resulting anguish and desperation that plagued Heathcliff than anything else, which is what is dominant in the novel too…the ghostly feel and the eerie images are a part of the book, but that is because Brontë’s descriptions are very gothic and metaphysical in nature and that is quite hard to portray in a film adaptation. But overall, the film resonated with me, so I asked myself why it didn’t go well with the critics. 

Wuthering Heights, in its very essence, remains a haunting, metaphysical Gothic novel of the Victorian times, and such a fine classic novel, when adapted into movies, has captured the attention of the audience. The strange, powerful world of Wuthering Heights inhabits the brutal yet enigmatic figures like Heathcliff and Catherine who are consumed by the peculiar world of their feelings. 

Incorporating the Gothic elements of imprisonment, escape, flight, persecuted heroine, ghosts, as well as introducing the mysterious Heathcliff, who destroys the lady he loves and who usurps inheritance; Emily Bronte establishes several Gothic traits that are embedded into the narrative of the novel, and some of the movie adaptations have done justice to a few of these themes, if not all of them. 

Seen as a supernatural Gothic love story, the overwhelming presence of a larger reality, the desperate striving for a greater, higher union gives the novel a transcendental meaning, essentially metaphysical in its nature. Hence, such a potent, imaginative classic with a raw, rugged beauty and intensity is a treat to watch in film adaptation, as a visual representation of the metaphorical truths embedded in the novel.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/21/emily-bronte-strange-cult-wuthering-heights-romantic-novel

https://lithub.com/wuthering-heights-is-a-virgins-story-and-other-opinions-of-brontes-classic/

https://literariness.org/2019/03/25/analysis-of-emily-brontes-wuthering-heights/

Visuals by Different Truths with picture from the internet