Inspired by Wuthering Heights

FICTION

It can be accurately stated that the popularity of Emily Brontë’s classic novel has largely inspired the production of many of the glossy-covered “romance novels” that line the racks of book-stores and supermarkets, and many authors have been moved to reimagine and retell the story of Wuthering Heights itself. Two recent examples are Windward Heights, by Maryse Condé, and Coldwater, by Mardi McConnochie.

Prize-winning Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé transfers Brontë’s tale of passion to her own tropically torrid island in Windward Heights (1998; originally published as La migration des coeurs in 1995). Condé, who first read Wuthering Heights when she was fifteen, has said that she tried in her novel to explore commonalities between Caribbean women and English women. Windward Heights tells the story of Razyé, a brutal black man, and Cathy, the mulatto daughter of the prominent man who takes in Razyé. When Cathy weds a Creole, Razyé flies into a destructive rage. Condé writes: “The great dream he had cherished would never come true. The girl he loved was now out of his reach. How could he live without Cathy? Can a human being live without his soul?”

In Mardi McConnochie’s Coldwater (2001), which won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003, the story is moved from the Brontës’ Yorkshire to the penal colony island of Coldwater off the coast of Australia. The year is 1847—when Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey were published. Captain Wolf runs both the prison and his household like an efficient warden; his three daughters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—come into contact only with prison guards. The sisters’ isolation forces them to create more magical realms in their feverish imaginations.

Coldwater is narrated by these three geniuses. The narrator of each section is identified upfront, and the length of each speaker’s section is roughly equivalent to the amount of work published by her Brontë counterpart, with the Charlotte of the novel doing most of the storytelling, Anne placing a distant second, and Emily’s contributions sporadic and minimal. Charlotte writes in the first person with a sure hand. Emily also writes in the first person, but her fragmented, emotional prose is punctuated with capitalized nouns typical of her poetry and enough dashes to make Emily Dickinson blush. McConnochie has Anne write in the third person, offering more distance and a more complex look at Charlotte, Emily, and the goings-on at the penal colony.

When Finn O’Connell, an extraordinary Irish prisoner, becomes the captain’s valet, the unstable Emily falls madly in love with him. Shortly after she completes the Wuthering Heights manuscript (and then in a wild dance tosses it page by page into the sea), she writes: “I fear that I am going mad—.”

FILM

Emily Brontë’s saga of tempestuous love has been filmed several times. The distinguished roster of adaptations includes Luis Buñuel’s Spanish version, Abismos de pasión (1954); Robert Fuest’s 1971 film starring Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton; Jacques Rivette’s French version, Hurlevent (1985); Peter Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights (1992), starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes; and a Masterpiece Theater production that aired in 1998. But William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939), produced by Samuel Goldwyn, is universally considered to be the definitive film of Brontë’s classic.

Featuring a screenplay by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, Wyler’s film is limited in its narrative scope to the tormented love of Catherine and Heathcliff. A listless and winsomely childish Merle Oberon plays Cathy, and a scowling, churlish Laurence Olivier, in his first major film role, plays Heathcliff. The opening credits introduce us to the stormy Yorkshire moors and Wuthering Heights. After the appearance of Catherine’s pallid ghost, the film launches into flashback, detailing the arrival of the gypsy boy Heathcliff, who becomes Catherine’s favorite playmate. In their games of make-believe, they turn Penistone Crag, a rock perched upon a cliff, into a wondrous castle. Heathcliff affirms to Catherine, “Here, you will always be my queen.”

When Hindley (Hugh Williams) becomes master of the estate, he demotes Heathcliff to stable boy. At first the abused Heathcliff is too devoted to Catherine to leave Wuthering Heights and prospect for greener pastures. Catherine’s interests turn to music, manners, and society, and soon she agrees to marry Edgar Linton (David Niven), failing to notice Heathcliff’s devotion or to hear his pledge to her of undying love. The beautiful black-and-white cinematography by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) incorporates several close-up shots of Olivier’s pained, glowering face and of Oberon’s flighty ex pressiveness. The film closes with Heathcliff reuniting with Catherine’s ghost at Penistone Crag.

Nineteen thirty-nine has been called the greatest year in motion picture history, and Wyler’s Wuthering Heights had to compete for Oscars with Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Wizard of Oz, among others. But Wyler’s film held its own, earning eight Oscar nominations, including for best actor, best supporting actress (Geraldine Fitzger ald, who played Isabella Linton), best screenplay, best director, and outstanding production (that is, best picture). Four of Alfred Newman’s scores were nominated for Academy Awards that year, among them that of Wuthering Heights. Gregg Toland took home an Oscar for his precise, deep-focus cinematography.

POETRY

Emily Brontë’s inner tempest has inspired generations of poets, among them Sylvia Plath, who titled one of her poems “Wuthering Heights.” Published a year before Plath’s suicide in 1963, it presents a keenly felt affinity with Brontë’s preoccupation with passion, death, and a terror that lurks just beneath the surface. In the poem, Plath writes: “If I pay the roots of the heather / Too close attention, they will invite me / To whiten my bones among them.”