Wuthering Heights Screen Adaptations: I Am Tired

Why Do Filmmakers Keep Aging Cathy And Heathcliff?

Hello!!!

This is Joyie and welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books!

This week I finished reading Vanity Fair. Have you been reading anything this week?

So, today I'm gonna talk about a book that I’ve already talked about like a million times, but I can’t help it because it's literally my favourite book: Wuthering Heights.

Earlier this week, I came across a post on twitter. It was a snap of Margot Robbie dressed as a bride holding a bouquet. Apparently that was her playing Cathy Earnshaw in the upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation. To my relief, people were NOT buying that.

I have been ignoring the existence of this movie the way the movie is ignoring its source material. I generally refuse to watch any screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights because I know none of them do justice to the story, and I love that book way too much. I won’t be able to stand seeing it being butchered.

The only exception to that was the 2009 TV adaptation starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley. I watched it because my brother wanted to see what it was about the story that has me so obsessed with it. I didn't hate it, but one thing in there pissed me off royally. And just knowing what I know about the upcoming movie, I know it's the same with this one too (among other things!).

Cathy Earnshaw is nineteen when she dies. She gets married at eighteen, and engaged at fifteen. Filmmakers don't seem to grasp how young that is.

I once saw a comment on YouTube, saying Wuthering Heights is a book written by a child without a mother, about children without their mothers. Yes, Cathay and Heathcliff are frustratingly immature in their behaviour. But all of that makes sense when you take into consideration that Cathy is a child, and so is Healthcliff in the first half of the book.

They’re children who grow up being abused. Healthcliff’s abuse is a lot more obvious because it's clear violence. But for Cathy, it's a little more subtle.

She loses her mother at eight (I don't know how affectionate a mother Mrs. Earnshaw was, but still) and Mr. Earnshaw is hardly an affectionate parent to her. He outright tells her that he regrets ever having her. And he dies when she's twelve, so all of this is happening to her before or at the age of twelve.

After his death comes Hindley who is worse. He's violently abusive towards Healthcliff, and also mistreats Cathy. We have Cathy’s first hand account of that.

So, Cathy and Healthcliff are two children without any adult figures in their life to protect and take care of them, only having each other to find any emotional comfort in. Therefore they adapt badly, are unable to regulate their emotions the way well-adjusted adults do. Even though he lives to his late-thirties, Heathcliff still behaves like a kid, his pursuit of revenge is actually pretty childish.

When adaptations make Cathy and Heathcliff visibly much older, it erases that decisive element of their characters. And I really fucking hate that.

And I love Margot, but she's as bad a choice for Cathy as she was a good choice for Barbie.

What about you? Have you ever watched any screen adaptation that you didn’t enjoy? I'd love to know!!!

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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.

Until then,

Joyie 🌻