Anca Danila

XI B

Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte’s only novel. The first film adaptation of the novel
was filmed in 1939, and after 53 years, in 1992 Peter Kosminsky made another interpretation
with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.
The action of the novel takes place at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and
its subject is the unaccomplished love between Heathcliff and Catherine. Wuthering Heights is
the novel of two families Earnshaw and Linton. Both families have two children Catherine and
Hindley Earnshaw, Edgar and Isabelle Linton. The novel is concentrated on a triangle of love:
Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff and Edgar Linton.
Heathcliff is Catherine’s foster brother, and then he becomes her other half. But instead
of being together, they become a sort of enemies and the revenge takes place between them.
Hindley, after his father’s death, persecutes Heathcliff and treats him like a servent.
The novel begins with the arrival of Mr. Lockwood at Wuthering Heights to meet his
new landlord Heathcliff. He is forced to remain one night at Wuthering Heights because of the
weather. He is treated coldly and rudely by his new landlord and in this night he discovers the
beginning of Catherine Earnshaw’s story.
She and Heathcliff spent their childhood together at Wuthering Heights and when si
discovered Linton’s residence she loved their life style. She got a cold and Mr Edgar Linton took
care of her a few months. When she returns to Wuthering Heights she tells Nelly Dean, her
house keeper, about her feelings for Edgar Linton and also for Heathcliff. This is the moment
when Heathcliff leaves Heights and disappears for a long time.
While Heathcliff was gone, Catherine got married with Edgar Linton and moved to
Thrushcross Grange. After a long period of being gone, Heathcliff comes back and surprises
Catherine. Now he is rich, good looking and handsome and the new landlord of Wuthering
Heights.
But he doesn’t come with good intentions. He wants revenge for those who were
between him and Catherine and he gets what he wants: a son with Edgar’s sister to get a part
from her inheritance, he persecutes Hindly’s son as he was by him and in the end even the
Thrushcross Grange forcing Cathy, Edgar and Catherine’s daughter, to marry his son, Linton.
Catherine dies after giving birth of Catherine Linton, but not before telling Heathcliff
what she feels for him.
 The story of the two lovers repets in the end of the novel. The same story is between
Cathy and Hareton, son of Hindly, and they have Heathcliff in the middle not leting them to be
together. The novel ends with the death of Heathcliff and the union between Cathy and
Hareton.

Wuthering Heights is a complex novel and Peter Kosminsky made a good job
interpretating and transposing the story in pictures, in his visions. He chose the characters well,
they are great actors and I think that they fit in those roles. They made me to love and to hate
at the same time with them. They got me in the film, in the action, as Emily Bronte made during
the book.
There are some differences between the book and the film. A lot of detalis were
excluded from the film. In the film Cathy looks like her mother and in the novel she looks more
like her father, Edgar. In the novel Nelly has an important role during the action and in the
movie she has a small one. Hindly is an alcoholic in the novel and in the film this is shown only
in his lasts years of life.
I think that this excluded detalis were necesarely to make this complex novel much
easier to understand.
Now I should try to convince you to watch the movie, but I won’t do this. Read the novel
and then watch the movie. It will be better for you and for your mind to process what Emily
tried to say behind those letters and words.