Hila Shachar (Auth.) - Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature - Wuthering Heights and Company

Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of
Classic Literature
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Cultural Afterlives and
Screen Adaptations of
Classic Literature
Wuthering Heights and Company
Hila Shachar
Honorary Research Fellow, University of Western Australia
Palgrave
macmillan
© Hila Shachar 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-29404-2
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First published 2012 by
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
For my parents, Arie and Orna Shachar, and my brother,
Harel Shachar. With respect, gratitude and love
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Contents
List of Figures viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: The Screen Afterlife of Wuthering Heights 1

1 Before the Afterlife: Analysing Wuthering Heights 17
2 The Cinema of Spectacle: Establishing the Wuthering
Heights Tradition on the Eve of Hollywood’s Golden Era 39
3 Moving Backward, Looking Forward: Jacques
Rivette’s Hurlevent 61
4 Wuthering Heights in the 1990s: Peter Kosminsky’s
Ambitious Narrative 85
5 Catherine and Heathcliff for the Y Generation: MTV’s
Modernisation of Wuthering Heights 113
6 Critical Legacies and Contemporary Audiences:
The Politics of Neo-Victorianism in ITV’s 2009
Adaptation of Wuthering Heights 145
Afterword: Myths and Demystification 181
Appendix: Wuthering Heights Screen Adaptations 205
Notes 207
Select Bibliography 211

Index 221
vii
List of Figures
2.1 Catherine (Merle Oberon) and Heathcliff (Laurence

Olivier) on the hilltop, from Wuthering Heights (1939),
directed by William Wyler, United Artists/MGM 42
2.2 A close-up of Catherine (Merle Oberon) in her
luxurious finery, from Wuthering Heights (1939),
directed by William Wyler, United Artists/MGM 52
3.1 Roch (Lucas Belvaux) works on the farm, from
Hurlevent (1985), directed by Jacques Rivette,
La Cécilia, Renn Productions, Ministère de la
Culture de la Republique Française 72
3.2 Catherine (Fabienne Babe) and Roch (Lucas Belvaux)
in an image of domestic discord, from Hurlevent (1985),
directed by Jacques Rivette, La Cécilia, Renn Productions,
Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française 83
4.1 Catherine (Juliette Binoche) and Heathcliff
(Ralph Fiennes) recalling Wyler’s hilltop lovers,
from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992),
directed by Peter Kosminsky, Paramount Pictures 89
4.2 Heathcliff’s (Ralph Fiennes) tortured masculinity
in the romantic letter scene, from Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights (1992), directed by Peter Kosminsky,
Paramount Pictures 94
5.1 A ghostly Cate (Erika Christensen) watches over her
daughter, from Wuthering Heights (2003), directed by
Suri B. Krishnamma, MTV Networks 122
5.2 Heath (Mike Vogel) composing his romantic music,
from Wuthering Heights (2003), directed by
Suri B. Krishnamma, MTV Networks 127
6.1 Catherine (Charlotte Riley) and Heathcliff
(Tom Hardy) in the latest version of the ‘hilltop
lovers’ imagery, from Wuthering Heights (2009),
directed by Coky Giedroyc, ITV. Image courtesy of ITV 172
viii
List of Figures ix
6.2 Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) rescues a heavily pregnant

Catherine (Charlotte Riley) on the moors, from Wuthering
Heights (2009), directed by Coky Giedroyc, ITV. Image
courtesy of ITV 175
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the guidance of
Professor Kieran Dolin and Professor Judith Johnston at The University
of Western Australia. In undertaking this work, I have had the benefit of
their friendship, support and invaluable knowledge. I would also like to
thank Robert White, Dianne Sadoff, Andrew Higson, Imelda Whelehan
and Patsy Stoneman for offering practical tips to make this book better
and being so generous with their advice.
My family has been an enormous source of personal support and
encouragement. In particular, I want to thank my parents, Arie and
Orna Shachar, and my brother, Harel Shachar, who have helped me
in more ways than I am capable of noting here, and who have been
there from start to finish. I am similarly indebted to all my friends who
have seen this work through along with me and endured my countless
discussions on Wuthering Heights. Special thanks go to Kobi, my writing
companion, for his sympathetic presence.
I am deeply grateful to the staff at the Brontë Parsonage Museum at
Haworth, Yorkshire, for granting me access to the collections held at the
museum’s library and providing me with copies of ballet programmes
and the Press Pack for the 1992 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights,
used in this book. I especially want to thank Sarah Laycock, Linda
Proctor-Mackley and Ann Dinsdale for making the task of researching
this work a pleasurable one. This research was substantially funded by
the Australian Bicentennial Scholarship, awarded by the Menzies Centre
for Australian Studies at King’s College, London. I wish to note my grati-
tude for this award and the research it has elicited. Furthermore, I want
to note my gratitude to the Graduate Research and Scholarships office
at The University of Western Australia for awarding me with the two
scholarships that have sustained this work: the Australian Postgraduate
Award and the Ernest & Evelyn Havill Shacklock Scholarship in the
Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
I am greatly indebted to Tristan Kewe at the department of European
Languages and Studies at The University of Western Australia, who has
kindly translated the French material in this work. I also wish to thank
ITV’s Picture Archive Manager, James Felham, for granting me permis-
sion to use images from ITV’s 2009 screen adaptation of Wuthering
Heights within this work, as well as generously providing the cover
x
Acknowledgements xi
image for this book. The cover image and all the other images from this
adaptation are reproduced courtesy of ITV.
Parts of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 have previously appeared in Hila Shachar,
‘The Legacy of Hell: Wuthering Heights on Film and Gilbert and Gubar’s
Feminist Poetics’, in Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic After
Thirty Years, edited by Annette R. Federico (University of Missouri Press,
2009, pp. 149–69), and are reprinted here by kind permission of the
University of Missouri Press, © 2009 by the Curators of the University of
Missouri. Parts of Chapter 5 have previously appeared in Hila Shachar,
‘The Lost Mother and the Enclosed Lady: Gender and Domesticity
in MTV’s Adaptation of Wuthering Heights’, in Neo-Victorian Families:
Gender, Sexual and Cultural Politics, edited by Marie-Luise Kohlke and
Christian Gutleben (Rodopi, 2011, pp. 221–44), and are reprinted here
by kind permission of Rodopi, © 2011 Editions Rodopi.
Finally, a heartfelt thank you to my two editors at Palgrave Macmillan:
Paula Kennedy, who agreed to take on this project, and Benjamin
Doyle, who has endured countless emails and has been patient and kind
throughout the entire process.
Introduction
The Screen Afterlife of Wuthering Heights
She loved second-hand bookshops for their presump-

tion that any tatty volume mattered. . . . Inherited
books. Books as gifts. Books as objects flung across
the room in a lover’s argument. Books (this most of
all) taken into the warm sexual space of the bed, held
upon the lap, entered like another body, companion- reworking WH
able, close, interconnecting with innermost things.
Gail Jones (2006, pp. 136–7)
This book examines what happens to classic literature when it becomes

a cultural legacy through the process of screen adaptation. The pri-
mary focus of this examination is Emily Brontë’s famous 1847 novel,
Wuthering Heights (Brontë, 1998).1 Brontë’s novel is bound-up with
personal, cultural and national histories as a continually reproduced
entity. In much the same way as individuals hold certain texts close to
their hearts as remnants of childhood, lovers and the past, societies and
cultures continually rework certain texts as a collective inheritance. Yet,
the construction of Wuthering Heights as a cultural legacy and collective
inheritance through its screen adaptations has rarely been examined as
closely as it deserves. The intimacy with which many people respond
to Wuthering Heights speaks of its presence not only in their individual
lives, but also, within culture.
This work explores a ‘Victorian afterlife’, a phrase I borrow from
the aptly titled collection of critical essays edited by John Kucich and
Dianne F. Sadoff (2000b). Like the many other classic novels discussed in
Kucich and Sadoff’s collection, Wuthering Heights has a prolific cultural
‘afterlife’. The novel has been a constant source of adaptation into film,
for television, theatre, song, opera and ballet, and has elicited numerous
1
2 Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature
novelistic derivatives. It is this vast afterlife that Patsy Stoneman cata-

logues and analyses in what is arguably the most comprehensive work
on Brontë adaptations, Brontë Transformations (Stoneman, 1996a).
As perhaps the only critic to fully tackle the afterlife of the novel,
Stoneman’s research is foundational. Stoneman’s work shares obvious
similarities with my own and I am indebted to Brontë Transformations
for providing a starting point for this book. However, the type of explo-
ration I undertake here is different from Stoneman’s. My work is not
informed by the task of providing a cataloguing investigation of Brontë
adaptations. Rather, mine is a text-specific cultural analysis of adapta-
tions in particular media: film and television.
This book also differs from Stoneman’s Brontë Transformations by locat-
ing the analysis of Wuthering Heights adaptations in relation to other
adaptations of classic literature made in different historical contexts.
As the title suggest, the focus is on Wuthering Heights and its ‘company’
of fellow films and classic literature. Screen adaptations of Wuthering
Heights made from the 1930s to the present age have been influenced
by cinematic, television and cultural trends that are evident in other
adaptations of well-known novels. And yet, despite the similarities
which can be drawn between the adaptations of Wuthering Heights and
other classic literature, this work nevertheless contends that each liter-
ary work has its own logic and breeds its own unique form of cultural
legacy through the process of adaptation. It is hoped, therefore, that
this specific focus on Wuthering Heights will complement other similar
studies on the adaptation of individual literary works and authors.
Part of the logic of this book stems from the concept that the adapta-
tion and cultural legacy of specific literary works need to be examined
on an individual basis, rather than assuming that all screen adaptations
of classic literature essentially do the same thing. Within Adaptation
Studies, there is a tendency to clump adaptations of famous novels
together, often ignoring how a specific work or an individual author
is used to create a particular type of cultural legacy. Exploring the par-
ticular cultural legacy of Wuthering Heights in the company of other
adaptations however, raises important issues about how to approach
such adaptations in the first place. If the cultural legacy of a particu-
lar literary work is being examined, should discussion of the source
novel feature alongside the analysis of its adaptations? Or, should the
adaptations be allowed to speak for themselves as independent cul-
tural productions? These are questions that are best answered through
an explication of the methodology of adaptation utilised throughout
this book.
films to be
considered the tendency of
alongside clumping adaptations
the novel? together
Introduction 3
A question of methodology: Adaptation and

cultural critique
Any work that focuses on screen adaptations inevitably has to contend

with the large amount of film and adaptation theory that has been pro-
duced since the publication of George Bluestone’s foundational study
on adaptation, Novels into Film (Bluestone, 1957).2 Perhaps the most
widely-known approach to the analysis of adaptations is the notion of
fidelity. It is standard for most books on screen adaptations to begin
with this widely debated issue (see Cartmell and Whelehan, 2007a, pp.
2–4; Cahir, 2006, pp. 13–17; McFarlane, 1996, pp. 8–11; Whelehan,
1999, pp. 3–4; Geraghty, 2008, pp. 1–3; Welsh, 2007, pp. xiv–xv). Such
debates however, often over-emphasise the very concept that Adaptation
Studies seeks to move beyond: the notion that an adaptation must be
‘faithful’ to its source text. If, as Christine Geraghty notes, it ‘is widely
recognized that it is time to move on’ from these debates (Geraghty,
2008, p. 1), the manner in which more recent critics in Adaptation
Studies have ‘moved on’ also presents a certain set of issues.
Some critics have tried to steer the focus away from fidelity to inter-
textuality. One such notable critic is Robert Stam, who argues that adap-
tations are merely the most obvious examples of what is essentially at
work in any film, arguing that ‘all films, not only adaptations, remakes,
and sequels, are mediated through intertextuality’ (Stam, 2005a, p. 45).
As Geraghty points out, such an open approach to adaptations is useful,
however ‘Stam runs the risk of underplaying the particular features of
adaptations’ (Geraghty, 2008, p. 4). After all, an adaptation deliberately
announces itself as a reworking of a particular text, while other forms of
intertextuality can be less direct. In the effort to steer away from fidelity
comparisons between adaptations and their source texts, it is impor-
tant not to downplay the extent to which adaptations have a strong
relationship with a particular text above others. This book works under
the assumption that adaptations should be studied alongside their
source text, because they are, in Linda Hutcheon’s apt words, ‘deliber-
ate, announced, and extended revisitations of prior works’ (Hutcheon,
2006, p. xiv).
In their respective works, Hutcheon and Geraghty utilise particu-
lar metaphors to elaborate on their own approach to adaptations.
Hutcheon argues that it is useful to think of adaptations as:
inherently ‘palimpsestuous’ works, haunted at all times by their

adapted texts . . . When we call a work an adaptation, we openly
NO faithfulness to the source text

announce its overt relationship to another work or works . . .

Although adaptations are also aesthetic objects in their own right, it
is only as inherently double or multilaminated works that they can
be theorized as adaptations. (Hutcheon, 2006, p. 6)
Geraghty employs a similar metaphor when talking about adapta-

tions, using the word ‘film’ as both ‘a textual work and as a layer itself’
(Geraghty, 2008, p. 195). She writes that:
thinking about adaptations in terms of layering at least allows for the

possibility of seeing through one film (in both senses) to another and
acknowledges that the effect of simultaneity might draw on under-
standings built up through time and knowledge. The layering process
involves an accretion of deposits over time, a recognition of ghostly
presences, and a shadowing or doubling of what is on the surface by
what is glimpsed behind. (Geraghty, 2008, p. 195)
film - text
The idea of approaching an adaptation as a type of palimpsest which
accrues meaning over time through the adding and altering of a previ-
ous text or texts, or, as Geraghty puts it, through an array of ‘films’, is
highly productive. This approach does not limit a given adaptation to
direct comparisons with its source text, but allows us to examine it in
relation to the many layers of meaning that accrue over time, such as
previous adaptations and differing contexts. However, a palimpsest, no
matter how many layers and alterations it displays, and no matter how
far it travels through the hands of different ‘authors’, has a starting
point: the parchment begins with a decided source. An adaptation is not
simply an obvious example of intertextuality, it is also a decided engage-
ment with a particular text and its ongoing cultural history.
This book is not concerned with formulating a general theoreti-
cal model of adaptation. Rather, it examines certain adaptations as
part of the cultural phenomenon of a particular text and expands the
analysis of adaptations in an area which is sorely lacking in Adaptation
Studies: historical context and cultural critique. The analysis of film
adaptations – whether in general terms or in close textual analyses – has
often relied on an aesthetic approach that bypasses the influences of
society, culture, context and history. Thomas Leitch cites the ongo-
ing prevalence of such an aesthetic approach in adaptation criticism
(Leitch, 2007, pp. 2–5), even in more recent studies such as Stam’s
Literature Through Film (Stam, 2005b) and Kamilla Elliott’s Rethinking the
Novel/Film Debate (Elliott, 2003).
Introduction 5
Leitch argues that Elliott’s book is based on the:
assumption that adaptation study is and should be essentially

aesthetic. . . . This inquiry is remote from the central inquiry of
academic film studies, which from its beginnings had stacked its
insurgent disciplinary claims by rejecting the aesthetic appreciation
of literature and developing a competing methodology of cultural
critique. (Leitch, 2007, pp. 4–5)
Indeed, why assume that the study of adaptations must be rooted in

aesthetic appreciation rather than their wider contexts of society, cul-
ture and history? Adaptations, just like any other work, do not come
to fruition in a social, cultural or historical vacuum. To analyse them
as self-contained entities made up of certain aesthetic and formal
aspects alone, is to ignore a large aspect of their meaning as products
of a specific context and time. Conversely, Cultural Afterlives and Screen
Adaptations of Classic Literature is grounded in a methodology of cul-
tural critique and historical contextualisation, which seeks to move the
analysis of adaptations away from aesthetic comparisons between the
screen and the novel.
Contextual issues: Home, heritage and gender
Wuthering Heights has been the subject of adaptation in many different

countries and cultures, particularly in the media of film and television.3
These adaptations have numerous geographical origins, however the
most prolific adaptations are from a decidedly Western context. This
book focuses on screen adaptations from the United Kingdom, United
States and France, which are shaped by such a context. This focus is not
intended to downplay the extent to which Wuthering Heights has been
adapted in other countries and other cultures. Rather, it highlights the
unique approach that is evident in the British, American and French
adaptations and how such an approach has come to define the novel’s
cultural history as a primary ideological discourse in Western culture.
With these issues in mind, I want to explore the concept of ‘home’
as both a guiding metaphor for and extended line of inquiry within
Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature. In one of
the most memorable adaptations of the novel, Kate Bush’s well-known
pop song, ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘home’ features as a continual refrain in
the chorus: ‘Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy come home’ (Bush, 1978). Bush’s
song is a metaphor for the manner in which Wuthering Heights retains
its cultural presence in Western culture as a love story that refers not
simply to the love between a man and a woman, but also the love of
‘home’ as a sense of belonging, identity and cultural inheritance. Bush
has famously noted that she had not read the novel when she wrote
the song, but rather was inspired to write it after watching a screen
adaptation of it (Blake, 1978, n.p.). The types of screen adaptations that
Wuthering Heights has elicited in the specific contexts of Britain, America
and France have implicated the novel with various discourses of ‘home’
and ‘non-home’. It is therefore necessary to expand on the notion of
‘home’ as an ideological discourse. home
Rosemary Marangoly George writes that the word ‘home’, as it is
understood in Western culture, ‘immediately connotes the private
sphere of patriarchal hierarchy, gendered self-identity, shelter, comfort,
nurture and protection . . . “home” moves along several axes, and yet
it is usually represented as fixed, rooted, stable – the very antithesis
of travel’ (George, 1999, pp. 1–2). This definition of home provides
an analysis that not only accounts for home as a place and a space,
but also, an ideological discourse. The notion of home as a fixed and
intimate site is also merged with more public definitions of home that
refer to national identity, highlighting the extent to which, in George’s
words, ‘homes are not neutral places’ (George, 1999, p. 6). Rather, they
are confrontations with difference, with the foreign and with what is
considered ‘distant’, forming exclusionary and inclusionary boundaries
around nations, countries, cultures, societies and individuals (George,
1999, pp. 2–6). The word ‘home’ has always had a distinct reference to
a sense of belonging, and such a ‘belonging’ is predicated on personal,
social, cultural and national processes of inclusion and exclusion.
George also argues that discourses of ‘home’ form a type of ‘cultural
center’ around which definitions of self and society are often formu-
lated (George, 1999, p. 13). Such definitions include the concept of a
shared ‘heritage’.
In his investigation of heritage cinema, Andrew Higson notes that the
‘standard definition of heritage is that which is received or inherited,
that which is handed down to the present by previous generations’
(Higson, 2003, p. 50). While such a definition of ‘heritage’ is correct, it
also assigns an all-too-passive role to the receiver(s) of such an ‘inherit-
ance’. Higson instead argues that it is perhaps more productive to think
of heritage ‘as often invented or revised as it is conserved – hence the
insistence on agency on the part of those who mobilize the past as herit-
age’ (Higson, 2003, p. 50). Discourses of home in Western culture often
involve a relationship with the past as an inheritance.
Introduction 7
On one level, this is an individual relationship in which the inherit-

ance of the past is based on the mobilisation of childhood memories.
In what is arguably one of the most well-known books on the home,
Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the realm of childhood memo-
ries as they conflate with the childhood home forms a central discourse
of personal subjectivity:
the various dwelling-places in our lives co-penetrate and retain the

treasures of former days. And after we are in the new house, when
memories of other places we have lived in come back to us, we
travel to the land of Motionless Childhood, motionless in the way
all Immemorial things are . . . Memories of the outside world will
never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these
memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real histori-
ans, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but
an expression of a poetry that was lost. (Bachelard, 1994, pp. 5–6)
Although Bachelard is here speaking in universal terms, his description

of memory, childhood and the home, is a distinct variation of Western
subjectivity, created by means of the home as a terrain of fixed child-
hood memories and a reservoir of an individual ‘essence’.
Bachelard’s conflation of the home with a fixed childhood past is
not historical in nature but rather ‘motionless’ and emotive. It supports
George’s argument that the home in Western culture has come to repre-
sent ‘an ahistoric, metaphoric and often sentimental’ entity or concept
(George, 1999, p. 11). Similarly, it signals the manner in which personal
subjectivity and identity are associated with the home and the way that
a relationship with the past is inescapably tied to the metaphoric image
of an ideal home. It is also striking that home is imagined as an idealised
image of what once was and what perhaps never was. As we shall see
in the following chapters, the notion of home being predicated on loss
is particularly significant to the manner in which Wuthering Heights has
been adapted.
Yet, it is not only individual narratives of heritage that are associ-
ated with the concept of home in Western culture. A large aspect of
what constitutes home is not simply the realm of the familial house,
but also the terrain of the nation, the metaphoric realm of culture and
the notion of shared traditions, values, beliefs and the past. Part of the
manner in which collective discourses of home are constructed is by
the mobilisation of the past as a ‘heritage’ of distinct narratives that
provide a cohesive image of ‘us’ and ‘our stories’. Higson has pointed
out that ‘heritage is a selective preoccupation with the past, it is what

a particular individual or group takes from the past in order to define
itself in the present, to give it an identity. It is what “we” are happy to
regard as “our heritage”, enabling us to explain who we are by reference
to the past’ (Higson, 2003, p. 50). It should come as no surprise that
many of the films which explicitly deal with the past in Britain, America
and France in the form of heritage cinema, often do so through the
intimate settings of homes, highlighting the parallels between the past,
the nation/culture as ‘home’ and the family house.
However, perhaps more importantly, these types of heritage films
are often adaptations of classic literature, highlighting the extent to
which such literature has assumed a central cultural status as part of
the network of ‘our stories’ and ‘our heritage’. Many screen adaptations
of well-known literary works in Western culture, particularly Wuthering
Heights, are constructed as types of ‘home’ discourses, thereby retain-
ing their cultural presence as narratives of individual, national and
cultural ‘belonging’ and inheritance. This is a primary issue that runs
throughout this book, and which will be explored in more detail in the
following chapters.
The way that the concept of home is used in this book therefore func-
tions on two levels: both as an ongoing theme and area of investigation
in the texts analysed and as a discourse which has come to represent,
in part, the ‘meaning’ of Wuthering Heights as a cultural narrative. The
guiding parameter of Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic
Literature is context. The adaptations examined in this book are placed
within their wider context of Western culture in order to explore how
the adaptations work together to form a certain representation of
Wuthering Heights. However, they are also placed within their more spe-
cific contexts of the production teams and directors who made them,
their film companies, their immediate social and historical contexts
and their national boundaries. While the adaptations explored in this
work are similar, they are also distinct works which show variations in
ongoing themes and which engage their own particular contexts in the
production of meaning.
These variations add to, rather than detract from, the ongoing themes
which are examined in this book, for they highlight the extent to which
these themes retain their presence through changing contexts and
through their association with different areas of investigation, such as
gender politics. Indeed, gender is a primary area of investigation in this
work as it is bound up with the various representations of Wuthering
Heights on screen. Therefore, the focus on ‘home’, while central to this
Introduction 9
work, also interacts with other sites of meaning, all of which are essen-
tially linked to the particular context of each adaptation.
Representational concerns: ‘The lovers’ discourse’ and

the Sublime
films - novel
Like many other adaptations of classic literature, Wuthering Heights
adaptations have often been examined in a rather general manner.
Conversely, Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature
is predicated on a methodological approach of close textual analysis.
While numerous films and adaptations are discussed in this book,
I have chosen five particular screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights
for close analysis. The main chapters in this work are structured around
these five adaptations and the issues which they raise for other screen
adaptations of both Wuthering Heights and other classic literature.
The focus on the media of film and television, as opposed to other
types of media through which Wuthering Heights has been adapted, is
due to the significant role screen adaptations have played in the con-
struction of the novel’s cultural legacy. Its screen adaptations have, to
a large extent, cemented the novel’s ‘meaning’ in cultural terms. When
the question ‘what is Wuthering Heights about?’ is asked, the answer is,
more often than not, ‘it’s about Cathy and Heathcliff on the moors’.
That is, it is about a transcendent love story with a pair of archetypal
lovers. As Stoneman points out, ‘[p]eople who have never read the
novel feel they know its central theme, epitomized by the famous
still from William Wyler’s 1939 film showing Laurence Olivier and
Merle Oberon as Heathcliff and Catherine, silhouetted against the sky’
(Stoneman, 1998, p. vii). This is an image that continues to be used,
re-represented, contested and negotiated throughout the afterlife of
the novel on screen, and its recurrence has come to shape the status
of Wuthering Heights as, in Lucasta Miller’s words, a ‘modern myth’
(Miller, 2003b, p. vii). Indeed, Miller describes that when she first read
the novel as a twelve-year-old girl, she was disappointed that it did not
cohere with her expectations, which were largely shaped by the 1939
film (Miller, 2003b, p. vii).
If Wuthering Heights is remembered through the romantic image of
Catherine and Heathcliff frolicking on the moors as adult lovers, it
is not due to the novel itself, for this imagery does not stem from its
pages and is, at best, only hinted at in the margins of the text. Specific
screen adaptations of the novel have in fact constructed this cultural
memory of Wuthering Heights. While there have been numerous screen
images of C and H on the moors -

due to films
lovers' discourse, Sublime
adaptations of Wuthering Heights, the choice to focus on five particular

adaptations has been determined by both their specific screen content
and the purpose of this work. My exploration of the novel’s ‘afterlife’
is based on the practice of close textual and contextual analysis, rather
than a general discussion. I am concerned with the intricacies of each
adaptation and how they reflect upon the manner in which Wuthering
Heights is reproduced within culture. The five particular adaptations
chosen for close analysis are representative of the key issues that run
through other adaptations of the novel. However, if I privilege certain
adaptations over and above others, it is with the knowledge that they
are part of a wider network of meaning to which they contribute.
There are two aspects that form part of the representational ‘lan-
guage’ through which Wuthering Heights has been adapted on screen
that require definition here: ‘the lovers’ discourse’ and the Sublime.
The lovers’ discourse is defined by what Stoneman has aptly termed the
‘hilltop lovers’ motif evident in many adaptations of Wuthering Heights
(Stoneman, 1996a, pp. 116, 210–11, 245). The image of Catherine and
Heathcliff as lovers, framed by a hilltop landscape, has come to repre-
sent a discourse of transcendent, timeless and archetypal lovers, akin to
Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Isolde, representing one of the ‘great’
love stories of Western culture (see Stoneman, 1996a, pp. 116–34).
Catherine and Heathcliff’s status as legendary lovers has in fact been
largely constructed via reference to the imagery which Stoneman
refers to above from the 1939 film and its subsequent reworkings. This
imagery has become a point of reference in Western culture as a model
of love that is akin to nature itself, transcending society.
Perhaps what is most important about the lovers’ discourse is that it
has come to represent a cultural touchstone of familiarity. Catherine
and Heathcliff may represent transcendent lovers, but they are also
imagined as ‘our Cathy and Heathcliff’, as familiar beings who inhabit
the topography of culture and whose natural landscape represents a type
of ‘motionless’ terrain of cultural memory, to use Bachelard’s words. To
whom exactly this ‘our’ refers forms part of the politics embedded
within the lovers’ discourse, which is deeply concerned with issues of
cultural inheritance, belonging and being; that is, of ‘home’.
The aesthetic category of the Sublime helps to shape this lovers’ dis-
course in both visual and ideological terms. The way the term ‘Sublime’
is used in this book is largely in reference to the manner in which it is
detailed in one of the most well-known works on the Sublime, Edmund
Burke’s 1757 treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful (Burke, 1998). Burke links the Sublime with
Sublime
Introduction 11
qualities such as largeness, obscurity, excess, strength, infinity, vast spaces

and ruggedness (Burke, 1998, pp. 51–79). His description of the Sublime
evokes particular spaces that induce awe, fear and transcendence, such
as mountainous landscapes, craggy vistas, seascapes, gloomy caves, large
forests and towering Gothic houses (Burke, 1998, pp. 51–79). Through
the category of the Sublime, he constructs a discourse of fortitude,
strength, endurance, active power and transcendence (Burke, 1998,
pp. 51–79).
Just as importantly, Burke also constructs the Sublime by comparing
it with the Beautiful. Burke aligns the Beautiful with qualities such as
smallness, softness, smoothness, proportion, weakness, delicacy, fragil-
ity and clarity (Burke, 1998, pp. 81–114). He evokes imagery of dainty
objects, which one would imagine decorated homes in his time, wom-
en’s bodies and domestic scenes/spaces, throughout his description of
the Beautiful (Burke, 1998, pp. 81–114). And the discourse constructed
through the Beautiful is one of passivity, nurturance, domesticity and
sensual, bodily relaxation, rather than the transcendence of the mind
inspired by the Sublime (Burke, 1998, pp. 81–114).
It is no coincidence that the qualities and discourses Burke assigns
to the Sublime and the Beautiful are, as Anne K. Mellor rightly points
out, qualities and discourses associated with masculinity and feminin-
ity respectively in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Mellor,
1993, p. 85). Burke inextricably links the categories of the Sublime
and the Beautiful with discourses of both identity and gender. Thus,
throughout his treatise, Sublime scenes and spaces are associated with
a masculine drama of individual struggle and transcendence, enacted
within a public realm of male power and active interaction with one’s
environment. Whereas Beautiful scenes and spaces are linked with the
private, domestic sphere associated with femininity and the family
home, within which women and dainty objects are seemingly one and
the same.
These aesthetic categories help shape the imagery associated with the
lovers’ discourse, as this imagery draws on representations of natural
grandeur to align Catherine and Heathcliff with an overtly transcend-
ent and natural realm. Similarly, the gender politics within Burke’s
categories of the Sublime and the Beautiful are woven into the adap-
tations throughout their own gender politics and representations of
various spaces and bodies. The lovers’ discourse and Sublime aesthetics
I have detailed here are largely what come to mind when people refer to
Wuthering Heights as a ‘modern myth’ and as such they form a primary
area of investigation in the following chapters.
The exploration of Wuthering Heights adaptations begins with an analy-

sis of the novel itself, which is examined in Chapter 1 of this work.
When approaching an analysis of Wuthering Heights, one is faced with
a seemingly overwhelming task. As Miller has pointed out, the novel
‘has become one of the most written about novels in the language, to
the point where the novel’s critical history reads like the history of criti-
cism itself’ (Miller, 2003a, p. xx). Stoneman provides a comprehensive
study of the novel’s critical history in Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights,
which takes the reader through early Victorian responses, Humanism,
Formalism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Postcolonialism
and Feminism (Stoneman, 2000). It seems that every major critical
body has been used to examine Wuthering Heights, but the person who
is perhaps one of Emily Brontë’s most influential critics is her sister,
Charlotte Brontë.
After Emily’s death, Charlotte convinced her editor to reprint
Wuthering Heights. This reprinted 1850 edition of the novel came with
Charlotte Brontë’s own introduction to and analysis of Wuthering
Heights, which continues to be reprinted with every new edition of
the novel. J. Hillis Miller claims that ‘Charlotte’s prefaces establish
the rhetorical stance which has been characteristic of criticism of this
novel. This stance involves dismissing most previous critics and claim-
ing one has oneself solved the enigma, cracked the code’ (Miller, 1982,
p. 47). One could add that to a certain extent this is a ‘rhetorical stance’
that is adopted in the analysis of many other literary works, not just
Wuthering Heights. However Hillis Miller is right when he emphasises
that Wuthering Heights seems to elicit more of a desire to ‘crack the code’
and unravel its ‘secret’, to find that ultimate interpretative key that will
solve its ‘mystery’, most often because it is consistently argued to be an
enigmatic text.
Wuthering Heights is continually imagined as a self-contained universe
and a unique literary product bearing little relationship to the ‘real’
world or the contemporary literature of its times. Many of the early
reviewers of Wuthering Heights approach the novel from such a stance.
For example, in George Washington Peck’s 1848 review he claims that
‘nothing like it has ever been written before . . . [l]et it stand by itself,
a coarse, original, powerful book’ (quoted in Stoneman, 2000, p. 16).
And in 1850 Sydney Dobell writes that ‘one looks back at the whole
story as to a world of brilliant figures in an atmosphere of mist . . . [i]t is
the unformed writing of a giant’s hand; the “large utterance” of a baby
god’ (quoted in Stoneman, 2000, p. 17). These reviewers’ comments are
fairly representative of a certain dominant interpretative strand which
Introduction 13
Wuthering Heights seems to elicit. Their sentiments are echoed in what

are perhaps two of the most famous of such interpretations of the novel:
Virginia Woolf’s 1925 essay on Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and
David Cecil’s 1934 analysis of the novel.
Woolf’s essay constructs the world of Wuthering Heights as a self-
contained one that creates its own logic. She writes that in the world
of the novel, Brontë ‘could tear up all that we know human beings by,
and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that
they transcend reality’ (Woolf, 1985, p. 1349). Woolf’s critical stance
throughout her essay constructs Wuthering Heights as a mystery that can
be unlocked if only we too could move above everyday ‘reality’. Cecil’s
well-known and highly influential analysis of Wuthering Heights locates
the ultimate meaning of the novel in a similar transcendent plane of
archetypal and metaphysical forces. His analysis firmly positions the
novel against the other literature of its times, stating that it stands
‘alone’ (Cecil, 1934, p. 161). His, like Woolf’s, is an analysis of myth-
making. The extent to which these critical trends have persisted into
the latter half of the twentieth century is exemplified by Stevie Davies’s
argument that Wuthering Heights ‘has the self-contained and opaque
quality of all myth’ (Davies, 1983, p. 97).
In the same decade in which Davies made her argument, James
H. Kavanagh noted that ‘the dominant twentieth-century strategy for
interpreting Wuthering Heights has been to generate critical schemes that
attempt to mirror, or re-evoke, what is seen as the transcendent mystery
of the text’ and instead offers his study as a counter-analysis of the novel
which is rooted in the ideological approach of class politics (Kavanagh,
1985, p. 3). Despite the continuing popularity of engaging with the
novel and its author in mystical and transcendental terms, there have
been considerable movements away from such ‘critical schemes’. For
example, feminist and Marxist critics have provided important analy-
ses of Wuthering Heights that have placed the novel within a frame of
analysis which accounts for its own context and concerns of ideology,
discourse and power. Arguably the two most famous of such interpre-
tations are Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s analysis of Wuthering
Heights in their polemical 1979 feminist work, The Madwoman in the
Attic (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, pp. 248–308), and Terry Eagleton’s 1975
Marxist analysis in Myths of Power (Eagleton, 2005, pp. 97–121).
Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis helped to initiate a large and varied
feminist critical body which has centred on the novel, exploring issues
of gender and femininity in relation to ideologies of subjectivity,
domesticity and creativity in the nineteenth century (see Stoneman,
2000, pp. 155–83). Eagleton’s analysis has similarly helped to shape the
re-evaluation of the novel from a distinctly ideological point of view
and his particular study on Heathcliff in relation to class politics finds
echoes in other theoretical models which have been used to examine
Heathcliff’s status, such as postcolonialism (see Stoneman, 2000, pp.
135–55). While this book does not work under a specific theoretical
model, it is nevertheless indebted to these critics for their particular
theoretical approaches and focus on issues of ideology.
While it is possible to discuss the critical history of Wuthering Heights in
great detail, I am not concerned with providing a comprehensive account
of this history. Rather, I have briefly outlined particular aspects of the
novel’s critical history to highlight my own approach to the text based on
a contextual, historical and ideological framework of analysis. Wuthering
Heights is ultimately a product of its time and culture, and its surplus of
meanings elicit numerous readings, any one of which can be focused on
in an analysis of the novel. The manner in which I have limited my own
analysis to certain ideological and contextual issues has been determined
by the screen adaptations explored in the subsequent chapters. This focus
does not signify that such aspects are ultimately more important than
others in the overall analysis of the novel. But, what it does signify is that
they are more significant for the analysis of its adaptations.
I have chosen to focus on characters, spaces, discourses and ideolo-
gies that are relevant to the adaptations rather than aiming for a more
comprehensive approach to the novel. This means that many pertinent
aspects of the novel are left unexamined because they are quite simply
irrelevant to the manner in which Wuthering Heights has been adapted.
Such aspects particularly refer to the second generation, or second half
of the novel, which has often been removed, ignored, or diminished in
screen adaptations. The focus of such adaptations has primarily been
on Catherine and Heathcliff, and as such, they form the primary focus
of this book. 1939
Chapter 2 explores the iconic 1939 Hollywood film, Wuthering
Heights, directed by William Wyler and produced by Samuel Goldwyn
during Hollywood’s ‘Golden Era’ (Wuthering Heights, 1939). Arguably
the most well-known film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, it stars Merle
Oberon as Catherine and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff. This film has
greatly influenced subsequent screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights,
many of which draw primarily from Wyler’s adaptation of the novel
rather than from the novel itself.
Chapter 3 is devoted to Jacques Rivette’s iconoclastic 1985 French
adaptation, Hurlevent (Hurlevent, 1985). This film, along with the 2003
Introduction 15
and 2009 Wuthering Heights screen adaptations analysed in subse-

quent chapters, has been largely ignored in the analysis of the novel’s
afterlife.4 Rivette changes the historical context of the story, setting it
in the 1930s, and transports the action to the Cévennes, an area in the
South of France historically linked with rural Protestantism. With these
changes, Rivette symbolically mirrors the original landscape and his-
torical setting of Wuthering Heights as part of the demystifying politics
of the film.
Chapter 4 focuses on Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 British and American
1992
co-production, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, starring Juliette Binoche
as Catherine and Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff (Emily Brontë’s Wuthering
Heights, 1992). A film that is greatly influenced by the previous 1939
adaptation, Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights invests in the imagery of the
lovers’ discourse to promote certain positions regarding masculinity in
a post-feminist world. The film is also part of the wider trend of herit-
age cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, which arose as a particular type of
costume film and mode of engagement with narratives of the past.
Chapter 5 leads us into the current century with MTV’s 2003 mod-
ernised film version of Wuthering Heights, directed by Suri Krishnamma
(Wuthering Heights, 2003). Originally screened on MTV’s movie chan-
nel, this version of Wuthering Heights is set in modern-day California
in which Wuthering Heights is transformed into a secluded lighthouse
named ‘The Heights’, located on an isolated seaside landscape. MTV
transforms the story and action into a teen drama and turns Heathcliff
into Heath, an orphan boy who grows up to be a rock star.
Chapter 6 is devoted to the recent screen adaptation of Wuthering
2009
Heights, ITV’s 2009 television serial (Wuthering Heights, 2009). My
analysis of this adaptation draws from contemporary debates within
Neo-Victorian Studies and examines the adaptation in relation to the
themes and conventions evident in neo-Victorian fiction by authors
such as Sarah Waters, Gail Jones and A. S. Byatt. This examination seeks
to draw the issues present in neo-Victorian fiction into a relationship
with neo-Victorian screen adaptations. In the Afterword of this work,
I draw together my analyses of the various adaptations and examine
some of the dominant issues arising from these analyses as the adapta-
tion of Wuthering Heights moves into contemporary times.
To borrow Gail Jones’ words from her novel, Dreams of Speaking, what
I hope will be gained from this book is an examination of the ways
in which Wuthering Heights has been taken into the ‘lap’ of culture
through its continual adaptation, which has made it ‘second-hand’, or
‘inherited’ ( Jones, 2006, pp. 136–7). The adaptations examined in this
book display various approaches to Wuthering Heights: at times, it is

held reverently in the hands of culture as an inherited gift, at others, it
is thrown about in an ideological argument. At all times though is the
presumption that it matters, that it forms one of the stories through
which specific individuals, societies and cultures engage with ‘close’
and ‘innermost’ aspects of self, gender and ‘home’ ( Jones, 2006, pp.
136–7). Jones’ words first appealed to me because they resonated with
my own memories of the way that Wuthering Heights has been taken
into my own lap. While I have moved on from this intimate approach
to examine both the novel and its afterlife in relation to wider aspects of
culture, it is with the knowledge that Wuthering Heights would perhaps
not be held in such intimate terms by myself were it not continually
present in cultural terms.
It is also hoped that the analysis provided in Cultural Afterlives and
Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature will elicit further critical examina-
tions of other Wuthering Heights adaptations. The afterlife of Wuthering
Heights is prolific and constantly growing, as is the afterlife of other clas-
sic literature. While it is impossible to address all of these adaptations
and authors in the one work, the questions of why particular texts retain
a cultural presence, how they are adapted, revised and constructed, and
at what particular time and context, should be continually addressed, as
they form part of our cultural landscape. It is with an awareness of the
necessarily incomplete nature of this work that I begin.
1
Before the Afterlife
Analysing Wuthering Heights
I noted in the Introduction that the analysis of Wuthering Heights pro-

vided in this book is determined by the novel’s afterlife. As such, this
chapter focuses on issues and themes that are significantly reworked in,
or relevant to, the adaptations discussed in subsequent chapters. Rather
than providing a comprehensive analysis, or a theoretical position
regarding the text, this chapter instead offers detailed analyses of par-
ticular aspects and passages in the novel, through a focus on the char-
acters of Lockwood, Heathcliff, Catherine and her daughter (henceforth
referred to as ‘Cathy’).1 I conclude with an exploration of the discourses
of love expressed by Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, after
which we move from the novel to the screen.
Lockwood’s initial encounters with Wuthering Heights
Lockwood introduces the house of Wuthering Heights to the reader as

the first of the two primary narrators of the novel:
Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling,

‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of
the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy
weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all
times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blow-
ing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the
end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their
limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect
had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in
the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones. (Brontë,
1998, p. 2)
17
We are here presented with imagery of storm, isolation, desolation,

alienation, power, rugged strength, excessive barrenness, largeness of
size and blurred boundaries – the very keywords of Burke’s Sublime (see
Burke, 1998, pp. 53–74, 113–14). Lockwood presents Wuthering Heights
to the reader as a dwelling that is shaped by its surrounding landscape
and atmosphere, using a poetics of the Sublime to ideologically merge
the house with its immediate environment and location, so that the
distinction between house and landscape is subsumed by a romantic
image of a rugged rural scene.
Through Lockwood’s middle-class and urban perspective, the process of
locating Wuthering Heights within its ‘provincial’ landscape is informed
by the middle-class domestic ideology of the nineteenth century. Karen
Chase and Michael Levenson discuss a prime example of such a domes-
tic ideology at work: the 1851 census report which sought, among other
things, to define the family and the home (Chase and Levenson, 2000,
pp. 1–6). A particular statement made by the registrar-general is espe-
cially telling when he writes that ‘the possession of an entire house is,
it is true, strongly desired by every Englishman; for it throws a sharp,
well-defined circle round his family and hearth – the shrine of his sor-
rows, joys, and meditations’ (quoted in Chase and Levenson, 2000,
pp. 4–5). This statement articulates some of the dominant themes of the
Victorian middle-class ideologies of home and domesticity, particularly home,
the desire for clear boundaries of enclosure and privacy. domesticity
Lockwood’s initial description of Wuthering Heights inscribes the
dominant meanings of middle-class domesticity upon both the house
and landscape. It is important to remember that Lockwood comes to
the northern part of England in which Wuthering Heights is situated
to escape ‘the stir of society’ of the city (Brontë, 1998, p. 1). That is,
he seeks refuge from the city in a part of England which he names
as desolate, solitary, removed and a ‘perfect misanthropist’s Heaven’
(Brontë, 1998, p. 1). Thus, when he describes Wuthering Heights as
a space which both mirrors and is shaped by its landscape, he is not
simply providing an innocent description of a rural dwelling. Rather,
Lockwood locates Wuthering Heights and its surrounding landscape
within the ideological boundaries of privacy and enclosure, domesticat-
ing the romanticised Sublimity of his encounter.
Nancy Armstrong writes that when Lockwood comes to Wuthering
Heights he brings with him ‘urbane interpretive reflexes’ (Armstrong,
2003, p. 433). It is via these ‘reflexes’ that he presents the regional coun-
tryside to the reader and constructs a binary of public city and private
countryside in which the country is romanticised as a site of separation
Before the Afterlife 19
and privacy. Chase and Levenson discuss how such a construction of

the countryside formed in middle-class domestic ideology against a
backdrop of increasing urban sprawl and industrial growth (Chase and
Levenson, 1999, pp. 432–6). To be in the city street was to be seen and
make oneself available to a public gaze. It is this logic of the public
that Lockwood refers to when he reveals that he is ‘of the busy world’
(Brontë, 1998, p. 226) and ‘the stirring atmosphere of the town’ (Brontë,
1998, p. 270).
From his urban world, Lockwood encounters Wuthering Heights
and its landscape as sites of privacy, and his encounter reveals the
ideological workings of his class as a middle-class man. If, as Chase and
Levenson write, the ‘rookeries’, sprawl, spectacle and ‘visibility’ of ‘the
major cities’ became ‘the moral and social’ opposite of ‘the great coun-
try mansions’ in middle-class discourse (Chase and Levenson, 1999,
p. 432), Lockwood’s is a quintessential middle-class response to, and
construction of, the country ‘mansion’ he encounters.
The historical distinction between city and country is certainly
not new or limited to Victorian England. However it gained a differ-
ent significance in the period as it became aligned with what Chase
and Levenson call ‘the middle-class desire for enclosure’ (Chase and
Levenson, 1999, p. 436). The countryside had ideological currency in
the middle-class project of domestic privacy and it became another site
of the middle-class discourse of the private home. Lockwood’s escape to
the privacy of the country, separate from the spectacle of city life, leads
him to acquire a space of his own in this countryside.
Lockwood’s own site of privacy demonstrates his desire to construct
the family home as a private and enclosed domestic sphere. He con-
tinually searches for conventional domestic scenes within Wuthering
Heights because he has already constructed its location from an ideologi-
cal discourse of middle-class domesticity. Thus, when Wuthering Heights
is described as being shaped by its landscape, it becomes a type of coun-
try refuge, in which the undertones of Sublimity are subdued and ren-
dered unthreatening. The use which is made of the regional countryside
in the opening passages of Wuthering Heights is continually addressed
throughout the novel and is subsequently reworked in its screen adapta-
tions through their own uses of regional and marginal spaces.
Catherine’s room C's room
Catherine’s room at Wuthering Heights is perhaps one of the most impor-

tant spaces in the novel. It is via Lockwood that we are introduced to her
room when he is forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights. One

of the first objects he observes in the room is ‘a large oak case’ (Brontë,
1998, p. 15), which is an old-fashioned box-bed. He notices that the:
ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled

up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the
paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in
all kinds of characters, large and small – Catherine Earnshaw, here
and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff and then again to Catherine
Linton.
In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and con-
tinued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw – Heathcliff – Linton, till
my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare
of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres – the air
swarmed with Catherines. (Brontë, 1998, p. 15)
It is significant that Catherine’s various identities are written by the

window. The window is a symbol of both the separation of inside and
outside and their merging: it is a permeable boundary. Lockwood’s
middle-class politics can only validate the separating function of the
window as a space that helps construct the intimacy of enclosure.
The Gothic terror of Catherine however, is that she also embraces the
competing function of the window and its permeability. Catherine con-
structs an excess of identities by the window because it represents her
multifaceted response to the concept of ‘home’ that, as a middle-class
woman, domestic ideology has placed before her.
These are issues that are made clearer via Lockwood’s discovery of her
diaries and a particular dream these diaries initiate. Lockwood finds:
[a] Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf

bore the inscription – ‘Catherine Earnshaw, her book’, and a date
some quarter of a century back.
I shut it, and took up another, and another, till I had examined all.
Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it
to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate pur-
pose; scarcely one page had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary – at
least, the appearance of one – covering every morsel of blank that
the printer had left.
Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a
regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. (Brontë, 1998,
p. 16)
The ‘Testament’ is not only a symbol of religious authority, but also,

of patriarchal power. Catherine’s writing in the margins of the ‘legiti-
mate’ discourses of patriarchy not only highlights that which exists in
excess of the centre, but also turns the centre into a Gothic drama of
haunting. However, her excessive desire is also reworked in her own
diary entry and the dream which Lockwood has following his reading
of this entry.
Catherine’s diary entry begins with her detailing of Hindley’s harsh
treatment of Heathcliff and herself when he has assumed the position
of master of the household (Brontë, 1998, p. 16). ‘Home’ for her has
become a prison of domestic abuse following the exchange of power
from one patriarchal male to another. Catherine’s description of the
domestic neglect and cruelty suffered by Heathcliff and herself as chil-
dren subverts the Victorian ideal of the home as a protective refuge and
instead turns it into a site of abuse of patriarchal power. Yet, her narra-
tive does not ‘write out’ the middle-class discourse of home, but rather
confuses its logic and seeks to embrace it via other forms.
In response to the house’s lack of protective domesticity, the child-
Catherine tries to create a space of refuge that is signified by literal
borders of enclosure. She describes how she and Heathcliff made them-
selves ‘as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had
just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain’
(Brontë, 1998, p. 17). However, the protective curtain is torn down
by Joseph and she details how, in response to a punishment, she and
Heathcliff decide to run away:
I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the
house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with
writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient and pro-
poses that we should appropriate the dairy woman’s cloak, and have
a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion . . .
we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here. (Brontë,
1998, p. 17)
This passage encapsulates Catherine’s multifaceted position in relation

to the discourse of home and sets up the issues which are continually
addressed through her.
In this passage, Catherine desires escape from the space of the patriar-
chal home that, under the control of men, has become a prison. While
her desire for escape is a sign of her need for freedom, it also represents
her desire for a home. Having failed to construct a space of belonging
in the house, Catherine constructs the landscape that surrounds it,

‘the moors’, as a site of refuge from its ‘coldness’. Catherine’s narrative
essentially removes the clear distinction made in domestic ideology
between the space of the household as ‘inside’ and what is beyond it
as ‘outside’. In the process, the logic of her excess is also complicated
as this reworking reveals that her relationship with the ‘centre’ is not
simply subversive in nature.
Things are further complicated by a particular dream Lockwood has
when he falls asleep for the second time. He describes how this time,
‘I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the
gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir-bough
repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause’ (Brontë, 1998,
p. 20). His dream takes a horrifying turn when, resolving ‘to silence it’,
he tries ‘to unhasp the casement’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 20) but notes that:
[the] hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by

me when awake, but forgotten.
‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles
through the glass, and stretching an arm to seize the importunate
branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little,
ice-cold hand!
The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw
back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice
sobbed,
‘Let me in – let me in!’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself.
‘Catherine Linton’, it replied shiveringly (why did I think of Linton?
I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home, I’d
lost my way on the moor!’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 20)
Catherine’s excessive desire is here materialised as her own form, as a

ghost hovering on the outskirts of Wuthering Heights, seeking entrance
from the margins. She also names herself as Catherine Linton and
Lockwood asks himself why he remembered that particular name. The
informed reader, unlike Lockwood, knows that Linton is Catherine’s
married name, the name that carries with it overtones of the legitimised
realm of marriage. Thus, are we to read the ghost as a subversive force
from the margins, or as a force that seeks the ‘legitimate’ centre?
Furthermore, the comment ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the
moor’ carries a myriad of conflicting meanings. Her diary constructs
Wuthering Heights as anything but a ‘home’, rather naming ‘the moor’
as an alternative space of belonging. Yet the ghostly Catherine reverses

this logic and constructs the space of Wuthering Heights as her longed-for
home and ‘the moor’ as a site of homeless wandering. It seems that the
only constant meaning which is attached to Catherine is the desire for a
home, and this ‘home’ is revealed to be a site of shifting meanings.
The dream does not end there, however. What follows is perhaps one
of the most violent passages in the novel. Lockwood describes that:
Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the

creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it
to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still
it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost
maddening me with fear . . . ‘Begone!’ I shouted, ‘I’ll never let you
in, not if you beg for twenty years!’ ‘It’s twenty years’, mourned the
voice, ‘twenty years, I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’ (Brontë, 1998,
pp. 20–1)
The ghost-Catherine represents an excessive force as she exists in excess

of the prescribed limits of life and identity. She brings homeless wan-
dering into a space that is ideologically tied to notions of protective
enclosure and simultaneously highlights this site’s lack of protection via
her own status as a wandering waif. And as a wailing child by the border
of the window, the ghost-Catherine also represents an overwhelming
desire for a home that recalls her childhood search for one. She stands
as both a victim of and danger to the ideological forces that ironically
both confine her within a prison of the patriarchal household and deny
her access into the home.
Lockwood does not know how to ‘read’ Catherine’s ghost because
she brings with her too many conflicting meanings. She wishes to be
let in, yet her very politics of excess dissolve the boundaries of protec-
tion, enclosure and refuge, that her plaintive cry of ‘let me in!’ calls for.
The reader is left wondering just what is ‘home’ for Catherine. What is
telling about the image of Lockwood rubbing her wrist on the broken
window pane is that it reveals Catherine’s unresolved and unfulfilled
desire for a home as a violent encounter upon the broken barrier that
separates the two spaces which she constructs as both ‘home’ and ‘non-
home’. The blood that is spilled at the border between the two spaces
stands as symbol of her inability to find a space that will protect her
own sense of self. Lockwood’s story may demonstrate a fear of excess,
broken boundaries and disturbing enclosed sites, but Catherine’s story
is one of a violent and restless search for a home.
24 Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature C's identities
It is here that I return to the imagery of Catherine’s trialling of different

identities on the window ledge for, in a sense, it is fitting that we are intro-
duced to the space of her room via a suggestion of many possible identities
that carry multiple meanings. From an early age, Catherine is confronted
with a dominant ideological discourse of home that fails to satisfy her
sense of what a home should be. Her response is to conduct a search for
one. This search is closely tied to her own identity and sense of self. It also
proves to be an unfulfilled one culminating in an excessive desire that
fills her room and the margins of legitimate discourse, materialising as her
child-ghost. This excess is continually reworked and does not simply rep-
resent a subversion of the legitimised centre but also a desire for the values
of the protection and validation of the self which this centre espouses.
Such a reworking directly informs the trialling of various identities
by the border-space of the window. These identities represent her rela-
tionship with the spaces that the border of the window both separates
and links together: the household spaces and the landscape. ‘Catherine
Earnshaw’ links her with the household of Wuthering Heights, her
childhood home. ‘Catherine Linton’ links her with the legitimised
sphere of marriage and the household of Thrushcross Grange. ‘Catherine
Heathcliff’ links her with the liminal space of the margins associated
with the freedom of the landscape. Even though she marries and adopts
‘Catherine Linton’ as her legitimate name, in her own conception of
herself, Catherine never really chooses one identity over the other, but
maintains a relationship with all three. Her search for a home is a search
for a space that will validate and accommodate all three identities that,
at times, conflict with one another.
That such a home eludes Catherine not only speaks of the limits of
middle-class domestic ideology, but also of the limits of the subversive
space of the margins. Catherine wants it all, but cannot have it all, and
thus exists as an unstable force that violently ruptures at the border.
Thus, the space which is most strongly aligned with Catherine’s desires is
not the moors, but the window. The window represents her inability to
truly inhabit the spaces of the moors, Wuthering Heights or later on, the
Grange. It represents her liminal position at the threshold of a home. The
true tragedy of Catherine is not simply that she is confined by domestic
ideology and patriarchal power, but that she is also, homeless.
window
Cathy’s garden
Like her mother, we are introduced to Cathy via Lockwood, and she
proves to be similarly elusive. She does not offer herself to be ‘read’ and
her identity, name and position in the household are a mystery which
he tries, rather unsuccessfully, to solve. For example, when Lockwood
first encounters Cathy, he expects her to act like a typical domestic host-
ess who takes proper care of her guests. Instead, he finds young woman
who ‘never opened her mouth. I stared – she stared also’ (Brontë, 1998,
p. 7). He nevertheless proceeds to attempt to locate Cathy within a
prescribed feminine role in which she is an emblem of passivity and
domesticity.
Indeed, Lockwood’s dilemma of trying to discover to whom Cathy
‘belongs’ is primarily based on a middle-class discourse of femininity.
At first, he assumes she is Heathcliff’s wife and refers to her as ‘your
amiable lady’ and ‘presiding genius over your home and heart’ (Brontë,
1998, p. 9). Being informed that he is wrong, he turns to Hareton
assuming that he is thus ‘the favoured possessor of the beneficent
fairy’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 10). As ‘Mrs. Heathcliff’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 10),
Lockwood expects Cathy to play out the role of the middle-class wife
who attends to domestic duties and whose function is to provide a
welcoming sanctuary. However, Cathy’s sullenness, irresponsiveness
and lack of welcoming hospitality contradict his narrative of feminine
domesticity.
It is not simply her sullenness that Lockwood finds disconcerting, but
also her gaze. Lockwood’s own gaze illustrates Soyoung Lee’s discussion
of scopophilia as ‘the pleasure of the look, the taking of other people as
objects, subjecting them to a gaze that controls and trying to unravel
the mystery of the other’ (Lee, 2001, p. 203). Lockwood engages with
the household and Cathy as spaces of mystery that he attempts to
unravel via his inquiring gaze. It is also a gaze that attempts to control
what he sees and place it in a narrative that reflects his own desires and
expectations.
Lockwood reveals a similar incident with another unknown woman
whom he examined from afar while enjoying ‘a month of fine weather
at the sea-coast’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 3). Informing the reader that he
became infatuated with ‘a real goddess’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 3), he describes
how he replied coldly when she finally took notice of his gaze and
‘looked a return – the sweetest of all imaginable looks’ (Brontë, 1998,
p. 4). Tellingly, Lockwood reacts with horror when women return
his own speculative and desiring gaze. Discussing the same passage,
Armstrong argues that:
Lockwood encounters the regional landscape as a tourist, con-

verting that landscape and its occupants into a private-aesthetic
experience . . . Lockwood plays out the same exchange of glances at

least two more times, once with Catherine Earnshaw and then with
her daughter. Such repetition makes it clear that he not only wants
the pornographic thrill of fixing an object with his gaze, but also
expects the object he encounters to be nothing more than he sees.
By having the audacity to look back, the women in this novel chal-
lenge his way of seeing and define his categories as inadequate to
scan and contain them. (Armstrong, 2002, p. 186)
Lockwood treats women as objects of speculation and his gaze is

‘authorial’ in both senses of the word. This authority feeds his own
subjectivity as it speaks of his ability to desire and represent. The fact
that both the ‘sweet’ gaze of his mystery woman and Cathy’s hostile
one are treated with equal horror by Lockwood suggests that it makes
little difference to him what the tone of the feminine gaze may be.
His primary fear seems to be that these women actually dare to look
back at him. The moment they do so, they destroy his fantasy of them
and confront him with a desiring female subjectivity that is beyond
his ‘authority’. In Cathy’s particular case, he is also confronted by the
inadequacy and inaccuracy of his middle-class categories of feminine
roles. Domestic chores for her are part of her imprisonment within
Wuthering Heights and do not offer a romanticised discourse of ‘ami-
able’ domestic femininity.
Cathy’s ‘revenge’ however, against both Lockwood’s inadequate gaze
and Heathcliff’s containment, is her own complex ‘domestication’ of
Wuthering Heights. As Maggie Berg points out, this ‘domestication’ is
not a simple tale of the ‘feminization’ of Wuthering Heights (Berg, 1996,
p. 89), as the household does not have a stable meaning in the text as
a ‘non-domestic’ or ‘non-feminine’ space. As we have seen, Wuthering
Heights is also constructed as a patriarchal domestic household and
thus is, in a sense, already ‘domesticated’. Cathy’s ‘domestication’ is far
more complex.
It is Lockwood who introduces us to the changes at Wuthering
Heights as he once again visits the country. The changes that have
occurred in his absence, via Cathy’s influence, are significant. He notes
that this time:
I had neither to climb the gate, nor to knock – it yielded to my hand.

That is an improvement! I thought. And I noticed another, by the aid
of my nostrils; a fragrance of stocks and wall flowers, wafted on the
air, from amongst the homely fruit trees.
Both doors and lattices were open; and yet, as is usually the case in
a coal district, a fine, red fire illuminated the chimney; the comfort
which the eye derives from it, renders the extra heat endurable. But
the house of Wuthering Heights is so large, that the inmates have
plenty of space for withdrawing out of its influence; and, accord-
ingly, what inmates there were had stationed themselves not far from
one of the windows. (Brontë, 1998, pp. 272–3)
Ironically, the house yields itself to Lockwood as the hospitable space

he previously desired. However, this hospitality is not aligned with
Lockwood’s discourse of domestic enclosure, but rather is an expansive
openness. Cathy’s ‘homely’ and domestic touches of comfort are aligned
with a discourse of transcendence of boundaries. Everything is now open –
the gate, the doors, the lattices – and this openness is associated with a
thriving domesticity. Cathy’s form of domesticity relies on the expan-
sion of the borders of middle-class domestic ideology that constructs the
home as an enclosed space, clearly demarcated from the outside.
However Cathy’s opening up of her former domestic prison stems
from this very discourse of domesticity so that domestic ideology is
used to confuse its own borders of enclosure. If Gothic narratives of the
home subvert domestic ideology from the ‘margins’ as dark counter-
worlds to the romanticised domestic ideal of the ‘centre’, Cathy’s narra-
tive of thriving and open domesticity subverts domestic ideology from
the ‘inside’, from the very centre of the idealised domestic home. That
which was used to imprison herself and her mother is now implicated
in a narrative of free movement and open dialogue between inside and
outside. The metaphorical link formed with her mother’s desires
and multiple voices is reinforced by the symbolic positioning of Cathy
and Hareton near the window. The happy couple is not associated with
a closeted hearth-scene, but rather with a site that connects the interi-
ority of domestic space with the outside as a permeable boundary. The
liminal site of the window which represented Catherine’s own liminal
position at the threshold of a ‘home’, is now turned into an open site
of dialogue between inside and outside, rather than a site of division or
separation. Catherine’s frustrated desires are fulfilled by her daughter
via an appropriation of the discourses of the ‘centre’.
Cathy’s appropriation of the centre is predicated on a rewriting of
John Ruskin’s idealised definition of femininity in 1865. Ruskin’s well-
known lecture, ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’, has become synonymous with
the middle-class ideologies of domesticity and gender. In this published
lecture, women are positioned as enclosed ‘flowers’ in the ‘garden’ of the
home, whose ‘great function’ (Ruskin, 1912, p. 98) is to devote them-

selves to the care of others in an act of ‘self-renunciation’ (Ruskin, 1912,
p. 100). Ruskin’s domestic ‘garden’ is literalised by Cathy in an ironic
manner when she appropriates a patch of land in Wuthering Heights to
plant her flowers with the aid of Hareton (Brontë, 1998, p. 282).
The symbolic act of planting the flowers is tied to the wider narrative
of Cathy’s domestication of Hareton and her own rewriting of the mas-
culine narratives built around her. Cathy’s mimicry of middle-class femi-
ninity, enacting the role of the ‘flower’ in her domestic ‘garden’, is here
an act of defiance of the masculine borders of the household, in which
she co-opts Hareton as her ally in her own politics of ‘re-mapping’ the
landscape of Wuthering Heights, which, like herself, has been enclosed
within patriarchal borders of Gothic containment. Domestic ideology
requires her to serve others and inscribes her body with a self-sacrificing
passivity, yet she enacts such an ideal only to make it serve her and
thereby, undermine its politics of enclosure and feminine passivity.
Cathy’s reconfiguration of the literal space of Wuthering Heights
anticipates the many changes wrought upon the household which
Lockwood observes on his last visit. She begins by working on the mar-
gins of the household and concludes by blurring the ‘central’ bounda-
ries of imprisonment and bounded domestic space. Her discourse of
‘care’ and ‘nurture’ does not construct a contained domestic sphere or
limited femininity, but rather displays an active agency to use domestic
ideals to literally and metaphorically ‘re-map’ the landscape of domes-
ticity and femininity. Cathy’s act of defiant domestication fulfils her
mother’s desire for a space of belonging in which, in her own words,
‘I’m sure I should be myself’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 111), for her politics of
permeable boundaries is here used to rewrite the centre.
Heathcliff’s home H
The character of Heathcliff is a primary site of social, cultural and ideo-

logical exploration within the text and what shapes this exploration is his
lack of identity and homelessness. In particular, Nelly’s speculative inter-
action with the space of his body is especially significant for the manner
in which he has been adapted on screen. When Heathcliff compares him-
self unfavourably to his rival, Edgar Linton, Nelly responds by saying:
Come to the glass, and I’ll let you see what you should wish. Do
you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows,
that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of
black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly,
but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies? Wish and learn
to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and
change the fiends to confident, innocent angels. . . . Don’t get the
expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are
its desert, and yet hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what
it suffers. (Brontë, 1998, p. 50)
She then proceeds to weave a fantasy of his possible parentage:
And now that we’ve done washing, and combing, and sulking – tell
me whether you don’t think yourself rather handsome? I’ll tell you,
I do. You’re fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father
was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of
them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights
and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by
wicked sailors, and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would
frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was
should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a
little farmer! (Brontë, 1998, p. 50)
The logic of Nelly’s response, in which she seeks to turn Heathcliff’s

present oppression and suffering into a heroic discourse of fortitude,
echoes a type of middle-class masculine identity labelled ‘heroic mascu-
linity’, that became dominant in the Victorian period.
As James Eli Adams writes, ‘heroic masculinity’ was conceived as a
spectacle of the masculine body, offered up to an imaginary audience,
and grounded in the logic of self-renunciation, discipline, fortitude
and a stoic battle with suffering, pain and oppression (Adams, 1995,
pp. 21–6, 42–52, 107–12). Nelly desires to turn Heathcliff into precisely
this model of masculinity, as a site of stoic power that must bear its
oppression with a ‘manly’ fortitude that enjoys its own suffering. In
constructing his body as a physical spectacle, she calls upon a discourse
of self-discipline as a shaping force of masculine identity. Heathcliff
must learn to mould his features and body into a pleasing picture of
silent suffering in order to achieve power over Edgar and Hindley and
her advice echoes the Victorian concept of ‘heroic masculinity’.
As Adams writes:
[s]elf-discipline offers a powerful sense of the autonomy that is

fundamental to manhood, yet it can only be realized through a
perpetual and painful process of renunciation. The pangs of temp-

tation, on the other hand, must be distinguished in turn from the
feminizing anguish of frustration imposed from without – from
that emasculating capitulation to ‘circumstances’ that is the bane
of nearly all Victorian proponents of heroic masculinity, whether
Samuel Smiles or John Stuart Mill. ‘All true manhood consists in the
defiance of circumstances’, as Kingsley put it. (Adams, 1995, p. 110;
Kingsley, 1880, p. 203)
What is important to note here is that masculine renunciation and

suffering is distinguished from feminine renunciation and suffering by
the agency of self-discipline. Women are controlled, while men con-
trol their own struggle and pain. The notion of self-discipline implies
autonomy over oneself and the space of one’s body, and autonomy is
central to prevailing notions of masculine identity as self-sufficient and
industrious.
What Nelly essentially tries to do via her encouragement of Heathcliff
is turn him into this ideal of self-disciplining masculinity that governs
its own suffering, as opposed to the ‘feminized’ space he has become as
one who suffers from ‘frustration imposed from without’. Heathcliff’s
problem is that his oppressed condition has ‘feminized’ him as one who
is forced to renounce and suffer due to forces beyond his control. Nelly
tries to locate him in a discourse of a suffering and oppression that is
borne with fortitude and governed from within as an aggressive struggle
between oneself and one’s body. That is, she moves the site of his strug-
gle from forces ‘from without’ to forces from within and seeks to teach
him the art of ‘self-mastery’ and transcendence, or, as Kingsley put it,
the art of ‘defiance of circumstances’. His lack of identity and oppressed
status are turned into a masculine spectacle of bodily self-discipline,
power and control.
However, when Nelly’s encouragement moves from bodily spectacle
to Heathcliff’s unknown parentage, the focus shifts back to ‘outside’
forces. Susan Meyer argues that ‘Nelly’s speculations about Heathcliff’s
parentage offer him a fantasy of retribution for his unwilling coloniza-
tion. In this predictive moment, Nelly associates Heathcliff with the
appropriation of English land and property by countries subject to
British imperialism, that is, with the reverse colonization of England’
(Meyer, 2003, p. 493). Meyer’s argument draws attention to the fact
that Heathcliff’s colonised body in turn ‘colonises’ the environment
around him. However, the issues of internal and external colonisa-
tion Meyer raises can be expanded. First, the concept of the ‘outsider’
without a home is romanticised and presented as a series of romantic

tales of intrigue and loss in foreign lands. The fairy-tale of really being a
‘prince’ in a ‘pauper’s’ clothing, mingled with the exoticism of foreign
lands, constructs Heathcliff’s history and identity as a series of romantic
stories that idealise, rather than display an anxiety about, the foreign
and the ‘outside’. romantic themes
This idealisation is reminiscent of the alienated Romantic individual
found in the prose and poetry of Romantic authors such as William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley
and Mary Shelley.2 As M. H. Abrams and Jack Stillinger note, the figure
of the outsider is a common theme in Romantic writing, as is the
fascination with the alienated individual who cannot find a ‘home’
in ‘society or anywhere in the modern world’ (Abrams and Stillinger,
2000, p. 15). Heathcliff is ‘colonised’ not simply in the sense that he
represents for many characters a discourse of racial otherness, but also
in the sense that he is a space of discursive ‘play’ which references
other literary and cultural tropes while never really being assigned a
specific or stable meaning. The colonisation that Nelly evokes is of
both real countries and imaginary spaces of fictional romance. What is
particularly significant about Nelly’s romanticisation of Heathcliff as a
Romantic exiled outsider is that it blatantly highlights that his access
to an identity and a home is mediated by other people’s ‘stories’. His
‘home’ is, in a sense, discourse itself; and by ‘discourse’ here I am refer-
ring to narratives and stories.
To expand on this notion, I turn to an outsider figure who, as Abrams
and Stillinger note, was a source of fascination for the Romantics: the
Wandering Jew (Abrams and Stillinger, 2000, p. 15). Efraim Sicher simi-
larly discusses the Romantic engagement with the Wandering Jew figure
in relation to ‘the exiled state of wanderers from a destroyed Jerusalem’
(Sicher, 2002, p. 141). The figure of the Wandering Jew is inherently
contradictory. As a figure exiled from his homeland, his identity is
defined in terms of homelessness. Yet as a figure that is associated with
the Jews as ‘the people of the book’, he is linked to an identity based
on narratives, stories and traditions – that is, based on discourse rather
than land or country – which constitute a type of ‘home’. He represents
an identity and a home that both is and is not based on nationality
and land.
When Nelly calls upon romantic stories of faraway lands of Empire as
sites of possible homes and identities for Heathcliff, she does not simply
highlight issues of Empire and colonisation. She also evokes a discourse
of home and identity that both echoes prevailing notions of identity
as spatially and nationally bound, and suggests an alternative site of

identity and home as discursively bound. Heathcliff is constructed as a
‘Wandering Jew’ figure whose identity and home are defined by a rela-
tionship of exile from land and nation, and simultaneously, as a figure
whose home and identity is discourse itself. This contradiction creates a
twofold notion of identity and home as ‘bound’ entities and conversely,
as ongoing processes of storytelling. These issues which are raised
through Heathcliff continue to be reworked in the novel’s adaptations, in
which ideologies of nationality, cultural inheritance, identity and home
are worked out through various negotiations of land and discourse.
Discourses of love
In the Introduction, I discussed the lovers’ discourse as an ongoing

trope in the adaptation of Wuthering Heights. While this discourse is
largely constructed by the adaptations, the narratives of love in the
novel share a relationship with the screen lovers’ discourse. For exam-
ple, Catherine’s often-quoted declarations of love for Heathcliff inform
the lovers’ discourse. Importantly, such declarations begin as an expli-
cation to Nelly of a dream about home, as she describes how she once
dreamt that she was in heaven, but:
heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with

weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that
they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on top of Wuthering
Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. . . . I’ve no more business to
marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked
man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have
thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he
shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he is hand-
some, Nelly, but because he is more myself than I am. Whatever
our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as
different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. (Brontë,
1998, p. 71)
Stoneman argues that the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff

negotiates the concept of Romantic love (Stoneman, 1996b, pp. 521–33),
with the word ‘Romantic’ referring to ‘the set of attitudes characteristic
of the Romantic movement’ (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 523).
Stoneman’s explication of Romantic love is similar to the lovers’
discourse which has been constructed via the novel’s afterlife, in the
romantic love
sense that Romantic love is figured as an act of transcendence of all

that is bodily and temporal (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 523). It is a model of
love and desire that is posited against a social model based on marriage,
procreation and what Stoneman terms the process of ‘integration into
the normal structures of society’ (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 522). Romantic
love is also predicated on a politics of identity, as it presents the desired
other as a reflection of the self.
It is easy to see how Catherine’s declarations are informed by such a
model of love and how it in turn informs the screen lovers’ discourse.
However as we shall see in the coming chapters, the adaptations use this
model of love in different ways that often contradict or largely ignore
the context within which such a model of love is used in the novel,
and the fact that it is Catherine who constructs such a model of love at
a particular moment in her life. Catherine posits her marriage to Edgar
against her love for Heathcliff which is presented as a meeting of the
‘souls’. Heathcliff, she claims, mirrors her own subjectivity in a narcis-
sistic drama in which he is ‘more myself than I am’. The union of souls,
posited against marriage and the material concerns that Catherine notes
are the primary reasons for not being able to marry Heathcliff, is pre-
cisely what characterises the discourse of Romantic love.
This debt to Romantic notions of love is even more evident when Nelly
questions Catherine about the consequent separation from Heathcliff,
which she assumes marriage to Edgar would mean. Catherine’s response
is that her marriage to Edgar will not separate her from Heathcliff as she
tries to explain her feelings for Heathcliff, stating that:
I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that
there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were
the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great
miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched
and felt each from beginning; my great thought in living is himself.
If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be;
and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe
would turn to a mighty stranger . . . my love for Heathcliff resembles
the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but neces-
sary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as
a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as
my own being. (Brontë, 1998, pp. 72–3)
Catherine presents her ‘union’ with Heathcliff as one that tran-

scends social bonds, and assumes that because Heathcliff mirrors her
subjectivity, he will understand her ‘feelings to Edgar and myself’

(Brontë, 1998, p. 72). Perhaps more importantly, her declarations con-
struct a discourse of Romantic love that is based on transcendence of
her own body and existence, in which the poetics of love allows her
to exist beyond herself. That is, the discourse of Romantic love is here
used to construct a narrative of a transcendent identity. One of the
dangers of assuming that Catherine’s statements unproblematically
reflect Heathcliff’s own sentiments in a harmonious Romantic union of
minds and souls is the danger of accepting this Romantic ideology as an
unproblematic discourse in the novel, rather than addressing how the
text in fact draws attention to the politics of identity and gender that
underpin it.
When examining Catherine’s declarations, it is important to keep
in mind that they are only her sentiments. Catherine’s claim that
Heathcliff ‘comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself’
(Brontë, 1998, p. 72) is not supported as the novel progresses. Heathcliff
does not ‘comprehend’ and instead seeks revenge against Edgar,
Isabella and Catherine’s own daughter. As Stoneman rightly points out,
rather than enacting a transcendent ‘twin souls’ model of Romantic
love, Heathcliff instead participates in a middle-class and patriarchal
drama of love and marriage based on the exchange of women as pos-
sessions (Stoneman, 1996b, pp. 527–8). Catherine’s statements are,
significantly, all about herself. Her discourse of love is informed by the
desires that she seeks to fulfil throughout the novel and she engages
with the discourse of Romantic love in a manner that both reflects and
problematises it.
Catherine’s declarations are framed by the overarching desire for a
home, which she expresses throughout the novel. In her explanation
of her dream to Nelly, she links the site of Wuthering Heights with
Heathcliff as marginal spaces that express her own marginality. She
posits the house against the authoritative and patriarchal symbol of
heaven and ironically overturns the narrative of Romantic transcend-
ence at the very moment when she calls upon its poetics by literally
bringing it ‘back to earth’. Her desire to be brought ‘back to earth’ and
to Wuthering Heights symbolises a desire for a home. Heaven is not
her home because it represents the kind of patriarchal authority that
displaces her desires to the margins and imprisons her throughout the
story. Instead, she links the spaces of the ‘heath’, Wuthering Heights
and Heathcliff as her home, from which she has been exiled.
This linking of the landscape, Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff is
like a microcosm of the way that Catherine uses space throughout the
novel to articulate her own homelessness and desires. It reveals that

Catherine’s attachment to Heathcliff and desire for a home is essentially
an expression of a need to fulfil her own self in contrast to her social,
cultural and ideological world. It is a drama of identity and subjectiv-
ity akin to similar Romantic dramas of being undertaken by Romantic
authors.3 Only here, this existential drama is placed in the service of
a female poetics that problematises the logic of the masculine poetics
of being evident in the works of Romantic authors such as Byron and
Shelley. For example, Stoneman argues that Brontë reveals the limits
of Shelley’s ethos of ‘free love’ (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 527). The politics
of identity that she notes is evident in his poetics is that of the con-
struction of a deeply desiring masculine subjectivity at the expense of
feminine subjectivity (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 527). That is, Romantic love
works to construct unequal gender binaries of power despite its claims
of transcending them. While Brontë echoes this binary, her speaker is
a woman, not a man. As such, Brontë overturns the gender binaries
implicit in this discourse of love.
Catherine’s desire to attach herself to Heathcliff and construct a dis-
course of transcendence through him in which she has ‘an existence
of yours beyond you’ does not simply present us with a powerful trope
of Romantic love but also signifies a desire to transcend her own con-
dition in the tangible world around her. Heathcliff provides her with
a powerful reflection of her own condition of marginality and exist-
ence outside the patriarchal and middle-class narratives of the ‘centre’.
However, he is also a man, and as such, he is able to interact with his
material world in a manner that is impossible for her as a middle-class
woman. Heathcliff may perform his acts of dispossession and exchanges
of property ‘illegally’, but he is still able to perform them. He may be on
the margins of power and patriarchy, yet he is still able to, in Catherine
yearning words, ‘escape into that glorious world’ which is beyond her
reach as a woman (Brontë, 1998, p. 141).
Heathcliff can disappear into the ‘glorious world’ and move within it
to acquire the tools that will give him power over those at the centre.
Yet Catherine can only move from one household to another, and is
financially dependent on these households. Thus, when she expresses a
declaration of love that merges her own being with that of a man who
shares her marginality yet who also lives out her ‘dreams’ of the ‘glori-
ous world’, she removes the discourse of transcendent and Romantic
love from the ‘natural’ plane of non-ideological love and enters it
into a politics of gender that is tied to the tangible world of social
and cultural concerns. It is therefore important to note that Brontë’s
problematisation of the Romantic poetics that underpin Catherine’s dis-

course of love does not simply involve an inversion of gender roles but
also a contextualisation of this discourse within the social conditions
that govern the relationships between men and women.
Heathcliff’s declarations of love for Catherine are conversely tied to a
discourse of possession and competition. Significantly, his most heart-
felt declarations occur in moments when he is exercising power over
women. For example, when he comes to take Cathy away to Wuthering
Heights after Edgar’s death, he contemplates a painting of Catherine,
telling Nelly that ‘I shall have that at home’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 255). This
desire to posses Catherine’s painting launches him into the following
confession to Nelly:
I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging
Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her [Catherine’s] coffin lid,
and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when
I saw her face again – it is hers yet – he had hard work to stir me; but
he said it would change, if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side
of the coffin loose – and covered it up – not Linton’s side, damn him!
I wish he’d been soldered in lead – and I bribed the sexton to pull it
away, when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too – I’ll have it made
so, and then, by the time Linton gets to us, he’ll not know which is
which! (Brontë, 1998, p. 255)
It is significant that his expression of love is initiated by the desire to

possess a painting of Catherine and the exchange of her daughter from
one masculine authority to another. This essentially signals the logic
of Heathcliff’s love which is based on the possession and exchange of
women as ‘dead’ ‘images’ of masculine power and control.
As Berg points out, Heathcliff’s actions here are ‘motivated by rivalry’
(Berg, 1996, p. 97) with Edgar Linton and display what Stoneman
calls a ‘cultural intertext’, based on the ‘confrontation between men’
as part of ‘a masculine tradition in which women are the property of
men’ (Stoneman, 1996b, p. 528). The construction of Catherine as an
object in Heathcliff’s discourse of love is highlighted by the almost
fetishistic desire for her lifeless body. Heathcliff exhumes her body
twice in the story and at both times he fixates on it as a possession. He
refers to her as ‘my object’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 256), is ‘pacified’ (Brontë,
1998, p. 257) by seeing her ‘passionless features’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 256)
and dreams of sleeping with his ‘cheek frozen against hers’ (Brontë,
1998, p. 255) in a ghastly union in which she belongs to him alone.
While Catherine expresses her love as a transcendence of the body,

Heathcliff’s expressions are all about the body, and furthermore, the
lifeless female body.
What this reveals is that like Catherine’s declarations of love,
Heathcliff’s own expressions are also all about himself. The masculine
role which he enacts here is one that has been denied to him by his
class and economic status. His desire for Catherine cannot be separated
from his rivalry with other men and his competition with them in a
patriarchal game of ‘property’. If Catherine uses her discourse of love
to construct a narrative of transcendence that allows her to imagine an
‘escape’ into the ‘glorious world’, Heathcliff constructs a discourse of
love that allows him to attain ‘property’ and social ‘currency’ as a man
who is marginalised from such arenas of social power. Both have limited
access to social power and thus the site of their love opens up a space
wherein they can imagine and exercise such power.
The ending of Wuthering Heights is both concerned with these issues
of love expressed by Catherine and Heathcliff and signals the text’s own
afterlife when the discourse of love is taken up by Nelly and Lockwood.
Nelly begins by describing Heathcliff’s death and grave, moving on to
tell a tale of haunting:
the country folks, if you asked them, would swear on their Bible that
he walks. There are those who speak to having met him near the
church, and on the moor, and even within this house – Idle tales,
you’ll say, and so say I. Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms
he has seen the two on ’em, looking out of his chamber window, on
every rainy night since his death – and an odd thing happened to me
about a month ago. (Brontë, 1998, p. 299)
Nelly then describes how she encountered a village boy on the moors,
scared of Catherine and Heathcliff’s ghosts (Brontë, 1998, p. 299).
Against this narrative of haunting, Lockwood provides the following
narrative of peace, which forms the last paragraphs of the novel:
I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope

next to the moor – the middle one grey, and half buried in heath –
Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf, and the moss creeping
up its foot – Heathcliff’s still bare.
I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths
fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could
ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
(Brontë, 1998, p. 300)
Between them, Nelly and Lockwood articulate the different discourses

of love associated with Catherine and Heathcliff. Nelly describes a
transcendent love, existing beyond the material world. Lockwood, like
Heathcliff, locates their love within a bodily love triangle of corpses
sleeping a quiet death. Notably, Lockwood does not name Catherine’s
headstone as she lies between the two men who have fought over the
contested site of her body.
However Nelly and Lockwood also compete for meaning and author-
ity over the story we have just read and point to different ways of
‘knowing’ the text: one fixed and closed, the other open and unstable.
The novel’s subsequent screen adaptations not only negotiate Catherine
and Heathcliff’s differing discourses of love, but also Lockwood and
Nelly’s own competition for meaning, in which both romanticised mar-
ginal landscapes and narratives of transcendent lovers are entered into
the cultural ‘myth’ of Wuthering Heights.
2
The Cinema of Spectacle
Establishing the Wuthering Heights Tradition
on the Eve of Hollywood’s Golden Era
The 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, directed by William

Wyler, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and starring Merle Oberon as
Catherine and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, can be said to have initi-
ated the screen tradition of Wuthering Heights, and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, established the novel’s ‘meaning’ in cultural terms (Wuthering
Heights, 1939). Although an earlier screen adaptation of Wuthering
Heights was made in 1920 (Wuthering Heights, 1920), it is this 1939 film
that inaugurates the dominant screen tropes for later adaptations.1 Part
of the task then, of analysing this film is similar to that of analysing
the novel: examining a ‘beginning’ that has already become a heavily
defined ‘end’ as, arguably, the film that has been given the most critical
attention and one that is inextricably bound up in the popular imagina-
tion with what the novel ‘means’.
The 1939 film was made during Hollywood’s ‘Golden Era’ of the stu-
dio system, in which the primary concern in adapting the novel was
the appeal to, in Patricia Ingham’s words, ‘a mass audience’ (Ingham,
2006, p. 228). The result is the reworking of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
as an appealing love story that is conveyed through beautiful imagery.
In her analysis of the characterisation of Catherine in the film, Ingham
notes that ‘[s]pectacle was clearly a primary concern’ (Ingham, 2006,
p. 229). I would argue that the defining logic of the film as a whole is
spectacle. The film’s logic of spectacle is constructed via excess and an
overt display of bodies, houses and landscapes.
The entire film seems to be consumed by an almost overt conscious-
ness of visual display. Characters are constantly in melodramatic poses,
their bodies in conscious exhibition. Landscapes and households are
constructed as visual extremes, drawing on an aesthetic of excess that
highlights the visual pleasure of such spaces as spectacles. The camera is
39
not simply a recorder of events and spaces but also an active participant
in the action of the film, constructing a voyeuristic mood that draws
attention to the audience’s own gaze. The characters themselves enact
such a highlighting of spectatorship when their own gazes are continu-
ally fore-grounded. However, the film does not create a spectacle for
spectacle’s sake, but rather imbues it with many ideological underpin-
nings. By examining this logic of spectacle and the way it is constructed
aesthetically and ideologically, we can begin to analyse the film as a
product of specific individuals, Hollywood’s ‘Golden Era’ and the film’s
wider historical and cultural context.
The politics of the ‘hilltop lovers’
One of the primary spaces of spectacle in this film is the landscape,

as it is associated with the lovers’ discourse. We are given visual and
ideological clues as to how to ‘read’ this site in the opening scenes.
The first images of the film are ironically dominated by words. Against
a backdrop of a gloomy sky and landscape, the distinct silhouette of a
Gothic house and a flourish of romantic music, the first titles of the film
loom before our eyes in large white letters: ‘Samuel Goldwyn presents
“Wuthering Heights”’. When the film opens with the title in quotation
marks, we are alerted to the quoting of the novel as an appeal to its
authority as a ‘canonical’ text and literary inheritance; an appeal that
participates in constructing the novel as canonical. Part of the logic
behind this appeal lies, of course, in the words that precede the quoted
title: ‘Samuel Goldwyn presents’.
Mike Cormack points out that part of the reason behind Goldwyn’s
decision to produce a film such as Wuthering Heights was the desire for
‘prestige’ films (Cormack, 1994, p. 124). As H. Mark Glancy notes, ‘pres-
tige’ films were ‘films that drew strong foreign earnings’ and ‘often had
some claim to cultural value’ (Glancy, 1999, p. 69). Glancy highlights
that one of the most remarkable aspects of 1930s Hollywood cinema is
its fascination with British culture and literature as it set out on a project
of ‘promoting British culture’ (Glancy, 1999, p. 74). Many ‘prestige’
films were ‘British’ films and Hollywood continued to locate ‘cultural
value’ in British culture and literature throughout the period leading up
to and during World War II, as a source of a shared tradition (Glancy,
1999, pp. 4–5, 69, 74, 96, 130–1).
Examples of such ‘British’ Hollywood films include Goodbye Mr Chips
(1939), Great Expectations (1946), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Rebecca
(1940), Jane Eyre (1943), Mrs Miniver (1942), Henry V (1944), Waterloo
The Cinema of Spectacle 41
Bridge (1940), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), David Copperfield (1935),
That Hamilton Woman (1941) and Fire Over England (1937). It is tell-
ing that these titles are only a few examples of the prolific number
of ‘British’ Hollywood films made in the 1930s and 1940s, many of
which were adaptations of classic English literature. The 1939 Wuthering
Heights film joins other Hollywood adaptations of classic English litera-
ture throughout the period.
The reason behind such a strong endorsement of British culture and
literature during 1930s and 1940s Hollywood cinema becomes obvious
when we consider the historical context of World War II. The 1939
Wuthering Heights film is not simply the product of Hollywood cinematic
conventions, but also stems from the historical context of an impend-
ing war that approaches with the gained perspective of the horrors of
World War I. As Ingham notes, the ‘film was made in the run-up to the
Second World War: between the Munich Crisis and the start of the war
in September 1939’ (Ingham, 2006, p. 228). Indeed, when the New York
Times reported on the shooting of the film in 1939, it also highlighted
the centrality of the looming war to the film’s production:
Heathcliff was peering out across the moors and screaming, ‘Cathy,
come to me! Cathy, my own!’ while there beyond, in a corner of the
stage, muted when the set’s microphone was alive, a tiny radio was
tuned to one of Hitler’s more portentous harangues. Between each
take, between Heathcliff’s heartbreaking cries and cornflake flurries
of the studio-made gale, cast, director and crew were sprinting to
the radio corner where a little property man with a knowledge of
German was standing in newfound dignity, haltingly translating
phrases that might have spelt war, but did not. Truly, ‘Wuthering
Heights’ was hewn in a wild workshop, in the literature of the screen
as in literature. (Nugent, 1939, X5)
Such a politicised historical context, along with the initial appeal to

the ‘cultural value’ of Wuthering Heights as an example of classic English
literature, is what ultimately shapes the adaptation of the novel within
the film through the much venerated site of the English landscape.
Perhaps the most consciously constructed imagery of spectacle, and
the imagery which summarises the dominant representation of the
landscape in the film, is the image of Catherine and Heathcliff sitting
together upon a Sublime hilltop landscape representing the English
moors, framed by the sky with all its connotations of eternity and
transcendence, with gazes transfixed upwards in a transcendent unity
(see Figure 2.1). This imagery represents a type of Sublime ‘oneness’

between Catherine and Heathcliff, and between the landscape and their
love. This ‘oneness’ also speaks of a Romantic discourse of being, that
locates a transcendent identity in the eternity of nature and, perhaps
more importantly, in a specifically English landscape.
It is clear that such a Romantic oneness is constructed as a focal point
in the film. In contrast to scenes in other spaces where the camera is
continually roving, moving and searching as an active participant in
the action of the film, images of the landscape and of Catherine and
Heathcliff on the ‘moors’ are strikingly still for prolonged periods of
time. There is a self-conscious staginess to their interactions on the
landscape, in which they are placed in positions for prolonged periods
of time, as if they are posing for a photograph. The camerawork in these
landscape scenes evidences a strong awareness of the power of the styl-
ised image, frozen in time. This is not a spectacle that is constructed for
its own sake, but rather, it has political undertones.
Figure 2.1 Catherine (Merle Oberon) and Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) on

the hilltop, from Wuthering Heights (1939), directed by William Wyler, United
Artists/MGM
The imagery of the hilltop lovers is the culmination of several integral

scenes of Catherine and Heathcliff interacting together on the moors. In
their first scene on the moors as adult lovers, Catherine urges Heathcliff to
run away, and this is linked to a class politics and desire to ‘elevate’ him
through money. That is, if he cannot inherit his riches like an English
gentleman, he will earn them like the archetypal American self-made
man. After Heathcliff does run away for a brief period, they meet on the
moors again and he reveals to Catherine that he planned to board a ship
for America, but did not make it. Later, we learn that after running away
for a second and final time, Heathcliff does indeed make it to America and
becomes a self-made man in the ‘new world’. Thus, the site of the English
landscape is linked to an American success story, and, through the dis-
course of transcendent being that is built around Catherine and Heathcliff,
it is also constructed as a site of ‘eternal’ values and traditions.
The English moors are turned into a space of freedom for Catherine
and Heathcliff that is quite different from the freedom that Catherine
envisaged in the novel. They are constructed as a space that both
highlights shared values between England and America that allows
the audience to see the historical links between an English discourse
of being, conveyed by an English landscape and English lovers, and
contemporary American values. The cinematic spectacle of Catherine
and Heathcliff as hilltop lovers in a pose of Romantic ‘oneness’ is thus
predicated on a cultural dialogue. In their interactions on the English
moors, Catherine and Heathcliff form a dialogue between England and
America, with England being constructed as the bastion of tradition
and the values which the Western world – specifically, America – has
inherited, and America being characterised as a land of opportunity that
cultivates the Western values of equality and democracy.
It is difficult not to read this dialogue within the logic of the film’s
immediate context of the impending World War II. In his comprehen-
sive study of the Hollywood ‘British’ films of the 1930s and 1940s,
Glancy points out that many of these films were made with the inten-
tion of promoting ‘a shared Anglo-American’ tradition that, as World
War II progressed, bordered on propaganda for the allies (Glancy,
1999, pp. 5, 106–7). Robert Lawson-Peebles notes that this ‘pro-British’
propaganda can be traced back to 1937, locating what he calls a vital
‘colony’ of British expatriates in Hollywood such as Aldous Huxley,
Robert Stevenson, Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Greer Garson, David
Niven and Joan Fontaine, who helped shape a cultural and cinematic
Anglo-American tradition that spoke for ‘Western civilization’ (Lawson-
Peebles, 1996, pp. 2–4).
Indeed, Linda V. Troost’s analysis of Robert Z. Leonard’s adaptation of

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1940) could equally apply to the 1939
Wuthering Heights film when she argues that:
[a]ppearing as it did at the start of World War II and with British actors
and a British screenwriter, it becomes a film designed to strengthen
the British and American alliance at a fragile moment. Huxley and
Murfin aim to make the England of the film into a world worth
protecting and the characters of the film into people Americans can
identify with (and eventually fight alongside). (Troost, 2007, p. 76)
The 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice rewrites Austen’s novel by mak-
ing all the English characters entirely sympathetic, toning down the
original story’s class politics and turning it into a more empathetic
romance for an American audience. As Dianne F. Sadoff points out, the
film’s idealisation of the ‘British rural and middle classes’ occurs against
the historical background of ‘the height of the battle of Britain’, implic-
itly calling for ‘Anglo-American solidarity’ in a time of political ‘crisis’
(Sadoff, 2010, p. 27).
The intentions behind the 1940 Pride and Prejudice adaptation corre-
spond with Goldwyn’s own desire to make both the narrative and the
characters of Wuthering Heights more ‘appealing’. Ingham notes that
‘Goldwyn could not see “why an audience would pull for a capricious,
irresponsible girl or a hate-filled man bent on revenging his miser-
able childhood”’ and instead determined that the narrative would be
reworked ‘as “a story of undying love . . . that transcends the gloomy
nature of its backgrounds”’ (Goldwyn quoted in Ingham, 2006, p. 229).
Goldwyn’s desire to make the audience sympathise with the narrative
and its characters cannot be simply explained by his preoccupation
with marketing the film for mass consumption. The notion of a love
story that ‘transcends the gloomy nature of its backgrounds’ speaks of
the film’s immediate political context, in which Heathcliff utters his
cries of love amidst the possible declaration of war. The desire to make
England sympathetic to the audience is as much a concern as the desire
to ‘sell’ the film to this audience.
It seems that Goldwyn was not alone in this desire. Many Hollywood
producers and directors, and those who invested money in the industry,
felt that cinema served a purpose in the war effort and in encouraging
American involvement in the war in the hopes of countering the iso-
lationist sentiments in America (Lawson-Peebles, 1996). In their logic,
such isolationist sentiments could be addressed by demonstrating the
values that the Western world must fight for and the traditions which
it must protect, while at the same time constructing the boundaries of
the ‘Western world’ along the lines of shared Anglo-American values
(Lawson-Peebles, 1996).
Among these values and traditions was the literature of the English-
speaking world whose narratives were turned into discourses of inher-
ited culture. It is not surprising then, that the majority of the Hollywood
‘British’ films were adaptations of classic English literature that looked
to an English world and its literature as sites of the ‘eternal’, ‘enduring’
and ‘transcendent’ values of the Western world, amidst the ‘gloomy’
background of the present.2 However, Glancy does not locate the 1939
Wuthering Heights film or the 1940 Pride and Prejudice film within this
distinctly political arena, simply summing them both up as ‘costume
dramas’ that ‘have no political subtext’ (Glancy, 1999, p. 110). Such
a statement overlooks the tangible political and ideological subtext
within the adaptation of English literature throughout the inter-war
years and the cultural context of the rise of ‘English Studies’.
The imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors is a powerful
symbol not only of transcendence per se, but more specifically, of the
transcendence and endurance of the literature of the English-speaking
world. In her own analysis of the 1939 film, Stoneman examines the rise
of English Studies in England as a key aspect to the film’s representation
of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors through an engagement with
Chris Baldick’s The Social Mission of English Criticism and Terry Eagleton’s
Literary Theory (Stoneman, 1996a, pp. 74, 129–30). I would like to
extend her engagement with these works and examine the implications
of Baldick’s and Eagleton’s works to the 1939 film in more detail.
Examining the rise of English Studies as a distinct discipline in
English universities, Eagleton argues that in ‘the early 1920s it was
desperately unclear why English was worth studying at all; by the early
1930s it had become a question of why it was worth wasting your time
on anything else. English was not only a subject worth studying, but
was the supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social
formation’ (Eagleton, 1983, p. 31). Eagleton details how the movement
from an emerging discipline of English Studies to the establishment of
this discipline as a central ‘civilizing pursuit’ and the ‘essence of the
social formation’ occurred against a historical and cultural background
of the social repercussions of World War I:
the deep trauma of the war, its almost intolerable questioning of

every previously held cultural assumption, gave rise to a ‘spiritual
hungering’, as one contemporary commentator described it, for

which poetry seemed to provide an answer. . . . English Literature rode
to power on the back of wartime nationalism; but it also represented
a search for spiritual solutions on the part of an English ruling class
whose sense of identity had been profoundly shaken, whose psyche
was ineradicably scarred by the horrors it had endured. Literature
would be at once solace and reaffirmation, a familiar ground on
which Englishmen could regroup both to explore, and to find some
alternative to, the nightmare of history. (Eagleton, 1983, p. 30)
Baldick argues a similar point when he notes that:
[t]he First World War has long been recognized as marking a dis-
tinct turning-point not only in world history but also in English
literature. . . . The inauguration of the modern epoch of wars and revolu-
tions triggered, as one of its remote ripples, what one of its participants
described as the ‘Revolution in English Studies’. . . . The resurgence of
national pride, and the indignant brandishing of the cultural heritage
that went with it, acted as a powerful impetus to the establishment of
English Literature as a ‘central’ discipline. (Baldick, 1983, p. 86)
Both Baldick and Eagleton detail the effect of World War I upon the
development of English literature as a central cultural heritage and
English Studies as a distinct educational discipline in schools and uni-
versities. Citing an array of critics, authors and social commentators,
Baldick and Eagleton describe in their respective works the function
which was applied to English literature as a socially cohesive cultural
element, which could act as a substitute for those ‘previously held
cultural assumptions’ that had undergone interrogation and erosion in
the aftermath of World War I (see Baldick, 1983, pp. 86–108, 134–61;
Eagleton, 1983, pp. 17–53).
Eagleton’s comment that English literature became ‘the supremely
civilizing pursuit’ and ‘spiritual essence of the social formation’ is
by no means an exaggeration on his part as such commentators and
critics were not subtle in the manner in which they allocated English
literature a socially and culturally central role. For example, in 1932,
F. R. Leavis wrote that the ‘dissolution of the traditions, social, religious,
moral and intellectual, has left us without that basis of things taken for
granted which is necessary to a healthy culture’, arguing that ‘literary
education . . . is to a great extent a substitute’ for these lost traditions
and values (Leavis quoted in Baldick, 1983, p. 193). As the decade drew
to an end, moving closer to another war, the central nature of English

literature as a recuperative and unifying discourse, as well as a symbol
of cultural heritage, became even more important in the face of another
threat to ‘healthy culture’. English literature became aligned with the
project of ‘Western civilization’ in the face of chaos; with what Eagleton
calls the ‘liberal’ and ‘humanizing’ discourse that acts as the ‘antidote
to political bigotry and ideological extremism’ (Eagleton, 1983, p. 25).
The ironic effect of the strident nationalism behind the promotion of
English literature and English Studies was the turning of such literature
into an ahistorical emblem of transcendent values that must be pro-
tected in the name of Western civilisation.
Part of the ‘project’ of English Studies was the turning of English lit-
erature and English authors into signifiers of what Eagleton terms ‘eter-
nal truths’ and discourses of transcendent being and ‘nature’ (Eagleton,
1983, p. 25). It was at this time that Wuthering Heights was re-evaluated
by critics such as Woolf and Cecil in their well-known analyses of the
novel, with Cecil noting in 1934 that Catherine and Heathcliff ‘loom
before us in the simple epic outline which is all that we can see of
man revealed against the huge landscape of the cosmic scheme’ (Cecil,
1934, pp. 150–1) and Woolf claiming in 1925 that the novel conveys
Emily Brontë’s ‘struggle to say something through the mouths of her
characters which is not merely “I love” or “I hate”, but “we, the whole
human race” and “you, the eternal powers”’ (Woolf, 1985, p. 1348).
This critical tradition of locating the novel’s meaning within a discourse
of transcendent, eternal and universal ‘nature’ speaks of the Modernist
tradition that infuses analyses of literature throughout the period of
the 1920s and 1930s. This tradition contributed to the rise of English
Studies and the aggrandisement of the literature of the English-speaking
world as eternal narratives of archetypal nature.
‘Nature’ is a key word here, for as Armstrong writes, ‘“nature” was the
ultimate reality’ for Modernism (Armstrong, 2000, p. 313). Armstrong
argues that against a backdrop of ‘theories of degeneration’ and the
context of two World Wars, Modernist fiction and Modernist re-inter-
pretations of Victorian literature turned to a discourse of eternal ‘nature’
as a fixed reality that lay behind Victorian surfaces (Armstrong, 2000,
p. 313). In a world where institutions and values that were previously
deemed ‘fixed’ were continually coming under attack by the onslaught
of war, construction of eternal and natural discourses of being became
prevalent, and literature such as Wuthering Heights was being re-
evaluated as a ‘cosmic’ narrative of ‘man’; as an ‘epic outline’ of ‘the
eternal powers’ and ‘we, the whole human race’.
In his own way, Wyler has created an image that directly corresponds
with Cecil and Woolf’s respective analyses of Wuthering Heights. It is pre-
cisely the image of Catherine and Heathcliff ‘looming’ before our eyes
amidst an ‘epic outline’ of sky and landscape that speaks of ‘the eternal
powers’ that the film provides. The location of a sense of eternal being
within a ‘transcendent’ love story and a specifically English landscape
and literary tradition is presented as ‘nature’ speaking for ‘humanity’.
The site of the English landscape becomes a type of cultural touchstone
for a world in conflict, seeking the cohesion of storytelling and narra-
tive tradition as spaces of eternal being and nature.
The landscape, as it is associated with ‘the lovers’ in the film, is turned
into a fairy-tale space of archetypes where all dreams are possible,
where cultural boundaries are transcended and where an impoverished
Englishman can cross over the sea to a Hollywood never-never-land,
which ideologically fulfils a sense of being and identity in the world
as well as providing him with riches. The film turns Catherine and
Heathcliff and the landscape they inhabit into models of the eternal
and transcendent nature of Western values and traditions in an unspo-
ken political message to their contemporary audience. The viewer trav-
els from England to America and back, and this process of literal travel
in the film and imaginary travel for the viewer constructs an ideologi-
cal space in which Wuthering Heights is turned into a politicised site of
cultural inheritance.
The film reworks Catherine’s discourse of love, uttered in her mono-
logues to Nelly in the novel, from the language of transcendence of
Victorian social boundaries to transcendence of cultural boundaries
between England and America. If the novel exists in the specific locale
of Victorian England, the film takes its viewer on a journey to a new
Victorian space where England is really America, and vice versa. And,
if the novel is written in the English language of an author engaging
with her nineteenth-century world, the film translates this language
into quite a different English ‘word’ that speaks for the Western
world.
In seeking to align the audience’s sympathies with England, the film
essentially participates in the project of ‘English Studies’ and extends
the parameters of ‘Western civilization’ to include America. The ‘liberal’,
‘humanizing’ and unifying discourse of English literature is called upon
as both a reflection of American values and the shared cultural herit-
age of the English-speaking world that must provide the ‘antidote’ to
‘ideological extremism’, blaring in German from a radio that was about
to proclaim war as the film was made. Through its own contextual
and historical politics, the 1939 film has helped shape the notion that
Wuthering Heights represents both a sense of cultural inheritance and an
ahistorical narrative of ‘timeless’ values.
Like the Burkean Sublime, in which a transcendent identity is con-
structed at the very moment of a possible loss of identity, the imagery of
Catherine and Heathcliff on the English moors is a symbol of transcend-
ent being that is set against a background of death, disintegration and
loss (Burke, 1998, p. 79). It is not simply a triumphant image of a shared
tradition, but also an expression of profound loss and instability that
is couched in a Sublime poetics. As Catherine and Heathcliff’s ghosts
walk hand-in-hand upon the snow-laden landscape in the final scene
of the film, Nelly’s narrational politics of haunting comes full circle. If
a ghost represents a sense of being that is predicated on death and loss,
it also represents a presence, a haunting that tries to fill this gap of loss.
Similarly, the image of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors as uni-
fied lovers is a twofold one that represents both a politicised transcend-
ence and the remnants of the loss upon which this image is predicated.
Perhaps one of the reasons why this imagery is a source of fixation
in the film, and why it continues to fascinate to this day, is precisely
because it is not simply triumphant but also a site upon which Western
culture can play with self-images and negotiate the boundaries of being
and belonging.
Indeed, one of the important issues the 1939 film’s construction of
the ‘hilltop lovers’ imagery introduces to the adaptation of Wuthering
Heights is the concept that its narrative and its cultural status are ines-
capably tied to the formation of discourses of identity and ‘home’, with
the boundaries of ‘home’ continually changing in focus. The film’s last-
ing legacy of the ‘hilltop lovers’ imagery is one that is also continually
returned to. As Stoneman points out:
the picture of Catherine and Heathcliff together, as adults, on the

hilltop, silhouetted against the sky which represents their mutual
aspiration, has become a visual emblem of what the novel ‘means’. By
1989 it was so well known that Monty Python’s Flying Circus could
assume that two lovers on a hilltop constituted a cultural icon to
which a mass audience would respond. (Stoneman, 1996a, p. 127)
Almost every screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights since the 1939 film
owes some sort of debt to the film’s imagery and continues to repeat it.
The representational power of the film has in fact assured the ‘afterlife’
of Wuthering Heights beyond the pages of the novel.
‘This woman’s work’: Hollywood glamour and

feminine spectacle
If the site of the landscape in the film is used to convey an image of

unified transcendence, it is also one which leads us away from this
unity to examine Heathcliff and Catherine’s bodies in separation and
in different aesthetic spaces. Catherine initiates this separation by a
move away from the unified transcendence to the dazzle of earthly
riches. As Catherine and Heathcliff sit on the moors and declare their
love, she is suddenly distracted by the faint echo of distant music from
Thrushcross Grange and exclaims, ‘music – the Lintons are giving a
party. That’s what I want. Dancing and singing in a pretty world. And
I’ll have it!’ (Hecht and MacArthur, 1943, p. 303). With these words,
and the move toward the Grange, begins the aesthetic and visual asso-
ciation made in the film between the space of Catherine’s body and the
Grange. As Catherine and Heathcliff peer through the windows of the
Grange, gazing into its luxurious interiors, they watch the elaborately
dressed guests of the Lintons’ party waltzing to music in an image that
resembles a fairy-tale ball. Heathcliff remains unmoved, but Catherine
is dazzled. Rather than simply seeking financial security, Catherine is
depicted as a child-woman who desires to become a princess within an
expensive castle.
The film draws attention to the oppositional nature of the two
houses of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange in the novel, by
taking it to aesthetic and visual extremes. While Wuthering Heights
is dominated by excessive darkness, lurking shadows, rustic interiors
and a claustrophobic atmosphere, Thrushcross Grange is excessively
polished, spacious, light and white. It is clear that an aesthetic opposi-
tional framework of light and dark is being constructed here, and while
Wuthering Heights is aligned with a Gothic darkness, Thrushcross
Grange is depicted as a luxurious spectacle of all that Western consumer
culture has to offer. As the film progresses, Catherine is symbolically
linked with the aesthetics of the Grange, as she is paraded in a dazzling
array of satiny white dresses that are complemented by luminous skin,
rendered excessively ‘polished’ by soft lighting, and blazingly glowing
diamonds that adorn her neck, hands and ears. This clothing is starkly
contrasted with the earthy and dark clothes she wears on the moors
with Heathcliff. Her body and the clothes that adorn it become sym-
bols of her movement away from transcendental love to a more socially
‘grounded’ love triangle as ‘Mrs Linton’. This love triangle also initiates
the separation of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s unified gaze, valorised
through the imagery of the two on top of the moors. As she is separated
from the moors, the camera adopts an objectifying gaze upon her as a
beautiful spectacle.
Perhaps the most striking scene in which such issues intersect is the
second ballroom scene in the film. Catherine is now no longer dazzled
but dazzling as Mrs Linton, the lady of the household. Heathcliff, hav-
ing just returned from a prolonged absence a wealthy man, intrudes on
her ball, recalling the previous ballroom scene in which they both spied
on the Lintons. As Lin Haire-Sargeant describes:
With Cathy’s marriage to Edgar she has become part of this world,
while Heathcliff, though mysteriously transformed into a gentleman,
remains shut out. Through brilliantly lit windows we can glimpse
dancing couples. Then there is a fade to the interior scene shown
through an ornate mirror, across expanses of mechanistically danc-
ing couples, other mirrors, crystal chandeliers. The effect is of a giant
music box . . . the footmen admit Heathcliff, in impeccable evening
dress, a tall black column against the hard white surfaces of the
ballroom. . . . There is an extended close-up of a somber Heathcliff;
we know where his unswerving gaze is directed. Cut to a close-up of
Cathy. She is a snow woman with her white bared shoulders, and her
apparel might as well be ice. The dress is highly polished white satin;
diamonds sparkle from necklace, earrings, and tiara. She is like an ice
sculpture. (Haire-Sargeant, 1999, p. 172)
Haire-Sargeant argues that the adding of this scene, and the distanc-
ing of Heathcliff not only from Catherine, but also from the polished
world she now inhabits, is to elicit audience sympathy for him (Haire-
Sargeant, 1999, p. 173). While correct, such an argument fails to fully
probe the layers of meaning which are conveyed here.
The complex camerawork of this scene positions a self-reflexive
eye on its own gaze. As it weaves through the doorway to present the
elegant image of the ballroom, the camera suddenly comes to a halt,
framing the ‘ornate mirror’ which Haire-Sargeant notes reveals the
interior scene of the ballroom. As the camera closes-in on the mirror
which frames Catherine’s image, she becomes doubly ‘framed’, fetish-
ised and distanced by both the mirror and the camera. However what
is also ‘framed’ and distanced is the film’s own gaze, disrupting the
process of narrative identification traditionally associated with classical
Hollywood cinema, and encouraging an alienating and self-conscious
perspective that highlights rather than obscures the constructed nature
of the visual spectacle. It is not simply Catherine who is turned into a

distanced object of visual pleasure, but the entire film itself. The effect
created is thus indeed that of ‘a giant music box’ of artificiality, which
traps the entire film within a fetishistic spectacle.
As the camera’s gaze, mirroring Heathcliff’s own, fixes upon Catherine
as the primary focus of this spectacle, the aesthetics of this ‘giant music
box’ are symbolically transferred to the site of Catherine’s body. The
house’s glaring whiteness, smooth interiors and dazzling crystal chan-
deliers are mirrored in Catherine’s smooth skin, sparkling jewels and icy
satiny dress. She is rather like an ‘ice sculpture’, a snow queen in all her
finery. Still, silent and frozen, she is not only conscious of Heathcliff’s
gaze, but as the actress Merle Oberon, she also seems aware of the cam-
era’s gaze and the need to pose in muse-like silence as an objet d’art (see
Figure 2.2). Thus, the film’s self-reflexivity is transferred to Catherine/
Merle, who poses for the camera in preparation for her perfunctory
glamorous close-up as the typical Hollywood screen siren. There is
no denying that such a use of the female body objectifies femininity.
However, such an objectification of the female body is itself framed by
Figure 2.2 A close-up of Catherine (Merle Oberon) in her luxurious finery, from
Wuthering Heights (1939), directed by William Wyler, United Artists/MGM
an ironic distancing that draws attention to the film’s manipulation of

visual pleasure and the gaze.
This scene’s aesthetics of ‘unreal’ spectacle turns the cinematic expe-
rience into a form of visual wonderment. In her dazzling attire and
frozen aspect, Catherine conveys the wonder of dream-like beauty,
glamour, riches and fantasy. More than simply an object of sexual
desire, she is also an object of consumer desire and the glossy appeal of
a beautified Hollywood world. It is important not to underestimate the
appeal of such an image in light of the film’s immediate context. The
use of Catherine’s body to construct a dream-like fantasy world can be
linked to the experience of cinema itself for the American and British
movie-goers of the 1930s, for whom films such as Wuthering Heights
were originally made. John Jervis writes that ‘the “cinema experience”
encompasses more than the film itself: there is also the impact of sitting
in the darkened auditorium, in the company of strangers. All contrib-
ute to the possibilities for fantasy fulfilment, the sense that film has a
dreamlike quality’ (Jervis, 1998, p. 294).
This ‘dreamlike quality’ is echoed by John Huntley’s account of the
experience of ‘going to the pictures’ in 1930s England:
I think it is difficult really to realize how marvellous it was in the

1930s to enter one of these wonderful Picture Palaces. The home in
those days was a pretty bleak place . . . and suddenly in this luxurious
setting of cinema you were warm and there was a lovely deep carpet
and you sank into a very comfortable seat. . . . We used to go in about
12 noon and not come out till 8.00 in the evening and that was a
day when you looked forward to not just seeing entertainment on
the screen but sheer living luxury in total contrast to what it felt like
at home. (Huntley quoted in Weightman, 1988, p. 44)
Although Huntley is referring to the English context, his description

could well apply to America as well, for American and English cinema
venues were similar in the 1930s. What is particularly striking about
Huntley’s account is his description of the comfort and luxury that the
cinematic experience afforded in the 1930s. In Wyler’s construction
of a dazzling Catherine who mirrors a dazzling world, this comfort
and luxury is reflected on screen as a spectacle of fantasy and wish-
fulfilment for those who no doubt knew what it meant to live without
such material abundance during the Depression and war-time years. It is
a vicarious living-out of the American consumer dream and the Western
capitalist ethos of materiality as a dream-like desire. Perhaps the film’s
self-reflexive distancing via the allusions to its own gaze is not meant as
an alienating experience but rather aids in the construction of a fantasy
world that is distanced from everyday reality.
This is a fantasy world mirrored in many other film adaptations
of classic literature during the period. For example, Leonard’s 1940
Pride and Prejudice enacts what Sadoff calls a ‘fantasized identification
with the privileges of rank and wealth’ to ‘endorse capital acquisition’
(Sadoff, 2010, p. 25). This is primarily achieved in the film by the align-
ment of the screen female body with ‘money’ and polished household
spaces, as well as a focus on extravagant costumes, female shopping and
a beautified aesthetic world of ‘Merry England’ (Sadoff, 2010, p. 25).
Such an adaptation, like many other ‘quality’ films of the 1930s and
1940s, provided a form of escape and ideological cohesion during times
of economic and political upheaval.
Here, we have truly entered a world that presents Burke’s aesthetic
category of the Beautiful, in which the female body and the house-
hold space are linked together and aligned with materiality, comfort,
sensuality and luxury (Burke, 1998, pp. 83–114). The construction of
Catherine’s body as a beautiful spectacle is so excessive in this scene
that it almost renders it Sublime. However, the intimate framing of her
body via the camera’s insistent close-ups does not allow for a Sublime
poetics: Catherine is fully contained. True to its traditional gender logic,
the film keeps the woman in her place. Yet, this does not mean that
such a containment is therefore simplistic, for it also speaks of wider
negotiations between material reality and fantasy.
For Americans and Britons in the 1930s, looking back on a war and
economic hardships, and anticipating another war that threatened to
create further disagreeable ‘realities’, the spectacle of the female body so
consistently ‘framed’ and adorned with luxury and beauty provided a
distinct cinematic space via which these societies negotiated their ideals
and material realities. Like the nineteenth-century domestic body of the
mother, who was assigned the ideological task of constructing a ‘home’,
the 1930s feminine screen siren had distinct ideological work to do,
which required the containment of the female body.
If, as the war progressed, women were required to step beyond the
confines of the home into the traditionally masculine and public
domain of the workplace, ideologically speaking, they were kept in their
‘proper’ place through other social mechanisms, such as cinema and
shopping, as consumers rather than producers, as objects rather than
subjects. Wyler’s Catherine anticipates this duality, for while she desires
equality, unity and transcendence in the fantasy space of the moors, in
the ‘real’ world of material comfort she seeks her own containment and
thus becomes a distanced object of masculine desire. It is ironic that
Catherine’s ‘real’ world is the audience’s fantasy. In its power to daz-
zle and distance reality, the film’s complex construction of memorable
images in this scene is equally powerful as its images of transcendence
on the moors, both of which perform ideological tasks in the service of
‘Western civilization’ according to Hollywood.
One of the results of turning Catherine’s body into an objectified spec-
tacle is that it becomes an object of desire for the audience itself, acting
as a type of advertisement for a Western consumer culture. After all, it is
widely known that Goldwyn wanted to show Merle Oberon off in fancy
costumes and jewels, hoping to capitalise on the display of the fruits of
‘capital’ (see Nash and Ross, 1987, p. 3936). Wuthering Heights was in
fact made to conform to MGM’s lavish studio style, with the narrative
and clothing being ‘updated’ to the 1830s so Oberon could be paraded
in more extravagant costumes. This was also the logic behind the updat-
ing of Leonard’s Pride and Prejudice from Austen’s Regency period to the
1830s (Sadoff, 2010, p. 26). Love, gender, desire and their social and
cultural boundaries are implicitly interwoven with mass consumerism
so that they become one and the same. This is a logic that subsequent
screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights have inherited and display in
varying degrees of self-consciousness. The site of Catherine’s body con-
tinues to exert its ideological power. A woman’s work is never done.
Olivier’s Heathcliff: The masculine spectacle of pain,

nobility and regeneration
When adapting Wuthering Heights, Goldwyn and Wyler wanted to

present Heathcliff in a more sympathetic and ‘heroic’ light (see Mills,
1996, p. 417). The manner in which his character is adapted in the 1939
film enters him into a ‘spectacle of pain’ via the aid of his surroundings.
If Catherine is aligned with the Grange, Heathcliff is linked with the
house of Wuthering Heights. John Harrington aptly describes the first
scene in which we are introduced to both Heathcliff and Wuthering
Heights:
As Lockwood enters the Heights . . . the impression is one of chaos

and disrepair. The house is dark, shadowy; plaster has fallen away
from the stone behind . . . it is the mise-en-scène of a horror film. . . .
Maintaining Lockwood’s point of view, the camera peers at Heathcliff
in the distance, by the fireplace. Accompanied by eerie music, the
camera dollies slowly with Lockwood toward the bright fire in the
center of the room, a fire surrounded and threatened by darkness and
shadow. . . . Heathcliff stands by the fireplace, looking vacantly into
the shadows. (Harrington, 1981, p. 73)
In their separation, Heathcliff forms the aesthetic antithesis of Catherine

in her glowing white dazzle and polish, as he seems to be carved out
of rugged shadows. However, Heathcliff has more autonomy than
Catherine as it seems as if his body is shaping the house. When Nelly
describes to Lockwood what the house was like before Heathcliff came
to live there we view a spaciously sunny domestic dwelling rather than
the bleak, austere, claustrophobically dark and shadowy house to which
we are introduced in the opening scenes. Therefore, the house’s change
in aesthetics is linked to the site of Heathcliff’s body, as if his pain and
struggle is shaping his environment.
Harrington is correct when he notes that the mise-en-scène is that of a
horror film: the atmosphere and interiors are typically Gothic. However,
unlike Brontë’s Heathcliff, the 1939 Heathcliff is more Sublime than
Gothic. If the shadows, magnificent fire, threatening atmosphere, decay
and ruggedness of the house all speak of Sublime undertones, these
undertones are not allowed to flourish into a fully Sublime spectacle
as the claustrophobic intimacy of the house speaks of Gothic entrap-
ment rather than the grandeur of a Sublime poetics. It is in the space of
Heathcliff’s body that they flourish, as he becomes increasingly associ-
ated with a grand spectacle of pain, in which he is presented as a force
that breaks boundaries, struggles, endures and is forever at the brink of
his own physical and psychological destruction.
Some of the most striking scenes within the film involve Heathcliff
physically breaking the barrier of the window, which is metaphori-
cally aligned with various meanings. When Catherine’s ghost calls
to Lockwood from beyond the window of Wuthering Heights, it is
Heathcliff who bursts the window open in a violent gesture. The camera
focuses intently on the physical contortions and lines of misery of his
face, while the lighting highlights the pain in his dark eyes, mirroring
the shadows of the house. The camera remains fixed on his face for a
relatively long time; a visual focus that is especially obvious considering
the camera’s movements were quick and mobile only moments before.
The visual message is clear: Heathcliff’s bodily pain is a valorised and
fetishised aspect within the film.
In a directly corresponding scene, Heathcliff is once again drawn to
break the barrier of the window by his love for Catherine. After a fickle
Catherine has pushed him aside, anticipating a visit from Edgar in her
satiny white finery, a stricken Heathcliff retreats into the shadows of the
Heights’ barn and lies beside its window. In a gesture of fury, pain and
humiliation, he violently slams both hands through the window. This
gesture of physical and emotional pain is once again held in a fetishistic
gaze by the camera through a close-up of Heathcliff’s face and hands.
Rather than the fetish of the female body as an indicator of material
wealth and luxury, what we have here is the antithesis: the fetish of the
masculine body in a pose of pain and lack of physical comfort.
While it is easy to read this dynamic within the traditional gender
binaries of feminine passivity and masculine strength, the question of
why the film is so focused on Heathcliff’s pain and deprivation extends
beyond this interpretation. In the context of the film’s immediate
cultural and political context, it is possible to read this fascination
with the site of Heathcliff’s body through an analogy with the soldier’s
body. Heathcliff is in fact turned into a prototype of the ideal soldier
who must endure commands, humiliation, physical and psychological
deprivation, pain and separation from the ‘feminine’ sites of the female
body, emotions and the domestic sphere.
This logic of the soldier’s body is just as potently worked out on the
site of Heathcliff’s body when the camera self-consciously fixates on
him in melodramatic poses of noble stillness and silent suffering. In
such scenes, Olivier’s Heathcliff enacts Nelly’s desire to ‘smooth out’ the
lines of savagery of his body in the novel, through a discourse of noble
suffering. As Elliott quite rightly points out, ‘Laurence Olivier performs
the role . . . as though Nelly herself had groomed him’ (Elliott, 2003,
p. 158). Goldwyn and Wyler in fact achieve what Nelly could not: they
turn Heathcliff into a noble hero who becomes a ‘prince’ in a foreign
land and, perhaps more importantly, they rework his suffering and
humiliation as a self-regulated stoic battle with his own body.
There are numerous scenes that depict Olivier’s Heathcliff through
the guise of stoic nobility, pain and suffering. Haire-Sargeant provides
an accurate description when she notes that:
Olivier moves through much of the film with his trunk and arms
stiff, his eyes fixed and unfocused, like a somnambulist who does not
dream. This of course makes his occasional outbreaks of movement –
two slaps across a faithless Cathy’s face, a plunge of bare knuckles
through the window glass – the more violently emotive, though
ultimately we are taught to experience Heathcliff’s giant rage in its
tethering. (Haire-Sargeant, 1999, p. 171)
These observations require expansion, as they compel the question:

what is the significance of such a representation of Heathcliff’s body?
I would like to engage with this question by examining Raz Yosef’s
compelling analysis of Amos Gitai’s film, Kippur (2000). Unlike the 1939
Wuthering Heights film, Kippur is explicitly about the soldier’s body in
war. The links I seek to draw here are therefore metaphorical and ideo-
logical. Yosef writes that:
the construction of the soldier’s body as resistant and durable is con-

ditional on its being in a position of pain, suffering, and humiliation
at the hands of both his commanders and the soldier himself. . . .
The soldier identifies with the harmonious and stable body of the
military unit in order to ease his anxiety of fluidity and disintegra-
tion, threatening states which are associated with femininity and
the enemy. What the soldier really fears, and thus displaces onto
the other, is the eruption of floods pent up in himself. . . . The male
soldier responds to this threat by standing firm, asserting his discrete
identity, his fixed boundaries, through ‘a kind of sustained erection
of the whole body’. (Yosef, 2005, pp. 51–2)
The soldier’s body is conditioned to experience pain as a rigid regulation

of the body that guards against ‘feminine’ eruptions of emotion and
that transcends the body as it simultaneously presents it as a spectacle
of silent suffering. It is precisely such a body that Heathcliff displays
via his silent nobility. When Isabella beseeches him in cries of unre-
quited love he responds by drawing a silent boundary around his body
that guards against such feminine displays of emotion and assumes
the statuesque position of ‘sustained erection’. This is a stance that is
continually repeated throughout the film when Heathcliff encounters
humiliation, pain and oppression. However, this stoic stillness is also
broken on numerous occasions through the violent eruption of the
body, most notably, his hands. The film articulates the two conditions
which the soldier must mediate: that of felt and inflicted pain and vio-
lence, and that of a rigid discourse of self-regulation that seeks to tran-
scend the bodily experience. While the two seem to be oppositional,
they are in fact interconnected as discourses of masculine identity.
Of course, Wyler’s Wuthering Heights is not an explicit ‘war’ film.
However, the modes of masculinity that it displays and valorises are
informed by the consciousness of a previous World War and the antici-
pation of another. Such a consciousness assigns very specific psycho-
logical, emotional and physical tasks to the male body as a space of
stoical transcendence, violence and pain. That such a masculine bodily

spectacle has its origins in a nineteenth-century model of heroic mascu-
linity speaks of the tangible ideological links that can be drawn between
the nineteenth-century conception of masculinity as an internally
regulated ‘battle’ in the public sphere and the twentieth-century body
of the male soldier in another battlefield.3 Such a mode of masculin-
ity is reworked in the 1939 film in a manner that renders it central to
the narrative and visual iconography of the film, unlike the relatively
small textual space which it receives in the novel (see Brontë, 1998,
pp. 49–50). This reworking of marginal textuality into a central visual
spectacle speaks of the particular relevance of such a mode of masculin-
ity for a culture heading to war.
One of the most striking consequences of the spectacle of nobil-
ity and pain built around Heathcliff in this film is the turning of his
character into the kind of romantic hero who is only mockingly hinted
at in the novel. The film turns Heathcliff into the image of ‘a hero of
romance’ that he refers to when mocking Isabella’s projection of a sto-
rybook persona onto the site of his body (Brontë, 1998, p. 133). While
Brontë’s Heathcliff cynically utilises such a persona, Olivier enacts it as
the defining Heathcliff. One of the results of a star like Olivier perform-
ing the role of Heathcliff in such a manner is of course the mythologis-
ing of the literary Heathcliff as a romantic hero who does not actually
exist in the novel. Just as the image of Catherine and Heathcliff on the
moors reworks the novel’s ‘meaning’, so too does Olivier’s perform-
ance of Heathcliff as a noble hero rewrite the savagery and cruelty of
the novel’s Heathcliff, so that to this day, his character endures as a
popular conception of romantic passion and noble pain – the ultimate
tortured hero.
Reworking problematic male literary ‘heroes’ in such a manner, during
the 1930s and 1940s, is not unique to Wyler’s Wuthering Heights. Many
of this period’s adaptations of classic literature worked on the pretext
of presenting their male leads as charismatic exemplars of ‘ideal’ mas-
culinity by valorising masculine pain and stoic fortitude. Like Olivier’s
Heathcliff, Orson Welles’s Edward Rochester in Robert Stevenson’s 1943
adaptation of Jane Eyre is carved out of rugged shadows, created by care-
ful lighting and camera angles. Welles performs Rochester in almost the
exact manner as Olivier’s silent, dark and soldier-like Heathcliff. This
‘stiff’ masculinity, in which the male body is held in a position of stoic
‘erection’, is also evident in Olivier’s performance of Maxim de Winter
in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s classic
novel, Rebecca. Sadoff further argues that Olivier also brought this form
of ‘brooding’ masculinity to his role as Darcy in Leonard’s Pride and

Prejudice (Sadoff, 2010, p. 76).
These male characterisations are more than simply classic Hollywood
constructions of romantic brooding masculinity, they are also specific
responses to the wider historical logic of the times. Heathcliff’s mode
of enduring and stoic masculinity is, after all, connected in the 1939
film to a discourse of redemption and regeneration. Yosef writes that
the masculine body is often constructed as ‘a symbol of personal and
national regeneration’ during war time (Yosef, 2005, p. 51). Heathcliff
represents precisely such a symbol of regeneration offered to both
Catherine and the audience. It is important to remember that his desire
to reconcile Catherine with the natural site of the moors throughout
the film represents both a transcendent model of love and a discourse
of cultural inheritance.
In the last scene of the film, Heathcliff holds a dying Catherine in his
arms in the doorway of her bedroom’s balcony at Thrushcross Grange.
She is no longer adorned with shining jewels or constraining clothes,
her hair is no longer wound in tight, glossy, corkscrew curls, but loose
and free-flowing, and her skin is not on display but appropriately cov-
ered up. She has been freed from the kingdom of artificiality and physi-
cal fetish. Significantly, Catherine is re-incorporated into an image of
unified oneness with Heathcliff, and thereby, is reconciled with herself,
Heathcliff, nature and the audience.
The dazzle of beauty and wealth may provide a compelling counter-
discourse in the film, but the realm of unified transcendence finally
asserts itself as supreme. By bringing her back to ‘herself’ Heathcliff’s
noble suffering and reconciling masculinity have brought the film’s
contemporary audience back to the transcendent realm of Western
cultural unity and inheritance, constructed along the lines of a shared
Anglo-American literary tradition of enduring myth. The film provides
a complex Heathcliff who highlights the preoccupations of his times.
As Wuthering Heights continues to be adapted, Heathcliff’s character has
become one of the key aspects through which subsequent adaptations
engage with their own particular contexts.
3
Moving Backward, Looking
Forward
Jacques Rivette’s Hurlevent
I believe more and more that the role of the cinema

is to destroy myths. . . . I truly believe that cinema’s
role is to disturb the audience, to contradict all ready-
made ideas but even more those established patterns
of thought that underlie those ideas. We have to stop
the cinema being reassuring.
Jacques Rivette (1968, n.p.)
In a 1990 documentary . . . he admits that he is not

overly given to close-ups; he likes to see the whole
body, he says, and the way shape or gesture may
amplify facial expression. But then, he says once you
have the body, why do you really need its setting – the
room, the house, the place? That in turn leads you to
wonder about how that setting fits in with the town,
the locale, the territory. Mr. Rivette shows a constant
tendency to move backward, to find the ultimate
context.
David Thomson (2001, p. 2.11)
In comparison to the well-known 1939 film version of Wuthering

Heights, Jacques Rivette’s French adaptation of the novel, Hurlevent
(1985),1 is perhaps only known to those film aficionados dedicated
to the study of Rivette’s work, as, in Alan Riding’s words, ‘a founding
member of the French New Wave’ (Riding, 1991, p. A.14). An obscure
film that was only briefly shown in cinemas when released, Hurlevent
has received little critical attention. The 1985 film’s obscurity in com-
parison to its 1939 counterpart is perhaps fitting as Rivette admitted a
61
dislike for the 1939 film and its ‘melodramatic’ aesthetics (see Hazette,
2003, n.p.). Rivette said that when making his own film, ‘I had a very
strong memory of the Wyler movie – because I hate it’, noting that
the 1939 film ‘makes no sense whatsoever with all those ball scenes
sprinkled everywhere. . . . Actually, Wuthering Heights is Wyler’s
movie, after a novel by Jane Austen!’ (Rivette quoted in Hazette, 2003,
n.p.) In contrast, Rivette provides a stark and uncomfortably intimate
film that seems to be the antithesis of Wyler’s aesthetics of spectacle.
However, rather than viewing Hurlevent as an obscure oddity, pitted
against its antithetical Hollywood production, I wish to engage with
this film as a similarly symptomatic text for both its immediate con-
text of 1980s France and the wider context of the Wuthering Heights
‘tradition’.
Rivette’s Hurlevent comes after a succession of BBC television adapta-
tions of Wuthering Heights. The BBC serialised the novel for television
in 1948, 1953, 1962, 1967 and 1978.2 The majority of these adaptations
are no longer available, but they left a lasting consciousness about the
‘meaning’ of the novel, borrowed from Wyler’s film: the elemental ‘love
story’ between Catherine and Heathcliff, constructed via their natural
landscape of the moors. Rivette therefore came to the adaptation of
Wuthering Heights with the legacy of both Wyler’s iconic film and a his-
tory of repetitive tropes about the ‘meaning’ of the novel. His adapta-
tion however turns this ‘meaning’ on its head.
Analysis of Rivette’s work is typically aligned with his French New
Wave origins and this generates problems with regard to the interpre-
tation of his later films which, historically, fall outside of the French
New Wave ‘moment’ in history, yet ideologically and aesthetically,
are intimately tied to the New Wave movement (see Monaco, 1976;
Thomson, 2004, pp. 23–5; Elsaesser, 2005, pp. 165–77). This categorisa-
tion of Rivette’s films works to obscure the very specific contexts within
which New Wave directors’ works were made. After all, a film made in
the 1980s emerges from a different social context to a film made in the
1950s or 1960s. It is not my intention, therefore, to analyse Hurlevent
as a New Wave film, but rather to position it within the varied contexts
within which it was produced and produces meaning.
The issue of context is a complex one in the film which is inescapably
linked to political undertones. Rivette does indeed ‘disturb’ and unset-
tle his audience in this film of stark simplicity, harsh environments,
intimate settings and overabundant contexts. Hurlevent does not seek
to reassure through myths of unification and tradition, but rather to
probe these myths and examine their place in cultural and national
Moving Backward, Looking Forward 63
histories. Rivette’s adaptation is an iconoclastic film that investigates

personal, historical and cultural stories with its probing silences and
stark aesthetics. The contexts across which Rivette asks these questions
are abundant, moving from the body, house, region, nation and finally
‘the ultimate context’ of ‘heritage’ texts like Wuthering Heights as pri-
mary discourses in Western culture.
Set in the rural French countryside of the Cévennes in the 1930s,
and made in the mid-1980s, Hurlevent looks backward and forward at
culture and history, moving through time and spaces with a question-
ing force that is at once subtle and severe. What the film provides is an
adaptation that mirrors Brontë’s complex interrogation of ideologies of
gender, home, identity and nationality in the novel. Rather than simply
engaging with Brontë’s own context in an exploration of these issues,
Hurlevent locates the process of contextual interrogation across multiple
time periods and nationalities.
It is also important to note that Rivette has always had an inter-
est in literary criticism, and in his understanding of both academic
theoretical debates and the manipulations of film technique, he cre-
ates multilayered films that require an audience to participate in the
unravelling of metaphors and film surfaces (see Monaco, 1976; Neupert,
2002; Austerlitz, 2003). Rivette started his career as a critic, and his own
films require an audience who will read the images before them in a
critical spirit.
The trapped female body and mind: Rivette’s

transcendence-seeking Catherine
Sometimes I feel so fed up being the incarnation of someone else’s

fantasies! That’s why I love Jacques – there’s none of that sort of
thing on in his films.
Emmanuelle Béart (quoted in Porton, 2003, p. 17)
The site of Catherine’s body in Hurlevent is presented as a primary con-

text that is itself continually trapped by contexts and circumstances.
Rivette frames and follows her body with fascination throughout
the film. However, this is not done in a fetishistic manner. Rather
than being turned into the ‘incarnation of someone else’s fantasies’,
Catherine is afforded the drama of an existential crisis, usually explored
through male characters as a development of subjectivity. Perhaps as a
testimony to this lack of feminine stereotyping, Rivette avoids close-ups
of her body and has simplified everything around her and on her: her
hair, her clothes, her manner of speech and her environments. The aes-
thetics of stark simplicity in Catherine’s case represent a focus on her
in her metaphorical environments of society and culture, rather than
entrapping her in the world of beautiful images. Rivette’s Catherine is
a thorough engagement with Brontë’s own trapped and transcendence-
seeking Catherine.
Rivette’s Catherine is presented as searching for freedom from entrap-
ment and for the appropriate outlet for her desires and sense of self in
the face of her own changing body and circumstances, both of which
are governed by men. The intimacy with which Rivette presents her is
unusual as it signifies both her own sense of suffocation and a desire to
understand her in the face of her circumstances, rather than develop a
specific viewer position with regard to her character. This approach to
a character, who has been interpreted in a much maligned manner (see
Cecil, 1934, pp. 164–5; Kettle, 1951, pp. 143–7; Heilbrun, 1973, p. 80;
Leavis, 1993, pp. 24–35), is typical of Rivette’s approach to his female
characters. In his better known film, La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Rivette
tackles another female stereotype – that of the artist’s muse and model,
and slowly unravels the positions of power implicit in this construction
of female objectification. Rivette’s unravelling in Hurlevent also takes us
through the female body and mind and into perhaps the most intimate
and individual manifestation of the body: dreams.
The representation of Catherine’s character in Hurlevent is punctuated
by three dream sequences at the start, middle and end of the film. In
between, the issues raised within the dreams are worked out in ‘real life’.
Only the middle dream is Catherine’s while the other two are Guillaume’s
(Hindley) and Roch’s (Heathcliff). Like her dream, the men’s dreams are
about Catherine, her body, and her relationship with Roch. However,
Roch and Guillaume’s dreams are seen through the desires, power and
position of each man. In their dreams, she becomes ‘someone else’s fan-
tasies’. It is significant that these dreams come at the beginning and the
end of the film as they act as a frame of limitation that is interrogated
in Catherine’s own dream and throughout the film.
Hurlevent begins with Guillaume’s dream. The first few images depict
Guillaume spying on Catherine and Roch, lying on top of a rocky hill-
top. The scene before us recalls the ‘hilltop lovers’ motif in the 1939
film with Catherine and Roch lying on top of large grey and white
stones in a similarly Sublime-looking natural environment that hints
at transcendence. However, Rivette’s mirroring of the trope of the ‘hill-
top lovers’ is not a homage to the 1939 film, but rather a ‘misuse’ of
its imagery. There is no staged posing or flourish of romantic music,
but the continual movement of writhing bodies locked in an awkward

erotic embrace, an uncomfortable silence and low-angle, voyeuristic
shots of the couple that make the scene feel seedy rather than romantic.
Rivette also frames the scene before us within a narrative of spying that
is uncomfortably intimate and incestuous.
These are not transcendent lovers in the vein of Merle Oberon and
Laurence Olivier sitting upon a Sublime rock. Catherine lies beneath
Roch in an embrace that signals sexual awakening and vulnerability.
Her position also hints at the physical power that Roch has over her
in the sexual act. Coupled with the overarching frame of her brother
spying on their passionate encounter, such a position renders the scene
menacing, as if the female body is literally and metaphorically ‘beneath’
male power and surveillance. Adding to this menacing tone, Guillaume
means them harm as he picks up a large rock to throw at them.
However a figure of another man, whom we later learn is Catherine and
Guillaume’s father, stops him from throwing the rock. The three men
seem to crowd around Catherine when she is in a position of particular
vulnerability and exposed sexuality. Lying beneath Roch, and closely
watched by her brother and father, Rivette introduces the themes of
female containment, masculine surveillance and suffocating intimacy.
Catherine’s body will continually be the subject of containment and
surveillance throughout the film as she experiences her domestic envi-
ronments as intimate prisons. Her body is not her own in this male
dream, which presents it as an object of contestation between men, each
of them wishing to leave their imprint on it as a symbol of their own
desires. Guillaume’s dream plays out dramas of control between father,
son and brother, with the female body acting as the object upon which
such networks of power are played out and exposed. In this opening
sequence, Rivette sets the scene for his questioning of ‘those established
patterns of thought’, those ideologies of gender that encompass the
female body in Brontë’s text and in his own culture. The sense of dis-
comfort and unease in the dream sequence works to negate the ‘reassur-
ing’ discourse of the hilltop lovers and instead focuses attention on the
relationships of power inherent in Catherine’s relationships with men.
The dream ends with Guillaume’s abrupt awakening as he sits at the
dining room table alone, waiting for Catherine to join him. The action
in the ensuing scene is a series of fights between brother and sister with
the issue of Guillaume’s control over Catherine being the main subject
of contention. Guillaume’s control is rendered uncomfortably intimate
by his desire to dictate the clothing, the actions and the movement of
Catherine’s body. As their fighting comes to an end with Guillaume
locking Catherine in her room, Rivette literalises the issues that he

metaphorically explored in the dream: the physical imprint of mascu-
line control over Catherine’s body and her entrapment under masculine
surveillance.
Catherine rebels and immediately frees herself. As she escapes her
room and runs with Roch across a hilly landscape, the camera quickly
zooms out and a startling sound of music blares in unison with their
running bodies. The sudden change in camerawork and the loud music
that breaks the harsh silence of the film signal the change of tone
from menacing intimacy to exuberant freedom. Valérie Hazette argues
that the ‘only concession to lyricism’ (Hazette, 2003, n.p.) in the film
‘can be found in the magical accents of Le mystèrie des voix bulgares, a
Bulgarian choir’s album . . . Their voices echo at some key, epiphanic
moments – when, for instance, Roch and Catherine, in a state of utter
happiness, dash across the Garrigue’3 (Hazette, 2003, n.p.). It is indeed
the film’s only concession to romanticism. However, the argument that
this lyricism comes at a moment of ‘utter happiness’ is contestable. Like
the music itself, the scene is more complex.
In its loud, wailing and drawn-out notes, the music is at once joyous,
rebellious and melancholy. In particular, the voices of the women in
the choir are tinged with a wailing sadness that speaks of a community
of female voices in sympathy with Catherine’s bid for freedom within
her frame of limitation. Working with the music, the camera zooms out
and gives Catherine and Roch space within the confines of its own gaze.
As it zooms out, we view Catherine and Roch dwarfed by a wild, but
unprettified landscape. Rivette is here utilising the visual iconography
of the ‘hilltop lovers’. However, this romanticism exists within a certain
frame of meaning that curtails its transcendent overtones in the service
of exposing how a politics of transcendence stems from an overarching
discourse of female limitation. The scene reads as Catherine’s desire for
transcendence and freedom, rather than a lovers’ discourse of unified
subjectivity. This becomes even more apparent when Catherine and
Roch eventually run in opposite directions and the camera remains on
Catherine rather than Roch.
Rivette’s use of the hilltop-lovers imagery must also be read in the
context of the subsequent scene in which Catherine and Roch enter
the woods. The landscape of the woods is presented as a threatening
place, laden with the familiar fairy-tale tropes of female victimisation
and blood. Part of the logic behind Rivette’s sudden romanticism in the
midst of the stark simplicity of the film is to highlight the mythic sta-
tus that is often afforded Catherine and Heathcliff, and thereby places
Catherine into a logic of inherited and repeated cultural discourses of

subjectivity and gender.
As Catherine runs ahead of Roch in the woods and spies on the
Landon (Linton) children playing tennis, she is literally caught by the
claws of a trap meant to capture wild animals, and starts bleeding. Once
she has entered this mythic, fairy-tale space, Catherine has become
a stereotypical fairy-tale girl, caught by the claws of a culture which
ascribes the inevitability of blood as part of a gender discourse that
will enclose her within patriarchal households. Rivette here mirrors the
manner in which Catherine is caught in the novel, representing what
feminist critics such as Gilbert and Gubar have termed a ‘fall’ from
childhood to adulthood that traps female subjectivity (Gilbert and
Gubar, 1984, p. 271). Rivette’s conversion of the space of entrapment
from the landscape of the moors to the woods signifies both an aware-
ness of the type of feminist argument Gilbert and Gubar explore in their
analysis of Catherine’s ‘fall’ into womanhood, and an extension of such
an argument by the mingling of Catherine’s experience with fairy-tale
tropes and spaces.
Wendy Swyt has written that the space of the woods in traditional
fairy-tales is a ‘psychosexual’ site that is often threatening to the girl
who must lose her innocence along with her subjectivity (Swyt, 1996,
p. 315). Similarly, the symbolic nature of being ‘caught’ by blood is a
typical motif of fairy-tales, in which girls enter the inevitable cycle of
blood and objectivity by the pricking of fingers and other accidents.
As Gilbert and Gubar quite rightly point out with regard to Catherine,
‘such bleeding has sexual connotations, especially when it occurs in a
pubescent girl’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, p. 272). The fact that Rivette
has chosen such a young actress to play Catherine highlights her vul-
nerability and fall into womanhood.4 The implication is clear: under
what Rivette calls the ‘established patterns of thought’ of her culture,
Catherine is doomed to enter a mythical space of femininity, in which
her body is a prison of objectivity and her identity is determined in
relation to the desires of men. The fact that he mingles Catherine’s
fairy-tale ‘fall’ with the equally culturally mythic imagery of the ‘hilltop
lovers’ indicates a subtle yet telling criticism of the manner in which
the romantic discourse that has been built around Wuthering Heights has
often been used against a politics of female transcendence. It is ironic
then that Catherine’s fall into patriarchal objectivity in the film also
signals the beginning of her existential drama.
Catherine’s ‘fall’ is followed by more direct acts of surveillance and
an awareness of her body as a desirable space. When she returns to her
childhood home after her forced stay in the Landon household, it is

with an awareness of the changing nature of her body and the primacy
of this body as object to be looked upon. One of her first actions after a
fight with Roch is to gaze at herself in the mirror in her new dress and
twirl in front of it. The setting for this examination of her ‘new’ body is
a basement room in which Catherine and Roch used to play as children.
As Catherine moves away from the mirror she realises Roch is also in
the room. She tries to console him while he moodily plays on the pool
table. Realising that childhood play will no longer do, Catherine lies
languidly on the pool table in a position of playfully erotic submission.
This use of her body seems to contradict her blunt and simple language,
a remnant of her old self. It is almost as if she has been taught to view
herself differently, from a male perspective. Rivette subtly indicates
the changes that have taken place upon the site of her body during
her stay in the Landon household, which will eventually become her
marriage home.
This particular scene leads to her own dream after Roch runs away
and she enters a delirious, fevered sleep. As this dream is quite complex,
it is necessary to describe it before analysing it. The dream begins with
Catherine lying in her bed as she ‘awakens’ to find Roch entering her
room. He sits on her bed, takes both her hands, and covers her eyes with
each hand. Up until now, there has been complete silence, yet when
Roch places her hands on her eyes, the previous choir music blares out
in a startling note. The music continues to wail as Roch helps her out
of bed, continuing to cover her eyes. He leads Catherine into the same
basement room in which they played as children. As they reach the
mirror in the room, he spins her around with eyes covered in front of it
and lets her go. Dizzy, Catherine starts walking toward him a few steps
away from the mirror, and she notices she has blood on her hands, like
crucifixion wounds. She then notices that Roch has the same wounds
on his hands. The positioning of the blood, hers on top of her hands
and his on the palms of his hands, indicates that the blood is Roch’s.
Remnants of this blood can also be seen on the shoulder of her night-
gown where Roch had his hands.
As they both stare at their bloody hands and at each other, Roch falls
to his knees and collapses on the floor in a dead pile at Catherine’s feet.
Catherine lifts her bloody hands to her face in quiet confusion. The
dream, along with the music, promptly ends at this point. As Catherine
wakes up in the patio of the Landon household, we realise that she is
no longer in her childhood home, but dressed as a ‘lady’ and now a
married woman. The dream acts as a bridge between the time of Roch’s
departure and the following years in which Catherine marries Olivier

(Edgar) and moves to the Landon household.
Read literally, the dream seems to be more about Roch than Catherine,
in which he expresses her ‘betrayal’ of him and their love in her ‘blind’
pursuit of a relationship with Olivier, leaving him spiritually ‘dead’.
Thus, the blood on her hands indicates a betrayal in which the woman
is at fault. However, this literal reading does not make sense in the con-
text of the film as it is uncharacteristically moralistic and judgemental
in tone toward Catherine. Viewed from the logic of the film, the dream
requires the viewer to look beneath the layers of patriarchal assump-
tions within which Catherine is trapped.
The literal reading of Catherine’s dream does not ‘fit’ because it is the
moralistic interpretation of her character found in the 1939 film and in
many other readings of her character (see Cecil, 1934, pp. 164–5; Kettle,
1951, pp. 143–7; Heilbrun, 1973, p. 80; Leavis, 1993, pp. 24–35). These
interpretations blame Catherine for abandoning her poetic ‘oneness’
with Heathcliff and read her decision to marry Edgar as a ‘betrayal’. In
his own film, Rivette exposes Catherine’s lack of freedom within her
social context, and thus challenges the readings that view her actions
from a moralistic perspective. Through Catherine’s dream, he highlights
the hypocrisy of blaming the woman for betrayal when she lacks free-
dom and practical ability to govern her own fate.
The dream, however, is also the product of the mind of a highly
conflicted young woman. The primary emotion which is depicted on
Catherine’s face throughout the dream is confusion. The notion of
being blindly led down a path dictated by a man recalls the danger
of the woods and the consequent loss of self that such a path entails.
When Roch spins her in front of the mirror with his hands firmly hold-
ing her own hands in front of her eyes, it is a symbolic gesture that
indicates that like her brother, he has become another masculine force
seeking to position her on the path of masculine desires. The image
recalls the passage in Wuthering Heights in which Catherine does not
recognise herself in the mirror when she is slowly dying at Thrushcross
Grange (Brontë, 1998, p. 109). Indeed the dream engages with Brontë’s
depiction of Catherine’s sense of alienation from herself as she has
become inculcated into the world of patriarchy, while desiring her own
form of transcendence. In the novel, the search for transcendence ends
in Catherine’s death, and it is similarly so in Hurlevent.
Catherine’s deadly illness is depicted in a deeply empathetic manner
in the film. It is a far less melodramatic depiction than the ones found
in the 1939 film and even the novel itself. There are no flights into
poetic madness, but rather a silent descent into despair and suffocation.
During her illness, Rivette shifts the focus away from madness onto a
symbolic trope: a painting of a young girl that looms over Catherine’s
bed. As Catherine utters the words, ‘there’s nothing left, only darkness’,5
the camera pans away from her to the painting in a rare close-up. The
eyes of the young girl are not directed at Catherine, but away from her
to the side in a severe expression. The next image we see is Guillaume
sharpening his knife in front of Isabelle (Isabella) who is recovering from
a brutal rape by Roch in Catherine’s childhood bed. Guillaume intends
to kill Roch, and these two acts of male violence are merged together by
the young girl’s sharp gaze. The movement of her gaze from Catherine’s
utterance of darkness to these masculine acts of violence create a meta-
phorical link between the ‘violence’ wrought upon Catherine’s subjec-
tivity and that which has been inflicted on Isabelle’s body.
The reference to darkness and the acts of violence also bring us back
to Catherine’s blindness in her dream and the blood on her nightgown.
In the sequence of ‘real life’, Catherine’s desire for transcendence results
in death. Similarly, the blood which is spilled on the nightgown is not
the man’s but the woman’s as Isabelle is brutally beaten and raped.
Angela Carter writes that ‘somewhere in the fear of rape, is a more
than merely physical terror of hurt and humiliation’ but also ‘a fear of
psychic disintegration, of an essential dismemberment, a fear of a loss
or disruption of the self’ (Carter, 2000, p. 6). Through the relationship
between Catherine’s dream and ‘real life’, the loss of self and the psychic
disintegration that comes with the physical act of rape links Catherine
and Isabelle’s fates together as victims of patriarchal authority and
violence.
The last dream, with which the film ends, is Roch’s. Returning from
a harrowing visit to a dying Catherine, Roch enters her childhood
bedroom, stares into her mirror and falls asleep in her bed. By now,
we know that Catherine has died. Roch’s dream is a transposition of
Lockwood’s in the novel (Brontë, 1998, pp. 20–1), only without the
Gothic overtones and without the child’s hand through the window.
Instead we have a woman’s hand and a woman’s voice asking to be let
in. In Roch’s dream he is not afraid of this ‘ghostly’ hand, but despair-
ingly sad and even though the voice begs to be let in as the hand breaks
through the glass of the window, the hand retreats when Roch reaches
out for it and begins to cry. This dream is also ambiguous and seems
to suggest a return to the frame of limitation with which we began the
film. Only now, this frame does not simply encompass the female body,
but also the male body.
Roch’s dream reads as a wish-fulfilment. After all, unlike Brontë’s

Catherine, Rivette’s Catherine never expresses a desire to return to her
childhood home. It is therefore jarring to listen to her ghostly voice
asking to be let into a space where she has never wanted to be. On this
level, the dream seems to be a fulfilment of Roch’s fantasy of reposses-
sion, rather than Catherine’s desire to return ‘home’. Thus, the dream
once again focuses on the issue of entrapment and masculine fantasies.
Yet, the final irony is that the last image is a similarly trapped mascu-
line body. As Roch wakes up, he stands near the window, which is now
revealed to be unbroken and sealed shut. Looming behind the bars of
the window as the camera pulls away from him and begins to examine
him from outside the window, he is presented like a prisoner within
the house. Like Guillaume, his desires have become his own prison.
Following on from Catherine’s dream, the frame of masculine limita-
tion has extended from the female to the male body, to imprison them
both. Rivette’s exploration of Catherine’s body and mind has come full
circle, only from an opposite direction, by moving to Roch.
Rivette’s peasant Heathcliff: Regionalism and the

nation in Hurlevent
Rivette’s Heathcliff is a stark antithesis to Laurence Olivier’s enig-

matic, tortured hero. In an interview, Rivette has pointed out that
his Heathcliff does ‘not possess at all the dark romanticism of Emily
Brontë’s Heathcliff’ and that his choice of actor to play the character
was ‘clear to me . . . because he had this sort of “peasant” demeanour
when he walked, when he talked, in fact, in his whole being’ (Hazette,
2003, n.p.). Rivette has indeed stripped him of his heroic and romantic
persona and has instead provided an ordinary-looking, pale, skinny,
blonde and youthful Heathcliff. If Catherine is presented within a
frame of limitation, so is Roch. However, his ‘prison’ is one of class and
regionalism. His characterisation does not venture into the territory of
transcendence, but rather is grounded within a politics of land and col-
lective national identity. As Roch, the character of Heathcliff becomes
a French peasant. Rivette taps into the regionalism of Wuthering Heights
within the context of his own country and a different time period.
Roch is presented as a child of nature in the film, but an earthy, rather
than romantic nature, that is associated with the rural environment
and work. The name Roch ironically means ‘rest’ in French. In a clever
reversal of meaning, Rivette painstakingly shows the viewer that Roch’s
life is anything but ‘restful’. Rivette presents carefully constructed
scenes in which Roch is aligned with his natural environment and its
ethics of work. For example, after he is thrown out of the Landon home
after Catherine’s injury, the film immediately cuts to a scene depicting
Joseph teaching him how to feed the pigs. It is a striking image for its
sheer earthiness as Roch is knee-deep in the filth of the pig pen. The
next scene shows Roch undertaking some more work around the farm,
and the dirt and filth seem to be permanently etched upon his body
(see Figure 3.1).
What is particularly striking about Rivette’s depiction of Roch at work
is how it differs from Olivier’s Heathcliff. There is no heroic display
of a powerful man at work but rather the awkward movements of a
young man who walks, talks and acts ungracefully, in a dogged reflec-
tion of the rest of the farm’s peasant workers. Similarly, Rivette does
not romanticise the work itself as a form of natural affinity with the
land, but highlights the fact that Roch must be taught how to work
the land and that such an instruction is based upon a class system of
disempowerment.
However, Rivette also draws a distinct alignment between Roch and
the land. His work and his body are presented as one and the same:
crude and earthy and dedicated to rural toil. Rivette is correct in his
analysis of the actor’s movements as akin to those of a peasant; and
perhaps under the instruction of Rivette’s direction, these movements
Figure 3.1 Roch (Lucas Belvaux) works on the farm, from Hurlevent (1985),
directed by Jacques Rivette, La Cécilia, Renn Productions, Ministère de la Culture
de la Republique Française
are highlighted. Roch does not walk, he shuffles and stomps awkwardly
with shoulders bent. His manner of speech echoes the awkwardness of
his body, reinforcing the sense that this body’s main function is to work,
not to be looked at. It is also significant that by choosing an actor who
does not reflect the dark romanticism of Olivier as Heathcliff, or the
novel’s Heathcliff in appearance, Rivette has provided an actor whose
colouring mirrors the hues of the natural environment surrounding
him. The actor who plays Roch is blonde and blue-eyed and these col-
ours are continually reflected in the landscape of the particular region
of France depicted. The film is set in the rural region of the Cévennes,
which, as Hazette points out, is an area that is ‘characterised by a wild,
sun-drenched landscape’ (Hazette, 2003, n.p.). The skies are a perpetual
shade of harsh blue that is reflected in Roch’s eyes, and the primary
colours of the landscape are muted shades of gold and green, mirroring
Roch’s own shade of straw-like gold hair.
Rivette presents Roch in the stereotypical fashion through which the
inhabitants of France’s regional countryside are described to this day.
For example, in his travel narrative for the Financial Times, Nicholas
Wordsworth describes a local inhabitant of the Cévennes as ‘at one’
with her natural environment, as a type of mythic representative of a
peasant community and a peasant past: ‘In her closeness to the earth,
in her frugal and hardy style of life, Mme Rauzier differs little from her
ancestors. Every day she disappears with her goat herd into the land-
scape to spend long hours sitting in silent woods and hillside glades
with no company other than Athos’s. It is hard to get more zen-like
than that these days’ (Wordsworth, 1997, p. 20). This type of romantic
amalgamation of the farm worker with the land, as a symbolic figure of
an ahistorical peasant body, is hinted at in Hurlevent via the mingling of
Roch with his natural environment.
However, the difference between Rivette’s representation and the
type of romanticisation evident in Wordsworth’s article is that Rivette’s
conflation of Roch with the land is not a romantic image of countryside
idyll or ‘zen’, but rather a harsh depiction of Roch’s struggle within his
labourer class identity. He is linked with his natural surroundings despite
his desires, and his is a story of class injustice and struggle. Rivette shows
the ugly side of the farm worker’s life, by literally depicting such a life
as one of filth, stench and abuse. It is also striking that in almost every
scene in which Roch is seen at work around the farm, he is taunted by
Guillaume who wishes to show him his ‘proper’ place.
Rivette’s use of Roch’s body as a peasant figure is also a complex
exploration of the politics of region and nation with which such
a figure is associated. When using the word ‘peasant’, I am working

under Susan Carol Rogers’ specific definition of the term in the French
context. Rogers writes that ‘peasants’ refer to ‘family farmers working
the same land as generations of their ancestors. “Peasant” is sometimes
further expanded in general parlance to refer to rural dwellers living in
areas more or less dominated by agriculture’ (Rogers, 1987, p. 57). The
question of Roch’s own unknown origins in the film casts a shadow
upon the romanticised image of the peasant working the land of his
forefathers in an assuring image of class order. Instead, Roch’s confla-
tion with the land is presented as a process of random class abuse.
Rogers notes that definitions of French national identity are depend-
ent upon two dominant conflicting models of France:
On the one hand, France is a highly centralized, modern civilization

with a strong, unified sense of national identity emanating from
clearly delineated centers of power and thought. On the other, its
identity is tied to a long history of deeply rooted traditions, many
anchored in the French soil and expressed in the highly diverse rural
societies historically composing the national territory. (Rogers, 1987,
p. 56)
She further explains that the figure of the peasant is tied to these defini-
tions of French national identity:
The quintessence of Frenchness derives (both literally and figura-

tively) either from its dominant center (Paris) or from its authentic
many-shaped roots (assemblage of provinces). The process of change
in France can be read as one in which cultural diversity is alterna-
tively managed, coordinated, masked, or highlighted. The peasant
persona serves this process, sometimes as the antithesis of modern
France and sometimes as its authentic essence. It is used not only in
political discourse, but also in popular culture, literature, and schol-
arship. (Rogers, 1987, p. 56)
Rogers’ discussion is useful for the analysis of Rivette’s own construction

of the peasant persona through Roch. The issues which Rogers discusses
here and throughout her article come to a head in a particular scene
in Hurlevent that depicts the celebration of Bastille Day in Catherine’s
childhood home. In this scene, the 1930s setting, the 1980s context
of the film, and the regional environment of the Cévennes, all con-
verge with the construction of Roch’s body as an emblematic peasant,
bringing to light the political use and misuse of the peasant persona
in discourses of regional independence and the centralised nation in
French culture and history.
This particular scene is lodged between Catherine’s return ‘home’
after her injury and a meeting with Olivier, which signals her perma-
nent movement to the Landon household. It thus comes at a tension-
filled moment in the action of the film where the predominant tone is
one of separation. Even though the scene is contextualised within the
frame of a celebration of national unity, it is filled with fighting and
discord, highlighting personal disunity. Rivette’s decision to introduce
the theme of Bastille Day is particularly significant here. Celebrations
of Bastille Day are tied to the French Revolution as a moment in history
which inaugurated the French Republic. Discourses of regional specifi-
city run counter to the notion of the centralised French Republic and
provide competing narratives to this amalgamation of French identity by
presenting individual histories of difference and diversity. Rivette seems
to be highlighting this tension in French national identity through his
use of Roch’s body as a catalyst for discord in the scene. The small party
gathered at Guillaume’s household consists of the Landon children,
Catherine, Roch, Guillaume and Hélène (Nelly Dean). All the characters
rotate around Roch’s actions in this scene in which he provokes fights
and interrupts the dancing couples, compelling a movement away from
unity within a celebration meant to symbolise harmony.
Roch’s own personal dilemma and feelings of class injustice come
into conflict with the overarching narrative of unity. This is more than
simply ironic, it is also deeply political in tone for it depicts Roch as
doubly imprisoned by both a narrative of region, which conflates him
with the land he works and an overarching conflicting ideology of
unity, which seeks to disavow the particularity of his own individual
narrative through the loss of the very specificity of his context. Roch’s
personal history is a critical interrogation of France’s collective history
in which the figure of the peasant features as a site upon which political
tensions are played out. Both the notion of the peasant as an ‘authentic’
symbol of ‘Frenchness’ and as a negation of this very ‘Frenchness’ are
called into question. Rivette highlights how the notion of a homog-
enous French identity, stemming from the urban centre of Paris is as
much a problematic discourse as the notion of a romantic countryside
idyll of the region-specific peasant who is the ‘essence’ of France. Both
rely on the restructuring of historical realities to fit one vision of France
over the other, and do so at the expense of the real historical conditions
of individuals. Rivette reveals that buried beneath both these idealised
discourses of national identities are narratives of power determined by

class, money and specific historical contexts.
The specific historical conditions that Rivette introduces are those of
the 1930s. At the beginning of the film, the following inter-title appears
before Guillaume’s opening dream: ‘1931, between the Beaume River and
Vidourle River.’ The particular location is in the region of the Cévennes,
which is an isolated and historically Protestant area in a mainly Catholic
France.6 Historically, the Cévennes region has been home to a margin-
alised Protestant community, which sought refuge in the mountainous,
southerly region of France in the face of historical persecution, from
the seventeenth century onwards. While ostensibly a nod toward the
Protestant English origins of the narrative, Rivette also locates Roch’s
body within a French regional landscape that is associated with a history
of violent persecution, dislocation and differentiation from the ‘norm’.
Roch’s alignment with the landscape is both a source of misery for
him in his desire to escape his class prison, and an emblem of his own
sense of persecution and lack of belonging. The historical positioning
of the community of the Cévennes resembles Roch’s own personal posi-
tion as an orphan who does not really ‘belong’, but who is neverthe-
less imprisoned by those who do not wish him there. Rivette implodes
the romantic ideology of ‘oneness’ between the land and the peasant
from the very centre by demythologising the discourse of an ahistorical
regionalism with the harsh facts of a history predicated on violence and
power struggles rather than a timeless ‘essence’ of land and harmony.
His film does indeed ‘destroy myths’, to use his own words.
Similarly, the context of 1931 speaks volumes, symbolising an inter-
war period in French history and the beginning of a decade leading
up to a war that would see France occupied and its very identity ques-
tioned. Nicholas Hewitt notes that one of the directions in which the
French government moved during the inter-war years and those leading
up to World War II, was the political ‘revival of the ethos of provincial
France, together with its rural virtues’ (Hewitt, 2003, p. 36). The contex-
tualisation of Roch’s own ‘peasant’ drama within this historical frame
highlights the shifting nature of the discourses of identity in which
he is implicated and their importance in times of social and cultural
upheaval. What was once a symbol of regional specificity that stood in
antithesis to the interests of a modern, centralised government is, in a
different historical time frame, the symbol of national cohesion appro-
priated by that very government. Rivette highlights how Roch’s body
is not his own, but rather, is a politicised space. His conflation with his
surrounding environment and work throughout the film renders him
an unstable space, which is appropriated by different political positions

and shifting historical circumstances.
Rather than allowing his viewer to linger in the romance of historical
nostalgia and inheritance, Rivette instead utilises the site of Roch’s body
to display the often harsh and violent struggles for power and meaning
that have been fought on the space of this body, at the expense of indi-
vidual lives. If Brontë utilises Heathcliff’s body to explore her country’s
national identity in the context of nineteenth-century England, Rivette
moves both forward and backward to explore his own country’s national
identity through his re-fashioning of the character of Heathcliff as an
orphan peasant boy in the French countryside.
There is another way, however, in which we can view the impor-
tance of the date 1931, and that is in relation to the date of 1981: the
beginning of the decade in which the film was made and the year in
which President Mitterrand was elected to power in France. The issue of
President Mitterrand’s new government in the 1980s is one which has
been fervently discussed by French historians as a sign of social and cul-
tural change in France (see Hewitt, 2003, p. 10; Kelly, 2003, pp. 183–4;
Nettelbeck, 2003, p. 273; Austin, 1996, pp. 142–5). One of these histori-
ans’ analyses of the implications of Mitterrand’s government is particu-
larly relevant to my own discussion here. Quoting Robert Darnton, the
film historian Guy Austin writes that:
[i]n the months following his election victory in May 1981, President
Mitterrand was faced with ‘a declining franc, an escalating arms race,
a crisis in the Middle East, and trouble everywhere on the home
front’. But in the autumn of 1983 ‘the crisis that he placed at the
top of his agenda was the inability of the electorate to sort out the
themes of its past’. Launching a reform of the French curriculum,
Mitterrand implicitly attempted to take control of French history,
and in particular the founding moment of republican France, the
Revolution of 1789. (Austin, 1996, p. 144)
It is important to remember that the period in which Hurlevent was

made and released was 1984 to 1985. With Rivette’s particular sensitiv-
ity to political issues, and his continual interrogation of ‘those estab-
lished patterns of thought’ throughout his films, he would no doubt
have been following his new government’s efforts to re-order national
history and ‘sort out’ its ‘themes’.
If the new government of the 1980s saw a return to the ‘the moment
of republican France’, so does Hurlevent through its overarching
narrative of Bastille Day celebrations. Only Rivette’s return is mediated

by other time periods and does not wish to ‘sort out the themes of’ the
‘past’ but rather, to expose them. Unlike Mitterrand’s national policy,
Rivette’s venture into French history is a deconstructive rather than
reconstructive journey in which the viewer is shown the violent proc-
esses via which history is placed upon the site of Roch’s body as a physi-
cal and metaphorical prison of class, work and power. In the context
of his own times, Rivette both reflects upon and interrogates his own
period’s use of history and it is telling that such issues stem from the site
of Roch’s body for he is essentially a re-fashioned English hero.
The ‘ultimate context’: Nostalgia, the heritage film and

the Wuthering Heights tradition
Nostalgia has a venerable history . . . the word was coined from two Greek
words meaning to return home (nostos) and pain or longing (algia).
Phil Powrie (1997, p. 16)
In his dialogues with Claire Parnet, Deleuze speaks of the necessity

of rendering language strange, and of being a stranger to one’s own
mother tongue.
Emma Wilson (2000, p. 1)
One of the most striking aspects of French and English cinema of the
1980s is the development, production and popularity of what has been
termed the ‘heritage film’. Such a label refers to, in Phil Powrie’s words,
‘nostalgic period reconstructions’ and historical costume films (Powrie,
1997, p. 6). Austin writes that the rise of heritage films in France ‘chron-
ologically . . . parallels the British trend for nostalgia initiated by Chariots
of Fire in 1981’ (Austin, 1996, p. 142). Thus, we are back to the year 1981
and the rise of the Mitterrand presidency. The relationship between the
new government and the rise of the ‘genre’ of heritage films in France
is particularly important in the specific case of Hurlevent.
As Austin writes:
François Mitterrand’s presidential victory . . . was fundamental to the

development of the heritage film as a coherent and successful genre in
the eighties, for two reasons. First, the victory of the Socialists in May
1981 stimulated a nostalgia for the 1930s, . . . the golden age of poetic
realism. . . . Second and more significantly, the Socialists began to target
for funding a particular brand of French film, prestigious but popular
‘cultural’ cinema. The result was ‘la “nouvelle qualité française”’, the film-
ing of France’s historical and cultural past as a form of national educa-
tion, aiming to provoke ‘le retour du grand public au cinema’ [the return of
the general public to the cinema], and funded or promoted by Jack Lang
as Minister of Culture and later of Education. (Austin, 1996, pp. 143–4)
It is significant that the bulk of these heritage films were adaptations of

canonical French literature and tended to privilege the rural and regional
countryside of France as an historical ideal. For example, Claude Berri’s
critically and commercially successful adaptations of Marcel Pagnol’s
novel in Jean de Florette (1986) and Manon des Sources (1986), present a ster-
eotypically French countryside landscape that sentimentalises a rural past
through a sweeping provincial drama. These films are widely recognised
as primary examples of French heritage cinema of the 1980s and 1990s,
which celebrated French culture, history and rural landscapes and helped
to promote the region of Provence as a tourist destination and national
icon (see Cousins, 2006, pp. 185–94; Hayward, 2005, pp. 300–1).
Another notable example is the sweeping historical drama, La Reine
Margot (1994), directed by Patrice Chéreau and based on the 1845 histori-
cal novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas. With its array of French
stars, such as Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil, coupled with its roman-
tic imagery of grand castles and costumes, the film was a box office suc-
cess in France, Europe and the United States (Higson, 2003, p. 195). It
also popularised French history and national identity as a series of grand
houses, landscapes and literary narratives. This is similar to the English
heritage films of the 1980s, popularised by the well-known Merchant-
Ivory productions. As Louisa Hadley writes, these ‘films were part of a
wider “heritage culture” in Britain during the 1980s, which sought to
bolster a sense of a fixed national identity; they offer . . . Britain’s cultural
heritage as encoded in both its landscapes and properties, particularly the
country house estates’ (Hadley, 2010, p. 10).
These issues are all significant to Rivette’s own adaptation of a canoni-
cal English text. In light of the nationalistic implications of the heritage
film genre in both English and French contexts, what do we make of a
French director adapting one of the best-known English novels of the
nineteenth century? Similarly, what do we make of his own use of the
period of the 1930s and the regional countryside; two significant aspects
tied to the rise of the genre in France under the Mitterrand government?
To engage with these questions, it is important to examine first the way
Wuthering Heights, along with its author, has been interpreted in the
French popular imagination.
The integration of Wuthering Heights into French culture has tended

to locate the novel within an interpretative frame of international
transcendence, in which the specificity of the novel’s original time-
period and national context are negated by a discourse of ‘universal’
love. While an English adaptation of the novel in ballet form exists,
France has been the only country to repeatedly adapt the novel into
ballet.7 This is a significant point because the particular medium of bal-
let allows the novel’s English language and regional Yorkshire dialect
to be replaced by bodily movement and expression. Furthermore, the
kind of descriptive narratives that have been formed around the novel
in analyses of these ballet adaptations highlight the French reception of
Wuthering Heights and its author.
For example, in the programme for Roland Petit’s ballet adaptation
of the novel, Les Hauts de Hurlevent: histoire d’une passion (Petit, 1982),
the scenario director, Edmonde Charles-Roux, describes the novel
as ‘a gigantic narrative’, summarising the ballet ‘inspired by Emily
Brontë’s novel’ as ‘nothing more than the irreversible sequence of
actions brought about by mortal passion’ (Charles-Roux, 1982, n.p.).
This romantic interpretation of Wuthering Heights abounds in the pam-
phlets and programmes used to promote the French ballet adaptations.
The lengthy programme for Kader Belarbi’s Hurlevent (Belarbi, 2002)
describes Wuthering Heights as ‘the unique work of a young girl who
wrote cut off from the world, drawing from her imagination’ and dis-
cusses the ‘Romanticism’ of the novel which carries the ‘excessive char-
acters into a painful whirlwind, who tear each other apart by hatred or
mad passion’ and ‘gives to Hurlevent the timelessness of a quest for the
absolute’ (B., 2002, n.p.). Similarly, under the title ‘Nocturnal Poetry’,
the programme asserts that ‘this work where a lyrical breath blows,
belongs to the poetic domain, timeless’ (B., 2002, n.p.).
These descriptive passages are exemplary in identifying the manner in
which the novel has been integrated into French culture. What I suggest
occurs here with regard to Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights is similar
to the critical re-positioning of Edgar Allan Poe and his literary work
in the French context.8 Like Poe, Emily Brontë is a particular source of
fascination to the French imagination, in which she and her work are
linked to an ahistorical realm of literary greatness and a type of poetic
transcendence that speaks for the human condition.
The similarity between Poe and Brontë’s reception in the French
critical context highlights the extent to which such an interpretation
of foreign literary works and authors is a seductive one in French cul-
ture. Such an approach essentially removes the problem of immediate
context and ignores the specific cultural and national origins of the
American Poe and English Brontë. If one of the ways in which French
national identity has cemented itself internationally is via its cultural
output as a nation of artists, intellectuals and philosophers (see, Hewitt,
2003, pp. 10–16; Paulson, 2003, pp. 145–64), then it must in turn inte-
grate other nations’ cultural outputs in a manner that will dispel the
problem of context.
In light of this cultural reception of the novel, Rivette’s Hurlevent
seems to be the antithesis of such adaptations as it is all about context.
However, the context which he provides is a distinctly French one.
These two issues of the film’s French environment and the adaptation
of an English novel bring together the two critical frames via which the
film is mediated: that of lack of context within the critical tradition of
Wuthering Heights and that of too much context in the tradition of the
heritage film. By adapting a canonical English text, which has been
interpreted as a universal narrative, in a manner that critically subverts
the heritage film genre, Rivette brings together two conflicting perspec-
tives, thereby interrogating their function.
As Austin has demonstrated, part of the motivation behind the pro-
duction of heritage films in 1980s France was the government’s desire
to promote a certain image of France and French national identity by
‘re-educating’ audiences about the past (Austin, 1996, pp. 143–4). This
process is, in a sense, an elaborate journey of looking backward in order
to find a ‘home’. If hidden in the word ‘nostalgia’ is a translation of a
longing for home, then the heritage film with its overt politics of his-
torical nostalgia is the ultimate journey home into a reassuring space of
cultural familiarity, belonging and inheritance.
In contrast, Rivette’s film disrupts this overtone of ‘home’ and famili-
arity by looking backward through the words of a foreign text. The use
of a foreign literary source as the subject for the engagement with a
French rural history renders both the novel and the journey into history
strange and unfamiliar. That is, Rivette compels his French audience to
be strangers to their own history via the overarching frame of a foreign
‘word’ and simultaneously compels an English audience to be ‘a stranger
to one’s own mother tongue’ by the re-contextualising of a canonical
English novel within a distinctly French history. If the two sit uncom-
fortably side-by-side in the film, it is precisely such a lack of comfort,
such a lack of ‘home’ as it were, that is being highlighted and necessi-
tated as a critical rather than nostalgic journey into the past. Thus, the
1930s context in the film is not a re-integrating site of political unity,
but a depiction of the historical struggles endured by an appropriated
body. Similarly, the trip into the French countryside and its regional spe-
cificity is not a romantic journey into the heart of an ahistorical French
‘essence’, but a narrative of historical violence and persecution that
highlights the layers of diversity hidden beneath political ideologies.
What is ironically highlighted through Rivette’s own re-positioning
of Wuthering Heights is the similarity between the two national ‘projects’
of French and English heritage films of the 1980s. By placing the
‘wrong’ text in the ‘wrong’ context, Rivette implicitly interrogates what
is achieved in both national cinemas by placing the ‘right’ text in the
‘right’ context: a reassuring image of unified cinema and unified nations.
In doing so, he also highlights the extent to which Wuthering Heights and
its adaptations have become inescapably entwined with discourses of
national identities in Western culture, and dispels its mythical position-
ing within a transcendent, ahistorical realm. That is, he reveals the layers
of nationality and context beneath the poetics of transcendence. This is
an issue that I would like to explore further by returning to a previously
examined scene in the film: the Bastille Day celebration scene.
If we examine this scene more closely, it becomes increasingly clear
that while it engages with similar themes to the 1939 film’s use of the
‘hilltop lovers’ motif, aesthetically, it reads as a direct inversion of this
imagery. The scene begins with a social triangle of people rather than
a pair of lovers as Catherine entertains Olivier and Isabelle. She is sur-
rounded by symbols of community and domesticity with Bastille Day
decorations hanging from the home and food laid out behind her. As
Guillaume starts to play some music on a gramophone, Catherine and
Guillaume dance together while Olivier and Isabelle follow their lead in
what becomes an unusual image of familial intimacy. What is even more
visually striking however is the fact that these two couples dance beneath
blatantly nationalistic decorations with the colours of the French flag
brightly apparent against the dull background colour of the house.
Roch refuses to dance as the couples continually change before his
eyes. His sense of resentment and lack of belonging eventually leads
to the disruption of these dancing couples in the form of a fight. As
the fireworks celebration begins, Roch is locked-up in a room with
Catherine sneaking away to meet him. The final image of the scene
is thus contradictory, because narratives of separation are played out
against a backdrop of celebration of national unity. The last image we
see is of Catherine and Roch facing each other in the darkness of the
room while the smoke of the fireworks creeps into the confined space.
The dark lighting mirrors the darkness of their moods as the camera
remains still upon this image of discord (see Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2 Catherine (Fabienne Babe) and Roch (Lucas Belvaux) in an image of
domestic discord, from Hurlevent (1985), directed by Jacques Rivette, La Cécilia,
Renn Productions, Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française
What this last image provides is both a culmination of the themes

in the scene and an inversion of the 1939 film’s iconic hilltop-lovers
imagery. Unlike Olivier and Oberon, Rivette’s Catherine and Roch do
not share a unified transcendent and upward gaze, but a gaze that is
introspectively aimed toward each other, face-to-face, and toward the
action beyond the window. Similarly, they are not positioned upon
a hilltop, but confined within a room in which the darkness is an
oppressive symbol of domestic discord. This image acts as a metaphoric
re-reading of the politics of transcendence associated with both
Catherine and Heathcliff and the novel from which they stem. In the
overarching narrative of Bastille Day, it acts as a re-reading of the poli-
tics of a shared Western tradition tied to the 1939 film’s construction of
the ‘hilltop lovers’.
We no longer have an image of a pair of lovers representing a tran-
scendent Western tradition, but rather we are presented with lovers
whose own personal dilemmas come into conflict with the ideologies
of their culture and whose personal stories are situated within the
very specific context of the household, the family, the region and
the nation. If part of the ideological function of the 1939 imagery of
Catherine and Heathcliff is to construct a unified vision of shared tradi-
tions and a shared culture, then Rivette’s own inverted image reveals
that, viewed from a different ‘angle’, this image is in fact built upon
specific discourses of national identity, the lives of individuals and their

communities.
Rivette deconstructs the poetics of transcendence via which both
his own culture and other cultures have come to represent Wuthering
Heights by demonstrating that beneath the headings of ‘the West’ and
‘the nation’ lie specific stories that do not always ‘fit’ in the grand nar-
ratives into which they are co-opted. Rivette’s interrogation of his own
country’s use of the heritage film leads us into an interrogation of the
equally problematic romanticisation of texts under the questionable
label of ‘universal’ literature. What he provides is not simply a counter-
image to the 1939 film, but also another way of approaching the novel’s
relationship with history and culture, in which Wuthering Heights is
used to ‘destroy myths’ rather than create them.
4
Wuthering Heights in the 1990s
Peter Kosminsky’s Ambitious Narrative
If Rivette’s Hurlevent is a subdued and ascetic film, predicated on the

premise of demythologisation, Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 film adaptation
of Wuthering Heights is, conversely, an ambitious work in its scope and
aesthetics. Titled Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992),1 and starring
Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes as Catherine and Heathcliff respec-
tively, the film is a British production, funded by the American film
company, Paramount Pictures. Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights is aesthet-
ically and ideologically on a large scale, with carefully constructed sets
and scenery and the representation of both generations of characters in
the novel. It also adds a particular aspect of its own to the narrative in
the form of Emily Brontë as a character in her own story.
Perhaps the most defining aspect of this film is its multiplicity. We
are presented with layers of ‘authors’, stories and ideological preoccupa-
tions that sometimes conflict with one another. While some ‘authors’
and stories are ultimately more dominant than others, the film allows
for some ambiguity. It is this ambiguity that characterises the film,
despite its often decidedly explicit politics and aesthetics. Ideologically,
it engages with a multitude of concerns: masculinity, feminism, author-
ship, national identity and heritage discourse. Aesthetically, it utilises
a distinctly excessive visual politics that draws on the discourses of
Romanticism and the Gothic. Careful attention has been given to the
construction of the film’s interiors and exteriors, and this focus on the
nature of film surfaces extends to encompass the site of the actors’
bodies. Perhaps the most dominant of these bodily representations is
the use of Ralph Fiennes’ body as Heathcliff. It is with this body, and
the many discourses with which it is associated, that my analysis of the
film begins.
85
A Heathcliff for the 90s: Kosminsky’s masculinist politics
The last line of Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights epitomises the gender

politics of the film. In the final voiceover, Emily Brontë, played by
Sinead O’Connor, utters the words: ‘Edgar, Cathy, Heathcliff. May they
sleep sound in that quiet earth. But country folk will swear on their
bibles that he still walks.’2 Significantly, the film concludes at a moment
that privileges Heathcliff’s position in the story. In the novel, Nelly’s full
concluding narrative ends with a ghostly Catherine haunting alongside
Heathcliff (Brontë, 1998, p. 299). The film replaces Nelly’s narrative of
transcendent Romantic lovers who haunt the earth, with an equally
Romantic narrative that privileges the masculine.
As Stoneman quite rightly points out:
[t]aking the country folks’ conviction that ‘he walks’ out of context
in this way reinforces the publicity campaign which places Heathcliff
at the centre of interest; and this is not the only way in which the
film grants him a privileged position . . . it is Heathcliff who becomes
the spokesperson for Romantic pantheism when he says that he will
send Catherine’s spirit into a tree which will then talk to them. More
dramatically, Kosminsky introduces a scene – widely used for public-
ity purposes – in which Heathcliff prophesies that Catherine’s life will
follow the pattern of the weather. (Stoneman, 1996a, pp. 209–10)
The issue of the publicity campaign focusing on Heathcliff and, just

as importantly, on Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff, is one to which I shall
return. However, it is important to explore the full implications of the
scene Stoneman mentions here, as it is arguably one of the most memo-
rable scenes in the film. It is also a scene that highlights the masculin-
ist agenda that dominates the film’s gender politics. Stoneman briefly
touches upon this particular scene, but it warrants a deeper analysis,
particularly in light of the cultural context of post-feminism and the
film’s use of a neo-Romantic ideology. In order to do this, it is also
necessary to examine the characterisation of Catherine in relation to
Heathcliff as part of the film’s representation of the lovers’ discourse.
Through various scenes depicting Catherine and Heathcliff frolicking
on the moors and playing together at Wuthering Heights, Kosminsky
constructs a discourse of rebellious and energetic lovers who continu-
ally breach the religious, ideological and cultural boundaries which
surround them. Juliette Binoche in particular, enacts Catherine in
an energetic manner that recalls Brontë’s own Catherine as ‘always
Wuthering Heights in the 1990s 87
going – singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do

the same’ (Brontë, 1998, p. 36). Binoche’s literalisation of Catherine’s
behaviour in the book is particularly striking on the screen, as her skin
is flushed from exercise and her mouth always ready with giggles and
songs. In contrast, Heathcliff, while equally rebellious in behaviour, is
represented in a subdued manner as the typical brooding male. His form
of brooding masculinity only serves to highlight the vivid energy and
restless physicality of Catherine who seems to be like a wild spirit, hap-
piest in her natural environment.
Ingham argues that:
[Catherine’s] youth is presumably meant to be suggested by her

frequent and often inappropriate girlish giggle, which is awkwardly
at odds with Heathcliff’s grim intensity and rough appearance. The
effect of this representation . . . creates an asymmetry between herself
and Heathcliff which, as one critic puts it, ‘weakens anything that
Wuthering Heights for the 90s might have to say about the sexual
politics of Emily’s novel’. (Ingham, 2006, p. 244)3
It is important to allow for the possibility that such a performance of

Catherine is not simply a way to articulate her youth, but also to com-
ment upon Brontë’s Catherine. Like Gilbert and Gubar, Kosminsky
interprets Catherine’s change in behaviour upon entering the space of
the Grange as a symbolic ‘fall’ from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ (Gilbert and
Gubar, 1984, p. 255). He displays such an interpretation through her
body as we view a change from childish energy, happy laughter and
singing, to a consciously repressed hysteria. She is not ‘weakened’ by
her laughter, but rather, by the co-opting of her character into a distinct
masculinist politics in the film.
The film’s gender politics is deeply ambiguous because, while it
seems to champion a type of rebellious female energy, this female
energy is often overshadowed by the discourses that it helps to create.
Kosminsky’s particular emphasis on Catherine’s wild physicality is con-
structed in the service of an overarching lovers’ discourse, representing
a transcendental and ‘natural’ model of love and desire that is pitted
against the artificial world of culture and its constraints. Furthermore,
this discourse is ultimately aligned with Heathcliff’s desires and iden-
tity, as he enacts an existential drama that is inherently tied to issues
of masculinity.
The scene to which Stoneman alludes in her own discussion of
Heathcliff’s dominance is a prime example. The landscape in which
this scene is set is particularly spectacular and was specifically chosen

for its visual potency, with Kosminsky shooting much of the exterior
landscape scenes of the film on location in the wild moorlands north
of Grassington in Yorkshire. Catherine and Heathcliff walk upon huge
white stones that are interspersed with Gothic-looking trees. Their own
dark clothing and hair stand out against this blinding backdrop of
whiteness, which, coupled with the enormity of the stones, creates an
atmosphere of poetic Sublimity and transcendence.
The camerawork and positioning of Catherine and Heathcliff are also
particularly telling as, at one point, the camera halts and focuses on them
standing in a strikingly similar position to Catherine and Heathcliff in the
1939 film. In what seems to be a direct visual homage to the 1939 film,
Catherine and Heathcliff are positioned side-by-side, with heads inclined
in the same direction and with gazes once again transfixed upward in
transcendent unity, as they are framed by the landscape and sky. While
this mirroring of the 1939 film’s imagery works to construct an ongoing
lovers’ discourse that cements the novel’s ‘meaning’ with the ‘hilltop lov-
ers’ motif, it is also distinctly linked to Heathcliff in the film.
This particular positioning of Catherine and Heathcliff comes at a
specific moment when Heathcliff seems to prophesy Catherine’s future
according to the weather, as they enter into the following dialogue:
HEATHCLIFF: Let’s send your spirit into that tree and make it talk to
us. [Whispering, as he stares intently at the tree, the
camera providing a close-up of his face in concentra-
tion.] Listen, they’re calling your name.
CATHERINE: How did you do that?
HEATHCLIFF: I can do lots of things.
CATHERINE: What things?
HEATHCLIFF: Stand up. Close your eyes. [She closes her eyes as he
whispers into her ear.] If, when you open your eyes, the
day is sunny and bright, so shall your future be. But if
the day is full of storms, so shall your life. [Heathcliff’s
face moves away from Catherine’s to gaze at the sky.]
Now, open your eyes.
As Catherine opens her eyes, the camera focuses on their unified gazes
and bodies, remaining still on this image, as if to jolt a knowing audi-
ence with the memory of Wyler’s film (see Figure 4.1). However, as
Heathcliff shifts his gaze in the opposite direction, trouble looms, for
the sky is no longer clear but stormy, and their gazes are no longer
Figure 4.1 Catherine ( Juliette Binoche) and Heathcliff (Ralph Fiennes) recalling
Wyler’s hilltop lovers, from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992), directed by
Peter Kosminsky, Paramount Pictures
unified but discordant. Catherine, aware that his gaze has been averted,
shifts to look in the opposite direction too, only to gaze fearfully at the
stormy sky and utter, ‘what have you done?’
As Stoneman argues, this added scene, ‘which has no precedent
in Emily Brontë’s text, undermines the famed oneness of the lovers
by making it appear that Heathcliff has “written” Catherine’s life’
(Stoneman, 1996a, p. 210). I would argue that it also undermines the
potency of Catherine’s rebellious female energy and instead constructs
such an energy in the service of more dominantly explored discourses
of being. It seems that her alignment with nature is constructed in order
to facilitate Heathcliff’s more central characterisation throughout the
film. If Catherine is the ‘daughter’ of nature, Heathcliff is its ‘master’.
When Catherine is later portrayed as ‘betraying’ the ethos of rebel-
lious nature by being girlishly wooed by Edgar and entering his world of
cultural finery, Heathcliff remains the one constant element in the film
as a tall, dark and commanding figure of nature who is both physically
and metaphorically akin to the dark trees that sparsely populate the land-
scape he once inhabited with her. The film depicts Heathcliff as ‘writing’
Catherine’s life literally via his ‘control’ of nature, and metaphorically
through its focus on him as the one constant character throughout the
narrative. Kosminsky’s film is primarily Heathcliff’s story.
The focus on Heathcliff is telling in light of the film’s own context of
the 1990s. Claire Monk writes that:
[t]o an almost unprecedented extent, 1990s British cinema seemed

preoccupied with men and masculinity in crisis . . . this post-feminist
male panic, and the resultant mix of masculinist reaction and mas-
culine self-scrutiny, have been the defining influences shaping the
dominant images of men produced in the British cinema’s intensified
attention to men and should not be read as denoting a progressive,
liberalising or egalitarianising shift in the gender and sexual politics
of British cinema or society . . . the emergence of this impulse within
the mainstream of British cinema at the moment when the fallout of
post-industrialism and Thatcherism collided with the gains of femi-
nism, produced a strand of male-focused films whose gender politics
were more masculinist than feminist. (Monk, 2005, pp. 156–7)4
Kosminsky’s Heathcliff is, it seems, both a product and symptom of his

times. What occurs in this particular scene, and the film as a whole, is a
‘rewriting’ of feminist discourse and the ‘gains of feminism’ through a
type of neo-Romantic masculinist myth-making. One primary example
of these ‘gains of feminism’ in the critical analysis of Wuthering Heights
itself is Gilbert and Gubar’s influential essay on the novel in their femi-
nist work, The Madwoman in the Attic (see Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, pp.
248–308). While I am not suggesting that Kosminsky’s film specifically
engages with Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis, I do believe that it reworks the
type of feminist arguments they have helped shape in the cultural inter-
pretation of both the novel and gender, by constructing an alternative
reactionary ‘myth’.
Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis of the novel links the dichotomy
between nature and culture along gender lines, arguing that nature is
a decidedly feminine site that informs Brontë’s ‘anti-Miltonic myth’,
in which women are ‘Fal’n by mistaken rules’ of culture (Gilbert and
Gubar, 1984, p. 251). In turn, the 1992 film ‘looks oppositely’ at the
feminist legacy and re-readings it has inherited. The realignment of
‘nature’ as a ‘masculine’ rather than ‘feminine’ site once again pushes
the female subject to the margins and appropriates her ‘natural’ sphere
as a distinctly masculine space.5 If men have fallen from their lofty

position of assumed subjectivity into the politics of gender and culture,
then one form of recuperation of such a subjectivity is via the appro-
priation of the discourses which have led to this ‘fall’.
In line with Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis of Wuthering Heights as a
‘myth of origins’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, p. 292), Kosminsky’s film is
also a myth of origins: it is a myth of the ‘new’ modern man in a post-
feminist world, who has to rewrite the scriptures of power and negoti-
ate his position in a world where the laws of culture are continually
interrogated. Nature is perhaps a fitting refuge, as it is for Catherine in
certain passages in the novel.
Kosminsky’s focus on Heathcliff throughout the film as a whole and
in the particular scene discussed locates his control of nature within a
distinctly Romantic framework. What is particularly striking about the
film’s construction of Heathcliff as mystically ‘at one’ with nature is
how it appropriates a feminist poetics in a similar manner to the way
that the Romantic authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
appropriated ‘feminine’ sensibilities in the service of masculine subjec-
tivity (see Mellor, 1993, pp. 23–4). Kosminsky constructs Heathcliff as a
Romantic hero akin to the poets whom Shelley labelled ‘the unacknowl-
edged legislators of the world’ in 1821 (Shelley, 2000, p. 802). Not only
has he usurped ‘nature’, but, in taking control of it and Catherine’s life,
Kosminsky’s Heathcliff has usurped the female womb by being the sole
origin of creativity and ‘life’. Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis of Wuthering
Heights provides an important framework of interpretation that seeks to
recuperate female stories from the margins. Kosminsky’s re-reading of
Wuthering Heights pushes these female narratives and the female author
back to the margins by revealing that at the heart of the narrative lies
a masculine author who has control over both nature itself and its
‘daughter’.
The construction of Heathcliff as the film’s main focus was also
integral to its distribution. As part of the promotion of the film, the
company responsible for distributing Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights,
U.I.P. (United International Pictures), produced a small booklet titled
The Making of the Film. In an interview conducted with Ken Green, the
Marketing Director of U.I.P., he describes the reasons behind the focus
on Heathcliff the character and Ralph Fiennes the actor:
We already knew that people were aware of the novel ‘Wuthering

Heights’. Also, a lot of people were aware of the Laurence Olivier
film of the 1940s. However, despite this awareness, not everyone
who knew about the book had read it . . . They remember the image
of the scene on the moors, which they have probably seen on the
television . . . Most people remember that it is a romantic novel and
also a classic . . . From our research we found that the film played
especially well to female audiences (as expected). We thus decided to
concentrate on the idea of the story being a romantic adventure.
[. . .]
[B]ecause we felt that women were an important part of the
audience we made two decisions – firstly to make the character of
Heathcliff and the actor who plays him, Ralph Fiennes, central to
the campaign and secondly, when it came to putting the trailer
together, we would use a woman’s voice for the trailer . . . We wanted
to present the character of Heathcliff to be charismatic and intrigu-
ing to the audience. On the poster design, Heathcliff (Fiennes) is the
main visual element. (Green, 1992, pp. 21–2)
What is telling about Green’s explanation is the manner in which

he assumes that the 1939 film, as well as the 1992 film, are men’s
narratives. He not only discusses the reasons for marketing the 1992
film with a decided focus on Heathcliff/Fiennes, but also refers to the
1939 film as ‘the Olivier film’. The implicit assumption is that we are
dealing with masculine narratives and masculine dramas of being,
marketed as romantic stories for women under the trope of the ‘lov-
ers’ discourse’.
The manner in which Kosminsky overshadows Catherine and Emily
Brontë by utilising both to centralise the masculine story and the mas-
culine ‘author’ reflects the way the film was marketed to audiences when
first released. The ‘woman’s voice’ in the trailer, like Emily Brontë in the
film itself, is cast into the margins in a perfunctory role of providing access
to the masculine narrative without any real creative power or authority,
in both senses of the word. Thus, while the film is explicitly marketed at
women and while it seeks to draw them in with an energetic Catherine
and a ‘sisterly’ voice that frames the narrative, it simultaneously ‘puts
them in their place’ as avenues for masculine stories, akin to muses.
Green’s assertion that part of the logic behind the focus on Heathcliff/
Fiennes was the desire ‘to present the character of Heathcliff to be char-
ismatic and intriguing to the audience’ is also a primary aspect explored
throughout the film. There is no doubt that Kosminsky seeks to present
Fiennes as a primary visual spectacle within the film and in doing so,
he also creates a deeply layered characterisation in which Heathcliff
is turned into multiple ‘hero’ personas which stem from the novel,
the novel’s cultural history and the film’s own immediate context.
In Kosminsky’s hands, and within Fiennes’ body, Heathcliff becomes
many different men: a remnant of the Romantic literary persona, a suf-
fering and wronged hero, a disturbing yet glamorous sadist and a sexy
heartthrob.
There is a particular scene in the film that both exemplifies and sum-
marises the multilayered nature of Heathcliff’s characterisation. This
scene occurs immediately after Cathy has visited Wuthering Heights for
the first time and has been introduced to her cousin and Heathcliff’s
son, Linton. We view a pitch black screen that slowly becomes illu-
minated by a single candle as the camera moves horizontally. In the
background, we hear Heathcliff whispering in a throaty tenor, ‘dearest
Catherine’, and finally the camera moves to his face, which is half
obscured by shadows. As the camera stops moving and focuses on his
face, half illuminated by candlelight and half covered in shadows, we
hear him continue to whisper the following words as Fiennes gazes self-
reflexively into the camera: ‘why have you not come back to me? Every
day, I wait for you. My one waking thought has been of you.’ Suddenly,
half the screen is covered by Cathy’s face as she reads a letter. Juliette
Binoche plays both Catherines in the film and this is presumably meant
as a device to comment on identity and desire.
As Heathcliff speaks and Cathy reads, we realise that Heathcliff is
not only speaking to his Catherine, but is also trying to get his son to
seduce her daughter by means of a letter he has composed himself. This
is confirmed as Heathcliff fades from the screen and we see Cathy read-
ing the letter, sitting by her father’s bedside. But the focus soon shifts
back to Heathcliff as the camera closes-in on a striking image of Fiennes
sitting next to the flickering candle in the darkness (see Figure 4.2),
staring into the distance and stumbling over words that are laced with
emotion: ‘why have you not come back to me, Catherine. I have waited
so long.’ His tone suddenly shifts from raw emotional softness to a hard
and dictatorial command, ordering his son, who has been transcribing
his words, ‘now, sign it, “Linton.”’
This scene is emblematic in many ways. First, there is the sheer
physical spectacle that is made out of the planes of Fiennes’ face as
he is sculpted by shadows. This is an effect that has not gone unno-
ticed by critics. For example, in his review, Alfred Hickling notes that
throughout the film, Fiennes’ face ‘remains an outrageously attractive
composite hacked of shadows, the light occasionally catching a cheek-
bone curved like a scimitar-blade, eyes glinting fiercely from the depth
of impossibly retracted sockets’ (Hickling, 1992, p. 11). The manner in
Figure 4.2 Heathcliff’s (Ralph Fiennes) tortured masculinity in the romantic

letter scene, from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992), directed by Peter
Kosminsky, Paramount Pictures
which Fiennes is visually presented in this scene exemplifies the way his
body is used throughout the film. It is telling that in the many images
of Fiennes used to publicise the film in magazines and advertisements,
he is framed by the same type of lighting, which renders his body a fas-
cinating study of light and dark. The aim of making him ‘charismatic’
and ‘intriguing’ is apparent in these images and in this letter scene.
In a magazine article about Fiennes, Mary Selway, the producer of
the film, has been quoted saying that the decision to cast Fiennes as
Heathcliff was determined by the need for someone ‘who would be a
film star – who could take on the film and have the power to dominate
it’ (Selway quoted in Gritten, 1992, p. 38). This is indeed what Fiennes
does. The constant attention placed upon Fiennes’ body constructs
the masculine body as an inherently eroticised space; a categorisation
that is predominantly associated with women. This, coupled with the
overtly romantic tone of Fiennes’ performance in which Heathcliff is
also visually turned into a type of Mills and Boon hero on the cover of
romance novels, means that there is the distinct danger of undermin-
ing the masculine authority and transcendence that the film seeks to
re-instate for masculinity via the politics of authorship. However, such

dangers are deflected by a reconstitution of Romantic identity, coupled
with a discourse of suffering, pain and sadism.
The letter scene in Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights is a trope that is evi-
dent in many other costume films of the 1980s and the 1990s. Julianne
Pidduck notes that a ‘common trope in recent costume film, the letter
signals cherished discourses of interiority and desire . . . These scenes
are frequently shot in close-up: the hands writing, the pensive face in
a darkened room illuminated by an intimate light source’ (Pidduck,
2004, pp. 54–5). The purpose of Fiennes’ own letter scene is partly to
display Heathcliff as both a metaphorical and literal ‘author’ who finds
his ‘inspiration’ in the torment of unfulfilled desire. His emotional state
and intense feelings are manifested as a source of power, whereby he
‘authors’ the lives of those around him via the use of his own feelings,
rather than depicting this excessive display of emotion as a source of
feminine ‘weakness’. His expression of intense emotion as a source of
authorship and power is akin to the Romantic poets’ own emphasis
on the imagination and feelings in their conception of poetic iden-
tity. Fiennes’ Heathcliff authors words which are remnants of a tran-
scendent discourse of love and thereby is turned into a transcendent
author-figure himself. Thus, despite the fact that the film constructs an
overt spectacle around the space of his body, the result is, ironically, a
discourse of masculine transcendence.
Such a construction of masculine identity is similar to other screen
adaptations of classic literature of the 1990s. For example, the BBC’s
extremely popular 1995 television serial based on Jane Austen’s Pride
and Prejudice, launched the actor Colin Firth into ‘Darcymania’ through
his performance of a particularly brooding Darcy. Firth plays Darcy like
Fiennes enacts Heathcliff. The scene depicting his writing of a letter to
Elizabeth after she has rejected his proposal could easily be transposed
to Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights. He is likewise tortured, expressing a
violently excessive emotion that signifies an idealised site of interiority.
While the camera lavishes attention on his closed eyes, groaning face
and romantic excesses, it is his repressed interiority that is privileged in
this masculine spectacle of pain. As Cheryl L. Nixon points out, ‘this
is how the twentieth century, and not Austen, expresses masculinity’
(Nixon, 1998, p. 33).
Indeed, Monk has outlined the particular fascination with masculine
‘pain’ in 1990s cinema (Monk, 2005, pp. 156–7), which I would argue
extends to the television screen as well. It is also important to remember
that the particular feelings expressed by Fiennes’ Heathcliff in his own
letter scene are mainly those of suffering, betrayal and pain. Heathcliff’s
words as he authors the letter are verbal echoes of a pain which he
continually expresses as physical violence throughout the film. For
example, upon Catherine’s death, he breaks into the room in which her
body is kept. He does so by violently smashing through the glass barrier
of the door that protects her, using his bare fist. This particular scene is
strongly reminiscent of Laurence Olivier’s own depiction of Heathcliff
smashing his fist through a glass window as a symbol of his pain. Like
the 1939 film, Kosminsky’s film represents the masculine body through
a spectacle of pain. Heathcliff’s self-inflicted pain also reflects the
physical violence which is wrought upon his body. When he arrives
at Wuthering Heights as a boy, he is promptly physically attacked by
Hindley. Similarly, when the Earnshaws entertain the Lintons, the party
is interrupted by Heathcliff, who is in turn violently beaten by Hindley.
The attack is particularly brutal and gory, and Kosminsky does not spare
his audience its physical details, but rather focuses intently on them as
a type of visual spectacle of masculinity. In the process, such attacks
compel sympathy for Heathcliff at the onset of the film so that when
we view his own violence later on, it is ‘explained’ by the early depic-
tion of the abuse and betrayal he has endured by those around him,
including Catherine.
The letter scene comes immediately after we view his own physical
abuse and betrayal of Isabella and just before we are about to view the
same treatment inflicted upon Catherine’s daughter. Catherine’s pres-
ence is metaphorically at the heart of this scene as a symbol of what he
has lost and how he has been betrayed, so that there is no moral doubt
as to his reasons for his treatment of women. As Haire-Sargeant points
out, ‘when Cathy hurts him, he will hurt, and hurt worse, something
or someone that Cathy cares about. Watching a smiling, controlled
Fiennes jerk a puffy-lipped Isabella (Sophie Ward) by the wrist as he
tells her how much he detests her is much more painful than watching
parallel scenes in Wyler and Hammond’ (Haire-Sargeant, 1999, p. 185).6
This particular scene with Isabella is indeed brutal and evidences a
decided escalation in the representation of Heathcliff’s violence.
To a certain extent, Kosminsky builds upon and reflects the rising level
of glamorised masculine violence against women depicted through the
character of Heathcliff throughout his screen afterlife. While Olivier’s
Heathcliff initiated this glamour, his violence is primarily aimed toward
himself, rather than women. In contrast, later adaptations have directed
the glamorised pain toward women more explicitly. Luis Buñuel’s adap-
tation of the novel, Abismos de Pasión (1954), is brutally violent toward
women within a suffocating Gothic Roman Catholic Mexico, ruled by

a masculinist culture. Within the interpretative context of what Buñuel
calls the timeless ‘spirit’ of Brontë’s novel, this violence reads as elemen-
tal art-house glamour.7 This brutality is further glamorised in Timothy
Dalton’s performance of Heathcliff in Robert Fuest’s 1970 film adapta-
tion of Wuthering Heights. In his slick James Bond persona of misogynist
masculinity, Dalton’s Heathcliff viciously slaps Catherine in between
tumbles on the moors. Love and violence are linked and used to seduce
an audience into identifying with a sadistic masculinity.
What is unique about Kosminsky’s characterisation of Heathcliff’s is
the fascination with, and escalation of, such a glamorisation of sadistic
violence. Haire-Sargeant raises a point with regard to this issue that is
important to examine further. She writes that the:
[v]irtuosic cosmic evil of Fiennes’s Nazi in Schindler’s List, the all-

for-love moral myopia of his title character in The English Patient –
both are anticipated here. Yet as bad as Fiennes gets, he never loses
his appeal. Rather than asking how we are made to like him at all,
we might better inquire why we do not hate him more thoroughly.
The answer perhaps reflects more luster on the movie’s psychology
than on the moral soundness of its audience. (Haire-Sargeant, 1999,
p. 185)
Indeed, why do we not hate him more thoroughly and why is his
particular form of controlled sadism depicted in such a glamorous and
seductive manner? The fact that we are not only positioned to sym-
pathise with Heathcliff throughout the film, but also view his sadistic
cruelty to others as a glamorous and romantic spectacle is itself an issue
that needs to be unpacked.
There is a distinct undertone of misogyny that can be felt in Heathcliff’s
characterisation in the 1992 film. While the violence inflicted upon
Heathcliff is depicted as both random and unjust, the violence which
he in turn inflicts upon women is represented as ‘romantic’, glamorised
by the use of Fiennes’ physical appearance and his association with
a heartthrob-hero persona. There is something distinctly disturbing
about this glamorisation of masculine cruelty to women which implies
that the carefully constructed attraction that Fiennes’ Heathcliff may
hold for the presumed female audience, confirms that somewhere
deep in their hearts, women do not really want freedom, equality and
the ‘gains of feminism’ (Monk, 2005, p. 162), but rather, to be domi-
nated, seduced and used. Haire-Sargeant is not drawing an implausible
correlation between the film’s Heathcliff and Fiennes’ later character of

Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, as the central focus of Goeth’s cruelty
is his strange attraction to, yet physical abuse of, the Jewish woman he
comes to ‘love’.
Monk notes that such a fascination with masculine violence and
misogyny was prevalent in various forms in the films of the 1990s
and in other cultural outputs. She labels such a trend ‘new laddism’,
and writes that:
[a]lthough new laddism found its official media organ with the
launch of the men’s monthly magazine loaded in 1994, the new lad’s
endurance suggested that . . . his media inventors had astutely tapped
into a male mood . . . already latent in the culture. The new lad ethos
was neatly encapsulated in loaded’s cover line: ‘for men who should
know better’ . . . In spring 1999, loaded’s founding editor James
Brown was sacked from his new post as editor of rival men’s monthly
GQ after running a feature which named Rommel as one of the ‘200
most stylish men of the 20th century’. (Monk, 2005, pp. 162–3)
It is interesting to note the reference to Rommel, another infamous Nazi,

and, more importantly, the focus on his ‘style’. This is strikingly similar
to the glamorisation of Heathcliff’s cruelty in the film, as Rommel’s
cruelty is flippantly glossed over by a discourse of visual glamour. In all
of these cases of the glamorisation of masculine cruelty, including the
depiction of Fiennes’ Heathcliff, we ‘should know better’. However, the
very fact that these types of men are glamorised in a resurgence of vio-
lent masculinity means that despite our ‘better’ knowledge, these men
and their acts are made visually and aesthetically appealing. The 1992
Heathcliff’s alignment with this particular discourse of masculine sad-
ism highlights that this is an altogether different type of glamorisation
of masculine pain to the one that is evident in the 1939 film. Fiennes’
Heathcliff is a distinct product of his times.
Imelda Whelehan also notes that this glamorisation of masculine
violence in the 1990s celebrates masculine misogyny which would have
been ‘denounced’ by previous generations of feminists (Whelehan,
2000, p. 65). Instead, in the popular culture of the 1990s, self-conscious
irony and glamour are used to gloss over any attempts at criticism
with an ‘aggressive refusal to endorse or acknowledge any changes in
the relations between the sexes’, encapsulated by loaded magazine’s
catch-phrase of men ‘who should know better’ (Whelehan, 2000,
p. 75). Likewise, Kosminsky should know better, but instead wallows
in the easy glamour of romanticised misogyny. In its characterisa-

tion of Heathcliff, Kosminsky’s film covers all marketing and cultural
bases. Heathcliff the sadist and physically abused hero does not allow
for the dangerous eroticisation of the masculine body. Yet, the very
fact that such a sadism and violence is also rendered glamorous, and
that Heathcliff is presented as the tortured romantic hero, means that
we cannot really hate him enough. As he enters the 1990s, Heathcliff
remains a hero upon whom cultural politics are written and rewritten.
Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights and the heritage

cinema discourse
Kosminsky’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights is deeply informed by the

heritage cinema discourse of the 1980s and 1990s. If Rivette’s Hurlevent
interrogates the basic premises of such a cinema, Kosminsky’s adapta-
tion of the novel participates in the discourse and locates Wuthering
Heights within a framework of cultural heritage. It is important to point
out however that I do not view heritage cinema as a monolithic or static
‘genre’. The films made in the 1980s and 1990s for example differ from
later variations made in more recent times. Like Sadoff, I locate heritage
films within ‘different decades of heritage cultural production’ (Sadoff,
2010, p. xi).
Ginette Vincendeau writes that heritage cinema:
emerged in the 1980s with the success of European period films . . .

Heritage cinema thus refers to costume films made in the past twenty
years or so, usually based on ‘popular classics’ . . . The large major-
ity are European, though in the 1990s productions evolved toward
a greater internationalism, either pan-European, such as Orlando, or
with large American participation. (Vincendeau, 2001, p. xvii)
Kosminsky’s film is firmly positioned within this cinematic mode and

represents an English costume film that is primarily funded by ‘large
American participation’.
As previously noted, one of the most important additions in the film
is the figure of Emily Brontë herself. In Kosminsky’s film, Brontë is cast
in the role of the Romantic author. In the first images we view the lone
figure of Brontë, played by a mysteriously cloaked Sinead O’Connor,
who is shown wandering the moors. As we see her stumble upon an
excessively Gothic-looking house, the camera positions itself in a rela-
tively low angle to mirror her own viewpoint. We are clearly made to
identify with her perspective and participate in her discovery of the

Gothic dwelling. As Brontë is seen entering the building, the camera
suddenly shifts to view her from above, almost as if the house itself
is watching her, and we switch from identification with the author to
identification with the house. This shift, along with Brontë’s voiceo-
ver, is a marker of the manner in which authorship is constructed and
represented in the film: ‘First I found the place. I wondered who lived
there, what their lives were like. Something whispered to my mind, and
I began to write. My pen creates stories of a world that might have been,
a world of my imagining. And here is one I’m going to tell.’ Thus begins
the story of Wuthering Heights in the film.
Selway has been quoted saying that the aim behind the addition of
Emily Brontë ‘is to convey something of the creative process and the
way in which Brontë’s spirit infects the story’ (Selway quoted in Heller,
1991, p. 17). However, as Stoneman points out, ‘the lone figure of Emily
is shown happening upon a (real) house (Wuthering Heights) which
appears already to contain its history, just waiting for Emily to “imag-
ine” it’, arguing that ‘the idea for Wuthering Heights appears to involve
no work, no labour of thought or craft . . . this Emily reinforces the
idea of author as inspired genius’ (Stoneman, 1996a, p. 210). The film
invests in the idea of the Romantic genius/author, inspired by his/her
surroundings in a seemingly mystical manner. There is no actual depic-
tion of the ‘creative process’, but rather a haphazard representation of
the mysterious author. Despite Brontë’s words, the camera’s shift in
focus when she enters Wuthering Heights represents a movement away
from her mind to the source of ‘inspiration’ itself as a ready-made nar-
rative waiting for the appropriate ‘medium’ of the genius author. Brontë
is thus venerated as a generalised figure of the Romantic author, rather
than as a specific individual whose creation involves work and engage-
ment with her world.
Stoneman argues that such a representation exemplifies an ongoing
cultural trend when adapting the novel. She writes that while ‘academia
acknowledges “the death of the author” . . . stage and film are still
investing in the Romantic genius’ (Stoneman, 1996a, p. 210). By con-
tinually locating the novel’s meaning within a discourse of mystical
inspiration, adaptations of Wuthering Heights turn it into a mytholo-
gised narrative rather than the product of a specific mind, born out of
a specific context. This depoliticises many of the novel’s tensions and
ideological disruptions, smoothing them over with an all-encompassing
discourse of transcendent creativity which, like myth, belongs in no
context.
The focus on the figure of the author is also however, a particular trend
in the heritage cinema of the 1990s. A quick look at the titles of adapta-
tions of classic literature at the time reveals this trend. Noticeably, most
of these adaptations included the author’s name in the title of the film,
as if to ‘authenticate’ screen imagery with literary heritage. For example,
we have Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994),
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1996), William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
(1996) and William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999).
Along with its contemporaneous 1990s screen serial adapted by ITV
(Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, 1998), Kosminsky’s film is likewise
titled, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, drawing from and participating
in this trend. The inclusion of Brontë in the film and the use of her
name in the film’s title represent a decided fixation with the issue of
literary heritage that is also evident in many other films of the period.
Indeed, Higson notes that part of the success of many heritage films
in the 1990s stems from the ‘cultural prestige’ associated with literary
adaptations as emblems of ‘a national cultural tradition’ (Higson, 2003,
p. 20). The name and the figure of the author are thus marketable enti-
ties which help validate the films’ own particular agendas and construct
national and cultural discourses of inheritance.
The question is, however, whose cultural and national inheritance
is being invoked? In many of the discussions on heritage cinema, it
is often assumed to be a British or European one. However, many of
these films are the products of American funding and production com-
panies (see Higson, 2003, pp. 119–45). Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights
is a prime example. The 1992 Wuthering Heights film was the product
of the newly formed ‘British division’ of the American film company
Paramount Pictures, which opened in London in January of 1990 (Wall,
1992b, p. 1). Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights was one of the first films
to be made from this new division and the decision to produce the
film was partly spurred by the popularity of literary adaptations and
the ‘renaissance of European films’ in the 1990s (Wall, 1992b, p. 1).
The company approached both the novel and the film that was to be
produced from it as commodities that could be successfully marketed to
audiences who have already displayed a desire to consume period dra-
mas and literary adaptations. The production of the film was based in
England with a mainly British cast and crew, making the film a British
and American co-production. The issue of national and cultural inherit-
ance is therefore a vexed one, as Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights is repre-
sentative of many costume films in the 1990s produced in a distinctly
British/European context, yet funded by American companies.
As is evident from the characterisation of Brontë herself, the film’s

construction of the notion of literary and cultural inheritance is as much
informed by the ongoing cultural ‘afterlife’ of Wuthering Heights, as it is
by its immediate context of heritage cinema in the 1990s. Kosminsky’s
Wuthering Heights displays the same tension that is evident in many other
adaptations of the novel: that is, the tension between the desire to repre-
sent the text as a ‘timeless’ and transcendent narrative, and as a story that
can only be born out of the specific regionalism of the Yorkshire moors
and an English landscape. In the press release for the film, Selway’s com-
ment that ‘[i]t has always been the right time for “Wuthering Heights”,
it’s an incredible love story; a powerful, elemental [story]. It is, quite
simply, timeless’ (Selway quoted in Paramount British Pictures Limited,
n.d.a, p. 1), sits side-by-side with the comment that ‘[i]f ever a book
was set in its landscape, “Wuthering Heights” is that book, and there is
nowhere else you should go to shoot the movie than the North Yorkshire
landscape where it all took place’ (Paramount British Pictures Limited,
n.d.a, p. 3). The film negotiates this tension in a similar manner to the
1939 film, by constructing Wuthering Heights as a ‘classic’ English novel
that represents a transcendent ideal for Western culture as a whole.
It is worthwhile to go back to the scene I previously discussed in
which Catherine and Heathcliff traverse the moors upon huge white
stones. One critic has compared this chosen landscape to ‘the magni-
fied involutions of the brain’ (Mars-Jones, 1992, n.p.) and indeed there
is something both elemental and psychological about not only the
landscape itself, but also the manner in which it is handled in the film.
The stark contrast that is created between the darkness of Catherine and
Heathcliff and the white rocks constructs an aesthetic logic of isolation
and transcendence, as if they are the only two people on earth. Or, per-
haps more correctly, as if the Sublimity of the landscape is an outward
manifestation of their shared subjectivity, in contrast to the physicality
of their bodies. In its own way, the 1992 film constructs an image of
transcendence and unity to rival the 1939 film’s iconic imagery. The
fact that such an image eventually collapses into an individual narrative
of reclaimed masculinity does not entirely dispel its power. What is per-
haps most striking about it is the fact that it is so visually excessive and
self-consciously constructed as a recognisable Wuthering Heights trope.
Kosminsky not only provides a homage to Wyler, but also seems to be
involved in a process of out-representing him. The use of the landscape
in such a manner turns the specific regionalism and nationalism of the
Yorkshire moors into a mythical and archetypal space. The use of the
English landscape in this way, coupled with the authorising presence
of Emily Brontë’s herself, constructs Wuthering Heights as an ongoing

Western literary tradition. England and classic English literature thus
come to represent a shared Anglo-American inheritance in a similar
manner to the way that the French ballet adaptations of Wuthering
Heights construct the novel as a ‘universal’ text. This ‘universalism’, of
course, obliquely refers to Western culture.
Yet the issue of nationalism is not dispelled by the imagery of a
mythical Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors, as it is continually
interrogated throughout the film’s quest for ‘authenticity’. The preoccu-
pation with authenticity is perhaps most obviously evident in the film’s
representation of the two houses of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross
Grange. Much care was taken in the choosing of locations for the film,
and its publicity and advertising campaigns frequently emphasised the
film’s ‘realistic’ historical detail and shooting locations on the Yorkshire
moors.8 In his previously discussed interview, Green mentions the
agenda of ‘creating an early awareness of the film’ by ‘inviting journal-
ists on the set’ while the film was in production (Green, 1992, p. 21).
The point continually stressed by such journalists and in subsequent
reviews is that of ‘authenticity’.
Zoë Heller’s article is representative, in which she reports that:
[a]uthenticity is being pursued in all areas in this production. Three

locations scouts have scoured the Yorkshire countryside looking for
places that match, as far as possible, the trysting points and lonely
nooks described by Brontë; for several weeks, gangs of men have
been working at Grassington, on the construction of a vast trompe
l’oeil Wuthering Heights – an immaculately distressed Hammer
Horror edifice complete with weathered-look plaster bricks. (Heller,
1991, pp. 16–17)
This elaborate attention to detail and the effort that has gone into
describing it is reflected in the film itself, which is overly concerned
with the visual representation of places and people as a ‘correct’ and
‘realistic’ portrayal of the past. The result is, ironically, an excessive fas-
cination with the representation of characters and their surroundings.
For example, in the opening scenes in which we first view the house of
Wuthering Heights, the camera does not simply focus on the figure of
Brontë as a point of interest, but also slowly depicts every corner of the
house, which is markedly Gothic, not only because of its size and archi-
tecture from the outside, but also because of the carefully constructed
lighting and gloom of its interiors. In the desire to present the house as
‘realistic’, the filmmakers have constructed an ‘unreal’ ‘Hammer Horror’

space, which strives to be more real than the real itself. The elaborately
constructed state of ruinous disrepair seems like an overly excessive rep-
resentation. The emphasis on the ‘real’ and the ‘authentic’ becomes a
fetishistic spectacle of historical settings as a series of recognisable visual
signs and images that have been lifted out of a Gothic novel.
The representation of Thrushcross Grange is similarly predicated on
an aesthetics of overt ‘authenticity’ through visual excess. We first view
the Grange in a long wide shot allowing us to see its beauty and size
against the perfectly manicured green landscape in which it is set. The
camera then moves to view its interiors through a window as Catherine
and Heathcliff spy on the Lintons playing inside. The interiors reveal a
meticulously detailed representation of the type of vast houses typically
found in Jane Austen costume films of the 1990s. From the chande-
liers, to the crimson carpets and antique furniture, we are continually
reminded of the grandeur of the house, as the aesthetic opposite of
Wuthering Heights. While the representation of Wuthering Heights
and Thrushcross Grange in the film stems from the novel’s oppositional
construction of such spaces, they are nevertheless representations that
are more concerned with attention to aesthetic detail as markers of his-
torical ‘fidelity’, rather than as ways to engage with the many ideologi-
cal issues which Brontë raises through her oppositional construction of
the households. The fixation with showcasing the most insignificant
details of flowers, paintings, household objects and carpets, highlights
the extent to which the representation of these details is, itself, a cen-
tral preoccupation in the film. That is, the film is not simply concerned
with adapting the narrative, but also, the past as a series of objects on
display, like a museum. This is highlighted by the fact that visual repre-
sentation of spaces often overrides narrative, themes and dialogue.
For example, in one particular scene, Catherine is shown recuperating
in the Linton household after Heathcliff’s disappearance. Such a turn
in the narrative does not seem as important as the visual representa-
tion of her sitting in the impressive interiors of the Grange. The room
is constructed as a perfectly symmetrical setting of aesthetic harmony
through the careful positioning of an array of huge pot plants that
adorn it in rows. The effect is quite startling turning what is an already
vast looking interior into a site of excessive grandeur that highlights the
essential foreignness and novelty of the household for a contemporary
audience. It is clear that the interior of Thrushcross Grange is turned
into a ‘period’ space for an audience that desires the aesthetic beauty of
visually appealing costume films. Indeed, the film is often dominated
by such imagery in which the representation of location, landscape and

households overshadows the actual narrative being explored. These
types of images provide an important visual accompaniment to the
imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors, so that the film is
best remembered as a series of striking interiors and exteriors.
This approach is similar to many other heritage films and screen
adaptations of the 1990s, which tended to proclaim their ‘authenticity’
through a fetishistic foregrounding of houses, landscapes, costumes
and obscure historical details. For example, Franco Zeffirelli claims that
his 1996 adaptation of Jane Eyre approaches the novel through an aes-
thetics of ‘fidelity’, stemming from his careful attention to ‘the period’
and ‘place’, and his ‘abiding love of British culture’ (Zeffirelli quoted in
Sadoff, 2010, p. 81). Similarly, upon the release of Howards End in the
same year as Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights, Ishmail Merchant proudly
declared that the film’s mise-en-scène stems from the importance of
‘authenticity’ (Merchant quoted in Warren, 1992, p. 13). Indeed, the
‘authentic’ period ‘look’ of Howards End and its mise-en-scène have
become a template for heritage films.
Higson terms this aesthetic template ‘the pictorialist museum
aesthetic – the cinema of heritage attractions’ (Higson, 2003, p. 39) in
which the ‘effect is to transform narrative space into heritage space:
that is, a space for the display of heritage properties rather than for the
enactment of dramas . . . The gaze, therefore, is organized around props
and settings – the look of the observer at the tableau image – as much
as it is around character point of view’ (Higson, 2003, p. 39). There is
indeed a ‘museum aesthetic’ quality to the 1992 Wuthering Heights film’s
careful attention to detail and representation of both houses as spaces
that are placed on display as rarefied exemplars of ‘this-is-how-they-
really-looked-in-those-days’, to use Heller’s words (Heller, 1991, p. 17).
Such an approach mirrors countless other films of the period, including
the well-known Howards End, which similarly arranges the viewer’s gaze
around nostalgic rural landscapes, antique furnishings and picturesque
building shots. Furthermore, both Kosminsky’s film and its publicity
campaign act as advertisements for the locations in which much of the
shooting took place. Not only do the many articles on the film continu-
ally refer to the locations for the setting of Wuthering Heights and the
specific house used for Thrushcross Grange, but they also mention the
close vicinity of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, as if to draw further
‘authenticity’ from the ‘official’ Brontë institution, which is itself con-
sidered a heritage tourist site (see Hickling, 1992, p. 11; Wall, 1992a,
p. 4; Paramount British Pictures Limited, n.d.b, p. 3).
This tourism mode, or ‘cinema of heritage attractions’, is evident in

the film itself as most of the images we are shown of spaces such as
Thrushcross Grange are picturesque and visually appealing, resembling
postcard images of a stereotypically ‘old’ English home. For example,
when Heathcliff and Catherine take a walk on the extensive grounds
of Thrushcross Grange, the camera focuses on an image depicting the
perfect symmetry of the house against the backdrop of the landscape
before such a walk is even initiated, almost as if the development of
characterisation and plot is secondary to the construction of a pictur-
esque portrait of the past. In what has become a recurring scene in
many period dramas of the 1980s and 1990s, we view a slow-moving
shot of the house and its extensive grounds, before the camera moves
to the people who populate this setting. As they walk, the storyline of
the characters has to compete with the visual splendour of the land-
scape behind them. This particular type of camerawork, involving slow-
moving and long-distance shots, is a key element of many costume films
of the period, as it not only allows for a contemplative and leisurely
view of the scenery, but also frames the images within a picturesque
logic of background, middleground and foreground, which has come to
define the mise-en-scène of heritage films (see Higson, 2003, pp. 38–9).
As one reviewer of Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights notes, ‘[t]hey wanted
it parky, and that’s how they got it – National Parky’ (Hickling, 1992,
p. 11). This remark is echoed by a reviewer of Howards End who refers to
the film as an ‘Edwardian Theme Park’ (Billson, 1992, p. 33).
The extent to which these films were shaped by heritage tourism,
boosted by the work of institutions such as The National Trust and
English Heritage, can be gauged not only by their screen imagery, but
also via the types of reviews and official publications created around
them. A Sunday Telegraph reviewer compared the BBC’s 1995 Pride and
Prejudice adaptation to ‘a lovely day out in some National Trust prop-
erty’ (reviewer quoted in Higson, 2003, p. 57). Locations used in period
dramas, such Lyme Park from the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice and Saltram
House from Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, appeared in travel sections
of newspapers and websites, promoting a rural, stately and nostalgic
Britain for potential tourists (Higson, 2003, p. 57). ‘Making of’ booklets
abounded around heritage films, with a plethora of information on
shooting locations and estates. And, as Higson points out, the British
Tourist Authority even created a ‘Movie Map’ in 1998 to showcase film
locations, sent out to travel agencies across ‘North America, the Far East,
Australia and Europe’ (Higson, 2003, p. 59). It is clear that Kosminsky’s
Wuthering Heights participates in such a promotion. The ‘making of’
booklet, the publicity campaign, reviews and the film’s own ‘lovely day
out’ at the Grange all construct a discourse of national heritage. And
‘national’ is perhaps as much a keyword as ‘heritage’, for Higson rightly
points out that ‘these films operate as cultural ambassadors, promoting
certain images of Englishness’ (Higson, 2003, p. 5).
Yet, the film’s preoccupation with authenticity, fidelity and the pro-
motion of the English landscape and old houses is also the product of
the wider tension between the particular and the general that many
adaptations of Wuthering Heights negotiate. On the one hand, the film
presents Wuthering Heights and its natural landscape as a transcendent
and ‘universal’ site of Western culture. On the other hand, there is a
distinct anxiety to emphasise the authentically ‘English’ nature of the
locations and settings of the film, as well as its reconstruction of the
past. In the ‘making of’ booklet, Green notes that the extensive regional
and national advertising planned for the 1992 Wuthering Heights was
particularly important to ‘emphasize that this is a British film’ (Green,
1992, p. 23) rather than the British and American co-production that
it really was. This anxiety to highlight the film’s national and regional
credentials (Paramount British Pictures Limited, n.d.b, n.p.) in the face
of its international funding and indeed, use of a universal discourse of
being, can be partly explained by the tourism mode of much of the
film’s representation of spaces. There is a need to ‘sell’ the film both
at home and abroad, and in the desire to promote it across multiple
markets, the content of the film becomes a curious mix of nationalism
and internationalism.
This is a point that is further compounded by the fact that a French
actress was chosen to play Catherine. Juliette Binoche’s Catherine
caused much uproar in local Yorkshire audiences, as well as derision
among other national and international reviews, with many question-
ing the decision to cast a well-known French actress in the role of an
iconic English heroine.9 In the delicate, and somewhat unsuccessful,
mix of nationalism and internationalism, which the production and
publicity team sought to create for the film, such a decision seems to
highlight both the motivations and tensions of Kosminsky’s Wuthering
Heights. Binoche, a recognisable star of ‘quality’ art house European cin-
ema, is associated with a presumed appeal for a wider international and
European audience. Zeffirelli similarly cast the French actress Charlotte
Gainsbourg in his own ‘authentic’ adaptation of Jane Eyre, seeking
to draw from the reputation of an art house actress. Yet, within the
claims of ‘authenticity’, ‘fidelity’ and national specificity, Binoche, like
Gainsbourg, is a contradictory presence, highlighting the dual tension
within the film which is evident through the more dominant issue of
the lovers’ discourse.
The appeal of Wuthering Heights as a transcendent lovers’ discourse,
which bridges all national boundaries (albeit, in an unspoken tacit
agreement that such a crossing occurs within Western culture), is
as seductive as the appeal of the novel’s specific nineteenth-century
English and rural past, which draws on the image of England as a series
of old country houses. While such a topic could elicit fruitful discus-
sions on the issue of national identity in the 1990s in the face of the
increasing multiculturalism and urban environments of much of the
film’s immediate audiences, I am here more concerned with the issue of
how such an adaptation contributes to the afterlife of Wuthering Heights
and its cultural positioning.
The result of the film’s visual representation of transcendent lovers
and touristic spaces is the construction of Wuthering Heights as a recog-
nisable ‘brand’ that can be sold to numerous audiences. If the imagery
of the hilltop lovers endures as a discourse of Western transcendence,
it is also accompanied by a museum aesthetic which packages the spe-
cificity of the novel’s past and regionalism as a national artefact that
promotes a certain image of England both at home and abroad. It seems
that as Wuthering Heights moves into a postmodern age it is increasingly
interpreted as a commercial and ideological commodity. As we shall see
in the following chapters, the novel’s movement into the twenty-first
century signals further developments in such areas.
A return to Catherine: Kosminsky’s marginal

female narratives
It is perhaps fitting to conclude this chapter with a brief return to Catherine

as a point of transition to the following chapter in which I explore MTV’s
Wuthering Heights (2003). While Catherine, like her daughter, is a mar-
ginal figure, acting as the lesser-explored counterpart to Heathcliff’s more
dominant characterisation, the issues briefly explored through her and
Cathy are deepened in the 2003 film. The 1990s screen adaptations of
Wuthering Heights are generally dismissive toward female characters, with
a discernable shift in attention only coming with MTV’s 2003 film.
The 1992 film’s counterpart, ITV’s 1998 television serial called Emily
Brontë’s Wuthering Heights directed by David Skynner, likewise inserts
the second generation as an afterthought that is clumped together
along with the marginalised female characters. Heathcliff, played by
Robert Cavanah, is the ultimate focus of the adaptation, enacted in a
similarly sadistic and glamorised manner. Coupled with many shots of

the two lovers frolicking on the moors, the audience comes away from
ITV’s adaptation with a similar understanding to Kosminsky’s Wuthering
Heights: the story is about ‘sexy’ Heathcliff and the enduring love he
has for Catherine. While there is much potential in both adaptations
to explore female narratives and the second generation of characters in
more considered detail, they both remain on the margins, overshadowed
by the powerful masculine characterisations. However, I wish to explore
Catherine’s ‘story’ and relationship with her daughter in Kosminsky’s
film, as it acts as a type of precedent for MTV’s subsequent adaptation.
Tellingly, Catherine’s story is told on the margins of the film, at its begin-
ning and its end, through her own body and that of her daughter’s.
In contrast to the vivacious Catherine we see in the early scenes, the
remainder of the film depicts a more subdued, quiet and consciously
repressed Catherine who is almost like an insubstantial shadow. Indeed,
Kosminsky utilises the metaphor of a ghost to highlight her loss of self
and links this loss with her ‘betrayal’ of Heathcliff and their love. For
example, such a metaphor is evident in the scene in which Catherine
informs Nelly of her decision to marry Edgar, in Kosminsky’s repre-
sentation of the famous ‘I am Heathcliff’ speech (Brontë, 1998, p. 73).
Nelly is shown nursing Hareton in the kitchen and mistakes Catherine
for a ghost due to her white gown and fluttery movements as she runs
through the sudden flash of lightning that briefly illuminates the night.
Catherine begins her speech in the giggly and energetic mode in which
she has thus far been cast. However as she progresses, she becomes
increasingly sad. Like her ghostly appearance, the speech itself becomes
an insubstantial whisper that is barely audible. This particular represen-
tation is perhaps meant to depict her marriage to Edgar as a negation
of her self, or a type of betrayal of which she is ashamed. Yet, in light
of her marginal position in the film and the dominance of Heathcliff,
it also has the effect of rendering one of the most passionate expres-
sions of transcendence in the novel a depoliticised and subdued echo of
Brontë’s exploration of Catherine’s position and identity.
Like Brontë, Kosminsky places Catherine on the margins and uti-
lises the trope of the ghost. But, unlike Brontë, he does not use such
a position to interrogate the ideological boundaries that locate her
in marginal spaces. Nor does she remain a strong spectral presence
as in the novel, functioning as a force that disturbs those who have
repressed her, and interrogating the politics of the ‘ghosting’ of her self.
Rather, these aspects are used as explanatory details that convey her
betrayal and, more importantly, that help construct the more dominant
characterisation of Heathcliff through the erasing of her own existential

crisis and identity in the service of masculine subjectivity. After all, it is
her ‘betrayal’ that allows Heathcliff to enact an existential drama, which
is the primary focus of the film. Her own story is turned into a series of
untapped meanings that exist to help shape the more dominant preoc-
cupations with masculinity and the lovers’ discourse.
If Brontë’s Catherine writes on the margins, Kosminsky’s Catherine is
gazed upon in silent objectification from within them. The film enlists
both Catherine and her daughter into a politics of the gaze through
their physical similarities and location in the fringe of the house and
the film itself. When we are first introduced to the house of Wuthering
Heights, it is through Lockwood’s gaze as he metaphorically frames and
contains both women. Lee argues that:
Spectators enter Kosminsky’s fictional world through Lockwood’s

perspective as the camera aligns the spectator’s gaze with his.
Lockwood’s gaze first beholds Cathy’s portrait and then lightning
strikes to reveal to him the face of the daughter Catherine, both
played by Juliette Binoche . . . The framing of both figures . . . are in
sympathy with Brontë’s perspective in the novel as they emphasize
woman’s fate as contained image. (Lee, 2001, p. 215)10
While I agree with this analysis of Lockwood’s gaze, Lee overlooks the
importance of our introduction to Catherine’s daughter through the
flash of lightning that illuminates her face, mirroring her mother’s
own illumination in her transition from self to ghost. Cathy reflects
her mother not only through her similar appearance, but perhaps more
importantly, through the ‘ghosting’ of her self via the masculine gaze
and her own silence. Cathy’s silence, as she sits in the chair as an object
to be looked upon, carries her mother’s subdued whisper into a dis-
course of silent and objectified femininity in which both their fates are
linked through the overt association made between Catherine’s portrait
and her daughter’s equally ‘framed’ face and body.
However, like Brontë’s Cathy, Kosminsky’s Cathy rewrites her moth-
er’s position and resists Lockwood’s gaze through her own hostile gaze
when she stares back at him. As Lee points out, at the end of the film,
we view the same introductory scene from Cathy’s perspective rather
than Lockwood’s, arguing that:
[t]he same scene repeated from Catherine’s perspective undermines

the previous containment of the two Catherines in the form of
image . . . During the sequence of cinematic images and narrative

development, viewers have wandered away from Lockwood’s male
gaze to that of Catherine’s . . . Lockwood’s earlier recoiling from the
hands of Cathy’s spirit is supplanted by Heathcliff’s receiving the
hand of young Cathy’s spirit. The perspective that spectators have
begun the film with, i.e. the perspective that conditions distance, is
replaced by a perspective that embraces the merging of oneself with
others, represented by Cathy and Heathcliff. (Lee, 2001, p. 217)11
This is a problematic argument in many ways, primarily because femi-

ninity and female identity are rendered marginal by the very discourse
of unity embraced by Lee. In fact, the film’s ending seems to perpetu-
ate the primacy of the masculine story as it ultimately takes us back to
Heathcliff. The adoption of Cathy’s resisting gaze and the reworking of
feminine objectification through this gaze exists as an untapped poten-
tial in the film to explore issues of femininity and gender.
Kosminsky’s framing of his film through an overt recognition of
the gaze as it relates to femininity evidences a self-conscious aware-
ness of the gender politics at work in the novel. Yet, this awareness is
not explored but rather co-opted into the larger masculine narrative
surrounding Heathcliff and the politics of the lovers’ discourse. After
the feminine gaze has been reclaimed and Catherine’s spirit merges
with Heathcliff’s in death in a romantic scene, we once again return to
Heathcliff’s body as the primary site of the narrative. The focus on his
dead body as one of the last images of the film echoes the focus on his
character in the last line of the film. Thus, while the focus shifts from
distance to merging, it is nevertheless a merging that brings us back to
Heathcliff and away from Catherine and her own position.
This creates a deeply ambivalent gender politics in the film, in which
female agency and identity are both denied and reclaimed in an ongo-
ing manner against the overarching backdrop of the primacy of the
masculine narrative. However, while the focus shifts from Catherine,
it does not entirely shift from her daughter. Part of the logic behind
this representation of a ‘redeeming’ and reclaiming femininity through
Cathy is to create an alternative lovers’ discourse via Cathy and Hareton
as a domesticated couple, in contrast to the transcendence of Catherine
and Heathcliff.
In one of the last scenes of the film, Kosminsky provides a potent
image of Cathy and Hareton riding horses together on the moors,
only these moors are not the grand, white, and towering spectacle of
Catherine and Heathcliff’s moors, but rather a flat, gently rolling and
picturesque landscape of various shades of green, gold and brown. That

is, a Beautiful landscape, rather than a Sublime one. There is something
overtly domestic about this scene, despite the sense of open space, as
the landscape is warm and safe, reflecting the love Cathy and Hareton
share, which is predicated on the comfort they provide for each other
as solitary beings in a hostile household. Cathy comes to love Hareton
because of the protection he affords her from Heathcliff and his desire
to make her physically comfortable. For example, after Linton’s death,
a widowed Cathy is offered comfort via Hareton’s kind gesture of
the hearth fire. Similarly, Hareton’s own feelings develop against the
backdrop of the solidarity and sympathy he finds in Cathy. They are
mutually bonded by the desire for a sense of self that is aligned with
the home as a space of refuge, and marriage as a site of harmonious
domestic union.
Throughout the film, Cathy is also aesthetically aligned with the
same warm colours that we see in this scene. The colour of her hair,
makeup and clothing all mirror the colours of the warm landscape, in
contrast to the cooler hues associated with her mother. The implicit
undertone to this scene is one of warmth and domesticity, where
Catherine’s daughter has redeemed her mother and those around her,
only to re-domesticate the narrative and femininity. While the very last
scene returns us to Heathcliff, masculinity and a transcendent lovers’
discourse as we view Heathcliff’s final embrace with Catherine on their
Sublime moors, this re-domestication process is one that becomes
important in the subsequent screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights, in
which is it given a central rather than a marginal or competing role.
Indeed, MTV’s following 2003 film adaptation seems to answer many
of the questions that are implicitly raised via Kosminsky’s representa-
tion of both Catherines, such as the logic behind an alternative lovers’
discourse of domesticity and a redeeming femininity. If these ques-
tions remain unexplored possibilities within the masculinist politics
of Kosminsky’s film, they are, in turn, dominant discourses in MTV’s
own adaptation of the novel, creating important dialogues between two
films that not only adapt the same novel, but also do so during similar
contextual timeframes.
5
Catherine and Heathcliff
for the Y Generation
MTV’s Modernisation of Wuthering Heights
On the 14th of September 2003, MTV’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights

aired for the first time on its movie channel. Although not released in
cinemas, MTV’s Wuthering Heights undoubtedly reached a wide audi-
ence during its air-time and subsequent release on DVD. MTV films
are made with the precise intention for release on the cable network’s
movie channel and are thus created and distributed with a specific
‘young-adult’ audience in mind. It is therefore not surprising that the
producers of MTV’s Wuthering Heights modernised and re-contextualised
the narrative of the novel. The nineteenth-century Yorkshire moors are
replaced by a contemporary Northern California setting; Wuthering
Heights becomes a secluded lighthouse named ‘The Heights’; Heathcliff
becomes Heath, an orphan boy who grows up to be a rock star; and
Catherine becomes Cate, a teenage heroine whose persona stems from
popular teen television serials.
While Kosminsky’s 1992 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is concerned
with an overt politics of historical fidelity associated with heritage cin-
ema, representation of history or the past is tellingly absent in MTV’s
Wuthering Heights. However, like Amy Heckerling’s similarly modern-
ised film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma as the film, Clueless (1995),
MTV’s adaptation recycles past identities and provides ongoing clues to
its textual and historical origins. The film’s recycling of the past into
new forms resonates with Kucich and Sadoff’s own discussion about
the postmodern use of the nineteenth-century past and postmodern
historiography.
Kucich and Sadoff’s engagement with Fredric Jameson’s critique of
postmodernism highlights the cultural milieu within which MTV’s
Wuthering Heights is produced. In particular, they argue that a film like
Clueless confirms Jameson’s critique of postmodern consciousness in
113
his famous work, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(Kucich and Sadoff, 2000a, pp. ix–xi), which begins by declaring that
‘[i]t is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to
think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think
historically in the first place’ ( Jameson, 1991, p. ix). Although Jameson,
as well as Kucich and Sadoff, are here referring to the context of the late
twentieth century, their analysis could easily be transferred to what is a
similar early twenty-first-century context.
In Jameson’s analysis, postmodernism is concerned with ‘breaks’ and
moments after which history ‘is no longer the same’ ( Jameson, 1991,
p. ix). This process is fed by the rampant commodification of culture in
the postmodern age, which has turned history into series of styles in a
‘random cannibalization of all the styles of the past’ ( Jameson, 1991,
p. 18). This creates a ‘loss of historicity’ that is intermittently medi-
ated by ‘attempts at recuperation’ ( Jameson, 1991, pp. x–xi). Kucich
and Sadoff examine ‘postmodern Victoriana’ from Jameson’s perspec-
tive of a ‘postmodern historical crisis’, arguing that a film like Clueless
‘is part of the fascination with the nineteenth century that inhabits
late-century postmodernism’s obsession with the telltale instances of
historical rupture, with the “shifts and irrevocable changes in the repre-
sentation of things”’ (Kucich and Sadoff, 2000a, p. x; quoting Jameson,
1991, p. ix).
Jameson’s analysis is equally applicable to MTV’s adaptation of
Wuthering Heights, as this adaptation represents the ‘changes in the
representation of things’ in an age that has ‘forgotten’ how to think
historically, and simultaneously provides ‘recuperative efforts’ for its
contemporary audiences through its ‘cannibalization’ and recycling of
the ‘styles’ and identities of the past. Kucich and Sadoff argue that many
of the adaptations examined in Victorian Afterlife locate ‘the Victorian
age as historically central to late-century postmodern consciousness’
(Kucich and Sadoff, 2000a, p. xi) and similarly, MTV’s Wuthering Heights
locates a Victorian novel and a nineteenth-century past as central to
contemporary early twenty-first-century consciousness in a manner
that bypasses history and historical representation.
However, the film’s ‘cannibalization’ of the style of the past and its loss
of historicity is not ‘random’. There is an overriding politics behind it in
which nineteenth-century discourses of gender and identity are recycled
with ideological ends. Ironically, the result of the film’s modernisation of
the narrative is a deeply conservative politics in which the identities of the
past come to represent ahistorical discourses of being. The film’s represen-
tation of Cate and Heath’s traditional gender roles as essentially ahistorical
Catherine and Heathcliff for the Y Generation 115
in nature stems from the wider concerns played out through its moderni-
sation of the novel, namely, the loss of authenticity, stability and ‘home’
in the modern Western world. The film is, in a sense, a ‘recuperative effort’
in which the perceived ‘break’ with the nineteenth-century past comes to
represent both the cause and answer to the ‘losses’ of the present.
In both its use of the identities of the past and its modernisation, MTV’s
adaptation plays out discourses of authenticity and superficiality, in which
the ‘new’ and ‘old’ are opposed in a manner that ignores historical context
in favour of ‘nature’. What the film ultimately seeks to recuperate is not
a sense of historicity as such, but rather the values of the past as nature
rather than history. Therefore, it both enacts a postmodern consciousness
by displaying a ‘dysfunctional cultural memory’, which acts as a recycling
of the past devoid of context (Kucich and Sadoff, 2000a, p. ix), and simul-
taneously underwrites the logic of its own times by seeking discourses of
nineteenth-century authenticity as ‘cures’ for modern ills. The film also
relies upon the processes of commodification and modernisation, which
it both enacts and critiques. MTV’s own construction of a lovers’ discourse
and its particular characterisations of Cate/Catherine and Heath/Heathcliff
need to be unpacked with these issues in mind.
A post-feminist Catherine: MTV’s domestic politics
Feminism is no longer cool. Most young women routinely declare

themselves not to be feminists.
Simon During (2005, p. 172)
I saw her as really scared of losing herself, which is the whole risk
of Heath. The best things about her are her driving curiosity about
this world. As much as she loves him and wants to be with him, he
quells that part of her. It’s this internal struggle. ‘I love you more
than anything. I want you to see the world with me, instead of keep-
ing me from it’.
Erika Christensen (quoted in O’Hare, n.d.)
The words spoken by Erika Christensen about her character in MTV’s

Wuthering Heights, Cate, are deeply ironic, for those aspects which she
notes are ‘the best things about her’, are precisely those that are over-
written in the film. Her individuality, her identity and ‘curiosity about
this world’ are ‘quelled’ not only by Heath, but also by an overarching
discourse of anti-feminism and a simplified neo-Victorian domesticity.
The characterisation of Cate supports Whelehan’s assertion that there is
‘a definable thread’ that ‘runs through the language of culture, politics

and the mass media’ in contemporary Western culture ‘that is quite
simply anti-feminist and anti-equality’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 3). In a
movie that attempts to appeal to a young audience by making a clas-
sic text modern, we are also shown that it is indeed no longer ‘cool’ to
be a feminist. Seeking individual fulfilment, or desiring to escape the
boundaries of the family home as a woman, result in dire consequences.
What ultimately both defines and ‘redeems’ femininity in this film is
domesticity, through the recycling of Victorian feminine roles, particu-
larly the contested site of the mother’s body.
In many ways, MTV’s Cate recalls Rivette’s Catherine in her blonde
youthfulness, her inexperience and her desire for escape from the con-
fines of masculine control and the family home. Yet ideologically, she is
immersed in a discourse of femininity and domesticity that is the direct
antithesis of Rivette’s demystifying politics. If Rivette shows his viewer
the social, cultural and ideological boundaries that confine Catherine
and do not allow her to be herself, MTV’s adaptation presents these
confining aspects as not only ‘natural’, but also as a necessary cure
for the ‘ills’ of modern femininity, bred by a recent history of feminist
negotiations of traditional gender roles. Similarly, MTV’s Cate reworks
Kosminsky’s own representation of both Catherines in the 1992 film, by
utilising the trope of the ghost as a symbol of a loss of self, the mother-
daughter relationship and the narrative of an alternative domestic
lovers’ discourse, as central aspects in the film.
The film commences with a violent storm. From a distance, we view
a faraway lighthouse that is nestled between the stormy night sky and
wild sea. As Cate begins to narrate, we view the lighthouse as a lonely
and isolated dwelling set amidst the turbulence. Cate’s voiceover reveals
that ‘when I was a little girl, my mother left us. My father used to say
that she needed to see the world. So he raised us himself in an old
lighthouse that he spent most of his time restoring. Everything I ever
knew, everyone I ever loved, was right there.’1 This opening scene
highlights the ongoing theme of containment versus freedom explored
throughout the film, in which Cate’s desire to ‘see the world’ like her
mother comes into conflict with the men in her life who wish to keep
her within her childhood home. The stormy opening and carefully
constructed Sublime imagery of isolation and desolation speak of the
domestic discord caused by her mother’s abandonment. The camera
moves fast and jerkily, creating an unstable and unbalanced atmosphere
that is coupled with long-distance shots, which reinforce a feeling
of deep space rather than a cosy home. It is clear that the Heights is
represented as a space of struggle rather than of comfort, and the direct

link drawn between the imagery of tumult and the lack of motherhood
highlights the extent to which the film positions the role of mother-
hood as central to the narrative at its outset.
Throughout the film, Cate’s fate will be inexplicably bound-up with
her mother and with the narrative of lack of feminine domesticity. Like
Hurlevent, MTV’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights begins with issues
surrounding Cate/Catherine’s position with regard to the themes of
containment and escape. MTV’s Cate is like an oppositional double of
Rivette’s Catherine. While both girls are presented as confined by mas-
culine desires at the opening of their respective films, Rivette’s charac-
terisation probes and exposes such a confinement, while MTV’s seeks to
re-instate it against a perceived social and cultural context of ‘excessive’
feminine freedom.
All the young characters in the film experience a lack of emotional
security tied to the site of the domestic home and instead are depicted
as seeking it in various other forms through drugs, music and destruc-
tive relationships. The film almost stands as an indictment of contem-
porary families, in which the patriarchal order of family life has been
broken by irresponsible mothers and by the questioning of previously
‘stable’ ideas regarding the roles of men and women. One of the con-
tinually interrogated themes in the film is the issue of Cate’s mother
leaving her family and thus destroying the space of the home as a site of
comfort, security and nurturance, with the unspoken assumption that
‘home’ can only be achieved through the presence of a mother. From
this perspective, it is significant that the space of Wuthering Heights is
transformed into the towering and overtly phallic space of a lighthouse
that stands against a barren landscape. As a further symbol of lost
femininity and motherhood one of the rooms in the Heights depicts a
portrait of a woman, perhaps a self-portrait, painted on the ceiling of
the room by Cate’s mother. When Heath is rescued by Cate’s father and
brought to the Heights, one of the first things Cate reveals to him is
this portrait, telling him that her mother painted it, to which her father
responds, ‘she did, just before she left’.
The painting of this woman seems to haunt the house, and represents
‘dead’ motherhood. There are several key scenes that are tied to this por-
trait, which are worth exploring here. After Cate and Heath consummate
their relationship for the first time, they argue about Heath’s desire to
‘possess’ Cate and keep her at the Heights. Suddenly, the film cuts to
an image of her father lying underneath the portrait and it is clear he
is dying. The portrait looms over him literally, and metaphorically over
Cate and Heath, linking all their fates together with the image of lost
motherhood and family unity. The film’s use of the portrait as a loom-
ing shadow of death and discord offers an ‘explanation’ for her father’s
death and for her argument with Heath: the feminine desire for escape
from the confines of the home and domestic relationships, in favour of
the freedom of ‘the world’. After her father’s funeral Cate cries to the
painting and falls asleep underneath it in a foetal position. The moralis-
tic implication in the film seems to be that if Cate’s mother had not left,
these orphaned children would not consume themselves and everyone
around them in destructive relationships. The very freedoms of indi-
vidual self-expression and the re-conceptualisation of the patriarchal
family that have been fought for, and, to some extent, won, by feminist
politics, are here relegated to the realm of selfish disregard for the neces-
sary cohesion of traditional family life and traditional feminine roles.
These themes also run through Alfonso Cuarón’s modernised film
adaptation of Charles Dickens’ nineteenth-century classic in Great
Expectations (1998). Like MTV, Cuarón updates the narrative, setting it
in 1980s Florida, off the Gulf Coast. Steeped in the same Sublime sea-
scape imagery as MTV’s Wuthering Heights, the film transforms Pip into
Finn (Ethan Hawke), a fisherman’s son who grows up to be an artist in
New York. Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) is likewise re-imagined as a heart-
less predatory ‘bitch’ of the 1980s, similar to Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest
in Fatal Attraction (1987).
What is most striking about this adaptation’s reworking of Dickens’
narrative, however, is the way that it moralises female behaviour in a
way that changes the tone of the original novel’s female characters. For
example, in the novel, Pip’s sister dies after a brutal attack. In Cuarón’s
film, she runs away, leaving her husband to take care of Finn alone.
Discontented and seeking freedom from domestic responsibilities,
Cuarón ‘modernises’ her character by presenting it within the same
‘selfish’ mould as Cate’s mother. Both women essentially represent a
wider gender politics in which feminine ‘liberation’ is moralistically
used to explain the breakdown of the domestic sphere and male feelings
of abandonment.
These issues form the content of Whelehan’s study of the feminist
backlash that can be traced in contemporary Western culture. According
to Whelehan, one of the most dominant arguments levied against femi-
nism is that women ‘have been forced to turn their backs on their natural
biological imperatives by entering the sphere of full-time work, politics
and higher education’, or, in other words, the outer ‘world’ into which
Cate’s mother and Finn’s sister escape (Whelehan, 2000, p. 17). That is,
feminism has encouraged women to ‘turn against their families and

lovers’, thus ‘destroying the sanctity of their private lives’ (Whelehan,
2000, p. 21). Feminist critics such as Susan Douglas, Angela McRobbie and
Susan Faludi have similarly explored such feminist backlash (see Douglas,
2010; McRobbie, 2009; Faludi, 1992), with Faludi decrying the view that
women ‘are enslaved by their own liberation. They have grabbed at the
gold ring of independence, only to miss the one ring that really matters.
They have gained control over their fertility, only to destroy it . . . The
women’s movement, as we are told time and again, has proved women’s
own worst enemy’ (Faludi, 1992, p. 2). Cate’s mother, like Finn’s sister, is
represented in such a way that she readily serves as a direct example of
such supposed detrimental effects of feminist liberation.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, MTV’s characterisations of
both Cate and her mother echo the criticism that has been placed upon
feminism as a discourse of being that has resulted in the perceived dis-
solution of private familial bonds and the privacy of the home, itself as
a sacred site of social cohesion. The assumptions behind such criticism
are that the home is a private and depoliticised space and that women
are inherently linked to this space in the ‘natural’ order of things. MTV’s
adaptation highlights the extent to which such criticism has seeped
beyond the pages of contemporary scholarly debates to the realm of
popular teen culture, presenting young girls with conservative and
often limited ideas of what it means to be a woman.
MTV’s Wuthering Heights exemplifies what Vivien Jones explores
in the contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen novels: the defini-
tion of feminism ‘as a caricatured straw woman’ responsible for social
ills and critiqued ‘in the popular cultural arena, where the impact of
post-Thatcherite market individualism, which was enthusiastically
developed in Blair’s Britain, and replicated with even greater inten-
sity in George W. Bush’s America, is most immediately felt’ ( Jones,
2010, p. 72). Cate’s mother, the flighty artist, is the ‘daughter’ of
feminist politics. The implicit argument throughout the film is that the
interrogation of traditional feminine roles has created a ‘fallen’ world
of irresponsible femininity, due to the freedoms that have accompanied
such an interrogation. The film presents the father’s obsessive remodel-
ling of the lighthouse in a desire to create a ‘home’ as a compensatory
physical act to provide the kind of stable family home that, as a man,
he cannot emotionally create, further reinforcing traditional gender
roles. Only the lost mother can provide such a home through her
presence; and her lack of presence equals lack of home. Rather than
re-conceptualising the role of the father in family life and the home,
the film instead places blame upon the mother. Such a representation
seems to reinforce Whelehan’s argument that contemporary American
and English societies have entered an era of ‘retro-sexism’ (Whelehan,
2000, p. 11), and I would argue that such a ‘retro-sexism’ often func-
tions through the utilisation of nineteenth-century ideologies of gender
in their most simplified forms as exemplars of ahistorical ‘nature’ to
which we must ‘return’.
As her mother’s daughter, Cate is aligned with this fallen woman-
hood. The film is punctuated by instances in which Cate fights with
Heath over her desire to leave the Heights and experience the world.
Similarly, these same arguments involve her desire to separate her own
identity from Heath’s and to prise herself away from his possessive grip.
Part of her attraction to Edward (Edgar) Linton, the rich boy next door,
lies in his ability to ‘buy’ her the world with his money. That is, his abil-
ity to let her travel and move away from the confines of her childhood
home. Each time Cate tries to leave the Heights she is represented either
as betraying the transcendent love she has with Heath, or as being self-
ishly like her mother. For example, on her wedding day to Edward, her
brother bitterly comments that ‘you’re finally getting away, just like
mom’, highlighting that her marriage to Edward is not simply a betrayal
of her love for Heath, but also a form of ‘selfish’ escape from her predes-
tined feminine role. Ironically, her marriage to Edgar is not an act that
consolidates but rather that challenges the ideal domestic femininity
constructed through her in later stages of the film, for it is essentially
presented as a corrupting alliance in which Cate is seduced by money,
freedom and an opportunity to see the world. In the contemporary
politics of the film, which is laden with broken families, marriage is not
a guarantee of stability. Rather, the film seeks a more ‘permanent’ source
of stability in the form of death.
While much of the film seems to indict modern femininity, the end-
ing and its last few scenes ‘redeem’ it via re-casting womanhood in its
forgotten Victorian role of motherhood. The culmination of much of
the film’s action begins in the rocky cave by the seashore in which Cate
and Heath used to play as children. This cave alludes to Catherine’s
‘fairy cave’ in the novel, which she refers to as she lies in her marital bed
in Thrushcross Grange, dying and pregnant (Brontë, 1998, p. 108). Like
Catherine in the novel, Cate seeks her cave at a moment when she is
about to give birth and die. However, unlike Brontë’s Catherine, Cate’s
cave is not a symptom of her desire to escape from the confines of her
marriage bed, her body and her role as mother/wife, but rather is a form
of domestic reconstitution.
Throughout the film, the cave is a symbol of Cate and Heath’s

‘orphan’ status and their desire to construct a ‘family’ through each
other. They play, kiss and hide within this cave, exploring stories about
Heath’s possible parentage, and forming the boundaries of their rela-
tionship in the process as a substitute sense of belonging. In the last few
scenes, as Cate lies dying and in labour in the cave, her ‘ghost’ runs to
Heath in the Heights and tells him to come find her. Heath rescues her
and brings her back to the Heights to give birth to a baby girl who is
most certainly his child, rather than her husband’s.
After the birth, Cate confesses that the baby girl is Heath’s, as the cam-
era suddenly focuses on the portrait her mother painted on the ceiling,
before focusing with equal attention on Cate’s face as she closes her eyes
and dies. In dying, Cate has redeemed both herself and her mother by
literally giving up her own life and identity in the service of motherhood.
The bond between mother and daughter is here, for the first time, unified:
the mother has returned ‘home’ and has relinquished the world in the
most permanent sense of death, with the cave no longer necessary as a
substitute ‘home’. While this seems essentially contradictory, as Cate must
physically leave her daughter as her mother has left her, Cate remains in
spirit, and unlike her mother, she does not leave behind a symbol of indi-
vidual identity but rather relinquishes one on behalf of motherhood.
The last scene of the film is of Cate’s ghost standing on top of
the lighthouse, watching over Heath and their daughter as they play
(see Figure 5.1). Against a background of tender music, Cate’s ghost
speaks the following words to her daughter: ‘I once dreamt of getting
away from the Heights, but now I know I was meant to stay. To see you
grow up, my daughter. In this lighthouse, on the edge of the ocean,
no matter what the future holds, I’ll always be there, watching over
you.’ The Sublime imagery accompanying this voiceover is similar to
Wyler’s and Kosminsky’s: the large cliff-side rocks, the towering struc-
ture of the Heights and the close-up shots of the ocean and the birds
in the sky essentially repeat the familiar ‘hilltop lovers’ imagery of
transcendence associated with the lovers’ discourse. The camerawork is
similarly uncomplicated as the camera looks up at Cate’s ghost to create
the feeling that she is looking down upon the domestic scene before
her, highlighting her transcendent position. These last images mingle
the transcendent ‘oneness’ of Cate and Heath, which is constructed
throughout the film through numerous shots of them wandering the
rugged landscape as lovers, with a domestic politics, highlighting how
domesticity, family and, above all, motherhood, are ultimately more
transcendent than sexual love and individual desire.
Figure 5.1 A ghostly Cate (Erika Christensen) watches over her daughter, from
Wuthering Heights (2003), directed by Suri B. Krishnamma, MTV Networks
What MTV’s film also provides via this mingling of the transcend-
ent oneness with a domestic politics is an answer to Kosminsky’s
own briefly explored politics of an alternative lovers’ discourse in the
form of Cathy and Hareton. If in the 1992 film Cathy’s redeeming
femininity and domestic love exist as fragmentary narratives within
the more dominant politics of masculinity and transcendence, in
MTV’s adaptation, they are merged with this mode of transcendence
as the lovers’ discourse becomes a contradictory ideology representing
both Sublimity and contained domesticity. Catherine’s loss of identity
through the ghosting of her self is here co-opted into a discourse of
Sublime domestic femininity.
Cate here becomes a domesticating force that constructs a ‘home’
through her overarching presence. In other words, she becomes an
ideal emblem of neo-Victorian femininity. The manner in which
Cate is represented at the end of the film resonates with some of the
more memorable passages in Ruskin’s well-known lecture, ‘Of Queens’
Gardens’, in which he both summarises and participates in the construc-
tion of the trope of the Victorian ‘angel in the house’ as a dominant
ideological mode of Victorian femininity. Ruskin writes that a woman
must be ‘enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise –
wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation’ (Ruskin, 1912,
pp. 99–100). The ideological framework in which women are required
to renounce their sense of self is tied to the issue of the domestic home,
which is intimately linked to the feminine body:
And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always around her. The
stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold
grass may be the only fire at her foot: but home is yet wherever she
is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than
ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light
far, for those who else were homeless. (Ruskin, 1912, p. 99)
It is precisely this idealised image of an inherently sacrificing and sac-

rificed femininity, whose entire function resides in the construction
of a home as a site of security and stability from the world, which is
constructed via Cate’s literal sacrifice of her life and identity. In casting
aside her ‘selfish’ desire for escape and realising that her function is in
fact to become a symbol of eternal motherhood, Cate ‘redeems’ modern
femininity from its ‘fallen’ status of individuality and reconstructs it as
a Victorian ideal of, in Gilbert and Gubar’s apt words, ‘self-less’ femi-
ninity, ‘with all the moral and psychological implications that word
suggests’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, p. 21).
Cate’s sacrificing of her identity and individuality is highlighted by
her ghost’s Christ-like crucifixion position on top of the lighthouse, as
she watches her daughter. Once femininity has been ‘redeemed’, the
social environment of the Heights is changed from a barren, mother-
less space of selfish desires and violence, into a happy, productive and
familial space of domestic unity and security. Furthermore, the film
elevates this redeemed and redeeming neo-Victorian femininity to
the realm of Sublime transcendence by linking it with a discourse of
eternal nature, ‘on the edge of the ocean’. The 2003 film’s utilisation
of the well-known ‘hilltop lovers’ motif is ultimately in the service of
rendering Victorian femininity a ‘natural’ and transcendent discourse
of being.
What is telling about Cate’s characterisation is that it taps into a
trend within narratives marketed to teenage girls which elevates the
notion of feminine self-sacrifice as part of a larger narrative of romance
and family. For example, the popular teen vampire novels, The Twilight
saga written by Stephenie Meyer (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008), concludes
the heroine’s narrative with a happily-ever-after tale of self-sacrifice.
Bella, a teenage girl who falls in love with a possessive vampire named
Edward, receives her wish to become a vampire herself in the last novel
of the saga (Meyer, 2008). In order for her to successfully belong with
her partner and his world, she must first literally lay down her life as a
human in the service of motherhood.
Bella chooses to give birth to a vampire child whom she knows will
kill her. Meyer effectively elevates her heroine’s often morbid willingness
to destroy herself in the service of others throughout the novels into a
mystical veneration of feminine and domestic self-sacrifice. Ultimately,
what this suggests is that ‘true love’ and a ‘happy family’ are only attain-
able for women once they give up something, most commonly, them-
selves. This same inclination toward the destruction of female agency
and individuality is evident in MTV’s Wuthering Heights, which, when
coupled with Heath’s similarly conservative characterisation, suggests
that Wuthering Heights has entered a reactionary post-feminist gender
politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Heathcliff becomes a rock star: Masculinity, romanticism

and rock ideology
While the issues of femininity and domesticity are central to the film,
the characterisation of Heath is relatively deeper and more detailed in
comparison with Cate’s. This is partly because MTV’s modernisation of
the narrative centres on the theme of music, which is best embodied
by Heath as the chosen rock star of the film, as a way of both ‘updat-
ing’ the novel for a modern teen audience and of making the narrative
relevant to MTV’s own primary function as a music television network.
If Cate is associated with the re-establishment of domesticity, security
and stability, Heath’s characterisation stems from an ongoing discourse
of authenticity that negotiates masculinity through the politics of the
rock star and a subjective interiority.
In an interview with the executive producer of the film, Jim Steinman,
who also happens to be the writer of the numerous songs ‘authored’
and sung by Heath in the film, Kate O’Hare reveals that Steinman
‘says he had only one musical directive from MTV’: ‘They were very
specific. . . . They wanted it to be rock ’n’ roll. It was said as, “This is
more important symbolically. This has to represent our commitment
away from boy-band pop back to raw rock ’n’ roll”’ (O’Hare, n.d.). The
distinction Steinman makes here between ‘rock’ and ‘pop’ music is one
that is played out within the film with a specific type of rock ideology
defining the characterisation of Heath.
As numerous popular music critics have noted, rock music is often
defined, both ideologically and thematically, in opposition to ‘pop’
music.2 This is, in many ways, a contradictory distinction relying on
what Roy Shuker has aptly termed ‘the old art versus commerce mythol-
ogy’ (Shuker, 2001, p. 116). The assumption behind such a ‘mythology’
is that rock music is an inherently authentic artistic expression of an
individual musician, pitted against the more commercial- and profit-
minded production of ‘pop’ music, which is seen to be the product of
market-driven companies. Shuker argues that such an interpretation
of rock and pop music essentially obscures the fact that ‘all music
texts are social products’ (Shuker, 2001, p. 117) and I would also add,
commercial products that are subject to the same social, cultural and
commercial constraints of the economic industries in which they func-
tion. However, the ‘mythology’ endures and rock music’s ideological
alignment with auteur theory both utilises and expands this mythology
through the construction of the rock star as a ‘creative genius’.
Shuker’s discussion of auteur theory in relation to rock music ideology
is particularly relevant to the characterisation of MTV’s Heath:
American critic Jon Landau argued that ‘the criterion of art in rock
is that capacity of the musician to create a personal, almost private,
universe and to express it fully’. This application of auteur theory
to popular music elevated genres such as 1960s rock to the status
of art. This involves distinguishing it from popular culture, with its
traditional connotations of manipulated consumer taste and escap-
ist entertainment, and instead relating rock music to notions of
individual sensibility and enrichment. (Shuker, 2001, p. 117)
Through auteur theory, rock music gained ‘credibility’ as a valid form of

artistic expression, as opposed to being conceived as the product of con-
sumer capitalism. Also, perhaps just as importantly, rock music became
aligned with a discourse of ‘authenticity’, particularly authenticity of
emotion, as it became increasingly perceived as the personal and indi-
vidual product of the artist’s mind.
In fact, the notion of ‘authenticity’ is a primary issue in the analy-
sis of rock music. Norma Coates writes that ‘[r]ock is not so much a
sound or a particular style of playing music, but represents a degree of
emotional honesty, liveness’ and ‘musical straightforwardness’ (Coates,
1997, p. 53). Marion Leonard also notes that:
[w]hile since the 1960s, pop has been constructed as commercial and
disposable music, rock has alternatively been judged as a ‘genuine’
music form . . . as a vehicle for genuine emotional outpourings,
which, because of their authentic nature, are not sullied by their
dissemination through a capitalist industry. Thus, the concept of

authenticity is articulated not just in the music form or text but
also in the body of the performer, who is understood to communi-
cate directly to their audience. (Leonard, 2007, p. 32)
MTV’s anxiety to steer away from ‘pop’ and present a rock-sensibility

displays this rock ideology of authenticity at work through the charac-
terisation of Heath.
In the early scenes of the film, we view Heath’s transition from child-
hood to adulthood as marked by his musical abilities maturing and
progressing in an overtly earnest manner, as if his music is neither
the product of hard work, nor the desire to succeed commercially, but
rather the natural and personal outpourings of his mind. When Isabel
(Isabella) later uploads and publicises the music he created in these ear-
lier scenes on the Internet without his knowledge, he is both appalled
and angered, highlighting to the audience the extent to which his
music is not made with profit or fame in mind. As we fade out from a
scene of Heath and Cate kissing amidst the romantic location of their
rocky, seaside cave, we fade into a dreamy image of Heath strumming
his guitar and singing a love song (Figure 5.2). The camera lovingly
provides a string of close-ups of his fingers as he plays the guitar, fol-
lowing them with gentle movements, as if echoing the tenor of his
voice and the emotional honesty of his song. This scene is a carefully
constructed visual representation of rock ‘authenticity’. As the camera
moves upward slowly, it stops when it reaches his face and we view a
still close-up as he sings. The emotional vulnerability evident on his
face reflects a discourse of ‘genuine emotional outpourings’ as his face
becomes a portrait of deep feeling. The camera then pans out and back
in so we view continual slow-moving shots of Heath in his immediate
surroundings and close-ups of his face. Bathed in warm lighting, sitting
by an old-fashioned night-lamp, wearing simple clothing and adorned
with long natural locks, Heath is a direct visual echo of Fiennes’
Heathcliff in the 1992 film’s letter scene. And, like the letter scene in
Kosminsky’s film, MTV’s construction of a deep, interior subjectivity is
tied to a discourse of Romanticism.
Several critics have noted that a Romantic aesthetic and ideology in-
fuse the popular conception of the rock star (Goodwin, 1992, pp. 104–5;
Knightley, 2001, pp. 135–7; Shuker, 2001, p. 147). Andrew Goodwin
discusses the influence of Romanticism in rock ideology by quoting a
passage from Abrams’ The Mirror and the Lamp, which is a well-known
landmark critique of Romanticism. Abrams writes that while for most
Figure 5.2 Heath (Mike Vogel) composing his romantic music, from Wuthering
Heights (2003), directed by Suri B. Krishnamma, MTV Networks
of the eighteenth century, the poet’s ‘invention’ was reliant upon the
‘external universe’ and his ‘audience’, Romanticism shifted the focus
inwards (Abrams, 1953, p. 21). The stress was now on the:
poet’s natural genius, creative imagination, and emotional spontane-

ity, at the expense of the opposing attributes of judgment, learning,
and artful restraints. As a result the audience gradually receded into
the background, giving place to the poet himself, and his own men-
tal powers and emotional needs, as the predominant cause and even
the end and test of art. (Abrams, 1953, p. 21)
Goodwin argues that such a sensibility of the artist continues to deter-

mine how rock music is viewed and constructed in ideological terms
as authentic, honest, emotional and the spontaneous outpouring of an
individual creative mind (Goodwin, 1992, p. 104). It seems that rock
music is ideologically akin to Wordsworth’s well-known definition of
poetry as the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ (Wordsworth,
2000, p. 250), and the rock star is constructed as a figure of the creative
genius, spurred by his natural emotions, imagination and feelings, as
opposed to the more petty concerns of profit, fame and audience.
Heath seems to be cut from the same mould of this idealised image.
In the scene discussed where we first view him creating his music, he
seems to be a modern visual representation of the famous portrait of

Percy Bysshe Shelley painted by Amelia Curran in 1819, in which he is
depicted with long bohemian hair, an open white shirt and a pen in his
hand. This portrait represents a dominant cultural definition of the cre-
ative artist in Western culture, and the 2003 film simply trades Shelley’s
open shirt for a t-shirt, his pen for a guitar, and his bohemian locks
for artfully constructed facial-hair scruffiness. Heath is the modern-day
aesthetic equivalent of Shelley.
However, Shuker not only locates a use of Romanticism in the aes-
thetics of the rock star, but also in the lyrics. He notes that ‘part of
the argument for 1960s rock’s superiority over pop and earlier forms
of popular music rested on the claim that its major songwriters were
poets . . . akin to romantic poetry’ (Shuker, 2001, p. 147). If Heath looks
like a Romantic poet, it is also important to consider whether he sings
like one. The lyrics of the song he sings in the opening scenes, which is
fairly representative of his songs throughout the film, are as follows:
If you want to sleep, I’ll pull a shade

If you should vanish, I’m sure to fade
If you should smoulder, I’ll breath in your smoke
If you should laugh, I’ll smile and pretend that I made the joke
...
If you should sink I don’t want to swim
If you lock the door, I’ll beg to come in
If you should sing, I won’t make a sound
If you should fly, I’ll curse the ground
[Chorus, repeated often] And if you should ever leave me I will

crumble
That’s just the way I am,
I hope you never leave me
That is to say, I will crumble, I will crumble, and I will crumble
If you’re an explosion, I won’t search for shelter

If you’re the sun, I’ll sit here and swelter
If you’re the moon, I’ll stay up all night
If you’re a ghost, I’ll be haunted for life.3
I would like to compare these lyrics with particular lines from Shelley’s
1821 poem Epipsychidion.
In my analysis of the novel in Chapter 1, I examined Catherine’s

declarations of love for Heathcliff and her construction of a Romantic
subjectivity through Stoneman’s discussion of the concept of Romantic
love. Stoneman argues that Brontë reworks a discourse of Romantic love
through an engagement with the literary legacy of a poet like Shelley,
and uses Epipsychidion as a primary example of Brontë’s reworking of
the ‘spiritual oneness’ evident in the poetry of the ‘male Romantics’
(Stoneman, 1996b, p. 524). The following lines from Epipsychidion reso-
nate with Heath’s lyrics in the film:
We shall become the same, we shall be one . . .

In one another’s substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The wingèd words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love’s rare Universe,
Are the chains of lead around its flight of fire –
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
(Shelley, 1970, pp. 432–3, lines 576–94)
The links that can be drawn between these lines and Heath’s song are
not based on poetic structure, but rather on themes and imagery. Both
Heath (via Steinman’s lyrics) and Shelley construct a sense of Romantic
oneness through love, and utilise the imagery of transcendence (fly/
flight) and fire (smoulder/flames), and, perhaps most importantly,
imagery which suggests that the subjectivity of the speaker depends
on the existence of the beloved other (I will crumble/I pant, I sink,
I tremble, I expire).
Brontë’s Catherine also seems to echo such sentiments when she
utters: ‘My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries,
and I watched and felt each from beginning; my great thought in living
is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue
to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the Universe
would turn to a mighty stranger’ (Brontë, 1998, pp. 72–3). However,
Brontë contextualises such a notion of love and subjectivity within the
very temporal concerns of Catherine’s social position and economic
status as a woman, essentially demystifying Romantic love while simul-

taneously calling upon its poetics. MTV’s reworking of a Romantic
ideology of love in Heath’s lyrics seems to function on a different level
as the film unproblematically invests in the idea of Romantic love
and simply updates its language and the medium through which it is
expressed. Cloaked in the persona of the rock musician, which is itself
highly informed by the notion that rock music is akin to Romantic
poetry, MTV’s utilisation of Romantic love is ultimately in the service
of constructing a deep subjectivity for Heath as a modern-day ideal of
the male musician as poet. Like Brontë’s own use of the discourse of
Romanticism however, the 2003 film’s alignment of Heath with a
Romantic discourse of being is tied to issues of gender.
While the characterisation of Cate ultimately results in the sacrific-
ing of her identity, there is a repetitive preoccupation in the 2003 film
with Heath’s Romantic subjectivity through the medium of music.
Such a preoccupation is not simply due to the fact that, as an MTV
production, the film would inevitably have a bias toward the continual
representation of music being performed. As we have seen from Heath’s
initial characterisation, the emphasis is not simply on the music itself,
but perhaps more importantly, on the type of subjectivity which
the performance of such music allows Heath to demonstrate. As the
film progresses and Heath attains stardom, he demonstrates such a
subjectivity in the different context of the stage. In a key scene, he is
shown performing live on stage in a concert, and the representation
of a Romantic subjectivity is here deepened as it becomes linked to a
‘parade of pain’.
The scene begins with an image of Heath surrounded by a mass of
cheering fans, as he stands as a solitary figure amidst gloomy and hazy
backlighting and smoke. The focus is on the physical spectacle of his
body in performance, with close-ups of details such as the sweat run-
ning down his face, his open white shirt revealing the contortions of
his body and his pained facial expressions. This is, to a certain extent,
a cataloguing of the musician’s physical exertion on stage, which
compels the audience to view his performance through a discourse of
pain. As the scene draws to an end, we are presented with a close-up
of Heath’s face as he looks upward in anguish with his eyes closed. The
physical exertion of his performance as a form of pain is here associated
with the content and tone of his lyrics as he sings a song he wrote for
Cate, who has ‘betrayed’ him and their love. At this point, it becomes
increasingly clear that the carefully constructed physical spectacle of
his body in pain is not just a way to visually articulate to the film’s
audience Heath’s new glamorous identity as a famous rock star, but also
to directly link this physical spectacle with Heath’s subjectivity. That is,
his body is a physical marker of his interiority. Furthermore, the issues
raised here extend beyond the persona of the rock star as the linking
of Heath’s pain with Cate and their love contextualises it within an
altogether different framework of interpretation.
Heath’s performance in this scene highlights how the construction
of his character in relation to the persona of the rock star is placed
in the service of the discourse of Romantic love which he expresses
at the beginning of the film. Similarly, the performance of music in
these opening scenes is also placed in the service of constructing a
neo-Romantic subjectivity for Heath that strikingly contrasts with the
increasing objectification of Cate. In doing so, the film essentially per-
petuates traditional gender binaries of self and other, in which women
must learn to retreat back into values of self-lessness, while men must
learn to cultivate discourses of subjectivity at the expense of women.
Heath’s alignment with traditional gender roles is further highlighted
by the fact that throughout the film, he acts as a seeming advocate for
patriarchal gender roles, in which he both encourages Cate to stay at
home and limit her desire for freedom and links his own subjectivity
with a discourse of love that essentially requires the re-establishment of
a neo-Victorian motherhood and domesticity.
At the end of the film, the same song he sang in the opening scenes
is heard as the camera focuses on Cate’s ghost, permanently fixed on
the site of the Heights. He has finally attained his all-consuming desire
to see Cate never leave her home. While this linking of Heath with a
desire for a reconstitution of a Victorian domestic ideal and his role
as a single father could possibly lead to an exploration of the role of
fatherhood and masculinity in child-rearing, such an exploration does
not occur. Instead, as we have seen, the focus is solely on the role of
femininity in the construction of the security of the home and on
motherhood. Heath’s music and rock star persona ultimately lead to
this re-instatement of traditional femininity, and the development of
his subjectivity throughout the film only makes Cate’s final objectifica-
tion seem more ‘natural’, as it is presented as the fulfilment of the kind
of Romantic love he sings about.
The focus on constructing a deep interior subjectivity for Heath
through the medium of music and the converse fixation with also
presenting his body through a discourse of pain is not separate
from but rather intimately linked with the film’s response to a femi-
nist legacy. Whelehan’s exploration of contemporary masculinity is
particularly relevant to the male characters in MTV’s adaptation of

Wuthering Heights:
Men, we are told, have it tough too. Media pronouncements give

us recurring images of the young adult male trapped in a cycle
of depression and dispossession, leading to identity crises and
despair. . . . The classic ‘explanation’ offered is that changes in wom-
en’s lives and aspirations over the past thirty years have offered new
identities for women, but precious little for men. The price of female
self-determination and steady strides toward formal equality is, it
seems, male nihilism. The struggle for gender equality, rather than
being pictured as a pair of scales, is more like a see-saw: if women go
up, men must hit rock bottom. (Whelehan, 2000, p. 133)
Whelehan’s discussion here finds strong support in the 2003 film’s

representation of its male characters, all of whom are alienated, dispos-
sessed and, with regard to Cate’s father, depressed.
Upon her mother’s abandonment, Cate’s father is a hollow man who
obsessively renovates the site of the house as a way to construct a sense
of permanency and stability. Cate’s brother, the aptly named Hendrix, is
a sullen, angry and violent young man who rages at the world. Edward,
Cate’s neighbour and later on, husband, is an ineffectual man who
‘attains’ Cate through the machinations of his domineering sister, Isabel.
And Heath himself experiences an ongoing anxiety throughout the film
about his lack of identity and belonging. This adaptation focuses with
an unnerving repetitiveness on the issue of Heath/Heathcliff’s lack of
identity and parentage, and links these issues with Cate and a gender
politics. In all cases, these men experience a lack of stability and an
anxiety about their sense of self and position in the world, due directly
to the relationships they have with women. Women have either left
them, refuse to be what they want them to be (possessions, lovers,
mothers, wives), dominate them, or desire a problematic freedom that
conflicts with their own desires of containment. The metaphor of a see-
saw is apt here, as the representation of the relationships between men
and women is one of conflict and blame, where women have gone too
high ‘up’ and men have come too far ‘down’. It is no wonder that the
continuing preoccupation of the film is to construct a deeply ‘authen-
tic’ subjectivity for Heath as the primary masculine identity in the film,
at the expense of women.
I want to return to the scene of Heath performing on stage from this
perspective. Numerous critics have noted that since the 1990s, there has
been an increasing preoccupation with the cultural representation of

the male body as painfully visible and politicised. For example, Simon
During notes that historically, the white male body:
has been relatively invisible, as if the power attached to whiteness

and maleness would be at risk were the actual flesh be presented in
public . . . This structure began to change during the sixties, partly
as a result of feminism . . . At this point, at one level men became,
as they say, increasingly ‘feminised’, sparking off what was widely
represented as a crisis of masculinity. (During, 2005, p. 180)
In her own study of masculinity, Sally Robinson links this ‘crisis of

masculinity’ and the questioning of white male privilege with contem-
porary spectacles of the white male body in pain (Robinson, 2000). The
problem with such arguments however, is that the white male body has
not always been ‘invisible’, and nor are spectacles of masculine bodies in
pain a necessarily new or contemporary phenomena. My own analyses
of the various characterisations of Heathcliff in differing historical time
periods and adaptations reveal that the masculine body as a spectacle of
pain has been an ongoing feature in the construction of a deeply visible
masculinity. Similarly, Adams’ previously discussed Dandies and Desert
Saints reveals that such a discourse of masculinity has its roots in many
nineteenth-century ideologies of gender. Therefore, it is important to
ask what makes these contemporary spectacles of the pained white male
body so unique as to warrant a ‘crisis of masculinity’.
The answer may very well lie in the logic behind these depictions of
masculine pain. The nineteenth-century representations of masculine
spectacle and indeed, the 1939 film’s soldier-like Heathcliff, differ from
the more contemporary representations evident in the 1992 and 2003
films. These latter films evidence an increased awareness of gender ide-
ologies and an anxiety about the perceived gains of feminism. In the
2003 MTV film, in which contemporary femininity is represented as the
cause of social ills, it is indeed possible to read Heath’s bodily display
of pain as a symptom of its times: that is, as an anxious response to the
questioning of gender norms of the past.
However, I am reluctant to view Heath’s bodily spectacle of pain within
such a framework of interpretation as it is romanticised rather than
anxiety-laden and works to highlight a sense of identity, subjectivity and
interiority. The men in this film may experience a ‘crisis of masculin-
ity’, yet such a ‘crisis’ is ‘redeemed’ through the development of Heath’s
identity. Heath’s stage scene functions in much the same way as Nelly’s
desire to construct a desiring and self-determining masculine identity for

Heathcliff in the novel through the spectacle of his body (Brontë, 1998,
p. 50). We must remember that Heath’s spectacle does not arise from
feelings of impotence or powerlessness, but rather acts as the bodily ‘evi-
dence’ of a deeply desiring subjectivity. In this way, it is similar in tone
to Nelly’s attempt to locate Heathcliff’s own struggle from within, rather
than from without. The fact that Heath’s interiority and subjectivity are
also linked to an overt politics of masculine Romanticism further high-
lights the extent to which the film looks to nineteenth-century discourses
of identity as recuperative values for the present.
The decision to make Heathcliff a rock star who is aligned with both
Romanticism and ‘authenticity’ is telling. If the only intentions behind
the characterisation of Heath as a musician were simply to ‘modernise’
the narrative and make it appealing for a younger audience, then MTV’s
production team could have just as easily, and perhaps more simply,
characterised Heath in a similar manner to Hendrix. A neo-punk-rock
musician whose style emulates well-known contemporary male musi-
cians, Hendrix in fact represents a modern persona of the rock star with
which the film’s target teenage audience would be more familiar. Yet,
his character is entirely negative as it is made clear that his aesthetic
and music styles represent a ‘false’ identity lacking in Heath’s honesty
and earnestness. Hendrix pretends to be a rock star (as his name alludes)
through the ‘aping’ of identities, while Heath is a poet at heart. The
contrast made between the two young men’s styles of rock music func-
tions as a metaphor within the film and, this is a metaphor that takes
us beyond issues of gender and masculinity.
Style and substance: Postmodernism and MTV’s

Wuthering Heights
When examining Heath in contrast to Hendrix, I have been compelled

to interrogate the logic behind MTV’s decision to present Hendrix’s
style of music and character in a negative light. In his review of the
film, Chris Elliot summarises Heath and Hendrix’s different aesthetic:
‘[t]heir fashion preferences register this opposition with banal effi-
ciency: set against Heath’s white t-shirt, blue jeans, and straight blond
hair (so earnest!), we have Hendrix in tattoos, spiked-up hair, and
chains’ (Elliot, 2004). Hendrix represents a more stylised mode of rock
music that is easily recognisable and translates well with a contempo-
rary young-adult audience. The question is, why is such an identity
portrayed negatively in a film which seeks to appeal to an audience
of Hendrix’s contemporaries? And indeed, why is such a characterisa-

tion not explored through Heath himself as a more ‘modern’ appeal to
the teen market? After all, Heathcliff’s utilisation of the persona of the
Gothic villain in the novel could easily be updated into a representation
of teenage rebellion. However, we have seen that Heath is the antith-
esis of rebellion and a seeming champion for a conservative politics of
domesticity. Herein lies the answer to the negative representation of
Hendrix and the reason why he is aesthetically and thematically pitted
against Heath.
It is important to consider what Hendrix’s appearance and style of
music actually represent. His music stems not only from overt ‘borrow-
ings’ of other people’s styles, but is also inherently cynical in tone. If
Heath’s music is represented as the natural outpourings of his interior
subjectivity, Hendrix’s music is presented as the superficial emulations
of an opportunistic young man. At all times, the film presents us with
clues to the logic behind Hendrix’s style of music as he attempts to use
the ‘tough rock’ persona to seduce and impress girls at parties, seek
fame, make money and imitate other rock stars. Indeed, Hendrix’s cho-
sen musical style of punk-rock is itself symbolic for those who recognise
one of the original functions of punk music as an aggressive interroga-
tion of traditional middle-class values. Furthermore, the best Hendrix
can achieve is a bad ‘copy’ of this style of music, for his replication of
a punk-aesthetic of rebellion is presented as the cheap imitation of a
young man who cannot even bring himself to believe in nothing. The
difference drawn between Hendrix and Heath rests upon the film’s own
critique of the contemporary dissolution of traditional discourses of
being, which do not simply refer to gendered identities, but also, the
concept of subjectivity itself.
In his discussion on postmodern subjectivity, Stuart Sim notes that:
Humanism has taught us to regard the individual subject as a unified

self, with a central ‘core’ of identity unique to each individual . . .
[for] postmodernists, the subject is a fragmented being who has
no essential core of identity, and is to be regarded as a process in a
continual state of dissolution rather than a fixed identity or self that
endures unchanged over time. (Sim, 2001, pp. 366–7)
Catherine Belsey also links the development of the subject with the
type of Romantic fixation with the interior self that I have argued is
associated with Heath (Belsey, 2002, pp. 62–3). Heath’s alignment with
a discourse of subjectivity that is predicated on the notion of a ‘unified
self’ with a fixed ‘core’ stemming from a poetic self-consciousness,

contrasts sharply with Hendrix’s rejection of such an interiority and
‘authentic’ earnestness. He is instead fashioned as a fragmented being
who adopts his identity via the choosing of a style and a process of
simulation. Hendrix is portrayed in a negative light because he repre-
sents the perceived contemporary cultural milieu in which identity is a
superficial politics of replication of style without substance. And, just as
importantly, because he also represents the cynical interrogation of the
middle-class values of the past with which the film is overtly concerned,
such as domesticity and traditional gender roles.
Ironically, Hendrix’s characterisation summarises the criticism levied
against MTV and its own participation in a postmodern identity ‘crisis’.
Since its inception in the 1980s, MTV commentators have readily applied
postmodern theory to its analysis as a cultural expression of contempo-
rary postmodern identity. For example, E. Ann Kaplan argues that:
MTV reproduces a kind of decenteredness, often called ‘postmod-

ernist’, that increasingly reflects young people’s condition in the
advanced stage of highly developed, technological capitalism evi-
dent in America . . . MTV arguably addresses the desires, fantasies
and anxieties of young people growing up in a world in which
all the traditional categories are being blurred and all institutions
questioned – a characteristic of postmodernism. (Kaplan, 1987, p. 5)
In his analysis of postmodernism and MTV, Bill Osgerby writes that

many critics often link this ‘decenteredness’ with the aesthetics of the
music video. He notes that MTV is understood to be ‘a pre-eminent
manifestation of postmodern aesthetics’ (Osgerby, 2004, p. 100)
through what Kaplan terms ‘its celebration of the look – its surfaces, tex-
tures, the self-as-commodity – [which] threatens to reduce everything to
the image/representation/simulacrum’ (Kaplan, 1987, p. 44).
Hendrix embodies such arguments through his style of music, as
his character essentially represents ‘the look’ over interiority, the
‘self-as-commodity’ rather than an expression of a stable subjectivity,
and the reduction of the self to an ‘image’, ‘representation’ and most
importantly, ‘simulacrum’. Hendrix does not have a stable subjectivity
or interiority like Heath, but rather he simulates one as a conscious rep-
lication of a rock star identity that is fashioned from a desire for fame
and money. Heath’s desire to create music is entirely divorced from the
issue of commerce as it is made clear that he has little interest in fame,
money or self-promotion.
In light of the film’s continuing preoccupation with recuperating a

perceived lost sense of stability and authenticity, it is possible to read
the negative representation of Hendrix’s persona as a criticism of the
contemporary postmodern condition in which identity is constructed
through a commercial politics of image-making. Yet, the film also relies
on the very mechanisms of simulation and commodification which it
critiques. The thematic and aesthetic distinction that is drawn between
Heath’s earnest authenticity and Hendrix’s cynical simulation of iden-
tity acts as a metaphor for a wider and ongoing contradiction within
the film. This contradiction is arguably most evident in MTV’s own
construction of the lovers’ discourse through the representation of the
‘hilltop lovers’ motif.
A large portion of the film consists of images of Cate and Heath
wandering the surrounding landscape of the Heights together as an
expression of their love. It is clear that from the initial conception of
the film, the representation of the landscape was built on a poetics of
myth. Steinman reveals that Northern California was chosen as the
modern-day setting because it ‘has a mythical resonance for me . . .
I thought it was cool to be on the far edge of America. Big Sur was in
my mind – the majesty but also the bleakness’ (O’Hare, n.d.). While the
film was actually shot in Puerto Rico, the sparsely populated and coastal
mountain landscape of the Big Sur in central California is evoked by
the chosen shooting location, which seems to be comprised of tower-
ing coastal cliffs and Sublime seaside landscapes. The imagery of the
landscape, along with Heath’s music, is mainly responsible for the
construction of a lovers’ discourse in the film. This imagery replicates
previous adaptations in their own utilisation of the landscape as a way
to tie the meaning of the novel with the imagery of Cate/Catherine and
Heath/Heathcliff as lovers wandering a Sublime landscape.
In one of the earlier scenes, we view a young Cate and Heath play-
ing in the landscape surrounding the Heights, and the image of the
two children sitting within their rocky cave quickly fades into an
image of the sea, populated by jutting rocks and partly obscured by
a hazy mist. This image, in turn, fades into a teenage Cate and Heath
kissing within the cave. Their transition from childhood play to teen
romance is turned into a more ‘serious’ discourse of transcendent love
via the aid of the Sublime imagery of the rocks, the mist and the sea.
As the scene progresses, this particular type of imagery is continually
repeated with aerial shots of the waves crashing against the rocks, or
long-distance shots of Cate and Heath standing upon the edge of a cliff,
fading into and out of images of the two frolicking along the sea and
kissing. The unspoken message is that their love exists on an elemental

and transcendent plane, outside of time and history. Such a representa-
tion undeniably stems from the familiar imagery of the 1939 film and
the subsequent adaptations that follow it. It seems that while MTV
‘modernises’ many aspects of the narrative, the notion of the lovers’
discourse and the familiar imagery accompanying it is kept the same to
once again summarise what the story ‘means’.
This particular type of imagery is repeated throughout the film at
certain intervals in an unchanging manner, as if its continual repetition
will cement it in the audience’s minds. MTV’s Wuthering Heights rein-
forces the notion that the novel has become a visual style that is easily
recognisable by the repetition of culturally familiar imagery. Yet, while
the film replicates previous adaptations, its own representation and
contextual politics raise new issues in the construction of the lovers’
discourse. It is possible to compare the construction of the ‘hilltop lov-
ers’ imagery with the film’s representation of Heath’s rise to stardom
via the Internet. We view his rise to fame in quick, piecemeal shots,
without narrative or dialogue. As Heath’s music becomes popular on the
Internet, the camera succinctly closes-in on rapid shots of fan sites, chat
rooms and online image galleries devoted to him. The audience must
make up the missing narrative links and draw the unuttered conclu-
sion that Heath’s meteoric rise from bedroom-recording to an Internet-
following has resulted in his fame. All this happens in the space of a
few short minutes and it is clear that MTV is appealing to a media-savvy
audience that is well-versed in ‘reading’ rapid successions of piecemeal
images in place of a narrative.
The use of rapid and fragmentary imagery in place of a narrative
displays the logic behind much of the film’s aesthetic representations
which, as executive producer Maggie Malina admits in an interview,
stem from MTV’s music video aesthetic (O’Hare, n.d.). As John Mundy
writes, ‘music video texts have often been described as “evoking the
story rather than telling the story”, of being concerned with implicit
narratives rather than making clear the causal connections which realist
cinema demands’ (Mundy, 1999, p. 226). Like the unspoken, visual and
rapid depiction of Heath’s rise as a rock star, the imagery of Cate and
Heath on the landscape is given to the audience as a rapid succession
of stylised and repeated images from which we are supposed to infer a
narrative of love.
While most film adaptations of Wuthering Heights utilise the imagery
of the hilltop lovers, MTV’s adaptation constructs such an imagery as
a visual style that replaces narrative. This music-video aesthetic logic
becomes increasingly evident when we compare the film’s represen-

tation of the ‘hilltop lovers’ motif with representations in previous
adaptations, in which the audience is given ample time to linger on
the images. Similarly, the camerawork in the 1939, 1985 and 1992 films
during scenes that explore the ‘hilltop lovers’ imagery is often slow-
moving and at times, completely static, further highlighting the tone
of contemplation created through such an imagery in these films. In
contrast, MTV’s representation and camerawork do not allow for such
a steady contemplation and mirror the logic of a three-minute music
video which, through the constant flow of rapid images, implies a nar-
rative that the viewer must infer, rather than clearly relating one.
It is not surprising that MTV’s music video style has been compared
to television advertisements (Goodwin, 1992, p. 94; Shuker, 2001,
pp. 190–1) and linked to the social and cultural context of what Kaplan
terms ‘the advanced stage of highly developed, technological capitalism’
(Kaplan, 1987, p. 5). Adapting a canonical nineteenth-century novel in
a manner that renders it both aesthetically and ideologically akin to
the rapid imagery of television advertisements, the 2003 film collapses
the boundaries that Romantic discourse constructed between art and
commerce.
In fact, MTV’s promotion of the film does not focus on the novel’s
cultural ‘high art’ status as a canonical text that is taught in schools
and universities, but rather emphasises its function as a consumable
commodity. For example, on MTV’s website viewers can learn about the
Wuthering Heights film while being encouraged to ‘pick up the sound-
track and DVD’ at the MTV online store and ‘once you score both,
consider your collection complete’ (MTV Networks, 2007). Following
in the wake of the film, MTV Press published a series of books based
on Wuthering Heights called the ‘Bard Academy’ novels, written by Cara
Lockwood. This series was aimed at teenagers and modernises the story
between Catherine and Heathcliff into teen drama set in an exclusive
boarding school in which a resurrected Heathcliff is a student who
falls in love with Catherine’s direct descendent, Miranda. The titles of
the books in this series include Wuthering High (Lockwood, 2006), The
Scarlet Letterman (Lockwood, 2007) and Moby Clique (Lockwood, 2008),
in which classic literature is co-opted into a clever cross-marketing cam-
paign of tie-in characters who help promote other MTV products.
Unlike the 1939 and 1992 films, whose promotional material empha-
sises issues such as historical fidelity and the ‘classic’ status of the novel
being adapted, MTV’s promotion of the film centres on locating the
adaptation within an interpretative framework that ‘updates’ not only
the narrative, location and timeframe, but also the status of the text, as
in line with teens’ buying habits. As we are reminded on the MTV web-
site, ‘toss your notes out of the window because this isn’t your English
teacher’s Wuthering Heights’ (MTV Networks, 2007). Consequently,
the film becomes aligned with the very processes of commodification
which it critiques through the character of Hendrix.
This is almost identical to Heckerling’s own modernisation of a
literary classic, Jane Austen’s Emma, in her film, Clueless (1995). Set
in a modern-day Beverly Hills high school, the film updates Austen’s
narrative by reframing it within the logic of late twentieth-century
consumer culture. Clueless self-consciously begins with a parody of teen
advertising with Cher, our modern Emma, sardonically narrating the
opening montage of slick images with the comment: ‘okay, so you’re
going, is this, like, a Noxema commercial or what?’ As Sadoff points
out, much of the film is aesthetically presented like a commercial, with
fast-moving images, careful product placements and tie-ins, evidenc-
ing ‘a media-saturated culture’s gleeful repurposing of classic culture as
content/software for advertising’ (Sadoff, 2010, p. 95). But, like MTV’s
Wuthering Heights, Heckerling’s Clueless is contradictory in tone, as it
simultaneously benefits from and critiques the mode of consumerism it
parodies and replicates. While in Clueless this contradiction is evident
through the form of stylised satire, in MTV’s Wuthering Heights it exists
as a problematic movement between authenticity and consumerism.
We have seen through the contrast between Hendrix and Heath that
there is an inherent desire throughout the film to construct binaries
between consumerism and art that contradict the film’s own reliance
on the processes of collapsing such binaries. By constructing the lovers’
discourse as a visual style of representation, the film locates the novel
within the frame of art-as-commodity. It also aligns it with various iden-
tity and gender politics that seek to re-instate nineteenth-century values
as ‘authentic’ discourses of being that stand in antithesis to contem-
porary discourses of the self as an image, or identity as a ‘style’, partly
shaped by processes of commercialisation. Indeed the very notion of a
‘true’ and transcendent love expressed through the imagery of the hill-
top lovers contradicts its postmodern representation, which performs
an interrogation of the metaphysics of love and identity. The desire to
appeal to a particular type of audience and to locate the novel within a
contemporary logic conflicts with the equally strong desire to promote
the values of the past as ‘authentic’ and in need of recuperation.
Goodwin’s discussion on what he terms ‘the two MTVs’ reveals that
such a contradiction in fact informs the production of many MTV
productions. Goodwin writes that while ‘[o]ne MTV discourse is the

nihilistic, pastiching, essentially pointless playfulness that is evoked
in postmodernist accounts of MTV’, the other is ‘responsible’, socially-
aware ‘and almost invisible in academic accounts of MTV’ (Goodwin,
1992, p. 150). In my own analysis of MTV’s Wuthering Heights I have
sought to redress some of the balance by making the socially-aware
aspects of MTV’s cultural productions evident in this film. It is pos-
sible to extend Goodwin’s argument and examine the ‘two MTVs’
in relation to the specific ways in which postmodern consciousness
negotiates what Jameson has termed ‘the cultural logic of late capital-
ism’ ( Jameson, 1991) with a desire to recuperate the ‘stability’ and
‘authenticity’ of those very aspects which have been interrogated and
increasingly commodified.
Belsey’s discussion of ‘postmodern love’ touches upon some aspects
which are particularly relevant to this argument:
To the degree that the postmodern condition implies an unbridled

consumerism . . . love is a value that remains beyond the market.
While sex is a commodity, love becomes the condition of a happiness
that cannot be bought, the one remaining object of desire that cannot
be sure of purchasing fulfilment. Love thus becomes more precious
than before because it is beyond price, and in consequence its meta-
physical character is intensified. More than ever, love has come to
represent presence, transcendence, immortality. (Belsey, 1994, p. 72)
And yet, as much as postmodern love’s ‘metaphysical character’ is

‘intensified’, Belsey points out that postmodernity:
also represents a radically sceptical attitude to metaphysics, a fun-

damental questioning of presence, transcendence, certainty and all
absolutes, the postmodern condition brings with it an incredulity
toward true love. . . . Love . . . thus occupies a paradoxical position
in postmodern culture: it is at once infinitely and uniquely desirable
on the one hand, and conspicuously naïve on the other. (Belsey,
1994, pp. 72–3)
It is important to remember that in all the instances in which MTV’s

Wuthering Heights seeks to provide discourses of recuperation of a lost
‘certainty’ in contemporary culture, such a recuperation is tied to a
discourse of love as precisely what Belsey calls a metaphysical tran-
scendence. The rewriting of Cate/Catherine as a neo-Victorian domestic
ideal and Heath/Heathcliff as a Romantic poet of interiority and sub-

jectivity is inescapably tied to a discourse of love in which the trope
of the hilltop lovers constructed in previous adaptations is intensified
in meaning by being aligned with a desire to reclaim authenticity,
certainty and stability in the face of ‘decenteredness’ and ‘unbridled
consumerism’. The fact that the film simultaneously participates in the
process of turning the text and the discourse of love into a commodity
itself does not negate the processes of recuperation that it undertakes.
Rather, the inherent contradictions that shape the film are in fact the
symptoms of its time in which paradoxical positions shape our rela-
tionships with those ‘innermost things’ ( Jones, 2006, p. 137) of love,
identity, family and home.
Love, in MTV’s Wuthering Heights, becomes a metaphor for certainty
and transcendental truth, behind which stands a politics of identity,
gender and the idea of home-as-security, all of which are perceived to
have been lost and obscured by modern life. The full implications of
both Cate and Heath’s characterisations are only evident when we con-
sider them in relation to the negotiation that occurs between the desire
to locate the narrative in modern times, and simultaneously, to align it
with the ideological politics of the past.
If we consider the issues I have touched upon in this chapter as a
whole, it becomes clear that the film both enacts and critiques those
aspects that Jameson marks as key to postmodern historiography. In
particular, MTV’s Wuthering Heights looks for the ‘breaks’ and ‘telltale
instants after which [history] is no longer the same’ and simultaneously
enacts the ‘irrevocable changes in the representation of things’ ( Jameson,
1991, p. ix). It is preoccupied with the nineteenth century as a moment
of ‘rupture’ in stability and certainty, yet is overtly concerned with the
present and bypasses historical continuity. The issues of home, belong-
ing, identity and gender, which are worked out through discourses of
heritage and historical fidelity in the 1992 film, through demystifica-
tion of heritage cinema and historical investigation in the 1985 film,
and through the construction of cultural and historical inheritance
in the 1939 film, are here worked out through a movement outside
history altogether. In doing so, MTV’s Wuthering Heights ironically con-
solidates the novel’s cultural position as a narrative of belonging and
inheritance.
MTV’s Wuthering Heights sharpens and intensifies the mythologised
aspects of the novel – mainly, the lovers’ discourse and the identity/
gender politics that surround it – by removing the issue of historical
analysis altogether and highlighting that the novel’s narrative retains
its cultural presence through its status as myth. This construction of

the novel as myth is one of the primary aspects that have contributed
to the positioning of Wuthering Heights as a significant ‘inheritance’
in Western culture. Like the perceived lost security, certainty and
authenticity, which are sought in the film through the recuperation of
the patriarchal family home, the mother and the desiring masculine
subjectivity, MTV participates in locating Wuthering Heights within a
home-discourse, in which the novel is adapted with regard to issues of
being and belonging.
6
Critical Legacies and
Contemporary Audiences
The Politics of Neo-Victorianism in ITV’s
2009 Adaptation of Wuthering Heights
In 2009, on the back of a number of Jane Austen adaptations, ITV

premiered its most recent screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
This two-part television serial was first broadcast in January of 2009
in the US, and aired on ITV1 in the United Kingdom in August 2009
(Wuthering Heights, 2009). During its air-time and subsequent release
on DVD in September of 2009, it received a considerable amount of
attention online from fans and critics alike. The vast majority of reviews
have highlighted the proliferation of film and television adaptations
of classic literature in the recent decade, undoubtedly boosted by the
popularity of the heritage cinema boom of the previous decade. Yet the
recent decade has seen adaptations being made with greater frequency
and a more acute awareness of the adaptation market as television
networks and film companies capitalise on an already established and
popular screen genre.
The difficulty for production teams in adapting classic literature in
the current age is not simply tackling the screen adaptation of long
written works, but also addressing an increasingly knowing audience.
The products of a media-saturated consumer culture, modern audiences
already come to a well-known novel with a large amount of informa-
tion about its cultural presence and critical history. Online websites and
blogs devoted to costume films and adaptations are filled with highly-
educated, media-versed viewers, aware of the kind of critical discourse
surrounding the literary classics they have studied in school and univer-
sity. The demand for more ‘modern’ approaches is strongly evident in
recent screen adaptations, which tend to rework specific literary works
through an awareness of how history and literature can be altered to
suit modern concerns and understanding.
145
ITV’s 2009 Wuthering Heights therefore belongs within a wider con-

text of contemporary developments in the adaptation of literary works
catered to modern viewers, which expands upon and moves beyond
the issues raised in MTV’s contemporaneous adaptation of the novel.
As Sadoff notes:
A new round of adaptations has begun appearing at the megaplex and

on the small screen. Even as the BBC and WGBH’s Masterpiece Theatre
treats middle-aged professional-managerial fans to new versions of
Austen, Forster, Dickens, Emily Brontë, and Elizabeth Gaskell, they
solicit a younger audience for heritage film with an updated, more
quickly paced story: dramatizers familiar to heritage devotees and
upstart millennial-generation British filmmakers now adapt classic
fiction for the graying domestic audience and the global teenage set.
(Sadoff, 2010, p. xxi)
This is precisely the target audience that ITV seeks to appeal to. The
story of Wuthering Heights is updated for a modern teenage audience
with a young, good-looking cast, explicit sexualisation of relationships,
a quick-paced storyline, and edgy music, lighting and camerawork. Yet,
it does not provide a complete modernisation like MTV’s Wuthering
Heights, but maintains the heritage cinema appeal of costumes and the
historical context of the nineteenth century for a wider ‘professional’
and educated audience.
In attempting to appeal to such an audience, ITV’s Wuthering Heights in
fact delivers one of the more complex and critically-aware screen adapta-
tions of the novel. In this respect, it is similar to other recent adaptations
of the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell and
Charlotte Brontë, which tackle issues such as women’s roles, feminism,
class, race and colonialism in their reworkings of the novels for contem-
porary audiences. Such adaptations display a sophisticated understand-
ing of the kind of critical theory that has shaped the interpretation of
classic literature. Literary and cultural criticism is no longer restricted to
the domain of scholarly enquiry as the critical debates surrounding lit-
erary works have infiltrated all aspects of culture. With the proliferation
of different media outlets and the ever-expanding online dissemination
of knowledge come more critically-aware cultural productions.
However, as many feminist critics have demonstrated in their analy-
ses of contemporary culture, the evidence of various feminist, postmod-
ernist and postcolonial theories reworked within popular culture does
not, in most cases, signal an unproblematic, progressive movement
Critical Legacies and Contemporary Audiences 147
that embraces the ideals of such theories.1 Often, these theories are
reworked in contradictory ways that demonstrate the concerns and
invested interests of those who are reworking them. This accounts for
a recent screen adaptation such as ITV’s Lost in Austen (2008), in which
a contemporary heroine who time travels to an imaginary nineteenth-
century past through the pages of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, can
utilise the language of postmodernist theory while at the same time
endorsing a highly conservative desire for traditional romance. It is no
coincidence that ITV’s Wuthering Heights displays a similarly contradic-
tory mode of critical self-awareness and romanticisation of traditional
romance and gender, as both Lost in Austen and the 2009 Wuthering
Heights adaptation were made by the same producers, Michele Buck and
Damian Timmer from Mammoth Screen.
What is particularly telling about adaptations such as ITV’s Wuthering
Heights and Lost in Austen is their location of various gender, romance,
race, class and national politics within a distinct neo-Victorian dis-
course. In fact, many recent adaptations of classic nineteenth-century
literary works manipulate the setting and timeframe of the works they
are adapting to locate their narratives within the height of Victorian
culture. Austen’s works are often re-framed within a Victorian sensibil-
ity, rather than an earlier Regency one, while ITV’s Wuthering Heights
‘updates’ Brontë’s narrative by setting it a year after the date of its first
publication, 1848, rather than the original date with which the novel
begins, 1812. The story of Wuthering Heights is thus located within a
distinct mid-Victorian society rather than a late eighteenth-century
one. While one of the reasons behind such a change could very well
be to align the Victorian ideologies of the novel more logically and
closely with the story’s setting, this change also stands as a meta-
phor for the wider neo-Victorian politics embedded throughout this
adaptation.
Recent years have seen a remarkable growth in the output of research
and analysis into the mode of neo-Victorianism in contemporary lit-
erature, film, television and popular culture.2 Arguably though, litera-
ture has tended to dominate in such studies, with critics such as Kate
Mitchell, Louisa Hadley, Marie-Luise Kohlke, Ann Heilmann, Rosario
Arias and Patricia Pulham focusing on neo-Victorian novels. The
analysis of neo-Victorianism in film and television is still an avenue of
enquiry that requires some foundational critical analysis to explore the
links between neo-Victorian fiction and the neo-Victorian screen. By
locating my analysis of ITV’s Wuthering Heights within such a critical
framework, I hope to highlight such links, and, more importantly, to
demonstrate how they shape the understanding of the adaptation of

Wuthering Heights and other classic literature in the current age.
There is no categorical definition of what constitutes a ‘neo-Victorian’
text, both on screen and in other media. However, most neo-Victorian
critics will agree that at the heart of such texts is an exploration of the
nineteenth-century past through the concerns of the present. I have
referred to neo-Victorianism numerous times in my analyses of previous
adaptations of Wuthering Heights. Neo-Victorianism is something that
has always existed, in one form or another, since the historical pass-
ing of the Victorian age. Yet, what has given rise to the recent plethora
of scholarship on neo-Victorianism in the past decade is the more
distinct critical self-awareness displayed by contemporary examples of
neo-Victorianism.
What is different about ITV’s mode of neo-Victorianism, when com-
pared with other adaptations of the novel, is its more knowing critical
sensibility, linking it strongly with the works of neo-Victorian authors
such as Sarah Waters, A. S. Byatt and Gail Jones, to name a few. These
authors utilise the Victorian past with a critical awareness that has come
to typify the cultural sensibility of the recent decade.3 Their exploration
of the nineteenth century through fiction is also a critical mode that
engages with debates surrounding gender, feminism, sexuality, post-
colonialism, race, history and memory.
As Arias and Pulham note, such neo-Victorianism does not quite fit
with other uses of the Victorian past, which have tended to be more
unproblematically nostalgic and unambiguous in their politics (Arias
and Pulham, 2010, p. xiv). An example of this lies in MTV’s Wuthering
Heights, which quite explicitly uses a neo-Victorian gender and domes-
tic politics to highlight the need for a romanticised ‘return’ to simpli-
fied Victorian ideals. Conversely, the critical mode of neo-Victorianism
found in neo-Victorian fiction incorporates a more complex engage-
ment with the Victorian past and its legacies, because we ‘no longer
seek in the past refuge from the present; instead we excavate the past
to expose its “inequities and indignities”. Our own twenty-first century
sense of nostalgia is therefore far more complex’ (Arias and Pulham,
2010, p. xiv).
Yet an adaptation such as ITV’s Wuthering Heights also complicates
and expands such a model of contemporary neo-Victorianism, because
it highlights how recent neo-Victorian texts can utilise such a criti-
cal sensibility to work for, rather than against, traditional ideologies
of gender, love, romance and history. It is for this reason that recent
scholarship on post-feminism is particularly relevant to the analysis
of contemporary neo-Victorian adaptations such as ITV’s Wuthering

Heights and Lost in Austen. Critics such as Douglas, McRobbie and Faludi
have highlighted how feminist critical discourse has been incorporated
into everyday culture in a manner that often undermines it (Douglas,
2010; McRobbie, 2009; Faludi, 1992). I argue that such a line of enquiry
can be expanded to explore other critical legacies that engage with
issues such as race, class, history, nationality, home and ‘belonging’. It
is through such a focus that I will be analysing ITV’s Wuthering Heights
and its similar screen adaptations.
The neo-Victorian Catherine: Feminine desire, identity

and sexuality in 2009
ITV’s 2009 Wuthering Heights accomplishes what few screen adapta-

tions of the novel have attempted to do: it adapts the second genera-
tion of the novel through a strong metaphorical and ideological link
between Catherine and her daughter, Cathy. Apart from the notoriously
long and detailed BBC television serials, most screen adaptations of
Wuthering Heights have tended to either eliminate the second part of the
novel or considerably reduce the focus on the second generation as a
small footnote within the ‘main’ narrative of Catherine and Heathcliff’s
‘love story’. This is why there has been little prominent discussion of
the second generation in my analysis thus far, because it quite simply
does not feature in major adaptations of the novel.
Most adaptations have followed Wyler and Goldwyn’s lead, adapt-
ing the novel through a selective narrative lens that brings Catherine
and Heathcliff to the forefront. As the adaptation writer for ITV’s serial,
Richard Bowker, notes, ‘with classic Hollywood ruthlessness they filleted
out the Cathy/Heathcliff story and ditched the rest of the plot. It’s a
great film, but it does the novel a great disservice’ (ITV, n.d.). Conversely,
Bowker’s approach was to write a screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights
that opens ‘up some of the themes’ (ITV, n.d.) carried by the relationship
between the two generations in the novel, primarily, the metaphorical
relationship between Catherine and her daughter. This is achieved via
a complex structure of flashbacks that remove Lockwood’s character
altogether and displace Nelly’s narration onto the film’s imagery and
storyline.
However, while ITV’s adaptation removes Lockwood and Nelly’s
narration, unlike MTV’s television film which similarly eliminated the
narrators, it does not write-out the themes explored through them in the
novel. For example, in the first few scenes, we view the strong hand of
Catherine’s ghost violently smashing through her bedroom window and

transferring her blood onto Heathcliff’s hands as he lies in her bed. This
is one of the few depictions of Catherine’s ghostly hand in which her
excessive energy is not subdued but actually rendered explicitly violent
and disruptive. In between, we view flashback shots of Catherine and
Heathcliff having sex on the moors. Through such imagery, ITV’s adap-
tation alludes to Brontë’s characterisation of Catherine, who disturbed
a dreaming Lockwood, awoken by her excessive energy that threatened
to destroy his clear boundaries of domesticity and femininity. This
awareness of Catherine’s position in the novel is something that is quite
unique to ITV’s serial as very few screen adaptations have shown a will-
ingness to engage with the violent, excessive, disruptive and desire-laden
identity politics that Catherine represents in the novel.
In this sense, ITV’s adaptation would seem to approach Wuthering
Heights in a similar manner to the recent 2011 film adaptation of Charlotte
Brontë’s Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga. Like ITV’s Wuthering Heights
this most recent screen version of Jane Eyre is structured through a series
of elaborate flashbacks that bring the latter half of the novel to the
beginning of the film. As screenwriter Moira Boffini explains, the logic
behind this decision is similar to Bowker’s, with both adaptation writ-
ers seeking to incorporate the latter halves of the novels more forcefully
into the narrative at the outset, to create a sense of unravelling mystery
that highlights the key themes of the novels (Focus Features, 2011).
In Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, the flashbacks allow us to view Jane’s blossom-
ing romance with Rochester through the ideological lens of what one
reviewer calls ‘Brontë’s clearsighted feminism’ (Scott, 2011). Flashbacks
of Jane being violently abused as a child and mistreated as a young
woman intermingle with her growing attraction to Rochester and pleas
for the same freedoms as men. Likewise, ITV’s Wuthering Heights uses
the flashbacks structure right from the start to highlight the theme of
Catherine’s excessive desire, associated with a narrative of literal and
metaphorical feminine ‘bleeding’, abuse, imprisonment and ‘homeless-
ness’ both in the novel and the adaptation. The scene ends, after all,
with blood on Heathcliff’s shaking hands as he begs Catherine to ‘come
home.’4
Yet, Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre does not diminish the feminism evident
in Charlotte Brontë’s novel, while ITV’s Wuthering Heights reduces
Catherine’s rebellious character, even as it calls upon it. The first few
scenes of ITV’s adaptation provide the structural and thematic logic that
underpin the entire adaptation. While, overall, the serial often raises
important critical issues regarding gender, class and racial inequalities in
the nineteenth century, such issues are nevertheless utilised in a manner

that renders them unthreatening rather than interrogative. Ultimately,
Catherine’s metaphorically disruptive hand is subsumed into the overly
familiar screen trope of the lovers’ discourse. Her violence and excessive
desire are neatly ‘explained’ by the imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff
as a pair of iconic lovers. That is, what she desires is Heathcliff, not a
‘home’, freedom or identity.
The first few scenes display a keen understanding of the critical legacy
that has shaped the interpretation of the novel from a feminist perspec-
tive. But the exploration of such a perspective is manipulated into a sim-
pler and more conservative representation of love and gender predicated
on the familiar idea of Catherine and Heathcliff embodying one of the
‘great’ love stories of Western culture in which Catherine’s identity and
individual desires are subsumed into romance. ITV’s Wuthering Heights
seeks to ‘explain away’ Catherine’s identity politics by shifting it from
the disruptive critical frame of feminist discourse to the ‘safer’ represen-
tation of conventional heterosexual romance. The demand for a more
‘modern’ understanding of the novel is safely negotiated through the
reworking of feminist discourse. This interplay between critical under-
standing and the desire to locate the adaptation of Wuthering Heights
within more typical representations runs throughout ITV’s serial.
Some of the most telling scenes in ITV’s Wuthering Heights occur
through an exploration of Cathy’s relationship with her dead mother.
While the second generation is explored in far greater detail in this adap-
tation, Hareton and Linton receive little screen time, with the main focus
being primarily on Cathy. Little moments of discovery in the novel when
Cathy acquires new knowledge about her mother are often enlarged in
significance in this particular adaptation, or, indeed, completely invented.
During a visit to Wuthering Heights, Linton is of little interest to Cathy,
unlike her adolescent infatuation with him in the book. Instead, in ITV’s
version, she is more preoccupied with her mother. Cathy’s first act is to
enter her mother’s bedroom and lovingly touch her writing carved on the
wooden panel of her bed. She then brushes her fingers in an imaginary
caress upon her mother’s face, revealed through a portrait in her bedroom.
Directly after, she is imprisoned by Heathcliff in her mother’s bedroom,
along with Nelly.
During the scenes of imprisonment that follow, we view imagery of
Heathcliff digging up Catherine’s grave and embracing her skeleton
in an act of possessive desire, intermingled with Cathy once again
caressing her mother’s carving of her name. These scenes culminate
with a movement back to the first generation as Heathcliff comes back
from his ‘tryst’ with a dead Catherine only to gaze up at her bedroom
window and examine her imprisoned daughter. Through his vision,
Cathy materialises into her mother and a direct ideological link is
formed between the two women’s imprisoned, objectified and dispos-
sessed positions.
What this serial brings through its interpretation of the second gen-
eration is a clear understanding of how mother and daughter are passed
around as possessions throughout the narrative of Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff’s desire in the novel to possess Catherine’s lifeless body as he
is legally possessing her daughter’s live one, along with his wish to see
Catherine’s portrait relocated to the Heights with her daughter, are here
reworked as far more obvious visual connections between mother and
daughter. Cathy’s identification with her mother during her imprison-
ment, and the intermingling of such an identification with Heathcliff’s
morbid need to possess Catherine’s skeletal remains, highlights to the
audience how both women are essentially the pawns of men in a battle
for ownership of female bodies, properties and houses. It is arguably
Cathy’s honest desire to engage with her dead mother and enquiring
tentative caress that is more loving and touching in such scenes, when
compared with Heathcliff’s violent need to consume Catherine’s body
through a deadly embrace.
What is also particularly significant about Cathy’s constant fixation
with her mother’s carved writing is the implication such an act raises
regarding the feminist critical legacy surrounding the interpretation of
Wuthering Heights. Cathy’s inquisitive fingers over her mother’s exces-
sive writing in the margins momentarily adopts a feminist critical per-
spective that focuses on Catherine’s subversive writing in the margins of
authoritative patriarchal texts in the original pages of the novel. Rather
than the conservative neo-Victorian mother and daughter relationship,
which is created in the 2003 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, what we
have here is a more ‘sisterly’ feminist bond that alerts the audience to
the gendered context Cathy and her mother inhabit as nineteenth-
century women.
Here, ITV’s Wuthering Heights is similar in tone to the kind of neo-
Victorian novels written by contemporary authors. As Hadley writes,
many of these authors utilise the Victorian past to explore forgotten
and marginalised female narratives (Hadley, 2010, p. 110). Hadley
argues that such a focus ‘connects to the feminist motivation which
underpins these novels; they all seek to provide alternative narratives
to official history’ (Hadley, 2010, p. 110). For example, the novels
of Waters invent feminist and homosexual Victorian narratives to
highlight what is left out from official historical records and patriarchal
culture. A novel such as Affinity (Waters, 1999) explicitly utilises the
symbolism of a woman’s diaries as an account of a forgotten feminine
history. Mitchell notes that ‘Waters has materialised the diaries for
us so that they may retrospectively inhabit and expand the Victorian
literary tradition, materialising experiences rendered invisible by
the historical record’ (Mitchell, 2010, p. 126). This is precisely what
Catherine’s writing in the margins materialises in Wuthering Heights:
traces of a forgotten and marginalised female history that exists as a
footnote within the official patriarchal text. If Brontë could only insert
this history into the margins, a contemporary author such as Waters
moves such feminine writing to the centre, making it the focal point
of her neo-Victorian fiction.
There are traces of such feminist motivations within ITV’s adaptation of
Wuthering Heights as Cathy is drawn into a sisterly bond of understanding
with her mother through her marginalised writing. Yet, while such con-
nections are often sensitively and knowingly drawn, this is where they
remain: as momentary traces, rather than a fully-fledged exploration of a
feminist position to the text. In fact, in many cases, the characterisation
of Catherine and her daughter is often negotiated through a more domi-
nant desire to place them within the conventional narrative of Wuthering
Heights as an iconic love story that comfortably fits with traditional
notions of desire, feminine identity and gender relations. Therefore, while
the adaptation raises significant critical issues that recall feminist criticism
of the novel, it does so in the service of the very ideologies of patriarchal
culture which such feminist discourse critiques and questions.
This is primarily because running through this adaptation is an
overwhelming desire to make the characters palatable to an audience
that at once demands a ‘modern’ critical take on characters, yet which
is also by now quite used to the idea of Wuthering Heights as a ‘great’
love story. Cathy’s metaphorical relationship with her mother through
the writing in the margins is ultimately allowed to play out in detail to
highlight the bond between Catherine and Heathcliff, not to endorse a
feminist interpretation of Wuthering Heights. As Cathy traces her moth-
er’s writing with her fingers and questions Nelly about her, she repeats
the name ‘Cathy Heathcliff’ numerous times, and asks Nelly why her
mother wrote this name over and over again. Rather than the prolif-
eration of multiple subversive identities that Lockwood encountered
in the novel, the audience is instead presented with a single identity
that is tied to a narrative of iconic romance. Therefore, while the scenes
of Cathy discovering her mother evidence a distinct engagement with
feminist critical discourse surrounding Wuthering Heights, the end result

of such an exploration is not the promotion of a feminist position
within the film.
What this highlights is how complex, varied and contradictory ITV’s
mode of neo-Victorianism is. At once, it presents an audience with the
kind of critical awareness of gender politics that can be found in the
feminist neo-Victorian fiction of an author such as Waters, yet which also
ultimately collapses into the conservative neo-Victorian gender manifes-
tations that can be found in MTV’s Wuthering Heights. This ambiguous
mode of neo-Victorianism is a trend that can be found in other recent
screen adaptations, as many display a similarly contradictory mode
of engagement with critical feminist legacies of classic literature. For
example, the BBC’s 2006 version of Jane Eyre employs a similar mode of
representation.
When Gilbert and Gubar analysed Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in The
Madwoman in the Attic, they examined the first Mrs Rochester, Bertha
Mason, as ‘Jane’s dark double’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984, p. 360). In doing
so, they also opened up the interpretative possibilities of the Gothic
undertones of the novel in relation to feminist analyses of nineteenth-
century literature. However, the novel’s representation of female Gothic
entrapment and madness has rarely been adapted on screen in ways that
explore Jane’s Gothic ‘doubling’ and ideological relationship with Bertha
Mason. Screen adaptations of Jane Eyre have often drawn a distinct line
between Bertha and Jane as opposites rather than doubles, with a nota-
ble exception being the BBC’s 2006 television serial, directed by Susanna
White (Jane Eyre, 2006).
This particular version of Jane Eyre evidences an awareness of feminist
analysis of Bertha and Jane. This begins through the representation of
Jane’s childhood abuse and her own violent passion as a child. The first
scene of the BBC’s 2006 Jane Eyre depicts a young Jane daydreaming
through her books, in which she imagines herself wandering a vast desert
draped in a bright red scarf. Immediately after, we see this red colour her
forehead as blood when she is beaten by her cousin and accused of being
‘mad’ herself for retaliating. Within the context of the abuse she endures
in her aunt’s home, the first daydreaming scene is a self-conscious
attempt to highlight to a knowing audience how Jane responds to various
inequalities in her life though outbursts of passion, symbolised by bright
red clothing.
Such passion is repressed as Jane enters womanhood and attempts
to embody ideal Victorian middle-class femininity, yet the red scarf
continues to haunt her. She views it several times carelessly swinging
from the window of the attic in which Bertha Mason is imprisoned. The
first time she glimpses this scarf, Jane smiles in a type of curiosity but
also, recognition. There are clear symbolic links drawn between Jane’s
rebellious feminist passion in the novel and the ungovernable passion
of the first Mrs Rochester. Jane is aligned with Bertha’s symbolically
red outbursts in the BBC’s 2006 adaptation, creating a critical nexus of
meaning that alerts the audience to feminist critical interpretations of
Jane’s Gothic double.
Yet, like ITV’s 2009 Wuthering Heights, this recent adaptation of Jane
Eyre only hints at feminist interpretations, rather than fully explor-
ing them. While the link between Jane and Bertha is clearly made, it
remains in the shadowy periphery of the narrative, and is not worked
out in a manner that explores the significance of such a link to Jane’s
character. Bertha, in many ways, enacts Jane’s own latent anxieties
about her role within Rochester’s house and her social status. Feminist
critics such as Gilbert and Gubar have explored their relationship in
relation to Jane’s direct pleas within the pages of the novel to widen
the scope of middle-class women’s experiences and lot in life (Gilbert
and Gubar, 1984, pp. 336–71). These are not aspects that are explored
in the 2006 adaptation, despite the critical attention to symbolic
details. Coming away from this adaptation, there is the distinct sense
that such features are added to make the storyline more involving to
a knowing audience, but ultimately, also unthreatening to the general
focus on the romance between Jane and Rochester. While the adapta-
tion seems to utilise feminist critical tropes, it does not seek to promote
a feminist position.
Quite strikingly, ITV’s 2009 Wuthering Heights also utilises the sym-
bolism of red clothing, constructing perhaps unintended links between
this adaptation and the BBC’s 2006 Jane Eyre. Catherine is dressed in
many red pieces of clothing, particularly during her trips to the moors
with Heathcliff. The symbolism of red clothing is explicitly tied to the
sexualisation of her character in the serial, the result of which is a pecu-
liarly modernised yet unthreatening Catherine whose contradictory
desires are tamed and ‘explained’ via sexual desire.
There are numerous, quite showy, sex scenes in this adaptation,
between Catherine and Heathcliff, and Catherine and Edgar. Often, they
are used as forms of deliberate explanations for Catherine’s behaviour
and motivations. For example, after Catherine returns from her stay at
the Grange and fights with Heathcliff, they have sex. Obviously used as
a sign of Catherine’s renewed affections, the sex scene also simplifies her
attachment to Heathcliff as a conventional love story. Similarly, when
Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights after Catherine has married

Edgar, we view Edgar and Catherine having passionate sex, consummat-
ing their marriage. The very next day, Heathcliff confronts Catherine on
the moors for having sex with her husband and betraying him.
The insertion of explicit sex scenes into the narrative may modernise
the story for a contemporary audience, but it also simplifies and paci-
fies the subversive elements of Catherine’s character. Her attachment to
Heathcliff in the novel is far more complex and contradictory. Heathcliff
often symbolises for her the inequalities and ideological limitations she
faces as a middle-class woman. As we saw in Chapter 1 her attachment
to Heathcliff is tied to an identity politics in which he acts as a mirror
to her own social concerns, rather than an object of bodily desire. In
ITV’s Wuthering Heights, the desires she expresses throughout the novel
for freedom, for ‘home’, for the moors and for Heathcliff are removed
from their political context of nineteenth-century class and gender and
are instead recast as a universal tale of thwarted sexual desire.
Ostensibly, the sexualisation of Catherine’s character seeks to also rep-
resent what is left out of Victorian novels, what is implied and alluded
to, but never said. Indeed, an author like Waters utilises such a strategy,
introducing explicit sexuality within her neo-Victorian novels, including
Tipping the Velvet (Waters, 1998), Affinity (Waters, 1999) and Fingersmith
(Waters, 2002). However, Waters’ sexualisation of her nineteenth-
century characters is inherently politicised, as she utilises sexual desire
to explore gender and sexual inequalities within the nineteenth-century
and our own current age, including the social position of women and
homosexuality. She also self-consciously utilises sexual desire as a criti-
cal mode that questions how we interpret history and who gets to tell
history. In ITV’s mode of sexualised neo-Victorianism, sex is not a
critical questioning tool, but a pacifying narrative structure that closes-
off the interrogative possibilities of Catherine’s character and seeks to
show that behind her actions lies a simple physical need for the man
she loves.
What ITV’s Wuthering Heights evidences is a post-feminist gender
politics that is quite different to the blatantly reactionary post-feminism
found in MTV’s Wuthering Heights, or indeed, the masculinist anti-feminist
backlash found in Kosminsky’s 1992 film. Rather, we have entered a
more complex form of post-feminism in recent years. McRobbie argues
that the current ‘social and cultural landscape’ of modern Western soci-
eties has been ‘marked by a new kind of anti-feminist sentiment which
is different from simply being a question of backlash against the seem-
ing gains made by feminist activities and campaigns in an earlier period’
(McRobbie, 2009, p. 1). Instead, ‘elements of feminism have been taken

into account, and have been absolutely incorporated into political and
institutional life’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 1), as well as cultural productions.
Catch-words such as ‘freedom’, ‘choice’, ‘equality’ and ‘empowerment’
have infiltrated everyday language (McRobbie, 2009, p. 1). Feminist crit-
ics such as McRobbie, Douglas and Whelehan have analysed how this
seeming ‘victory’ of feminist discourse within wider culture is actually
a form of what McRobbie terms ‘faux-feminism’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 1)
that pretends to speak for the interests of women as it simultaneously
undermines them (Whelehan, 2000; Douglas, 2010).
The realm of women’s interests has shifted from the political move-
ments that sought real change in various practical aspects of women’s
lives to a pacified pseudo-feminism, which bypasses feminism’s interrog-
ative motivations to suggest that women are responsible for their own
conditions through individual ‘choice’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 13). For
modern women, the focus has shifted from the realm of political action
to individual responsibility; a position which is inherently problematic
in a culture where ‘inequality, though changed, remains unequivocal
and substantial’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 2). McRobbie’s detailed analysis
of contemporary culture in modern Western countries lucidly supports
her thesis that ‘the spectre of feminism is invoked so that it might be
undone’ as young women and girls are invited to move ‘beyond femi-
nism, to a more comfortable zone where women are now free to choose
for themselves’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 17). The point is, this is an illusion:
while women enjoy more freedoms in the current age, their choices
are still limited by specific gender ideologies inherited from the past.
Similarly, as backlash rhetoric has been shaped into a more complex
form of post-feminism, our modern culture has also reshaped the forms
of gender inequalities experienced in the current age.
One line of enquiry which McRobbie traces in the new mode of post-
feminism is the replacing of feminist politics with ‘the field of sexual-
ity’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 5). Music videos, popular ‘chick-lit’, romance
novels, films, fashion and advertising are all populated by an increasingly
sexualised female body that stands as a symbol of women’s ‘liberation’
(McRobbie, 2009, p. 5; Whelehan, 2000, pp. 37–57). Sex and sexual
pleasure have become ideological markers of modern femininity that
have been cast in a post-feminist role of individual freedom. The problem
with such an image of femininity is of course that it belies the fact that
women’s choices are still governed by unequal ideologies of gender, that
objectification of women occurs on a daily basis and that there are often
dangerous consequences for the sexualisation of the female body. But,
perhaps more importantly, for my analysis of ITV’s Wuthering Heights,

such an image of modern femininity also obfuscates the fact that wom-
en’s sexual pleasure and their sexualised bodies are, in Whelehan’s words,
‘prone to appropriation for essentially patriarchal ends’ (Whelehan, 2000,
p. 45). More often than not, the sexualised female body is used to under-
mine feminist politics via its alignment with a traditional model of gender
relations in which women’s sexuality fits neatly with conservative ideas of
romance, desire and relationships.
It is my argument that the kind of neo-Victorian sexual and gender
politics that is evident in many contemporary screen adaptations of
classic literature often utilises the language and symbolism of feminism
in a similar manner to neo-Victorian literature, yet with oppositional
ends. The heroines of neo-Victorian novels such as Jones’ Sixty Lights
or the numerous novels of Waters embody a deliberate mode of sexual
desire that complicates traditional ideas regarding gender and explicitly
question the patriarchal logic of identity that underpins such ideas.
For example, Jones’ Victorian heroine, Lucy Strange, expresses sexual
desire in a manner that complicates traditional notions of a stable
and gendered identity, suggesting that we are instead the products of
cultural change and systems of power (Jones, 2004). Conversely, adap-
tations such as ITV’s Wuthering Heights, the BBC’s 2006 Jane Eyre and
ITV’s Lost in Austen utilise imagery of feminine sexuality and the sym-
bolism of feminist discourse in a manner that typifies contemporary
post-feminism, which subdues feminism and, to use Michèle Roberts’
words, makes it ‘unthreatening, nice. Less a politics than a behaviour’
(quoted in Whelehan, 2000, p. 92). Indeed, Catherine’s pacified charac-
ter through her sexualised body is a more complexly worked-out post-
feminist politics that can be found in a simpler form in Lost in Austen.
In ITV’s Lost in Austen, the twenty-first-century heroine, Amanda
Price, embodies a type of endearing, Bridget Jones character who out-
wardly seems to be a free, modern woman, but who ultimately con-
firms for her female audience that true love and happiness can only
come when contemporary women ‘decide’ to bypass feminism. That
is, Amanda’s ‘freedom’ is a conservative politics of choosing to go back
to the nineteenth century to live happily ever after with a mythical
Darcy whom she self-consciously fashions from popular culture. In one
memorable scene, she asks Darcy to take his shirt off and swim in the
lake, mimicking Colin Firth’s famous performance of Darcy in the BBC’s
popular 1995 adaptation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. As she gazes
at him with overt desire, she exclaims that she’s having a ‘postmod-
ern moment’. Her obvious sexual desire is linked to a self-consciously
knowing mode of contemporary postmodernism in which identity is

fashioned from various inherited roles of femininity and masculin-
ity. Linking a self-conscious postmodern irony with Amanda’s desire
for what Whelehan has termed a ‘retro-sexist’ mode of gender politics
(Whelehan, 2000, p. 11), not only takes the ‘sting’ out of the interrogative
possibilities of her knowing position, but also highlights how contem-
porary post-feminism hides behind an ironic knowing sensibility in
many recent adaptations.
In her analysis of contemporary Jane Austen screen adaptations, Jones
notes that what Austen’s adapted heroines share with the heroines of
modern ‘chick-lit’ books is precisely this intermingling of overt sexual
desire with a ‘postmodern irony’ that together, act as a strategy to close-
off any critique of the still dominant ideology of patriarchal gender.
Examining ‘chick-lit’ novels such as The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the
City and Bridget Jones’s Diary, alongside modern Austen screen adapta-
tions, Jones argues that despite the often knowing sensibility of con-
temporary adaptations of Austen’s heroines, ‘any pretence of critique is
abandoned – other than by invoking the always already available get-
out clause of postmodern irony’ (Jones, 2010, p. 69). Amanda, with her
‘postmodern moment’ as she sentimentalises an archaic gender politics
is indeed another version of Bridget Jones who calls herself a ‘feminist’
while simultaneously proclaiming that ‘there is nothing so unattrac-
tive to a man as strident feminism’ and so proceeds to mould herself
into what she thinks men want: ‘unthreatening’ femininity (Fielding,
1996, p. 18).
ITV’s Catherine is not very different from such heroines. While she
is not modernised or depicted as a twenty-first-century heroine, she is
sexualised and represented through a knowing sensibility that stands
in place of sustained critique. Like Amanda Price and Bridget Jones,
Catherine’s feminine identity politics is closed-off by a conservative
and repeated model of love. By subsuming the critical possibilities of
the representation of her character into the familiar lovers’ discourse,
ITV’s Wuthering Heights enacts the same gender politics that is evident
in many contemporary screen adaptations and ‘chick-lit’ novels, includ-
ing the previously discussed popular teen romance series, the Twilight
saga. As Jones quite rightly points out, these familiar ‘love plots’ define
such adaptations as ‘a discourse of containment rather than resistance’
that ‘characterises late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture’
(Jones, 2010, p. 73). Despite her ambivalent desires in Brontë’s novel,
Catherine offers numerous modes of resistance that can and should
be explored within the current context. In 2009, Catherine may be a
more complex and knowing character on screen, but she is still waiting
to fully enter the interrogative mode of critique that Rivette dared to
explore in a previous and lesser-known screen adaptation of Wuthering
Heights.
Reconsidering the modern hero: Heathcliff’s cultural,

critical and literary inheritance
Despite the attention given to the second generation and Catherine’s

character in ITV’s Wuthering Heights, it is primarily Heathcliff’s character
who dominates the production, as is typical among screen adaptations
of the novel. While ITV’s Heathcliff follows from his screen predeces-
sors, being represented through a politics of deep Romantic interiority,
the focus also moves outward to his social context in the nineteenth
century. As such, ITV’s Wuthering Heights presents us with a more com-
plex interpretation of Heathcliff that is reliant upon an implicit under-
standing of the critical discourse surrounding his character. Yet, such a
critical understanding collapses into the familiar mode of a venerated
masculine identity that defies context and circumstances. The interplay
between utilising familiar modes of representation and examining the
often neglected cultural context within which Brontë’s Heathcliff is
shaped affords a significant example of both the possibilities and limi-
tations of engagement with critical discourse in contemporary adapta-
tions of classic literature.
The opening scene of ITV’s adaptation reveals an extreme close-
up of Heathcliff’s tortured face as he is bathed in shadows and the
romantic half-light from the candle he clutches in his hand. This
scene is strongly reminiscent of Fiennes’ similarly candle-lit, tortured
masculinity in Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff here takes the
place of Lockwood, who in the novel is the one lying in Catherine’s
bed at the beginning of the narrative. While removing Lockwood’s
character allows the focus to shift to the second generation through
a flashback narrative structure, it is a structure that is co-ordinated
around Heathcliff’s perspective. It is through his gaze that Catherine
and Cathy are merged into a metaphorical relationship, and through
his consciousness and memories that the audience is introduced to the
character of Catherine. Like Kosminsky’s Heathcliff, ITV’s Heathcliff is
the ‘author’ of the narrative. The same scene that begins the adaptation
is repeated at the end, mirroring the structure of the 1992 adaptation in
which the character of Heathcliff frames the story of Wuthering Heights
as implicit narrator, central focus and the primary source of audience
sympathy. It also sets the logic for much of Heathcliff’s ongoing strug-
gle as inherently tied to Catherine and their love, rather than the mul-
tiple discourses of race, class and nationality with which this struggle
is aligned in the novel.
This first scene relies on an audience’s familiarity with the cultural
persona of Heathcliff as a tortured hero to the extent that it barely war-
rants much explanation in terms of imagery or dialogue. A few shots of
Heathcliff mumbling in excessive anguish, a few close-ups of his dark
eyes tantalisingly framed by candlelight and shadows, and a few glimpses
of his dishevelled black hair are all it takes to place Tom Hardy, the actor
who plays Heathcliff, within the well-known masculine persona of
Emily Brontë’s infamous ‘romantic’ hero. Hearkening back not only to
Fiennes but also Olivier, Hardy’s Heathcliff begins on a familiar note.
It is within such a frame of representation that we are introduced to
Catherine and the second generation. In a sense, Cathy’s relationship
with her mother could never truly be explored from a more interroga-
tive perspective since the first scene alerts the audience to the dominant
mode of romanticisation that is ultimately endorsed in the adaptation.
And yet, it is undeniable that within such a frame lie complex and con-
tradictory representations that often conflict with this dominant mode.
They are worked out as interrogative possibilities that have not gone
unnoticed by reviewers.
For example, as one reviewer notes:
After so many previous adaptations of Wuthering Heights, it’s good to

see a new one that still manages to surprise the viewer. Against the
isolation displayed in the past . . . this adaptation takes Catherine,
Heathcliff and some of the cast to Gimmerton and, believe it or not,
there are even extras around: a church congregation, a market day,
are all crowded with people and this, in our opinion, is one brilliant
addition. There are several scenes which, though not in the book,
might serve to give some background to the story: Heathcliff fight-
ing with the village boys, for instance. (Remotely Connected/PBS,
2009).
ITV places the story within a wider social and cultural context, and
certain scenes move away from the isolation with which previous
adaptations have approached the novel. Ever since Wyler’s 1939 film
popularised the idea of Wuthering Heights as a timeless myth, audiences
have become familiar with the idea that the novel is best represented by
a pair of lovers isolated from the rest of the world and their immediate
social context. As we have seen, this is a constant repetitive theme that

runs through nearly all of the screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
In ITV’s version, there is a discernable shift from such a perspective,
even as it inevitably prevails.
Tellingly, such a shift occurs primarily to highlight Heathcliff’s social
position. Scenes from Heathcliff’s childhood are invented to allow the
audience to understand his tenuous position in terms of class and racial
ideologies in the nineteenth century. In the first few scenes, as Heathcliff
stares at an imprisoned Cathy from the bars of a bedroom window and
through his gaze, materialises her into Catherine, the camera suddenly
focuses on his agonised face and provides another startling close-up of
his eyes. Then, the focus on the second generation shifts to the first gen-
eration through flashback scenes that take us directly into Heathcliff’s
childhood. The first dialogue we hear through a voiceover is Earnshaw
stating ‘I found the boy on the streets of Liverpool.’ Then, the close-
up image of Heathcliff’s adult face dissolves into a young Heathcliff
standing in stoic silence, gazed upon by the inhabitants of Wuthering
Heights. We are positioned to sympathise with Heathcliff immediately,
as the hostile gazes he encounters while standing in humiliated silence
are quickly followed by numerous scenes that explicitly highlight his
marginal status.
One scene depicts Nelly scrubbing him harshly in a bath, which he
once again endures in noble silence. Both her words and actions are
stinging, for while the scrubbing brush against his skin rubs him raw,
she calls him a ‘gypsy brat’ and questions Earnshaw’s sanity in bringing
such a being to Wuthering Heights. Then, Heathcliff is taken to church
along with the family and must endure a barrage of further hostile
gazes from all members of the local community. Standing tall and dark
amidst them, he is presented as a silent, noble savage. The hypocrisy
of the community and of the church is notably highlighted for while
everyone around him is singing Sublime prayers their gazes and actions
contradict such pious sentiments with petty, narrow-minded judgment.
The scene closes with local gossip as people wonder if he is Earnshaw’s
illegitimate son, while the priest makes it clear to Earnshaw that a
‘bastard’ is not welcome in his church.
There could not be a clearer representation of Heathcliff’s margin-
alised position. He is essentially cast aside by ‘proper’ middle-class
society in every possible way: his birth is questioned, his racial status
is commented upon and his lower class origins from the dirty streets
of Liverpool are a black mark against him. Far gentler and kinder than
Brontë’s Heathcliff, ITV gives the audience a detailed glimpse into his
childhood to suggest that were it not for the prejudices of those around
him, he would have grown up into a commendable man. Unlike
Brontë’s amoral Heathcliff, ITV is at pains to depict Heathcliff’s moral
compass as entirely intact in childhood, only to be skewed by racial,
class and religious injustices.
No where is this more evident than in the fight scene to which the
reviewer previously alluded. Here, Heathcliff is shown fighting with
several local village boys while Hindley watches on. Earnshaw quickly
breaks up the fight and takes Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine into his
study to question them about it. Catherine comes to Heathcliff’s defence,
telling her father that Heathcliff was defending Earnshaw from local gos-
sip about rumours that he fathered an illegitimate son. Earnshaw quickly
realises that Hindley is responsible for this gossip and reveals to his son
that it is not true. This invented narrative scene, in which unanswered
questions in the original novel are neatly tied up, also seeks to provide
simple character motivations and align the audience’s sympathy on one
side: Heathcliff’s. His nobility in defending Earnshaw against untrue
vicious gossip and his further refusal to speak up and rightly place the
blame on Hindley, even if he knows he is about to receive a beating as
punishment, all construct his morality as resolutely strong and stoic, like
Olivier’s in the 1939 film. Standing as a tall, silently suffering column
of masculinity, he provides the audience with yet another masculine
‘parade of pain’, which is later evident through more extreme physical
suffering when he becomes an adult.
From these scenes it is quite evident that ITV’s contextualising of
Heathcliff’s character is quite different in tone from Rivette’s own
contextualisation of his character as Roch. Rivette’s representation of
Heathcliff is distinctly unromantic and is more concerned with high-
lighting social injustices to explore the underlying ideologies of power,
nationality and identity latent in both the original novel and his own
specific context of 1980s France. ITV’s 2009 Heathcliff however, is placed
within a context to highlight the romanticised legacy of his character,
as inherited from previous adaptations. And, just as importantly, such a
subsuming of contextual analysis into a romanticised ‘parade of pain’ is
ultimately tied to Catherine within another representation of conserva-
tive gender binaries in which masculine subjectivity is explored against
the backdrop of feminine marginalisation.
Yet, it would be inaccurate to dismiss his characterisation in ITV’s
adaptation as simplistically romantic, as there are moments in which the
potential for a more complex critical engagement with his character can
be felt. Such scenes often revolve around his relationship with Hindley;
a relationship that has been explored through critical discourse in

fields such as postcolonialism and Marxism, but which has been largely
ignored in screen adaptations.5 In contrast to previous adaptations of
Wuthering Heights, ITV’s 2009 serial not only examines the relationship
between the two men but also, its ideological implications.
In Eagleton’s landmark Marxist analysis of Wuthering Heights he argues
that Hindley and Heathcliff are entered into a power-based relation-
ship stemming from social class, in which Hindley ‘withdraws culture
from Heathcliff as a mode of domination’ (Eagleton, 2005, p. 104) while
‘Heathcliff acquires culture as a weapon. He amasses a certain amount of
cultural capital in his two years’ absence in order to shackle others more
effectively, buying up the expensive commodity of gentility in order
punitively to re-enter the society from which he was punitively expelled’
(Eagleton, 2005, p. 104). ITV’s Wuthering Heights shows an awareness of
such an argument, devoting some screen time to displaying precisely the
kind of power relationship that Eagleton analyses, based on class, cultural
capital and money.
Previous adaptations have typically glossed over the intricate rela-
tionship between Hindley and Heathcliff, limiting any exploration to
quick shots of Hindley beating Heathcliff as a boy and a man. There
is often very little exploration of the deeper ideological significance of
such abuse and it seems to be added purely as a way to elicit sympathy
for Heathcliff, or to explore his deep devotion to Catherine. In ITV’s
2009 adaptation however, Catherine is momentarily removed from the
logic of the relationship between the two men and more time is spent
exploring the contextual motivations of social and economic class in
certain scenes.
One such pivotal scene occurs when Heathcliff is shown gambling
with Hindley and other neighbourhood men after he returns to Wuthering
Heights from his two years’ absence. This scene enacts the issues raised
in Eagleton’s analysis quite explicitly. As the men exchange and com-
pete for money, the ‘civilised’ tone of the gathering suddenly becomes
brutal when Heathcliff suggests to Hindley that they play their own
personal game. If Hindley wins, he can have all his land and Wuthering
Heights back from Heathcliff, who is now legally the owner of both. If
Heathcliff wins, he wants to take Hindley ‘into the yard, strip your shirt
and flog you, just as you flogged me.’ When Hindley hesitates and the
other men around the table become uncomfortable, Heathcliff reminds
them that he ‘pumps’ them ‘full of cash’ each night so they can play,
and orders them to stay. Baiting Hindley further, he asks, ‘what do you
say Hindley? My cash, against the skin on your back?’ Hindley agrees
and promptly loses, causing the men to come to his defence, begging
Heathcliff not to whip him in front of Hareton. Heathcliff, amused by
their pity, turns to one man and asks him ‘are you a good man? I could
have been a good man once, but then I met Hindley.’
The screenwriter and director of ITV’s Wuthering Heights are here quite
literally specifying the deeper logic of Heathcliff’s revenge. Separated
from the conventional explanation of thwarted desire for Catherine,
his hatred is instead politicised as a drama of class, social status and
economic privilege. If Hindley’s abuse of Heathcliff during his youth
was the product of an unequal class system and Heathcliff’s precarious
economic position, Heathcliff’s revenge is similarly explained through
the drama of his changed economic status. After all, it is explicitly
clear in such a scene that Heathcliff’s power over the men and Hindley
resides in his entering the sphere of ‘culture’ through an elevated social
position and the flow of ‘cash’. Using his money as a weapon of destruc-
tion and revenge, ITV’s Heathcliff is here a politicised portrayal of his
character through the legacy of critical theory.
The line ‘my cash, against the skin on your back’ has other critical
implications, besides class. It also suggests a legacy of oppression that is akin
to slavery. Many critical analyses of Heathcliff’s character have examined
the modes of oppression he endures through the context of nineteenth-
century imperialism (see Stoneman, 2000, pp. 150–5). For example, in her
postcolonial analysis of Wuthering Heights, Meyer argues that while critics
such as ‘David Wilson, Arnold Kettle and Terry Eagleton have accounted
for the threatening power of Wuthering Heights by reading Heathcliff as
a representative of the discontented working class’, within the ‘inter-
pretative context of imperialist history’, Heathcliff is actually aligned
more closely with ‘the “dark races” beyond the margins of England’
(Meyer, 2003, pp. 483–4). Rather than trying to mount a case for what
type of oppression Heathcliff represents, I am more concerned with
how Meyer’s argument can be felt through overt symbolism in ITV’s
Wuthering Heights.
Meyer’s main argument is that Heathcliff represents a form of ‘reverse
colonization of England’ (Meyer, 2003, p. 493). ITV enacts such a ‘reverse
colonization’ through Heathcliff’s relationship with Hindley. His state-
ment ‘my cash, against the skin on your back’ reverses the logic of
British imperialism in which the skin off the colonised people’s backs
was literally sacrificed for ‘cash’ and economic exploitation. Similarly,
when Heathcliff ponders about what form of physical revenge he will
enact upon Hindley, he focuses intently on the disciplining instrument
of the whip, explaining to the other men in the room what kind of
whip does more damage to the flesh. More than just sadism, the already
politicised representational context created through the gambling scene
turns such a fetishistic focus on the whip into something far deeper in
meaning. The symbolism of the whip here not only represents personal
revenge but also hearkens back to a well-known history of slavery in
which the whip was a tool of cultural, national, economic and political
oppression.
ITV’s Heathcliff utilises the weapons of both the British Empire and
the middle classes in his reversal of the power dynamic he encountered
as a young boy. In such a scene, we catch glimpses of the interrogative
possibilities of this adaptation. Yet, as is often the case throughout ITV’s
Wuthering Heights, such possibilities are never fully worked out as a coher-
ently politicised interpretation of the novel. Rather, as soon as the film
raises such debates, it effectively closes them off. Heathcliff’s character is
not allowed to linger for long in such a critical interpretative context but
rather the adaptation moves on and shifts the focus to the wider, more
dominant mode of representation: the Romantic, tortured hero.
If Brontë’s Heathcliff mocked Isabella for picturing within him a roman-
tic, story-book hero, ITV’s Heathcliff, like Olivier and Fiennes before
him, enacts such a hero as his ‘authentic’ self. In fact, ITV tones down
Heathcliff’s physical violence toward women and lacks the overt sad-
ism evident in Kosminsky’s 1992 film. When he consummates his
marriage to Isabella, it is clearly not depicted as rape. Removed from
the sadistically brutal Heathcliff who abused Isabella, hung her puppies
and violently beat her, ITV’s Heathcliff is instead depicted as a deeply
wounded man. As they make love, he asks her, in a soft, defeated voice,
not to look at him. The audience is left to infer that he is thinking of
Catherine. Rather than being violently raped, it is Isabella’s pride which
is here wounded. It seems as if, both aesthetically and morally, ITV
fashions Heathcliff’s persona from the softer side of Fiennes’ Heathcliff
to make him both more politically correct and simultaneously highly
romanticised. Paraded through an array of facial close-ups, long dark
locks and a discourse of romantic suffering, Hardy’s Heathcliff is the
epitome of the tortured masculinity evident in Fiennes’ performance,
who he yearns for Catherine in his poeticised letter scene. Any violence
he enacts is primarily aimed at Hindley, and our sympathies are clearly
directed toward him in this battle between the two men.
In the same way as ITV’s Wuthering Heights utilises the imagery and
language of feminism only to undermine it, so too does it utilise a
politicised critical understanding of Heathcliff’s character, only to locate
him within the familiar ideological terrain of a transcendent, internally
coherent masculinity that mysteriously bypasses the problematic gen-

der and identity concerns the novel raises through him. His relationship
with Hindley does not lead us to critically examine how his environ-
ment shapes ideas about masculinity and his identity, but rather, it
simplistically compels us to value his ‘true’ Romantic self, expressed
through tortured love and seemingly removed from the wider concerns
of class, social status, nationality and race. For all his modernisation,
‘updating’ and softening, there is little to distinguish ITV’s Heathcliff
from previous incarnations.
Even within a highly self-conscious, modern adaptation, that evi-
dently displays awareness of the novel’s critical legacy, the idea of locat-
ing Heathcliff within a more complex mode of masculinity can only
be glimpsed in hints, rather than a full deviation from previous adap-
tations. Heathcliff’s latest screen incarnation demonstrates the con-
tinuing reluctance to, in Whelehan’s words, approach masculinity and
masculine identity as ‘constructions – as roles which may emanate from
certain biological givens but which are negotiable in their enactment’
(Whelehan, 2000, p. 125 [emphasis in original]). As long as Heathcliff’s
masculinity is systematically represented as non-constructed, turning
his violent behaviour into a crudely romanticised drama of passionate
love, he will continue to be the hero of a conservative mode masculinity,
immune to the changing and varied influences of context.
Wuthering Heights beyond postmodernism: Exploring

the contemporary significance of neo-Victorianism in
the ‘lovers’ discourse’
As with most screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights, ITV’s serial relies

on an overriding fascination with the trope of the lovers’ discourse.
Images of Catherine and Heathcliff as adult lovers on the moors, rep-
resenting a timeless and transcendent love story, typically dominate
in this adaptation. What is striking about ITV’s representation of such
familiar imagery is the way that it combines and extends previous screen
adaptations of the novel. Stylistically, the lovers’ discourse imagery is
constructed through many of the same visual techniques evident in
MTV’s Wuthering Heights: quick-paced camerawork, a music-video aes-
thetic of short and fragmentary images, slick, fast-paced music and a
self-consciously exaggerated Gothic visual mode that teeters on the edge
of postmodern irony.
The first few images are illustrative. The introductory credits roll
against fast-moving images of the landscape, glimpsed through speedy
and jerky camerawork similar to a hand-held camera. Mimicking MTV’s

opening sequence and quick-paced camerawork, ITV also introduces
equally fast-paced music that beats in a rushed, rhythmic drum,
echoing an accelerated heartbeat. As the camera suddenly closes in
on Heathcliff’s face in an extreme close-up, we are quickly introduced
to a further succession of short and quick images that flash before
our eyes through his memories: Catherine standing in isolation on
the moors, Catherine and Heathcliff making love on the moors. Like
MTV’s representation of the lovers’ discourse, ITV’s utilisation of the
familiar imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors relies on
a media-versed audience that is able to infer a narrative through the
rapid succession of piecemeal, fragmentary shots. Through the quick
flash of a few images, we are supposed to understand that Wuthering
Heights is a tragic love story. Such techniques not only rely on a certain
kind of ‘modern’ audience, attuned to a music-video mode of representa-
tion, but also, an audience that is already familiar with the idea of what
Wuthering Heights ‘means’ in popular culture.
Added to this modernised aesthetic is an exaggerated Gothic style,
which relies on a popular clichéd visual language of spooky lighting
and sparse landscapes. One reviewer has commented on director Coky
Giedroyc’s use of an ‘over-the-top gothic’ aesthetic ‘at every opportunity’
(Wiegand, 2009). But what this reviewer terms an unintended visual
‘cheesiness’ (Wiegand, 2009) is in fact an intentional construction. In a
promotional interview with the actor who plays Edgar, Andrew Lincoln,
he reveals that Giedroyc explicitly sought to make this particular adap-
tation of Wuthering Heights ‘modern’ by utilising a self-reflexive, ironic
use of a familiar cinematic genre. Lincoln notes that Giedroyc wanted
to make Wuthering Heights similar to a Gothic ‘western’, drawing on the
visual appeal of a ‘beautiful’ and isolated landscape (ITV, n.d., p. 10).
This sense of stark isolation is strongly evident in the numerous scenes
depicting Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors, highlighting that
despite the adaptation’s incorporation of a sense of context through
the introduction of village life, it nevertheless retreats into the mythic
romanticism of previous adaptations, and does so in a self-conscious
and prepackaged manner.
Against this backdrop of exaggerated isolation intermingled with a
timeless, mythic landscape, are however, claims to local specificity. Like
the promotional material for Kosminsky’s Wuthering Heights, ITV makes
numerous contradictory claims, seeking to appeal to both a domestic
English audience and an international one. On the one hand, the
appeal of the story and the landscape that the lovers inhabit is referred
to in typically universalising language (ITV, n.d.). But, on the other

hand, the production and marketing team are at pains to demonstrate
the regional English roots of the adaptation. For example, a promo-
tional interview with Charlotte Riley, the actress who plays Catherine,
emphasises her ‘authentic’ Northern accent as she describes how ‘there
is something very specific and unique about the Yorkshire moors and
how the landscape makes you who you are, especially for Cathy and
Heathcliff who live in complete isolation’ (ITV, n.d., p. 8).6 Lincoln
echoes the same point when he notes in his interview that ‘you can’t
make the drama anywhere else’ but ‘the wild moors’ as this ‘landscape,
the world they inhabit, the isolation, the ruggedness and the beauty of
the landscape is the core of the story’ (ITV, n.d., p. 11).
This official press release booklet concludes with an article that reads
like a tourism advertisement for both Yorkshire and England, tempting
viewers to come see where this legendary ‘love story’ was born:
A stunning adaptation of Emily Brontë’s world famous literary classic

Wuthering Heights is the latest in a succession of recent high profile
drama productions to showcase Yorkshire’s diverse landscape on
screen. Vast areas of bleak untouched moorland alongside beautifully
preserved stately homes made the region the perfect backdrop for
ITV’s upcoming version of the gothic love story, which was shot at a
number of locations across West Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Dales.
Producers at Mammoth Screen were determined to base their produc-
tion in the region following their critically acclaimed drama series,
Lost in Austen, which filmed there in 2007. (ITV, n.d., p. 13)
Further down the page, there are more descriptions of other ‘recent
acclaimed productions’ filmed in the same region and location (ITV, n.d.,
p. 13). Clearly predicated on an agenda of cross-promotion and ‘packag-
ing’ Wuthering Heights through the marketing strategy of tourism and
heritage-inspired advertising, such a promotional piece highlights how
the contemporary adaptation of classic literature primarily functions
through a need to address a myriad of target audiences and ‘sell’ adapta-
tions within a growing and expanding heritage industry. The imagery
and landscape of the lovers’ discourse is essentially co-opted into a wider
advertising campaign that signals the incessant commodification of clas-
sic literature in screen productions.
This is obviously quite similar to the way Kosminsky’s 1992 film was mar-
keted and promoted, yet ITV also seeks to appeal to a younger audience,
intermingling heritage marketing with a modernised and media-savvy
aesthetic. As Sadoff points out, contemporary adaptations and herit-

age films are continually developed with a range of target audiences in
mind, no longer seeking to appeal to one kind of ‘niche’ audience over
another (Sadoff, 2010, p. xv). Sadoff explains that through the expan-
sion of the Internet and modern technology, contemporary adaptations
of classic literature and popular costume films now ‘travel’ beyond a
‘British domestic audience’ or a niche American audience, soliciting an
‘international’ audience shaped by the increasing globalisation of the
‘marketplace at the millennium’ (Sadoff, 2010, p. xv).
The local and regional credentials of shooting locations thus become
ironically co-opted into a broad marketing strategy that removes the
specificity of the text being adapted and the landscape being utilised.
The opportunistic mentioning of ITV’s similarly modernised, yet herit-
age-inspired adaptation, Lost in Austen, highlights one of the primary
ways through which such a specificity is lost in the mode of generalised
marketing of adaptations for wide international and national consump-
tion: cross-promotion. Brontë’s Catherine and Heathcliff, and Austen’s
Elizabeth and Darcy, are no longer conceived as specific characters within
specific texts, but rather, as character ‘types’ that cross over from one
adaptation to another and that can be used to promote each other. In
his toned-down romantic appeal, ITV’s Heathcliff is more like Austen’s
Darcy as acted by Colin Firth in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice. With
her rebellious attitude and desire for freedom ITV’s Elizabeth Bennet in
Lost in Austen seems more like a simplified version of Brontë’s Catherine.
In Joe Wright’s recent 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice both
Elizabeth and Darcy explicitly resemble Catherine and Heathcliff.
For example, in a visually evocative and invented scene, Elizabeth
is shown perched on the edge of a towering cliff as she contemplates
Darcy. Drawing on the appeal of Keira Knightley’s air-brushed beauty,
her upwardly turned gaze and the Sublime landscape surrounding
her, Wright’s Pride and Prejudice clearly borrows from the cultural screen
imagery associated with Catherine and Heathcliff, perched on the Sublime
moors in an expression of romantic love. Toward the end of the film, as
Elizabeth and Darcy are about to meet on another romantic and sweep-
ing landscape, we view Darcy walking toward Elizabeth dressed in a
long dark coat, resembling the classic images of a rugged Heathcliff
that have come to grace the various covers of Wuthering Heights. Tall,
Byronic, dark, romanticised and foreboding, he draws his visual lineage
from figures such as the brooding Rochester and the tortured Heathcliff,
rather than his own famous screen predecessor, Colin Firth’s repressed
Darcy.
In an age where new editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are
marketed toward teen girls by utilising the cover art from Meyer’s popular
Twilight saga novels, it is typical to find the characters of various classic
novels being reworked not only in their own narrative, by also in other
authors’ narratives. One popular novel is used to sell another, and one
well-known character is used to promote a different story. What is lost is
a sense of specific context, hidden beneath the layers of cross-promotion.
If Rivette sought to place his Catherine and Heathcliff within the ‘wrong’
context in order to strip them of their romanticised status, ITV partici-
pates in their overt romanticisation by turning them into general market-
able entities that can be promoted to multiple fans and audiences.
The need to ‘package’ and ‘sell’ the adaptation is evident throughout
the construction of the lovers’ discourse imagery and its representation
of the landscape. The Guardian’s John Crace has likened ITV’s continual
repetition of a beautifully shot landscape and windswept lovers to
advertisements, laconically remarking that ‘with its haunting desolation
and matching his-and-hers windswept hairdos, the Yorkshire Tourist
Boards and L’Oreal should be enjoying’ ITV’s Wuthering Heights (Crace,
2009). It is not surprising that reviewers have picked up on the carefully
constructed imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors, or the
manner in which it feeds into the promotion of the adaptation in its
official media release.
There is nothing essentially unique about such a promotion and
marketing of Wuthering Heights, as the construction of a lovers’ dis-
course belongs, on the one hand, to the overall cultural history of
the novel. Indeed, the main promotional image used to sell the film
through online reviews, media releases and DVD covers bears a strik-
ing resemblance to the ‘lovers on the hilltop’ imagery from Wyler’s
1939 film, which, as we have seen, has been continually reworked and
repeated by subsequent adaptations. In ITV’s version of this imagery,
Catherine and Heathcliff are once again depicted against a naturalis-
tic backdrop, with tousled hair and unified gazes fixed upward and
beyond, representing a discourse of transcendent love (see Figure
6.1). Such an image, used repetitively and consistently to market the
production, also highlights how ITV’s utilisation of familiar Wuthering
Heights imagery is aligned with the current fascination with ‘pack-
aging’ the story and the imagery associated with it as an explicit
commodity.
Jones writes that an author like Jane Austen is a ‘popular cultural
commodity’ who is ‘variously packaged’ along with her novels, playing
‘a key role in the current moment of “heightened address by cultural
Figure 6.1 Catherine (Charlotte Riley) and Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) in the latest
version of the ‘hilltop lovers’ imagery, from Wuthering Heights (2009), directed by
Coky Giedroyc, ITV. Image courtesy of ITV
industries to . . . consumers”’, with the aids of ‘product placement’ and

cross-promotion (Jones, 2010, pp. 71–2). The same could be said about
Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights, and a whole host of other authors
and classic literature. The result is often a flattening out of meaning in
which conflicting lines of representation are streamlined toward the
overriding need to make a particular adaptation palatable to a wide
audience, aesthetically pleasing, non-confronting and cross-referen-
tial with other well-known literary works that can be easily identified
and marketed alongside it. In the case of ITV’s Wuthering Heights, this
inevitably results in the submersion of the adaptation’s more critical
or interrogative possibilities within the aesthetics and narrative of a
decontextualised, simplified and appealing love story. This occurs in
numerous scenes.
For example, ITV’s Wuthering Heights reworks one of the most politi-
cised passages in the novel, Nelly’s speech to Heathcliff about his pos-
sible origins and parentage, into a rather non-confronting narrative of
love. At the beginning of the adaptation, we view several scenes of an
adult Catherine and Heathcliff running on a sweeping landscape, beauti-
fully shot through close-ups of their ecstatic faces, carefully tousled
locks, and long distance shots of the Sublime landscape dwarfing their
figures. These romantic images culminate in Catherine and Heathcliff
literally riding off into the sunset on a horse, against the expanse of an
isolated landscape. As this imagery fades, we are shown slow-moving
images of a river, with the camera moving diagonally over the water,
and halting suddenly as it reveals the two lovers lying together by its
banks. Like MTV’s use of the imagery of water and Sublime landscapes,
ITV is here calling upon a visual language that seeks to demonstrate to
the audience the timeless quality of their love, governed by the eternal
laws of nature, rather than stemming from a specific social context.
Like Wyler’s 1939 Wuthering Heights, ITV’s production relies on a static
mode of camerawork when depicting the lovers ‘posing’ against the
landscape.
It is telling that ITV’s director and screenwriter have chosen to
introduce the topic of Heathcliff’s origins at this precise moment. As
Catherine strokes his chest lovingly, Heathcliff mumbles, ‘where do you
suppose I’m from, where do you suppose I began?’ Catherine replies by
touching her heart with her hand and softly whispering, ‘you began
in here.’ As Heathcliff seeks further reassurance, Catherine gently runs
her finger along his forehead to the tip of his nose, tracing his profile.
Calling him ‘noble’, she tells him ‘look at you, you’re fit for a prince in
disguise.’ The couple then stare at each other longingly before kissing.
It is obvious that such a scene borrows heavily from Wyler’s 1939 film,
in which Catherine and Heathcliff are literally moulded into a noble
prince and princess when they play-act on the moors and in which
Heathcliff’s origins are likewise romanticised.
What is different about ITV’s serial, however, is that it is not a wholly
uncritical adaptation; it does seek to explore, if only in suggestions,
Heathcliff’s problematic social status and the history of power and
abuse associated with his character. It also hints at a deeper exploration
of his character through postcolonial and class discourse. Therefore,
this tame reconstruction of Nelly’s speech into a clichéd love story
highlights that while ITV may display a critical understanding, such
an understanding ultimately feeds into the more dominant mode of
promoting the ‘meaning’ of Wuthering Heights as a visually beautified
love story. Catherine’s stroking finger upon Heathcliff’s face, their long-
ing gazes and softly whispered words of love resemble contemporary
romance narratives and essentially removes the critical frame of Nelly’s
words, which highlight issues of class, race, masculinity and imperial-
ism in the nineteenth century, and have nothing to do with a tran-
scendent love story.
Another notable example is the manner in which ITV’s Wuthering Heights

reworks Catherine’s illness and pregnancy into a similarly conventional
and decontextualised love story. The passages describing Catherine’s self-
inflicted starvation and decline in Brontë’s novel are perhaps some of the
most politicised pages in the text (Brontë, 1998, pp. 107–14). Her decline
into madness significantly occurs in the domestic confines of her room
in Thrushcross Grange. Her physical deterioration within a domestic
prison highlights her power struggles and feelings of frustration with the
roles she is expected to enact as a middle-class woman and wife. In ITV’s
adaptation, her madness is shifted to the moors in a similar manner to
MTV’s domesticating lovers’ discourse.
In an invented scene, we view a heavily pregnant Catherine stepping
out onto the moors during a heavy storm. ITV simplifies the onset of
her madness, by ‘explaining’ it as an expression of heartbreak once she
learns that Heathcliff has married Isabella. This not only reduces the
complexity of her character, but also sets the scene for how to interpret
her subsequent suicidal wanderings within a vicious night storm. The
images of a ghostly, pregnant and rain-drenched Catherine are strik-
ingly similar to MTV’s heavily pregnant Cate, waiting for Heath to
come rescue her as she goes into labour. Indeed, Heathcliff comes to
Catherine’s rescue in ITV’s version as well.
As he finds her on the moors, he cuddles her like a baby in his arms
underneath the shelter of a rock that resembles Cate and Heath’s ‘cave’
in MTV’s Wuthering Heights. Catherine is not only physically diminished,
but ideologically reduced. She pathetically seeks Heathcliff’s reassur-
ance that he hasn’t ‘forgotten’ her, and asks him ‘what about Edgar
and Isabella?’ Their conversation clearly casts their attachment as a tale
of star-crossed lovers, thwarted by petty jealousies. Heathcliff tenderly
whispers to her in response, ‘it’s just you and I, it’s just you and I.’ Rather
than encountering Brontë’s contradictory Catherine, we instead view
MTV’s Cate, patiently waiting for her man. When Heathcliff stands up
holding her in his arms, he not only resembles MTV’s knight-in-shining-
armour, Heath, but also, countless other masculine heroes on the cover
of romance novels (see Figure 6.2). There is a distinct Mills and Boon
tone to such an image that feeds into the overall marketing of the film as
a tragic love story. Lost within the haze of romance, Catherine’s madness
and subversive desires are diluted into an easily promoted storyline.
The significance of such reworkings not only lies in the manner that
they perpetuate familiar myths about Wuthering Heights, but also in the
way that they reveal the logic of contemporary adaptations of classic
literature. Tackling a knowing audience that often seeks modernised
Figure 6.2 Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) rescues a heavily pregnant Catherine

(Charlotte Riley) on the moors, from Wuthering Heights (2009), directed by Coky
Giedroyc, ITV. Image courtesy of ITV
perspectives on familiar tales, ITV’s Wuthering Heights, like many other

recent adaptations I have discussed in this chapter, takes critical discourse
into account only to ultimately undermine it and retreat into traditional
modes of representation. This is a strategy that feminist critics have
explored in the media and popular culture with regard to feminism.
For example, McRobbie notes that one mode via which feminist
discourse is dismissed within popular culture is by the self-conscious
appropriation of its language, as if to suggest that by using the language
of feminism, the issues of inequality that feminists tackle are taken into
account and ‘surpassed’ (McRobbie, 2009, p. 1). Yet, what we often find
is that catch phrases of ‘choice’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘equality’ do little
to engage with actual problems of gender inequalities within culture and
are instead co-opted as clever marketing strategies within consumer
culture (McRobbie, 2009, p. 1). Women are encouraged to be ‘inde-

pendent’ and ‘powerful’ within the narrow frame of consumer culture,
which bombards them with various products that ironically feed into
traditional gender stereotypes of femininity and beauty. It is a mar-
keting strategy that seeks to demonstrate a ‘modern’ perspective to a
more knowing audience in a manner that undermines the very goals of
‘choice’ and ‘equality’ it utilises.
What I want to suggest is that this kind of co-opting of feminist
language as a marketing strategy reveals a wider general trend within
consumer and popular culture. Many contemporary adaptations, such
as the BBC’s 2006 Jane Eyre, ITV’s Lost in Austen and of course, ITV’s
Wuthering Heights, demonstrate how other forms of critical discourse are
being co-opted as strategies to appeal to modern audiences and market
adaptations. These adaptations utilise the language and imagery of
feminism, postcolonialism, class and postmodernism, turning them in
marketable strategies for a wide audience. However, by appealing to our
desires and expectations as modern viewers and utilising such desires as
a commodity, such adaptations also reveal our contemporary relation-
ship with the past and the stories we have inherited. It is because the
dominant paradigm of ITV’s Wuthering Heights is precisely this canny
marketing toward modern viewers that it also highlights many of the
same issues explored in contemporary neo-Victorian fiction.
Although the neo-Victorian novels of authors such as Jones, Waters
and Byatt often engage with Victorian legacies and texts in a manner
that is critical, interrogative and subversive, they also share the same
preoccupations of more normative neo-Victorian adaptations on screen.
An adaptation such as ITV’s Wuthering Heights exemplifies a trend in
the development of costume drama, literary adaptations and heritage
films, in which the primary mode of engagement with the past cannot
simply be described as ‘postmodern’, but perhaps more correctly as a
contemporary mode of neo-Victorianism that extends postmodernism.
As Mitchell writes, contemporary modes of neo-Victorianism in fiction
privilege an engagement with the historical nineteenth century that
moves beyond postmodernism’s problematisation of the representation
of history, and yet, which nevertheless resists the notion of a ‘factual’
and objective engagement with the past (Mitchell, 2010, p. 3).
Mitchell writes that such a neo-Victorian historical mode functions
through the trope of ‘memory’:
As Mieke Bal, suggests, ‘the memorial presence of the past takes many
forms and serves many purposes, ranging from conscious recall to
unreflected re-emergence, from nostalgic longing for what was lost

to polemical use of the past to shape the present’. . . . Moreover,
‘memory is active and it is situated in the present’. Positioning neo-
Victorian novels as acts of memory provides a means to critically
evaluate their investment in historical recollection as an act in the
present; as a means to address the needs or speak to the desires of
particular groups now. (Mitchell, 2010, p. 4)
ITV’s Wuthering Heights is predicated, both thematically and structurally,

around acts of memory and recollection, which feed into the desires
of the target audience. The lovers’ discourse and the familiar legacy of
Wuthering Heights as a love story is constructed through the frame of
Heathcliff’s memories. This is a stylistic and structural approach to the
adaptation of the novel that is unique to ITV’s adaptation. While the
result of such a structure is often the same as previous adaptations –
constructing Wuthering Heights as a tragic love story – it is nevertheless
a structure that reveals our current preoccupations and desires, which,
in Mitchell’s words, combine ‘a contemporary scepticism about our
ability to know the past with a strong sense of the past’s inherence in
the present, often in non-textual forms and repetitions’ (Mitchell, 2010,
p. 7). The first and last scenes of ITV’s Wuthering Heights illustrate this
point.
The ending is essentially a repetition of the beginning, in which we
are shown a succession of Heathcliff’s memories, intermingled with the
intrusion of Catherine’s ghost, hovering on the edge of this act of recol-
lection. This framing structure is repeated throughout the film in which
the flashbacks and characters’ engagement with the past occur prima-
rily through the dramatisation of their memories and the remnants left
behind by the dead in the present. The novel, like the past, is filtered
through imperfect, subjective and consciously repetitive memories that
simultaneously highlight the impossibility of an ‘objective’ or ‘factual’
engagement with the text and its nineteenth-century past. The remnant
of Heathcliff’s act of recollection is Catherine’s ghost, depicting the act
of historical recollection as a repetitive haunting that leaves fragmen-
tary traces.
This is a narrative strategy and structure that mirrors Jones’ neo-
Victorian novel, Sixty Lights, in which history is mediated via memory,
uncanny repetition and fragmentary traces (Jones, 2004). These scenes
introduce and conclude the narrative of Wuthering Heights through
the neo-Victorian fictional mode found in Jones’, Byatt’s and Waters’
novels, for as Mitchell points out, these novels too ‘suggest that the
past inheres in the present . . . in the form of embodied memory,

as a repertoire of shared cultural images, and a series of repetitions’
(Mitchell, 2010, p. 11). ITV frames its adaptation of Wuthering Heights
within the familiar ‘shared cultural images’ of the lovers’ discourse and
continues to repeat the same images through Heathcliff’s embodied
memories over and over again. As such, it not only participates in the
cultural history of locating Wuthering Heights within a representational
mode of decontextualised myth, but also in a contemporary mode of
neo-Victorianism.
Another significant element within this adaptation’s depiction of the
lovers’ discourse is primarily filtered through embodied memory: desire.
Through Heathcliff’s memories, we view him having sex with Catherine
on the moors. This sexualisation of their relationship essentially seeks
to feed the desires of a modern audience, which, as Virginia L. Blum
notes in her analysis of recent Austen adaptations, almost demand an
‘orgasmic plot’ (Blum, 2003, p. 174), however out-of-place such a plot is
to historical ‘accuracy’. Unlike Kosminsky’s adaptation, which is overly
concerned with historical ‘fidelity’ and ‘authenticity’ as part of an
earlier form of heritage cinema discourse, ITV’s adaptation is more con-
cerned with bypassing historical accuracy in favour of aligning history
with the wishes of the present. And it is not the only recent adaptation
to follow such a path.
For example, one of the most controversial adaptation endings for
Austen devotees has been the last few scenes of the recent 2007 adap-
tation of Persuasion. In the last scene, Anne and Captain Wentworth
kiss passionately in public, an act which undoubtedly belongs within
the logic of our own times rather than Austen’s, in which such a public
display of affection would never occur. This ending is itself borrowed
from the BBC’s previous 1995 adaptation of Persuasion which simi-
larly concludes on the unrealistic note of a public kiss on the streets
of Bath. However, the 2007 adaptation makes this kiss more explicit
and fetishises its function within the narrative’s meaning through
dramatic slow-motion and drawn-out camerawork that obliterates
the surrounding context of Austen’s narrative and shift the actors
into the modern moment. After running through the streets of Bath
with Wentworth’s letter in her hand, Anne finds him, and in broad
daylight, in front of his friend, passionately kisses him. The camera
closes-in on their mouths the minute their lips touch, removing their
surroundings from our view and signalling to the viewer that they
have moved beyond the confines of Regency England into the logic
of our own times.
Mary A. Favret’s analysis of the similar scene at the end of the 1995
version of Persuasion could perhaps more accurately be applied to the
2007 adaptation:
When the lovers kiss in broad daylight on a Bath street, we are

reminded of the mutuality of the audience’s and Anne’s desires.
In fact, the public kiss belongs to us and the movies: it brings the
couple into a different world. The kiss . . . supplies the sign that they
have moved beyond the limits of Regency England. The irony of this
scene is that it satisfies the desires of the lovers along with most of the
filmgoing public (which expects such guarantees of romance in the
movies), but it denies . . . Austen’s world. (Favret, 2000, pp. 77–8)
In feeding us our own desires and modern expectations through its own
insertion of explicit sex scenes, ITV’s Wuthering Heights also ‘belongs to
us and the movies’. And yet, our desires are fed through the act of recol-
lection and a self-conscious awareness that the narrative of Wuthering
Heights comes to us via memory. Heathcliff’s subjective, embodied memo-
ries of desire are a metaphor for the adaptation as a whole, which displays
an awareness of the inherited nature of classic literature and discourses
of the past, and an understanding of how they can only be accessed in
the present through cultural memory. It suggests a contemporary mode
of historical representation similar to Byatt’s bypassing of ‘intellectual
knowledge’ in her novel, Possession, in favour of a relationship of mem-
ory and desire (Mitchell, 2010, p. 94).
As Mitchell points out, Byatt’s Possession utilises the metaphor of a
romance between two lovers as a mode of historical enquiry dependent
upon an understanding of how the past is recreated via the needs and
expectations of the present (Mitchell, 2010, pp. 94–5). Not simply preoc-
cupied with the postmodern dilemma of whether we can even conceive
of historical enquiry or its supposed ‘collapse’ in modern times, contem-
porary neo-Victorianism is more concerned with how we choose to access
it in the present. Unlike Kosminsky’s historically ‘faithful’ approach to
the representation of the past, ITV’s Wuthering Heights is more concerned
with shaping it for contemporary consumption. If it feeds our desires too
well by inserting Wuthering Heights into a well-worn repetitive model of
the lovers’ discourse, it does so with a self-consciousness that is unique to
contemporary adaptations of classic literature.
The last scene of ITV’s Wuthering Heights depicts Catherine and
Heathcliff’s adult ghosts staring from beyond Catherine’s bedroom
window at the retreating figures of Nelly, Hareton and Cathy, who are
relocating to Thrushcross Grange. On the one hand, this final image is a

last attempt to locate the meaning of the novel within its romanticised
legacy. On the other hand, the famous lovers are depicted behind the
bars of the windows as if they are imprisoned by their own myth. It
remains to be seen whether future adaptations will remove them from
behind the bars of such a myth and allow them to fully enter the inter-
rogative mode evident in contemporary neo-Victorian fiction.
The question for future adaptations will inevitably be that, with all
our modern understanding of the text, will we still require Catherine
and Heathcliff to come ‘home’ and represent for us a stable discourse of
belonging, or will they be allowed to enter a ‘foreign’ representational
context based on a more expansive notion of cultural inheritance? To a
large extent, ITV’s Wuthering Heights is predicated on a loss of historical
innocence. Marketed toward a knowing audience, and explicitly seeking
to appeal to such an audience, this adaptation functions through the
loss of a more straightforward and ‘innocent’ engagement with the lega-
cies of the past and classic literature. Yet, in place of this loss, it inserts
the myth of Catherine and Heathcliff as iconic lovers representing an
ongoing discourse of cultural familiarity that hearkens back to a simpli-
fied notion of Western ‘civilization’, inheritance and culture.
With all its self-consciousness, it could have instead entered the
cinematic realm of Jane Campion’s Bright Star (2009), which similarly
functions through the loss of historical innocence as a way to engage
a contemporary audience in a revisionist history. Campion’s Bright Star
rewrites the myth of the tortured Romantic poet by focusing attention
away from such a myth onto those historically marginalised narratives
that are often hidden beneath the romanticisation of the past.7 ITV is
still invested in the mode of myth, and as such, is locked within the
dominant paradigm of locating Wuthering Heights within a repeated
‘home’ discourse, representing a comforting, if narrow, notion of
cultural familiarity and belonging.
Afterword
Myths and Demystification
The five primary adaptations of Wuthering Heights I have examined in

detail have contributed significantly to the afterlife of the novel. What
I have found particularly striking when examining these adaptations is
the extent to which their different contexts often shape the cultural def-
inition of the novel along similar ideological lines, in which Wuthering
Heights is aligned with certain familiar tropes, values and forms of
representation. The adaptation that stands out the most in its difference
is Rivette’s 1985 French film, Hurlevent. While Rivette’s film explores
similar issues and themes to the other screen adaptations examined in
this book, it does so through an oppositional ideological framework in
which the primary mode is demystification. This difference in approach
not only suggests other ways of engaging with the novel, but also criti-
cally highlights the kind of ideological work that the other adaptations
perform. The oppositional distinction which can be drawn between
Rivette’s Hurlevent and the other adaptations is a significant one that
requires elaboration. I will do so through an expansion of the issues
I have raised throughout my analyses of Catherine, Heathcliff and the
various landscapes they have inhabited.
Catherine
When Brontë’s Lockwood encounters the ghostly child-Catherine in

the intimate space of her bedroom, it is with sheer horror in a ‘night-
mare’ of excessive female energy that cannot be contained or silenced,
despite his best efforts. His nightmare is the last manifestation in a long
list of disturbing encounters he has in her bedroom and bed, in which
her multiple identities, desires and marginality challenge his politics of
comforting domestic enclosures. Yet, Catherine desires to be let it, rather
181
than out, despite her often problematic relationship with the domestic
home. In my analysis of the novel in Chapter 1, I detailed Catherine’s
contradictory search for a ‘home’, in which she desires spaces of free-
dom from the confines of the middle-class patriarchal household and
simultaneously seeks access to sites of domestic enclosure.
In Hurlevent, Rivette smoothes out this contradictory politics by
aligning his Catherine with a desire for freedom from the confines
of domestic households and patriarchal gender roles. The result is an
intensification of the narratives of feminine containment and aliena-
tion evident in Brontë’s novel, which aligns the film with a seemingly
feminist approach to the characterisation of Catherine. What his film
displays is the potential for the exploration of Catherine’s identity and
gender politics in the novel from an interrogative perspective that has
often eluded her throughout the afterlife of Wuthering Heights.
This is a perspective that is shaped by Rivette’s opposition to the 1939
film’s mode of representation. Rivette’s interrogation of Catherine’s
social and cultural position is shaped by the redefining of imagery and
tropes found in the 1939 film. Wyler’s Catherine moves from one spec-
tacular dress to another, as she is paraded in ball scenes and in front of
mirrors as a visual spectacle. Her clothing and body are aligned with
her position in the Grange, in which she is often shot from behind
the bars of windows, highlighting her feminine confinement within
the household. Rivette’s Catherine is similarly positioned in front of
mirrors and confined within households, but from an oppositional
perspective. When Rivette’s Catherine twirls in front of the mirror, she
is the aesthetic opposite of Wyler’s Catherine in her stark vulnerability
and youthfulness. Her dress, hair and face are noticeably plain and
subdued. Rather than allowing his audience to linger on the spectacle
of the feminine body on display, Rivette instead demystifies its poet-
ics in a stark drama of alienation. When we move into the follow-
ing dream sequence in which Catherine is led to the same mirror by
Roch, Rivette transforms the ideology of feminine objectification into
a psychological drama of profound feminine alienation. Her dream
sequence recalls Brontë’s Catherine in her alienation from her self
as she gazes into the mirror at her bedroom in the Grange and does
not recognise her own reflection, misreading her image as a threaten-
ing ghost (Brontë, 1998, p. 109). For both women, their sense of self
is eroded by the feminine roles they are expected to enact and they
express such an erosion through feelings of alienation from their own
reflections in the mirror: that is, through a rejection of their bodies as
contained images.
Afterword 183
The trope of the mirror as a symbol of feminine objectification and

the construction of femininity as a contained image are reworked in the
1992, 2003 and 2009 adaptations through the more literal symbols of
paintings, in which women are literally frozen in time as images. The
1992 film utilises the trope of the painting in a manner that highlights
the masculine gaze when Lockwood frames both mother and daughter
as silent images of contained femininity. When the daughter’s own
resisting gaze in the 1992 film is reworked in the 2003 film via another
daughter closing her eyes to die underneath the mother’s painting, the
two films enter into a dialogue with each other. The latter film closes
off the interrogative potential of the reclaimed feminine gaze in the
1992 film, along with the problematic freedom of feminine creativity
symbolised by the mother’s painting in the 2003 film, through a
discourse of death.
ITV’s serial picks up on such connections by contrasting Heathcliff’s
possessive desire with Cathy’s more inquisitive engagement with her
mother’s portrait, lovingly traced in sympathy with her fingers rather
than simply her gaze. Yet, while it may seem to rework the trope of the
painting and the politics of objectification found in previous adapta-
tions, ITV’s Wuthering Heights ultimately encloses Cathy’s inquisitive-
ness within Heathcliff’s more dominant narrative, effectively ‘killing
off’ any possibility for serious critique and an exploration of Catherine’s
character from a more complex perspective.
All three adaptations seem to rework Heathcliff’s relationship with
Catherine after her death in the novel, where he participates in locat-
ing her within a discourse of bodily fetish and contained image. When
Heathcliff moves from desiring to possess Catherine’s daughter, to a
painting of her, and then her corpse, Brontë highlights their mutual
relevance, for all three are essentially ‘dead’ and silent representations
of femininity, in which the female body and its remnants are desired
as objects and possessions. As I have argued in Chapter 1, Heathcliff’s
expressions of love for Catherine contrast with her own declarations,
which are marked by imagery of transcendence through which she
expresses a desiring subjectivity. Conversely, Heathcliff seems to desire
her in moments when such a feminine subjectivity is no longer present
and is instead replaced by narratives of bodily possession.
The 1992, 2003 and 2009 adaptations adopt Heathcliff’s perspective in
the novel, only the focus shifts from corpses to ghosts. In doing so, these
adaptations not only locate femininity within Heathcliff’s interpretative
realm, but also negate the disturbing power of Catherine’s ghost in
Brontë’s novel. This disruptive force associated with Catherine’s ghost
momentarily appears in ITV’s Wuthering Heights when her hand smashes

violently and bloodily through the window, onto her bed. It quickly
becomes subdued by and entangled within Heathcliff’s more definitive
ghost explored in detail and repeated throughout the adaptation in his
memories of Catherine. It is as if he conjures her ghost through the act
of desired recollection, rather than Catherine’s disruptive force acting
of its own individual will.
Catherine’s ghost represents numerous contradictory meanings that
relate to her marginal position in life. Like her multiple names on the
window sill, her ghost remains a proliferation of uncontained desires
and identities that negate the comforting narratives of enclosure that
Lockwood’s masculine and middle-class politics seeks to construct and,
just as importantly, that contradict Heathcliff’s own objectifying poet-
ics through a discourse of a transcendent femininity. Both men cannot
silence her ghost in the novel, yet, when the trope of the ghost is raised
on screen, their desires are fulfilled. It is not the disturbing and exces-
sive ghost that Lockwood encounters and that Heathcliff battles which
is transcribed on screen, but rather, the ghost of alienation and self-
lessness that Catherine gazes at when she is dying. In other words, it is
the ghost that is not threatening to discourses of containment, domes-
ticity and masculine identity, but rather the one that threatens feminine
identity and ultimately represents the erosion of such an identity.
The tropes and themes discussed here compare with what Jennifer
Gribble has termed the figure of the ‘enclosed lady’ who ‘is pictured again
and again’ in ‘Victorian painting, poetry and novels’ (Gribble, 1983, p. 3).
One of the most striking manifestations of this figure is, of course, Alfred,
Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott (1842). Gribble notes that:
The Lady of Shalott’s imprisonment . . . is set in the midst of an expan-

sive landscape . . . The world she must not look at has a changing,
detailed life . . . The delight of catching its mirrored reflections in her
web begins to falter as handsome knights and young lovers suggest a
realm of experience beyond her comfortable solitude. . . . Sir Lancelot is
launched into the poem, as if in answer to the aim of her wistful yearn-
ing for something more than ‘shadows’. And so the lady looks out; the
web breaks and the mirror cracks. But there is no place for her in the
world inhabited by Sir Lancelot. In fulfilment of the curse, she drifts
down the river into her inevitable ‘decline’. (Gribble, 1983, p. 2)
There seems to be a direct comparison, both in terms of imagery

and ideology, between the Lady of Shalott and the representation of
Afterword 185
Catherine on screen. The various characterisations of Catherine rely

upon a politics that situates her against ‘an expansive landscape’, which
helps to construct the more dominant masculine narratives and lovers’
discourse associated with Wuthering Heights. Ultimately though, like the
Lady of Shalott, ‘there is no place’ for Catherine within this expansive
outside world and instead, she is aligned with narratives of a ghostly
half-life, lived in the ‘shadows’ of men, resulting in her inevitable
‘decline’. This process of containment is aided by the Lady of Shalott’s
own imagery of the enclosed space of imprisonment, the mirror and in
the latter films, the imagery of the painting in place of the web. While
the comparison I seek to make here applies to all of the adaptations
in varying degrees, I would like to explore it more specifically with
regard to the 2003 film. MTV’s film represents the intensification of
the various contained manifestations of Catherine on screen, against
which subsequent adaptations, such as ITV’s Wuthering Heights, can be
compared as we move into a contemporary cultural context.
MTV’s Cate is like a modern-day Lady of Shalott. Cate’s movement
away from the Heights, which, in this version, is literally a ‘tower’, is
a movement from containment to doom and death, which is an iden-
tical trajectory to Tennyson’s own doomed lady. It is striking to see
this trope of the doomed lady, enclosed in a tower, recurring as late as
2003. Even more striking however, are the further similarities that can
be drawn. It is possible to liken the lady’s incessant weaving to femi-
nine domestic chores and the domestic realm within which Victorian
women were both ideologically and literally confined, like a curse. The
mirror similarly represents the lady’s distance and enforced separation
from the outside world of experience, akin to Ruskin’s famous dec-
laration that a woman’s place is within the confines of the home, in
which she is both protected from the outside world, and protects the
sanctity of domestic privacy (Ruskin, 1912, pp. 98–9). Indeed, Gribble
argues that Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott is a primary representative of the
domesticating politics of enclosure increasingly associated with femi-
ninity throughout the nineteenth century (Gribble, 1983, pp. 10–11).
Like Tennyson, MTV’s Cate draws together the themes of feminine con-
tainment and a ‘ghostly’ existence in the ‘shadows’ of men, experience
and ‘the world’, via a domesticating politics that is venerated as a poetic
sacrifice of the self.
It is not only a particular representation of women that Tennyson
and the 2003 film share however, but also, a similar ideological context
with regard to the changing roles of women. The 2003 adaptation mor-
alistically examines its own context from the perspective of the type of
‘feminine resistance’ which Gilbert and Gubar remind us had its origins
in the mid-nineteenth century:
it is not really until the moment in the mid-nineteenth century when

female resistance becomes feminist rebellion that the battle of the
sexes emerges as a trope for struggle over political as well as personal
power. At this point, Tennyson – himself on the verge of becoming,
as poet laureate, an official spokesman for his society – records a tale
of sexual battle whose contours of hostility interestingly prefigure
the antagonisms at the center of Hughes’ ‘Lovesong’. (Gilbert and
Gubar, 1988, p. 6)1
In No Man’s Land, Gilbert and Gubar explore the ‘battle of the sexes’
that has its origins in ‘the woman question’ of the nineteenth century
(Gilbert and Gubar, 1988, p. 12), referring to the political struggle
for the woman’s vote and what they term ‘the social metamorphoses
brought about by the “new woman”’, increasingly encroaching on tra-
ditionally masculine public arenas of power and experience (Gilbert and
Gubar, 1988, p. 21). It seems to me that the progression of the imagery
and themes of contained and objectified femininity associated with the
representation of Catherine on screen into a neo-Victorian domestic
politics by the 2003 film, represents what Gilbert and Gubar term a
‘masculinist backlash’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1988, p. 36) to the perceived
gains of a ‘feminine resistance’ that has its origins in mid-nineteenth-
century Victorian England.
There is much potential for subsequent adaptations made after MTV’s
version to move in Rivette’s oppositional direction and tackle both
Catherine’s character and the gender politics of the novel in a manner
that responds to the changing roles of women from a non-reactionary
perspective. It is promising, from this perspective, that ITV’s adaptation
shows a similar level of critical understanding found in contemporary
neo-Victorian fiction. But such an understanding is sidelined in favour
of a marketable approach to the novel that relies on its status as a
great ‘love story’ in which gender roles remain static and conservative.
If ITV’s Catherine is less of a domesticating force, she is nevertheless
couched within the same gender politics of MTV’s neo-Victorian con-
tainment. In many ways, Heathcliff’s romanticised memories imprison
Catherine’s character within a traditional discourse of romance just as
effectively as MTV’s tower.
Throughout the adaptations I have explored, there is a need to place
women back in their ‘proper’ place against a perceived social and
Afterword 187
cultural context of ‘dislocation’. The 1939 film constructs Catherine’s

objectification and containment not simply in relation to Hollywood
glamour, but also through the perspective of an impending war,
which will require women to step beyond the confines of the home.
Similarly, Kosminsky’s 1992 film is overtly concerned with a masculinist
politics against the social and cinematic background of images of ‘men
in crisis’, while the 2003 film seeks to counter such a ‘crisis’ with its
re-domestication politics.
In fact, by the time we reach the 2003 film, ‘the woman question’
is presumed to have been answered by the disastrous ‘victory’ of
feminism, resulting in what one Victorian commentator warned as the
natural outcome of the victory of ‘Woman’s Rights’: an ‘unsexed and
degraded’ woman who has ceased ‘to be a gentle mother’ (Cooke, 1898,
p. 86), in the form of Cate’s absent mother. However, MTV’s Wuthering
Heights wages its own ‘battle of the sexes’ in which the masculine and
the domestic are ultimately victorious, rewriting a history of feminine
resistance. ITV’s adaptation responds to such a gender politics with a
familiar strategy in modern times: the co-opting of feminist discourse,
language and imagery in a manner that undermines it. Even when a
small step is taken in the direction of expanding the understanding of
Catherine’s character and her feminine identity, the result is often a
problematically simplistic approach to both.
As Catherine has moved from the 1930s to the present twenty-first
century, she has, ironically, become increasingly marginalised, objec-
tified and contained. Rivette’s own Catherine suggests a way of mov-
ing forward rather than backward from such representations, with the
necessary beginning of critically interrogating the politics of feminine
containment and the implications that such a politics have not only
for women, but also for men. The last image of Hurlevent depicts a
broken and contained Roch, imprisoned by his own desires of pos-
session. That which has killed Catherine has also become a prison for
him. In Rivette’s logic, men do not go ‘up’ when women go ‘down’, or
vice versa, but rather what Whelehan has called the ‘see-saw’ of gender
relations is grounded on both sides (Whelehan, 2000, p. 113).
It remains to be seen whether subsequent adaptations, beyond ITV’s
2009 Wuthering Heights, will take the challenge of Rivette’s perspective
and move from critical interrogation to a re-evaluation of gender roles,
letting Catherine in with her politics of disturbance and desire to rework
the margins of the centre. On the other hand, if, like Lockwood, the
screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights continues to provide discourses
of containment, then, in Whelehan’s words, ‘traditional notions of
masculinity and femininity will continue to hold sway, and the “battle
of the sexes” is simply given a contemporary flavour’ (Whelehan, 2000,
p. 134). Rivette’s own interrogative politics reminds us that it is a battle
that, no matter how contemporary the ‘flavour’, will end badly for both
women and men.
Heathcliff
Rivette’s exploration of the politics of place raised through Nelly’s spec-

ulative speech about Heathcliff’s parentage (Brontë, 1998, p. 50) reveals
what Brontë highlights in her own characterisation of Heathcliff and
what other screen adaptations of the novel seek to obfuscate through a
discourse of masculine transcendence: the extent to which masculinity
and masculine identity are shaped and determined by circumstances
and context. This seems a simple statement, yet it is one that has been
complexly obscured and negotiated throughout the screen afterlife of
Heathcliff. Wyler, Kosminsky, MTV and ITV provide various Heathcliffs
who ironically highlight, while simultaneously seeking to transcend,
the gender politics of their times.
If Catherine has become increasingly contained and marginalised,
Heathcliff has become increasingly dominant. It is no coincidence
that Heathcliff’s position has been largely determined by Catherine’s,
for, as Whelehan notes, ‘many commentators have pointed out how
masculinity relies for its maintenance and definition on what it is not –
femininity’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 123). Heathcliff’s characterisation has
primarily been fashioned in response to changes in the roles of women
through a politics of transcendence in which his identity is turned into
a masculine existential drama. In contrast, Rivette broadens Heathcliff’s
character by reminding his viewers of Brontë’s own complex representa-
tion of his body in her novel.
Brontë’s Heathcliff is an inherently unstable being whose identity
is continually in the making through multiple discourses of class,
race, nationality and home. Similarly, Rivette locates Roch in various
interpretative landscapes of belonging and non-belonging through
discourses of history, nationality, class and regionalism. Such a treat-
ment of his character is starkly obvious in comparison with the various
romanticised representations of Heathcliff evident in the other screen
adaptations in which the primary concern is to depict Heathcliff and
masculine identity as inherently free of context and shaped by ‘the defi-
ance of circumstances’, to use Kingsley’s words (Kingsley, 1880, p. 203).
ITV’s adaptation has been the only one that has shifted slightly toward
Afterword 189
Rivette’s expansion of Heathcliff’s character via an exploration of social,

cultural and ideological context. But even here, context is inevitably
lost in the midst of romantic drama, and the need to position Heathcliff
in relation to Catherine and a much venerated discourse of masculine
transcendence.
I have previously quoted Kingsley’s definition of ‘true manhood’ as
‘the defiance of circumstances’ in relation to Adams’ exploration of
Victorian masculinities in Dandies and Desert Saints. I have found it
telling that the issues Adams explores throughout this work are consist-
ently relevant to the characterisation of Heathcliff throughout his screen
afterlife. Adams notes that the various ‘parades of pain’ explored in his
work are ‘instances in which masculine identity is realized through a
regimen of solitary but emphatically visible suffering, which claims
the authority of manhood’ (Adams, 1995, p. 16). The screen Heathcliff
is similarly constructed through parades of masculine pain, in which
masculine identity and authority are formed through the evocation of
the suffering male body as a symbol of transcendence of context and
circumstances. The various characterisations of Heathcliff explored in
this book have in fact fulfilled Nelly’s own desires in her re-fashioning
of Heathcliff’s body. Yet, Nelly’s engagement with Heathcliff’s body is
brief in the novel and he overwrites her narrative with his own self-
conscious enactment of multiple literary identities, revealing that is he
not a stable being stemming from a coherent interiority, but rather one
who is shaped by various cultural discourses.
However, if Nelly’s re-fashioning of Heathcliff is overwritten in the
novel, it dominates in its screen afterlife. His movement from the 1930s
to the twenty-first century follows a decided and progressive path of
internalisation. By the time we reach ITV’s 2009 adaptation, the specta-
cle of Heathcliff’s body as a ‘parade of pain’ even co-opts an exploration
of his cultural context into the familiar Romantic drama of masculine
subjectivity, created by the previous 1992 and 2003 adaptations by inten-
sifying the romanticisation of Olivier’s memorable Heathcliff. It seems
fitting that the 1992 and 2003 films have intensified the discourses
of transcendence associated with his character, as Olivier’s perform-
ance is best remembered as a series of images in which he is depicted
as an unchanging, tall and dark column of stoic masculinity. Olivier
is a constant aesthetic and moral fixture in the 1939 film. The petty
dramas of those around him do not concern him, nor can he fathom
Catherine’s desire for pretty ‘frocks’ and houses. Rather, he is an emblem
of enduring values, defying his circumstances through a discourse of
transcendent masculinity. The 1992 and 2003 films sharpen this type of
characterisation and similarly position it in contrast to their own types

of ‘faithless’ Catherines, seduced by the world and material concerns.
ITV adds its own logic to such a characterisation in which Catherine’s
‘faithlessness’ extends to petty sexual infidelity, adding to her ‘crimes’
and eliciting further sympathy for the romance of Heathcliff’s internal
defiance of his outside world. The result of such representations of
Heathcliff is the ongoing construction of his masculinity as an inter-
nally coherent one that is distanced from its context, even as it calls
upon this context as an oppositional framework of meaning. Heathcliff’s
masculine identity is primarily shaped by his ability to display a self-
sustaining subjectivity that defies the changing contexts within which
he is situated. And just as importantly, this defiance is inherently linked
to femininity and the changing roles of women.
We have seen that the progressive movement of Catherine into
increasingly contained and ‘self-less’ discourses of femininity is directly
linked to the exploration of Heathcliff’s masculinity in an oppositional
manner. This movement seems to support Gilbert and Gubar’s argument
that ‘the male soldier physically at risk during the war’ in the 1930s
finds resonance with the man ‘threatened by feminist demands in the
1970s and 1980s’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1988, pp. 46–7). Whelehan’s own
exploration of the ‘battle of the sexes’ and representations of ‘men in
crisis’ in contemporary culture suggests that the ‘threat’ of ‘feminist
demands’ and the changing nature of women’s roles in the workplace
and the home continue to be interpreted as a need to strengthen mascu-
line subjectivities that have been consequently ‘weakened’ (Whelehan,
2000, pp. 113–34). Heathcliff’s progression on screen from the 1930s to
the present times provides primary examples for Gilbert and Gubar’s
and Whelehan’s arguments. The kind of issues raised through his mas-
culinity require a more challenging approach if we are to move beyond
the repeated ‘battle of the sexes’ which, as Whelehan argues, ‘satisfies
nobody’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 134).
When the final image of MTV’s Wuthering Heights not only depicts
a neo-domestic Cate/Catherine, but also a single father, the film high-
lights the very issues it refuses to explore, namely, the reflection upon
what ‘being a man’ means in changing social and cultural circum-
stances. Rather, to use Whelehan’s words in her own exploration of
contemporary representations of masculinity, the film does not ‘take
up the challenge to reinvent’ masculine roles ‘or enter’ masculinity into
‘the “private sphere” in more meaningful ways, thus forcing a re-evalu-
ation of men’s relationship to work, parenting, sexuality and women in
general’ (Whelehan, 2000, p. 134). As Whelehan argues, ‘the response’
Afterword 191
to changing circumstances ‘has to amount to more than simply laying

the blame on feminism’ and indeed, on women in general (Whelehan,
2000, p. 134 [emphasis in original]). Furthermore, it has to amount to
something more than a solipsistic return to a transcendent masculine
subjectivity, which both requires feminine ‘death’ and could progres-
sively collapse into unproductive models of masculine isolation. ITV’s
subsequent 2009 adaptation could have fruitfully taken up the chal-
lenge of the ‘re-invention’ of masculinity with its knowing sensibil-
ity. Instead, we have glimpses of a wider, more culturally-determined
masculinity lost in a haze of familiarity in which Heathcliff’s subjec-
tivity is fashioned against Catherine’s objectification as part of the
romance plot.
Against the masculine ‘parades of pain’ we view in the 1939, 1992,
2003 and 2009 adaptations, we have Rivette’s Roch, an oppositional
Heathcliff who represents the merging of masculine identity with the
local and ideological contexts in which he is situated. Rivette’s Roch
reminds us that he suffers, not by way of an interior self-determining
subjectivity or women, but rather because of his particular circum-
stances, in which narratives of history, land, class and nationality shape
the terrain of his identity, as they shape his body. He is not a romantic
figure and his lack of glamour highlights how he is different from other
screen Heathcliffs. Rivette’s characterisation of Roch can be compared
to the artist Paula Rego’s 2003 engagement with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane
Eyre, which Cora Kaplan details is a ‘series of drawings inspired by the
novel, now produced in book form with an introduction by Marina
Warner’ (Kaplan, 2007, p. 31). Kaplan argues that:
[s]et out like illustrations with citations from the text at one side,
these images are in fact anti-illustrations; they construct a kind of
grotesque dreamscape for which the novel is the occasion. As Warner
notes, Rego’s portraits of Jane do not ‘prettify her’; ugly and stunted,
she is visually aligned, Warner suggests, with Bertha, eliding the dis-
tinction between heroine and villain, imperial agent and racialised
victim. (Kaplan, 2007, pp. 31–2)
Like Rego’s reworking of Jane, Rivette does not ‘prettify’ or romanticise

Heathcliff, but rather aligns him with various contested discourses of
social, cultural, national and historical contexts. In the process, he
highlights how Heathcliff’s body and identity are ‘colonised’ by such
contexts, in a similar manner to the way that Rego draws attention to
Jane’s relationship with her ‘other’, Bertha.
What Rivette in fact displays is a process of contextual deconstruc-

tion, in which Roch’s masculinity and identity are defined through an
interrogation of the shaping forces of environment. Rather than seeking
to make his Heathcliff move above his world, Rivette instead presents
a Heathcliff who reveals the complex manner in which masculine
identity is shaped by this world. There is no preoccupation in Hurlevent
with defining Roch’s identity as a response to Catherine and feminin-
ity. Instead, Rivette focuses on the multiple narratives of work, place
and identity that shape Roch’s masculinity. This is a representation
that is tantalisingly present in subdued hints in ITV’s Wuthering Heights.
Yet, it will be the task of future adaptations to make the decisive leap
forward and move away from his previous romanticised incarnations
altogether.
This type of wider representation of masculinity is also the kind of
interrogative ‘response’ which Whelehan calls for in contemporary
culture and which I believe expands upon Brontë’s own Heathcliff.
Brontë’s Heathcliff is, ultimately, a disturbing character in his name-
lessness and homelessness, and while Nelly may seek recuperative
discourses of internal masculinity for him, throughout the novel he
negates a stable masculine subjectivity by moving from one identity
to another. If his screen manifestations have primarily situated him in
a privileged position as the transcendent subjectivity in a battle of the
sexes, Rivette’s Roch suggests a more expansive politics of masculine
identity that remains lurking in the wings.
Landscape and loss
Lockwood’s journey to regional England in Brontë’s novel signals the

preoccupations that continue to be explored via the representation of
the various landscapes and discourses of home throughout the screen
afterlife of Wuthering Heights. The adaptations I have analysed have all
taken us to regional landscapes, utilising and constructing a politics of
place that is most often aligned with the lovers’ discourse. Part of the
enduring appeal of the lovers’ discourse lies in its location and land-
scape. Stoneman’s analysis of the continuing popularity of the ‘hilltop
lovers’ motif locates its cultural repetition within a discourse of loss. She
argues that part of the appeal of the imagery of Catherine and Heathcliff
on the moors lies in its ability to convey ‘existential loss’, noting that
there is a ‘tendency’ within ‘the Wuthering Heights industry to project
the meaning of the text into a pair of lovers welded into an iconic
whole by their very separation’ (Stoneman, 1996a, p. 213).
Afterword 193
Stoneman also notes that the:
compulsion to repeat what we might call the icon of loss embodied

in the lovers on the hilltop suggests that Wuthering Heights occupies
a place in the popular imagination of the present that is comparable
to that of Jane Eyre in the melodramatic imagination of the nine-
teenth century. Jane Eyre was reproduced predominantly as a social
drama, the story of the orphan denied her place in family and class.
Wuthering Heights, it seems, has come to represent the more existen-
tial loss of the twentieth century, the fantasy of those orphaned by
a non-existent God and alienated from a society which pretends to
belong to us all. (Stoneman, 1996a, p. 213)
In her discussion of the afterlife of Jane Eyre, Kaplan argues a similar

point regarding the cultural status of the novel, calling Jane Eyre a ‘type
of mnemic symbol, a Western cultural monument which has moved
generations of mainly women readers to tears of desire and rage, as well
as of loss’ (Kaplan, 2007, p. 15). While Kaplan and Stoneman approach
loss from different perspectives, their arguments employ similar models
of analysis of the enduring popularity of certain images and discourses
associated with Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in Western culture.
I am not concerned here with the similarities that can be drawn
between the afterlife of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as that forms
an altogether different topic. Rather, I seek to expand upon both
Stoneman’s and Kaplan’s arguments by unpacking the issue of loss
that is tied to the representation of the lovers’ discourse as an iconic
cultural image and myth. What Stoneman does not fully explore here
is the extent to which the ‘icon of loss’ is not simply embodied by a
pair of lovers, but also, by a poetics of place. Throughout their screen
afterlife, Catherine and Heathcliff have been located within repeti-
tively similar Sublime-looking landscapes on the margins of societies,
cultures and nations. Furthermore, their location in these spaces has
been implicated in various discourses of ‘home’, through narratives
of domesticity, belonging and non-belonging, nationality, heritage,
history, neo-Victorianism and cultural inheritance. With these aspects
in mind, I want to consider the issue of loss in the screen afterlife of
Wuthering Heights through an engagement with Elizabeth K. Helsinger’s
and Armstrong’s respective analyses of loss in relation to the representa-
tion of rural English landscapes in the nineteenth century.
Helsinger writes that from 1870 onwards, the slow disappearance of ‘old’
rural life in English culture during an era of increasing industrialisation
created a new ‘symbolic’ function for the countryside and its landscape.
She notes that the ‘change is signalled not only by a flood of repetitive
images of “a” rural England’ but also ‘by the gradual disappearance
both of competing rural scenes and of serious challenges to their use as
a metaphor for an original, essential national identity’ (Helsinger, 1997,
p. 6). Furthermore, Helsinger links this use of the rural landscape with
both heritage cinema and a ‘home’ discourse:
Rural scenes are increasingly deployed as portable icons of England

for those who have left home – urban dwellers with real or imagined
rural origins, colonists and imperial administrators in South Africa
or India, soldiers in the trenches of World War I – or more recently,
as the built or restored settings for a display of national heritage in
which the countryside is the unifying theme. Often these are repre-
sentations of a past that is dead: frozen, stylized, and reproduced to
unite those who can be brought together on the common ground of
this image for a lost past. (Helsinger, 1997, pp. 6–7)
It is important to point out that Helsinger’s discussion of ‘rural scenes’

does not simply refer to countryside scenes in the strictest sense, but
also more broadly to marginal and regional spaces, on the periphery of
central urban life. Thus, it is possible to read MTV’s own marginal land-
scape, ‘on the edge of the ocean’, as a modernised version of Helsinger’s
‘rural scenes’. What is of particular importance to my discussion here is
the extent to which the co-opting of marginal and regional spaces into
unified images of the past, an ‘essential national identity’, a cultural
‘heritage’ and ‘home’, are tied to loss.
In fact, Helsinger’s analysis here highlights that loss is necessary for
the unifying discourses that align the periphery with the ideologies of
the centre. It is as if the moment of loss when change occurs opens up
an ideological space whose function is to be filled with ‘frozen, stylized,
and reproduced’ images that subsume competing narratives of represen-
tation. Helsinger’s analysis suggests a way of reading loss that does not
simply indicate an anxiety about change, but also, that positions loss as
a cultural moment that allows for ideological unification.
The function of the imagery of the lovers’ discourse in the form of the
‘hilltop lovers’ motif displays precisely this subsuming of the marginal
into the central through a unifying mythology, predicated on loss. The
1939, 1992, 2003 and 2009 adaptations I have explored in detail have
all highlighted a central aspect that is pertinent to almost every screen
adaptation of Wuthering Heights: the construction of a lovers’ discourse
Afterword 195
imagery that stems from social and cultural backgrounds of perceived

loss, in which the erosions of war, coherency, stability, ‘authenticity’
and historical ‘innocence’ are turned into narratives of cultural inherit-
ance, heritage and home. Like the rural scenes Helsinger explores, the
landscapes that form the lovers’ discourse are turned into a series of
‘portable icons’ of home. The ‘icon of loss’ represented by Catherine
and Heathcliff as lovers is turned into an icon of home through the
co-opting of the landscape they inhabit as a representation of the
central values of Western cultures. Armstrong’s analysis of Wuthering
Heights in relation to the uses of regional landscapes in the 1830s and
1840s also suggests an expansion of Helsinger’s argument, in which she
argues that the use of regional landscapes at certain times does not sim-
ply indicate the co-opting of loss, but also, its construction (Armstrong,
1992, pp. 246–7).
Armstrong argues that the rise in tourism to regional landscapes in
the nineteenth century, in correlation with the rise of photography, in
which photographers and tourists from the ‘relatively well-to-do’ classes
went ‘in search of quaint customs and rugged landscapes’, resulted in
a type of regional and rural ‘murder’ (Armstrong, 1992, pp. 246–7).
That is, tourists and photographers destroyed the very landscapes they
sought to memorialise via their gazes through both the literal degra-
dation caused by tourism and the ideological erosion resulting from
the subsuming of local difference into central, urban and national
discourses (Armstrong, 1992, pp. 246–7). This, in part, helps us read
Lockwood’s own venture to a ‘rugged’ regional landscape in Wuthering
Heights in which his gaze commits often erroneous acts of ‘murder’
that seek to contain the marginal within the discourses of the urban
and middle-class centre. When he co-opts both the landscape and
Wuthering Heights into a discourse of middle-class privacy and seeks
to close-off the multiple voices in the narrative with his own discourse
of the ‘quiet earth’, he does indeed perform a type of murder in which
‘competing rural scenes’ are subsumed by his silent peace.
It is possible to extend my reading of Lockwood and Armstrong’s
own engagement with the novel when approaching the screen repre-
sentation of the marginal landscape in the 1939, 1992, 2003 and 2009
adaptations. These adaptations, in a way, perform their own types of
‘murder’ in their representations of marginal spaces. The 1939 film
uses the landscape of the moors to construct an image of cultural unity
at the onset of war, in which the specificity of the English moors is
subsumed by the concerns of ‘Western civilization’. The more recent
1992, 2003 and 2009 adaptations rework the politics of place evident
in Wyler’s film, and I would like to engage with them in more detail
as they signal the contemporary preoccupations that will continue to
shape subsequent adaptations.
The regional Yorkshire landscape that Catherine and Heathcliff
inhabit in the 1992 film is also a landscape that is mobilised in other
ways beyond the theme of their love. It is a landscape that is turned into
heritage space. Higson argues that:
if heritage has a temporal or historical dimension, it also has a spa-

tial and geographical dimension: it is articulated as both exemplary
narrative and traditional landscape. When heritage culture is mobi-
lized on a national scale (‘our shared national heritage’), it is in this
spatio-temporal grid that ‘the nation’ emerges as a unique, organic,
meaningful community. . . . Heritage cinema plays a crucial role in
this process of imagining English nationhood, by telling symbolic
stories of class, gender, ethnicity, and identity, and staging them in
the most picturesque landscapes and houses of the Old Country.
(Higson, 2003, p. 50)
If heritage cinema uses an ‘image of a lost past’, to use Helsinger’s words,

it also uses an image of a lost landscape that is re-imagined as heritage
space. Indeed, Helsinger’s own discussion of the more recent ‘display
of national heritage’ as a development of the nineteenth-century
preoccupation with the representation of regional spaces highlights the
extent to which heritage cinema and the heritage industry are often
built upon cultural and national discourses of unification that ‘murder’
competing voices.
As Mike Crang notes, critics of heritage cinema have pointed out that
part of the unifying process of the use of the past and regional land-
scapes is ‘the recovery of a “traditional England” in the face of a multi-
cultural Britain, an Englishness that invoked history to both cloak and
set a purported Anglo-Saxon ethnicity against other Celtic, Asian, and
African Britons’ (Crang, 2003, p. 112). As an English film that is backed-
up by American funding, the 1992 film seems to expand the Anglo-
American ‘tradition’ that Wyler’s 1939 film seeks to establish against a
background of national and cultural threat. Only this time, the threat
is internal rather than external, as a multicultural Britain returns to
imagined narratives of an exclusionary national past. This too is a type
of ‘murder’, for if, to use Higson’s words, ‘regional specificity’ and ‘the
local’ seem ‘overwhelmed by national tradition, the national is always
reduced to local tradition’ (Higson, 2003, p. 79). Such a reduction
Afterword 197
displaces those who do not fit into the ethnic and historical models of
identity presented on screen onto the margins of nationality, essentially
turning them into exiles within their own ‘homes’.
However, what does this regional and national specificity mean for a
wider American, European or international audience, to whom, along-
side a British one, the 1992 film was marketed? To answer this question,
we need to turn to the other side of heritage cinema: tourism and con-
sumerism. In my analysis of the 1992 film, I briefly explored the issue
of tourism in relation to the representation of region, landscape and
houses. Several heritage cinema critics have argued that the construc-
tion of attractive images of an English past, in which regional landscapes
and spaces are turned into what I have likened to ‘postcard’ images, is
related to tourism (see Higson, 2003, pp. 50–1). In particular, they argue
that the heritage cinema mode that developed during the 1980s and
1990s became increasingly aligned with a corporate and institutionalised
‘packaging’ and consumption of the past as a series of tourist experiences
and products to be bought (see Higson, 2003, pp. 50–1).
This is similar to Armstrong’s argument that mid-nineteenth-century
urban tourists and photographers turned the regional landscapes
they visited into consumable ‘words and images’ for an urban centre
(Armstrong, 1992, p. 248). In both cases, the result is a landscape and,
in Higson’s words, a history that ‘was being idealized, sanitized, and
rendered harmless and unthreatening; it was being preserved in aspic’
(Higson, 2003, p. 52). Armstrong would perhaps argue that it was being
preserved in the ‘memorialization’ (Armstrong, 1992, p. 247) of photog-
raphy as what Helsinger has termed ‘frozen, stylized, and reproduced’
images of ‘a lost past’ and landscape. Kosminsky’s film participates in
these processes of ‘memorialisation’ and ‘preservation’ of the regional
landscape and the past as ‘frozen’ and ‘stylized’ images to be consumed
by his audience. The excessive preoccupation with not only presenting
properly ‘authentic’ images of the past, but also, attractive images of
the landscape and the things and people that populate it, highlights the
location of the adaptation within a logic of consumption.
This issue is explored in the 2003 film outside the boundaries of his-
tory. MTV’s Wuthering Heights utilises a marginal landscape to engage
with the issues of love, gender, desire and consumerism, which I have
explored on the space of Catherine’s body in the 1939 film. In the 2003
film, these issues are transferred onto the landscape in a complex and
often contradictory process that highlights the film’s own marketing
of its imagery as it simultaneously seeks to provide counter-images to
consumption and consumerism as corrupting symptoms of the times.
What is particularly significant about this transference is that it is also

a transference of these issues from the boundaries of a lost past, to the
mythical context of a lost sense of historical consciousness. The chosen
seaside landscape is not simply geographically marginal, but also con-
textually marginal as a space that is aligned with myth, on the margins
of history.
MTV’s seaside landscape is a visual representation of Roland Barthes’s
definition of myth as ‘constituted by the loss of the historical quality of
things’ (Barthes, 1973, p. 155). It is a type of landscape that is also evi-
dent in Cuarón’s 1998 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
This adaptation similarly modernises the nineteenth-century novel and
sets it in a mythical seaside landscape. Like the misty atmosphere that
surrounds these landscapes, there is something ‘murky’ about these
adaptations. It is almost as if they are set outside time itself, with the
sea acting as a visual representation of the ‘mythical resonance’ of the
‘timeless’ landscape, to use Steinman’s words. MTV’s representation of
the landscape within a discourse of myth has its origins, of course, in
previous adaptations. Both the 1939 and 1992 films place Catherine
and Heathcliff in the landscape as a representation of ‘timeless’ and
transcendent values, through which both the lovers and their landscape
are lifted out of history and entered into the realm of myth. However, in
these films, we return to the frame of history, while the 2003 film never
really situates its own representations within such a frame.
MTV’s Wuthering Heights in fact intensifies Kosminsky’s representation
of a mythical landscape. I have previously noted that Kosminsky’s grand
landscape of huge white stones seems to ‘out-represent’ Wyler’s moors,
and in this manner it is similar to the landscape in Anthony Minghella’s
The English Patient (1996), another film in which Fiennes stars. In a
particularly striking scene depicting Fiennes’ character, Almasy, flying
across the desert, the landscape becomes unusually surreal. It is an
excessive representation of visual grandeur in which the desert planes
resemble, as one critic has termed it when analysing Kosminsky’s own
landscape in the 1992 film, ‘the magnified involutions of the brain’
(Mars-Jones, 1992, n.p.). The result of such a representation is also simi-
lar to Kosminsky’s, as it lifts Fiennes’ character into a mythical plane
of elemental and psychological transcendence, with the boundaries of
context momentarily eliminated by an expansive Sublime landscape.
What occurs in MTV’s Wuthering Heights is a movement from such
momentary eliminations of boundaries of context into a permanent
one. But the movement of the narrative outside the boundaries of his-
tory fixes its meaning within other, perhaps more static, unifying and
Afterword 199
subsuming boundaries than those of a ‘frozen’ and ‘unthreatening’ past:

the boundaries of myth.
MTV’s Wuthering Heights highlights the novel’s cultural status as what
Miller has termed a ‘modern myth’ (Miller, 2003b, p. vii). It also high-
lights the extent to which previous adaptations, like the nineteenth-
century tourists and photographers Armstrong discusses, have similarly
‘mythologised’ the marginal landscape within the boundaries of unify-
ing discourses of cultural inheritance and nationality. The difference is
however, that Armstrong’s exploration of tourism and photography in
the nineteenth-century locates these cultural developments against the
backdrop of the developing modern English nation. MTV’s Wuthering
Heights on the other hand is located within a cultural frame of the
perceived erosion of the boundaries of a ‘home’ that has been lost and
which can perhaps be recovered through the ‘portable icon’ of the
lovers’ discourse.
ITV’s Wuthering Heights is predicated on a different, if related, sense
of loss: the loss of historical innocence when engaging with the repre-
sentation of the past in the present. Its mode of neo-Victorianism is a
curious expansion and development of Kosminsky’s heritage consump-
tion mode and MTV’s decontextualisation movement into ahistorical
myth. The representation of the regional Yorkshire landscape as part of
the trope of the hilltop lovers participates in the construction of such
a landscape as a marketable tourist site that can be promoted to both
local and international audiences. Yet, this occurs through the added
feature of obvious cross-promotion with other adaptations and other
well-known literary works. In this brand of neo-Victorianism, context
is lost and the specific issues of class, race, gender, region and nation
explored in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are turned into a universal drama
of love that can be marketed across adaptations of other literary works.
This is a powerful form of myth-making in which Wuthering Heights
and its iconic pair of ‘lovers’ are turned into romance prototypes akin
to Austen’s Elizabeth and Darcy.
There is a suggestion though within ITV’s serial of how future
adaptations can move beyond this mode of myth: cultural memory.
Heathcliff’s self-conscious mode of memory politics highlights a way
forward in the adaptation of classic literature in which nostalgia is not
simply a conservative force, but also an interrogative one. Looking
back to the past can provide sustained critical investigation of mar-
ginalised histories and an awareness of how the present is shaped by
historical legacies. As Mitchell quite rightly points out, ‘[i]n the last
decade or two scholars working in a range of disciplines have reworked
the notion of nostalgia, claiming for it a more positive and productive

role in recalling the past, a project that seems important, even neces-
sary, in a culture that multiplies historical narratives in a variety of
media’ (Mitchell, 2010, p. 5). I would tend to agree that such a project
is necessary with the proliferation of historical and literary adaptations
on screen. But, it will require such screen adaptations to move in the
direction of contemporary neo-Victorian fiction, where nostalgia is
productive, rather than problematically unifying and often, conserva-
tive. The adaptation of Wuthering Heights on screen may be moving
into more self-conscious perspectives, but it is still undeniably rooted
within a conservative nostalgia.
What is at stake here in these continual representations of a landscape
built on loss throughout the screen afterlife of Wuthering Heights is the
very discourse of home itself. In its various manifestations, the land-
scape of the lovers’ discourse as myth, heritage, cultural inheritance or
memory, forms the unifying boundary of ‘home’, as it is constructed
along different lines of personal, national and cultural belonging. This
landscape, like Catherine and Heathcliff, is also familiar, and through its
familiarity, is rendered a comforting discourse of a ‘portable’ home that
can be called upon and amended at need. The question that requires
analysis is therefore, what would occur if such a landscape and indeed,
the poetics of home, were rendered ‘unfamiliar’? To engage with this
question, I want to return here to Brontë’s Lockwood and Rivette’s chal-
lenge to both his poetics of ‘peace’ and the novel’s mythical afterlife.
Rivette’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights does not ‘fit’ with the novel’s
other adaptations and it is precisely for this reason that I have chosen
it as a primary text in this book. Helsinger argues that in ‘the narrative’
Lockwood:
writes for English readers, the unsatisfied desires of Catherine and

Heathcliff can be buried safely in a distant place while he incorpo-
rates their strangeness into national culture. But in Brontë’s story,
as opposed to the one she has Lockwood tell, neither the driving
hungers of individuals nor the alien demands of marginalized local
populations can be fully subsumed into the peaceful unities of mar-
riage, death, or nationhood . . . Places, like persons, remain locked in
struggles for mastery. To read Brontë rightly is to be denied the pleas-
ure of romanticizing locality and rurality. (Helsinger, 1997, p. 177)
Rivette’s Hurlevent takes up Brontë’s challenge to romanticisation and

‘peace’ through the sustained deconstruction of narratives of home,
Afterword 201
gender and myth. The quiet intensity of the film, constructed through
an intimately uncomfortable lack of music and dialogue, can be read as
an ironic reworking of Lockwood’s poetics of ‘peace’ and ‘quiet earth’,
in which a unifying discourse of romanticised regionalism is turned
into narratives of ‘struggles for mastery’. Rivette’s alignment of the lov-
ers’ discourse and the landscape within which it is constructed with
Catherine’s own struggle highlights the politics of demystification at
the heart of the film, which moves from Catherine’s body and social
position, to the deconstruction of myths of nation, region, history,
heritage and the novel’s own cultural status in Western culture.
Rivette’s approach resonates with George’s discussion of feminist
critics’ exploration of the concept of home in the mid to late 1980s:
[i]n her sophisticated analysis of ‘home’ for those who have been
granted the privilege, [Minnie Bruce] Pratt’s text makes us question
the entire project of subjecthood and feeling at home . . . Home
remains a desirable place. And yet, Pratt’s advocation of struggle
and embracing the unfamiliar is the absolute antithesis of what has
(and continues to be) known as ‘home’ – the place of comfort and
familiarity. (George, 1999, pp. 27–8)2
George also adds that:
Pratt’s autobiographical essay is crucial to Caren Kaplan’s articulation

of a new ‘feminist poetics’ that is based on the first world feminist
critic’s willingness to leave home in order to feel difference, displace-
ment and ‘deterritorialization’ more keenly . . . ‘Becoming minor’
or ‘reterritorialization without imperialism’ requires that first-world
critics ‘dare to let go of their respective representations and systems
of meaning, their identity politics and theoretical homes’. (George,
1999, pp. 27–8)3
Rivette adopts a similar position to Pratt’s and Kaplan’s, as described

above. He compels his audience to ‘embrace the unfamiliar’ in multiple
ways. In his demystification of the lovers’ discourse and its popular
imagery, he advocates a history of feminine struggle rather than a myth
of unity. Similarly he rewrites the politics of heritage cinema as a process
of constructing, in Higson’s words, ‘idealized’, ‘sanitized’, ‘unthreaten-
ing’ and unifying images of history and landscape by delving into a
specific history of regional and religious violence upon which narratives
of unity and national identity have been built.
In a sense, Rivette uses the tropes of both heritage cinema and the
screen afterlife of Wuthering Heights to counter the cultural and national
uses of this cinema and afterlife. He utilises the romanticised landscape,
the site upon which mythical narratives of national and cultural identi-
ties have been built, to reveal the conflicting and competing histories
that a specific region may hold. Like Heathcliff’s unknown identity,
through which Nelly proposes a series of multiple possible homelands
from the British Empire’s colonised lands, Rivette reveals that personal,
national and cultural identities compete for meaning and are often based
on processes of internal and external colonisation. The implicit argu-
ment is that it is just as contradictory to construct an identity of unity
from these competing histories as it is to turn Wuthering Heights into a
narrative of myth when it too is the product of a specific context.
Furthermore, Rivette uses a foreign canonical text to explore his
nation’s own cultural and national history, ultimately making both the
text and the history ‘foreign’ aspects to both French and English audi-
ences. That is, he represents familiar identities and narratives as ‘unfa-
miliar’, compelling his audience to let go of the notion of ‘comfort’ and
instead critically examine their myths of culture and identity through a
process of ‘difference’ and ‘displacement’. It is a type of ‘reterritorializa-
tion without imperialism’, as Rivette looks to the past and the landscape
in a manner that does not seek to create new myths or appropriate the
much-trodden ground of transcendence, unity, familiarity and belong-
ing, but rather which seeks to interrogate those ‘established patterns
of thought’ (Rivette, 1968, n.p.) that underlie both his and Western
culture’s most dominant discourses of ‘home’. This is indeed a form of
destruction of myths, which he has stated is his own personal belief
regarding the role of cinema (Rivette, 1968, n.p.).
It is not possible to feel at home in Rivette’s adaptation as it is an
uncomfortable film in many ways. My first viewing of the film left me
confused and this initial response highlighted to me the importance of
making a text that is so familiar completely foreign, as it led to many
questions. Hurlevent essentially compels its viewer to ‘question the
entire project of subjecthood and feeling at home’, and in doing so, it
locates Wuthering Heights within an interrogative realm which asks the
questions that Helsinger (1997, p. 7) argues conservative nostalgia, and
I would also argue, myth, ‘forestalls’: namely, what is being ‘conserved’
and mobilised from our pasts, landscapes and literary texts, and for
‘whom’?
It is important to remember that nostalgia refers not simply to the
past, but also to a longing for home. Yet, Rivette’s approach needs to be
Afterword 203
taken further. If we cannot continue to long for a home that never was,
are we then to become, like Brontë’s Catherine, ‘homeless’? Is there not
a way of conceptualising of home that does not colonise and ‘murder’
competing voices? George’s and Kaplan’s engagements with Michelle
Cliff’s Claiming an Identity seem to suggest an answer to these ques-
tions through the conceptualisation of a space that is not predicated
on loss:
Cliff writes of a garden that is a ‘private open space’. Kaplan sees

here a successful move to reterritorialization . . . Hence she declares
Cliff’s garden: ‘a new terrain, a new location . . . Not a room of one’s
own, not a fully public or collective self, not a domestic realm – it is
a space . . . which allows for the inside, the outside, and the liminal
elements in between. Not a romanticized pastoral or a modern-
ist urban utopia – Cliff’s garden is the space where writing occurs
without loss. (George, 1999, p. 29)
This garden mirrors the garden I explored in Chapter 1: Cathy’s gar-

den in Brontë’s novel, through which she ‘remaps’ the margins of
Wuthering Heights.
Such a space requires that boundaries be permeable rather than static
or subsumed, that multiple voices be allowed to compete rather than
‘murdered’, in a politics of place that does not distinguish between the
outside and inside, and thereby, does not classify, contain and margin-
alise. Catherine wants to be let both in and out, and it is this ability
to create a space of being and belonging that does not specify unitary
meanings to our desires, our histories, our landscapes and indeed,
Wuthering Heights itself, that is required if we too are to formulate our
own ‘private open space’. As the confidante of Jones’ heroine in Dreams
of Speaking, Mr Sakamoto, points out, ‘[w]e are all large enough – are we
not? – to contain contradictions’ ( Jones, 2006, p. 83). And, indeed, we
are large enough to move beyond the interpretation of contradictions
and multiple voices in a threatening or anxiety-laden manner, which
must subsume them into myth.
One can only hope however, that such a garden will not simply be
limited to the space of critical writing, but taken into the ‘lap’ of cul-
ture, ‘interconnecting with innermost things’ ( Jones, 2006, p. 137), as
Wuthering Heights has been. As I write these words, information about
a new Wuthering Heights screen adaptation by director Andrea Arnold
emerges on the Internet with tantalising possibilities. Will Arnold
expand Rivette’s politics for a new modern audience? This remains to
be seen. In her concluding postscript to the Victorian Afterlife collection,

Armstrong notes that ‘[b]ecause our forebears were so successful in
establishing their picture of the world as the world itself, cultural theory
is not just a legacy they bequeathed to us, but one of the most effective
means of intervening in the reproduction of that picture’ (Armstrong,
2000, pp. 323–4). Similarly, if Wuthering Heights continues to matter as
it enters into what Kucich and Sadoff term the ‘histories of the present’
(Kucich and Sadoff, 2000a, p. ix), it can become one of the most effec-
tive means of reconceptualising of the ‘picture’ of our personal, national
and cultural worlds.
Appendix
Wuthering Heights Screen Adaptations
Abismos de Pasión (1953) Directed by Luis Buñuel [Film]. Mexico: Producciones

Tepeyac.
Arashi Ga Oka (1988) Directed by Kiju Yoshida [Film]. Japan: Mediactuel, Saison
Group, Seiyu Production, Toho.
Cime Tempestose (2004) Directed by Fabrizio Costa [Television serial]. Italy:
Titanus.
Cumbres Borrascosas (1979) Directed by Ernesto Alonso and Karlos Velázquez
[Telenovela]. Mexico: Televisa S. A. de C. V.
Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966) Directed by Abdul Rashid Kardar [Film]. India: Kary
Productions.
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992) Directed by Peter Kosminsky [Film].
UK/USA: Paramount Pictures.
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1998) Directed by David Skynner [Television
serial]. UK: ITV, Masterpiece Theatre, PBS.
Hihintayin Kita Sa Langit (1991) Directed by Carlos Siguion-Reyna [Film].
Philippines: Reynafilms.
Hurlevent (1985) Directed by Jacques Rivette [Film]. France: La Cécilia, Renn
Productions, Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française.
Ölmeyen Ask (1966) Directed by Metin Erksan [Film]. Turkey: Arzu Film.
‘The Spanish Inquisition’ [episode 15] (1970). Monty Python’s Flying Circus
[Television series]. Directed by Ian MacNaughton. UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (1920) Directed by A. V. Bramble [Film]. UK: Ideal Films Ltd.
Wuthering Heights (1939) Directed by William Wyler [Film]. USA: United Artists/
MGM.
Wuthering Heights (1948) Directed by George More O’Ferrall [Television serial].
UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (1953) Directed by Rudolph Cartier [Television serial].
UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (1962) Directed by Rudolph Cartier [Television serial].
UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (1967) Directed by Peter Sasdy [Television serial]. UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (1970) Directed by Robert Fuest [Film]. UK: American
International Pictures.
Wuthering Heights (1978) Directed by Peter Hammond [Television serial].
UK: BBC.
Wuthering Heights (2003) Directed by Suri B. Krishnamma [Television film].
USA: MTV Networks.
Wuthering Heights (2009) Directed by Coky Giedroyc [Television serial].
UK: ITV.
Wuthering Heights (2011) Directed by Andrea Arnold [Film]. UK: Ecosse Films,
Film4, Screen Yorkshire, UK Film Council.
205
206 Appendix
‘Wuthering Heights’ [episode 3] (1952). Broadway Television Theatre [Television

series]. USA: WOR-TV.
‘Wuthering Heights’ [episode 72] (1950). Westinghouse Studio One [Television
series]. Directed by Paul Nickell. USA: CBS.
‘Wuthering Heights’ [episode 81] (1948). Kraft Television Theatre [Television
series]. Directed by Fielder Cook and George Roy Hill. USA: NBC.
‘Wuthering Heights’ [episode 9] (1958). The DuPont Show of the Month [Television
series]. Directed by Daniel Petrie. USA: CBS.
Notes
Introduction
1. The edition of the novel used throughout this book is based on the authorita-
tive 1976 Clarendon edition of Wuthering Heights, edited by Hilda Marsden
and Ian Jack. This authoritative edition is based on the first edition of
Wuthering Heights rather than the second edition published in 1850, which
included changes made by Charlotte Brontë to her sister’s novel.
2. There have been numerous other studies on screen adaptation that have
guided my own reading on the subject, including: Leitch (2007); Elliott
(2003); Cartmell and Whelehan (1999, 2007b); Hutcheon (2006); Welsh and
Lev (2007); Geraghty (2008); McFarlane (1996); Cahir (2006); Wagner (1975);
Stam and Raengo (2004, 2005).
3. Please refer to the Appendix of this book for a full list of known Wuthering
Heights screen adaptations.
4. I have not found any significant analyses of the 1985, 2003 and 2009 adap-
tations, apart from reviews and publicity on the Internet. Stoneman lists
Hurlevent in the Appendix to Brontë Transformations (see Stoneman, 1996a,
pp. 315–6), but does not analyse it in the body of her work. To me, this high-
lights the extent to which Rivette’s Hurlevent could not be integrated into
Stoneman’s discussion of the mainly American and English adaptations. I feel
that the film’s different approach however, in fact highlights the ideological
processes at work in the other adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
1 Before the Afterlife: Analysing Wuthering Heights

1. There are two characters named Catherine in the novel and in some of its
screen adaptations: the elder Catherine, who is associated with Heathcliff and
the first generation of characters, and her daughter, the younger Catherine,
who is associated with the second generation. To avoid confusion, I will be
referring to the elder Catherine as ‘Catherine’ and the younger Catherine as
‘Cathy’ throughout this book.
2. It is worthwhile to point out that Emily Brontë was familiar with the works
of the Romantic authors. See Gordon (1989, pp. 86–94) for details regarding
the literary influences of the Brontës.
3. A notable example is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Epipsychidion, to which
I shall return in more detail in Chapter 5.
2 The Cinema of Spectacle: Establishing the Wuthering

Heights Tradition on the Eve of Hollywood’s Golden Era
1. No copy of the film is known to exist, with only a few photographic stills
surviving.
207
208 Notes
2. See Glancy (1999, pp. 70–1) for statistical information regarding Hollywood
‘British’ films of the 1930s and 1940s.
3. Refer to my discussion on Heathcliff in Chapter 1 of this book for further
discussion on nineteenth-century discourses of ‘heroic masculinity’.
3 Moving Backward, Looking Forward: Jacques Rivette’s

Hurlevent
1. The literal translation of Hurlevent in English is ‘howling wind’. While it is
possible to read this title in a metaphoric manner, the title of the film seems
to be more practical in meaning. Hurlevent is the standard translation for
Wuthering Heights in French, as the title appears in numerous French transla-
tions and adaptations of the novel. It seems that Rivette is here simply using
a title for his film that would be recognisable for a French audience as a refer-
ence to Brontë’s novel.
2. Please refer to the Appendix for full details about these adaptations.
3. The Garrigue is a type of scrubland in the regions of Provence and Corsica.
4. The actress who plays Catherine is Fabienne Babe who, along with Lucas
Belvaux, the actor chosen to play Roch, was specifically selected because of
her age. Rivette details in his interview with Hazette how he wanted to make
an adaptation of Wuthering Heights in which the actors would be the same age
as Catherine and Heathcliff in the novel. See Hazette (2003, n.p.).
5. All dialogue transcriptions are my own as there is no available copy of the
film’s screenplay.
6. For more detailed discussions on the region of the Cévennes in relation to
France’s religious history refer to Deming (1994), Randall (2004), and Kelly
(2003).
7. Wuthering Heights was adapted into ballet in France in 1982, 2002 and 2007,
with numerous performances. It was adapted into ballet in England in 2003.
8. Poe the ‘literary god’ is largely the product of his French critics, one of the
most noted ones being Charles Baudelaire. For illuminating discussions on
the issue of Poe’s status in French culture see Weightman (1987, pp. 202–19)
and Quinn (1967, pp. 64–78).
4 Wuthering Heights in the 1990s: Peter Kosminsky’s

Ambitious Narrative
1. Hereafter, the film shall be referred to as Wuthering Heights. Since there are
two Catherines in the film, as in the novel, I will be using the same method to
differentiate between the two Catherines as used in my analysis of the novel,
by referring to the elder Catherine as ‘Catherine’ and the younger Catherine
as ‘Cathy’.
2. Dialogue transcriptions are my own, as the only available screenplay of the
film is the shooting screenplay, which differs vastly from the actual final
product of the film. I have therefore chosen to concentrate on the dialogue
in the film itself rather than the screenplay.
3. Ingham is quoting Francke (1992, p. 60).
Notes 209
4. The issues which Monk discusses here are also raised in McFarlane (2001,
p. 277).
5. It is important to note that I do not believe that women or femininity are
inherently tied to nature, nor that nature itself is an unmediated site that is
the antithesis of culture. Rather, I am here engaging with Gilbert and Gubar’s
feminist argument and the manner in which the film reworks such feminist
arguments.
6. Haire-Sargeant is here referring to the elder Catherine as ‘Cathy’. The allu-
sion to ‘Hammond’ is a reference to the 1978 BBC television adaptation of
Wuthering Heights, directed by Peter Hammond. See the Appendix for full
details regarding this adaptation.
7. The film’s opening inter-title claims that it ‘remains true to the spirit of
Emily Brontë’s novel’ by demonstrating that ‘love can only be fulfilled
through death’ and that ‘instincts and passions’ are ‘timeless’. This is, of
course, a rather familiar mode of decontextualisation of the novel that func-
tions alongside overt misogyny in the film.
8. For example, see Anonymous (1991); Heller (1991, pp. 16–17); Paramount
British Pictures Limited (n.d.b); Wall (1992b); Matthews (1992, p. 33); Hewitt
(1991); Hickling (1992, p. 11).
9. For example, see Aldridge (1992, n.p.); Bark (1994, pp. 1C–7C); Meuller
(n.d., p. 34); Verity (1991, p. 40); Matthews (1992, p. 33); J (1992 (n.p.);
Hutchinson (1992, n.p.); Hardy (n.d., n.p.); Diamond (1992, pp. 16–17).
10. Lee is here referring to the elder Catherine as ‘Cathy’.
11. Lee is here referring to the elder Catherine as ‘Cathy’ and the younger
Catherine as ‘Catherine’.
5 Catherine and Heathcliff for the Y Generation: MTV’s

Modernisation of Wuthering Heights
1. All dialogue and narration transcriptions are my own as there is no available
copy of the film’s screenplay.
2. For example, see Cohen (1997, pp. 30–1); Coates (1997, pp. 52–3); Leonard (2007,
pp. 24–5, 32–3); Shuker (2001, pp. 115–37); Knightley (2001, pp. 109–42).
3. The lyrics have been transcribed from both the film itself and the soundtrack
to the film. This particular song is repeated throughout the film.
6 Critical Legacies and Contemporary Audiences: The

Politics of Neo-Victorianism in ITV’s 2009 Adaptation of
Wuthering Heights
1. For example, see Whelehan (2000); McRobbie (2009); Douglas (2010).
2. For example, see Hadley (2010); Mitchell (2010); Arias and Pulham (2010);
Heilmann (2010); Kohlke and Gutleben (2010, 2011).
3. It should be noted that some of these authors’ work range from the 1990s to
the present. But the kind of knowing sensibility they represent has moved
more strongly into other cultural productions, such as screen adaptations, in
the recent decade.
210 Notes
4. All dialogue transcriptions are my own as I have not had access to an available
copy of the serial’s teleplay.
5. See Stoneman (2000, pp. 135–55) for a detailed list of sources regarding post-
colonial and Marxist interpretations of Wuthering Heights.
6. Riley is here referring to Catherine as ‘Cathy’.
7. Campion’s Bright Star adapts the biography of the Romantic poet, John Keats
(1795–1821), through a distinct focus on the much marginalised Fanny
Brawne, his fiancée.
Afterword
1. The poem they are referring to here by Tennyson is The Princess: A Medley
(1847–51).
2. George is here quoting from the following essay: Pratt (1984, pp. 11–63).
3. George is here quoting from the following essays: Pratt (1984, pp. 11–63);
Kaplan (1987, pp. 187–98).
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by an ‘n’ refer to notes. Page numbers highlighted
in bold indicate illustrations.
Abismos de Pasión (1954, dir. Louis Béart, Emmanuelle, 63

Buñuel, film), 96–7 Beautiful, the (aesthetic category), 11,
Abrams, M. H., 31, 126–7 54, 112
Adams, James Eli, 29–30, 133, 189 Belarbi, Kader, 80
adaptation studies, see under Belsey, Catherine, 135, 141
adaptation Belvaux, Lucas, 72, 83, 208n
adaptation Bennet, Elizabeth (character in Pride
and adaptation studies, 2, 3–4 and Prejudice), 95, 170, 199
aesthetic approach to, 4–5 Berg, Maggie, 26, 36
and cultural critique, 3–5 Berri, Claude, 79
and fidelity criticism, 3–4 Binoche, Juliette, 15, 85, 86–7, 89, 93,
and intertextuality, 3–4 107, 110
theory of, 2–5 Bluestone, George, 3
Adjani, Isabelle, 79 Blum, Virginia L., 178
Affinity (novel), 153, 156 Boffini, Moira, 150
‘angel in the house’, the, 122 Bowker, Richard, 149, 150
Anglo-American tradition, 43–5, 48–9, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992, dir.
60, 103, 196 Francis Ford Coppola, film), 101
Arias, Rosario, 147, 148, 209n Bridget Jones’s Diary (novel), 159
Armstrong, Nancy, 18, 25–6, 47, 193, Bright Star (2009, dir. Jane Campion,
195, 197, 199, 204 film), 180, 210n
Arnold, Andrea, 203 British Tourist Authority, The, 106
art house, 97, 107 Brontë Transformations, 2, 207n
Austen, Jane (1775–1817), 44, 55, 62, Brontë, Charlotte (1816–55), 12, 146,
95, 104, 113, 119, 140, 145, 146, 150, 154, 191, 207n
147, 158, 159, 170, 171, 178–9, Brontë, Emily (1818–48)
199 screen representation of, 86, 92,
Austin, Guy, 77, 78–9, 81 99–103
Auteuil, Daniel, 79 Brontë Parsonage Museum, The, 105
authorship, 85, 92, 95, 100–1 Buck, Michelle, 147
Buñuel, Louis, 96–7
Babe, Fabienne, 83, 208n Burke, Edmund (1729–97), 10–11, 18,
Bachelard, Gaston, 7, 10 49, 54
Baldick, Chris, 45–6 Bush, Kate, 5–6
ballet, 1, 80, 103, 208n Byatt, A. S., 15, 148, 176, 177, 179
Barthes, Roland, 198 Byron, George Gordon, Lord Byron
Bastille Day, 74–5, 78, 82–3 (1788–1824), 31, 35, 170
BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation),
62, 95, 106, 146, 149, 154–5, 158, Campion, Jane, 180, 210n
170, 176, 178, 209n Carter, Angela, 70
221
222 Index
Cartmell, Deborah, 3, 207n Dalton, Timothy, 97

Catherine (character in Wuthering Darcy, Fitzwilliam (character in Pride
Heights) and Prejudice), 60, 95, 158, 170,
ghost of, 22–4, 56, 70–1, 109–10, 199
116, 121–3, 131, 150, 177, 181–5 Darcymania, 95
and homelessness, 22–4, 34–5, 150 Darnton, Robert, 77
and middle-class femininity, 19–24, David Copperfield (1935, dir. George
27–8, 35–6, 156, 174, 181–2, Cukor, film), 41
184–6 Davies, Stevie, 13
and the mother-daughter Deleuze, Gilles, 78
relationship, 27–8, 109–12, Depression, the, 53
116–24, 149, 151–3, 183 Devil Wears Prada, The (novel), 159
negative analysis of, 64, 69 Dickens, Charles (1812–70), 118, 146,
and Romanticism, 32–6 198
Cavanah, Robert, 108 domestic ideology, 18–19, 20, 22, 24,
Cecil, David, 13, 47–8, 64, 69 27–8
Cévennes, 15, 63, 73, 74, 76, 208n Douglas, Susan, 119, 149, 157, 209n
Chariots of Fire (1981, dir. Hugh Dreams of Speaking, 15, 203
Hudson, film), 78 du Maurier, Daphne (1907–89), 59
Chase, Karen and Levenson, Michael, Dumas, Alexandre (1802–70), 79
18, 19 During, Simon, 115, 133
Chéreau, Patrice, 79
chick-lit, 157, 159 Eagleton, Terry, 13, 14, 45–7, 164, 165
Christensen, Erika, 115, 122 Elliott, Kamilla, 4–5, 57, 207n
Cliff, Michelle, 203 Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992,
Clueless (1995, dir. Amy Heckerling, dir. Peter Kosminsky, film), 15,
film), 113, 114, 140 85–112, 89, 94, 113, 116, 121,
Coates, Norma, 125, 209n 122, 126, 133, 139, 142, 156, 160,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 166, 168, 169, 178, 179, 181–204
(1772–1834), 31 passim, 208–9n
consumer culture, 50, 53–4, 55, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1998,
139–42, 145, 171–2, 176, 197 ITV, television serial), 101, 108
consumerism, see under consumer English Patient, The (1996, dir.
culture Anthony Minghella, film), 97,
Cormack, Mike, 40 198
costume dramas, see under costume English Studies, 45–7, 48
films Epipsychidion (1821, poem), 128–9,
costume films, 15, 45, 78, 95, 99, 101, 207n
104, 106, 145, 170, 176 Eyre, Jane (character in Jane Eyre),
Crace, John, 171 150, 154–5, 191
Crang, Mike, 196
cross-marketing, 139 see fairy-tale, 31, 48, 50, 66–7
cross-promotion Faludi, Susan, 119, 149
cross-promotion, 169, 170, 171, 172, Favret, Mary A., 179
199 see cross-marketing femininity
Cuarón, Alfonso, 118, 198 during war-time, 50–5 passim
Cullen, Edward (character in the and the gaze, 24–8 passim, 50–5
Twilight saga), 123 passim, 108–12 passim, 181–8
cultural memory, 9, 10, 115, 179, 199 passim
Index 223
and Hollywood glamour, 50–5 Glancy, H. Mark, 40, 43, 45, 208n
passim, 187 Goldwyn, Samuel, 14, 39, 40, 44, 55,
and neo-Victorianism, 115–24 57, 149
passim, 131, 149–60 passim Goodbye Mr Chips (1939, dir. Sam
in the nineteenth century, 11, Wood, film), 40
19–28 passim, 35–6, 54, 122–3, Goodwin, Andrew, 126, 127, 139,
154–5, 156, 174, 185–6 140–1
and teenage girls, 67, 119, 123–4, Gothic, the, 11, 20, 21, 27, 28, 40,
159 50, 56, 70, 85, 88, 97, 99, 100,
feminism, 12, 13, 67, 85, 146, 148, 103, 104, 135, 154–5, 167, 168,
182, 201, 209n 169
backlash to, 86–99 passim, 115–24 Great Expectations (1860–1, novel),
passim, 132–3, 185–7 118, 198
and the ‘battle of the sexes’, 131–2, adaptation of, see under individual
186–8, 190–2 adaptations
co-opting of, 149–60 passim, 166, Great Expectations (1946, dir. David
175–6, 187 Lean, film), 40
and domesticity, 115–24 passim, Great Expectations (1998, dir. Alfonso
187 Cuarón, film), 118–19, 198
and motherhood, 115–24 passim, Green, Ken, 91–2, 103, 107
187 Gribble, Jennifer, 184, 185
and neo-Victorianism, 115–24
passim, 149–60 passim, 186 Hadley, Louisa, 79, 147, 152, 209n
and the sexualised female body, Haire-Sargeant, Lin, 51, 57, 96, 97,
155–60 209n
feminist, see under feminism Hamilton Woman, That (1941, dir.
Fiennes, Ralph, 15, 85, 86–99 passim, Alexander Korda, film), 41
89, 94, 126, 160, 161, 166, 198 Hardy, Tom, 161, 166, 172, 175
film star, the, 59, 94, 107 Harrington, John, 55–6
Fingersmith (novel), 156 Hawke, Ethan, 118
Fire Over England (1937, dir. William Hazette, Valérie, 62, 66, 71, 73, 208n
K. Howard, film), 41 Heathcliff (character in Wuthering
Firth, Colin, 95, 158, 170 Heights)
Fontaine, Joan, 43 Marxist interpretation of, 14,
French New Wave, 61, 62 163–5, 210n
French Revolution, The, 75, 77 postcolonial interpretation of, 14,
Fuest, Robert, 97 30, 31, 165–6, 191, 210n
Fukunaga, Cary, 150 and Romanticism, 31–2, 86–99
passim, 124–34 passim, 135, 142,
Gainsbourg, Charlotte, 107 160–7 passim, 188–92 passim
Garson, Greer, 43 and the tortured hero persona, 55,
George, Rosemary Marangoly, 6, 7, 57, 59, 71, 93–9 passim, 160–1,
201, 203, 210n 166–7, 170, 174
Geraghty, Christine, 3–4, 207n Heckerling, Amy, 113, 140
Giedroyc, Coky, 168 Heilmann, Ann, 147, 209n
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, Helsinger, Elizabeth K., 193–4, 195,
13, 67, 87, 90–1, 123, 154, 155, 196, 197, 200, 202
186, 190, 209n Henry V (1944, dir. Laurence Olivier,
Gitai, Amos, 58 film), 40
224 Index
heritage cinema, 6, 8, 15, 142, 145, Hutcheon, Linda, 3–4, 207n

146, 201, 202, 176 Huxley, Aldous, 43
and the heritage industry, 78–84
passim, 99–108 passim, 169–70, Ingham, Patricia, 39, 41, 44, 87,
194–7 passim 208n
and historical fidelity, 99–108 ITV (Independent Television), 15,
passim, 113, 178 101, 108–9, 145–204 passim
and the marketing of the author,
101 Jameson, Fredric, 113–14, 141, 142
the museum aesthetic of, 105, 108 Jane Eyre (1847, novel), 13, 150,
and national identity, 78–84 154–5, 171, 191, 193
passim, 99–108 passim, 194–7 adaptation of, see under individual
passim adaptations
and tourism, 99–108 passim, Jane Eyre (1943, dir. Robert Stevenson,
169–70, 79, 194–7 passim film), 40, 59
heritage films, see heritage cinema Jane Eyre (1996, dir. Franco Zeffirelli,
heroic masculinity, 29–30, 59, 133, film), 105, 107
188–90, 208n Jane Eyre (2006, BBC, television serial),
Hewitt, Nicholas, 76, 77, 81, 209n 154–5, 158, 176
Higson, Andrew, 6, 7–8, 79, 101, 105, Jane Eyre (2011, dir. Cary Fukunaga,
106, 107, 196, 197, 201 film), 150
hilltop lovers, the, 10, 40–9 passim, Jean de Florette (1986, dir. Claude
42, 64–7 passim, 82–3, 88, 89, Berri, film), 79
108, 121, 123, 137–42 passim, Jones, Gail, 1, 15, 16, 142, 148, 158,
171, 172, 192–4 passim, 199 176, 177, 203
Hitchcock, Alfred, 59
Hollywood, 14, 48, 50, 51, 53, 60, 62, Kaplan, Caren, 201, 203, 210n
149, 187 Kaplan, Cora, 191, 193
and the ‘British’ films of the 1930s Kaplan, E. Ann, 136, 139
and 1940s, 40–5, 208n Kavanagh, James H., 13
golden era of, 39 Kettle, Arnold, 64, 69, 165
and the screen siren, 52, 54 Kingsley, Charles (1819–75), 30, 188,
and the studio system, 39, 55 189
home Kippur (2000, dir. Amos Gitai, film),
as a theme, 5–9 passim, 193–204 58
passim Knightley, Keira, 170
and cultural inheritance, 5–10 Kohlke, Marie-Luise, 147, 209n
passim, 49, 81, 193–204 passim Kosminsky, Peter, 15, 85–112 passim,
and national identity, 5–9 passim, 113, 116, 121, 122, 126, 156, 160,
28–32 passim, 49, 81, 193–204 166, 168, 169, 178, 179, 181–204
passim passim
and Victorian domestic ideology, Krishnamma, Suri, 15
18–28 passim, 54, 123, 185 Kucich, John and Sadoff, Dianne F., 1,
Howards End (1992, dir. James Ivory, 113–14, 115, 204
film), 105, 106
Hurlevent (1985, dir. Jacques Rivette, La Belle Noiseuse (1991, dir. Jacques
film), 14–15, 61–84, 72, 83, 85, Rivette, film), 64
99, 116, 117, 139, 142, 160, 163, La Reine Margot (1994, dir. Patrice
171, 181–204 passim, 207n, 208n Chéreau, film), 79
Index 225
‘Lady of Shalott, The’ (1833, 1842, McRobbie, Angela, 119, 149, 156–7,
poem), 184–5 175–6, 209n
Lang, Jack, 79 Mellor, Anne K., 11, 91
Lawson-Peebles, Robert, 43, 44–5 Merchant, Ishmail, 105
Leavis, F. R., 46 Merchant-Ivory Productions, 79
Leavis, Q. D., 64, 69 Meyer, Stephenie, 123–4, 171
Lee, Ang, 106 Meyer, Susan, 30, 165
Lee, Soyoung, 25, 110–11, 209n Miller, J. Hillis, 12
Leitch, Thomas, 4–5, 207n Miller, Lucasta, 9, 12, 199
Leonard, Marion, 125–6, 209n Mills and Boon, 94, 174
Leonard, Robert Z., 44, 54, 55, 60 Minghella, Anthony, 198
Lincoln, Andrew, 168, 169 Mitchell, Kate, 147, 153, 176–7, 178,
Lockwood, Cara, 139 179, 199–200, 209n
loss, the theme of, 7, 49, 115, 180, Mitterrand, François (former President
192–204 passim of France), 77, 78, 79
Lost in Austen (2008, ITV, television Moby Clique, 139
serial), 147, 149, 158, 169, 170, 176 Modernism, 47, 203
lovers’ discourse, the, 9–11, 15, 32, 33, Modernist, see under Modernism
40, 66, 86, 87, 88, 92, 108, 110, Monty Python, 49
111–12, 115, 116, 121, 122, 137–8, Mrs Miniver (1942, dir. William Wyler,
140, 142, 151, 159, 167, 168–9, film), 40
171, 174, 177, 178, 179, 185, 192, MTV (Music Television), 15, 108, 109,
193, 194–5, 199, 200, 201 112, 113–43 passim, 146, 148,
Lyme Park (shooting location), 106 149, 154, 156, 167, 168, 173, 174,
181–204 passim
Madwoman in the Attic, The, 13, 90, 154 MTV Press (publisher), 139
Malina, Maggie, 138 Mundy, John, 138
Mammoth Screen, 147, 169 music video, the, 136, 138–9, 157,
Manon des Sources (1986, dir. Claude 167, 168
Berri, film), 79 myth, 9, 11, 13, 38, 60, 61, 62, 76, 84,
Marxism, 12, 13, 164, 210n 90, 91, 100, 137, 143, 161, 174,
Marxist, see under Marxism 178, 180, 181, 193, 198–9, 200,
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994, dir. 201, 202, 203
Kenneth Branagh, film), 101 Myths of Power, 13
masculinity
crisis of, 90, 133, 187, 190 National Trust, The, 106
and fatherhood, 119–20, 131, 190 neo-Romantic, 86, 90, 131
and feminist backlash, 86–99 neo-Victorian (ism), 15, 193, 199
passim, 131–4, 190–1 and domesticity, 115–24 passim,
and ‘laddism’, 98 131, 141, 186
in the nineteenth century, 11, 29–30, and feminism, 115–24 passim,
36–7, 59, 133, 188–90, 208n 149–60 passim, 186
and Romanticism, 31–2, 86–99 and fiction, 145–60 passim, 176–80
passim, 124–34 passim, 160–7 passim, 200
passim, 188–92 passim and memory, 176–9
and violence, 55–60 passim, 70, and postmodernism, 176
86–99 passim, 132, 164–6 and the representation of history,
Mason, Bertha (character in Jane Eyre), 176–9
154, 155, 191 Niven, David, 43
226 Index
Nixon, Cheryl L., 95 and Victoriana, 114

No Man’s Land, 186 Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of
nostalgia, 77, 78, 81, 148, 199, 200, Late Capitalism, 114
202 Powrie, Phil, 78
Pratt, Minnie Bruce, 201, 210n
O’Connor, Sinead, 86, 99 Pride and Prejudice (1813, novel), 44,
Oberon, Merle, 9, 14, 39, 42, 43, 52, 147, 170
52, 55, 65, 83 adaptation of, see under individual
‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ (1865), 27, 122 adaptations
Olivier, Laurence, 9, 14, 39, 42, 43, Pride and Prejudice (1940, dir. Robert
55–60 passim, 65, 71, 72, 73, 83, Z. Leonard, film), 40, 44, 45, 54,
91, 92, 96, 161, 163, 166, 189 55, 60
Pride and Prejudice (1995, BBC,
Pagnol, Marcel (1895–1974), 79 television serial), 95, 106, 158, 170
Paltrow, Gwyneth, 118 Pride and Prejudice (2005, dir. Joe
Parnet, Claire, 78 Wright, film), 170
patriarchal culture, see under Provence, 79, 208n
patriarchy Pulham, Patricia, 147, 148, 209n
patriarchy, 6, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 34,
35, 37, 67, 69, 70, 117, 118, 131, Rebecca (1938, novel), 59
143, 152, 153, 158, 159, 182 adaptation of, see under individual
peasant, the, 71–8 adaptations
period dramas, 101, 106 Rebecca (1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock,
Persuasion (1995, dir. Roger Michell, film), 40, 59
film), 178–9 Rego, Paula, 191
Persuasion (2007, WGBH/PBS, Riding, Alan, 61
television serial), 178–9 Riley, Charlotte, 169, 172, 175, 210n
Petit, Roland, 80 Rivette, Jacques, 14–15, 61–84 passim,
photography, 195, 197, 199 85, 99, 116, 117, 160, 163, 171,
Pidduck, Julianne, 95 181–204 passim, 207n, 208n
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49), 80–1, Roberts, Michèle, 158
208n Robinson, Sally, 133
Poetics of Space, The, 7 Rochester, Edward (character in Jane
pop music, 124–6, 128 Eyre), 59, 150, 155, 170
popular culture, 74, 98, 125, 146, 147, rock music, 124–30, 134–5
158, 168, 175, 176 rock star, the, 15, 113, 124–34 passim,
Possession (novel), 179 135, 136, 138
postcolonial (ism), 12, 14, 146, 148, Rogers, Susan Carol, 74
164, 165, 173, 176, 210n romance novels, 94, 157, 174
post-feminism, 15, 86, 90, 115, 124, Romantic love, 32–6, 129–30, 131, 170
148, 156, 157, 158, 159 see also Romanticism, 31, 32–6, 42, 43, 80,
feminism 85, 86–99 passim, 100, 124–34
post-feminist, see under post-feminism passim, 135, 139, 142, 160–7
postmodern (ism), 108, 146, 147, passim, 170, 180, 188–92 passim,
158–9, 167 207n, 210n
and historiography, 113–15, 142, Romantics, the, see under
176, 179 Romanticism
and love, 140–1 Ruskin, John (1819–1900), 27–8,
and subjectivity, 135–7 122–3, 185
Index 227
Sadoff, Dianne F., 1, 44, 54, 55, Waterloo Bridge (1940, dir. Mervyn
59–60, 99, 105, 113–14, 115, 140, LeRoy, film), 40–1
146, 170, 204 Waters, Sarah, 15, 148, 152–3, 154,
Saltram House (shooting location), 156, 158, 176, 177
106 Welles, Orson, 59
Scarlet Letterman, The, 139 Whelehan, Imelda, 3, 98, 115–16,
Schindler’s List (1993, dir. Steven 118–19, 120, 131–2, 157, 158,
Spielberg, film), 97, 98 159, 167, 187–8, 190–1, 192,
Selway, Mary, 94, 100, 102 207n, 209n
Sense and Sensibility (1995, dir. Ang White Cliffs of Dover, The (1944, dir.
Lee, film), 106 Clarence Brown, film), 41
Sex and the City (novel), 159 White, Susanna, 154
Shelley, Mary (1797–1851), 31 William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822), 31, Night’s Dream (1999, dir. Michael
35, 91, 128–9, 207n Hoffman, film), 101
Shuker, Roy, 125, 126, 128, 139, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1996,
209n dir. Kenneth Branagh, film),
Sim, Stuart, 135 101
Sixty Lights, 158, 177 William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
Skynner, David, 108 (1996, dir. Baz Luhrmann, film),
soldier, the, 57–60, 133, 190, 194 101
Stam, Robert, 3, 4, 207n Woolf, Virginia (1882–1941), 13, 47,
Steinman, Jim, 124, 129, 137, 198 48
Stevenson, Robert, 43, 59 Wordsworth, William (1770–1850),
Stillinger, Jack, 31 31, 127
Stoneman, Patsy, 2, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, Wright, Joe, 170
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 45, 49, 86, 87, Wuthering Heights (1847, novel)
89, 100, 129, 165, 192–3, 207n, adaptation of, see under individual
210n adaptations
Sublime, the (aesthetic category), 9, analysis of, 17–38
10–11, 18, 41–2, 49, 54, 56, 64, critical history of, 12–14
65, 112, 116, 118, 121, 122, 123, Wuthering Heights (1920, dir. A. V.
137, 162, 170, 173, 193, 198 Bramble, film), 39, 207n
Swan, Bella (character in the Twilight Wuthering Heights (1939, dir. William
saga), 123–4 Wyler, film), 9, 10, 14, 15, 39–60,
42, 52, 61–2, 64, 69, 82, 83, 84,
teen culture, 119, 123–4, 135, 139–40, 88, 91, 92, 96, 98, 102, 121, 133,
159, 171 138, 139, 142, 149, 161, 163, 171,
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 173, 181–204 passim
(1809–92), 184, 185, 186, 210n Wuthering Heights (1948, BBC,
theatre, 1, 100 television serial), 62
tie-in characters, 139 Wuthering Heights (1953, BBC,
Timmer, Damian, 147 television serial), 62
Tipping the Velvet (novel), 156 Wuthering Heights (1962, BBC,
Troost, Linda V., 44 television serial), 62
Twilight saga, the, 123–4, 159, 171 Wuthering Heights (1967, BBC,
television serial), 62
Vincendeau, Ginette, 99 Wuthering Heights (1970, dir. Robert
Vogel, Mike, 127 Fuest, film), 97
228 Index
Wuthering Heights (1978, BBC, Wyler, William, 9, 14, 39–60 passim,

television serial), 62, 209n 62, 88, 96, 102, 121, 149, 161,
‘Wuthering Heights’ (1978, song), 171, 173, 181–204 passim
5–6
Wuthering Heights (2003, MTV, Yorkshire, 80, 88
film), 14, 15, 108, 109, 112, and the moors, 9, 21, 22, 24, 37,
113–43, 122, 127, 146, 148, 41, 42, 43, 45, 49, 50, 51, 54–5,
149, 152, 154, 156, 167, 168, 59, 60, 62, 67, 86, 92, 97, 99, 102,
173, 174, 181–204 passim, 103, 105, 109, 111, 112, 113, 150,
207n 155, 156, 167, 168–9, 170, 171,
Wuthering Heights (2009, ITV, 173, 174, 178, 192, 195, 198
television serial), 15, 145–80, and regionalism, 17–19, 25, 38, 102,
172, 175, 181–204 passim, 207n, 107, 108, 169–70, 192–201 passim
210n and tourism, 25, 105–7, 108,
Wuthering Heights (2011, dir. Andrea 169–70, 171, 195, 197, 199
Arnold, film), 203
Wuthering High, 139 Zeffirelli, Franco, 105, 107

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Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of

List of Figures viii

Introduction: The Screen Afterlife of Wuthering Heights 1

Appendix: Wuthering Heights Screen Adaptations 205

Select Bibliography 211

2.1 Catherine (Merle Oberon) and Heathcliff (Laurence

6.2 Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) rescues a heavily pregnant

She loved second-hand bookshops for their presump-

This book examines what happens to classic literature when it becomes

novelistic derivatives. It is this vast afterlife that Patsy Stoneman cata-

A question of methodology: Adaptation and

Any work that focuses on screen adaptations inevitably has to contend

inherently ‘palimpsestuous’ works, haunted at all times by their

NO faithfulness to the source text

announce its overt relationship to another work or works . . .

Geraghty employs a similar metaphor when talking about adapta-

thinking about adaptations in terms of layering at least allows for the

Leitch argues that Elliott’s book is based on the:

assumption that adaptation study is and should be essentially

Indeed, why assume that the study of adaptations must be rooted in

Contextual issues: Home, heritage and gender

Wuthering Heights has been the subject of adaptation in many different

On one level, this is an individual relationship in which the inherit-

the various dwelling-places in our lives co-penetrate and retain the

Although Bachelard is here speaking in universal terms, his description

out that ‘heritage is a selective preoccupation with the past, it is what

Representational concerns: ‘The lovers’ discourse’ and

images of C and H on the moors -

adaptations of Wuthering Heights, the choice to focus on five particular

qualities such as largeness, obscurity, excess, strength, infinity, vast spaces

The exploration of Wuthering Heights adaptations begins with an analy-

Wuthering Heights seems to elicit. Their sentiments are echoed in what

and 2009 Wuthering Heights screen adaptations analysed in subse-

book display various approaches to Wuthering Heights: at times, it is

I noted in the Introduction that the analysis of Wuthering Heights pro-

Lockwood’s initial encounters with Wuthering Heights

Lockwood introduces the house of Wuthering Heights to the reader as

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling,

We are here presented with imagery of storm, isolation, desolation,

and privacy. Chase and Levenson discuss how such a construction of

Catherine’s room C's room

Catherine’s room at Wuthering Heights is perhaps one of the most impor-

room when he is forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights. One

ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled

It is significant that Catherine’s various identities are written by the

[a] Testament, in lean type, and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf

The ‘Testament’ is not only a symbol of religious authority, but also,

This passage encapsulates Catherine’s multifaceted position in relation

in the house, Catherine constructs the landscape that surrounds it,

[the] hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by

Catherine’s excessive desire is here materialised as her own form, as a

as an alternative space of belonging. Yet the ghostly Catherine reverses

Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the

The ghost-Catherine represents an excessive force as she exists in excess

It is here that I return to the imagery of Catherine’s trialling of different

Lockwood encounters the regional landscape as a tourist, con-

experience . . . Lockwood plays out the same exchange of glances at

Lockwood treats women as objects of speculation and his gaze is

I had neither to climb the gate, nor to knock – it yielded to my hand.

Ironically, the house yields itself to Lockwood as the hospitable space

home, whose ‘great function’ (Ruskin, 1912, p. 98) is to devote them-

The character of Heathcliff is a primary site of social, cultural and ideo-

She then proceeds to weave a fantasy of his possible parentage: