Sunday, May 27, 2012

Wuthering Heights



Romantic love so powerful, so soul-consuming, it dominates and overwhelms two lives and endures in one, undimmed, beyond the other’s death.





Most are familiar with Emily Bronte's  Gothic novel.

A remote, sombre manor house named Wuthering Heights towers over bleak, windswept English moors.

A street orphan, dark in appearance and temperament, is brought there by the home’s well-meaning master.  Heathcliff grows up with resentful adoptive brother Hindley and Hindley's high-spirited, willful younger sister, Cathy.  Heathcliff and Cathy fall in tempestuous, ill-fated love which consumes, and ultimately destroys, both of them.

The classic endures, as does our fascination with it. 

I read the original in my teens, viewed different film adaptations over the years, re-read it a couple of years ago, and recently watched a 1967 BBC version on DVD.  

The latter is adequate and faithful to the novel, but lacks passion and intensity.   A young Ian McShane is Heathcliff, but without the towering voice and gravitas he exhibits today.  Angela Scoular was miscast as Cathy, but Anne Stallybrass is outstanding as Nelly, the maid.

The Brits produce quality theater, always attentive to detail; one I noticed was still a custom where I grew up. A small dark arrangement called a funeral crepe (sometimes just something black) would be placed on the outside of a home, usually the door, to indicate a death had occurred within. The custom has long-since disappeared, of course, and I’m really not a hundred years old.  In the film, a large black funereal bow appeared on the entrance to Wuthering Heights after the master, Mr. Earnshaw, passed away.

Two aspects of Wuthering Heights intrigue me:  the mystique of romantic love and the mystique of death.  Both captured my young soul; both still do.   

Death was glorified where I grew up, steeped in ignorance, secrecy, superstition, ritual, reverence and fear. 

Love was rarely expressed or acknowledged.  The word "love" was usually only heard in Bible quotations.  Emotion and love were repressed in the belief  they were embarrassing, almost shameful, and that they inflated and damaged ego and discipline.   Their role in reproduction was never mentioned – strictly taboo!  The stork brought babies, and there was visible discomfort with the religious virgin-birth concept.  Protestant churches fiercely avoided the word "virgin" altogether.

 Wuthering Heights took me away from the rigid, suffocating, dull social and intellectual boundaries of my youth; it confronted and challenged prevailing social taboos, and it spoke openly of great passion and love which death itself would not diminish.

Despite its darkness, the themes of Wuthering Heights are as provocative and thrilling today as they were when it was written over a hundred sixty years ago.  Devoted fans now post Twitter comments at #WutheringHeights and #EmilyBronte. There are Facebook pages for both.

Here are some beautiful excerpts from the film (hardly changed from the book) and from the  book itself:

Cathy to Nelly in the film:
 
Whatever our souls are made of, Heathcliff's and mine are the same.  Nellie, I am Heathcliff; he's always in my mind, not as a pleasure, but as my own being.  He IS me!



 Heathcliff in the film just after he learns Cathy has died:               

 I pray one prayer, Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living.  Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad, but do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you.  I cannot live without my life.
     
        
Heathcliff in the book when Nellie tells him Cathy has died:

And - did she ever mention me? he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.  
Her senses never returned; she recognized nobody from the time you left her, I said. "She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days.  Her life closed in a gentle dream - may she wake as kindly in the other world!"    
 May she wake in torment! he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion.  Why, she's a liar to the end!  Where is she?  Not there - not in heaven - not perished - where?  Oh, you said you care nothing for my sufferings!  And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens -- Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living!  You said I killed you - haunt me then!  The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe.  I know that ghosts have wandered on earth.  Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad!  Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!  Oh, God!  It is  unutterable!  I cannot live without my life!  I cannot live without my soul!


Eighteen years later, Cathy’s husband dies and his grave is dug beside Cathy’s. Heathcliff secretly arranges for the sexton to dig on the other side of her coffin.

Heathcliff tells Nelly in the book:

I’ll tell you what I did yesterday!  I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her 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!
You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!  I exclaimed, "were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?
I disturbed nobody, Nelly, he replied; and I gave some ease to myself.  I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you'll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there.  Disturbed her?  No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years - incessantly -- remorselessly - till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil.  I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.
And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then? I said.
Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still! he answered.

And tells Nellie in the film as he gazes at Cathy’s portrait eighteen years after her death:

You know I sleep in her room; when I walk on the moors I expect to meet her, and when I come back to Wuthering Heights I hurry in case she's there.  I only have to close my eyes and she is outside the window and in the room.  I open and close my eyes a hundred times a night, but she's too quick, she kills me, not by inches but by fractions; those breadths.  Last night when I saw her, I thought I might lay her ghost, but no ... no!  I know she is above the earth.

While the love story of Heathcliff and Cathy is central to Wuthering Heights, other tales are intertwined though I’ve not mentioned them. As much as they expand, inform and enrich, they’re peripheral.

I cling to the belief that a love like Heathcliff’s and Cathy’s can exist.  Perhaps I’m just a crazy, unrealistic romantic, but I still love and admire their love and devotion.

Generations have embraced this tale; something about it captivates and enthralls, but is such consuming love possible?  Normal?  Desirable?  Obsessive?   

Must romantic love be reciprocated to truly exist and endure, and if not, will it ultimately burn out? 

Where and when does romantic love cross into obsession? 

Can pre-death love endure at the same intensity after one lover is gone?

What impact does time and separation have on lost love?  Does it reflect the quality of the love, the lovers, or both?

On the latter question, a good friend recently shared a secret.  She’d unexpectedly become reacquainted with someone from her past, someone she’d been in love with thirty years ago.  They were young then, unsure of their mutual commitment, and ultimately went their separate ways.  Now, all these years later, it’s as though time stood still.  Cold embers reignited, and they’re once again powerfully drawn to one another.  A platonic relationship is complicated and unworkable, yet my friend says when they’re together, “I feel I belong there.” 

I saw my friend again a few days ago.  In response to my veiled reference, she gently shrugged her shoulders, acknowledging futility, yet her face lit up with warmth and happiness.  In return I could only say what I believe:  their special connection matters and maybe it’ll be enough.    

While obtaining my friend’s permission to disclose, she says she doesn’t believe the embers were ever really cold, at least not for her. 

 Don’t know the answers to most of the questions – they’re probably different for everyone.

What do I believe?

I believe that hearts and souls can connect, entwine and endure in ways as powerful as Heathcliff and Cathy’s. 

I also believe we can be powerfully attracted to more than one person at the same time.  It happens rarely, especially for women, and if it develops into love, I don’t think we love each the same way and to the same degree.  [Cathy didn't love Edgar Linton, the man she married, the way she loved Heathcliff.]  It's not a concept generally or warmly received or accepted and I don’t pretend to understand it, especially if it happens when one or both are already in love and committed, but do any of us fully understand attraction and emotion?  We can control emotions, or at least try to once we’re aware of them, but we don’t control their sudden, spontaneous emergence.  We’re often blindsided.

And for some, there'll be more than one great love in a lifetime.

My friend’s experience tells me romantic love can and does survive and endure.  As does “Wuthering Heights.”   Another movie version was released last year.  There are now more than twenty around the world, in addition to radio and stage productions. 

Read the book first, then watch a film version. 

The book ends this way:    

I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor; the middle one grey and half buried in heath; Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and 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 harebells, 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.