Something Thoughtful

    Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

                                                          DRIVELLING TRIPE

Many years ago in the Stone Age, when I was a rookie high-school teacher in my first school – an upper-class school -  my boss told me which novels I should teach to what was then called Form Six – a senior class. It was a boys school, and the novel I was given was Wuthering Heights. I diligently read it and took notes and read what academics had to say about it and prepared my lessons carefully including what the boys’ homework would be and what kind of tests I would give them. Finally, well prepared, I walked into the class. To their credit, the boys were well-behaved and we ploughed our way through the novel over three weeks with brakes to deal with other English-language work. But when we got through both the novel and all the essays the boys had done, I gave one lesson in which the boys were allowed to say what they really thought of Wuthering Heights. Some were quite positive, but saying that they thought some of the characters were extreme and their behaviour was almost hysterical. Some said that they found the nineteenth-century language difficult to follow. And though they didn’t say it, it was clear that it was not a novel that adolescent boys could really like. To put it brutally, they seemed to be saying it was something that adolescent girls would be more likely to enjoy.

Now I was not so naïve as to be unaware that some of the boys would have resorted to cheat-cribs – Coles Notes,  Monarch Notes etc. – those pamphlets that used to tell lazy readers everything about the plot, the characters, the ideas etc. of a novel without having to actually read the novel itself. [At university I knew enough students who had the same idea]. But back when I was teaching schoolboys, there was not yet the plague we now have where lazy both students and school boys-and-girls simply look up their computer to be told everything they need to write what are supposed to be essays. But I digress…

Years later, I read once more Wuthering Heights. And guess what?  I found myself agreeing with the boys I had taught. Please do not immediately assume that I am some sort of male chauvinist. Wuthering Heights is still very popular with many younger women, but I have read enough articles and essays by women who have damned it and seen it as romantic nonsense at its worst. Perhaps teenage girls will be enthralled by the idea of Cathy and Heathcliff running around together in the moor, but the fact is that Heathcliff is a thug, Cathy is gullible and her romantic vows mean nothing… and if you read the whole novel, you will learn that they mess up the lives of the younger generation that comes after them. The fact is, I think Emily Bronte was a much lesser author that than her sister Charlotte. Yes, Jane Ayre,  Villette, and even Shirley have their moments of melodrama [“Reader, I married him”] . But at least Charlotte Bronte tried to deal with reality and she fought a good fight for the status of women – she was an early feminist.  Emily, though she had some bright moments, was a fantasists.

Now why on earth have I bother you with all this?

A new film version of Wuthering Heights has just been released (put together by Emerald Fennell; Margot Robbie as Cathy, Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff) . I have not seen the film and, being a good reviewer of films, I do not make comments about films that I have not seen.  But I am aware that many reviewers have damned this new film for being very different from the novel. Of course all film adaptations of novels simplify the original novel, but apparently this particular film goes far away from the original novel altogether. Apparently lots of sex, some sadism, bad casting. Naturally those who have never read the novel think this is hot stuff and the reviewers who have never read the novel say you should ignore the “purists”  [meaning those who know the novel]. One reviewer, writing for a perfectly intelligent magazine, wrote a very positive review of the film, but she mentioned that she had never read the novel. She had only heard about Wuthering Heights because she knew the pop song Kate Bush wrote and sang in 1978.

All of which leads me to the obvious. The semi-literate or the never-readers often think they know all about a classic novel because they saw the movie version of it. Nine out of ten times, the movie has little to do with the novel.

Let’s look at some examples. I looked up Wikipedia [yes I do that sometimes] and I was told that over the years Wuthering Heights has been turned into a film over 19 times; there have been 10 full-length television versions of Wuthering Heights; there have been five television versions that were presented as serials; the novel has been twice turned into an opera and of course the novel has many times been acted on the radio. Of the 19 film versions, Wikipedia notes that they included Indian Bollywood versions, a Japanese version, and a Filipino version.

As it happens, over the years I have seen five film versions of Wuthering Heights and one or two B.B.C. television versions. But there are only four that stand out to me – not because they are great but because they are in their own ways odd. First there is the 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon – decent enough, but sweetened-up and notorious for dealing with only the first half of the novel. In 1988, there was the  French version of Wuthering Heights called Hurlevent  starring Juliette and Ralph Fiennes. Good casting but …um… not very English. There was, in 1970, quite a good version with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marsh, but not outstanding. In fact the only one that really stood out for me was a film that you have probably never heard of. The film Abismo de Pasion [The Abyss of Passion] – a version of Wuthering Heights in Spanish - was directed by Luis Bunuel, the Spanish director whose career had begun  with surrealism. He stuck with what was either very realist or very crazy. Abismo de Pasion is both – what is sordid and how crazy the main characters are, Cathy and Heathcliff, really tearing each other for no real purpose. Yes indeed, that is really all they do in the novel, although even Luis Bunuel also skipped second half of the novel.

Naturally, I have offended some readers who have read the novel Wuthering Heights and love it. Sorry, but I am not of that clan. Crudely joining the boys a taught so long ago, I can’t help remembering how they sometimes referred to Wuthering Heights as Drivelling Tripe.

And do remember that film versions of novels are never like the original novel.