As a change of pace from all the weird photos here, I thought I would write some thoughts on recent books I have read. Mostly recently, is Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.

Most of my recent reading has been more contemporary fiction, so it was interesting to take a step back and look at what is obviously considered “Classic Literature”, at least for the English Language. I came into this book without any kind of clear expectations, other than that I had always thought of Wuthering Heights as a kind of generic “period drama”. There will be sighing, and hand holding, men not interested in women for the wrong reasons. Of course, it would be a good read, probably groundbreaking at the time, (otherwise, why would it be classic?) but it would mostly remind me of the kind of early 2000’s BBC America period dramas I would watch as a kid.

I was not expecting the kind of weird this book would turn out to be. I guess the first half of the book could be generically described as genre romance piece. Catherine Earnhardt grows up in a dilapidated farm (the titular Wuthering Heights) with her older brother Hinton. While on business in Liverpool, their father brings back a young kid, Heathcliff. Its not clear exactly what the backstory of Heathcliff is, or why the Earnshaw patriarch has decided to incorporate him into the family, but what’s important is that Heathcliff and Catherine become inseparable as kids.

As the Earnshaw brood is growing up, a new family, the Lintons move into the neighborhood. The Lintons are the right kind of people, and as Catherine is grows up she inevitably finds herself engaged and married to Edgar Linton, the scion of the neighboring family.

Now, again, if this was a BBC period drama, the next steps would be pretty clear. Catherine is made the wrong choice for the right reasons, marrying the respectable Edgar, and realizing too late that her heart belongs to the wild Heathcliff, even if he isn’t respectable. (Seriously, he doesn’t even have a last name, everyone calls him Heathcliff or Mr. Heathcliff interchangeably). Catherine dies tragically in childbirth, only realizing at the last minute her true love was Heathcliff.

But this is only the midpoint of the book. Heathcliff in the first half, who could have been the tragic antihero who pines for a woman he can’t have, embraces revenge, and vows to destroy the Linton and Earnshaw families. And given that this was written in the mid 19th Century, that means the rest of the book is all about property.

Remember when I said that the Elder Earnshaw brought in Healthcliff to live with his kids at Wuthering Heights? I was careful to say at the beginning that Heathcliff was not adopted. It is very clear that he is tolerated but not part of the family. The property and inheritance of Wuthering Heights goes to Hinton as the elder brother, while Heathcliff gets nothing. Heathcliff returns though, in the second half of the book, mysteriously weathy, and proceeds through various plots to trick the elder Hinton into mortgaging Wuthering Heights to him. And to get back at Edgar Linton, the man that stole Catherine from him, he tricks/abducts Edgar’s sister Isabella, marries her (against her will, in 19th century speak, which clearly means misogyny and sexual assault when translated to the 21st century). Isabella runs off, but not before having a child, Linton Heathcliff, which the elder Mr Heathcliff schemes to marry off to Catherine and Edgar’s daughter (the confusingly named Cathy Linton).

This means by the end of the book, Heathcliff owns both Wuthering Heights, and Thrushcross Grange, the Linton estate, and he has succeeed in going from street urchin to owning everything.

So in the end this book did not turn out to be the clichéd period drama you might have thought it would be. Wuthering Heights is a classic book that has been adapted to screen a million times, but it turns out that almost every time this has happened, the adaptations stop in the middle of the book. This only helps to reinforce the period drama trappings, because if you stop halfway through, Heathcliff gets to be a tragic figure. We don’t really see how awful he is until the second half is revealed.

And I guess this kind of reinforces why my media diet recently has mostly been books. The dark complexity and craziness of Wuthering Heights doesn’t translate well to the screen: it becomes a little one dimensional and loses the texture of the original plot.

In the end though, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that wants a break from Netflix Bridgerton aesthetic. It’s been around for a while, but there is a reason Wuthering Heights is considered a classic.