The Welsh Wuthering Heights and other Brontë influences

icWales talks about a novel by Margiad Evans called Country Dance which has been regarded as the Welsh Wuthering Heights since it was published 70 years ago. The title is not so evocative as Wuthering Heights, though, is it? This is what Country Dance is about:

Country Dance is a story of passion, jealousy and revenge centred around a young girl who grows up in an isolated rural community on the border between England and Wales.
She keeps a diary of everyone she meets but her daily scribblings fall into the wrong hands.
Ann Goodman is a young woman caught between two suitors, one English, the other Welsh.
Her fiancé, Gabriel, an English shepherd, soon flies into a jealous rage when he reads of her encounters with her father's master, the ill-tempered but powerfully charismatic Evan ap Evans.[...]
"Country Dance is a lost classic. It is about relationships and is an observation of a time in the early 20th century when society was divided between the English gentry over the border and the Welsh countryfolk."

If you are curious about it, the book will be serialised by Radio 4:

Country Dance by Margiad Evans, adapted for radio by Arnold Evans, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Monday to Friday July 3 to 7, 10.45pm.

Other Brontë influences include Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann (translated by Anthea Bell) where

The reader will also pick up references to Hamlet and Wuthering Heights, but beyond this game-playing lies a story of odd, intermittent courage and solidarity.

And Words of Love by Pamela Norris:

The book becomes less interesting and provocative when, after a look at Murasaki's The Tale of Genji and the Renaissance poet Mary Wroth, it moves on to Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot.

Sounds unbelievable that a book should become less interesting when it comes to Charlotte Brontë, etc. How odd. Interestingly, this review is by Michèle Roberts, author of Reader, I Married Him.

Categories: In_the_News, Wuthering_Heights, Books