Brontë humour

The New York Times has a very funny article on how the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff would have evolved if they had had mobile phones.

It could all have been so different. Just think: every thorny literary problem solved by modern technology. Who hasn’t read “Wuthering Heights” and gnashed her teeth at poor Cathy’s fate, yoked to dreary Edgar Linton when we all know she yearns to swoon into hunky Heathcliff’s arms? But alas, unaware that her beloved is listening, she appears to refuse him in no uncertain terms: “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.” And so Heathcliff lopes away into the storm-wracked night without hearing the rest of her speech (“he shall never know how I love him”), and readers are denied the swoony bliss of true romance. So admit: You’ve thought it. I’ve thought it. We’ve all thought it. If only they’d had their phones!

I may now report, our narration continues, that this was not the last we heard of Heathcliff. For despite the violent wind, and the thunder that had split a tree at the corner of the Heights, knocking off a portion of the east chimney-stack, Catherine’s network was unaffected. She was, to her greatest relief, able to reach him who had so unwontedly overheard her incautious remarks, for Mr. Heathcliff, despite his sometimes rough manner, was never without his cell.
They lived happily ever after, and maybe things would have been easier for Emily Brontë too. You can see her, can’t you, mischievously texting her older sister across the garden at Haworth; scholars guess that, many years after Emily’s tragic early death, her sister Charlotte was raising a literary memorial in the text-messaging lingo that plays so crucial a role in “Jane Eyre” (“Hlp! Im in the attc!”).
O.K. Maybe not. I first read “Wuthering Heights” in ninth grade and loathed it; I would have been glad for a hundred pages less of the stuff. Lately I’ve come around — not only to Emily’s queer, savage novel, but also to the realization that cellphones, while they might have their uses in what we are pleased to call “real life” (though I’m still to come to a final verdict on that), are nothing but an albatross around the neck of any writer who wants to tell a story. (Erica Wagner)

Also Hannah from Naked Filmmaker has written to us to let us know about this post she dramatises a Hollywood producer's approach to script based on Charlotte Brontë's The Professor.

“Listen, Carson…”
“Currer.”
“Curry. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.” (Read more)

And remember Elizabeth Malin's retelling of Jane Eyre: Through Nightmare can be read on her website.

Another Brontë joke comes from The Mirror and Liverpool's player Peter Crouch:

Footballers have been asked to name their favourite books in the hope more kids will be inspired to read. [...]
The following people haven't joined in, but if they did, I'm guessing these would be the answers: [...]
Peter Crouch: Wuthering Heights

If you don't get the joke, just check his profile.

Categories: Humour, The Professor, Wuthering Heights