Wuthering Heights and its versatility

Nesrine Malik complains in the Guardian about the recent trend in the media and cultural outlets to transpose Occidental/European values into Indian-society stories. Tamasha's Bollywood-style adaptation is unavoidably mentioned as an example of this:

Wuthering Heights was recently given the Bollywood treatment. Apparently, "the repressive, corseted Victorian culture of the novel found a perfect foil in the rigid caste strictures of Indian society". A 17th-century Spanish family where virginity is prized and women regarded as chattel? A generic 21st-century Asian family will do – as it will do for the Yorkshire moors of the 19th century.

It is not the first time that Wuthering Heights has been transposed into the Indian culture, as it has into many more cultures. If anything, Wuthering Heights is both timeless and spaceless (or better: the story itself bears easily other climates and places, as well as formats, despite the prominence of the 'wuthering' Yorkshire moors in the original novel). Film adaptations of the story set in the 1930s French country or the Mexican plains to name but two examples have arguably had more convincing results than many a 'faithful' adaptation set at home in Yorkshire.

Another musical adaptation is Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon's 'Heathcliff' of which very little is known. Broadway World has a short paragraph on Lucy Simon where the basics of this adaptation are once again mentioned:

In 2006, she composed the music for a musical theatre setting of the Russian novel Dr. Zhivago, and has also penned the music for a musical re-telling of Wuthering Heights along with Secret Garden collaborator, Marsha Norman.

A little bit of Web 2.0: ...is five posts about Jane Eyre and Poem of the Day - after yesterday's Haworth Churchyard by Matthew Arnold - picks Emily Dickinson's All overgrown by cunning moss on the same topic. Reinap has uploaded to Flickr a few old Haworth postcards and a75 shares some atmospheric stills from Jane Eyre 1944.

Categories: Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights,