A psychologist's nightmare

The characters in Wuthering Heights must be a psychologist's nightmare. Psychology Today analyses a key scene from Wuthering Heights, which can't be easy either:

I was even more astonished that we then instantly started to talk about a book rarely discussed on Ocean Avenue: Bronte's Wuthering Heights. It's still the Bad Boy/Good Boy motherlode.
If Heathcliff represents the raw, a la Levi-Strauss, then Linton represents the cooked. Heathcliff is destined by his very soul to be the Bad Boy; Linton, equally bound by his destiny, is the Good.
In one telling scene, Bronte shows us a very young Cathy dividing her food and attention between a fierce guard dog that has attacked her but is now gently won over to her side, and a small indoor-pet dog that is equally affectionate. It is clear that the dogs represent the two men. (Insert "duh" here.) This becomes especially clear when Cathy pinches the nose of the guard dog to hurt it slightly, but she keeps it by her. So will Cathy and Heathcliff torment each other but be unable to separate. Cathy can articulate quite clearly her attraction to Linton as well as to Heathcliff; some critics seem remarkably surprised by the very idea that she can desire two men simultaneously. She wants one man who can be both lover and husband at the same time.
She doesn't want two men; she wants one man who can meet all her needs. "‘I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free ... and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!‘" Cathy longs for the prelapsarian moment, the time before her fall into the world of romance, in order to escape from the decision of having to choose between the two.
That's what we're really looking for: a Bad Boy who not only offers drama, but who can help us organize our lives. (Regina Barreca)

Still on the topic of not-so-functional relationships, The New York Times reviews the French film La Barbe Bleue, French director Catherine Breillat's take on Bluebeard.

Maria Tatar, a Harvard professor and the author of “Secrets Beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives” (Princeton University Press), said that teaching fairy tales to her students and researching the book convinced her that the tale of Bluebeard had fallen into a “cultural black hole”; she encountered few Americans who were able to recite the details of the story, despite its cultural resonance.
“I’m always astonished at how few people know this story,” she said in a phone interview, “especially considering how many films and other works it has inspired.” Ms. Tatar noted that Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” owe something of their plots to the spirit of “Bluebeard.” (Kristin Hohenadel)

Incidentally, a new book on the subject - Jane Eyre connection included - is coming out next week: Bluebeard Gothic: Jane Eyre and Its Progeny by Heta Pyrhönen. Stay tuned for a BrontëBlog review in the coming weeks.

Daelnet is pleased to have the importance of the upland peat moors in areas like the Yorkshire Dales finally recognised.

Sheep were introduced to the new grazing and proceeded, amongst other things, to clear swathes of heather, the subject of a million picture post cards from the Dales, the North York Moors, and parts of the Yorkshire Pennines which inspired Wuthering Heights.

A press release on i-Newswire also mentions the Yorkshire Dales, though much less accurately (to put it mildly).

During a tour of the Yorkshire Dales in England in July, made famous by Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, they will visit the Bronte Parsonage in Howarth.

Apparently not so very famous, as such a tiny sentence includes two big mistakes: saying Charlotte penned Wuthering Heights which, needless to say (well, not as needless as one might suppose) was written by her sister Emily Brontë and spelling Haworth Howarth. Once again: it's H-A-W-O-R-T-H!

Monkey See - an NPR blog - brings up Wuthering Heights on the topic of Twilight and teenagers' reads.

The rest of today's blogs are mostly challenge-driven: Terri's Notebook has just joined in the Brontë-Along, Jayne's Books posts briefly about Wuthering Heights 2009 as part of the All About the Brontës challenge. Finally, 54 Books blog writes about Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights