Jonathan Holloway's Wuthering Heights: reactions

Last night Jonathan Holloway's controversial take on Wuthering Heights was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. It it available worldwide on their website for the next 6 days. The Guardian has published what seems like a balanced sort of review:

In a move to ditch what he sees as the novel's reputation as a cosy love story, and to restore the violent shock of the book when it was published in 1847, writer and director Jonathan Holloway has the young lovers reaching for expletives, while other characters taunt Heathcliff with racist jibes. [...]
"Fuck off," Hindley growls, "you're not 'avin' my 'orse." Heathcliff bellows: "I won't hit you back, you fucker." The original scene has the young men exchanging milder insults ("Off, dog!"), and it is hard to imagine today's readers – latching on to the novel for its portrayal of a love that respects no boundaries, not even death – getting the full impact of insults such as "imp of Satan".
The addition of swearing here is defensible: Heathcliff refers in the original to his habit of cursing, and Brontë's manuscript used blanks in some particularly heightened exchanges as if, even publishing under her alias Ellis Bell, she couldn't print everything she wanted her obsessed, cruel characters to say.
Other linguistic innovations in this production were less convincing, though, sitting uneasily in an otherwise impressive and faithful adaptation. Holloway has Hindley calling Heathcliff "pikey scum, you scrounging black bastard" and Mr Linton describing him as "a wicked little wog of some kind". Here, Brontë has already done the work for us, and the insults are vicious enough in her words: Heathcliff repeatedly called a gypsy and casually dehumanised as "it" when he first arrives at Wuthering Heights. The fear and mistrust of the outsider needs no underlining.
But it was Catherine's use of the F-word that felt most like an empty shock gesture. It came in her dizzyingly passionate description of how she loves Heathcliff, and is a pivotal moment in the plot which lurches us into the next phase of exquisite misery. In the original, Catherine cries that if all the world remained, yet Heathcliff "were annihilated, the universe would turn into a mighty stranger".
Holloway has her saying that if Heathcliff were annihilated "I would wish the whole fucking universe burned to a cinder". It was the only duff note in Natalie Press's otherwise haunting portrayal of Catherine, and sounded absolutely ludicrous, smashing the poetic beauty and structure of the speech. (Elisabeth Mahoney)

Twitter user LarryAdamSmith's opinion is straight to the point:

Dreadful version of Wuthering Heights on Radio 3. The guy playing Heathcliff worse than Cliff Richard.

And the Brontë Parsonage Blog also reviews the dramatisation:

However, the use of offensive language was not the problem. That aspect was a mere curiosity, artistically defensible if properly executed within a high quality production. In this case it was little more than a gimmick, and the whole best forgotten. Whilst there are many difficulties in the way of a satisfactory visual rendition of Wuthering Heights, it would seem perfectly possible to produce a creditable – even a great – radio version of the book. What we had was a disjointed script which gave the impression of being written by someone who had relied on a précis based on a skim-reading of the book. A listener new to the work would have been hard put to follow the plot, while those who know it well could only be infuriated. (Chris Went) (Read the full review)

And after that, it's back to Jane Eyre 2011, which seems to be doing very well. Rotten Tomatoes and others report:

Expanding indie titles did well too. The period drama Jane Eyre grossed an estimated $983,000 from 90 sites in its third frame for a solid $10,922 average for Focus. (Gitesh Pandya)

The Stir is giving away (US-only) a Jane Eyre Kindle pack.

A few blogs review the film: The Dirty Brunch Club, Tim Jackson Web, Neil's Movie Reviews, Quirky Reviews, The Film Experience (on podcast) and notoriousmadness.

Tribune Magazine reviews Faulks on Fiction:

The cheerful decisiveness with which he decrees Darcy’s neurosis and Emma’s ultimate intellectual superiority to Knightley does not follow the critic to Wuthering Heights. His comment is humble. “I hope it is not a readerly cowardice to declare oneself, however admiring, defeated by a book.” Not so defeated that he doesn’t have a furiously unorthodox view of the main character. His Heathcliff is not ruggedly attractive and a bit wild. He is the animaline extremity at which a man can stand. The romantic hero of popular assumption “has the curse that rings in our heads as long and as terribly as any howl in Lear or Macbeth”. He could never have been played by nice young Laurence Olivier in that lovely film. (Edward Pearce)

The Globe and Mail uses Jane Eyre to discuss state education in Britain:

By 1833, 85 per cent of Britain’s children could read and 53 per cent could write – an elementary-school literacy rate, Prof. West noted, not far off the U.S. rate in the 1970s. (As for the poor, think of Charlotte Brontë’s little orphan, Jane Eyre, at Lowood Institution.) (Neil Reynolds)

Lowood, though, still had to be paid for:

"Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?"
"We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each."
"Then why do they call us charity-children?"
"Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription."
"Who subscribes?"
"Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London." (Jane Eyre, chapter V)

The Yorkshire Post asks singer Tony Christie:

If a stranger to Yorkshire only had time to visit one place, it would be?
Haworth. Go and have a look at the Brontës’ place, and the Dales.

We certainly agree with that, though we wonder whether Lonely Planet does too. According to the Daily Mail,

England has been damned as celebrity-obsessed with a ‘dicey’ economy and an addiction to junk food.
The verdict is in the latest Lonely Planet travel guide, which also portrays the Coalition Government as devious over spending cuts.
The guide, published this month and expected to be bought by 100,000 people worldwide, is regarded as a bible by many travellers.
Co-ordinating author David Else laments that the nation which spawned Shakespeare, Dickens and the Brontës has become obsessed with celebrity. (Jonathan Petre)

Austenacious posts about the Brontë vs Austen debate.

EDIT: An alert for tomorrow March 29 in Wolverhampton, UK:

St Peter’s Collegiate School production of Wuthering Heights will run from March 29 - April 1 at the Hayward Theatre.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights