From Yoshishige Yoshida to Kate Bush to Emerald Fennell, Wuthering Heights has inspired adaptations across time, medium, and culture. The central couple, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, are the heart of the story. Widely regarded as one of the greatest books of all time, it’s no mere romance. Told from the perspective of Nelly, a second generation servant in the Earnshaw household, Wuthering Heights examines gender, class, cycles of abuse, and desire itself. It’s no small thing to put it all on screen.
Too often, Catherine – Cathy – is more of a ghost on screen than the Cathy on the page. Where Cathy haunts the narrative of any version, adaptations tend to make her overly light-hearted to prove Heathcliff’s darker nature (Juliette Binoche, Wuthering Heights, 1992) or reduce her to an opaque, aesthetic ideal that moves like a ghost while she’s still alive (Kaya Scodelario, Wuthering Heights, 2011). But PBS Masterpiece Theatre’s Wuthering Heights casts Charlotte Riley in a truly complex portrayal. [...]
A crucial part of this is in how it embraces sensuality. The adaptation adds steamier scenes on the moors that are only loosely implied in Brontë’s romantic descriptions, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would deny that sex is part of the wildness explored in the book’s themes. Most adaptations ignore this. In 1992’s Wuthering Heights, kisses are primarily reserved for Cathy’s deathbed. In Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film, Heathcliff assaults Cathy when they’re still children, a particularly severe interpretation of their relationship and the themes of sadomasochism throughout the novel.
Riley and Hardy's chemistry is primarily playful. Even without explicit scenes on the moors, it’s clear these are two people who want to be affectionate with one another. When they are loving, it’s often at Cathy’s initiation. She’s not just there to soothe Heathcliff – she’s hungry for him. Teasing him until he grabs her, taking his hand, pressing into him, tracing his face, this all communicates that she isn’t just comfortable with Heathcliff. She enjoys physically being with him. More than just expanding the moor's representation of wildness, the added sexuality in Giedroyc’s version further solidifies Cathy as Heathcliff’s mirror. She’s as sensual, dark, and doomed as he is, and her recklessness is often demonstrated through these sensual desires. For Cathy and Heathcliff, a sexual connection becomes another way that they reject the gentility of Victorian society and choose one another. In the film, the corrupting nature of class and hierarchy is seen and felt in these physical expressions.
Despite literally haunting the narrative, Cathy is alive more than she is dead in PBS Masterpiece Theatre’s Wuthering Heights. It’s a rare adaptation that shows that Wuthering Heights was a hostile environment before Heathcliff ever came along, and even before her father’s death. Instead of making Cathy an unrealistic exception to her family’s dysfunction and an unwilling victim of a one-dimensional revenge scheme by Heathcliff, she is shaped by her family and desperately wants to eschew expectations and join him.
Riley’s easy laughter and frenetic shift to Cathy’s heavier emotions makes you truly miss Cathy when she’s gone, which makes Heathcliff more empathetic. In the end, the heartbreak of Wuthering Heights has nothing to do with the toxic tropes of modern dark romance, and everything to do with two people lashing out because lashing out is the only thing in their control. (Miranda Adama)
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