Frost from fire…

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees – my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath – a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

I love my murderer--but yours! How can I?

Sometimes I can’t imagine anything more beautifully written as passages like this, passages from Wuthering Heights.  Wuthering Heights is one of my all-time favorite novels.  I read it first when I was very young, several times since and am craving to read it again.  Nothing compares to it; it is the quintessential Gothic love story.   Indeed, it is perhaps even the quintessential love story, period.

When reading Wuthering Heights, I’m often amazed that a clergyman’s daughter, a woman who was never married, could have concocted such an amazing story of love that transcends – literally – everything. 

And I pray one prayer–I repeat it till my tongue stiffens–Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you–haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!

Terror made me cruel...

 If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.

I will admit that I’m very picky about film adaptations of my beloved classic works of literature, particularly ones as powerful and soul-consuming as Wuthering Heights.  I’ve not yet seen a truly good, accurate version of it and doubt that I ever will.  It simply cannot be done; film is not and never will be literature.  In this case, actions do not speak a thousand words. 

That being said, I will say that the recent Masterpiece Theatre version was immensely enjoyable.  The scenery is just amazing: the moors are everything I would imagine them to be and the setting for the Heights and the Grange are seemingly perfect.  And, the cast in this version is about as close to what is in my mind as I think is possible, particularly Heathcliff.  Tom Hardy does a brilliant version.  He is not Heathcliff – no one is or can be – but he plays him nicely.  Cathy and Nellie are also very good, I think.

However, I will also say that this version includes several glaring inaccuracies and even more subtle ones.  There are things that I can’t imagine being included in the film, things that are so removed from how it was in the book that it almost seems a bit disrespectful.  So, there is that.

But, all-in-all, it is a beautifully done film that is just fun to watch and, even with its inaccuracies, it is a brilliant story to wrap yourself up in.  It doesn’t consume the soul like the book does but it will completely captivate you while it lasts and for a time afterward too. 

It is well worth owning.  I’m planning it for a Happy Valentine to me.  ♥

Wuthering Heights on DVD

Buy it here.

Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

Disclaimer:  My advocacy of this version has absolutely nothing to do with Tom Hardy being an amazingly stunning hunk of burning love.  Okay, his being an amazingly stunning hunk of burning love HELPS but my heart truly does belong to the story.