Book to TV adaptation
By Rebecca / Spinebreakers Crew
When I sat down to read Wuthering Heights I was looking forward to submerging myself in an epic love story that would become a life long favourite. However, I’m afraid to say that despite my best efforts I was not able to believe in this romance and the whole book was struggle for me as I was determined to finish it but was bored and exasperated by its content. Heathcliff is generally acknowledged as one of the great romantic heroes but I found no appealing qualities anywhere in his nature. He is a cruel brute with a thirst for revenge who displays no demonstrations of his affection. Cathy too is vindictive, masochistic and self-absorbed with a warped view of love. Being not in love with the man and finding no similarities between myself and the woman, I could not bring myself to care about them and in fact disliked them so heartily that I did not want their happiness. In fact I found the book much more entertaining in the second half when it was not about Cathy and Heathcliff at all. That part, I felt, was more realistic, engaging and properly structured.
Though I had my reservations I sat down to watch the recent ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights in the hope that they had ironed out the faults I had found with it and I was rewarded. It was not the best adaptation of a novel I’d seen but it was much more convincing and moving to me than the book and played host to actors I had seen in other things and whose performances I enjoyed (Andrew Lincoln, Burn Gorman and Kevin R McNally). My strongest objection to the book was that the narrative gives little background and does not build up a sense of Cathy and Heathcliff being in love. It does not focus on their days as children or tell of any intimacy between them. There are odd declarations of passionate love for one another but these are few and far between and given the information we have so far they are difficult to take seriously. I don’t get a feeling for Cathy and Heathcliff being part of each other. As the adaptation was not confined to the narrative of Nelly the maid and housekeeper it was able to show a much closer, tenderer and much more explicit relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. One of its strengths was that very few of the scenes of the adaptation are actually in the book and so the plot was manipulated to a point where it made sense. Cathy had a much softer personality and the actress (Charlotte Riley) portrayed her well as a conflicted girl with a strong personality prone to great jealousy - something which isn’t quite understandable in the book. Heathcliff was also much more sympathetic as his background and influences (mainly the cruelty he is subjected to) are explored in greater detail. It also helped that the actor wasn’t bad-looking.