Wuthering Heights: “who would have thought you were born in one year?”

1/ One trouble with screen adaptations is that you form a mental image of a character because of various actors, only to return to the book and realise that the character is much younger. Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice for example is only 25. Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility is only 35. So I have been rereading Wuthering Heights, and realised that the characters are younger than I remembered. 

Heathcliff and Catherine grow up together. In the latest (travesty of a) film, they’re portrayed by 28-year-old Jacob Elordi and 35-year-old Margot Robbie, but in the novel, their entire love story is in their teens. That affects the way you see the characters (the same way I feel like people who are harsh on Romeo and Juliet seem to forget that Juliet is only 13 and Romeo is around 16-17). When Catherine dies about halfway through the novel, she’s only 18 and Heathcliff is 19—this makes her waywardness and impetuosity more understandable, but makes his savagery, violence, and vindictiveness more terrifying. Isabella is also 18, several months younger than Catherine, so it’s understandable that she falls for Heathcliff and perversely ignores both her brother, who dearly loves her, and Catherine, who understands Heathcliff better than anyone else does.  

Another intriguing aspect of their age is that Heathcliff runs away at 16—what does he do at that age and how does he make money in those 3 years? 

Now look at other characters. Hindley is only 21 when he loses his wife Frances, and 27 when he dies. Is it not heartbreaking that he becomes self-destructive and drinks himself to death at 27? But another surprise to me, as I reread Wuthering Heights, is that Nelly Dean’s the same age as Hindley, just a few months younger. I now see that Nelly Dean is a judgemental, manipulative, unreliable woman, which I didn’t quite realise when reading the novel the first time years ago; I also realise that she’s only 26 when Catherine dies, and 22-23 when she causes the rift between Catherine and Heathcliff. 

Note too that Nelly Dean is 14 when Mr Earnshaw brings home the boy Heathcliff, and she joins Hindley in hating and bullying the outsider. She’s a servant, but she also grows up with the main characters. 

2/ I don’t know if I’m going to have anything more interesting to say about Wuthering Heights, so for now I’m just going to say that it is an ingenious novel, carefully constructed, with vivid and well-delineated characters. What a mad imagination! Emily is the genius of the family. 

People tend to name Middlemarch as the greatest British novel, but I much prefer Bleak House and Wuthering Heights.