Brother/Sister (?)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Wuthering Heights
RashomonLaStrada — 16 years ago(January 30, 2010 06:58 PM)
Many years ago a friend explained that WUTHERING HEIGHTS was actually about incest. Would Mr. Earnshaw have brought home some random street urchin? There were a lot of hungry children in British cities back in those days. Earnshaw brings home this boy and wants him to sleep in Hindley's room not in the servants' quarters.
More likely Heathcliff was the illegitimate child of Earnshaw and some woman (mistress?).
Do you think the filmmakers were aware of this in the casting? Casting Heathcliff and Cathy so they truly do look like brother and sister.
"The good end happily, the bad unhappily, that is why it is called Fiction." -
jeffreywills7 — 16 years ago(February 07, 2010 02:08 PM)
One of the oddities of Romanticism when Bronte wrote the book was the preoccupation of writers like Shelley, Wordsworth, etc., with androgeny and the taboo notion of brother/sister love. Simply put, Cathy and Heathcliff are raised as brother and sister and can never be a real couple. Cathy herself says, "I am Heathcliff." Notice in the novel who astonishingly similar their anger is. If you want to read about this, consult the book "Sexual Personae" by Camille Paglia. She is a scholar and literary critic. The book is fascinating on this topic.
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hachmom-1 — 15 years ago(June 16, 2010 12:49 PM)
I had never thought of it before but there is alot of incest and quasi incest in the books of the timeand i am reminded that in the book of frankenstein Elizabeth is Frankenstein's foster sister also..
It is not our abilities that show who we truly areit is our choices -
jschillig — 15 years ago(November 16, 2010 03:47 PM)
Nope, you're not the first to come up with that interpretation. What's more, the Timothy Dalton version practically states it outright! (Mrs. Earnshaw is heard to snap at her husband, "How dare you bring your doings into my house!")
The recent (2008, was it?) version on Masterpiece Classic also hinted at such rumors in town about Heathcliff, but never confirmed it.
And now that I've read that theory, it's hard for me to "unsee" it as a real possibilitydoesn't it seem a bit odd that Earnshaw headed out of town on unspecified "business", just happened to take pity on a random street orphan with Earnshaw-like dark hair and eyes, and give him the name of a deceased son of the family? (I'm not sure if Heathcliff's actually supposed to have Roma-like features, or if he was just called "gypsy" because of his dark coloring and unknown parents.)
It's like Lucy Van Pelt once saidthe perfect theory is the kind that can't be proven one way or the other.
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OriginalSplunge — 14 years ago(June 18, 2011 04:34 AM)
The novel does not explicitly state so but strongly implies it.
We can probably thank Lord Byron as the theme is rare in Western literature before he arrived on the scene.
Prior to that, we have to go back to the Greeks, Romans and of course, the Bible. -
OriginalSplunge — 12 years ago(November 04, 2013 06:49 PM)
One theory suggested that Heathcliff was in fact the bastard son of Mr. Earnshaw and thus Catherine's half brother.
High school was a long time ago but as I recall, that was a theory briefly raised by my high school English teacher. She had a wonderful way of pointing out things like that in her reading assignments.
I far preferred, both then and now, the movie version with Laurence Olivier over the book.
They should stop attempting to remake the movie. One cannot improve on perfection.