Wuthering Heights with Evie Solheim

Nadya Williams and Evie Solheim discuss Wuthering Heights, what makes it a gothic classic, why Emily Brontë's moral ambiguity still provokes, how the novel speaks to a generation starved for romance, and why the new film adaptation trades subtlety for TikTok-style spectacle. Also: Anna Karenina, Virginia Woolf, and Greta Gerwig's Narnia.

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Chapters

• 00:11 – Opening reading from Wuthering Heights and intro to the Brontë sisters
• 01:54 – Welcome to Season 2 of Christians Reading Classics; introducing Evie Solheim
• 03:25 – What makes a classic? Timelessness, breaking the mold, and the canon
• 06:35 – Plot summary: key characters, places, and the structure of the novel
• 08:43 – The gothic genre: origins, elements, and its American descendants
• 10:22 – Southern Gothic: Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, and True Detective
• 13:12 – How we first meet Cathy — and the unreliable narrators telling her story
• 16:28 – Advice for first-time readers: Emily Brontë's biography and creative world
• 19:43 – Virginia Woolf's essay on Wuthering Heights and what it means to write like that
• 22:56 – Why Wuthering Heights resonates with Americans today: romance, apps, and longing
• 27:21 – The new film adaptation: competing with TikTok, not other movies
• 31:43 – Comparing Wuthering Heights to Gone with the Wind: land, love, and star-crossed tropes
• 36:28 – Good cinematic adaptations: Greta Gerwig's Little Women vs. Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights
• 41:10 – Is Wuthering Heights amoral? Reading Heathcliff's fate through a biblical lens
• 47:29 – Closing question: the classic Evie wishes she had written — Anna Karenina

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Landlord, the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country. In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven. And Mr. Hithcliffe and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow. He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves with a jealous resolution still further in his waistcoat as I announced my name. So wrote Emily Bronte in opening her novel, Ruthering Heights, published in 1847, just a year before the author's untimely death at age 30. Emily was one of three famed Bronte sisters who wrote novels considered classics today. Her older sister, perhaps the most famous one, Charlotte Bronte, is the author of Jane Eyre, while her younger sister, Anne Bronte, is the author of Agnes Gray. The three sisters continue to be widely read, but Emily Bronte, in particular, could not have foreseen that across the pond in America, in the year of America's 250th birthday, her novel would experience perhaps the greatest degree of attention it has received in a long time. Welcome to season two of Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy. The theme for this second season is Classics American Christians Should Read in Honor of America's 250th. I am Nadia Williams, the book's editor for Mirror Orthodoxy, and the author of the book, Christians Reading Classics, out this past fall with Zon of an Academic. And today, it is an absolute delight to talk about Wuthering Heights and how we should think about classic books with Evie Solheim. Evie is a wife, mother, and author of the newsletter The Girls Guide, which you can find on Substack. She is a prolific freelance journalist and book reviewer. You can find her work in The American Conservative, First Things, Newsweek, and many other publications. And she's a proud graduate of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. So Evie, welcome. Thank you for having me. So thank you so much for taking the time. It's one theme on this podcast is busy moms talking about classic books, which by the way is a reminder: if you are listening and you're a busy mom, you can find time to read great novels. But first, so let's start before we before we dive into Weathering Heights, let's start with a general question. Since this podcast is about reading classic books, and you read a lot of classic books, how would you define a classic?

SPEAKER_02 3:33

How would I define a classic? Um, well, it's fun because that's the question that you and I first started corresponding over. Was a couple years ago I wanted to write an article for the Conservator, and I wanted to encourage people to, you know, instead of maybe just picking up like frothy beach reads to add a classic to their list for the summer and bring it on vacation. And I was like, well, who else will help me define what a classic is than Naughty Williams? I need to talk to her. And so I got in touch with you, and you gave me some really great quotes, and I was really happy with how it turned out. Um, but but the huge part, the huge thing that we talked about, and some of the other experts talked about, was just the fact that these are timeless works. Like you're gonna read them, and and of course, you know, there'll be details that feel dated and things like that, but you'll relate to that protagonist, you'll relate to those characters, you'll realize that human nature has a change. I think I'm just paraphrasing you at this point. Um, but but but that was, I thought, a really good message to share in my piece, and it really resonated with me as somebody who just has basically always loved classic literature. My mother's a reader, you know, she really instilled that in me. It was, I was homeschooled. It was let's go to the library and just whatever you find, you can read it. Um, so I was reading all kinds of things. Um, and and one thing which I've listened to, you know, lots of your episodes, and I don't know if this is something someone has said before, they probably have. But I feel like oftentimes a classic, not always, but oftentimes they're like breaking the mold in some way. Which I don't know if you'd agree with that, but that's something that comes to mind for me as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Oh, that's interesting. And I don't think anyone has actually mentioned that. So the idea, yeah. But I I like where you're going with that. Do you want to elaborate a little more?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Maybe, maybe just the fact that the writer is, you know, building on a lot of things that come before them, but they are adding something new that maybe even shocks people or that people don't like at first. Um, you know, even uh Weathering Heights was very much regarded as this is just an amoral tale, and everyone is just too ugly and coarse and rude, and we don't read novels like this. There's always got to be someone who's representing like the moral character, and they're good and they're beautiful and they're perfect, and there's nobody like that in this novel. So that even comes to mind for Wuthering Heights.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

That's interesting. So, in some ways, it's easier to see a classic with a distance of a hundred or you know, two hundred, however many years later, than at the very moment when it is published.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Maybe, but then I also go back and forth, and I'm I'm somebody who used to work in publicity a lot, and I also know how much just publicity plays into people's perceptions of things. So I do also like when people talk about like minor classics or like overlooked works that should be in the canon. And I'm like, okay, it makes sense that not everything is gonna get its due. So, like you're saying, yeah, we're we're looking back at it with with uh fresh eyes.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Oh, I like this. So let's set up this novel, Wethering Heights, for anyone who might not have read it before or maybe has not read it recently. What is going on? Like, who are the key characters, key places?

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yes, yeah, do not do not take your synopsis out of the film. Don't think that if you read the film synopsis, the new Emerald Finel film synopsis, if you read that, that's not the book necessarily. Um, but I mean the name, Wuthering Heights. What is Wuthering Heights? It's this house. It's this house that stood in the Yorkshire Moors for, I think we're supposed to believe centuries. There's, you know, a name and a year carved carved into the house, and that really represents our first protagonist, Catherine Ernstshaw. I think is her family name. Um, and and so she's been on the moors, her family's been on the moors, and that's like her first love. Is she loves the nature around it, she loves, you know, the changing seasons, that's where her family is. Um, and basically she develops a very close relationship with basically her adopted brother. Um, and she has also a biological brother who's much older and takes control of the house. And so there's a power struggle between them. There are new neighbors who move in, and they represent like wealth and stability, and kind of they're from outside the moors, they're more cultured, they represent her stepping into a different society. So we kind of watch from the perspective of a couple other narrators, which is interesting, but we watch as she decides what world she wants to be in. And, you know, people were also complaining about the film that it only uh, you know, it only examined the first part of the book because we go on to see descendants of these original characters, and that's really what the novel ends with. So yeah, it's a good book. I hopefully I I didn't give too much away slash explained it well enough, but it's there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on in this novel.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yeah, and um, one thing we can talk about that will not spoil it for readers is what sort of novel is it? Because you've mentioned the term gothic. So talk about that, please.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yes, a gothic novel. Right. And um, you know, if you think of Gothic, you're thinking more of like Europe. So it's interesting that Gothic influence, we can literally trace it to some particular American genres of literature and film and you know, things like that. But um, yeah, it's it's really fun because I I'm somebody who like in the fall, I love to read a gothic novel. Like this is literally me. I I have to read a gothic novel in the fall. You know, it doesn't necessarily, I don't tend towards supernatural, but the things that people say are elements of gothic novels are um, you know, there's a persecuted heroine, there's an inscrutable villain. Sometimes, I mean, if you're being literal, they're literally surrounded by gothic architecture because it's taking place in that kind of castle. Um, and there's, you know, the supernatural, or, you know, the belief in the supernatural or the wonder if like a ghost could be there. So, so when I talk about Gothic novels, I think that's what I'm talking about. And people trace it back to, I think um, the big one was The Mysteries of Udolfo by Ann Radcliffe. Um, but yeah, so it's a it's a fun genre, and it's one that people still play with today. Um, and it's interesting that it definitely originated with a very English writer, but American writers kind of made it their own in the falling centuries.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah, because today I think um the person we think of is Flannery O'Connor, the Southern Gothic.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yes, yes, some William Faulkner, some Flannery O'Connor, apparently Eudora Welty very much did not want to be included in the Southern Gothic genre. I was reading a quote somewhere. I don't, I don't think she really I wouldn't really put her in there. Apparently, at first, people didn't even want to be called Southern Gothic, even though that's nice people people kind of search that out. Um, but and I think the Southern Gothic tie-in I was talking to you about was, you know, I hear that Wuthering Heights, the movie, is coming out and I agree to review it for first things. Um, and I'm like, well, I want to I want to watch some films that kind of get me excited for this. I'm gonna watch the 2015 Jane Eyre, which I believe is really well done. I think it's really well done, and it's directed by Carrie Fuganaga, who I was familiar with because he does like these crime, horror, thriller movies and TV shows. Like he's not associated with period pieces or English literature or anything like that. You know, he's um behind true detective, which is a lot of people would say, oh, that's the best season of television I've ever watched. And also one that had the most interesting themes and just, you know, and it's Southern Gothic. Like it's people literally, it's like modern Southern Gothic to a T. You're wondering if there's supernatural there. There's gore, there's crime, there's, you know, family history. Um so I'm like, I'm gonna watch his Jane Eyre. And I'm just so confused. I'm like, why of all the things would he go from doing like modern American crime television to like this novel that people think of as like, oh, that's something like women read at book club, you know, stuff like that. Um, and it's because there really is this through line from, you know, the Gothic literature of which Charlotte Bronte is a part and she wrote Jane Eyre all the way to like modern Southern Gothic. Um, and I promise I will, I will wrap this up, but there's a really good quote from um Carol Synth that I like about this. And it kind of it kind of says why we liked the Gothic um, you know, back during the Enlightenment and now. Let's see if I can find my quote. Uh, she says the Gothic as a way of seeing the world originated at the end of the 18th century when a sense of scientific certainty was beginning to emerge. I suspect that the Gothic was even then a counterbalance produced by writers and thinkers who felt limited by such a confident worldview and recognized that the power of the past, the irrational, and the violent continues to hold sway in the world. Two hundred and more years later, there's much that science cannot explain and problems that technology cannot solve.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And that's striking. I, as I'm thinking about uh Wuthering Heights, um, our first mention of Kathy um in the book is the ghost.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Yes. Oh my goodness. And I had I read this book in ninth grade. They had us read it in ninth grade. Those 14-year-old boys did not want to talk about Wuthering Heights, anyways. And I've forgotten that that's how we meet Kathy. And I'd forgotten how intense it was. I don't, I don't know why I only really remember the like Romeo and Juliet type stuff. But um, yeah, you're, I mean, from then on, you're like, what's happening? Who, what's gonna pop up? You know, it it really grabs you.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah, because our initial narrator is just the visitor. So the segment, what I read at the very beginning of this podcast, um, this guy who's describing his initial visit to his landlord, he is an outsider. He's just there uh renting a house in the moors as one does, right? And uh suddenly he, and that's how we get our in as the readers into this crazy story.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yes. Yeah. No, it's apparently people were, you know, critics and and readers were even wondering about her kind of um, I'm trying to think of the right word, kind of a disjointed way we get the story. We're getting Lockwood, the narrator you're talking about. He comes and, you know, he's got his own thing going on. And he he gets Nellie, the longtime housekeeper, and you know, basically almost a family member of the Urnshaw. She's telling him some of the story. Then he gets sick, then he decides he wants to hear more of the story, which I I found fun. I enjoyed it. Um, I had kind of forgotten about that part because I had not read it in a few years. Um, but yeah, I mean, the the modern term we like to use is the reliable or the unreliable narrator, right? So I don't know what's your opinion on how reliable everyone is. Sometimes I think I can sense Nellie kind of doing some revisionist history, but I'm curious what you think.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, so Nellie, as like the faithful family servant, um, I could I I really want to see that her loyalties lie with the Earnshaws. And that's um, and that's the sense that I still had in rereading this time around. With Lockwood, he just really wants a good story. I think he's there for the gothic. Like it grabs him.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

I think so. I think so. And I think he gets more than he bargains for.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

But but a lot of characters do. Yeah, and I won't, I won't spoil the film too much. I don't mean to hearken on the film too much, but they really do change the character of Nellie in a way that makes her because she's she's there for the story, she bears witness to the story, but she actually becomes more pivotal to the story in the film, but then they don't flesh out her character, her motivations anymore. So it's just like it's not bad that that choice was made, but then you don't feel like you have anything to back it up. So I enjoyed, I enjoyed listening to it. I listened to it on audiobook most recently. Um and so yeah, her character just kind of providing the color rather than being part of the action. I was like, okay, that feels a lot more, that just makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

So you mentioned you read it first in ninth grade. So what advice would you give to a first-time reader who probably is not in ninth grade, but maybe, but maybe yes. So what should first-time readers pay attention to?

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Um, well, I always think it's fun to know a bit about the author's biography. So I was kind of brushing up on my Emily Bronte before you and I even chatted, you know, it and so it was three sisters and a brother who survived to adulthood, and they entertained themselves by writing stories. Um, you know, they would create these very detailed, I mean, they were world building, what we call in like film and video games and and writing, but they were world building together and they were so creative and they lived on these Yorkshire moors that they write about. Um, but apparently she was an extremely unique individual. We don't know much about her. There's not even any evidence that she ever, you know, was in any sort of courtship or relationship. We don't even know, you know, a lot more of her sister's writings and letters and diaries are around than hers. We don't know who she, quote, fell in love with if she ever did. You know, apparently she was a very um, she was just known for she was gonna be who she was and she wasn't gonna change. She traveled to a foreign country with her sister, and apparently her clothes stuck out, and her sister kind of changed her style of dress. And Emily said, I'm not going to. Like, I'm gonna wear what I want to wear. Um, so apparently that was her personality, and she was just very quiet and very withdrawn, um, to the point that people even had a hard time believing she wrote this story that scandalized people. Um, so I think it's always fun to learn more about the author. It's fun to learn more about the author. It's fun to see, you know, whether consciously or unconsciously, she was kind of building on the Romeo and Juliet idea. You know, just because people talk a lot about modern romance novels and genres and tropes. And it's kind of like you either have the love story where the lovers are separated by circumstance, or they're separated by like their own internal, you know, whatever's going on. And the easiest thing to pick is like the internal battle is that one of them is bad or evil or like has a darkness, you know, which is kind of what's going on in Wuthering Heights. Wathering Heights is kind of the blueprint. And there are basically a million copies coming out, you know, in the past few years as people get more and more into romance novels, and that becomes more of like a um like a hobby versus just like something people will pick up and read. It's like become more of a hobby and like an obsession for people. Um, so it I don't even remember your original question, but that's wrapped up.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

I like this. No, my uh the question was uh what advice would you give to a first-time reader? And you mentioned researching the author, which I think is really wise. Um, but it also is surprising to think about this shy, kind of reserved, uh homebody um person who died at age 30 and never married, uh, traveled abroad that time with her sister, but otherwise, like not a whole lot of life experience, and yet wrote this incredible novel.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Exactly, exactly. And so I enjoyed um there's a Virginia Wolf essay where she kind of compares and contrasts Jane Eyre and um Wuthering Heights, and she also throws in Jude the Obscure, I guess, for good measure, so Thomas Hardy. Um, but but she kind of is just really mulling this over. Virginia Wolf, like the critic, she's mulling over like, how could somebody like Emily Bronte write this work that just like it just never stops? It just keeps going. It captures the human experience. I think the way Virginia Wolf puts it is like, I'm paraphrasing, but she's basically saying, like, Heathcliff is it doesn't feel like you're not expecting, he's not the boy next door. You know, he is an extremely unusual composite or character. The same with Catherine Earnshaw, the original Kathy. Um, but she's saying, but somehow she captures more of like the human experience and what it means to suffer and what it means to love, what it means to hate, like by creating these characters that are almost realer than real, which I thought, obviously I'm no Virginia Wolf, but I just thought her her thoughts on it were beautiful. So that could also be a fun essay to read before you read the novel, just because it kind of gets your interest piqued. Um, but yeah, no, I I it's always interesting to see what people have thought of it over the years. Cause she was thinking she was reading it in the modern world. Right. Now we're a hundred or however many years later, and we're like, oh, let's go back in history, let's go back to Virginia Wolf. Um, but yeah, that's a great essay to read about it.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

And she, of course, was a novelist in her own right and has dabbled with kind of more historical novels too, like Orlando.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yes, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I forget that she ever even put her critic hat on. So I got surprised when I found it. And I was like, oh, I should have known this. Something in my brain, like when I started reading Weather Heights, I was like, I know there's a Virginia Wolf essay about this. I haven't seen it in 10 years. I was like, oh God, I didn't imagine this. Oh my gosh. But I enjoyed reading it and wishing I could write like that. But you know, a girl can dream.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Well, and you're still very young.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Time for your own topmanship.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

And you write a lot. Yeah, exactly. But that's kind of I think about this. Um, how are writers made? And especially like we look at uh people like Emily Bronte uh or Charlotte or their sister Anne, like none of them went to say MFA program in creative writing to get a degree in fiction before they wrote these novels, and yet they did. So what did they do? Well, they read a lot, and so I think about that as the best education for writers is just keep reading.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

That's so true. That's so true. Not to bring viral ex discourse into the podcast. Oh, yes. I'm trying to stay away from go for it. But there is a viral ex-discourse about should writers read, and quote, is it ableist to expect writers to read? Which I think there's always an exception to every rule. But I think for the most part, if you are teaching writing, it makes sense that you should also be reading writing, which I know nobody has to worry about with you.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, that's read more than you write, a lot more than you write. That's my method anyway. Well, let's shift gears to the American context. Um, why does Brothering Heights speak so well to Americans today? I mean, here we are, the year of America's 250th, and one of the best read novels right now is not an American novel, but Emily Bronte's Buthering Heights.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Yes. Yeah, because they're they're selling, I mean, it's the exact version she wrote. They're selling it with 2026 movie poster on top, and people are buying it, and people are reading it in book club, and I'm literally running into friends I haven't seen in a while, and they're like, I'm like, what are you reading? They're like Wuthering Heights. Um, you know, so that's fun. But why does it speak to people? I I feel like just the fact that it's been labeled a romance. Now, a lot of people will contest that even because there is so much more going on. I I personally think romance is a big part of it. Um, but a lot of people would even contest calling it romance. But um I think a huge part of it is people love love. And it's a really it's a story about, you know, basically two star cross lovers. Um, much more than that, but it's about two star cross lovers when you reduce down the the Kathy Heathcliff. And I think people in our day and age, I think modern Americans do not feel like there's any love to even get star crossed, you know, they're like, I wish I just had had a chance at that, you know, and I'm Gen Z. I feel bad to even kind of rag on Gen Z because I don't think it's Gen Z's fault. But, you know, we've created a culture where people are pretty much only expecting to date or talk to members of the opposite sex, you know, for dating on apps, which don't feel as romantic as meeting on the Yorkshire Moors. Um, you know, so people are people are feeling like the ways they're expected to meet uh members of the opposite sex is just not as romantic. The algorithm's determining it, you know, it's it's it's divorced from seeing someone in real life and having that spark and meeting eyes, like you're just like swiping left or swiping right on people. And so I think that has created this weird hunger for anything having to do with romance, which you can go the classic direction and read some bronte, you can go the romanticy direction and get into all of this, you know, these news stories, which apparently really run the gamut. Um, I recommend um Stephanie H. Murray wrote for Tablet a piece called The New Romantics about the romantic trend and how being really into the romance genre is has become big among young people, which is new. Um, which almost kind of seems to be a stand-in for feeling fulfilled romantically. I don't know if that's quite the conclusion she came to, but that kind of seemed to be something that you could tease out. Um, but so I think people love these stories, and I think they feel like they're very foreign and different from life now. Like nobody talks about a meat cute anymore. You know, it feels like those died with like the 90s rom-coms. Um, so not that there's any meat cute in Wuthering Heights. I hate I hate to tell everybody. There's well, maybe Edgar and Kathy have a meat cute. Sort of. That's the closest, probably. There you go. There's a meat cute. So, anyways, there's meatcutes in Wuthering Heights, but not in 21st century modern love. So that's part of my theory. I think that's part of my theory. And I really do think, even going back to what should people know before they read it, I do think it's accessible. I think it's something that if somebody found it at the Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy books, I think if they pick it up, they'll it's not gonna feel too heavy or too hard to read. It's really a fast read. Um, so I think I think that goes into it as well why people are are excited for it.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

It's a striking thought that in the age of TikTok and social media, suddenly a romance on the moor seems on the, you know, remote. English Moors seems a lot more romantic than perhaps it did 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

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SPEAKER_01 28:16

Well, let's talk about the film, which um I think if if it's done anything good, uh the best thing it did was bring the novel to everyone's attention yet again. So um you mentioned uh as we were corresponding before, uh, that this new film version tries to be an epic of sorts. So talk about this.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Yes, yeah. So so even going back to what I was saying about why people might want to pick up Wuthering Heights right now, that's the same thing that these filmmakers and production companies are trying to tap into. You know, people's hunger for romance. The weird thing is, um, and I I kind of wrote about this in my review for first things, books and movies are competing. It used to be like we were like, oh, of course movies are winning. Of course movies are winning, film is winning. No, books, young women are more likely to probably be on book talk, you know, the book recommendation uh uh category of TikTok, the social media app, than they are to be like going to the theater, going to the cinema, and like watching a whole film. I I don't know if I've seen that number, but it just me anecdotally talking to other people under 30. That's very much the case with the people I talk to. Um and so, you know, these filmmakers of quote Wuthering Heights, because the director put it in quotes to say I'm not directly adapting it, you know, they're trying to tap into that and they're trying to compete with just how um attention-grabbing their competitors are. So, like this film, in my opinion, wasn't competing with the other films released at the box office that weekend. It's competing with the fact that people, that there are production companies that are dropping 60-second, uh, how do you say it? Uh, short form vertical romance series. So people are following accounts, and instead of being like, I'm gonna sit down and watch a movie, they're throughout the day checking in on these 60-second, um, like basically romance dramas. Um, and there's been a huge boom in that. Movie theaters are closing, production companies creating 60-second vertical romance dramas are are opening. So I find that interesting. So everybody's hating on the movie. I don't need to, you know, throw more fuel on the fire, but it really did feel like they were like, we're gonna keep everyone's attention. We're gonna have a crazy costume change every 60 seconds. We're gonna have the characters, you know, there will be no subtlety. You know, that's kind of what I got from the film. Um, and and first things titled my piece, Wuthering Heights is for the TikTok generation, which I didn't even get to enough in my review, but it really did feel like they were just fighting for your attention. I'm gonna keep doing weird stuff and odd stuff so you don't look away, just like you know, a creator on TikTok would do, because they just want to shock people and keep eyeballs on their content. So all the more reason to pick up a book, right? When that's how people are are approaching film.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

But that was my well, I think this is a really um, really interesting point, the idea of a movie for the TikTok generation. I really liked that. Um uh I thought that was a good title for the piece and the whole point that um here are people, a whole generation potentially, whose attention spans are 60 seconds or less. So one value of of reading, and especially of reading not classic novels, is they train your attention span. If you have not developed it, a classic novel will work that muscle. And it really is a muscle.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

No, that's so true. And that's when I feel like my attention span is not good enough. It's like, okay, you just need to sit down and read a book, um, turn your phone off, you know. And I feel like all your listeners of your podcast, they probably already do this, but they're probably feeling extra inspired. But um, yeah, yeah, no, it's crazy. It's crazy how much uh probably my generation and below, yeah, is shaped by the the attention economy and the viral video economy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

You noted at the same time that there are some similarities between this film and the American film classic Gun with the Wind. So what do we make off these epics if we look at them side by side?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Yes. Well, and and even what's interesting is a lot of scholars have um, you know, uh have globbed onto both of them as like, okay, they have a disagreeable female protagonist and labeled it feminist literature, which I think you can fight all the live long day, whether either of those are are works of feminist literature. Um, but that's something that comes to mind for me is I read North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell relatively recently.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

I love that one.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

I love that one so good, but it feels a little anemic, like before Wuthering Heights. You're like, oh, like these people are really they're saying it and they're feeling it. And and so it's it's interesting to watch like the 19th century century literature, like can be very didactic or it can, you know, feel very modern. So I feel like Wuthering Heights feels very contemporary and modern as you read it simply because she's she's not being didactic, you know, and so it feels more like the the authors of today. Um, and then add in that gone with the wind was what written 20th century, takes place in 19th, so you're kind of getting like a mix of things. But um yeah, Gone with the Wind uh and Wuthering Heights, I feel like have a lot of similarities. And I feel like they both kind of um draw from like the star-crossed lovers trope, you know. Um, so I I basically was Googling this. I was trying to Google. I was like, did Margaret Mitchell ever read Wuthering Heights? Like, do we know? And apparently all we know is that she read like every book in her local library, which probably included Wuthering Heights. I think she probably did. She was a very well-read lady, a very interesting lady. So, so no, I think that once you kind of think of these as being very similar, especially because there's the connection that Scarlett has to Tara, to her land, there's the connection, Kathy feels a huge connection to the Yorkshire Moors. You know, one thing I was kind of calling out about Wuthering Heights, the movie, was that it didn't make like the Moors are kind of a character in Wuthering Heights the novel, and they aren't really treated with any care in Wuthering Heights, the new film, which then I would contrast with the 2015 Jane Eyre film that I feel like does a really good job of like um making you feel like you're on the moors, and it's not just a setting, it's kind of it's like more than a setting. The Moors are somehow moving the story along. Like there's a scene in the 2015 Jane Eyre where she, you know, gets stranded and she has to sleep out in the open. And when the sun rises, it's like she's being cradled by the Heath. And I'm like, oh, that is cinema. That is so good. And that probably would accord more with, you know, what was happening in Charlotte Bronte's mind's eye, you know, when she's writing it, versus the Wuthering Heights uh film I watch, you know, the other weekend where nature didn't really come into it, even though that's a huge part of Catherine Earnshaw and who she is and her family. You know, it's almost like they communicate about the weather and the nature in the book instead of talking about what's happening inside for them, if that makes any sense. Um, so so, anyways, I I love that Scarlett and Catherine are both connected to their land and their families, and they both want to like preserve their place in the world, and they're both like um, you know, having to make choices in economic depression or desperation. And so that's interesting. They both have like these caddish love interests. You know, Scarlett's got Rhett Butler, and I would say Kathy gets the short end of the stick with Heathcliff. Um, because he is just what is going on with him? I was reading papers about how he's actually a werewolf and a vampire, all this, and you know, he's he's like absolutely, you know, the lover from hell. But, anyways, not to spoil it too much for anyone who hasn't read it, but yeah, a lot of similarities there, which I find fun because there's nothing new under the sun, right? And so it's kind of makes you see Wuthering Heights, some some pieces of it transported to the American South.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

In other words, a lot of the English-speaking world, as far as fiction goes, uh has been interested in the same themes. 100%. 100%. Yep. So we've uh we've said a lot of bad things, probably all deserved, about the new movie adaptation. But uh talk to us more about good cinematic adaptations of classic novels.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Yes, yes. So I have this theory that the three most powerful millennial women in entertainment have a group chat. So it'd be Emerald Finell, who um directed Wuthering Heights. It would be Margie who financed Wuthering Heights and starred as Kathy. Um, and it would be Greta Gerwig, who um is known for working with Margot Robbie on um the Barbie movie, which people forget Emerald Finelle had a had a bit part in the Barbie movie. They're all friends and they all fund each other's projects, and they are the hive mind that's deciding what do we think millennial women need to watch or read next. And the the saddest thing about some of their artistic choices or business features is that they all have talent and they all have good ideas, but they just don't always execute them super well. So I'm I'm somebody who I've known about Greta Gerwig. I was in theaters for her first film, Lady Bird. And I was also in theaters for her, I believe it was her second feature-linked film, her adaptation of Little Women, which of course you're like, oh, like you're gonna read you Little Women? Like we already have the Winona Writer Christian Bale version of this like classic American novel. Like, do we really need it? And I felt like she did really build on that. And I felt like she did really understand the book and do a great job. And because people are so familiar with Little Women, she did kind of play with the chronology and she did a few little fun things, but she still kept it very much um within the bounds of the novel, and probably something that Louisa May Alcott, you know, would say, Yes, I recognize that. Um, so I feel like she did a great job. Um, and so she's an American filmmaker paying homage to a great American novel. And so then it was weird that her friend Emerald Chanel is, you know, trying to pay homage to a great English novel, and she's English, and she did, in my opinion, let's just say she did her own original work. Like you could have made that movie and not said it was Wuthering Heights, and people would have been like, oh, okay. Like, I don't know if changed some names, I don't know if they would have known it was Wuthering Heights, like my personal opinion. Um, but so, so it's interesting to me. Um, you know, the thing that I kind of come back to is I felt like Greta Gerwig loved the novel and loved her audience. Emerald Fennel kind of seemed to love the novel. She loved her memories of reading the novel as a 14-year-old. She did not seem to love her audience, you know, which I don't know how that applies to novel writing. I don't know how you apply that to novel writing or literature, but it it was it's very interesting. I watched both of them back to back. Um, and I was like, one of these is really good, the other one not so much. But I don't know, was there anything else I I needed to touch on on those? Because I'm trying to compare and contrast the American okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

I appreciate that. Yeah, and I think it's always encouraging to tell people if uh if you're looking for a good film based on a classic novel, at least like give us some ideas. And you've mentioned earlier in this conversation the Jane Eyre adaptation and uh this particular Little Women adaptation. So that's that gives us something. And the Little Women really is a family-friendly film, which is great too.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Yes. Yeah, no, it's wonderful because it was written for a young audience, exactly, you know, and and people still enjoy it. So and then one more tidbit for your audience, not to freak them out, but Greta Gerwig is apparently adapting the Chronicles of Narnia, and she's going to have a an actress who played Emily Bronte in a movie about Emily Bronte play the White Witch. So just everything's just connected. Not a conspiracy theorist, I promise.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Well, it's it's fair that actors and directors talk to each other. Oh, I suppose. Oh, yeah. But I thought that was funny. That is funny. Yeah. It's just sort of confusing when you see things like that on screen for the first time. So one thing I wanted to come back to. You mentioned that at times Wuthering Heights has been accused of being an amoral tale. And it seems like the new film adaptation really leans into that as like a great thing. But can you tell us, like, why has it been accused of being an amoral tale and what is a better way of reading it?

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Yeah, and and I won't say I'm the definitive voice on this. It's just something I picked up, I picked up on rereading it. Um, but obviously, like so many works written by women in the 19th century were very much trying to impart a moral, you know, and and by men too. But it feels like there were a lot of female writers who really felt like they were trying to impart morals. And it doesn't seem like that was Emily Bronte's um goal with Wuthering Heights. And if it was, I don't know what her moral was. Um, but but but it's it's interesting to read because, you know, characters who you feel like didn't do anything too horrible, die, you know, characters who you feel like are pretty horrible live. Is that judgment? Is that good? Is that bad? But but one interesting thing I did find is, you know, we start the novel with the Earn Shaw line and the Linton line then comes into play. And you have Heathcliff who doesn't really, he's got no end and no beginning. He doesn't even have a last name. His name is just Heathcliff. And and we never find out where he's from, his parentage. We don't, we don't know anything about him. So some scholars have even called him the interloper. Um, so he he comes into the story and he sort of becomes a member of the Earnshaw household. Um, but throughout the course of the novel, you know, people marry, people um have children, and so Heathcliff's son dies without any children. So his line ends. And at the very end, spoiler alert, but um the original Catherine, her daughter Catherine. Catherine marries um, who is now a Linton, marries the remaining member of the Earnshaw family. So, like their two families continue on together. And Heathcliff had this weird thing about uniting the two families' estates, but of course he wanted to be under his control. Um, his plan does not come to fruition in that, in that way, I guess. Um, and so, and so the two estates do get united, but it's not through hate, it's through love. Um, which which feels like there's there's something there, but it is interesting because like this kind of ancient like desire for your bloodline to continue or for your children to, you know, have an inheritance, like it's there. It's like the the the good or the the good ones continue on, and and Heathcliff's line is is kind of snuffed out, which depending on your reading, some people, you know, think he's supposed to even be like demon-possessed or something like that. But but so he he definitely does so many actions and makes so many people miserable, it's hard not to think he's experiencing some kind of judgment. Um, so that's something that always stuck out to me about that, because you know, the Linton and the Earn Shaw line continues and and his does not.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Yeah. I was thinking about that in uh this reading, as in terms of biblical blessings and curses. A blessing is when your line continues, a curse is the the ultimate eradication of an entire family. And so here's this man with no parentage who insinuates himself into a family, um, but then the interloper as you described, but then that's it. There is no fruit to it other than a lot of evil and hopefully some redemption in the next generation.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

Yeah, yeah. And I even, even going back to your first, what is a classic question, like I feel like Emily Bronte stands a cut above many other authors of her era because she doesn't try to tie everything up in a loose bow. Like, there are ways we're sympathetic with Heathcliff. There are ways we find him to be horrible. We never find out what he does during his lost years. You know, I feel like a lesser author would have to tie everything up with a bow and kind of ag at the Christie who done it. But she just kind of gives us this work and says, like, discuss it, and then she dies. Um, so I I it just does make me respect her a lot more, even, you know, for how she chose to, you know, the negative space in her novel, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 46:36

Yeah. So there are a lot of secrets throughout that are not resolved. A lot of secrets are resolved, but there are also a lot that are not, which is a little bit frustrating as a reader. You get to the end and sort of like, wait, I had questions. But anyway. But it is um, her writing is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

It is, yeah. And even going back to the Virginia Wolf essay I brought up, you know, Virginia Wolf praises her for her poetry, you know, because she was someone, even we're talking about, you know, reading more and turning off, you know, viral video affected brain. I feel like I could maybe get my sanity back if I could sit down and write a poem, which is something I haven't done since like grade school. But, you know, Emily Bronte was somebody who was writing poems and creating her, you know, her mythical world gondol. And she was just like living in her mind, and you know, just obviously her imagination was incredible. Um, but yeah, I I like a lot of um, a lot of different lines people have really um uh kind of globed onto from Wuthering Heights. And some of them did end up in the new film, like the I Am Heathcliff, you know, whatever our souls are made of, whatever stuff our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. Uh it's like the kind of things people would get like on their notebook or like a sticker for their laptop, but then you read it in context, and you're like, oh, this is this is just as good as when you hear it out of context, you know. So I do love a lot of those. I kind of find it more quotable than some Romeo and Juliette lines that people love in terms of just these like really romantic quotes. But yeah, really good. I wish I could write like that, but yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

The power of good writing. But speaking of things you wish you had written, so this is our usual concluding question here. What is a classic book? It can be from any period, whether American or not, that you wish you had written and why?

SPEAKER_02 48:40

Oh man, uh, yeah. No, this is hard. It feels like you're in the hot seat. I do know my answer, but I'm still like, I'm probably gonna change my mind in a minute. Probably Anna Karinina by Tolstoy. I mean, beautiful writing. You feel like you're there. His his window into the human psyche is just so good. Like you feel like he's seeing through you, he's seeing through everyone. Um, even because people forget about what a huge part Levin plays in um the novel. You know, it's almost like there's two protagonists. Well, I think you could, you would say there are two protagonists. Um, but just the scenes where he's able to get these like weird philosophical, like existential realizations that Levin is having. You know, it's like, how does he write that? Like it's probably thoughts we've all had for like, oh, I just realized this. Like Tolstoy can actually write it and can actually convey it. Um, and a huge part of that is translator as well. I'm a big fan of Constance, Constance Garnett translations of Tolstoy. Um, mainly because I think it's cool she lived at the right era. She had lunch with him.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

I'm like, oh, that's so cool. Um, I want to read a biography about her, but but I love her translations of Tolstoy because I am obviously not reading them in the original. Um I am monolingual. My husband's bilingual. He's like, you can't even be bilingual. I'm like, no. No, I can't. You've heard my Spanish accent, it's really bad. Um, so anyways, yeah, some some Anna Karinna. I need to reread it because it's just so wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

Wow. Well, speaking of big, big novels, but that's uh that's the beauty of so many of these classic novels, 19th century. I'm thinking whether Russian or British or French, these are like doorstoppers.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Yes. Yeah, and they don't feel because I I do like to read some modern fiction or things like that. And I feel like another thing that separates the classics is that they actually, not in all cases, but every word is is not just repetitive, but it's like right where it needs to be. And so, like, you'll read all of anachrina, and you're like, okay, I did just live, you know, however many years in the life, you know, authors who aren't just repeating themselves for repeating themselves' sake. No shade to Dickens. Love Dickens. I always loved the um, what is it? He was paid by the word. People like, he was paid by the word. Okay. That makes so much sense once you know it. But no, and I don't know how things were working back in Tolstoy's day. But but yeah, just the fact that the world building, like I was talking about earlier, which I feel like is a little bit of a cheap phrase for like when you're like getting into the human psyche. But yeah, no, it's incredible. It's incredible how much people write.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

Well, thank you so much, Evie.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Thank you for having me.