This November

In Which You'll Find: Lust, Hate, Blood & Love

This November…

All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints and All Souls

Autumn is kinda our thing…

Frankenstein. Turnips and pumpkins. Three blood red pomegranate seeds. We viewed Guillermo del Toro’s film, carved the turnips & pumpkins. Tonight, we eat the seeds.

Michael Allen and I celebrate a wedding anniversary tomorrow— on All Saints Day (November 1). Michael and our son also celebrate their birthdays in November.

A Cancerian, flanked by Scorpios. ♡

All Souls Day, 1888, Jakub Schikaneder, The National Gallery Prague

Wuthering Heights Nature & Folklore Themed Read-Along

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I recently began writing about the Nature and folklore woven throughout Volume II of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Need to catch-up? Visit the Autumn 2025 Read-Along Main Page. First-Time reader of Wuthering Heights? See my Readers Guide.

These are available to every subscription level through the Solstice (December 21).

Film & Television

While browsing a bookshop recently, I pulled out my phone to consult my Goodreads (yea, I know everyone prefers StoryGraph) and searched for Wuthering Heights on Film and Television: A Journey Across Time and Cultures (2016). I’ve been meaning to get my hands on a copy and needed to double-check the author’s name. Sadly, the seller did not have a copy (despite offering a large selection of books on Film Studies).

Until recently, I had seen one film adaptation of Wuthering Heights: Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 adaptation starring Sinéad O’Connor as the author Emily Brontë, French actress Juliet Binoche as both Catherine Earnshaw and Cathy Linton and English actor Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff. I do love Ralph Fiennes.

Last weekend I planned to watch the 2009 two-part Wuthering Heights serial starring Charlotte Riley as Catherine and Tom Hardy as Heathcliff—my twenty-year-old son and I just had to see the guy from Taboo and Venom play Heathcliff!? Admittedly, I was also eager to see Andrew Lincoln (Walking Dead) in the role of Edgar. Sadly, the streaming platforms on which they were advertised were glitchy and instead of Tom Hardy, we had to choose between a 1998 adaptation starring Matthew Macfadyen as Hareton Earnshaw or, a 2011 adaptation starring troubled actor James Howson, the first Black actor to be cast in the role of Heathcliff. I chose Mr. Darcy.

Macfadyen is the film’s only redeeming quality. Overacting, the addition of a weird, gratuitous breast grab and Penistone Crags transforming into a drippy, underground cave make Binoche’s French Catherine seem like a faithful reproduction.

There is no faithful reproduction—I know. Emily Jane’s story will never play out on film the way it is written, too many readers require the unknown to be invented. This weekend’s viewing made me wish to see other adaptations...

So, I have the classic Samuel Goldwyn Wuthering Heights (1939) queued up—starring Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine—I look forward to watching it in all of its black and white splendor.

Adaptations inform my reading. They help me read the novel from the viewpoint of others. Why do so many producers abandon Brontë’s beautifully crafted literal words and instead, explore a story they have invented in their own imaginations—more so, why advertise such as, Wuthering Heights?¹

If lust and hate is the candy
If blood and love taste so sweet
Then we give ‘em what they want

10,000 Maniacs, "Candy Everybody Wants" 

Brontë certainly provided Victorian readers with hate. The story is filled with hate and violence. Throw-your-wife-onto-the-floor-and-insist-she-wipe-up-someone’s-spilled-blood-kind-of-hate. Graphic, visceral, in-your-face, violence.

Audiences desire: sex. Everybody wants lust and hate. And so, filmmakers invent it, as any mildly creative person (with a modicum of imagination) is capable. Plus, it sells.

I prefer Emily’s story. I will always. It is what is not being said which interests me—what Emily had in mind. I want Emily Jane’s secrets to be kept, to remain hidden away from prying eyes. I wish to ponder. To muse.

I do still wonder: Why the addition of falconry in the Kosminsky film? Not that I don’t love birds of prey wearing tiny, ornate hats. But, what makes a writer think: What this story needs is more hawking.♡²

1. Emerald Fennel titled her upcoming Barbie fantasy, “Wuthering Heights.” The sex-charged story is not Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights. Instead, it is a reaction. A perception of Catherine and Heathcliff, conceived of and imagined during Fennel’s own adolescence.

2. Of course, I know: Predator = Heathcliff, Prey = Isabella. This is Symbolism & Structure!

But…if Emily Jane wished to include that imagery in her novel, she would’ve written it.