Happy Birthday Emily Bronte

Today, July 30^th, is Emily Bronte’s birthday. She was born in 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire. I’ve compiled a list of suggestions for celebrating the great English novelist’s special day.

1. Read Wuthering Heights, of course.
2. Watch Wuthering Heights, preferably the version with Tom Hardy hotness.
3. Write a story in the tiniest handwriting you can manage.
4. Go for a long, long, long walk.
5. If the weather cooperates, stand in the rain.
6. Act obsessive and morose to your significant other.
7. Stand in a graveyard at night and pound your chest.
8. Ponder digging up a grave.
9. Decide against it and make an impassioned speech.
10. Tap on windows and creep out hapless occupants within.

 In all seriousness, thank you Emily, for the genius that is Wuthering Heights. For daring to write about arguably unlikable characters who nevertheless claim our hearts in their struggle to hold on to love.

If you can’t get enough Wuthering Heights, here’s a link to some covet-worthy WH swag.

Wuthering Wednesdays

For some time I’ve wanted to incorporate a weekly post sharing fun and interesting Brontë quotes and facts with you, my hapless blog readers. In order to give you fair warning, I’ve come up with the tidy moniker Wuthering Wednesdays. So when you see Wuthering Wednesday in your inbox or on your blog feed, you’ll know the post will be Brontë related.

As I said, I hope to make Wuthering Wednesday a regular thing here on Breathe In Breathe Out. Naturally this means it will be hit and miss, half the entries will show up on Thursday because I’ve forgotten whereabouts in the week Wednesday is, and I will likely go off on tangents about footwear or cheese.

As an introduction, the Brontës were a nineteenth-century family living in Yorkshire where Patrick Brontë was a curate. The siblings’ creativity is legendary, with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights hailed as classics of English literature. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this extraordinary, tragic family so I’m not going to give you a history lesson or rehash any of my college essays. I’d rather give a brief background or relevant info with each quote, so let’s get to it.

“A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o’ clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

This quote is from Wuthering Heights. Nelly, who plays many roles in the novel—from nurse, to servant, to confidant—is chiding Mr. Lockwood, renter of Thrushcross Grange, for staying up late and sleeping in come morning.

In the scene, Lockwood begs Nelly to continue her story—that of Heathcliff and Catherine—even though it’s eleven o’clock and Nelly wants to go to bed. After all, she’s the housekeeper and she probably gets up before everyone else.

I have to say, I have sympathy for both the characters. Like Nelly, I’ve been on the receiving end of pleading eyes and “it’s not that late really,” and “please, just one more chapter.” Of course, those requests come from my kids, not from a grown man who is also my employer. But I feel for whiney ol’ Lockwood, too. I’ve become engrossed in a story and stayed up way too late greedily consuming every word. Last night was one of those nights. I blame Lisa Bergren and her River of Time series for that.

The difference, of course, is that Lockwood can sleep in, and neither Nelly nor I can. We have work to do. And a ten o’clock deadline, apparently.

New Wuthering Heights Movie

My friend, autor Kristin Billerbeck, mentioned the new Wuthering Heights movie on her blog today. Since I’ve been immersed in all things WH for the last two years, I was aware that the movie was being made, but until recently could find very little information about it.

There still not a whole lot out there, but I did find this great >review from The Guardian. (Profanity warning!)

This particular sentence from the review caught my eye: As youngsters, Heathcliff and Cathy (played first by Shannon Beer and then by Kaya Scoledario) exist in a kind of primitive Eden where they are neither quite siblings or lovers but some innocent hybrid of the two.

I’ve heard this take on the novel before, and it actually fits better than trying to view the story through the traditional framework of a romance. In fact, I think we’ve done ourselves a disservice in continuing to remake Wuthering Heights as a love story. It’s more of a need story. And “need” can be an ugly word.

Maybe it’s because of where I’m at in life, raising kids, watching as their emotional needs grow deeper day by day—but I find I read Wuthering Heights differently now. Basically, I see a story of two people who had the one thing, or person, they needed taken away.

Heathcliff and Catherine were everything to each other. It's hard to overstate this fact. They believed they had one soul between the two of them. Juvenile? Yes, sure, of course. But when I look into my son’s eyes and see an utter need for an anchor in an unknown world, it doesn’t matter to me if his emotional framework is immature. The need is all the greater for it. It breaks my heart to think of my little boy without a tether—without any link at all to the love a human being cannot survive without.

Emily Brontë, genius freak that she was, dared to write a book about a boy just like that.

I could not write that book. It would break my heart.

The novel I just completed, The Immortal Heathcliff, takes that ruined man and sends him on a journey for redemption, and ultimately, a love that will anchor his soul. My job was far easier than Emily’s, partly because I could never claim to have her insight into suffering and human nature, nor her tortured genius. But also because writing hope is easier on the writer’s heart than crafting ultimate despair.

This may sound absurd, but Brontë's greatest feat as an author may have been to leave her characters in the ashes of their choices. There is no happy ending. The woman was as unrelenting as a Pilates instructor!

So, anyway, what do you think about the upcoming movie? Please someone out there tell me you’ve read the book! Much is being made of the choice to have a black actor portray Heathcliff. Scholars agree it is unlikely that the character of Heathcliff was meant to be black. For a break down of the textual support of this claim click this link and scroll down to the heading “Was Heathcliff Black?” But putting that detail aside, I think it’s a great move from an emotional and artistic standpoint. I’m more excited about the apparent choice to take a young adult approach since the main action of the story happens when the characters are teens.

You might as well go ahead and comment with whatever comes to mind about the movie, WH, or crazy/lovely Emily Brontë. You should know I will keep talking at you about the subject regardless. By the way, the UK release date is September 30. I didn't find a date for the US.