Basically I've Read Emma By Jane Austen And Just Seen The Film Adaptation By Autumn De Wilde. I'm Not

Basically I've read Emma by Jane Austen and just seen the film adaptation by Autumn de Wilde. I'm not over it and have some points to get through:

The film is so awkward and yet so aesthetically pleasing at the same time, OMGGG.

Emma's sass at the beginning! particularly in the scene when she's opening the carriage window to listen to Miss Bates. Dear Lord, she's the epitome of sassines.

How Emma and Mr Knightley are always drawn to eachother. Even when they're arguing they cannot help it but get nearer and nearer and look like they're about to kiss.

When they laugh together after the baby scene! It was such a good way to make it clear that they were still comfortable with eachother and had definitely made up after their argument.

All the glances they exchange.

The ball, obviously the ball. In particular how they are focused only on eachother, how they miss a step because of that, and the hands at the end.

The scene at the end when they are all reading end exchanging covert glances.

How totally smitten Mr Knightley is by Emma.

Their talk about Mr Knightley coming to live at Hartfield. It is the wisest decision and yet few people would have made it in that time and age.

The kiss.

How Mr Knightley cries twice; once out of despair, once out of happiness.

The fact that the film ends with a shot of Emma's pleased expression, BECAUSE IT'S HER STORY.

Some other valuable reflections:

Mr Woodhouse is the keeper of my serotonin. How he is portrayed in this film has so good a comedic effect that I am not to complain about the differences of his situation from how it's described in the book.

The actors are amazing, so neat and expressive.

Even though the plot doesn't always follow the book I believe that the story is well depicted (but I still miss the scene where Mr Knightley almost kisses Emma's hand before leaving for London).

The quotes they decided to use are truly spot on.

I was just thinking of two passages from Wuthering Heights that tend to be overlooked.

The first is one sentence spoken by Catherine #1 when she confronts Heathcliff about his courtship of Isabella:

“If you like Isabella, you shall marry her.”

The second is this brief speech of Heathcliff in his first meeting with Nelly during Catherine’s illness:

“I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his [Edgar’s] loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished hm from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But till then – if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me – till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!”

Both of these moments add nuance to Heathcliff and Cathy. For all their unhealthiness and toxic behavior, and as selfish, jealous, possessive and codependent as their love largely is, there’s still a capacity for selfless love in both of them. Cathy would have accepted Heathcliff and Isabella’s marriage, despite knowing that Edgar will be furious about it and ban Heathcliff from Thrushcross Grange, if only Heathcliff had genuinely loved Isabella. Meanwhile, Heathcliff refuses to physically hurt Edgar because it would make Cathy unhappy, and claims that if she were his wife but still cared for Edgar, he wouldn’t have banned him from her presence.

Of course “I won’t kill her husband” isn’t exactly beyond basic decency, and Heathcliff’s implication that he only refrains from it to spare her feelings is hardly admirable. Besides, we could argue that Heathcliff is flattering himself in this speech. After all, he still seeks psychological revenge on Edgar and knowingly causes strife in the Lintons’ marriage, and as a boy he was very resentful of Edgar and Cathy’s friendship, even before romance or marriage were ever mentioned. It seems unlikely that Cathy could ever have had a free, untroubled friendship with Edgar if Heathcliff had been her husband, even if he never openly objected to it. As for Cathy, though she insists that her objection to Heathcliff courting Isabella has nothing to do with jealousy, few readers have ever believed her. (Although her character becomes more interesting if we assume she’s telling the truth, IMHO.)

Still, there’s at least a part of each of them that’s willing to respect the other’s love for someone else and that values the other’s happiness more than their own jealousy. It’s a weaker instinct than it could have been if they had been emotionally healthier people, but it’s still there.

I wouldn’t claim that Wuthering Heights is a romance or that Heathcliff and Cathy’s love is “relationship goals,” but it doesn’t ring true either when people go to the opposite extreme and claim “We’re supposed to completely disdain Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship, it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of mad passion, etc.” We don’t need to idealize them or idealize their relationship to see a fundamental purity and (in the old, “frightening” sense of the word) sublime beauty to their love, or to feel that despite everything, they really do belong together. As much as we tend to react against pop culture’s idealized view of them and highlight their blatant negative behaviors both as individuals and as a couple, sometimes it’s worthwhile to remember the better side of their bond too.

“Wuthering Heights is surely the most beautiful and most profoundly violent love story. For though Emily Brontë, despite her beauty, appears to have had no experience of love, she had an anguished knowledge of passion. She had the sort of knowledge which links love not only with clarity, but also with violence and death - because death seems to be the truth of love, just as love is the truth of death.

- georges bataille, literature and evil (1957, tr. alastair hamilton)

100 FEMALE CHARACTERS IN 2021

8. Elizabeth Bennet ☆ Pride and Prejudice (2005) dir. Joe Wright

wuthering heights (2011, dir. andrea arnold)