Great Books: Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë's 1847 classic Wuthering Heights, published a year before her death at the age of 30, is one of--to quote Julie Andrews and Sheryl Crow--my favorite things: a Gothic romance that bursts conventional genre boundaries to tell perhaps the most peculiar love story (think: "love" on steroids) in English literature. Unfortunately, this edition of Great Books falls a bit short when it comes to explaining what is "great" about the novel. Combining somewhat cheesy dramatic re-enactments charting the tortured love between the low-born orphan Heathcliff and the estate-born Catherine Earnshaw, as well as scenes of the Brontës (Emily, Charlotte, Anne, and Bramwell) at play on the Yorkshire moors or gathered round a table scribbling away, this half-hour survey features commentary from a handful of scholars and biographers who offer a Cliff Notes synopsis of the story, discuss the "loner" similarities between Heathcliff and his creator, and touch on the publishing of the book (we're told that the novel appeared under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell--but not that 19th century women authors regularly adopted masculine or ambiguous first names to hide their gender). Neither is any mention made of the book's unusual structure, extraordinarily well-plotted timeline, or gift of two of the great comic creations in literature: the narrator Lockwood and the dialect-heavy grumbling servant Joseph. In fact, more time is spent depicting Emily's fatal battle with tuberculosis than exploring, say, the supernatural elements or unexplained cruelty in her book. And while many bits of dialogue are quoted here, the most famous (and character defining) line in the novel--Catherine: "I am Heathcliff!"--is not. A few discussion questions and a resource guide (elaborated on in the accompanying study guide) appear at the end of the tape. Optional. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)