Wuthering Heights: The Movie or the Book?.
Wuthering Heights is one of the most widely read classic novels of all time. Since it was first published in the 1800's, it has captured the hearts and imaginations of people all around the world. Many of the foremost filmmakers and directors of every time period since then have tried to capture Emily Bronte's masterpiece onscreen, but none have been able to do it fair justice. The one film that has come the closest to portraying Wuthering Heights in its truest form is the 1998 made-for-television version, directed by David Skynner. Unlike the others, it is a version that Emily Bronte herself would recognize as being based on her own writing. Nonetheless, Wuthering Heights is impossible to film onscreen in such a way that its key ideas and themes will come across just as the author intended them to. It is a great work of art, and therefore stands unmatched by any attempt to alter it from its original state.
Wuthering Heights is a work rich with human emotions such as love, romance, passion, revenge, and violence. Its themes cover ideas about nature, religion, superstition and death, as well as discussing the social values of the 19th Century. The novel was criticized when it first came out due to the fact that it was written so far ahead of its time, exploring feminist ideas about the inheritance of land and money, and about marriage for social status. It would possibly have been found offensive to the original Victorian audience who read it, but it later came to appeal to a modern readership, something of which, due to her premature death, Bronte would never learn. Bronte writes about her own experiences in the novel, with some characters closely relating to her own life. Wuthering Heights itself demonstrates her unique outlook on existence, and denies the reader perhaps the resolved ending they would have desired; instead concluding with a realistic sequence of events that appeals to every reader.