Musings

Top of Page

Searching for the Perfect Catherine

January 2008. Having now watched my fifth version of Wuthering Heights (the 1978 Hutchison and Adshead version), I set to wondering why none of the actresses who played Catherine (the elder) quite worked for me. The answer came to me as I looked at the timeline of the novel and I think it boils down to their ages.

If we look at five of the best-known versions and compare the approximate ages of the 'Catherines' at the time, we get:

In the book, Catherine is 15 when Heathcliff runs away and just 18 when she dies. Even the youngest of the actresses is five years older and the oldest is 19! (although, admittedly, Orla Brady looked much younger). However, each of the actresses appears clearly adult, not the teenager than Catherine was. We should also remember that an 18 year old was not the adult they are considered today: a person was not considered to 'come of age' until 21.

If you think of Catherine as a slightly immature teenager rather than an adult, it brings a whole new aspect to the story. Her spitefulness towards Isabella, the "dashing her head against the arm of the sofa", her attempts to make herself ill: these become more believable if we imagine a younger teenager performing them. There is also a deeper pathos to the scene in chapter 12 where Catherine in her delirium wishes she were back in Wuthering Heights. If we think of her as a child then rather than a spoilt adult, we can have more sympathy for her. We could feel the loneliness and sadness of a child forced into an adult's world.

It would be fascinating to see a version of Wuthering Heights with Catherine played by a teenage actress (or one who could pass as teenage). It would be rather like seeing Juliet of "Romeo and Juliet" played as the thirteen year old she was supposed to be. It would need an actress of great skill and subtlety, of course, able to switch from mature love to childish petulance, but what a role. And what a new interest it would add to the scenes with Heathcliff.

(As an afterthought, looking at those rumours of Angelina Jolie being lined up to play Catherine, her age this year will be 33 – not a good omen.)

Top of Page

Tracking down "the Grange" and "the Heights"

March 2008. It has long been a pastime for fans and researchers of Wuthering Heights to try and determine the inspirations for the buildings of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Tradition has it that the farm of Top Withens is the former and Ponden Hall is the latter, but both of these sources are unsuitable. Top Withens is far too small for the grand farmhouse of the book; it's barely large enough to act as the stables. Its location, however, may have acted as the source for the wind-blown, isolated dwelling. Ponden Hall is also inappropriate for that of Thrushcross Grange. The Grange is a grand house with many rooms and servants, sitting in a large park and having a courtyard surrounded by a high wall. A glance at the photographs of Ponden Hall leaves one searching for the similarities.

A noticeable thing about Emily's descriptions of the two houses is how they differ in extent. Wuthering Heights is described in great detail, both in the external and internal appearances, and in the layout of the rooms. It is why it was relatively easy for me to construct the floor plans of the house. The Grange, on the other hand, is only cursorily described. We know nothing about its exterior layout or appearance, except for "...the moon looked over the high wall of the court, causing undefined shadows to lurk in the corners of the numerous projecting portions of the building". Some interior rooms are mentioned but without going into detail apart from Heathcliff's description of the drawing room in chapter 6. Why the difference? Did Emily simply not care about Thrushcross Grange and only describe what she had to? The deep detail that she goes into for the novel (see the timeline and the legal aspects) does not suggest such a slapdash habit.

It seems to me much more likely that she wrote in detail about Wuthering Heights because she had a model in her head, a building that she knew well (and for which she was able to construct a floor plan). In comparison, she wrote little about the appearance of Thrushcross Grange because there was no single example, no well-known grand building that she could use. It was an amalgam of her imagination and assorted reminiscences.

Top of Page

Which buildings might be the choice for Wuthering Heights then? There are only a few that Emily Brontë knew well in her life, buildings that she lived in for some time. There was the Parsonage, of course, and also Roe Head (when she was aged 17), Law Hill (20) and the Pensionnat Héger in Brussels (23-24). She would also have known Ponden Hall well, not from living there but from visits. The two locations of Thornton and Cowan Bridge can be excluded: she was young at the time and probably would not remember enough to describe them in detail when writing the novel at the age of 27.

The Parsonage can quickly be eliminated apart from a few minor details such as Joseph's fruit bushes which were also grown and loved by the Brontës. A symmetric Georgian village town house built in 1799 is a world away from a storm-racked farmhouse with narrow windows dating from 1500, even without examining the interior layout. Roe Head, Law Hill and the Pensionnat Héger may also be disposed of for at least two reasons: they were all schools so unlikely to be similar to a farmhouse in appearance and layout, and they belonged to Emily's past. That meant that she only had memories, three to ten years old, left to reconstruct the setting. As a student or lowly teacher, she would not have known much of the layout and details of the buildings.

But there is one building which remains very suitable as the model for the ancestral home of the Earnshaws. It was a building that Emily could have visited whenever she was walking the moors; it was a building that she knew the interior of well; it was a farmhouse (or certainly resembled one); it was the home of a respected and old family: it was Ponden Hall.

When I created the model for Wuthering Heights that is shown on that page, I had only seen Ponden Hall briefly some years before. It was not in my head. Rather I created it from the descriptions in the book and research into Yorkshire farmhouses. Later, when I visited Ponden and learned more of it from the owners, I realised that it is not that far away from my model. Both floor plans show a large main hall/'house' and a kitchen added as a wing at the rear. Admittedly, the Ponden Hall entrance opens into a hallway rather than the 'house', and that room does not rise through two floors. On the other hand, the approach to Wuthering Heights in my plan is from the right with the lane passing by the entrance and a path leading of it, as Ponden Hall did before the reservoir was constructed (see the map here).

In the end though, I don't believe that Emily used Ponden Hall totally as the model for Wuthering Heights, there are too many inconsistencies between the described layout and Ponden's. Considering the detail she goes into, I suspect she created a floor plan for the farmhouse which she consulted as she wrote; thinking about the maps and elaborate background that she went into with her Gondal stories, I would expect it. I suspect it was loosely based on Ponden Hall as the only suitable building that she knew well enough but other elements such as the two-storey main room and the elaborate porch (from High Sunderland?) were added to the initial layout.

As for Thrushcross Grange, my view is that she had seen Shibden Hall before, either in pictures or a personal visit, and this was the sort of house she was thinking of. She did not know the Hall well enough to construct a detailed floor plan which is why the Grange is only vaguely described in the book.

Unfortunately, as with so much about Emily and Wuthering Heights, we shall probably never know the truth.

Top of Page