Whatever Our Souls Are Made Of, His and Mine Are Half-Same
Most of English literature’s greatest hits are about property: who gets to inherit Father’s fortune, who gets the family estate, etc. Those salivating over the promise of the greatest love story of all time in Wuthering Heights need to buckle up for a lot of details about probate, executorship, and entailment. That’s how it is in the novel, anyway. I’m sure Emerald Fennell doesn’t dwell on the dwellings as much in her film adaptation. One thing I’m curious to see if she kept in: all the incest.
Wuthering Heights is about two generations of two families intermarrying as the question of who will inherit the titular estate hovers over them. The tragic couple Catherine and Heathcliff marry the wrong people (to say the least), and their mistakes haunt them and repeat themselves through their children’s adult lives. Incest is not even subtext in the plot. Catherine’s daughter, Cathy, marries not one but two of her cousins: her mother’s brother’s son and her father’s sister’s son. Catherine confesses to Nelly, the housekeeper, that it would “degrade” her to marry Heathcliff, which is sort of true, but not because he is poor and uncouth (or because he’s Black/Romani/Irish-coded), but because he’s her half-brother.
In the beginning of the novel, Catherine’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, turns up with an “orphan” that he “found” in the city, and he and his wife name him after their dead son, Heathcliff. In a story where everyone who shapes the plot is related (even Nelly is a sort of half-sibling to Catherine’s older brother, Hindley, as Nelly’s mother was also his wet nurse), no one is a stray. Heathcliff, who sleeps in a bed with little Catherine and Hindley, is more likely Earnshaw’s illegitimate son than some ward he picks up out of the goodness of his heart. But Catherine knows this perfectly well, perhaps unconsciously. She admits: “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Or half-same, anyway.
This is why Wuthering Heights, as extra extra as it may be, is straight culture. It’s about the pyramid scheme of heterosexuality, of braiding together boys and girls until everyone ends up related, where incest is less of a kink than a strategy to keep property in the family.
Side note: I haven’t seen it yet, but my prediction is that Emerald Fennell (whose Saltburn was less of an eat-the-rich fantasy and more of a warning against the dangers of middle class strivers) will end the film with Nelly in control of both estates. Not legally, per se, but influentially, because what could be a bigger tragedy than the maid running the show? I also think she’ll skip the part where Heathcliff beats and rapes his wife, Isabella, since she can’t pull the same ending as Promising Young Women, where the cops show up to bring justice to the rapists. Just like they do in real life.
Happy Valentine’s Day! If you’re in New York or LA, go see Pillion instead. —Natalie Adler