Reply to Ok DCUM, what do you think of the Wuthering Heights movie?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]The book made his race the reason they couldn't be a match[/b]. The movie reduces it to class.

I think it was a miss. When a book from the 1800s can be more insightful about race than a movie in 2026, that's kind of wild. [/quote]

No, it didn't.  It was a lot more nuanced/complicated than that.

He received no education, and not even a name: he was just "Heathcliff."  He had no money, no future, and was treated as a hired hand, the help, after his protector (kind of) Earnshaw died and Hindley put him out to sleep with the servants and perform farm work.  As Catherine told Nelly Dean, it would "degrade" her to marry Heathcliff IN COMPARISON with Edgar Linton, who was: a landowner/heir, wealthy, educated, socially acceptable because of those things.  Cathy had no choice but to marry the wealthy landowner.  None.  There was no future for her and Heathcliff together at that point in the Victorian era because they would have been homeless with no way of earning money/supporting themselves.  He had all the skills of a handyman, a farmhand who could not support a wife or even have his own shack.

Was his race part of that?  Yeah, maybe.  But if Earnshaw had truly given him his name, making him an adopted son, Heathcliff Earnshaw, not just Heathcliff the farm boy, and sent him to be educated as he did his son Hindley, AND given him an inheritance and set him up in business, then he COULD in theory have married Cathy.  Hindley wouldn't have cared.

In the Victorian era in England, ESPECIALLY in port regions, such as Liverpool, interracial marriages DID happen.  Heathcliff, if Earnshaw had cared enough to ensure his future beyond farm boy status, could have set up a little business or shop in Liverpool, then taken Cathy there and married her after Earnshaw died (or maybe before that).  They would have lived an unremarkable life in a port community where other interracial marriages were common enough not to be particularly noteworthy.

There are many legitimate academic sources you can find on this, or just google quickly.  Here's just an article you can scan: https://treventour1995.medium.com/shondalands-bridgerton-the-black-history-you-don-t-learn-at-school-d3f39df2aefb
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