WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2018 - INTERVIEW WITH PAUL ERYK ATLAS: BECOMING HEATHCLIFF

Shao'ri Morris and Paul Eryk Atlas in a scene from Wuthering Heights

Though he may apparently look quite the brooding Romantic hero, he shares very little with the protagonist of Wuthering Heights. He is no Heathcliff at all.  Paul Eryk Atlas loves smiling, is the least vengeful creature in the world and has such a joyful disposition that he had fun even answering my teacher-mode questions and made this interview such fun to read! 

I can't wait to see Paul on screen when the new Wuthering Heights will be out in 2018 to celebrate Emily Bronte 200th birthday anniversary!    

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2018: THE TRAILER IS OUT! + INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR NINA ELISAVETA ABRAHALL

Last week I posted the first installment in my Wuthering Heights 2017 series: my interview with Shao'ri Morris, the actress starring as Catherine Earnshaw in the upcoming movie. Today I've got not one but two absolute exclusive features: the fist trailer and an interview with director and screenplay writer, Nina Elisaveta Abrahall. She kindly answered all my questions, even the most insidious ones, with generosity and open-mindedness. You know, I even dared ask whether we truly needed a new version of Emily Bronte's novel after so many had been already made. I think she has a point there! Discover more reading through the interview and enjoy the trailer at the end of the post! By the way, my next interview is with Heathcliff, that is Paul Eryk Atlas.  Stay tuned!

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 2018 - BECOMING CATHERINE EARNSHAW: INTERVIEW WITH SHAO'RI MORRIS

Emily Bronte wrote the greatest , most terrifying love story of all time: Wuthering Heights.  It is a wild, passionate tale of the intense and  demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, allegedly a Gypsy foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is degraded and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man to find he is too late and that Cathy has married Edgar Linton. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his miseries.Unable to bear being parted from his love he curses her on her deathbed to never rest and always be with him and so begins 20 years of her haunting his every waking and sleeping hour. A tale of love, hate, horror, haunting, but most of all a story about human nature. 

HOMES OF CLASSIC LITERATURE

At many a time we can become lost between the pages of a good book. Immersed in its fantasy and mysterious tales, the captivating characters, scenes and a little imagination can easily take you there. This infographic delves into some classic stories from The Hobbit to the depths of The Secret Garden to show you nine of the famous homes found within these tales. Ready for the tour?

SHEILA HANCOCK, A JOURNEY TO THE BRONTES' COUNTRY AND INTO HERSELF

Perspectives: The Brilliant Brontes was on ITV  at the end of March and it is still available in streaming on their iPlayer. 

What was really touching while watching it was how deeply the commenter, actor Sheila Hancock,  was connected both with the Brontes and with their works. 

Watch the clip I've added for you below to get an idea. You can feel how moved she is, her voice broken more than once and eyes filled with tears . It is as if she is undertaking an honest journey into herself while visiting the places where the Bronte sisters lived, wrote, dreamt and died.

Impossible not to be  moved by the tragic series of deaths their official biographies are charachterized by, but following Sheila Hancock in her gripping journey to Yorkshire and into herself has been much more than that.

She starts the documentary remembering how much in love she was with Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff as a young girl and how she felt betrayed when later on she re- read the book Emily Bronte had written. 

WUTHERING NIGHTS BY SUMMER DAY - GIVEAWAY WINNER

Just a brief posting to announce the name of winner of the digital copy of  Wuthering Nights,  Summer Day's latest YA novel,  she kindly granted the readers of FLY HIGH!

Congratulations to BookAttict!

WEATHERING THE STORM BY KATE FORRESTER - GIVEAWAY WINNERS

The latest giveaway contests here at FLY HIGH have been somehow connected to Wuthering Heights, the controversial passionate tale Emily Bronte published in 1847. You can still enter for a chance to win a digital copy of Wuthering Nights by Summer Day (click HERE), which is a modern retelling of Catherine and Heathcliff's tale, while I'm here to reveal the names of the two winners of a paperback copy of Weathering The Storm by Kate Forrester, which is actually inspired to the TV series Sparkhouse, loosely based on Wuthering Heights. 

There has been a lively exchange of comments after Kate Forrester's interview and I must thank all contributors,  starting from Kate herself!

Now it's time to reveal the names of the two winners picked up via random.org:

Mrs Higgins & Herba

Congratulations to both and thanks for taking part!

GIVEAWAY - WUTHERING NIGHTS BY SUMMER DAY - A MODERN VARIATION OF EMILY BRONTE'S CLASSIC NOVEL

Wuthering Nights, Summer Day's new novel is inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.  Both her latest releases Wuthering Nights and  Pride and Princesses are modern variations of classics, written for Young Adults. 

At Summer's blog you can find the first three chapters of each novel 

You'll find   Wuthering Nights  &  Pride & Princesses  at Amazon.com  but... what about winning a free copy of Wuthering Nights? Summer Day has granted us 1 digital copy of her latest book! Just leave a comment + your e-mail address and then be patient until June 20th when the name of the winner is announced. This contest is open internationally.

Wuthering Nights Synopsis

When Heath and Kate meet as children they form a bond that lasts forever...

Read the first reviews of the book at Amazon

DESY GIUFFRE' - A YOUNG ITALIAN WRITER IN LOVE WITH A LITERARY ROMANTIC HERO - I AM HEATHCLIFF, BOOK PRESENTATION, GIVEAWAY & POLL

I met Desy Giuffrè on Facebook as we are both members of Bronte fan groups and I was immediately curious to discover more about the book she was launching: I am Heathcliff, a modern sequel of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a paranormal romance.

I asked her to present her first published book, IO SONO HEATHCLIFF (I AM HEATHCLIFF),  to you readers of FLY HIGH - though it is an  Italian book - and to explain the reasons of her fascination for Heathcliff and Catherine. She accepted to do it  and her publishers, Fazi  Editore,  have even granted you  (even if  NOT living in Italy) the chance  to win a free  copy.  To be entered in the giveaway contest,  leave your comment,  add your e-mail address and choose  your favourite Heathcliff in the poll below.   The winner will be announced on  28 April. NB. THE BOOK IS IN ITALIAN

Here  are Desy’s answers

Desy Giuffré

Why Wuthering Heights? Why writing  a sequel, a  paranormal sequel, of a literary classic that has already in itself an inexhaustible fire of emotions?

Well, the protagonists of Wuthering Heights can breathe immortality. And that is why  I chose them as a source of inspiration for a new story, a new love story which turns  life upside down.  Io sono Heathcliff  changes its atmosphere respect to the original novel, moving  from the  past to the  present, which is chaotic , carved on rocks,  spread in the heath and  blown in the wind which sings the eternal love between Cathy and Heathcliff.  

A love that hurts, that is beautiful and ruthless,  for his beloved Cathy Heathcliff is  a root  and , though an  unhealthy  one,  this root drags  something pure and precious. Not a villain, but a magnificently flawed man  in its stark reality. It is from this feeling, which is unique and memorable, and its shocking twists and turns that my story begins   and comes to life in the protagonists of  Io sono  Heathcliff:  Elena Ray and Damian Ludeschi.

SEPTEMBER 2011 - CHARLES DICKENS IN MANHATTAN AND EMILY BRONTE IN VENICE

After hosting a successful exhibition dedicated to Jane Austen ,   A Woman's Wit - Jane Austen's Life and Legacy, in 2010, The Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan, NYC opens a new great one to celebrate Charles Dickens's 200th birth anniversary. This is how they present the event: 

Alfred Bryan (1852–1899). Caricature of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was Britain's first true literary superstar. In his time, he attracted international adulation, and many of his books became instant classics. Today, his popularity continues unabated, and his work remains not only widely read but widely adapted for stage and screen.

The Morgan Library & Museum' si collection of Dickens manuscripts and letters is the largest in the United States and is one of the two greatest collections in the world, along with the holdings of Britain's Victoria and Albert Museum. Charles Dickens at 200 celebrates the bicentennial of the great writer's birth in 1812 with manuscripts of his novels and stories, letters, books, photographs, original illustrations, and caricatures. Sweeping in scope, the exhibition captures the art and life of a man whose literary and cultural legacy is unrivaled. 

(September 23, 2011 through February 12, 2012 )

GOTHIC BRONTES

Though they lived in the Victorian Age and published their novels in those years, the three Bronte sisters share a great deal with the Romantic Age in their works: themes, literary devices and features, wild nature and tormented souls. For example, Charlotte’s Mr Rochester or Emily’s Heathcliff embody the typical Byronic hero: moody, restless, wild in manners, tormented but so attractive. The heroes and the heroines in their novels tend to be atypical, anti-conformist, unable to simply accept their duties. They are often led by feelings and passions. And all of that is not typically Victorian. The reading audience was shocked by Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847). (I still am sometimes re-reading it: she was so brave at writing and publishing such a novel at that time)

A literary taste the three writers share is that for Gothic elements. And this is what I want to point out in this post I prepared for The All About the Brontes Challenge.

Gothic novels were very popular at the end of the 18th century (the first one was published 1764 by Horace Walpole and was titled The Castle of Otranto) and their popularity went on through the Romantic Age. Lord Byron and his friends, among whom P.B. and Mary Shelley , spent their nights together reading and discussing gothic tales and they even proved themselves at writing one , but only Mary Shelley wrote something as worthy to be remembered as her Frankenstein (1818).

Gothic novels were based on frightening characters and events and had risen thanks to Edmund Burke ’s new conception of the sublime as “horrible beauty” whose main source was fear. What is Gothic then in our beloved novels by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte?

1. In Charlotte’s JANE EYRE (1847) we can recognize many  Gothic features

 Jane’s childhood terrors in Lowood school

 Thornfield mysterious nocturnal incidents

 A sense of supernatural

 The gloomy atmosphere

 Bertha’s madness

 Jane’s (apparently) unrequited love

2. The same can be said for Emily’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847): Gothic features are prevailing respect to Victorian themes

 the atmosphere of the setting ( that is sinister and sublime because of the stormy, windy weather on the moors )

 Catherine’s ghost

 the dreams

 the superstitions

 the graves

 the macabre details

 the themes of death and revenge

 Heathcliff as the villain who persecutes the naive heroine (Isabella Linton, Cathy Jr)

3. To recognize Gothic features in Anne’s THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1848) is less immediate.

I read this novel quite recently, not yet a year ago. Last summer in fact. I was impressed by young Anne courage at dealing with the theme of women’s equality. Her Helen is not a silent victim, what the society of the time would have expected from her since conventions dictated submissiveness. This is why this novel is often considered the first feminist novel.

But we have to focus on Gothic details . In The Tenant there are not so many.

Certainly its wonderfully Gothic title owes a debt to the Gothic tradition. Wildfell Hall is a desolate residence in an isolated place. And this is already a typical Gothic setting. Then, Helen is surrounded by mystery in the first part. Nodoby knows much about her and her past and her being self-possessedrather secluded and surrounded by secrecy makes her the victim of local slander.

In the second part, while we read Helen’s diary with Gilbert Markham, the mystery of her past is revealed and we are plunged in a different atmosphere which is still Gothic: Helen and her son become the victims of dissolute Arthur Huntington, respectively her husband and his father. Their lives were spoilt and exposed to many risks: Arthur lost control and became a brute, especially when drunk.

This character is said to be inspired to Branwell Bronte, the Bronte family’s spoilt son, but can well recall – in some moments and only in the central part , not in his sad end - the villain in the Gothic novels who abducted, threatened, raped naive girls.

So, we can conclude saying that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Gothic particularly in its sense of mystery and in its portrayals of an aristocratic life of decadence and emotional brutality

Related posts on FLY HIGH & LEARN ON LINE

A Wuthering Weekend

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte

Shirley: Charlotte Bronte's historical novel

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall  by Anne Bronte

Gothic Austen

My students' lessons on

Jane Eyre 1

Jane Eyre 2

Wuthering Heights 1
Wuthering Heitghts 2

SPARKHOUSE - RA FRIDAY AND ALL ABOUT THE BRONTES CHALLENGE IN ONE POST

‘Oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

What I’ve been re-watching for the All About the Brontes Challenge is the modern-day version of Wuthering Heights , or better the 2002 BBC series thus presented. Emily Bronte ’s evergreen romance has inspired many TV and film adaptations, including Robert Fuest's 1970 film starring Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff and Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy. In 1992 Pewter Kosminsky revisited the story with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes in the lead roles and the latest version is quite recent, 2009 . I posted about the several adaptions I’ve seen so far in A WUTHERING WEEKEND .

In this loosely –based- on modern version Heathcliff is a young working -class woman called Carol Bolton, who is in love with her middle class neighbour, Andrew. So the class relationship between Bronte's uncultured Heathcliff and the upper class Cathy has been reversed. And it is middle-class Andrew's parents who want him to leave Cathy and go to university.

The three-part TV drama is   SPARKHOUSE (2003) ,  filmed in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, northern England - not far from Haworth, where Emily Bronte grew up. Producer Derek Wax believed the story's themes are perennial: "The battle between passionate love and economic necessity; following your heart, or doing something expedient, or socially desirable. These questions are the same in the 21st century as they were in the 19th."

 

The storyline

• Carol Bolton is a feisty, passionate and reckless young woman who life has dealt a raw deal. She lives in poverty-stricken Sparkhouse Farm with a drunken and abusive father, Richard. Carol is determined to protect those closest to her - younger sister Lisa and her soul mate since childhood, Andrew Lawton.

(Carol and Andrew reading Wuthering Heights on the moors)

• Andrew and Carol's love is not a teenage crush. Their passion is urgent, powerful, enormous, like the landscape they share; the raw energy of the wind, the awesome loneliness of the moors. Yet all of this is in danger of being destroyed when a Pandora's Box of secrets and lies is forced open. Andrew's parents are strongly against the match and ensure that he goes away to college. Andrew is frightened by what he discovers about Carol and leaves...

• After another violent attack of her father against her, Carol runs away from home with her younger sister, Lisa,  in order to protect the latter from their father's violence.

• (After three years) Andrew has tried to forget his passion for Carol and is back to his family home married to a sweet young woman he met at university . (Parallelism with Wuthering Heights  : Catherine’s marriage to Linton)

• Carol too is back : her father's farmhand John Standring, has searched and found her in order to inform that her father is seriously ill , Carol’s rage and disappointment are unrestrainable (Heathcliff's furious reaction to Cathy's marriage)

• After the death of her father and since Andrew has also had a baby from the woman he married, Carol seeks solace with her father's farmhand, tender and caring John Standring, and works with him to protect her family (Lisa) and the farm. (Heathcliff ‘s marriage to Isabella Linton)

• But the bonds which have always linked Andrew and Carol cannot be easily cut ... as it happens in Wuthering Heights between Catherine and Heathcliff, their love will survive tragedy and even death.

(Andrew reading Wuthering Heights to his pupils)

 I loved and still love this series a lot, though  at first I was a bit disappointed because I couldn't  find as much Wuthering Heights as I expected buying the DVD in 2006.  This modern-day retelling of Wuthering Heights is a gripping  compelling story, with memorable characters and a complex plot.  Heathcliff/Carol Bolton, the daughter of an abusive, alcoholic father who molests her,  is incredibly well portrayed by Sarah Smart ( who had been Cathy Jr in 1999 version of Wuthering Heights).  Andrew and Carol, Cathy and Heathcliff , are torn apart by the upper class family of the boy and this will condemn them to unhappiness.  The subplots and supporting characters are all very contemporary with contemporary conflicts and passions. Some  viewers  may be confused by the gender-switch in the story  or disturbed by the bluntness of some scenes and dialogues. But I'm convinced , instead, that Sparkhouse  is worth seeing .

The Cast

• Carol Bolton - Sarah Smart

• Richard Bolton - Alun Armstrong
• Lisa Bolton - Abigail James
• Andrew Lawton - Joseph McFadden
• John Standring - Richard Armitage
• Kate Lawton - Celia Imrie
• Paul Lawton - Nicholas Farrell

About me and  John Standring

You've seen Richard Armitage in the pictures above as John Standring (the Isabella Linton of this story) , one of his most  touching interpretations. I must confess I didn't notice him the first time I saw this series, 'cause my attention was focused on the main hero that is  Andrew /Joe MacFadden and ... well... John  was a very sweet lovely guy but we didn't hit it off at the time! Then, when I saw Richard as John Thornton in North and South in 2008 for the first time, I came to "notice" him  and started searching for information about that unknown (then!) Mr Armitage.  I discovered he had worked in Sparkhouse but I couldn't recall him. I neither recognized him immediately when I played Sparkhouse again in search for broody Thornton! Now I would catch the glimpse of RA even with a mask on his handsome face, I bet. And I'd recognize his voice among thousands. So ... it was not love at first sight, you see! Now, I must admit, John Standring is one of my favorite among Richard's characters.

I want to leave you with three final caps....

Picture 1. Lisa Bolton (Carol's younger sister in Sparkhouse)  and John Standring (Carol's husband in the same series) - (2003)

Pictures 2 and 3

Guy  and Meg in Robin Hood 3 (2009)

Lovely couple, aren't they?

A WUTHERING WEEKEND

Emily Bronte was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England. She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry. It was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called one of the most repellent book ever published. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and instead of a proper Victorian heroine she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film/ TV adaptations. WUTHERING HEIGHTS. (from Masterpiece Classic presentation)

I’ve re-watched all the film/TV adaptations I’ve got in my DVD collection in order to compare and decide which one I liked best.

1. Wuthering Heights film 1992 starring Juliette Binoche (Catherine Earnshaw), Ralph Fiennes (Heathcliff)  with Jeremy Northam (Hindley Earnshaw)

2. Wuthering Heights Tv movie 1998 starring Orla Brady and  Robert Cavanagh with Matthew MacFadyen and Sarah Smart

3. Masterpiece Classic 2009 two-part series WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Andrew Lincoln

4. SPARKHOUSE, Sally Wainwright ‘s BBC drama (2003), inspired to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights  starring Sarah Smart, Joe McFadden and Richard Armitage

It has been a real marathon, full of passion and fury, tragedy and romance. This is one of the stories I’ve loved reading the most and which most move me to tears each time.
I first thought I could have used this post as one of the entries for my PERIOD DRAMA CHALLENGE  in the section VICTORIAN MIST but then I decided this story is absolutely non-Victorian, in spite of the date of its publication. It is Romantic in its mood; it has  a Byronic hero as its male protagonist and  a totally atypical female protagonist, too wild and passionate, too free and self-determined to embody the Victorian "angel of the hearth". Wuthering Heights is terribly modern in its originality. Impossible to label it  in a definite genre. What I am sure of  is that it is not Victorian.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS 1992

The most grey and bleak of the three adaptations I saw. Quite accurately based on the original text, it starts with a female figure wandering on the moors and revisiting the story she has heard about and decided to write: Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s tragic love story. It’s the first WUTHERING HEIGHTS I saw and the one I’m more affectionate to. Some details are given for granted but those who well know the story don’t need them to catch the dramaticity and beauty of these beloved characters and of their doomed lives. Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are absolutely convincing.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS TV movie 1998

Not so different in its structure from the 1992 film, some scenes are pretty similar. Still very near to the original text. Not exceptionally good. I don’t particularly like the two actors starring as the two unfortunate lovers. It has received much interest later on, after Pride and Prejudice 2005 was released, when a huge number of new Darcy’s fans started looking for more Matthew Macfadyen’s work. He is, in fact, in this movie as handsome Hareton, Hindley Earnshaw ’s son.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS- Masterpiece Classic 2009

Of course the script writers had to adapt this story for modern American and European modern  audience and they changed a good deal of details though substantially the plot is the one we very well know. I appreciated the effort to popularize such a classic novel but I must admit I don’t think it was so necessary to add violence to already violent characters like Heathcliff or Hindley and neither to show what happened in a "marital bed" (Shakespeare?) at night in those years, too. I loved the costumes and the locations of this Masterpiece Classic version.  (CLICK to see a BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO)

SPARKHOUSE 2003

Just "inspired" to Wuthering Heights, SPARKHOUSE tells the story of contemporary teenagers. Carol lives at run-down Sparkhouse Farm with her drunken, abusive father, Richard (Alun Armstrong), and younger sister, Lisa. Across the valley live the middle-class Lawtons - Andrew, and his parents Paul and Kate. Carol and Andrew have been inseparable since childhood. At the beginning of the drama, they are 18 and passionately in love, a love that is raw, urgent and powerful. Carol is feisty and reckless, a young woman who is mistrusted and disliked by Andrew's parents who try to keep them apart. The only place they can be together is a ruined farmhouse up on the moors.

John Standring (Richard Armitage) works at Sparkhouse Farm. Loyal, hard-working, and painfully shy, he loves Carol. At first only a peripheral character, he gradually moves towards the centre of the drama.
The story covers approximately 5 years, and follows Carol and Andrew's attempts to be together in spite of numerous obstacles.

Just a curiosity, Sarah Smart interpreted Catherine Linton in Wuthering Heights 1998 and in Sparkhouse is, instead, the female protagonist, Heathcliff 's counterpart in this modern drama.

(Sarah as Cathy Jr in 1998)

(Sarah as Carol in 2003)

UNFORGETTABLE QUOTES (from 1998 adaptation) AND SCENES (from 1992 film)

1. Catherine is talking about her intention to accept Edgar Linton's marriage proposal to Nellie, her old faithful maid servant:

“If Heathcliff and I married we should be beggars. Whereas if I marry Linton, I can aid Heathcliff to rise and place him out of my brother’s power.”

“That’s a terrible reason for marrying Linton”


“It’s the best reason. I do love Edgar. But my love for him is like …is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it. But my love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rocks beneath. Nellie, I am Heathcliff. He is always, always in my mind. Not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

2. Catherine is dying and asks Heathcliff forgiveness for marrying Linton . He answers:


“I forgive what you’ve done to me. I love my murderer. But yours…How can I?”

3. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff is desperate and shouts:

“I pray one prayer. I repeat till my toungue stiffens. Catherine Earnshaw may you not rest as long as I am living. Haunt me! Take any form, drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul”.

YES !!! I KNOW IT IS TERRIBLY SAD. BUT I LOVE CRYING ON THESE EXTREMELY MOVING PASSIONATE SCENES. AM I THE ONLY ONE?

P.S. I have - but did not want to re-watch - an Italian  adaptation of Wuthering Heights (RAI 2004).

Can you imagine why? Too many changes, too many cuts. It's a total re-invention of the story as it happened with the latest Italian DAVID COPPERFIELD. Fortunately, I can watch movies and drama coming from Britain. They still seem to respect their classics. What about the new EMMA? Have you seen the first episode?