I was thrilled when I heard that Margot Robbie, of Barbie fame, was going to star in a new movie based on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I thought it was funny, though, that the marketing for it makes you think Brontë’s book is a bodice-ripper, when it’s actually a story of childhood sweethearts. Then a friend of mine pointed out that the title is in quotes. She said that means it’s obviously not trying to be a faithful adaptation of the book. (It’s like when you get ice cream that’s vanilla flavored.) But then I read that the director, Emerald Ferrell, doesn’t consider this movie an adaptation at all. She said she thinks “that you can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book,” and that she wouldn’t say she’s “making” Wuthering Heights. But what she will say is that “I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so [the film] is ‘Wuthering Heights’, and it isn’t.”
That quote really inspired me. I have been working on my own version of Wuthering Heights for years, but not finishing because I want to include everything and solve every single one of its mysteries. But now I realize I don’t have to. It’s done.
I’ve decided to finally publish my version, first on a website and then as a book. And just as Ferrell puts her title in quotes to show that it’s just her version, my title makes clear that I’m not trying to “authentically adapt” Brontë either. I call my book Apocrypha: Another Wuthering Heights.
Below is the beginning of it. Its opening scene is nothing like the opening of Emily Brontë’s book. But it starts in a way that I think many romance lovers would like it to begin: in the voice of its heroine, Catherine.
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Ere I die, I will set down how I have loved.
Of death’s advance, I have no doubt; before long I will meet my Maker, be He God or Satan. The babe who grows within my flesh—if it lives to know the light—will never see its mother face to face.
Is it folly to write these words—words that may never reach another’s eyes? Perhaps it is—I have been accused of madness. But some vital force within me drives my hand across the page. In the eyes of the world, I am Catherine Linton, wife of the handsome young Edgar, mistress of elegant Thrushcross Grange. A patroness of dressmakers, and model for portrait-painters; in short, the finest lady in the district. It is a distinction I longed for, once. But it now provokes in me only the bitterest laughter.
I must tell my story, though I write into the void—though my hand trembles as rage and grief wash over me in waves, and though I ache, to my core, with nausea and chill. I must create my testimony, in the faith or the delusion that a mind will one day live who can receive it, and through whose understanding—finally—my truth will be known.
Dearest reader—whoever you may be—know this, if nothing else:
I am Heathcliff.
Memory is a gift, a treasure beyond price.
Alone in this dark night, my mind reaches, searches; drawing around me like down the softness, the tender starglow, of that night in the summer of my sixteenth year. I lay in my bed at Wuthering Heights fully dressed, waiting for what seemed forever as one by one, my brother Hindley’s drunken companions took their leave. Finally, I heard Hindley’s own heavy tread upon the stair.
If I listened carefully, I knew, I might soon hear his weeping. Since his wife’s death, my brother’s life-clock seemed broken: each night, to him, was like the first after he laid her in her grave. But with the cruelty of youth, I wished him no comfort: it was Hindley who had separated me from my life, my all, by reducing Heathcliff to the status of a servant after our father’s death. I thought of Hindley only as our tormentor, and knowing him out of the way, I hastened with a light heart down the stairs.
In the back garden, the light from Heathcliff’s lantern showed the broad, tall man my childhood playmate had become. I ran to him and he caught me by the waist, swinging me in a high circle before setting me on my feet again. He laughed, his face and heart open, joyous, as they had long ceased to be by daylight. His black eyes shone as they met mine. but then he glanced quickly to the windows behind me.
“Come,” he said, leading me by the hand toward the moor path I knew so well. For a moment, I was a girl again—not the young lady my elders insisted I had become, as if through some witch’s curse. We were heading for the ruined church that had been our secret retreat when we were small. The village children had not dared to follow us there, fearing ghosts and goblins, but Heathcliff and I had never been afraid.
However, the path seemed rougher now than it had ever been. I stumbled and was forced to catch Heathcliff’s arm for balance. That made the lantern swing from side to side, and he smiled down at me in the flickering light.
“My lady’s boots are made for dancing, not for walking on the moors,” he said.
“The hateful things!” I replied. I carried on as best I could, concentrating fiercely to avoid twisting an ankle. Finally, we reached the base of the church tower. The lock on its door had decayed long ago, but wind and weather had warped the wood so that the door stuck fast in its frame. As children, we had always needed to push hard, together, to open it, but now it yielded to Heathcliff’s strength alone. I watched the muscles in Heathcliff’s back move beneath the linen as he set his shoulder to the door, and then led the way up the granite stairs. I breathed in the smell of his skin, mingling with the cold scent of stone. Then Heathcliff pushed open the upper door, and we emerged to find ourselves standing in the sky.
Stars were everywhere above and before us on this clear, moonless night. Below us lay the moors, limitless and dark. Heathcliff leaned his back against the parapet that encircled the tower roof, and I watched the warm wind rippling through his shirt and hair. He struck me as the very picture of ease; while my own clothes and shoes pinched terribly. Suddenly overcome by this injustice, I sat down on the tower roof, unlaced my boots, and flung them at the wall near where he stood, making him jump slightly out of the way.
“It isn’t at all fair,” I said, getting to my wounded feet. “Men are allowed to be comfortable, while women can hardly walk or breathe. I would a thousand times rather be a man!”
Heathcliff said nothing for a moment. Then he observed:
“There’s no one else here— dress as you like.” Then turned away from me to look out over the moors.
I stood motionless an instant, feeling somehow alone. Alone with the pressures of my own, bound flesh, and with the enticing caress of the wind that seemed to speak, without words, of freedom. From somewhere deep within me there came a faith, as strong as any I had ever known, that what I was about to do was right.
In a moment I had undone the fastenings of my dress and loosened my corset, casting off all these strict constraints of womanhood. I slipped out of all my clothes and breathed free, feeling the wind on my skin. Then Heathcliff turned to me and in his eyes, I read an expression of wonder.
“Look,” he said softly. “Look how beautifully you are made.”
He stepped close to me then, and with exquisite gentleness, his hand traced the lines of my cheek, and throat, and collarbone. At last Heathcliff took hold of my chin, tipping my mouth up to meet his. As I felt his lips, his mouth, his tongue, I felt my whole body soften and yearn. I unbuttoned his shirt and drew it from his shoulders, caressing his naked back. My eyes filled with tears as I felt the scars there—relics of the whip that had so often torn his flesh, in cruel punishment ordered by my brother. But Heathcliff was smiling as he took my hand and drew me down to the floor, arranging a bed for us out of our clothes.
“Woman, not man, is the peak of all Creation,” he told me. “You must never regret what you are.”
Then, as Heathcliff’s hands moved upon my skin, I knew true solace. Resting at ease, I felt his hands trace the curve of my breasts and the sweep of my belly and hips, over and over, as if he were sculpting me from clay. I closed my eyes, and the darkness intensified his touch as he caressed my thighs; then I gasped as his fingers found the wetness between them. I reached for Heathcliff, then, grasping him to me in an embrace as fierce as it was fond. His kiss filled my mouth as I felt my pleasure soar, and peak; then I collapsed, laughing, all my limbs like liquid in his arms.
Soon I was falling asleep while Heathcliff’s hand stroked my lower belly, below the navel.
“Here, one day, new life will grow,” he whispered. In his voice, I heard amazement—perhaps even envy. It was a clear message: woman, in spite of everything, you are blessed.
I believe he stayed awake, holding me and now and then stroking my hair, for some hours. He was keeping me all to himself as long as he dared, in this private aerie.
But when he saw the red dawn advancing, he roused me to return to Wuthering Heights.
Read more of Kimberly’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights on her website.
