A day for lovers, but Wuthering Heights is no love story - Christa Ackroyd

I am actually out for Valentine’s Day tonight and can’t wait to be surrounded by happy couple’s gazing into each other eyes while spending the evening with two of my closest (female) friends.

It will be different that’s for sure.

And I have to say that my favourite meme on social media was the one where a woman gazes wistfully into the distance and asks “Do you know what hurts more than being single on Valentine’s Day?”.

Her answer had me spluttering in my coffee as she declared “My right knee…”

But that’s just my mood at present and I know dozens of happy couples who keep the romance alive for months, years even decades.

And even I have to admit there is nothing that elicits a bigger aaah than seeing an elderly couple holding hands and still in love after years spent together.

Many of you of course may be planning a visit to the cinema either tonight or in the coming days to see the new Hollywood production of Wuthering Heights.

And I too,by the time you read this, will have been to see it, controversial though it is. Of course I will. Though I get why there has been such a furore about it before it even hits the big screen.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are Australian. No Yorkshire actors available?

Though from what I have seen so far he does a pretty good job of a ‘northern’ accent as well as mastering the brooding Heathcliff look.

And I have enjoyed his self deprecating humour on preview interviews, something the character he plays certainly never mastered.

And Margot? I will wait to pass judgement though in my mind’s eye Cathy was dark haired and Yorkshire, having been brought up on the moors and pretty hard hearted at times. But we shall see.

Margot just might be a little plummy for my Cathy, though of course it may be that she becomes more refined in bath voice and dress when she becomes mistress of the posh house over the hill leaving Heathcliff in tormented despair to seek his fortune somewhere we are never told where.

No matter. I applaud this latest reinvention whether it is my cup of Yorkshire tea or not. Anything which brings the works of my favourites sibling authors to a wider audience can only be a good thing.

And if the younger generation reach for their books as a result, even better.

No, my main objection is that this film, with its huge budget and even bigger hype is being released in time for Valentine’s Day which makes me wonder if the script writer’s have even read the same book I first picked up as a fourteen year old girl brought up in the same city as the three sisters who went to live in a drafty old parsonage high on the moors, a place that I have held dear ever since I fell in love with their story and their stories.

But Valentine’s Day? This is not a love story. It was never portrayed by its brooking author as such.

In fact I have often debated the strange life of Emily, too shy to socialise, too homesick to leave the brooding moors for more than a few months and too angry and private to want anything to do with it’s publication almost two centuries ago when her anonymity was shattered and the critics on finding out it had been penned by a woman declared it too shocking to find a place on the bookshelves of gentile society especially if it was to be read by those of the ‘ fairer’ sex.

But then Wuthering Heights was never written to be sentimental fodder for the masses. It was written to be devoured by those with a brain and a mind of their own, like Vathy and it’s author.

Yes it is passionate at times, but it is also violent in the extreme. It is as dark as the stormiest skies the moors ever witnessed, as depressing and at times cold as the winds that batter them.

And as powerful as the landscape that becomes equally as important as the love story it was never intended to be.

Wuthering Heights is a story of obsession. Of demonic thoughts. Of anger. Of revenge.

It is almost heathen in its entirety with its stories of god fearing servants and the wayward lass who despises the thought of heaven, dreaming of being flung back to earth and the Heights by the angels she has no wish to become.

It is not an exercise in unrequited love nor even of ego, although Cathy certainly chooses comfort and class above the urchin boy she at times cruelly ridicules after she opts for the luxuries she enjoys as the mistress of the fair haired posh boy she chooses above her childhood playmate.

It is in my view entirely a depiction of love entwined with hate and jealousy.

Hardly sunshine and Valentine’s roses, made all the more disturbing when you consider its unmarried author was the unworldly daughter of a local cleric.

It is anything but a romantic treat. It is instead a story of class divide. Of prejudice of birth.

The story as to how Heathcliff found wandering the docklands of Liverpool speaking in another language was judged by his dark skin and unknown origins.

You could even say it is the modern day equivalent of illegal migrants cast aside by those who would see themselves as superior, and treated as Heathcliff was like a dog.

And it is the best book ever written. And by a woman who surely lived a secluded life far removed from the ills of the society into which she was born.

But that would be to do Emily Brontë and her only work of fiction a disservice. She knew of the anti slave campaign her father supported, of little boys of unknown heritage shipped from overseas to be treated as interesting objects in the Georgian houses of the period.

She knew of women of strength and passion who were expected to conform as Cathy did and settle down to make a suitable marriage.

She knew also of the ills of heavy drinking and opiate consumption as Cathy’s brother displays in all his anger, because she saw that in her own brother, Branwell.

She also witnessed his destructive obsession with the married woman whose station was deemed beyond him who cost him his job, a roof over his head and later his mind.

She knew of the harsh environs of the heath where hillfarmers fought against the elements to scratch a living and people died before their time from consumption and disease as Cathy did and her father, Heathcliff’s mentor and saviour, had done before.

But love? Love rarely is depicted within its pages,save that for the hardworking cook Nellie who in real life was Tabitha whom Emily not only felt safe with she felt seen and un judged for her differences.

And if that’s your idea of a good love story I for one will hope that at least some of the tragedy and anger that was to fuel Emily’s words and life translates to the silver screen.

“My love for Linton (the posh boy) is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it as winter changes the trees.

"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight, but necessary,” cries Cathy.

Was it necessary to make yet another adaptation of Wuthering Heights? Of course not. Will I savour every moment. Of course I will.

Anything which brings together the rugged beauty of setting and words from my beloved Yorkshire moors and it’s most anguished writer cannot be ignored.

Will it be a source of little visible delight? I do hope not. From what I have seen to date, far from it.