Wuthering Heights

I decided to join the book club organised by our ward's Relief Society and thus undertook to read the book they will be discussing at their next meeting: Wuthering Heights. I read Wuthering Heights when I was in high school. Not because it was assigned, but rather because I wanted to. I had already embarked on my anglophilic obsession with 19th century British women novelists and had worked my way through Austen's ouvre and had finished Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights was the logical next step. Being seventeen and engaged in several intense crushes (well, intense as any high school crush can be) on inappropriate boys, naturally the book appealed to me. I felt the anguish of proud Catherine and anger of spurned Heathcliff. I was so engaged in the book that I declined an invitation to a co-ed snowmobiling party to finish it. I bought a copy of the book. It sat on my shelf through college and beyond and I haven't really thought of it in years except when packing and unpacking it during my many moves. Until now.

I don't know if it is age or wisdom, but the book doesn't hold the same power it once did. As I read it, often aloud to my mom so we can both get it finished by Tuesday, I am more annoyed with the characters than anything. Edgar Linton, who I mentally mocked along with Catherine, is now the most sympathetic. I have no patience for what I now read as Catherine's selfish rantings. Either I have grown cynical or just lost my naivete, but I hold no romantic notions about Heathliff. I pity him; I wonder what would have become of him if shown one ounce of courtesy or compassion by any in the Earnshaw or Linton households other than Catherine and her father. However, I no longer have any idea of hope that he might have some shred of human decency, an idea I harbored when I read the book a decade ago. And it isn't just because I know the end from the beginning now, because the genius of Wuthering Heights is how engrossing the story is, even though the novel's struture is such that the outcome for most of the characters is known from the beginning of the novel. The first time I read it, I knew that Heathcliff came to a bad end, because he opens that book very near the bad end. I'm just not connecting to book the way I once did, nor am I enjoying reading it as I once did. It is more like a chore.

An interesting corollary to this is that a decade ago when I read Jane Eyre I liked it, but wasn't moved by it. After seeing the recent Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of it, I re-read it and found it so much more engaging. Is this also a symptom of age or wisdom? Or do I simply not have the emotional energy for any entertainment without a fully happy and hopeful ending these days?

And in a superficial and wholly 'What the crap!?!" moment for you all, when I was searching Google for a picture of the book, I came across a Wikipedia entry that mentioned someone in Hollywood was floating the idea of a film adaptation of Wuthering Heights with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp as Catherine and Heathcliff respectively. Any thoughts?