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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Live-Blogging PBS' "Wuthering Heights," Installment II, (part 2)

  • And everything is falling apart. Cathy is histrionic, Heathcliff has gone from man to monster, Hindley is waving a gun all over the place. Edgar is tyrannical and conventional. And everyone reveals their worst selves! Emily Bronte is merciless.
  • Here come some vital exchanges:
  • Nelly remarks on the fact that Cathy won't eat, which is a super important metaphoricaly--her self-starvation is her way of rebelling against the ties that bind by punishing herself (or the part of herself that is aligned with the strictures of the social-patriarchal order?).
  • And Cathy longs to be a "savage" again...to no longer be stuck in her gilded cage but to be wild, to be one with Heathcliff once more.
  • Cathy runs out onto the moors in the rain calling Heathclif's name. He hears her, he finds her!
  • And just when you think they are both horrible people and deserve nothing, they have a tender scene in the rain revealing their primal connection. "There's no Edgar, there's no Hindley, there's just you and I," he says.
  • On her deathbed, Cathy asks that her child not be too tame. Oh man, if this book is not a giant FU to the patriarchy I shall eat my bonnet.
  • Hindley, pointing a gun at Heathcliff, tells the story about how Cathy asked for a "whip" from her dad as a child and got Heathcliff instead. But of course, he is her whip--the weapon she uses against the world, the part of herself that exacts a brutal revenge on those who subdue her wildness, who tame her.
  • And when Isabella encounters her brother, he reveals himself to be just as cruel as Heathcliff, totally spurns her. Of course, his wife IS departing this earthly realm and she loves another dude, so one might be inclined to cut him some slack. Who am I kidding, Edward is a !@#$t..
...
  • And Cathy is dead. Heathcliff does NOT bang his forehead on the tree whilst she is dying, which is disappointing. But he does talk to her corpse, quite intimately. And here comes his big line, his "I am Heathcliff" moment.
  • wait for it, wait for it, wait for it,
  • and here it comes...
  • I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY LIFE, I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY SOUL.
...
  • 15 years later and Heathcliff is exacting his revenge by forcing emo-Linton Heathcliff to marry baby Cathy. See you in the next liveblog thread!

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