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Wuthering Heights is back in the cultural forefront with the new adaptation out in February. With that, it brings a new wave of references and takes on the classic novel out in spades. Whether you liked the new adaptation or found it too far from the source material to stomach, you’ve got an opinion! And so does everyone else!
Like with a lot of classic novels, this isn’t the first time pop culture has made reference to the gothic tragedy first published by Emily Brontë in 1847. The tortured story of Heathcliff and Cathy is poked at quite frequently in modern-day media, and many, many Pinterest pins and Tumblr blogs love to share one of the novel’s most enduring quotes about souls and whatever they’re made of. It’s an enduring, if polarizing, novel that has wormed its way into the vernacular of today, especially with the main characters. Many a TV character or modern novel has made reference to the dour, angry leading man or the emotionally volatile leading woman. What better time to take a look at just some of the numerous references to the classic novel in pop culture over the years?
In literature, the novel has been adapted into plays, like John Davison’s Wuthering Heights: a play from the novel in 1942, as well as riffed on in poetry. Sylvia Plath, for example, wrote a poem titled “Wuthering Heights,” though it’s debated whether there’s any connection to the novel rather than the location, as did Ted Hughes.
Modern authors have taken on the novel’s complicated, for some romantic, character dynamic, adapting the story in different lenses like Tasha Suri’s What Souls are Made of, Layne Fargo’s The Favorites, in which Kat and Heath are figure skaters, or Windward Heights by Maryse Condé, which sets the story in the Caribbean instead of the windswept moors of Yorkshire. You can’t forget to mention the Twilight references to Wuthering Heights, in which young Bella reads the romantic tragedy, quotes from it, and makes a declaration that the real problem of the novel is Catherine, not Heathcliff, after all.
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Musically, of course, Kate Bush’s 1978 song, “Wuthering Heights“, is a classic take on the novel with a must-watch ethereal music video to match in which the young singer dances around in a white dress while singing about Cathy coming home to Heathcliff. You’ve also got Yoko Ono’s “You’re the One” that references Heathcliff and Cathy, and “Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie.
There are also operas that were adapted from the story: Carlisle Floyd’s in 1958, for example, and Bernard Herrmann’s, which was first recorded in 1966 and then staged in 1982.
Film and screen adaptations aren’t new to Brontë’s enduring novel either. Filmmakers have been taking a crack at depicting the story as far back as 1920 in a silent film by A.V. Bramble. Soon after came a film adaptation in 1939, directed by William Wyler, with subsequent adaptations to follow, featuring Richard Burton (1958), Ralph Fiennes (1992), and Tom Hardy (2009) as the leading man, Heathcliff.
Television hasn’t escaped the enduring vocabulary of Heathcliff and Cathy’s love, either. Shows like Seinfeld, The West Wing, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and even My Little Pony make reference in some way to the story, its characters, and their moody moors. Often, these references need little more than to say the name Heathcliff for those in the know to understand the comparison to the brooding villainous leading man.
This is by no means a comprehensive look at the novel’s pop culture references, either. It seems that anywhere and everywhere you look, the doomed love of Heathcliff and Cathy is there, waiting for you to pick up on the story’s enduring impact in pop culture. It’s clear that this take on the book in the new film adaptation isn’t the first, and it certainly won’t be the last to take Brontë’s source material and run with it.
If you liked this glimpse into the pop culture inspired by a classic novel, check out this look at retellings of classic novels or this look at Edgar Allen Poe in pop culture!