Casting about: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights has been adapted to the big screen several times, with one of the more well-known versions being this 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (watch it on Hulu.com for free). More recently, talk had centered around Kiera Knightley, Lindsay Lohan or Natalie Portman playing Cathy, with Colin Farrell up for the role of Heathcliff, but  according to IMDB.com, Abbie Cornish has signed on to play Cathy and Michael Fassbender will play Heathcliff in the version due out in 2010.

If you’ve seen the 1939 film, how do you like it compared with the book? How likely are you to go see the new version, based on your reading of Wuthering Heights? And lastly, who would you cast in the roles of Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar?

Update, 5/20/2009 (via Daily Mail (UK)): Casting for the new 2010 Wuthering Heights has reportedly changed again; Britons Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace, 2008) is now slated to play Cathy and Ed Westwick (Gossip Girl) will play Heathcliff. Filming is supposed to start in the fall of 2009.

Heathcliff, Edgar & Cathy and Heathcliff, Hindley & Catherine

Consider the generational relationships in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar vs. Catherine, Hareton, and Heathcliff. What parallels are there? What significant differences are there? What changes that allows the second generation to find some measure of contentment in life? Is it personality, economics, social class changes? Do you think that Catherine and Hareton in particular learned anything from seeing how the adults around them behaved and the consequences of that behavior?

Modern vs. contemporary attitudes

Wuthering Heights received some pretty harsh reviews at the time of its publication. Here are a few examples:

“We rise from the perusal of Wuthering Heights as if we had come fresh from a pest-house. Read Jane Eyre is our advice, but burn Wuthering Heights…”
– Paterson’s Magazine (USA), March 1848 (via The Reader’s Guide to Wuthering Heights)

“How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. “
– Graham’s Lady’s Magazine (USA), July 1848 (via The Reader’s Guide to Wuthering Heights)

“”Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story. There are evidences in every chapter of a sort of rugged power–an unconscious strength–which the possessor seems never to think of turning to the best advantage. The general effect is inexpressibly painful.”
– Atlas, 1848 (via Lilia Melani’s “The 19th Century English Novel“)

Now compare that with selection from Alice Hoffman’s introduction to the 2004 Signet Classics edition of Wuthering Heights:

“Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest novels of all time, and arguably the greatest psychological novel ever written… The ultimate rebel’s treatise written by a woman who rarely ventured farther than her own village and whose own life was tragically short, Wuthering Heights is a domestic drama, a ghost story, a romance, a spiritual journey, a diary of dreams and visions, and above all else, an examination of the nature of humanity.”

What changes in attitude between mid-19th century and now may have revised public and critical opinion of the book? Was the book’s contemporary criticism justified in any way?