Welcome to the Cool Kid Club: Wuthering Heights' Influence on Modern Culture

          If you're an avid fan of the television shows Madmen, Sex in the City, Family Guy, The Vampire Diaries or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, singers Kate Bush or Pat Benatar, the band Death Cab for Cutie or the movies Cold Mountain or Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, you've no doubt heard at least one modern reference to Emily Bronte's only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847).  Apparently it's the book all the cool kids love to remind you that they've read.  In the Sex and the City movie, Carrie mentions Wuthering Heights in her late library books.  In the 2004 film Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Lindsey Lohan's character sees her favorite singer in NYC and remarks "except for the garbage and cars, it's like following Heathcliff on the moors."(wikipedia.org, Categories:  Victorian novels)  Perhaps most recognizably of late is the classic tale of stormy passion's reemergence in popular culture via the contemporary Gothic love story Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

          Readers of the Twilight Saga first get the message that main character Bella Swan (and by default author Stephenie Meyer) is, in fact, a member of the Wuthering Heights Cool Kid Club in Chapter One, Book One, Twilight which makes reference to Bella reading the novel.  This reading takes place on and off between her google searches on vampire and werewolf legends throughout the book, but I digress.  In Book Three, Eclipse there are several direct quotes used to compare Bella's relationships with sparkling vamp extraordinaire Edward Cullen and smoldering love puppy Jacob Black to Catherine's relationships with Heathcliff and Edgar.  For example, Bella quotes from WH:  "If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."  Likewise, Edward quotes Heathcliff:  "I cannot live without my life.  I cannot live without my soul!"  Holy diamond encrusted bloodsuckers, Batman!  That Edward is as smooth as a baby's bottom, isn't he?

          A central conflict in the Twilight Saga's plot is Bella's struggle to let go of Jacob aka Edgar Linton.  Like Catherine, Bella is passionate, stubborn and, let's be real, selfish.  Bella eventually sees more and more of Catherine's selfishness in herself according to shmoop.com in the online article Bella and Edward-Cathy and Heathcliff?.  "I was selfish.  I was hurtful.  I tortured the ones I loved.  I was like Cathy, like Wuthering Heights, only my options were so much better than hers, neither one evil, neither weak.  I couldn't allow what hurt me to influence my decisions anymore," Bella professes in Eclipse, Chapter 23, pages 158-159.

          Aside from the quotes, there are other similarities between Wuthering Heights and Twilight.  Both stories take place in gray, lonely, rainy places:  WH in the moors of England, Twilight in the Pacific Northwest town of Forks.  Both are about forbidden, obsessive love.  In the case of WH, it's all in the family:  Catherine and her adopted brother Heathcliff fall in love as teenagers and must deny their passion for the rest of their lives [Donna Kaufman, Is 'Wuthering Heights' the New (or Old) 'Twilight'?], while in the case of Twilight, teenage Bella Swan falls in love with a 107 year-old vampire.  Like Edward Cullen, Heathcliff is a bad boy with a good-guy rival.  Joelle, blogger of The Real Pretend makes the following observations about the ways in which Edward and Heathcliff are similar in a post entitled How Wuthering Heights was 1847's Twilight:

• dark, creepy personalities
• pasty skin
• terrifying eyes
• poorly styled hair
• obsessive about the woman they love to the point of death

          So, what is Meyer trying to accomplish here?  Her literary references to WH certainly help to give her own story about a passionate teenage girl in a love triangle of doom a level of depth it may have otherwise lacked, but the similarities don't necessarily translate in reverse.  For example:  "Characters in Wuthering Heights set out to inflict pain on others, but that's not the case with Edward and Bella," writes Brooke from Witchita Falls, Texas on twilightseriestheories.com (2008).  Brooke points out that Edward leaves Bella to spare her what he thinks will be inevitable pain.  Edward places Bella's happiness above all else.  Brooke also notes that Bella is honest with Jacob from the beginning that her feelings for Edward will not change, unlike Catherine who leads both Heathcliff and Edgar on.  WH is a masochistic love story whose characters destroy themselves and the lives of the people they touch. (Passionate Destruction:  a Comparison of Wuthering Heights and Twilight, 2012).

          I can't help wondering about the scores of young girls and women known as Twi-hards that have picked up Wuthering Heights, either hoping to join the Cool Kid Club or looking for a similar tale to Twilight.  Publishers are capitalizing on this phenomenon and a new edition of WH has been released with a Twilight-esque cover.

          At their cores, WH and Twilight both romanticize obsessive relationships.  When you're young and inexperienced with matters of the heart, it's easy to equate the kind of obsession that drives a guy to creep into your bedroom at night to watch you sleep with true love.  "Neither WH or Twilight are sweet 'I'll die without him' love stories," says Joelle from The Real Pretend.  "They are creepy, restraining order, medication-requiring stories."

          Whatever your take on Emily Bronte's only novel, feel free to enlighten your friends, family and the general public with your opinions about it.  It's one of the perks--ok, the only perk--of belonging to the Wuthering Heights Cool Kid Club. 

References:

Wuthering Heights, www.Wikipedia.org, Victorian novels.

Bella and Edward-Cathy and Heathcliff?  www.shmoop.com.

wraithziodex, Passionate Destruction:  a Comparison of Wuthering Heights and Twilight,

          www.studymode.com

(2012)

Brooke, In what ways do you think Wuthering Heights and Eclipse parallel?,

          www.twilightseriestheories.com (2008)

Joelle, The Real Pretend, How Wuthering Heights was 1847's Twilight, www.blogspot.com (2011)

Kaufman, Donna.  Is 'Wuthering Heights' the New (or Old) 'Twilight'?, www.ivallage.com, (2010)

Meyer, Stephenie.  Twilight, Little, Brown & Company (2005)

Meyer, Stephenie.  Eclipse, Little, Brown & Company (2007)