The Trouble With Adapting 'Wuthering Heights'

“I could have told Heathcliff’s history, all that you need hear, in half a dozen words.” We are only a few chapters into Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights when Nelly Dean, the servant, foster-sister, and—crucially—narrator apologizes for how longwinded her tale has become. At this point, in fact, she’s barely begun. And just as Nelly is merely one of several narrators in Brontë’s novel, her version of “Heathcliff’s history” is far from the only one. The proliferating narrators set a model for readers’ attempts to adapt and transform Wuthering Heights—attempts that are nearly as old as the novel itself.