tw WW2 talk

I lost my pen for my surface pro so now I can't do any digital drawings for a while (I still suck at those lmao) so enjoy this rough sketch of Nelly whose age I'm just now realizing I never decided

fuck it she's 4! Nelly is from my og story Enemy Territory which takes place in WW2

it's about a German and American soldier who both get separated from their troups and realize they have a higher survival rate if they stick together as they overcome prejudices and begin to trust each other until a relationship forms

my German boy (Lutz) goes through some MAD character development and learns that he's on the wrong side of this war. while Tommy learns that just because they're German doesn't mean they're a Nazi

god fucking dammit I'm literally writing this story and my favorite character is still a damn side character!!!

I just reread Wuthering Heights for the first time since high school. Thanks to @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys, @astrangechoiceoffavourites and others for inspiring me to do it!

Here are some of the things that stood out the most for me.

1. I can’t believe how ambiguous all the characters are! “Morally gray” doesn’t begin to describe it. Even the most sympathetic characters are deeply, deeply flawed, yet just when a character seems unredeemable, they’ll show their capacity for love and altruism. It’s hard to say how Brontë meant us to feel about any of them. I won’t even touch on Heathcliff or the other leads: the example I’ll use is the short-lived yet important figure of Mr. Earnshaw. On the one hand, he’s framed both by Nelly Dean’s narration and by Cathy I’s diary as a kind, benevolent man. He takes in the homeless, orphaned young Heathcliff, raises and loves him as his own, treats his servants almost like family, is reasonably warm and indulgent to his children before his illness worsens his temper, and is very much loved by little Cathy in particular. After he dies and Hindley becomes the tyrannical new master, Cathy and Nelly remember his lifetime as a paradise lost. But he blatantly favors Heathcliff over his own children, sewing the seeds for Hindley’s abuse and degradation of Heathcliff, and during his illness, the disparaging way he talks to and about Hindley and Cathy definitely feels like emotional abuse, at least by modern standards. His harsh words to Cathy are especially heartbreaking given how clearly she worships him and it makes you wonder if her future arrogance is really a cover for self-doubt. But since Nelly depicts Hindley and Cathy as difficult and bratty from childhood, and both become truly toxic adults, maybe their father’s harshness is meant to be justified or at least understandable, and since Heathcliff was a poor orphan who faced who-knows-what horrors in his first seven years, we might argue that he needed more care and affection. But Heathcliff also becomes a toxic adult and Nelly implies that being the favored child made him spoiled and arrogant. And none of the above even touches on the theory that Heathcliff might be Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, which would definitely cast the latter in a less favorable light. Any claim of “This is how we’re supposed to feel about this character” can only fall flat, because there’s so much ambiguity.

2. The recent reviews by @astrangechoiceoffavourites of the 1939 and 1970 film versions point out something interesting: that in both of those versions, which only adapt only the first half of the book, Cathy (I) is more of the protagonist than Heathcliff. This insight raises a good question: who really is the protagonist of the book? Of course the traditional answer is Heathcliff. He’s the character we follow from beginning to end, whose actions drive the entire plot. But he’s not the viewpoint character; we mostly see him from Nelly Dean’s perspective, and Heathcliff sometimes disappears for months or years at a time from her narrative. Yet Nelly can’t be called the protagonist because she’s more of an observer than an active participant. I think we can argue that, at least in terms of plot structure, the two Cathys are the book’s real protagonists: Cathy I leads the first half, with Heathcliff as the deuteragonist/love interest, while Cathy II leads the second half, with Heathcliff as the villain. Of course this is debatable, but so is nearly everything else about this book.

3. I never realized until now what a perfect inversion Cathy II’s character arc is of her mother’s arc. There are so many parallels, but they happen in the opposite order. Just look:

** Cathy I is born and raised at Wuthering Heights, but as a young girl she ventures to Thrushcross Grange, meets her future husband and ultimately lives there./Cathy II is born and raised at Thrushcross Grange, but as a young girl she ventures to Wuthering Heights, meets her future husband and ultimately lives there.

** Both are raised by widowed fathers whom they adore, although Mr. Earnshaw is stern and critical to Cathy I while Edgar dotes on Cathy II; eventually both fathers die prematurely, leaving their daughters in a tyrannical new patriarch’s hands (Hindley/Heathcliff).

** Cathy I initially loves the rugged, dark haired Heathcliff, who lives as a servant at Wuthering Heights; she helps to educate him and they wander the moors together. But as she spends more time at Thrushcross Grange, she absorbs its snobbery, treats him with increasing disdain (though she really does still love him), and favors the refined, prissy, blond haired Edgar, whom she eventually marries./Cathy II initially loves (or at least cares for) the refined, prissy, blond haired Linton, whom she eventually marries. Having been raised with Thrushcross Grange’s snobbery, she initially disdains the rugged, dark haired Hareton, who lives as a servant at Wuthering Heights. But as she lives at the Heights after Linton dies, she looses her snobbery and becomes increasingly drawn to Hareton; ultimately they fall in love, she helps to educate him and they wander the moors together.

** Because of the above, Cathy I’s story ends tragically, while Cathy II’s story ends happily.

It really is too bad that most screen and stage adaptations only adapt the first half and leave out Cathy II, because it seems to me that Cathy I’s story was always meant to be juxtaposed with her daughter’s mirror-image arc.

4. If I was ever half-tempted to believe the theory that Branwell Brontë was the book’s real author, I don’t believe it anymore. There’s no way a 19th century man, especially one who was allegedly a bit of a womanizer, could have written such nuanced, realistic, non-objectified female characters. Even male authors whose characterizations of women I respect, both of the past and of today, tend to have problems with sexualization, madonna-whore stereotyping, etc. But the women in Wuthering Heights are thoroughly non-sexualized three-dimensional characters: all of them flawed yet (arguably) all sympathetic, no better yet no worse than the men around them, all fully human.

5. The circumstances of Cathy I’s mental and physical breakdown are different than I remembered from high school. I was under the impression that Heathcliff married Isabella to hurt Cathy the way she had hurt him and that Cathy’s brain fever was caused by jealousy and heartbreak at being “rejected” for another woman. I think the screen adaptations tend to frame it more that way. But really, Heathcliff marries Isabella less to hurt Cathy emotionally than to gain power over her husband by gaining a claim to inherit his property and fortune. Nor is Cathy’s breakdown caused by jealousy (she knows Heathcliff doesn’t really love Isabella, after all), but by the conflict between Heathcliff and Edgar that the Isabella scandal triggers, which culminates in Edgar punching Heathcliff, making him flee for his life, and demanding that Cathy choose between them. It’s the crumbling of Cathy’s attempted double life with both men that breaks her, not rivalry with Isabella.

6. When I first started the reread, my dad suggested that I try to see if I could find more sexual tension between Heathcliff and Cathy I than I did in high school. But I didn’t. Their love is just as strangely, fascinatingly sexless as I thought it was. I suppose the question remains: did Brontë purposefully write it as sexless, or does it just reflect her own lack of sexual experience?

7. If I were to write the screenplay for a new film version of Wuthering Heights, I think I’d present it in anachronic order, similar to Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Scenes from the first half would alternate with scenes from the second half. This way the second half would really be given its due, the mirror-imagery between Cathy I and Cathy II’s character arcs would be especially apparent, and the Hareton/Cathy II romance could be highlighted as a healthy alternative to Heathcliff/Cathy I. I would also make a definite point to de-romanticize Heathcliff, not only by portraying him as a tragic man-turned-monster and not downplaying his cruelty, but by leaving it ambiguous, as I think it is in the book, whether the love he shares with Cathy I really is romantic love or a strangely intense, codependent brother/sister bond. I definitely wouldn’t age them into young adult lovers on the moors the way most screen versions do; I’d portray them at their correct ages, just 12/13 when they roam the moors together and still just 15/16 when Cathy accepts Edgar’s proposal, and highlight that they were only truly happy together as children. That in some ways their love is always the love of two children, both in its selfishness and in its purity. Cathy’s ghost at the window would be portrayed as a child, as in the book, and if I were to show Heathcliff’s ghost joining her in the end, I just might have them both transform back into their 12/13-year-old selves. That could make for an interesting contrast with Hareton and Cathy II in the end: Heathcliff and Cathy I reunited as free, half-savage children, while their foster-son and daughter appear as a mature romantic couple embracing civilization and adulthood.