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NARRATOR: They loved wandering free
here, on this Yorkshire moor.

It was their horizon,
a place to dream,

a place to write.

There were three of them.

The Bronte Sisters.

There was Charlotte, the ambitious
eldest, author of Jane Eyre.

There was Anne, the discreet one,
who wrote Agnes Grey.

And there was the enigmatic Emily...

..the creator
of the strangest of love stories...

..Wuthering Heights.

(WIND WHISTLES)

(UNSETTLING FLUTE MUSIC)

A tale of love and death,
on this windswept moor.

The story of Cathy and Heathcliff...

..doomed passion, merciless revenge.

Wuthering Heights
is an extraordinary book.

I'm in awe of it.
It is one of the most unique books

in the English language.

It's totally unique in the context
of the Victorian novel,

sort of,
out of sync with its own time;

I mean, out of sync, possibly,
with any time.

It's also a very sophisticated book
and a very disconcerting book.

And it's such a strange story.

It's dark and odd,

and it definitely
has a peculiarness to it

that I don't think any of
the other Bronte's novels have.

And it's a shame that we don't
have another novel by Emily

because it would be amazing to know

if all of her work
was going to be like that,

or if this was just an anomaly
that poured out of her,

but I suppose that's something
that we'll never know.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)

Emily Bronte was born in 1818,

and she only lived to the age of 30.

(BIRDS TWITTERING)

A short life, spent here in Haworth,

a little industrial village
in Yorkshire.

Beyond the black roofs, the moor.

At the centre of the village,

the church where their father,
Patrick Bronte, was the priest.

(CHURCH BELL RINGS)

And just behind that, the cemetery.

Emily was only three
when her mother was laid to rest

in the family vault in 1821,

soon followed by the two
eldest daughters in the family.

The windows of the parsonage
still look out onto the graves.

This is where Emily grew up

and lived with her two sisters,
Charlotte and Anne,

and their brother, Branwell.

The Brontes' literature
is so original and passionate.

And I think when you combine
that with the story of their lives,

three geniuses living and growing
up together in this house,

and you've got the landscape
of Haworth,

the bleak, you know, the moorland.

And I think it's a really potent mix

which continues
to bring people here.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)

Within these austere walls,

so removed
from the effervescence of London,

an unusual
literary adventure unfolded.

It started in secret.

Because at first the Bronte Sisters
chose to hide...

..behind ambiguous pseudonyms...

..only keeping their initials.

Charlotte was Currer Bell.

Anne, Acton Bell.

And Emily, Ellis Bell.

"We did not like to declare
ourselves women",

Charlotte wrote later,

"because we had a vague impression
that authoresses

"are liable to be looked on
with prejudice."

(PENCIL SCRIBBLING ON PAPER)

(CLOCK CHIMES)

The trick worked.

In October 1847,

Charlotte, alias Currer Bell,
published Jane Eyre.

The account of an orphan girl,

a governess in love
with her master, Mr Rochester.

"A powerful romance,"
said the critics.

It was a runaway success.

In December,
still under her pseudonym,

Anne published Agnes Grey,

and Emily, Wuthering Heights.

Agnes Grey, a biting critique of
the bourgeoisie, was well-received.

Critics were astonished
by Wuthering Heights.

I was rereading the other day,
the very, very first reviews

that were ever published when
Wuthering Heights came out in 1847.

This was at a time
when nobody knew who Ellis Bell was.

They didn't know
that Ellis Bell was a woman.

They knew nothing about the author.

And in a way,
these very early critics responded

with a sort of honesty and
engagement that later got lost.

They confess to being bewildered
and baffled by this book.

They described it as strangely
original, completely new.

One comment from one of these
very early reviews in 1847,

it was the end of the review,
and it really stuck out for me.

The critic just said,

"It's as if the author was saying,

"'Here, take that
and see what you can do with it.'"

(WIND BLOWS)

What lies within Wuthering Heights
that made it so incendiary?

The story begins one night in 1771

at Wuthering Heights, an isolated
farm on the Yorkshire moors.

The master, Mr Earnshaw,
brought a lost child there.

He named him Heathcliff,

a name of heather and rock,

and brought him up in his family.

(DOOR CLOSES)

(FIRE CRACKLES)

His eldest son Hindley
hated Heathcliff.

He turned him into a humiliated,
brutalised servant.

But Hindley's younger sister Cathy,

"a wild, hatless little savage,"

saw herself in Heathcliff.

(PANS CLATTER)

Give him to me,
or I'll tell my father

how you boasted you'd turn me
out of doors when he died.

That's a lie.
I never said such a thing.

Of course he didn't.You never had
a father, you gypsy beggar.

You can't have mine.
Cathy, stop that!

"Poor Heathcliff,
Hindley calls him a vagabond,

"and won't let him sit with us,
nor eat with us any more;

"and, he says,
he and I must not play together,

"and threatens to turn him out
of the house if we break his orders.

"His conduct to Heathcliff
is atrocious.

"H and I are going to rebel."

Are you hurt badly?

Talk to me.

Why don't you cry?

Heathcliff, don't look like that!

How can I pay him back?

Cathy, Heathcliff,
for life, in death.

(ROMANTIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

A childhood love...that cared
nothing for either the taboos

or the difference in class.

An absolute love, which Cathy
betrayed when she got older.

WOMAN: 'Heathcliff! Heathcliff!'

'(DOOR SLAMS)'

Cathy.

Heathcliff.

(MELANCHOLY ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

Why did you stay so long
in that house?

I didn't expect to find you here.

Why did you stay so long?

Why? Because I was having
a wonderful time.

A delightful, fascinating,
wonderful time.

Among human beings.

Go and wash your face and hands,
Heathcliff.

And comb your hair,

so that I needn't be ashamed of you
in front of the guests.

Wuthering Heights
is probably guilty

of touching upon at least
two or three of the things

that I think
most trouble English people

when they think of English society.

Wuthering Heights is guilty

of a pretty savage investigation
of the class system.

Well, the whole
of the structure of the book

is set up around rank and order,

who is acceptable,
who is acceptable to marry who,

erm...how you move up
the class system,

how you can fall off that ladder
and move down.

The shame and the guilt

and the discomfort around class
and rank and order

is very much at the centre.

Of course, that's one of the
things that so disturbs Heathcliff,

this idea of not belonging,
not being the right kind of person.

(RAINFALL PATTERING)

Cathy married Edgar Linton,
a gentleman,

the heir of the neighbouring estate.

A man of her own social class.

Defeated, Heathcliff fled.

MAN: "Why did you despise me?

"Why did you betray your own heart,
Cathy?

"You loved me.

"Then,
what right had you to leave me?

"What right?

"Answer me.

"Because misery and degradation
and death would have parted us.

"You, of your own will, did it.

WOMAN: "I have no more business
to marry Edgar Linton

"than I have to be in heaven.

"And if Hindley had not brought
Heathcliff so low,

"I shouldn't have thought of it.

"It would degrade me
to marry Heathcliff now.

"So, he shall never know
how I love him.

"And that,
not because he's handsome,

"but because he's more myself
than I am."

Initially love, some kind of love.

A kind of connection, a bond,

which has become poisoned.

It's become diseased.

It's become infected with something
that they can't recover from,

that they can't really
escape each other either.

That kind of toxicity
which is beginning to undermine it

means it's no longer love,

but it's the kind of familiar bond
that they can't break it.

So, that's tragic, of course.

(ROMANTIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)

Years later, Heathcliff returned
to Wuthering Heights.

I'll wait for you.

Till you come.

Devastated, Cathy died of sorrow.

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not
rest, so long as I live on.

I killed you.

Haunt me, then. Haunt your murderer.

I know that ghosts
have wandered on the Earth.

Be with me always.

Take any form, drive me mad.

Only do not leave me in this dark
alone, where I cannot find you.

I cannot live without my light.

I cannot die without my soul.

Oh, Cathy.

Oh, my dear.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

The 1939 film version
by William Wyler,

with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff,

had an enormous impact
in terms of turning this book

into a sort of icon
of popular culture

and a sort of iconic story
of romantic love.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC CRESCENDOS))

I think the film
was enormously popular.

I think by 1947, within ten years
of it being released,

something like 200 million people
had seen it.

# KATE BUSH: Wuthering Heights

And that's how Wuthering Heights
became a legend.

# Out on the wily, windy moors

# We'd roll and fall in green...

In 1978, an unknown young,
19-year-old singer

even turned it into a global hit.

# How could you leave me

# When I needed to

# Possess you?

# I hated you, I loved you, too

# Bad dreams in the night...

Kate Bush sang
of Wuthering Heights...

# I was going to lose the fight

# Leave behind my Wuthering,
Wuthering

# Wuthering Heights, Heathclif

# It's me, I'm Cathy,
I've come home now

# So cold

# Let me in your window... #

(THUNDER CRACKS)

..Cathy, Heathcliff, the moors.

Classic.

But in danger
of being misunderstood.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Heathcliff!

Heathcliff! (SOBS)

Heathcliff.

But I don't know what people who've
seen the film would have felt

when they opened the book

because the film
really transforms it

into something completely different.

The film completely overlooks

the disturbing aspects, really,
of the novel.

It makes Heathcliff
much more sympathetic,

and it completely omits
the second half of the plot

in which Heathcliff
implacably pursues his revenge.

(WIND WHISTLES)

Emily Bronte wrote of that...

..the most horrifying,
the most uncompromising revenge.

Haunted by his dead love,

for 20 years Heathcliff lashed
out at all those who remained:

Hindley, Cathy's brother, whom he
leads into debauchery and ruin;

Edgar Linton, whose sister
he seduces and persecutes.

And when they were all dead,
he went after their children:

Cathy's daughter, Hindley's son,

and even his own son.

MAN: "I have no pity.

"I have no pity.

"The more the worms writhe,

"the more I yearn
to crush out their entrails!

"It is a moral teething;

"and I grind with greater energy in
proportion to the increase of pain."

No, no, no, it's savage.

You know, there's a great deal
of cruelty and revenge,

which is in parallel with the...
with the supposed passion and love.

Again, it's unchecked, it's
uncontrolled. It's... It's wild.

There's a moment where I think
Heathcliff takes the young Cathy,

Cathy's daughter, Cathy number two,

on his knee and slaps her
so hard about the face and ears.

It's just a scene of...

You know, there are no
trigger warnings in this book.

There are scenes
of sadistic violence....

you know,
perpetrated all over the place,

but when it's perpetrated
by a man on a woman,

it's particularly difficult
to swallow.

But the novel just presents it,

it doesn't really comment on it.

(UNSETTLING MUSIC)

Class violence, revenge, sadism.

Wuthering Heights
isn't just a love story.

According to the script of the very
first adaptation, made in 1920,

and unfortunately lost,

instead it was
a "tremendous story of hate."

The moral of the story,
if there is one,

it's not an optimistic view
of human nature.

Heathcliff himself, I think,
at one point says

something like
"the tyrant grinds down the slave,

"and the slave
doesn't rise up against him.

"He grinds down those beneath him."

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

Wuthering Heights has been adapted
for the cinema more than 50 times.

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

In 1988, Japanese filmmaker
Kiju Yoshida took on the challenge.

His version
embraced every aspect of the work.

Heathcliff is Onimaru;

Cathy is Kinu.

(THEY SPEAK JAPANESE)

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

For French writer, Georges Bataille,
Wuthering Heights was one

of the greatest works of literature
of all time.

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

Perhaps the most beautiful,

the most profoundly tormented
of love stories.

(SPEAKS FRENCH)

The thing that's so odd about the
book is that it just isn't sexy.

It's not about erotic desire,
really.

I mean, the bond between Cathy
and Heathcliff is...

it's like a bond of identification
rather than desire.

So, as Cathy says,
"I am Heathcliff."

It's a bond
that's forged in childhood,

and there's almost overtones
of sibling incest

because they've, of course, been
brought up as brother and sister.

There are so many aspects
about this novel

that break boundaries
and feel transgressive.

(WIND WHISTLES)

MAN:
"I'll tell you what I did yesterday.

"I got the sexton
who was digging Linton's grave

"to remove the earth off
her coffin lid, and I opened it."

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

"Before closing the coffin,
I struck one side of it loose,

"and I bribed the sexton to pull it
away when I'm laid there."

(THUNDER CRACKS)

"And then by the time
Linton gets to us,

"he'll not know which is which."

(COFFIN LID CREAKS)

(SPEAKS JAPANESE)

(HIGH-PITCHED WHISTLING)

Emily Bronte wrote about
all the shades of Evil.

And that's what has fascinated,

obsessed, and astounded people
from day one.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Who could have written this?

It was a mystery.

Because Emily Bronte wouldn't
let anyone get close to her...

(FLOORBOARDS CREAK)

..hidden behind the walls
of the parsonage in Haworth...

and her pseudonym, Ellis Bell.

(TINKLING PIANO MUSIC)

Her true identity was only
revealed after her death

by her sister, Charlotte Bronte.

After this, actually,
critics, you know

they turn against
Wuthering Heights completely.

By this point,
they know it's by a woman,

and this also really changes
their viewpoint. I mean...

you know, when it was being read
as being by a man,

it was an interesting
experimental work of art.

Once it's known to be by a woman,
it's unacceptable.

(CLOCK TICKING)

In response to Victorian England,

which condemned Wuthering Heights
and its creator,

Charlotte Bronte rewrote
the myth of Emily...

(LEAVES RUSTLING)

..painting her
as a simple girl from the moors,

a solitary, reclusive
and innocent virgin,

supposedly inspired
by an inexplicable intuition.

Charlotte pleaded for her
to be forgiven,

claiming she didn't realise
what she was writing.

Charlotte once said an interpreter

should have stood between Emily
and the world.

And, actually,
an interpreter usually does

because we have to rely
on the testimonies

of Charlotte or of other people

who didn't have an intimate
relationship with her.

(TINKLING PIANO MUSIC)

We know very little
about Emily Bronte,

and she's quite mysterious.

There is so little material
relating to Emily Bronte.

We don't know for sure whether
she destroyed many of her stories

and her early manuscripts
before she died,

or whether Anne destroyed them
after Emily's death.

I think because Emily
didn't form friendships

outside the family circle,

we don't have that kind
of wealth of correspondence,

which we do
in the case of Charlotte.

All we've got to go on
are a collection,

a small collection of diary papers,

which she produced every
four years with her sister, Anne.

The first diary entry
is dated November 24th, 1834.

Emily was 16 years old.

"Anne and I have been peeling
apples for Charlotte

"to make an apple pudding.

"Tabby said just now,
'Come, Anne, pilloputate.'

"It's past noon,
and Anne and I are yet to wash,

"make our beds, or do our chores,

"and we want to go
and play outside."

Emily is just describing
what is happening.

It's just symbolic
of how we generally feel

about how we wish
we knew more about Emily,

but there's something
in the lack of sources

and also in her own personality
that just won't let us in.

(RAIN PATTERING)

Emily evades us,
and the mystery remains.

Unless we could go back in time.

(WIND WHISTLES)

(CLOCK TICKING

(CLOCK CHIMES)

At the parsonage in Haworth, Emily,
her sisters Charlotte and Anne,

and their brother Branwell
grew up motherless, isolated,

but free...

..under the watchful eye of
an unusual father, Patrick Bronte.

(CLOCK CHIMES)

A priest and a poet,
he revered literature.

He was an Irish immigrant
and former blacksmith

who had raised himself all
the way up to Cambridge University.

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

For Branwell, his only son,

he had ambitions
for the greatest of literary

and artistic successes...

..the best studies,
the Royal Academy of Art.

And for his three daughters,
a solid grounding in the classics,

and independent lives
as governesses or teachers.

I think another gift that Patrick
gave to all his children

was that he encouraged them
to read widely,

and he didn't censor their reading.

They were avid readers
of newspapers,

and they read anything
that they could lay hands on.

One of their firm favourites
was Blackwood's Magazine,

which contained all
kinds of political accounts.

It had reviews,
new books and art and literature.

And they would devour this.

They had a passionate interest

in what was going on
in the wider world,

which in turn, had a huge
impact on the imaginary world

and the events that were
taking place there.

One day in 1826,

Patrick Bronte gave nine-year-old
Branwell a box of 12 toy soldiers.

(FIRE CRACKLING)

Along with his sisters,
Branwell dreamed up names for them,

adventures, conquests, and passions.

And soon, as they played and wrote,

a whole imaginary world took shape.

The adventure had begun.

Four writers were born.

WOMAN:
"Awful Branny, gloomy giant,

"shaking o'er Earth his blazing air.

"Dread Tally next,
like a dire eagle flies.

"Emmy and Annie last
with boding cry.

"All these, and more than these,
before my eyes appear."

Imagining the fire going and the
darkness and the curtains drawn

and the candles and the four of them
sitting around this table

with their papers spread out

is a really arresting image.

And it's impossible to sit
in this room and not imagine that.

Obviously,
there was a lot of tragedy.

They lost their mother,
they lost other siblings,

but it seems that they were
so creatively ambitious

and so extravagant
with their imagination

that they must have been happy
as well, I like to think.

So, this is one
of the miniature books

produced by Charlotte Bronte

when she was about 13 years of age.

So, you've got a whole collection
of poetry and prose,

all the elements you'd expect
to find in a journal

like Blackwood's Magazine.

These were intended to be read
by a set of toy soldiers.

They would act out little plays

and create an imaginary world
around the soldiers.

I think it's all quite childish,
initially,

but as the children got older,

the imaginary world
and the ongoings in it

got more and more complex
and sophisticated.

(CLOCK CHIMES)

There has sometimes been a feeling

that the Bronte novels
just appeared from nowhere,

but the other thing
about these tiny manuscripts

is they show that the Brontes served

a long apprenticeship in literature.

(UNSETTLING MUSIC)

(FLOORBOARDS CREAKING)

WOMAN: "We wove a web in childhood

"A web of sunny air.

"We dug a spring in infancy

"Of water pure and fair. #

Miniature books
and hundreds of poems,

prose texts and detailed maps.

Written by the four of them
over nearly ten years,

under the aegis of Branwell
and Charlotte,

these exuberant youthful writings

conjured up an entire world -
Glass Town.

Capital of the Kingdom of Angria,

an imaginary land on the distant
shores of West Africa.

Isabel Greenberg made a graphic
novel out of all this.

I think they were fascinated
by the news

and the world that they lived in.
They were alive

in a time of great exploration
and colonialism,

and so all the things they were
reading in the newspaper, of course,

were going to find their way
into their imaginary world.

The way that they write it was sort
of romantic and exciting to them.

They're, sort of, very...
It feels quite patriotic,

and that is uncomfortable,
I think, for a modern reader.

But they were children of their time

and they were writing
what they knew.

(URGENT DRAMATIC MUSIC)

(PEN NIB WRITING ON PAPER)

In the twists
and turns of Glass Town,

one character stands out.

His name is Quashia Quamina.

Most of the characters they use
are, sort of, British,

English, European types,

but Quashia Quamina is a native
prince of the Kingdom of Angria,

and he is...

his plot arc is really exciting.

He is rescued/kidnapped
from his village

by the Duke of Wellington himself
who's been doing the pillaging.

(HORSES' HOOVES GALLOPING)

WOMAN: "At the age of 17 he was
a handsome youth, black as jet,

"and with an eye full
of expression and fire,

"and at the same time
deeply treacherous.

"And notwithstanding the care

"with which he had been treated
by his conquerors,

"he retained against them
the most deeply-rooted

"and inveterate hatred."

I don't know if that is something
that was on Emily's mind

when she was writing Heathcliff.

I like the idea that they had sat
around this table,

chatting about...Quashia
and Heathcliff, but I'm not sure.

The idea of a, sort of,
hated brother...

..being brought up, I guess,
perhaps abusively,

maligned, hated, not respected,

and then having to seek revenge,

that is a parallel, I think,
that you can't, sort of, escape.

(GRASS RUSTLING)

(SOMBRE PIANO MUSIC)

Heathcliff is an enigma.

He's a foreigner,
but where did he come from?

What is his background?

Emily kept it a mystery.

Clues planted here and there
to decipher throughout the pages.

She describes him
as a "little Lascar,"

as the son of a Chinese emperor
and an Indian queen.

But, above all,
he's the seven-year-old child

Mr Earnshaw brings back
to Wuthering Heights one night,...

a child "as dark almost
as if it came from the devil."

You've got to leave some room
for the imagination,

but her physical descriptions of
Heathcliff, you know, as his colour,

the colour of his skin,

the descriptions of him in terms
of how he kind of frightens people

in the way in which people
take a double take sometimes

when the door opens,
and they're not expecting

to see a darker-skinned person walk
in, or a person with curly hair.

She's doing that all the time
throughout, certainly in his youth.

You know, erm...

She doesn't need
to do any more than that,

then you suddenly realise, you know,
he doesn't look like...

he doesn't look like the other boys.

It's not just that his origins
are a problem.

It's the visuals
are a problem as well.

(SHIP'S HORN BLARES)

(SEAGULLS CRY)

WOMAN: "The master tried
to explain the matter.

"It was a tale of his seeing it
starving and houseless,

"and as good as dumb
in the streets of Liverpool,

"where he'd picked it up
and enquired for its owner.

"Not a soul knew
to whom it belonged.

"He thought it better
to take it home with him at once."

(HORSE CARRIAGES RATTLING)

I began to see him through the prism

of what Liverpool means in British
society in the 19th century,

the 18th century too;

as the chief slaving port.

That is where orphans,
that's where the jetsam and flotsam,

that's where the, kind of, detritus
of empire washed up,

which is why Liverpool
has the oldest black community,

why it has
the oldest mixed-race communities,

it has the oldest Chinese community.

That's where the backwash
of empire ended up,

on the streets of Liverpool,

and was slowly integrated
into the society.

It's a very...

It's a melting pot, that city,
but at the heart of it is slavery.

At the heart of it
is the slave trade.

Heathcliff seemed to me

to be clearly part
of the detritus of empire.

In his novel The Lost Child,
Caryl Phillips imagined

what Heathcliff's life
might have been like

before his arrival
at Wuthering Heights.

He imagined him as the son
of a woman from the Congo,

reduced to slavery,

deported to Jamaica,

and washed up in Liverpool.

(SHIP'S TIMBERS CREAKING)

Slavery wasn't abolished until 1833.

Emily was 15, and in the newspapers

she, her sisters,
and her brother devoured,

the debate over abolition
was omnipresent.

(PEOPLE APPLAUDING)

That's the central story
in Britain at the time.

"We need to abolish the slave
trade. It's evil.

"It is a moral stain on our society.

"How can we do this
to other people?"

Emily is composing the novel

and is thinking about the novel

at precisely the moment
that these debates are raging

about what does it mean
to be exposed to a system

which is making
phenomenal amounts of money,

which actually fuels
the Industrial Revolution,

and makes Britain, you know,
the great capitalist power

in the 19th century that she became?

She would have been very aware

that slavery was not just an evil

that was perpetrated
upon non-white people;

slavery was an evil
that was actually eating away

at the moral fibre
of people that looked like her.

So, in one sense,
I think you could see the novel

as a sort of warning
to Victorian society,

and perhaps particularly
Victorian colonial society,

that, you know, the outcast
will rise against you in the end.

(HAUNTING MUSIC)

It seems that,
at the heart of her novel,

Emily Bronte tucked all the things

that ate away
at the society of her time -

violent class relations...

..but also colonisation, slavery...

..the oppression of the other.

However, it took until 2011,
and Andrea Arnold's adaptation,

for a Black actor, James Howson,
to play Heathcliff in a film.

It's not convenient to look

at a great canonical novel
like Wuthering Heights

and see it through the prism
of multiculturalism,

you know,
because it didn't begin then,

as far as most people are concerned.

It began with people like me

arriving in England
after the Second World War.

They don't want to think,
"Oh, it began all those years ago?"

I think that's what
Emily Bronte could see.

(SHIP'S HORN BLARES IN DISTANCE)

My parents came to England
in the late '50s from Saint Kitts,

which is a small island
in the Caribbean.

I did grow up ten miles away
from where she grew up...

..in the '60s in Leeds,

as a Yorkshire kid, as a northerner,
but as a Black northerner,

which obviously meant that at times,
it was precarious.

That duality, where some days
you feel you belong,

some days in subtle
and unsubtle ways you don't belong.

I think I share that with her

because I'm sure on some days
she belonged

because her father was...
the big man in town.

It was his church, you know,

and she could sit in the front pew,
and she belonged,

but, erm, I'm sure when people saw
her walking by herself on the moors,

they're thinking, "Who's that freak
out there? What is she doing?"

(WIND WHISTLES)

It's really important to understand

that Emily Bronte herself
was marginalised.

You're not... If you have
to publish under the name of a man,

as a woman, that tells you something

about the precarious nature of your
relationship to that society.

So, that's the crucible, if you
like, out of which she was writing.

She had intuition about the other
because she's the other too.

That's why.

(CHURCH BELL RINGING)

(LEAVES RUSTLING)

(DOOR OPENS)

(FOOTSTEPS)

(CHAIR SCRAPES)

WOMAN: "Monday 26th June, 1837,
a bit past four o'clock.

"Charlotte working in Aunt's room.

"Anne and I writing
in the drawing room."

In her diary entries,

Emily Bronte never refers
to her novel, Wuthering Heights,

Heathcliff, or Cathy.

She never provides an explanation.

Just the present moment...

WOMAN: "Aunt: Come, Emily,
it's past 4 o’clock.

"Emily: Yes, Aunt.

"Ann: Well, do you intend
to write in the evening?

"Emily: Well, what think you?"

..as well her imagination,

which bursts forth here
and there in a line.

WOMAN: "A fine, rather coolish,
thin-grey, cloudy, but sunny day.

"Papa gone out,
Tabby in the kitchen.

"The Emperors and Empresses
of Gondal and Gaaldine

"to prepare for the coronation."

It's really as if the imaginary
world, the fantasy world,

and the real world
are on a continuum for her.

For Emily, the imaginary world
is as real as the real world.

she doesn't really ever want to give
up retreating into this world.

I mean, I say retreating,
but on the other hand,

it was also clearly a world
in which she was able to exercise

her powers of imagination
in a really creative way

that, you know,
involved actual real work

that fed into her greatest work,
Wuthering Heights.

(FIRE CRACKLING)

(CLOCK CHIMING)

As they grew up, Charlotte
and Branwell drifted away

from the imaginary worlds
of their childhood.

Emily stayed true to them,

building a new kingdom, Gondal,
with her younger sister Anne.

The saga of Gondal exists
only in Emily's poems.

Hundreds of verses written from her
teens until the end of her life.

Between the lines, you glimpse the
fate of a mysterious queen - AGA:

Augusta Geraldine Almeda.

Her kingdom of moors and mist,

her many lovers, dead in combat,

murdered or mad with love.

WOMAN:
"Augusta, you will soon return

"Back to that land
in health and bloom

"And then the heath alone will mourn

"Above my unremembered tomb

"For you'll forget the lonely grave

"And mouldering corpse
by Elnor's waves."

(WIND WHISTLING)

Beautiful, in love, rebellious,

could AGA foreshadow the rebellious
Cathy of Wuthering Heights?

I would even go so far as to suggest

that Wuthering Heights
is taken from a Gondal story.

I think she's taken the characters

and put them
into a Yorkshire setting.

I think Emily's poetry is important.

It gives you an indication
of the themes that drew her,

and which are all there
in Wuthering Heights.

Doomed love affairs,
tragic early deaths

and, erm, also revenge,
it has to be said.

Those are themes which you see
in Wuthering Heights.

(FOOTSTEPS)

Emily Bronte didn't have
to experience

the passions woven into her poems;

she read about them...

..in Walter Scott's
adventure novels...

and in the inflammatory poems
of Lord Byron, the great Romantic.

His pariah heroes,
his scandalous love stories

filled her imagination
from childhood on,

and never left her.

We describe Emily Bronte
as being a genius.

That's where it comes into it.

I think if she'd had
a real-life love affair,

Wuthering Heights would have been
a completely different book.

I think it's the fact that she
didn't have a real-life love affair,

and that this relationship

is based on the dramatic
that she's read in Byron,

in Blackwood's Magazine.

And also, if you think about

her own brother's tragic love
affair with Mrs Robinson

and the devastation that
that caused in his own life,

you can kind of see where the drama

in the relationship between
Cathy and Heathcliff came about.

(CROWS CAWING)

Emily saw her brother foundering,

lost because of his impossible love
for a married woman, Mrs Robinson.

Branwell, the prodigy,
the precocious writer,

the promising painter
was a complete failure.

Incapable of publishing a poem,

he ruined himself in the taverns
and artificial paradises.

(CHURCH BELL RINGS)

From this painting of the four
of them, which he painted at 17,

he eventually removed his image.

He died on September 24th, 1848,
at the age of 32,

defeated by his sorrowful passions
and tuberculosis.

A few weeks later, Emily, too,
fell ill with tuberculosis.

She refused any treatment.

She died on December 19th, 1848...

on this sofa, in the parlour
in which she had grown up,

dreamed, written.

(SOLEMN PIANO MUSIC)

(WIND GUSTING)

Childhood, that's the country
that writers never leave.

First love...

first passion,

first betrayal,

erm...

..you carry it
for the rest of your life.

Erm...

Everything thereafter for a writer,

I think, is a sort of form
of observation.

But the real bedrock
of what you're going to deal with

and the real bedrock
of what you're interested in,

you're going to return to and mine

and reexamine and mine it again...

..erm,
is early experiences in childhood.

(LEAVES RUSTLING)

In the end, isn't that
what she shares with Heathcliff?

Her wretched anti-hero,
haunted by his dead love,

who never got over the lost paradise
from which he had been exiled.

Wuthering Heights.

Cathy.

The moors.

Childhood.

(WIND WHISTLING)

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