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princesssarisa · 3 years

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A defense of the ending of “Wuthering Heights"

@astrangechoiceoffavourites, @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys, @heightsandmoors, @incorrectwutheringheightsquotes

I’ve been reading other people’s opinions on Wuthering Heights this past year, I’ve noticed a small recurring theme.

It’s the idea that the ending feels out of place; tacked on; anti-climactic; too tame compared to the rest of the book. That it feels wrong for Heathcliff to simply lose interest in his revenge and then lose the will to live, or for the surviving characters to have any kind of happy or hopeful ending after so much brutality.

One book I read excerpts from on Google Books (I don’t remember the title or the author) suggested that maybe Emily Brontë originally wrote a very different, more brutal and Gothic ending, now lost. The author proposed that the final ending was probably the result of Anne and/or Charlotte urging Emily to tone down the book’s “immorality.” Of course this is pure conjecture. This same author also speculated that in the novel’s first draft, Heathcliff was explicitly Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, but that Anne and/or Charlotte persuaded Emily to change it. I’m not at all convinced by that theory, since @astrangechoiceoffavourites has argued very eloquently that to make Heathcliff and Cathy’s love forbidden because of the incest taboo rather than because of social class and race would go against the plot’s main themes and make nonsense of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Lintons and Earnshaws.

Still, this theorist isn’t the only person to think the ending (and possibly the whole second generation storyline) feels like the work of a different author than the rest of the book. Just recently I read a comment on Facebook arguing that a more cohesive, consistent Wuthering Heights would have had “a much darker and more explosive ending.” I assume a similar mindset is why some theorize that Branwell wrote the novel’s first half and Emily wrote the second. (I think I hate that theory even more than I hate the theory that Branwell wrote it all – “He didn’t write the whole book, but he did write the part everyone likes best.”) And if we compare the various adaptations’ endings to the ending of the book, there’s definitely a trend of giving Heathcliff a more brutal death.

I understand all of this. The ending of the book is ironic. Heathcliff himself knows it’s ironic: “It is a poor conclusion, is it not?” he asks Nelly, “an absurd termination to my violent exertions?” We don’t expect a towering, terrifying yet fascinating Byronic anti-hero like Heathcliff to become apathetic and ineffectual in the end and then die quietly (albeit mysteriously and eerily) in bed. We’d sooner expect him to freeze to death chasing Cathy’s ghost through a blizzard, or to be shot by his worst enemy, or to be lured by Cathy’s ghost to commit suicide by gunshot.

But I know I’m not the only person who thinks the entire book is fully cohesive and who sees nothing wrong with the ending whatsoever.

As far as I’m concerned, Heathcliff’s “absurd” end is more interesting than anything “darker and more explosive” would have been, precisely because it’s unexpected and yet makes perfect sense. Revenge never makes Heathcliff truly happy or brings him peace of mind: we know that all along. It might distract him from his pain, but it can’t cure it. While initially surprising, in hindsight it’s not surprising at all that, with no out-of-character repentance or remorse, he eventually loses the will to seek any more revenge. At heart it was never what he really wanted most; his real greatest desire is and always has been to be with Cathy.

Then there’s the strongest factor in his loss of his will for revenge: his grudging empathy for Hareton. Again, as far as I’m concerned, this is fascinating irony. Heathcliff has purposefully set out to shape Hareton into a copy of himself. Ultimately, that scheme “goes horribly right,” because he sees too much of his younger self in Hareton to hate him as much as he wants to, or to have the will to separate him from Cathy II the way he himself was separated from Cathy I. Then there’s Hareton’s resemblance to his aunt, Cathy I; even though Heathcliff’s passion for Cathy has been the motive for all his revenge on the two families that separated them, in the end it’s what makes him unable to ruin the lives of her lookalike nephew and her daughter, even though they’re also the children of the two men most responsible for taking Cathy from him. Again, it works because it’s handled delicately and without sentimentality. He still shows no remorse or regret for his past actions, and never shows any real kindness or fondness to Hareton or Cathy II, but despises the conflicted feelings they stir in him. But the fact remains that, despite all his efforts to be a monster over the years, he’s still a human being, capable of some empathy for people in whom he sees aspects of himself and of his beloved Cathy. I think it’s fascinating that this humanity, and not his monstrous actions, is what undoes him in the end.

Also, as some critics have pointed out, the very fact that Heathcliff receives no punishment for his sins (apart from his inner torment) makes the ending subversive by Victorian standards. If he had died a brutal death, it could easily have been viewed as his comeuppance, demonstrating God’s justice. From a moral and religious perspective, it might be all the more disturbing that instead he gets to die as close to a peaceful death as his character allows, with a devilish smile on his face.

Moving beyond Heathcliff’s death, I don’t see anything wrong with Hareton and Cathy II′s ending either.

First of all, it isn’t necessarily a straightforward happy ending. It’s definitely bittersweet if we have any sympathy for Heathcliff, and not just because he dies. This penniless, abused, disdained orphan of color defied the classism and racism of his society by clawing his way to wealth and status and by bringing down the two families who once oppressed him, but in the end, it’s all for nothing. Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange go back to the Earnshaw and Linton heirs and the only trace left of Heathcliff is a single name and death date on a tombstone. He’s just as much of a “nobody” in death as he was as a homeless child. Of course it’s tempting to cheer for this fact because of his cruelty and because Cathy II and Hareton are sympathetic, basically innocent young people whom he unfairly punished for their parents’ sins. But in a way at least, especially in Marxist readings of the book (which I don’t fully agree with but do see validity in), the ending can be viewed as the triumph of the classist and racist status quo.

Nor, as some critics have argued, is it guaranteed that Cathy II and Hareton will live happily ever after. First of all, the fact remains that Hareton loved and loyally served Heathcliff to the end, and to please Hareton, Cathy had to stop speaking out against Heathcliff even though he had horribly abused her. There’s also the fact that Hareton once hit Cathy himself; only once, and before they were even friends, let alone lovers, but in the real world it rarely bodes well for a woman to marry a man who once slapped her. A few critics have wondered if Hareton is really permanently “tamed” in the end, or will eventually revert to the roughness Heathcliff bred in him and abuse his new power and status the same way Heathcliff did. On the flip side, there’s the fact that apart from her conceding not to criticize Heathcliff, Cathy seems to rule over Hareton almost as much as her mother did over Heathcliff when they were children. She educates him, he craves her esteem and does her bidding, and in his lessons she meets his mistakes and inattention (however playfully) with “smart slaps” and threats of hair-pulling. Some critics have wondered if we should view these as red flags; if Cathy II is destined to be an emotional abuser like her mother was.

But even if you don’t subscribe to those darker interpretations of the ending... even if you view Cathy and Hareton as fundamentally good people who genuinely grow and change for the better, find a healthy balance between the worlds of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and will be truly happy together... well, what’s wrong with that?

Is it really so impossible to believe that sometimes the cycle of abuse can be broken, or so “out of place” to show it being broken at the end of a book that shows its horrors? Is it just naïve delusion to hope that, with effort, children can avoid repeating their parents’ mistakes and opposing social structures like the Heights and the Grange can be reconciled? That at least one young couple might manage to combine the good aspects of both worlds while discarding the bad, rather than combining the worst of both worlds the way Heathcliff did? Just because the book is dark as a whole, do we really need to be so cynical when reading it that we can’t allow it to end on a note of hope?

Besides, I’ve written before about the mirror-image character arcs of the two Cathys. Cathy I is born and raised at Wuthering Heights, but eventually leaves it for Thrushcross Grange when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the rugged dark-haired Heathcliff and wanders the moors with him, but then gains snobbery, treats Heathcliff with increasing disdain, and shifts her attentions to the prissy blond-haired Edgar, whom she marries; as a result, her life ends in misery. Cathy II is born and raised at Thushcross Grange, but eventually she leaves it for Wuthering Heights when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the prissy blond-haired Linton, whom she marries, and treats the rugged dark-haired Hareton with disdain, but eventually she loses her snobbery, learns to love Hareton, and wanders the moors with him. In no way is Cathy II’s positive ending “tacked on” – her entire character arc is structured to be the opposite of her mother’s tragedy.

I understand why some people don’t care for the ending and think it feels anti-climactic or out of place. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a thoroughly effective ending and fully consistent with what came before.

#wuthering heights #meta #emily bronte #heathcliff #catherine linton #hareton earnshaw #tw: death #tw: abuse #literature

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

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Psycho Analysis: Lucy

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

It’s not very often you see a series where the villain is the main character, but then again it isn’t very often you see a series quite like Elfen Lied. The series is dark, foreboding, and gory, and a lot of that has to do with its protagonist, the Diclonius woman Lucy. Lucy is one of the most brutally tragic villains you’ll ever see, between her incredibly nightmarish childhood to the constant torment her very nature puts her through as a mutant. It all adds up to a very rich, complex character... though one that ends up not as fully realized as she could have been.

Actor: Kira Vincent-Davis portrayed Lucy in one of her star-making roles. The other? Osaka from Azumanga Daioh. She definitely delivers an excellent performance here, and it is easy to see how she managed to get such a varied career out of this. She knows just how to inject the right emotions into Lucy’s voice, and when Lucy is in her Nyuu personality she manages to fill the latter’s Pokemon speak with enough character that you get what she’s going for.

Motivation/Goals: Lucy is a Diclonius, and as such she has internal homicidal instincts that make her desire to slaughter as many people as humanly possible; coupled with the horns, the name she ends up being given (her true name is Kaede, but she ends up being called Lucy), and the fact she ends up embodying each of the Seven Deadly Sins if you read into her actions, and Lucy ends up a symbolic stand-in for the Antichrist. Of course, as a child, she didn’t really grasp this and in fact actively tried to suppress these feelings, but unfortunately fate decided to deal her a very poor hand.

First was her only source of happiness at the orphanage she grew up in, a puppy. A puppy that her bullies found out about, and in one of the most infamous moments of the series, beat it to death in front of her… and in turn, begin her descent into villainy as she slaughters the entire lot of kids, from her bullies to the girl she had befriended earlier who decided to snitch to the bullies about the puppy.

Second was what she felt was a betrayal at the hands of her only friend, Kouta. After he got her to open up and befriended her, she saw him at the festival with his female cousin and became insanely jealous, thinking he chose another girl over her… and so she went on a killing spree, which culminated in killing Kouta’s father and sister right in front of him.

And finally, her last ray of hope, a human who she had befriended was injured by the people who finally took her into custody… she died of her wounds, but Lucy wasn’t told until after she was imprisoned under the condition that they save her. When she finally gets a chance to escape, her sole motivation seems to be staying near Kouta again and try to find some way to apologize for her heinous actions, though even she realizes she’ll never be able to atone for what she did to him.

This brings about a pretty interesting facet of her goals: she slowly starts to defrost and gain more humanity the more time she and her split personality Nyuu spend with Kouta. It is in fact a major part of the story that she slowly becomes less evil as time goes on and she begins to develop, though by “less evil” I mean to say that at best she is an anti-hero, one who has no qualms about brutally dismembering anyone who dares to harm Kouta or herself.

This also ties into one of the major themes of the series: nature vs. nurture. Obviously, Lucy’s internal genetic desire to wipe out humanity is her inherent nature, but one also needs to look at what drove her to her killings; she was bullied, abused, and faced prejudice, betrayal, and scorn all around her for her entire childhood. Notice how when she’s shown the simplest compassion, she immediately starts to fall for that person and seems to want to do better, before a simple misunderstanding causes her to react in a volatile manner. It may seem over-the-top and disproportianate what she does to Kouta, but this is what her peers and caretakers molded her into: a violent misanthrope who clings desperately to even the tiniest shred of kindness in the world, and when she feels betrayed she lashes out and kills in a fit of rage, giving in to her violent nature. After gaining the amnesia during her escape at the start of the series and gaining her split personality, she is taken in yet again by Kouta and treated as a friend, an equal, and this begins Lucy’s ascent from pure villain protagonist to very, VERY dark anti-hero.

Personality: Lucy is a cold, cynical, and bitter woman due to the numerous tragedies she experienced, but she is no emotionless husk; if there is one thing that is true about Lucy, it is that her capacity for love is one of her greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. Love is what drove her to kill Kouta’s family out of jealousy, it’s what drove herself to sacrifice herself for Aiko (the girl she befriended before being captured), it’s what drives her the most throughout the series really. Her capacity for love is only even closely rivaled by her capacity for hate.

Final Fate: In the anime, Lucy finally confesses the truth to Kouta, and while he outright says he can never forgive her for what she did, he is at least a little more sympathetic to her plight than he was in the manga, where he outright said he hated her (though he did at least say her split personality Nyuu could stick around as long as she promised not to kill anyone). She then makes a heroic sacrifice against the army who is after her, one which she may or may not have survived. The ending is rather ambiguous, as opposed to that of the manga in which she is really and most sincerely dead after nearly bringing about the apocalypse in a fit of rage.

Best Scene: There are a lot of contenders, but perhaps her finest moment is the scene where Lucy as we know her is truly born, baptized in the blood of the bullies who killed her dog.

Best Quote: “When you're miserable, you need to make someone even more miserable than yourself.”

Final Thoughts & Score: Lucy is an amazing character. Her character arc is a depressing, heartrending rollercoaster showing her descent into the darkest depths of despair, cynicism, and evil before she begins to slowly but surely rise again, climbing out of the dark if only just a little bit. She’s stoic and sadistic, monstrous and vicious, cruel and uncaring… but at the same time, she has a boundless expanse of love inside her broken, battered heart, and a burning passion that drives her actions and the plot. She is shattered, she is flawed, but she is so very interesting.

A really fascinating aspect of her is how she deconstructs the tropes of the cute monster girl and magical girlfriend. The former is deconstructed by the fact that, despite being appealing to the viewer and us being given no reason to think she’d be unattractive to the humans of her world, her horns and other differences cause her to be mocked, tormented, and persecuted by her peers, with said persecution ultimately pushing her over the edge and causing her to become a serial killer. For the latter, her powers are incredily, seriously dangerous, as her invisible arms (or vectors, as they are called in the series) can easily dismember and when not dismembering infect the reproductive capabilities of whoever they touch, and there is also the fact that they are part of the contributing factor that drives her to madness.

Lucy gets a 9/10. She’s a very impressive villain, and one who has one of the most fascinatingly tragic backstories. In fact, she has the backstory by which all tragic backstories should be judged; if your villain wants to destroy the human race and yet their backstory wasn’t a horrendously cruel conga line of trauma the way Lucy’s was, you may want to rethink that backstory. It really is the tragedy and the way the series unfolds to show you just how she became the way she is that makes her so great; the only reason I don’t give her perfect marks is because the manga goes into far more detail in developing her, as the anime was made while the manga was still ongoing.

And you know what? That might honestly be for the better. Lucy in the manga was far more insane, far more evil, and far easier to see as irredeemable, though even there she had moments of kindness and compassion that ultimately belied her true nature buried under the years of systematic abuse and betrayal. In the anime, while she is still a bitter, jaded serial killer, she comes off as bit more worthy of redemption; she revels far less in the actions she takes and seems to act in her adulthood more out of self-preservation than anything, as she harms only those who have wronged her rather than people who just get in her way. It does end up making it more believable when Kouta offers his sympathy at anime’s end; this version of Lucy seems more like a broken monster who does all she does because at this point it’s all she knows and all she thinks she can be rather than someone who all too often indulges their twisted genetic instinct. I would have much preferred to see this Lucy receive the culmination to her character that the one in the manga did, but sadly that did not come to pass. We are left with something brilliant, but also something that could have been even more heartbreakingly beautiful in its tragic poignancy.

#Psycho Analysis #Lucy #Elfen Lied #Spoilers #speelers

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wittypenguin · 5 years

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Glass (2019)

I’ve delayed writing this review from last week because I wanted to have a second look at it. Originally I had a long paragraph explaining about how I was excited to see the final film in the ‘Eastrail 177 Trilogy’ by director M. Night Shyamalan, as well as getting more of Samuel L Jackson’s character, Elijah Price. As much as James McAvoy’s performance is phenomenal to see, the character is more predictable: Kevin Michael Crumb will destroy everything in his path as ‘The Beast.’ On the other hand, ‘Mr Glass’ will not only accomplish something you thought improbable, he’ll do so before you had even thought of it in the first place. This sort of evil is far more fascinating than savage destruction.

Anyway, that paragraph — though mostly reconstructed above — is gone, and my initial enthusiasm for the events in the film have also been dampened somewhat by both time and listening to this episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, all of which has lead to me reconsidering some salient aspects of the plot and themes of the film, thus a second viewing.

In Split, we have Claire using her own experience to save others, whereas in this film we have all the main characters experienced with each other (for the most part), so less of any sort of reveal is inherently possible. That said, there’s a light touch when updating some of the characters’ stories — eg: Clair’s living situation, as well as the Dunn family — but others are bashed over the head until you want to yell for them to stop. References to scenes in the other two films — or just straight-up footage from them — are made too much of. I see that reminders are sometimes necessary, can be helpful even, but there’s a majority here that I question the usefulness of.

The facility in which much of the action takes place is a hospital with a specialty of mental health issues. It’s apparently an influence of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but the original Ken Kesey novel was published in 1962, the play débuted the next year, and the film was released in 1975. Even measuring from the film, psychiatric theory and medicine have progressed significantly in the intervening 44 years, as has societal understanding of mental health issues. Sure, these characters do not have simple issues, but surely we can have these three in something which wasn’t once described as a ‘loony bin,’ can’t we?

For sheer ‘hey, why not, it’ll make a great story,’ it’s tough to make sense of all of the various external characters arriving at the facility near the end. Sure, Dr Fletcher is coming to work, and maybe Claire is there to aid in the rehabilitation of Kevin, but the simultaneous arrival of Elijah’s mother’s as well as Joseph makes no sense. Unless Elijah has arranged all of this, but we neither see him do so, nor is there a discussion from the others that he has. I just couldn’t get past the illogic of it.

Spencer Treat Clark as ‘Joseph Dunn’ — — — —

There’s a wonderful scene with Joseph Dunn (played once more by Spencer Treat Clark) comes in to explain to Dr Fletcher about who and what his father really is. Her methodical deconstruction of his argument regarding why David “Overseer” Dunn should be released is hilarious. It certainly outlines both how insane the claims are about his father’s abilities, as well as how patently insane he sounds trying to argue that they are not true. Because we buy the reality of the film, the unreality of his argument is nuts, while at the same time, the reality of the film is nuts. This is further reinforced by Dr Fletcher’s summation late in the film of the three archetypes meeting in this story. Thus, we are watching something fully aware of its own unlikely nature.

Additionally, having the same person playing Joseph Dunn now as played him in the original film of 2000 is awesome!

Claire’s sudden feeling that the person who attacked and nearly killed her in Split now being, I dunno, ‘well meaning’ is something which I just do not get. I doin’t think there’s any textual justification for it; although the notion of ‘it’s not him, it’s the sickness’ might work, but isn’t invoked. The only suggestion of one is that she may feel sympathy for Kevin’s relationship with his mother and sees a parallel to her own experience, which isn’t nearly enough to justify what’s happened to her view (also while we’re at it WHY IS SHE STILL WEARING THAT ZOO JACKET?!). It is integral to make the rest of her character’s involvement in the denouement of the story work. For example: when she first arrives at the facility, she asks ‘would it be alright to see them,’ and is quite correctly told ‘no. You’re the victim.’ Then we see her being led into the secure portion of the building, completely contradicting every logical thing in the world of psychiatric medicine. Granted, if we didn’t see that, we wouldn’t have much of a movie, either, but the point here is that the world being constructed needs to justify why the rules are being altered from something sensible, and that doesn’t happen. Mr Shyamalan disagrees me, obviously, and I respect his decision, as I would probably do the same thing in his place; it makes things more interesting. She does this again late in the film, in an attempt to save some SWAT Team members from harm, and it still doesn’t make sense that she’s an advocate for her own attacker.

I am the questionable cloud in David’s MRI — Sarah Paulson as ‘Dr Fletcher’ — — — —

I originally mistook Sarah Paulson for Nicole Kidman doing a role with her credit hidden as much as possible so that people didn’t foresee her character as involved as she is; much the same way that Kevin Spacey’s credit is buried in Se7en. Ms Paulson really looks like Ms Kidman here (especially if one hasn’t seen the latter on screen for a number of years [:: awkward cough ::]) and her performance really is just as believable and studious as one Ms Kidman might bring. Early on, her character explains that she’s here to help the three characters overcome their delusions “by any means necessary,” which sounds particularly ominous.

Bruce Willis’ performance in Twelve Monkeys was super calm and flat but he also let his inner 8-year-old out with expressions of pure joy. It worked because there was a range. Here it doesn’t work because we don’t have much beyond ‘flat’ and ‘punching.’ That’s more like two modes, and just as two notes do not make a melody, two disparate states of being do not constitute a character.

It’s not until over an hour in that Mr Glass gets his action on, and it’s about the same time that something in the story happens too. That’s a long time to wait. Mr Jackson is worth the wait in any film, and here is no different. He is fantastic. Everything he does is exactly what’s needed.

Samuel L Jackson [left] as ‘Elijah Price’ and James McAvoy as ‘Kevin Michael Crumb,’ etcetera… — — — —

Mr McAvoy’s performance as Kevin Michael Crumb is once more, grand. I’ll admit to probably liking it as an actor, as opposed to doing so as a viewer. As is pointed-out on the PCHH episode linked to above, Mr McAvoy is Acting Really Hard here, with us seeing four complete transformations into ‘The Beast’ by my count. We had the personality revealed in the second film of this trilogy, so we already know what’s involved with the transformation, but one or two runs through the process is good as a reminder, perhaps with Elijah’s reaction when he sees it leading to an understanding of where he’s headed. Four, however, does seem a bit indulgent. I have the gift of objectivity and hindsight, but so would trim at least one of them out of this tale, probably switching to some other action while The Beast gets his growling done.

There’s a scene with Mr McAvoy’s multiple characters in the cell where he’s jumping back and forth between personalities and a nurse is there punching the light system to get Kevin to stop talking, and one wonders ‘why don’t you just leave the room, man? You won’t hear anything any of them are saying then!’ Granted, it does give the audience a chance to see a bunch of personalities in the character in rapid succession, but surely there’s a better way to present that which makes more narrative sense?

Overall, I love the performances, the story, and the action. The way the various plot threads all wove together and found conclusions was very satisfying. The new stuff was equally good, especially the things which were done with Ms Paulson’s character. The scripted dialogue was smart and witty and equally full of pathos. I would definitely recommend seeing all three parts of this. If you haven’t seen either Unbreakable or Split, do not start with this. It’s definitely a conclusion of a story, and not an entry point.

Some things I wouldn’t have done the way Mr Shyamalan did, but that’s because it was his movie and not mine. He did an excellent job with the creation of an ending to a complicated multi-part story.

★★★☆☆

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