Wuthering Heights

DeRay and I watched the version of Wuthering Heights made in 1992 last night. I would like to see again the version with Katharine Hepburn. I don’t think she would have been quite so giggly.

Many people consider Wuthering Heights to be a straightforward, if intense, love story — Romeo and Juliet on the Yorkshire Moors. But this is a mistake. Really the story is one of revenge. It follows the life of Heathcliff, a mysterious gypsy-like person, from childhood (about seven years old) to his death in his late thirties. Heathcliff rises in his adopted family and then is reduced to the status of a servant, running away when the young woman he loves decides to marry another. He returns later, rich and educated, and sets about gaining his revenge on the two families that he believed ruined his life.

I agree it is a love story and also a tragic story of revenge.

Another angle not mentioned is the adopted gypsy boy Heathcliff following his DNA, his instincts, “the apple not falling far from the tree” - a child usually has a similar character or similar qualities to his or her parents.  The genetic gene runs deep. I believe it is dominate in spite of our environment. That’s just my gut feeling from experience.

Remember Lucy Temerlin (1964–1987), a chimpanzee owned by the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma, and raised by Maurice K. Temerllin, Ph.D,  a psychotherapist and professor at the University of Oklahoma and his wife, Jane W. Temerlin.

Temerlin and his wife raised Lucy as if she were a human child, teaching her to eat with silverware, dress herself, flip through magazines, and sit in a chair at the dinner table. She was taught American Sign Language by primatologist Roger Fouts as part of an ape language project and eventually learned 140 signs. Fouts has written that when he arrived at Lucy's home at 8:30 every morning, Lucy would greet him with a hug, take the kettle, fill it with water, find two cups and tea bags, and serve the tea.

By the time she was 12, Lucy had become very strong and was very destructive in the Temerlin house.  She would tear the living room to sheds in minutes.  They actually had to cage her, eventually sending her back to the wilds.  

At first, she picked up their traits, including language, customs, and mannerisms; maybe even beliefs; charming their family life.  As she got older, more of her hereditary instincts manifest and she did not fit in at all.

Did Heathcliff’s genetics have any bearing on his actions? Was it more than love and revenge? Was it manifest destiny?