The people are frothing for a beloved Victorian classic once again, and that’s at least one promising sign that great literature continues to transcend — especially if you’re the dark, twisted weirdo of a novel that is Wuthering Heights. To gird oneself for the discourse around Emerald Fennell’s lace-lined adaptation (we hear the review embargo drops Monday…), I had the chance to call up one of my favorite people to discuss books with: Radhika Jones.
Radhika is an editor and writer at work on a memoir called Bookish. She’s a former editor in chief of Vanity Fair, and former editorial director of books at the New York Times. Coincidentally, she also just launched her book club newsletter a few weeks ago, where she’s tackling Wuthering Heights with the kind of perspective and context we would all benefit from brushing up on before taking any more Twitter bait about Heathcliff’s ancestry (not me, even though I alone have the one perfect opinion…)
On the pod, we cleared up plot points, discussed the Victorian significance of characters reading, and talked a lot about how the novel beguiles, offends, and even stuns modern sensibilities. Don’t let the bodice branding fool you: whatever vapours were floating around West Yorkshire in circa 1847 were not holding Emily Brontë back.
Questions asked and answered include:
What is Radhika’s secret to keeping a book club going since 2008???
What makes Wuthering Heights kind of the perfect “middle age” book?
What do we think of Nelly — for a narrator, she’s very meddlesome!
For all the sexy marketing around the movie adaptation, canonically, Healthcliff and Cathy never actually…consummate their love, right? Does Emerald Fennell know this?
Why do we as the reader never realize that Cathy is pregnant until, well, you know…
Is “illness as plot point” a bit of a Victorian cop-out literary device?
Do we like the surprisingly happy ending, or was that also a bit of a narrative cop-out?
You can subscribe to Radhika’s newsletter here, follow her on IG @radhikajones, and listen to the podcast below. And if you are also a Part 2 truther, please signal your solidarity below!
