When I tell people that Wuthering Heights is my favourite book of all
time,
they tend to raise an eyebrow,
perhaps out of concern.
Although,
of course,
I am not the only one.
I am just one of hundreds of thousands, millions of people who
have read and loved Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
And I'm sure you've heard the news that there is a brand new film about Emily Bronte's life,
and I was lucky enough to be able to interview the screenwriter and director of the film
Emily.
So stay tuned for that later in this video.
Now,
I can't quite remember when I first read Wuthering Heights,
whether I was still in high school or I was at University.
But I do remember that as a second language speaker of English,
that it was difficult to get through.
And even to this day,
like I wouldn't say that this is an easy book to read,
but I was absolutely fascinated by this book.
The three Bronte sisters,
Charlotte and Emily and their brother Branwell,
lived in Yorkshire and for most of their lives,
lived in a town called Haworth and the more I got i.nterested in the lives of the
Brontes.
The more I got fascinated with this place.
I got to visit a few years ago with my parents,
just like a flying visit.
And then more recently I went on a trip by myself to just spend some time there and soak it
all up.
See their old house,
which is now a museum. Walk on the moors while I listen to my Wuthering Heights
audiobook.
I stayed in an Airbnb that overlooked their old house in the street leading towards
it. And just the more I learn about the Brontes and the more I
look into it.
And the more I read,
the more fascinated I become.
So I figured I start this off with some of the reasons why I'm obsessed with the
Brontes.
And maybe some of these are ones that you're interested in as well.
Miss Emily Bronte.
You're off to become a wonderful teacher.
You know,
I don't like to meet new people.
What do you want to do?
Do you think I could be a writer?
I love that all the siblings wrote when they were children.
They wrote all these stories together,
building a whole universe.
A lot of people are really interested in those stories that they wrote as children.
That fantasy world isn't really one of my particular interest,
but I do love that.
There's just a sibling group,
including their brother Branwell,
and they were all writing.
They were writing poetry.
They were writing novels as they got older.
I don't know how often they would,
you know,
sit and write together or if they all
kind of spread out and wrote by themselves.
But I just love the idea of this like circle of writers and
obviously throughout history there were many of those,
but a lot of them are sort of friends and then spouses coming together.
But this being a group of siblings just feels really special.
I love the combination of their personalities.
Charlotte was small of stature,
and she was very serious. Anne was,
I guess, more of the quiet one.
Emily.
It was the weird one.
Obviously,
that is extremely simplified,
and I would love to learn more about their different characters,
but I love that dynamic. As women they had to publish under pen names,
and even then,
these books absolutely shocked the readers and reviewers.
As with many authors,
their experiences and their environment are so tightly bound into
their writing.
So they lived in Yorkshire.
They had this gorgeous wild landscape all around them,
like right at their front door.
I think at the same time,
also,
there was this huge amount of imagination used in the writing.
When you read Wuthering Heights and you hear about Emily Bronte's life,
you do think,
Where did this come from?
Has these dramatic scenarios these really cruel,
intense relationships.
When you read about her life,
some of it you can kind of match up,
and a lot of it just still remain so much of a mystery.
There was a huge connection and inspiration to the Gothic, again,
especially with Wuthering Heights with the haunting.
I absolutely love Gothic fiction.
I'm reading more and more of it.
That's another thing that even when I was a teenager that immediately clicked with me
and speaking of the Gothic,
their house overlooked a graveyard.
There's so many things about their stories,
like when you lay it out,
it just all seems to fit.
It's so perfectly,
and I think that's why so many people get fascinated with them.
They also all died quite young.
Some of their siblings died even younger,
and their father outlived all of them.
People sometimes tend to romanticise early death,
but it's interesting to think What would their lives have looked like if they had made it into their
like forties and fifties?
And if they wrote more novels and have more recognition during their lifetime. And then tied into that as
well There is the context of the limited options that were for women at the time,
especially unmarried women.
I guess they became teachers governesses.
There were a few other options,
but it was limited and they wanted to be creatives and they wanted to
write.
And perhaps some of that practically was also coming from what talents do we have that
we can use to make money?
Although at that time that didn't seem like a feasible option for them.
When I heard that there was going to be a film about Emily's life,
I was so,
so excited.
I feel like there's nothing like a film to just feel like you're experiencing things like
with these people.
And, of course,
if it's something that you care about so much you do get scared about,
like the different possibilities of what it might turn into.
But I had an opportunity to watch the film early,
and I loved it.
I absolutely like bawled.
at certain moments.
There's things I knew about.
There's unexpected things,
and there are different twists and different imaginations.
And I was really excited to get a chance to talk to director and
screenwriter Frances O'Connor because usually you sit in the cinema and you've got questions.
And this time I got to ask her some of my questions.
Hi,
so nice to talk to you today.
I absolutely loved the film.
I'm a big,
big Bronte fan.
Wuthering Heights is my favourite book.
Usually when I tell people that they say,
Are you OK?
And obviously the first question is,
what was your first introduction to the Brontes?
Were you young?
Were you a bit older?
What was the first time you were introduced to them?
I mean,
I read,
um,
Wuthering Heights because people just said,
Oh, you should read this.
But I was like,
15 and I had this hour's journey to school every day.
So I read that on a bus and I kind of like would kind of get
off at my stop after have been on the Yorkshire moors.
So for me,
I just thought I just I thought it really just piqued my imagination and the power
that's in that book for 15 year old girls like,
Yeah,
some people are introduced to it because I have to read at school.
But then there's something to it when you discover it on your own.
I think that makes it extra special.
And my sister,
who is just like one year older than me,
she was reading Jane Eyre.
And then at a certain point we switched.
Yeah,
Love that.
There's obviously a lot of mystery around the Brontes.
There's a lot of things that we know a lot of things that we don't know. A lot of this film is based.
In fact,
a lot of it is based in sort of your vision and your imagination.
And I wanted to ask,
How did you go through that decision process and what was the inspiration behind that?
Yeah,
when I was doing a film as a young actor,
I went up to Haworth for the first time and it was just so evocative.
That world,
I don't know if you've ever been up there.
Yes, I went last year on a solo trip and it was I don't wanna say life changing,
but it was fantastic.
It's really very special,
and it just really piqued my imagination.
So then I started doing research and there were a lot of different things.
I thought, Well,
how do I want to tell this story?
And I really wanted to kind of bring Emily to a younger audience,
So I didn't want to tell.
Like a period drama faithful bio pic.
I wanted to kind of use elements of Wuthering Heights,
things that I thought I had identified in her.
I also felt as a young woman growing up,
you know, feeling like who I really was was maybe not accepted.
And so I thought it was a good lens,
actually,
for kind of,
uh,
exploring some of these themes,
I think that would maybe speak to,
you know,
like people your age,
you know,
And there were certain things like the mask is a real object that the Brontes
had.
But then to use that as this kind of,
um symbol,
but also this kind of object that creativity kind of
can fly through or also like connecting it to the mother.
And so it's those things I tried not to limit myself,
and I think that's probably how Emily wrote Wuthering Heights.
And I don't know if,
you know, like when it came out,
it was damned in the press and she didn't get her first good review for that
book until 50 years after she died.
Because I think Victorian society,
it was just too much for them too much.
And she you know,
and I think that's because she did have such a powerful imagination.
So I kind of also wanted to slightly go with that as well as,
um,
as an idea,
I think,
How did you want to..
Obviously I've seen the film,
but how did you want to shape the visuals with your team?
So obviously was very immersive.
The costumes were absolutely wonderful.
There's the lightning bolt dress.
There's very minimal makeup.
And so I was kind of wondering how with your team you went about creating that vision.
Yeah,
I think because we do have every now and there's a kind of a moment that is kind of a little bit magical that I wanted
to also really grounded as a peace.
So we do very gentle hand held, so it feels documented.
Very little makeup,
natural hair.
Um,
the acting is very real.
The costumes are more like clothes.
So you feel you forget you're like,
Oh, no,
this is real.
I'm really in this world.
And then we can kind of take these kind of flights into something a bit more fantastical
because you believe that the world you're in is real and then also sound was very important.
Like so you can hear the actors breathe or the characters breathe.
You can hear the wind and then the bird song.
All of that kind of all these elements kind of create this reality that hopefully
I'm so glad you said immersive because that's kind of what we were going for.
I think the music as well and she's running on the
moors, that was invigorating to watch.
I mean,
you talked about visiting Haworth, and shooting on location and then bringing it to life and that
way, and how much were you able to do that?
We couldn't.
So you can't shoot in the museum.
Obviously,
it's a working museum,
and it's a very precious building.
So we found this fantastic place in Brent,
um,
which is about an hour's way,
but into kind of North.
So it's quite kind of virginal,
that kind of Moorland there.
It's slightly built up now around Haworth so,
uh,
we wanted to create an atmosphere that felt very kind of evocative and untouched.
And then we just got very lucky with this house that we shot in.
Um,
it looks very similar to the real parsonage,
but it was slightly more Gothic,
so it was kind of perfect.
Even better.
Yeah,
so it's not faithful,
but it's kind of it's kind of,
uh,
feels connected,
but it's its own thing.
Yeah,
and final question,
and I don't know if you have an answer for this in particular,
I was just wondering again,
there's people watching.
This will be a big readers are very interested in this.
Did you come across anything in sort of,
you know, reading up on things,
any books or any other sources that you think this would be really interesting for someone to look at
after they've seen this film, and think
I want to know even more.
I mean,
I There's two books.
I think there are really great Lucasta Miller's
The Bronte myth is really interesting because it's about how we view the Brontes
through the ages,
and it's just a really fun read as well.
And then the other one is Juliet Barker's written this tome,
but there's things you like.
You want to research after the film to find out.
Is that real?
Is it not real?
Um,
that's a really great one.
And it's also a great,
very long read.
But it's great.
Wonderful.
Yeah,
all right. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much!
Who are you?
You wait and see.
What I loved about the film is that you're really walking with Emily.
You get to see the ways in which she fit in,
in which she didn't, what she didn't experience or maybe did, the
pressures that were on her.
I thought Emma Mackey was fantastic in this role and she got to use her French
as well.
And I think she also felt like an actress who would be really invested in this
project herself as well.
And reading through all the filming notes was really interesting and definitely confirmed that too.
I had some chats with friends about the choice to include a relationship
and a new character that Emily gets involved with.
For me personally
the idea that she never was in a relationship and still wrote a novel like
Wuthering Heights that has these hugely intense emotions is very interesting,
and I guess adds sort of a layer of mystery,
knowing that she didn't have a relationship like that.
But then, at the same time,
I think it was very interesting seeing this played out in the film
as part of someone else's vision and then also mixing
different scenes and experiences from Wuthering Heights into the
film.
It really,
really made me want to visit Haworth all over again,
which I'm guessing I will do in the next few years,
And I immediately ran to the closest bookstore and picked up the
biography that Frances O'Connor mentioned, the brick.
I've only read the introduction and like a note on the new edition so far,
and the introduction is absolutely vicious so far.
The writing style,
I think,
is a good promise of what's to come. I want to make a video in the future,
sharing a bit more about my trip to Haworth and talk about different books you can read around the
Bronte's.
I've read part of Charlotte Bronte's biography.
I recently purchased this book called Walking the Invisible,
which is all about the landscape for the Bronte's would have walked and
spent a lot of their time.
And I have some Bronte books left to read.
I haven't read any of Anne's books yet.
I've got The Tennant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey.
So there is so much more to explore around the Brontes.
The more I read,
the more I'm interested in it.
And if any of this kind of sparked your imagination,
how much or little you know about the Brontes I would definitely recommend going to
see Emily and just dive into it.
If you have any Bronte specific requests that you would like to see,
please let me know in a comment.
Same goes for when this video is out and the film is in cinemas and you have seen it.
I would love to know what you think.
Thanks for watching,
and I'll talk to you soon. Doei!