“She Stoops to Conquer” (1773) — Oliver Goldsmith

Some lighter fare first. For those new to eighteenth-century literature, “She Stoops to Conquer,” a short but chirpy play, is a natural springboard. Set against the intimate, fire-lit rooms of an English country manor, this comedy of manners revolves around the quick-witted Kate Hardcastle, as she outmaneuvers her Janus-faced suitor Charles Marlow. With gentlewomen like Kate, Marlow is a bashful, deferential mess of a man. Meanwhile, in the company of working-class women, he is a bold (frankly, rather creepy) rogue, a reality Kate exposes in an elaborate ruse. “She Stoops to Conquer” explores the absurdity and humor in the everyday performance of class and gender norms — and the sometimes frustrating, sometimes endearing reality of human mutability. It’s the perfect panacea for a dull winter day.

“Northanger Abbey” (1817) — Jane Austen

For those unfamiliar with Austen’s beloved literary ribbing of the Gothic, the novel chronicles the development of Catherine Morland, whose preference for the genre colors her perception of the world from the modish streets of Bath to the halls of the eponymous estate. To the young protagonist, macabre intrigue is not just the stuff of books but of reality, too. Catherine discovers that her instincts and fears are not so much mistaken as misplaced — no matter what well-meaning but overly-secure beau Henry Tilney might say to the contrary. In a Radcliffean twist, Austen, in her archly astute way, shows us that everyday vices like avarice, tyranny and deceit are just as terrifying as any Gothic spook.

“Fathers and Sons” (1862) — Ivan Turgenev

Although “Fathers and Sons” examines a mid-nineteenth-century Russian ideological schism, one needn’t be a Russianist to appreciate the work. Turgenev’s nuanced, compassionate portrait of generational conflict stands the test of time. The novel opens with recent university graduate Arkady Kirsanov, as he returns to his father Nikolai’s provincial estate. His friend Yevgeny Bazarov, a medical student and self-styled nihilist whose worldview has already rubbed off on Arkady, comes along. Nikolai and his brother Pavel are troubled by the disparity between their (apparently antediluvian) liberal, reformist views and the young men’s skepticism toward progressivism and Slavophile traditionalism alike. When Bazarov and Arkady meet the captivating, financially independent Madame Anna Sergeyevna Odintsova and her quietly dignified sister, Katya, the young men must grapple with their supposed emotional indifference and their burgeoning affections. 

“The Rainbow” (1915) — D.H. Lawrence

Set primarily in the East Midlands of England between the 1840s and the early twentieth century, “The Rainbow” traces three generations of the Brangwen family, beginning with the union of a sensitive farmer Tom Brangwen and Lydia Lensky, a flinty Polish widow living in exile. The novel then focuses on the increasingly hostile marriage between Anna Lensky, Lydia’s headstrong daughter by her first husband, and Tom’s possessive, insecure nephew Will. Finally, “The Rainbow” follows Anna and Will Brangwen’s daughter Ursula in her pursuit of moral truth and vocational purpose in a mercenary society and in her search of emotional depth in her relationship with complacent soldier Anton Skrebensky. Part commentary on intergenerational relationships, part criticism of English industrialization and urbanization, part exploration of female hetero- and homosexual desire, part examination of the communication breakdown between men and women, it’s nearly impossible for me to condense “The Rainbow” into a neat summary. Lawrence’s language is fervid; his imagery, lush; his narrative, all-encompassing. The best I can say is, well, read it.

“Snow Country” (1956) — Yasunari Kawabata

Kawabata’s austere novel, expressed in crystalline and somber prose, reflects on the beautiful in the melancholy and on the isolation that arises from aestheticism devoid of human sentiment. For years, Shimamura, an idle married man from Tokyo, frequents a hot spring town nestled in the white-capped Japanese Alps, where he sees a young geisha named Komako. Though forced into her profession by financial necessity and gender constraints, Komako’s inner life is dynamic and rich. She cultivates her passion for music and dance insofar as she is able. She feels with vigor and delicacy in equal measure. While Komako comes to love him, Shimamura is unable to derive any finer feelings from what he sees as a transactional, carnal affair. At most, he pities her. But Shimamura, who lives off family money and merely pretends to have an interest in the performing arts, is much more to be pitied — or scorned. Only as a witness to Komako’s humanity can Shimamura realize the hollowness of his own life, though perhaps too late. 

“My Brilliant Friend” (2012) — Elena Ferrante

The first installment of Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” is a colossus of twenty-first-century fiction. Ostensibly, “My Brilliant Friend” centers on Elena Greco, a young woman in a working-class neighborhood in post-war Naples, as she recounts her childhood friendship and rivalry with Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo. Elena sees herself as retiring and both intellectually and physically unremarkable. In contrast, she views Lila as admirably fierce, adroit and beautiful. All the while, Lila berates herself for her crudeness and hot-headed nature. She holds Elena in high esteem for her diligence, composure and subtlety of mind. As the pair age, rhythms of class and gender limitations set them on divergent life paths. Nonetheless, their relationship with one another continues to inform how they perceive the world and how they conceive of themselves. The visceral, unrelenting honesty of Ferrante’s style — particularly in the expression of women’s rage in the face of gender and economic oppression — gives “My Brilliant Friend” a singular potency. Ferrante’s characters are literary forces of nature, even if they don’t always recognize it for themselves. Elena is simultaneously highly conscious, prudent, awkward, penetrating and powerfully resolute. Lila is indomitable, coarse, elegant, enterprising, loyal and vulnerable. Their “friendship” (the word is woefully inadequate) is manifold, running the gamut from hatred to love and dissolving the boundaries of selfhood. The result is magnetic. Brilliant, even.  

“Sing, Unburied, Sing” (2017) — Jesmyn Ward

Ward’s lyrical and gripping novel begins in the fictional Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage and follows Jojo, a precocious thirteen-year-old, and his little sister Kayla, siblings born to a Black mother Leonie and a white father Michael. The pair — both of whom possess the ability to communicate with the (un)dead — are raised primarily by their maternal grandparents; Leonie, traumatized by the murder of her brother and addicted to drugs, is mentally absent, while Michael is physically and mentally absent, serving out a sentence for drug trafficking. Upon the end of Michael’s sentence, Leonie and her family embark on something of a modern Odyssey to Mississippi State Penitentiary, coming face to face with the ghosts — literal and figurative, past and present — of US slavery, convict leasing, the prison industrial complex and the experiences of interracial families in a racist society.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Norah Catlin, Anabelle Meyers

Warning: Spoilers — This article discusses the general plot and themes of “Wuthering Heights” (1847). 

“Wuthering Heights” has a special eldritch place in my heart. Unfortunately, the silver screen has never done the novel justice. In light of Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation, I critique earlier film representations of Brontë’s novel, specifically their representations of Heathcliff, and explore the effects of artistic license.

In July, filmmaker Emerald Fennell of “Promising Young Woman” (2020) and “Saltburn” (2023) fame shared her next project: a film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic novel “Wuthering Heights.” 

Just last month, Fennell announced that Australian actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are slated to portray the novel’s leads, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, respectively. The casting of Elordi as Heathcliff was met with immediate backlash. 

In the novel, Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned” and likened to a “Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.” “Lascar” is a term that describes sailors from Southeast Asia or the Indian subcontinent. Most frequently, he is referred to using a common slur for Romani people. While this word has been used to describe anyone perceived as not ethnically English, the more overt physical descriptions Brontë provides of Heathcliff do not conjure up visions of Jacob Elordi. The Earnshaws, much like the Australian actor, are fair-skinned with dark hair and eyes and are presented, in no uncertain terms, as English. All of this compels me to ask: Why didn’t Fennell cast a person of color for the role?

The whitewashing of the Heathcliff is not unique to Fennell’s rendition of the novel. The misrepresentation of Heathcliff and of “Wuthering Heights” in cinema, and in the popular imagination, is long-running.

The 1939 adaptation of the novel is a far cry across the moors from its source material. Heathcliff is played by the white English Laurence Olivier. Even though the film was well-received, Olivier’s Heathcliff is more stern than impassioned and ruthless. 1939 lacks the zeal and, yes, morbidity necessary to convey the intensity and anguish of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship. The entire film works to warp Brontë’s vision into a schmaltzy Tinseltown Romance. But “Wuthering Heights” is not a sugary Hallmark-movie-esque story. In the novel, passion is all-consuming, inflicting psychological and physical distress. Catherine wastes away under its weight. It drives Heathcliff to sadistic monomania. It corrodes the boundaries of selfhood. Brontë asks us a question: Is passion or love inherently unhealthy, obstructive, or transgressive in its rebellion against racial, class and social norms?

If the novel is stripped of its thorniness, the points of tension that foster these questions are lost. How can we see the tension between love and racial norms in English society if we continue to see white actors like Olivier and Elordi on the screen? 

Not all films attempt to sanitize the novel’s brutality, yet even the most faithful of adaptations are flawed. “Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights” (1992) works to evoke the novel’s gothic mood and reconstructs much of the plot. Ralph Fiennes is a delightfully disturbed but thoroughly human Heathcliff. The film shows us the character’s subjection to years of physical and verbal abuse, particularly at the hands of an aptly detestable Hindley Earnshaw. The film also captures the intensity of Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s childhood bond. However, because Fiennes is white, the picture ignores what the novel makes clear: the primary motivation behind Heathcliff’s mistreatment is racism. Catherine’s decision to dissolve their childhood bond and marry the white, well-born Edgar Linton is informed by classist and racist norms.

So far, only one film adaptation has cast a person of color as Heathcliff. I consider the 2011 version, in which James Howson portrays Heathcliff and Kaya Scodelario portrays Catherine Earnshaw, to be a solid film in its own right but a poor evocation of Brontë. Much of the picture focuses on Heathcliff and Catherine’s childhood development. In contrast to the 1992 iteration, this adaptation makes the racial motivation for Heathcliff’s abuse and rejection apparent. Nonetheless, 2011 overemphasizes the bleakness of the environs and circumstances to the point that the film exists in an awkward tonal space between the sedate and the earthy — in every sense of the word. This tonal trouble neutralizes the passion that, as aforementioned, gives “Wuthering Heights” its impact. 2011 is a fair portrait of desolation and trauma, but it is not Brontë’s portrait. 

Ultimately, my pedantic critiques gloss over the fundamental questions: Is it even possible for the medium of film to capture “Wuthering Heights,” a novel so ennobled by Brontë’s language, her successful descriptions of the supposedly ineffable and her foresight to create distance between the narrator(s) and the subjects they describe? If it is possible to revive “Wuthering Heights” on the screen, is it necessary? 

Surprise. I don’t have the answer.

What I can say is that it’s worthwhile to consider how differences in media and stylistic choices therein shape our understanding of narratives and themes. Fennell has, undoubtedly, considered the effects of artistic choices in her adaptation at length. And while I think her decision to cast a white actor to play Heathcliff erases much of the profundity of “Wuthering Heights,” I do hope her overall project pleasantly surprises me. 

“Wuthering Heights” has a certain extraordinary power. It is the kind of story that gets into our bones, that stirs somewhere deep in the consciousness, forcefully surfacing of its own volition, telling us about the very core of ourselves, long after we’ve read it. If we do keep resurrecting this incredible story, please, please, let us ensure that it wakes kindly and not in torment.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Norah Catlin, Anabelle Meyers 

Parsing “Howards End” — insofar as it can be parsed — is like parsing any bit of Forster’s oeuvre. It’s a tall order, particularly for indecisive undergraduates. Forster synthesizes the commonly opposed; he problematizes conventions, yet never completely rejects tradition. His style is lucid and ambiguous, mirthful and melancholic, self-conscious and sincere. Even in their beloved film adaptations, Merchant Ivory Productions cannot capture the Forsterian spirit in full. The whole ordeal is rather like chasing a cloud. But I digress. 

On its face, “Howards End” is the story of three families in turn-of-the-century England: the cosmopolitan, liberal Anglo-German Schlegel siblings Margaret, Helen and Tibby; the Wilcoxes, hidebound capitalists made rich by the ill-gotten-gains of exploitation colonialism; and the Basts, comprised of Leonard, a clerk and Jacky, a former sex worker. This, however, is a grossly flattened view. As quickly as Forster has set these molds, he recasts them, collapsing any hegemonic conception of ethnonational, class, regional, imperial or political identity. The Schlegels are complicit in the imperialism that their high-minded musings condemn. The Wilcoxes, though a loathsome lot to the bitter end, are not without souls. As for Leonard Bast, he remains one of literature’s most beautifully drawn portraits of human dignity and decency attempting to contend with a classist society. I truly cannot do the novel justice.

Nor could I on that May morning, as I attempted to distill my visceral understanding of “Howards End” into a cogent, quasi-compelling essay. Alas, every theme, every figure — save one — seemed impenetrable. I eventually did scrape something together but continued to feel that most of the novel was beyond my scope of expression. Much to my chagrin, then as now, the only figure I could genuinely “get at” was Tibby.

Forster introduces Theobald “Tibby” Schlegel as “… an intelligent man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.” And though his adolescent “peevishness” mellows as he matures and comes up to the University of Oxford, his most grievous shortcoming, his “indifference to human beings,” metastasizes. To a novel concerned with personal connection — and to yours truly, a fellow student (nominally) — his emotional detachment is something of a moral and intellectual failing.

For all his schooling, Tibby, tucked away in “his comfortable lodgings in Long Wall,” conceives of thought and feeling as mutually exclusive. He fancies himself an impartial “juror” dealing in facts, above the trifles of “personal relations.” Forster lampoons Tibby’s facile outlook, writing in just one instance of many:

Tibby […] had no opinions. He stood above the conventions […]. It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all. […] His was the leisure without sympathy — an attitude as fatal as the strenuous; a little cold culture may be raised on it, but no art. (HE, Chapter XXXIX).

Granted, this image of an academic making unbiased (read: sterile) epistemological judgments from an ivory tower is nothing new. Nonetheless, as I come upon the close of my undergraduate education — and as I glance over some of the la-di-da things I have just written — I see that there is a touch of Tibby-ism in me. I would be lying if I said the pomp and circumstance surrounding academia doesn’t appeal to me on some level, though I know this ceremonial mystique to be riddled with elitism. All the same, I am quite content to sit in secluded libraries, under straight-faced oil paintings, and spend college dinners discussing Chartism. Talk about ivory towers.

That said, the exercise of discussion, if done with care and self-awareness, is vital. I hope no one consciously believes that the mark of education is speaking in hermeneutic tongues and navel-gazing. Intellectual growth cannot spring from apathy, affectation or arbitrary contrarianism. As Forster conveys, we must engage with society at large, not solely with some coterie, to even begin to process the world, to reform it, and to produce works of any depth. And (clichés incoming!) the more we engage, the more nuanced life becomes, and the more challenging it is to pass rigid judgments. But above all, Forster shows us we must embrace emotion, a touchstone of our lives. After all, is not the crux of so many academic disciplines to explore the human condition?

So don’t read “Howards End” because it’s “serious literature.” Don’t write it off because it’s old and, therefore, somehow arcane. Read it because it’s difficult to grasp — as most everything is. “Only connect!” indeed.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Anabelle Meyers, Norah Catlin