Revisiting the Brontës
As the house lights dim, a young woman speaks from the back of the theater. As she descends the stairway toward the stage, she introduces herself: She is Lucy Snowe, a 23-year-old woman left to fend for herself, with no family, connections, or prospects, who is striking out on her own in early 19th Century England.
At a theater four miles away, it is so blustery on the moors that the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, Mr. Lockwood, is nearly blown away while waiting for someone to answer his knock. He is grasping the door handle of his landlord’s farmhouse. He is waiting for Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights.
In the dull gray days of lingering winter, theatrical productions in Chicago have been leading observers to take a new look at the Brontës.
It’s not as if we haven’t been here before. Wuthering Heights has been adapted for the screen many times, with modern versions in 2015 and 2003, made-for-television movies and series in 1950 and 1967, and the classic 1939 rendition with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. There’s also a 1970 Villette TV series that appears to have been lost and the BBC series on Being the Brontës (All Wuthering Heights Adaptations, Ranked (According To IMDb) (screenrant.com), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04d3r2l.
But the 2023 versions are not simple retellings, and they are decidedly different. One is inward, almost claustrophobic, the other has been called a wild, neo-futuristic, epic folk musical. The one thing in common--each creates the opportunity to revisit the Brontës, the classic 1847 Wuthering Heights and 1853’s Villette.
Lookingglass Theatre
Playwright Sara Gmitter wrote Villette for Lookingglass Theatre in 2014, more than 150 years after it first appeared in print, spurred by its timelessness, she noted in an interview with Ensemble Member Kareem Bandealy.
Because of unexplained problems with her family and resources, Lucy Snowe is on her own, in an unfamiliar city--London--and yet making her way to board a ferry that will take her across the channel to even less familiar circumstances--the town of Villette in Belgium. In her own words as narrator, Lucy “tells this story about a young woman whose present situation is so bleak that risking everything for the chance of a better life in a different country doesn’t seem like any risk at all,” Gmitter said. Today, Gmitter noted, “There are tens of millions of people who make that same calculation every day. The circumstances that cause their desperation are different but I do believe the feelings- the anxiety and the not-really-daring-to-hope determination are the same. So I hope today’s audience will recognize a lot of Lucy’s story as parts of their own story.” (Lookingglass Theatre Company - VILLETTE - "I hope today’s audience will recognize a lot of Lucy’s story as parts of their own story..." (Click to Read More) (audienceaccess.co)
The book is considered to be somewhat of an autobiography, chronicling Charlotte Brontë’s time in Brussels from 1842 to 1844 when she taught English in the Pensionnat Heger and fell in love with a married man. She returned to England after her friends had left and she grew increasingly lonely and depressed. (https://www.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/the-brontes-in-brussels/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Villette).
In both play and book, the story is told in Lucy’s own words from her singular perspective: On her way to Villette, Lucy meets Ginvera Fanshawe, an 18-year-old who is not shy about touting her connections and prospects, begins to teach in Madame Beck’s School of Girls, falls for the hopelessly Ginvera-besotted Dr. John, and slowly develops a deep and abiding friendship with M. Paul Emanuel.
For more information about Lookingglass Theatre and its upcoming season, see: https://lookingglasstheatre.org/.
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
Wise Children’s Wuthering Heights is the latest in the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre WorldStage Series, which imports some of the world’s great theater productions to Chicago and, in turn, shares Chicago Shakespeare’s own productions with international audiences. WorldStage has brought to Chicago theater companies from 22 countries across five continents, from Dublin to Moscow, Paris to South Africa. And Chicago Shakespeare has sent troupes to Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and South Korea. https://www.chicagoshakes.com/about_us/about/worldstage.
Wise Children first performed Wuthering Heights at the Bristol Old Vic in 2021. After touring in the UK through May, 2022, the play came to the US, with performances in New York and California before the run in Chicago from February 23 to March 12, 2023.
As with Villette, Wuthering Heights is a resonant story from the past, but it has particular relevance today. Producer Emma Rice recalls being horrified by seeing children in refugee camps as they wait for governments to decide what should become of them. Heathcliff is just such a child, she points out, when he’s found at Liverpool docks and taken to Yorkshire by the Mr. Earnshaw.
For her, “Heathcliff, and the way he’s treated by those around him, is the key to the story. On the surface it’s a love story, but deep down I think it’s about kindness and about the danger of not showing compassion to those in need.” She went on to say: “Wuthering Heights is a cautionary tale about what happens when we treat those in need as somehow less than ourselves. This is the driving force of my adaptation: cruelty breeds cruelty. Be careful what you seed.” (https://charleshutchpress.co.uk/emma-rice-shakes-up-cautionary-tale-wuthering-heights-as-epic-folk-musical/)
Wise Children’s production tells the same heartbreaking tale of obsession, betrayal, and revenge as Emily Brontë’s book. But it does so with a breathtaking presentation--a world-class musical score and actors, a chorus of actors that plays the moors, puppets, innovative movable sets, swirling background videos, and small black chalkboards that keep viewers on track. And it changes the underlying format. While the book has only one storyteller--the nurse Nelly Dean--the play tells the story from five different perspectives.
For more on Chicago Shakespeare’s 2023 season, see: Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Plays & Events.
Revisiting Wuthering Heights and Villette
At the time it was published, Wuthering Heights was labeled as coarse and disagreeable, brutal, filled with scenes of oppression and tyranny. One critic said it would never be generally read. But another had a much better take on the novel: It is impossible to begin and not finish. What critics said about Wuthering Heights (wuthering-heights.co.uk)
Upon publication, Villette was labeled as superior to Jane Eyre by the author of Silas Marner Georg Eliot, who wrote there was “something almost preternatural in its power.” And G H Lewes, Eliot’s partner, was effusive: “There are so few books, and so many volumes. Among the few stands Villette.” Claiming lesser authors were “reverberating the vague noise of others,” Lewes believed “Brontë spoke out boldly in a voice that was all her own.” Charlotte Brontë: Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre (telegraph.co.uk) Villette is still far lesser known than Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights.
Villette admittedly is difficult to read. Language is convoluted, movement sometimes doesn’t track from section to section or chapter to chapter, French phrases appear almost willy nilly. And Lucy herself is distant. The story is introspective; readers observe characters and action along with Lucy as well as her own reactions but don’t always understand or feel connected to her.
Wuthering Heights likewise is difficult to read. But here the connection is almost too painful. Readers wince at the sudden bursts of physical violence and venom, shudder at the cruelty and mean-spiritedness, lament the ravages of Catherine’s madness, Isabella’s banishment, Heathcliff’s denigration of his son Hareton.
Yet the books are compelling. Pages turn as readers rush forward to learn what happens next, gain insight on the insidiousness of social class in the Victorian era as it infects relationships between men and women, fathers and sons, families and servants, and denies opportunities to those who are not to the manor born.
There is a continuing fascination with historical fiction that explores, if at the periphery, social class and almost romanticizes differences in stature--the romances that succeed despite difference in class, the efforts by women to circumvent the restraints. The power of Wuthering Heights and Villette is that they do not shirk, telling their stories as the circumstances of the time allowed, and yet they do not acquiesce. They present characters who do not succumb or smother under the pressure, but characters who overcome and learn to breathe on their own.
Sources:
https://lookingglasstheatre.org/.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Plays & Events.
( All Wuthering Heights Adaptations, Ranked (According To IMDb) (screenrant.com), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04d3r2l.
(https://www.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/the-brontes-in-brussels/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/Villette).
https://www.chicagoshakes.com/about_us/about/worldstage.
What critics said about Wuthering Heights (wuthering-heights.co.uk)
Charlotte Brontë: Why Villette is better than Jane Eyre (telegraph.co.uk)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë | Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (smartbitchestrashybooks.com)