engleski

Breaking the Taboo: Slavery and Dehumanization in Adaptations of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"

This paper presents the analysis of the issue of slavery in William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights (1939), Peter Kosminsky’s Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992), and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (2011), with respect to the portrayal of the character of Heathcliff, a darkskinned, oppressed boy from Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. The first part of the paper discusses the socio-political circumstances of Brontë’s time and the way they influenced the depiction of slavery in her novel, with a particular emphasis on the portrayal of Heathcliff. The main part of the paper explores the issue of slavery in the three adaptations of Brontë’s novel by analyzing Heathcliff’s background, social status, and his ability to climb the social ladder. The paper shows that the three adaptations considerably differ in their readiness to tackle the question of slavery, racial intolerance, and social injustice. The turbulent socio-political climate of Wyler’s time impelled him to remove the potentially controversial racist elements from his adaptation and make it a romance, while the time distance and the convenient historical moment allowed Kosminsky to reveal racial animosity and violence underlying Brontë’s novel in his adaptation. Likewise, the tendency of the twenty first century adaptations to address social injustice prompted Arnold to make her adaptation a social critique of white privilege. Paper reaches the conclusion that the readiness to depict social issues in adaptations depends on the suitability of the historical moment and the socio-political atmosphere ; thereby contemporary adaptations explicitly address the issue of slavery, whereas the older ones avoid it.

race ; slavery ; dehumanization ; adaptation ; Wuthering Heights

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