#haworth

𝑯𝒂𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒉, 𝑩𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒕ë 𝑪𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒚

And the setting is so. I can't fully explain the moors around Haworth to you if you've never been. It's bleak. Even on a good day, you're exposed. The wind can be fierce and there's nowhere to hide. It's not extreme (we aren't talking high altitude) but it's not easy. And that's where the eponymous house is meant to be - isolated, exposed. Miles from anywhere else. And it still is - Top Withens, the farmhouse that inspired Wuthering Heights, is still there, ruined in the middle of the moor. I don't have faith that this film will capture that. They filmed the external shots in the Yorkshire dales, which... It's lovely. Don't get me wrong. But so much of it is pretty rolling green fields. Chocolate-box vibes. There's not the grit from local industry colouring everything. Haworth was grim in the Brontës' time, the mortality rate was really high. And the landscapes are not the same. In the South Pennines, and particularly the West Yorkshire moors, there's not a lot to look at. It's just. Landscape. The dales have features and landmarks. Haworth moor... It's just small hills and valleys and heather and bog and scrub and the odd tree, and sheep and sheep and sheep, and landscape stretching out around you. It's not obviously impressive and beautiful. Appreciation grows slowly, over time. It doesn't hit you in the face in the same way.

So, for me, who roamed those moors in my youth, running where the Brontës did, where Cathy would have, which feel so central in the novel - it just feels wrong, to divorce this story from its roots in this way. I don't think it's wrong to take creative liberties when adapting something, and I know I should withhold my judgement until I've seen the thing. If it was any other book, set in any other place, I wouldn't feel quite so affronted. But these are my moors, and my history. So, I do.

(don’t repost photos)