Finally finished the book before the movie! Due to scheduling, Nina and I couldn’t go together, and I ended up heading to the theater alone on a Thursday afternoon. There were only a couple of other women in the theater—no men in sight. As expected, the movie Wuthering Heights diverged quite a bit from the book. But despite this, Nelly’s adaptation surprised me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

There’s something striking about watching a story unfold on screen that you’ve spent so much time envisioning in your own mind. The movie doesn’t even come close to the book’s depth, but I found it interesting how it tried to explore the perspective of Nelly, a character who, for me, always seemed a bit too present in the background of the story. She’s the one recounting everything to Lockwood, and in doing so, she’s also shaping our understanding of the events.

Nelly’s Unreliable Narration: A New Perspective

I had always wondered: How could Nelly have been there, witnessing everything, while the other servants were working so hard? In the movie, this question was finally addressed, and it made sense in a way that felt almost satisfying. Nelly isn’t just a passive observer; she’s the one telling the story. If we view the events from her perspective, we start to understand why some of the more passionate and tender moments between Catherine and Heathcliff are completely left out. Nelly, as the narrator, would never fully express the intensity of their love. In a way, this omission makes us, as readers and viewers, miss out on the true, reckless nature of their connection.

I think this is one of the film’s key insights. By focusing on Nelly, we get an entirely different lens through which to view the story, and it opens up a whole new realm of possibilities about what love really looked like for Catherine and Heathcliff. Their love is brutal, raw, and yes, maybe even harder to articulate in the traditional way we think about romantic connections.

The Raw Passion of Love and Sex

There was a lot of criticism around the film’s sex scenes, and it was especially amusing to me to see women voice their disgust. In all honesty, the scenes didn’t make me as uncomfortable as I had expected. They weren’t explicit for the sake of shock value, nor were they pornographic—they were an integral part of the story, exploring the raw human nature of desire.

Living in such a secluded, confined environment as teens, I can totally understand how sexual desire might have felt like a force of nature to Catherine and Heathcliff. They were surrounded by the elements—wind, earth, nature itself—and that unbridled, primal energy made their emotional and physical connection so intense.

In such a secluded environment, with few outside influences, Catherine and Heathcliff’s exploration of sex became a shared experience that was uniquely theirs. Their relationship wasn’t just about physical attraction; it was the intimacy of having a secret they shared, something that could only exist between the two of them. In such a confined space, their connection grew deeper, and their emotions—perhaps even their desires—became amplified. It was as if the lack of distractions made their bond unbreakable, making their love and passion feel both fierce and irreplaceable.

Sex in the film wasn’t some act of pleasure for the sake of it. It was the culmination of their yearning, their anger, and their wild passion—a passion that society often tries to suppress or define in certain terms. But love isn’t tidy, is it? It isn’t neat, nor is it rational. It’s chaotic, sometimes destructive, and yes, even uncomfortable. But it’s also the kind of love that gets under your skin and stays with you, long after the movie is over.

If anything, I think the sex scenes were just a raw depiction of the love that was really at the core of Wuthering Heights. Love between Catherine and Heathcliff wasn’t just sweet words and stolen kisses; it was urgent, reckless, almost dangerous. In real life, I can imagine that sex would have been far more intense, passionate, and uncontrollable. It’s a force that can’t be tamed, and I believe the movie captured that raw energy somehow.

Love Beyond Social Boundaries

The criticisms of the movie’s sex scenes made me think about how often we, as a society, shy away from confronting the full depth of love and desire. Most of the time, people criticize it because it doesn’t fit into the neat little boxes we’ve been told to live in—boxes where rationality rules, and everything has a socially acceptable explanation. But the truth is, real love doesn’t work that way.

What is right in love, anyway? Society tells us what we should desire, what’s acceptable, and what’s forbidden. But who gets to decide that? Does platonic love—pure and unblemished by sexual desire—truly exist? I’ve always doubted it. We all know, deep down, that love is not just about affection and emotional connection; it’s also about the visceral, often uncontrollable pull between two people.

The movie, in all its rawness, helped answer one question left open by the book: The love between Catherine and Heathcliff was wild and untamed, which is probably the exact reason it led to so much tragedy. Their love wasn’t about control, boundaries, or rules. It was about passion, the kind of passion that can break you, build you, and transform you in ways that no one—not even Nelly—could adequately explain.

The Unspoken Nature of Passionate Love

What makes this love so compelling is that it exists beyond the control of societal norms. There are kinds of love happening every day, hidden from the harsh judgment of the world. Some people are lucky enough to live in a space where they can experience it freely; others may never get the chance to embrace it. Either way, love, in its purest form, is messy, unpredictable, and often misunderstood.

I don’t blame the film for showing those sex scenes. They were integral to telling the story of Catherine and Heathcliff’s love. What I do blame are those who choose to judge this raw, passionate form of love without truly understanding it. It’s easy to criticize from a distance, but it’s far harder to look within and confront the untamed parts of ourselves.

Love—real, passionate love—can’t be confined by societal rules. Without its wild, irrational, and sometimes uncomfortable aspects, love would feel like nothing more than an unrealized dream. That’s the one truth I hold onto: love, at its deepest, will always be messy. And that’s exactly what makes it real.

The movie may be criticized for being “too horny” by some, but the truth is, we all have that primal desire hidden deep within us. It’s easy to condemn it from a moral high ground, but if we’re honest, that “beast” lives in all of us, often fiercer than we realize. In real life, we suppress it, trying to act rationally and behave like adults. But that raw, untamed desire is part of what makes us human. Without it, love and passion would only feel hollow, like a dream that’s never fully realized.

If not with Fallina I probably wouldn’t have finished this book, or thought about it in such a deep way. Being part of this book club has opened up new perspectives and made reading more meaningful. I invite you to join us at Secret Fallina and read along. Let’s explore more stories together, share our thoughts, and experience the beauty of books as a community!

WE ARE READING THE GREAT GATSBY FOR OUR 2ND SHARE READING!!!