Wuthering Heights:
THE FIRST YA NOVEL
When you ask people what they think of when they hear the phrase YA Fiction, you get a general recognition of the term, of the broad genre. But when ask them to describe what are the main components of this relatively new genre, you get confusion. It’s just so broad and impossible to pin down into specific recurring motifs or themes. When we do delve a bit deeper we quickly come to realise that YA is not a new genre. It is sold as a fresh, original, vibrant genre that speaks to and for young adults but really it has all been done before, by Emily Bronte with Wuthering Heights.
The main component of a YA novel is the age profile of the protagonist. We often follow them as they grow up, from child to adult. The Harry Potter phenomenon is often said to have given birth to this new genre, as marketeers looked to cash in on the new readers. We saw Harry Potter and his friends grow from child to adult, just like Catherine and, especially, Heathcliff. The first half of the novel takes place during their teenage years as their newfound emotions are barely held in check.
This coming of age theme is common to YA novels as well. Just as the children in Wuthering Heights must come to terms with the adult world, so too do the characters in modern novels like The Hunger Games series. Katniss, like Heathcliff and Catherine, is suddenly exposed to the raw truth of how adults behave. We may think that Catherine has a choice about who she can marry but really, in the world outside of childhood, she didn’t. She had to marry Edgar. Heathcliff, for all the emotions crashing against his chest, knows this and must adapt. He has to go away, be a ‘runaway servant’ to come back reinvented. They, like Katniss and Harry Potter, must make the sacrifices so that the next generation can enjoy freedoms that were previously withheld.
These emotions are heightened in novels like The Fault in our Stars where Hazel and Augustus’ love must also overcome numerous obstacles, not all of which are from the adults. Cancer, in this text, is like a supernatural force, like a killer in a thriller that just will not be defeated, that will come back in the third act. A similar trope is used in The Knife of Never Letting Go.
Bodies changing, emotions fluctuating, mortality looming. These are the background noises given metaphorical reality in supernatural form, making it easier for adolescents to process, control, accept these developments.
More straight forward supernatural elements are present in the guise of werewolves and vampires in the Twilight series, or Shadowhunters in The Mortal Instruments series of novels. Just like these novels where the Shadowhunters are of angelic blood and the Downworlders are of demonic blood with Wuthering Heights the supernatural is equally as primal. The use of gothic imagery, ghosts and skeletons add that frisson to the text. Heathcliff is like a feral werewolf with ‘half-civilised ferocity’, with Catherine occupying a fluctuating vampire/ghost dichotomy.
Wuthering Heights has the perfect prism through which to first enter the YA world; multiple adult narrators. This seems at first to undermine the youthfulness of the text, to turn it into an adult novel. Yet the problems with these narrators, the questions around their veracity, that solidifies the novel as aimed at a younger audience. After all everyone knows that you can’t trust adults. This book merely confirms these assertions.
BODIES CHANGING, EMOTIONS FLUCTUATING, MORTALITY LOOMING