The first thing one must ask when analyzing a novel that is a retelling of an existing classic from a different perspective is whether or not the author’s motivation for the response is a negative or positive reaction to the existing source. The answer to this question is of depthless help in determining the purpose of writing the new version. For instance, retelling the story of Gone with the Wind from the perspective of Mammy would almost certainly be the result of a negative reaction to persistent racism of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. On the other hand, writing it from the perspective of Rhett Butler is more problematic. Would this version be merely an opportunity to respond to the novel’s feminine perspective with that of the masculine point of view or would it be a patriarchal attempt to restore the narrative focus to the paternalistic vision of conventional wartime tales?
Maryse Conde includes a dedication to Emily Bronte expressing the hope the legendary author would have approved of the way she co-opts Bronte’s romantic tale. She also expresses that the dedication is made “with honor and respect.” Thus, one can fairly assume that Conde does not approach the task of spending all that time writing her own version of Wuthering Heights in order to score points of perceived failings of the original source. So, if Windward Heights was not written for the purpose of knocking down Bronte for any lapses, what is the purpose?
Do the research and one might well conclude that the purpose in resetting Bronte’s distinctly British tale of doomed love on the fog-shrouded Moors to the humid outpost of a Caribbean island is situated in transposing the economics-driven class divide which tears apart love into one in which racism is the driver of class divide. And that might be so, but it is merely a symptom of a larger purpose.
Wuthering Heights is one of those novels that even people who have never read it are somewhat familiar with. They may not know the intricacies, but they know Heathcliff and star-crossed love. It has remained a steadfast foundation of the official academic canon in every single English-speaking country in the world for nearly two-hundred years. Wuthering Heights is up there with Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, and Moby-Dick as classic tales of literature that define modern humanity. And, like those novels, Wuthering Heights is a story of white people.
Conde clearly shows that it is Bronte’s love story that captured her imagination. Does she engage in post-colonial transmogrification of the economic underbelly which is the conflict of Bronte’s story? Sure, but that is not the real point of Windward Heights. The real point of Conde’s retelling of Bronte’s love story which has been read and enjoyed, studied, written about, analyzed, interpreted and adapted into film over the course of its long unbroken history at the most elevated level of the literary canon is that it is not a story limited just to white civilization. People of all colors and nationalities can be the stars of exactly the same story. Its universality is the point Windward Heights makes.
