Latest news with #Heathcliff
Buzz Feed
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Readers Reveal Most Overrated Classic Books
When I turned twenty, I set a personal reading goal to read 100 classics by the time I turned thirty. I admit, I still have twelve books to go within nine I like to think that I am relatively well-versed in classic literature. So when Reddit user villagewitch3000 asked, "What's the worst 'classic' you've ever read?" I immediately had to see if everyone agreed with me about The Scarlet Letter being one of the most tedious slogs known to classic literature. (The consensus is IS!) Even though I wholeheartedly disagree with some of these reviews, I thought they were too interesting not to share. So without further ado... "Wuthering Heights. Jesus. Heathcliff, mate, just leave her alone. " "Pride and Prejudice. Long-winded drivel, neither funny nor romantic, and without even the redeeming quality of a worthwhile message." "The Scarlet Letter. I hate how Hawthorne spoon-feeds his readers symbolism. We get it. The scarlet letter is a symbol for shame." "Gone with the Wind. Scarlett O'Hara acts ridiculous and insufferable throughout the entire novel. She doesn't care who she has to hurt, just as long as she gets her way." "To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought it was so boring and I was really disappointed. I picked it up expecting that the racism aspect of the story would have a bigger role, but instead I had to read through pages and pages of this little girl's boring life." "The Great Gatsby. I can't stand Fitzgerald's writing style." "Rebecca. It's like, bitch, I do not care about your problems. The only person in this entire mansion that I can relate to is the maid that I'm supposed to hate." "This will probably get some Catcher in the Rye. I honestly could not connect with Holden Caulfield and found him to be somewhat of a whiny, self-indulgent ne'er-do-well." "Crime and Punishment. I just wanted to punch the main character in the face over and over again. And it honestly had zero to do with the fact that he was a murderer. I just hated his personality." "Lolita, hands down. Gross, perverted, and I dreaded picking it back up every time I did. " "Frankenstein. I think my problem was that I was expecting the book to be really different from what it was." "The Alchemist. Ugh. What utter tripe. If this book changed your life, then you must have had a truly horrific life up to that point." "Les Misérables. Not only is it very long, it has seemingly interminable stretches of boredom." "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It might've been funny or clever when I was 14 and loved Monty Python and thought absurdist British humour was the height of it was awful as an adult." "Anything Tolkien. Reading the man's writing is like trying to ingest a pack of broken light bulbs." "Heart of Darkness is so incredibly boring. I had to read it for three separate classes, and I really tried to like it each time, but I can't stand that book. " "Don Don Quixote." "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Talking about the mechanics of the boat is not fun." "Ulysses. That was work." "Atlas Shrugged. 🙄😴😴😴😴😴" "Moby Dick is one of the most inconsistent books I've ever read. It starts out as a first-person narrative by Ishmael, occasionally interrupted by lengthy speeches and occasional chapters on the anatomy of the sperm whale, and by the end, it shifts to the third person. Then there is maybe a paragraph tacked onto the very end when Melville realizes this was Ishmael's story, so he kinda reverts back to the first person to explain how he could have survived to tell the tale." "The Picture of Dorian Gray. Udder nonsense dressed in off-putting, overly flowery dribble." "Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck just REALLY likes describing scenery, and sometimes I'm just not down to read through ten pages about hills. " "The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The great depression... pretty much sums how I felt reading it." "One Hundred Years of Solitude. I recall reading it, and I ended up saying, 'That was it? What was all the fuss about?'" "Pretty much anything by Charles Dickens. He came from a time when authors were paid by installment, and it shows." "Brave New World. Didn't find it compelling at all. 1984 on the other hand scared the shit out of me." "The Turn of the Screw. It is supposed to be ambiguous, but I really only see the governess as a loon. " "The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer seems to think the only things that are funny are farts." "I read Slaughterhouse-Five and I don't remember a damn thing about it. " "I hated The Giver. The ending was just deus ex machina wish fulfillment. " "Walden was my 'I can't stand this' book. It almost destroyed my love of reading." "I get why Uncle Tom's Cabin is important, but hoooo boy, that book is a hot mess. Most of the classics I've slogged through are at least objectively well written, but not this one. " "Vanity Fair. I've read it about four times, and I still can't keep up with who is who and what the main character's motive is." "The Yellow Wallpaper. Yeah, I get it. Patriarchy bad. " "The Count of Monte Cristo. It builds up to this lacklustre ending that could've happened chapters ago. I felt I would have been better off watching a Hollywood adaptation loosely based on the original novel." "The Bell Jar. Took it from my university read it." "Toni Morrison's Beloved. Starts off boring, progresses slowly, and tries to be meaningful in places, but it just felt contrived. Then out of nowhere, a supernatural ending that would be more at home in a Sci-fi original movie." Since The Great Gatsby is my favourite book of all time, I am personally offended by those who tell me that Fitzgerald is nothing special. I want to scream, "You try writing such colourful and poetic prose!" So please don't let me down in the comments. Instead, in the comments, tell me the classic literature titles that you could barely get through, and which of the above titles are WRONG to be listed as a "bad classic." And make sure you follow BuzzFeed Canada on TikTok and Instagram for more!
Los Angeles Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Laguna Art Museum exhibit centers on ‘Wuthering Heights' character Heathcliff
There's vibrant color, engaging imagery and a strong sense of subversiveness. And at the center of Carole Caroompas' posthumous exhibit at Laguna Art Museum is Heathcliff. But this is no 'Wuthering Heights.' 'The show has this Heathcliff series and there's 10 works in the series and all 10 of them are included in the show,' said Rochelle Steiner, guest curator at Laguna Art Museum who curated 'Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour,' which runs through July 13. 'It's the first time that the series has been shown completely, which is very exciting,' Steiner said. 'She made them between 1997 and 2001. This work was inspired [in part] by her interest in 'Wuthering Heights,' that's the Heathcliff reference.' Caroompas, who spent her early life in Newport Beach and attended Cal State Fullerton before moving to Los Angeles, died at age 76 in 2022. With the help of her estate, the museum is showing the exhibit fully, with all 10 pieces. She was an artist inspired by pop culture and literature, feminism, gender and relationships. 'She got her MFA at USC and then after she graduated, she kind of found her way into the artist community of L.A.,' Steiner said. 'She was a painter. Her paintings are quite interesting in terms of the way she mixes materials and sources and references. One of the things that she was very inspired by was music. So in this particular series, you see a lot of references to musicians. But she also was very interested in what she called 'found embroidery,' which is basically like everything from napkins to tablecloths to things that had embroidered edges. And those were incorporated into her paintings as well.' Steiner said there's a mix of painted, collaged and assembled works in Caroompas' art. 'Rough and also very refined,' she said of the artist's works. 'Extremely colorful and extremely painted … mashed together. It's quite an interesting aesthetic. Some of the imagery is taken from album covers or inspired by album covers or movies or TV shows or even postcards that she found. She was quite a kind of visual collector and then that got assembled into her artworks.' 'Queen of the Countryside' in the Heathcliff series is just one example. It uses acrylic paint and found embroidery on canvas over panel that's nearly 8-feet tall, and has two sections. In one section, Heathcliff is different male rock stars — John Doe of LA punk band X and Joe Strummer of the Clash. They are with Exene Cervenka of X and Catherine Earnshaw, the fictional female lead character of 'Wuthering Heights.' 'She was really … on the one hand, very grounded in art and idea and literature and the classics and the movies and the films,' Steiner said. 'And on the other hand, she was incredibly fantastical in terms of her imagination and amalgamation of imagery.' The works in the series range widely in size — from a couple of feet up to 8 feet. 'There's really a sense of scale,' Steiner said. Steiner also included some of the artist's source material. 'For example, we found a few of the original postcards that she used, like images of kids or singers or others,' Steiner said. 'I put those in the between so we can see what she was drawing from.' Steiner also included Caroompas' own copy of 'Wuthering Heights' as part of the exhibit. The classic novel was written by English author Emily Bronte and published in 1847. 'So she wasn't just kind of superficially interested in 'Wuthering Heights,'' Steiner said. 'She read it and read it many times and I reproduced a page from it. She marked on almost every page, like different passages, and she took notes, and she, you know, really studied it.' At the heart of the Heathcliff series is relationships. 'She definitely was a feminist,' Steiner said. 'On the one hand very much focused on relationships between men and women, and that comes out in many of the works [in Heathcliff]. … What is the relationship or structure of a relationship between men and women? But she was very interested in kind of deconstructing power dynamics and thinking about equality and inequality.' Los Angeles artist Tom Knechtel said he first met Caroompas when she was invited to CalArts as a visiting artist in 1975, when he was in his second year of graduate school there. 'Carole's inspirations were diverse: literature, film, rock music, the history of art, popular culture and advertising,' Knechtel said. 'Before each body of work, she did extensive research — she often came to my house to raid my library. … The materials that she brought back from these investigations were not presented in a simple, straightforward fashion but were woven into a complex tapestry of conflicting images that create a conversation in front of the viewer.' Artist Cliff Benjamin, who lives in Hawaii, is in charge of Caroompas' estate. 'I knew Carole since 1985, until the day she died,' he said. 'She and I were really good friends for many decades.' He said she was a professor at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. 'It was a huge influence on … hundreds and hundreds of art students,' he said. Benjamin said she was part of the generation that lived through civil rights, women's and anti-war movements. 'She was part of that '60s generation that went through all of those different movements and was very much about doing the right thing,' he said. The Laguna Art Museum is located at 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. For more information and to order tickets, visit
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Wuthering Heights' Casting Director Defends Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Controversy: "It's Just A Book"
English author Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in November 1847, and the intense novel remains a cultural phenomenon over 177 years later. It's been adapted numerous times across film, TV, radio, and even music, but now, the latest re-imagination of Brontë's work has sparked some controversy. Wuthering Heights, a movie directed by Emerald Fennell and inspired by Brontë's iconic novel, is set to debut in early 2026. However, many have taken issue with the leading roles being given to Margot Robbie, best known for her performances in Barbie and The Wolf of Wall Street, and the Priscilla star Jacob Elordi. Brontë's Wuthering Heights takes place in the late 18th century in remote Yorkshire and centers on the relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, who is an orphan. In the book, Heathcliff is also portrayed as having dark skin, hair, and eyes, which is why readers suspected he was of Roman or "Gypsy" descent. This would help explain the prejudice that Heathcliff faces throughout the story. So, critics have suggested that Jacob Elordi wasn't the right choice to depict Heathcliff, given his ethnicity. Moreover, he and Margot Robbie, who are 27 and 34 years old, respectively, have both come under fire due to their ages, since the main characters are in their early twenties for most of the book. Casting director Kharmel Cochrane responded to the backlash at the Sands film festival in Scotland, claiming there was "no need to be accurate" since the material inspiring Emerald Fennell's newest film adaptation is "just a book," according to Deadline. This statement seemingly struck a nerve with numerous literary lovers, as a recent Reddit thread regarding Kharmel's response sparked a lot of outrage and called into question the respect Brontë's novel was being afforded. "It sounds like she [Kharmel] has lots of respect for the material and isn't just doing it for money," sarcastically commented one Redditor. "What was the point of adapting it if they weren't gonna actually adapt it accurately?" asked another, "They'll probably change entire plot points to make it unrecognizable." "The casting decision is one thing, but that dismissive attitude makes me angry. I won't be watching, considering it's 'just a film,'" added a third. Now, Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights isn't the first to ignore character traits laid out by Brontë in the original book. In fact, Heathcliff has previously been played by actors such as Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy, and Timothy Dalton. Still, the rest of Kharmel's remarks from the Sands film festival have left a sour taste in many people's mouths. "There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot. But just wait until you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don't need to be accurate. It's just a book. That is not based on real life. It's all art," she stated. "There's definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy. Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking. And there may or may not be a dog collar in it." According to , the film will be released on February 13, 2026. How well it's received by audiences in the wake of such casting controversy remains to be seen. Looking for more , , and news? Follow us on so you never miss a thing!
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Orange Cats Have Long Been a Genetic Mystery. Scientists Have Finally Solved It
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: The gene that causes orange coloration in cats had been pondered for years, but never actually found—until now. Cats with orange coats get them from a deletion (meaning a missing segment) mutation in the noncoding region of a gene associated with both neuroendocrine tissues and pigmentation. There are more male orange cats than females because this gene is located on the X-chromosome, which males only have one copy of. Females are more likely to be tortoiseshell or calico because they have two X chromosomes, and therefore have more genetic coat color options to 'choose' from. Garfield might be the most iconic orange tabby around, but Hollywood has seen quite a few leading cats of the same color—Heathcliff, Oliver, Hiyao Miyazaki's adorably terrifying Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro, and Morris from those retro cat food commercials all come to mind. Like most celebrities, they have so far refused to give up their most guarded beauty secret—how did they get those fabulous golden auburn coats? Hiroyuki Sasaki—a cat enthusiast and geneticist at Kyushu University in Japan—was determined to identify the elusive gene that carries the orange mutation in Felis silvestris catus (the domesticated cat). He and his research team analyzed DNA in skin tissue from cats with and without orange fur, and found a mutation to the ARHGAP36 gene. This was a type of deletion mutation, meaning that a segment of a gene is missing. In orange cats, the missing segment is located on an intron, or noncoding region, of the ARHGAP36 gene, which is also in neuroendocrine tissues (especially the hypothalamus), adrenal glands, and pituitary glands. The location of the mutation on this particular gene also explains why there are so many more male orange cats than female ones. ARHGAP36 is known as X-linked, meaning that it is located on the X chromosome. In female cats (and all female mammals), one of the two X chromosomes in each cell is randomly switched off in a process known as X chromosome inactivation, so even if the mutation is present, it is unlikely that it will be expressed by every cell and appear as an even (or even semi-even) orange coat. To be orange, a female cat must have the orange gene on both X chromosomes, so no matter which one is deleted, the orange gene still dominates. Male cats, on the other hand, only have one X chromosome, and are therefore much more likely to evenly express that mutation. Whether orange or not, all fur pigmentation genes are X-linked. Calico and tortoiseshell coats also come from different combinations of activated X chromosomes—both with and without the deletion that results in orange—which explains why most of them are female. For this to happen to a male cat, there would have to be two X chromosomes present next to the Y chromosome in order for random inactivation to result in mottled fur. Sasaki and his team found that ARHGAP36 was most active in melanocytes (cells in the skin which produce pigment) found in the orange patches of calicos and tortoiseshells. Genes promoting melanogenesis, or the production of melanin in melanocytes, suppress ARHGAP36 and are upregulated in brown, black, and gray patches. These colors are associated with the black or brown pigment known as eumelanin, which is also the most common form of melanin. Sasaki believes that when a mutated ARHGAP36 is expressed as orange fur in cats, the missing part of the gene would have suppressed orange coloration had it been present. In cats, mutated ARHGAP36 was shown to suppress other genes involved in the production of eumelanin so that it could instead produce a different type of melanin called pheomelanin, which is the reddish-yellow pigment in orange fur. Found only in mammals and birds, pheomelanin is also behind red hair in humans and flashy red feathers in some bird species. It seems that high ARHGAP36 activity is, in general, associated with reduced activity in genes involved with the production of eumelanin. Sasaki is convinced that this gene's takeover may somehow shift pigment production to pheomelanin instead—though, how exactly it pulls this off is still unknown. And because ARHGAP36 also has significant importance in the brain, there is even speculation as to whether there are true associations between fur color and personality (the confirmation of which could either prove or silence all the orange cat memes out there). 'Although it is not fully understood how the identified deletion switches the pigment species, the variation likely dominates the cat population with orange coat color,' the researchers wrote. Somewhere, Garfield is smugly beaming next to a tray of lasagna. You Might Also Like 70 Impressive Tiny Houses That Maximize Function and Style 30+ Paint Colors That Will Instantly Transform Your Kitchen
Scroll.in
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Emily Brontë's ‘Wuthering Heights' is a dark parable about coercive control
Coercive or controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship became a criminal offence in the UK in December 2015. The legislation was the result of a long campaign by the charity Women's Aid to extend understanding of domestic abuse beyond physical violence. But, over 150 years earlier, Emily Brontë placed coercive control at the heart of her celebrated gothic romance, Wuthering Heights. The novel is often read as a great love story. It has inspired a Kate Bush song and many stage, film and TV adaptations. But Heathcliff is an abused child who becomes an abuser – and teaches his son to copy, continue and refine his abuse. In the novel, Cathy declares that 'My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!' Coercive control, like Cathy's love, may not be fully visible, but it nonetheless underpins the emotional logic of Brontë's plot. Wuthering Heights is a novel of two halves. The first focuses on spirited, passionate Cathy, caught between her tamely domestic husband Edgar Linton and the thrilling wildness of Heathcliff, her soulmate from childhood. To revenge himself on Cathy for marrying Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's infatuated sister Isabella. Isabella initially sees Heathcliff as a brooding romantic hero, but she soon repents, fleeing with their baby son Linton. Heathcliff and Isabella Heathcliff's abuse of Isabella is sometimes physical, but more often psychological. He takes care, as he tells the family servant Nelly Dean, to 'keep strictly within the limits of the law' to avoid giving Isabella 'the slightest right to claim a separation'. The law grants him ownership of his wife's money and property, but subtler refinements of abuse include humiliation, isolation from family and friends, and deprivation of food, privacy and personal care. At Wuthering Heights, Nelly is shocked to see Isabella unwashed, shabbily dressed. She's 'wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging lankly down'. Isabella has already reported that she is forced to sleep in a chair because Heathcliff keeps 'the key of our room in his pocket'. Heathcliff delights in humbling her before Nelly and his own servants, calling her 'an abject thing', 'shamefully cringing', 'pitiful, slavish, and mean-minded'. Isabella escapes Heathcliff clad only in 'a girlish dress' and 'thin slippers', and goes into hiding with her brother's financial help. After her death, Heathcliff recovers their son Linton and uses him to engineer a second coercive marriage to his cousin, Cathy and Edgar's daughter Catherine. A sickly, peevish adolescent, Linton Heathcliff is perhaps the most unappealing character in Victorian fiction, lacking altogether the strength and charisma of his father. But his puny physicality casts the coercive nature of his abuse into relief. Catherine is imprisoned at Wuthering Heights and blackmailed into consenting to marry Linton, who becomes the legal owner of all her property. Incapable of dominating her physically, Linton delights in psychological torment, conspiring in his father's surveillance and depriving her of beloved possessions: All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine. And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle [Catherine's father], when they were young. That was yesterday – I said they were mine, too. After Linton's death, Heathcliff inherits everything, leaving the widowed and orphaned Catherine his penniless dependant. Wuthering Heights is a dark parable about the absolute power that marriage can grant to abusive men. Real-life inspiration Brontë's plot was rooted in a real-life local case of domestic torment. In 1840, a Mrs Collins came to Haworth Parsonage to ask Emily's father Patrick's advice about her alcoholic, abusive husband. He was Patrick's colleague and fellow clergyman, Rev. John Collins, assistant curate of Keighley. Unusually for the time, Patrick advised her to leave him and take her two children with her. In April 1847, just seven months before Wuthering Heights' publication, Mrs Collins returned to Haworth to thank him. She told the Brontë family how she had settled in Manchester with her children, supporting them all by running a lodging house. Mrs Collins' experience of abuse did not only shape the chilling psychodrama of Wuthering Heights. There are echoes of Patrick's advice in Emily's sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre (1847), and her eponymous heroine's famous declaration of autonomy: 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.' Mrs Collins' strength and resilience also inspires the bravery of Helen Huntingdon in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Like Emily's 'eternal rocks,' coercive control lurks beneath the Brontës' best-loved fictions, warning Victorian readers of the terrifyingly real dangers of psychological abuse long before the law caught up. Katy Mullin, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, University of Leeds. Hannah Roche, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, University of York. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
