Tea at Trianon: "Just a Book"

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, September 7, 2025

"Just a Book"

Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw in 'Wuthering Heights' (2026).

I sensed a lot of potential for the new Wuthering Heights to be a good film. There was hope for it even with the odd casting choices. Margot Robbie may be too old for a depiction of Catherine, who dies still a teenager, but she is a fine actress and capable of capturing the heroine's angst. I see people complaining that Catherine is played by a blonde, but I seem to recall Catherine being described as being fair-haired. And in Britain at the time the Brontë sisters, someone described as "dark" could have been someone with black hair from Wales. So Elordi as Heathcliff is not badly cast. But casting Shazad Latif as the pallid Edgar Linton is bizarre. Shazad should have been Heathcliff, who is often labelled as being like a "gypsy." It is a shame that Emerald Fennell appears to have been influenced by Fifty Shades of Gray. From The Independent:

Wuthering Heights is getting the Saltburn treatment – with shock tactics and more-is-more aesthetics replacing any real substance. Frankly, the trailer is every devotee’s worst fears come to life, soundtracked by “Everything is romantic”. It is, as one X (Twitter) user rather scathingly put it, “the matcha Dubai chocolate labubu of film”, a strange farrago of on-trend components (Jacob! Margot! Charli!) that seems to have been perfectly calibrated to rage-bait the internet rather than, you know, actually do any justice to the original.
Why does it feel like such an affront? After all, bad film adaptations of literary works aren’t exactly rare. And, in theory, Wuthering Heights is “just a book”, as the film’s casting director Kharmel Cochrane put it when defending her choice of lead actors earlier this year; the decision to cast Elordi as Heathcliff, who is described in the book as “dark-skinned”, has proved to be another major point of contention, one that some reckon will flatten the nuances and complex dynamics of the original.
But calling Wuthering Heights “just a book” underestimates just how strong a grip Brontë’s story still has on readers almost two centuries on from its publication. It’s a novel that inspires a rare kind of devotion, especially among female fans. There’s a cult around Emily’s one and only book that vastly exceeds the fervour inspired by her sister Charlotte’s most famous novel, Jane Eyre, and certainly outstrips the fandom for the underrated Anne. And with that adoration comes a protectiveness over this bleak marvel. (Read more.)