Angelika May rightly states that a considerable portion of working actors are privately educated (Wuthering slights: why are film-makers afraid of casting Yorkshire actors as Cathy Earnshaw?, 17 February). She neglects to mention, however, that Jessica Knappett, Wuthering Heights’ sole Bradford actor, is also privately educated.
Angelika points out that “northern characters, particularly women, are coded as working class”, to which I say, there’s northing wrong with that. Working-class culture, humour and identity should be celebrated. The key is to avoid what Angelika goes on to describe as “comic, chaotic or intellectually limited”. These stereotypes are deeply rooted in the British class system, and to overcome them, working class artists must smash the structures which uphold them.
Working-class artists have nothing to gain from being invited into the inner sanctum, or by being given roles in reactionary fluff like Wuthering Heights, if we keep telling the same old tales for the benefit of the same old institutions. The real goal, I say, should be more working-class writers, directors and performers telling their stories and making their work, on their terms. We can do without another boring adaptation of repressed middle-class sexuality, whoever happens to play Cathy.
Josh Guiry
Bradford
• Angelika May presents a good argument concerning the failure of successive adaptations of Wuthering Heights to cast a Yorkshirewoman as Cathy, but it is not strictly true to say that, “Across every major adaptation … not one Cathy has been portrayed by a Yorkshirewoman”. In Andrea Arnold’s film, the young Cathy is played by Shannon Beer, an actress from Shirecliffe in Sheffield. It should also be noted that Arnold’s film is the only adaptation to have cast Heathcliff using a black actor, James Howson from Leeds, also in Yorkshire. This is significant because the novel strongly implies that Heathcliff was of Black or Romany heritage.
Chris Goldie
Sheffield
