Kevin Brianton, Senior Adjunct Research Fellow, La Trobe University

Vulture film critic Bilge Ebiri argued that The Searchers.[1] The film is based on the novel Wuthering Heights (1847), which is a novel about passionate, destructive love, and The Searchers (1956) is a Western about obsessive, racist hatred. Aside from the scenic elements, the book and film share many similarities.

Both works focus on a brooding central male figure. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is an outsider. He was a foundling of unknown origin. He is consumed with love for Catherine Earnshaw, who grows up with him, and they run wild across the Moors. They are inseparable, but she chooses to marry Edgar Linton, a local gentleman, and Heathcliff grows cold with anger. His obsession turns into a campaign of revenge against all concerned.

In contrast, Ethan Edwards in The Searchers is a bitter United States Civil War veteran who refused to surrender and appears to be the one wanted for various unsolved crimes. At the start of the film, he returns to his brother’s farm in Texas after a long and unexplained absence. Shortly after his arrival, he joins a posse of men who are hunting Indians involved in the theft of cattle. While distracted with the pursuit, the Comanche attack his brother’s farm and his niece Debbie is abducted, while the rest of his family is slaughtered. In response to the atrocity, Edwards embarks on a long quest to find his niece. His motivation becomes a complex and dark mix of familial duty and a racist desire to ‘kill’ or ‘save’ her from being taken into the culture he hates.

They are different stories, but both are about Herculean characters capable of great feats of strength, yet who can also be destructive to their families. The core conflict in both stories revolves around a woman who is lost, not just physically but culturally. Heathcliff sees Catherine Earnshaw as being ‘stolen’ from him by Edgar Linton and the trappings of civilized society.

In The Searchers, the central question for Ethan is whether Debbie Edwards can be ‘saved’ after being absorbed into Native American life. She is, to Ethan, stolen by a culture that he hates. Apart from the two worlds, both stories use the passage of significant time as a key structural element, showing the protagonist’s obsession hardening over the years. In Wuthering Heights, the plot unfolds over the course of decades. After Catherine’s death, Heathcliff’s quest for revenge continues for decades. In The Searchers, the quest that spans seven years.

A key part of both stories hinges on a moment where the central character finally confronts the woman. Catherine and Heathcliff have their final, devastating confrontation shortly before her death. Catherine does not return to Heathcliff in a romantic sense; their reunion on her deathbed defines their bond. In contrast, after seven years, Ethan finally finds Debbie. In one of the most famous shots of the film, he chases her and, in a moment of extreme tension, lifts her in his arms and says, ‘Let’s go home, Debbie.’ In the original script of the film, Edwards says: ‘You sure take after your mother.’ It is faintly suggested that Debbie’s mother and Edwards had an affair, and Debbie may well even be his daughter. At the very least, there is an attraction. Heathcliff also sees something of Catherine in her daughter Cathy: “…perhaps you have never remarked that their eyes are precisely similar, and they are those of Catherine Earnshaw.”

Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was always meant to be a “Herculean” figure, not in the sense of a virtuous hero,an anti-hero possessing superhuman willpower, immense physical presence, and the ability to both endure and inflict extreme suffering. At one point, Heathcliff exclaims, “It is a poor conclusion, is it not?.. An absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!” Hercules was capable of great feats but also caused great suffering, particularly those close to him. After seeing Cathy’s eyes, Heathcliff loses the will to live and dies a broken man, his obsessive project complete but ultimately hollow. He is buried next to Catherine, “where they have unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.” They are also separated from the peaceful union of the next generation with Cathy and Hareton,

This structural similarity is not a coincidence. The Searchers is an important work of the Western genre, which has frequently adapted and repurposed archetypal stories. The film’s screenwriter, Frank S. Nugent, and its director, John Ford, were deeply literate men. No evidence exists that either the writer or director consciously used Wuthering Heights as a blueprint. However, the novel’s powerful template of an obsessed outsider is a classic literary structure with roots in Greek mythology. It is absolutely certain that both writers drew on the Herculean myth, as many writers throughout the century had done. Eugene M. Wraith in his book The Herculean Hero in Marlowe, Chapman, Shakespeare and Dryden has shown how frequently this motif has been repeated throughout Western literature down through the centuries. At the end of The Searchers, after bringing Debbie home, the other characters enter the homestead. Ethan is left standing outside. In the final celebrated scene, Edwards turns away from the community he has reunited and walks away into the wilderness. The shot is framed in the doorway as the door closes on him. He chooses not to enter the home, and he is forever the wanderer. Both characters end their journeys alone, unable to integrate or return to the domestic, civilized world.

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[1] Bilge Ebiri, Sorry, But These Wuthering Heights Trailers Rule, https://www.vulture.com/article/sorry-but-these-wuthering-heights-trailers-rule.html