If they go beyond the surface level, readers will realise the exaggerated and unjustified wickedness attributed to these female praying mantis and thus Mansfield’s denunciation of this negative image of women will be fulfilled, if only in this covert yet efficient way. Mansfield’s intention is to reveal the ostracism suffered by these apparently evil women, simply because they do not contribute to the propagation of patriarchal systems in the exercise of their freedom. In particular, we study the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield’s parodic use through this mimicry of the stereotype of the femme fatale or evil woman, as to illustrate how negative women are perceived when they pursue the attainment of their own desire, turning into men’s victimisers. The departure point of this essay is the concept of “mimicry” or “masquerade”, theorised by feminist and post-colonial critics like Melanie Klein (1920), Joan Riviére (1929), Luce Irigaray (1985), Mary Ann Doane (1991), or Homi Bhabha (1994), which implies that women deliberately assume the feminine style and posture assigned to them within patriarchal discourse with a subversive rather than merely imitative intention. How are films related to the literary source? What contributes to the differences among different adaptations? How does one adaptation affect another? It is believed that the responses to these questions will shed a new light on adaptation studies. However, in 2011, casting a black ill-experienced actor as Heathcliff has been under debate, for after Laurence Olivier enacted a Byronic handsome white male Heathcliff, Arnold’s attempt or even subversion of the image of Heathcliff seems to be unacceptable to some audience.
For example, in Hollywood’s Golden Era, William Wyler produced the classic adaptation of the novel, creating Heathcliff as an endurable and noble figure. Versions of adaptation vary in different ways. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is an unfathomable and unsettling story with a reinvigorating afterlife on screen, and adapting Wuthering Heights has been a daunting task for many directors.
Film at its birth was intertwined with literature, and with its rapid development, the relationship between film and literature is as complicated as ever, becoming an important subject matter in adaptation studies.
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