Why Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is out of sync with Emily Bronte’s iconic novel.
Predictably, the reception to Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is, at best, mixed. The film has been garnering controversy since long before its release due to how different it looked to be from Bronte’s work. Fennell’s iteration of Wuthering Heights is less an exploration of abuse cycles and more a lush and tragic love story. To be clear, Fennell is far from the first director to put their own spin onto a classic novel. She isn’t even the first director to make controversial choices when adapting Wuthering Heights. But why does Fennell’s adaptation in particular sting?
Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein was released several months ago and is still dominating cultural conversation. It is among a select few horror films that have received a best picture nomination at the Oscars, and received praise from literary scholars and casual fans alike. However, Del Toro did not make a completely faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. The creature is not a morally complex gothic character and Frankenstein is outwardly monstrous (with one character calling him a monster to his face, doing away with Shelley’s subtlety). Whilst there were still discussions about whether these changes served the story, they make sense within our broader cultural context. Of course the Creature will be more sympathetic in this film; it was made at a point where most people picture him as an evil horror villain. The moral complexity of Frankenstein is sidestepped in cultural conversations around the novel because of a general lack of familiarity with the subject matter. Del Toro’s adaptation is in conversation with Shelley, but it is also paying close attention to the broader cultural context surrounding the way we discuss Frankenstein and the Creature as characters.
I bring up Frankenstein not because it is similar to Wuthering Heights- it is clear Del Toro and Fennell have very different intentions in their direction- but in order to show why Fennell’s changes fall flat. Where Del Toro’s changes are as a result of considering our cultural context, Fennell’s are simply baffling. Frankenstein hits the same emotional beats of the novel, and prompts a similar sort of discussion to the novel despite taking a different direction to access these points. Wuthering Heights (2026) forgoes the novel’s themes entirely.
Those who enjoy Fennell’s adaptation typically have similar reasoning and justifications for it. They point out that Fennell has been clear that this is not a faithful, one to one adaptation of the novel and that critiquing its inaccuracy is a disservice to the film. Much of the press tour has been focussed on this, with Fennell offering limp justifications as to why she changed the aspects of the stories that she did. In an interview with W Magazine, she states that “[she] could only take [her] experience of [the novel] and try to translate it.” And clearly her experience of the novel does have an audience; audiences are swooning over Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s Cathy and Heathcliff. In my theatre there was a reverent silence once the film concluded, with many people visibly teary as they exited the cinema. As one user bluntly put it on X, “Wuthering Heights is SO good when you don’t have an English major in your ear telling you it’s nothing like the book.”
But there has always been an elephant in the room when it comes to Fennell’s adaptation: her casting choice for Heathcliff. Again, Fennell is far from the first director to sidestep the racism Heathcliff faces in the novel, but this is a particularly frustrating choice amidst the ongoing rise of racism. Heathcliff is viciously abused by Cathy’s brother Hindley throughout the novel (whom Fennell omits, with his role being filled by Cathy’s father) and is presented as the less acceptable and stable option for Cathy’s marriage. This is partially a result of his class, but his race is a significant factor in his mistreatment and is a key aspect of why Heathcliff becomes the cruel and abusive man he is later in the novel. His racial ambiguity is a result of the contrasting ways the other characters in the novel describe Heathcliff. The most common interpretations are that he is Romani or South Asian. As well as being described as dark-skinned, throughout the novel he is referred to using terms for these ethnic groups. With so much racial language being used in the novel, it feels ridiculous to sidestep this aspect of his character in adaptations. All of this context makes Fennell’s choice to ignore the racial tensions within the novel as confusing as it is offensive. Her justification for casting Elordi stems from the fact that the cover to her copy of Wuthering Heights featured a man who looked like Elordi, which is a weak justification when faced with this vast racial context.
Fennell’s warping of Heathcliff does not end at his racial identity. It extends to the relationships he forms throughout the film, particularly with his wife Isabella Linton. In the novel Isabella is a victim of horrific abuse at the hand of Heathcliff, who takes his anger at the world out on her. His story becomes one about perpetuating abuse cycles. Isabella, meanwhile, represents ending these cycles. She leaves Heathcliff at a time when this was not remotely socially acceptable, becoming a poignant example for young women. Fennell alters this story so the two have a BDSM relationship that Isabella fully consents to. This erasure of a radical and important plotline is deeply troubling, and it appears to have been done to make Heathcliff more sympathetic to general audiences. Removing an important aspect of a female character’s plotline to make the male lead more likeable is misogynistic, and it removes the nuance and tragedy of the original novel. Heathcliff is a tall, dark and brooding shell of the complicated character Bronte created.
I’m sure Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is fun without an English major lamenting about the social context of the novel and pointing out the racism present in this adaptation. The film is visually stunning, it hits the right emotional beats, and the supporting performances are impressive. But by removing this social context something significant is lost. As I watched the film I couldn’t help but wonder what insightful race and class politics could be explored by a more ambitious director. I wondered what Isabella’s story would look like if it was more faithful, depicting a woman escaping abuse at a point in history where doing so was near impossible. I left the film not angry in the way I thought I would be, but frustrated.
Image Credit: Film Poster from IMDb
