Literature & Drama editor Gemma Bini asks how an $80 million adaptation of Wuthering Heights ended up missing the entire point of the book.

By Gemma Bini | Mar 24 2026

“Wuthering Heights is SO good when you don't have an English major in your ear telling you it's nothing like the book.” Comments of this sort have been dominating Twitter since the release of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The film has sparked an uproar online, particularly in light of the casting of a white actor as Heathcliff. Other viewers, particularly those unfamiliar with the novel, have argued that the film can still be enjoyed despite its erasure of certain plot points.

Yet the elements Fennell leaves out are not minor details, but central to the novel’s meaning, and many characters lose their defining motifs in an adaptation that carefully sidesteps anything remotely ‘uncomfortable’. In the heat of the debate, however, it seems we have largely failed to address why these ideas matter in Wuthering Heights in the first place. As an English graduate, and an admittedly and perhaps irritatingly opinionated person, I will gladly take on this task.

Obviously, Heathcliff being portrayed by a white man, Jacob Elordi, is the most immediate eyesore, one that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the character as Emily Brontë wrote him. Many people have argued that the casting choice merely continues a long tradition in adaptations of the novel. However, this defence feels rather shallow. It is true that many earlier adaptations were produced at a time when POC actors were far less frequently cast in major roles, but that excuse no longer holds, especially when the question of Heathcliff’s ethnicity is not really up for debate.

The novel repeatedly makes it clear that he is not perceived as white. Mr. Lockwood, for instance, describes him as a “dark-skinned gipsy in aspect,” while Nelly speculates about his exotic origins, teasing him that his “father was Emperor of China, and [his] mother an Indian queen.” Most importantly, the prejudice Heathcliff faces from the other characters signals that his appearance alone marks him as an outsider, his ‘otherness’ visible before he even speaks. 

So, to those arguing that Heathcliff could just as easily be white - Irish, perhaps - I have no better response than the sound of an incorrect buzzer, which I unfortunately cannot embed in this article. Heathcliff’s origins alone point to him being perceived as foreign: he is found wandering the streets of Liverpool, a city that, at the time, was deeply entangled in the slave trade. Furthermore, Brontë demonstrates a remarkably nuanced, almost modern, understanding of the psychological effects of racialisation. It is the abuse Heathcliff suffers as a child that ultimately shapes him into the brooding, unstable Byronic hero he becomes as an adult. His revenge is hence motivated by the systemic dehumanisation he was a victim of, which had prevented him from marrying Catherine. If Heathcliff is white, his narrative arc misses the very motivation that leads him to act the way he does. 

Another change Emerald Fennell introduces is her depiction of Isabella Linton as a willingly submissive wife to Heathcliff. While this alteration has not been discussed as widely online, it should provoke just as much disgust from viewers. In the novel, Heathcliff is extremely abusive to Isabella. He forces her into a state of confinement, snatches a dinner knife and flings it to her head during a fight, kills her dog by hanging it with a handkerchief… If Fennel really sees him simply as a dark romantic interest, I wonder whether she skipped a few chapters of the book - or perhaps, only glanced at the cover. 

What is even more troubling, however, is the film’s suggestion that Isabella somehow enjoys this cruelty. By sexualising her suffering - most grotesquely in a scene where she appears chained in the same dog chain once used for her murdered pet - the film turns her story into a tasteless spectacle. The implication that Isabella desires or welcomes an abusive relationship is not only abhorrent and insensitive, but reveals again a profound misunderstanding of the story Brontë was actually telling. Isabella’s story illustrates the limited agency of women in her time, through which Brontë critiques the horrifying reality of a woman’s loss of legal, economic, and physical autonomy after marriage. That a novel from 1847 can deliver a far deeper and more incisive feminist commentary on women’s position in society than a contemporary film speaks volumes about the superficiality with which Fennell approached Wuthering Heights.

When questioned about the changes she made to the film, Fennell claimed that this version was meant to represent how she felt when she first read the novel at 14. This is difficult to dispute, as the changes to the plot and characters display a level of reading comprehension that seems entirely consistent with that of a fourteen-year-old. If anything, her misguided attempt proves why a teenager should not be put in charge of an $80 million film adaptation.

Yet I also do not wish to trivialise the consequences of erasing Heathcliff’s race and the novel’s themes of abuse and classism. Fennell is hardly a novice in literature: she holds an English degree from Oxford University. It is difficult to believe that she has not read the novel multiple times or that she is unaware of the widely discussed interpretation of Heathcliff as a racialised Other. The intentional blurring of these uncomfortable topics seemingly aims to create an apolitical, exclusively white version of the story that lacks any sort of meaningful representation and deeper reflection. This racist bias sits quietly beneath the film’s imagery, yet anyone who points it out is swiftly criticised by the movie’s defenders for daring to question the work. Fennel invites viewers to revel in the morbidity of the Gothic without interrogating its roots and symbols.

 However, Wuthering Heights became a classic precisely because of its complex engagement with cultural anxieties and social themes. By comparison, Fennell’s ‘art for art’s sake’ approach falls short of the qualities that elevate a story into the literary canon. In stripping Emily Brontë’s novel of its depth, the adaptation removes the very elements that make it a historically significant masterpiece. That said, I would not claim the film achieves nothing at all. Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of the novel has at least demonstrated that dying of tuberculosis may not, in fact, be the worst fate that can befall an author.