Opposing Emerald Fennell’s attempt to rebrand a story of psychological and physical abuse as “the greatest love story of all time”
Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film Wuthering Heights is the latest in a long line of unfaithful adaptations of Emily Brontë’s beloved classic, and perhaps even guiltier of diminishing the complexity of the original story than its predecessors. Her attempt to rebrand a story of psychological and physical abuse as “the greatest love story of all time” intentionally removes the overarching classist, racial, and gendered barriers that ultimately necessitate the violence found in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Through her recharacterizations of Heathcliff and Isabella, Fennell waters the complexities of the story down to passionate attraction, conflating love with violence in a way that contributes to a concerning normalization of abuse.
In Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff can only establish a measure of power against those who outrank him socially through psychological and physical violence. From early adolescence to adulthood, the perceived threat of Heathcliff’s physical violence constantly terrifies Edgar from his presence; when Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights, he exacerbates Hindley’s alcoholism and gambling to obtain ownership of the latter’s property. In other words, Heathcliff’s only avenue to power is through violence, and, by default, abuse. This cruelty is necessitated by barring him from conventional means of obtaining the financial independence and social status essential to his survival, based on one inherent difference from every other character in the novel: his race.
Heathcliff is described from the first as “dark-skinned,” and repeatedly throughout the course of his life is referred to using racist slurs or accusations of being demonic in nature, beginning — crucially — in early childhood. Racial otherness thus becomes a central plot device to the story, with Heathcliff’s formative experiences largely tainted by racism, serving as catalysts for the tyrannical villain who dominates the second volume of the original story.
Unsurprisingly, Fennell’s decision to cast Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff drew significant backlash from longtime readers of Brontë’s novel. In an interview with the BBC, she stated that Elordi “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read,” which indicates one of two things: she never got past the cover, or she actively ignored the repeated mentions of Heathcliff’s racial otherness throughout her reading. Either way, Fennell deliberately chose to omit the racism that necessitates Heathcliff’s comfort with violent abuse in favour of depicting him as the romantic anti-hero of her teenage imagination.
Another concerning Fennell re-characterization is that of Isabella Linton, Edgar’s younger sister and later Heathcliff’s wife. In Brontë’s novel, Isabella’s character arc serves as a poignant warning against abusive relationships, emphasizing the horrors hidden behind their beguiling masquerade as romance yet to be discovered. Pure-hearted and optimistic, Isabella learns she is not immune to the apathetic, cruel, and violent nature of her husband only after she has been wed to him. Forsaken by her brother and abused by her husband, Isabella decides to escape for the sake of herself and her unborn child, with no financial or social support, to the south of England where she hopes Heathcliff won’t enforce his legal right to compel her return.
Brontë’s portrayal of a married woman exercising her autonomy to subvert the misogynistic constraints of contemporary marriage was so incredibly radical for its time that it remains a focal point for contemporary feminist studies. In contrast, Fennell’s reduction of the dynamic between Heathcliff and Isabella to sexual sadomasochism reverts Brontë’s feminist characterization of Isabella, reducing her to an object of male sexual desire and entwining abuse with romance and sex.
When asked about the hypersexuality of the film as explicitly implied by the trailer, Fennell replied, “It’s [the film], like, primal, sexual . . . something that was the book that I experienced when I was 14,” before asserting the reason for controversy over the original publication of Wuthering Heights was the “enormous amount of sadomasochism in this book.” Reviewers of the novel in 1848, likely past the mature age of 14, were therefore apparently misinformed in centering that controversy around “the misdeeds and oppressions of tyranny” or “details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance” detailed in the original two volumes.
In her article on romanticizing abuse in the English literary tradition, Emily Boynton succinctly observes that “[a]lthough Brontë’s book was first perceived as monstrous, the text is now widely regarded as an epic love story. This shift has largely occurred because of the adaptations of Wuthering Heights which depict the violence within the novel as a feature of idyllic love.” The premise of the film is therefore counterintuitive to its origins; inspired by a masterpiece of high literature that addressed classism, racism, and sexism in a time when none were acceptable subjects of discussion, especially for an author suspected to be female (Wuthering Heights was first published under the ambiguously gendered pseudonym Ellis Bell in 1847), it diminishes the interplay of these elements in shaping the complex atmosphere of the novel in exchange for what Peter Bradshaw of theGuardian wittingly calls “an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire.”
Online discourse around Wuthering Heights highlights a widespread lack of media literacy with greater concern around consumerist appeal and emotional payoff that is placed in opposition to intellectual and critical approaches. This conversation reaches far beyond “yucking someone else’s yum”; it necessitates serious investigation into our social willingness to dismiss the harmful consequences of watering down complex literature for a cash grab. As one Reddit user aptly notes, “If you walk away from reading the book and still think it’s just about “ghosts and romance” then something is going wrong. A major argument in favour of the movie is that the book just doesn’t matter at all.”
Echoing the sentiment of ignoring the source text is Elordi’s description of the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine: “If you are willing to spite me and hurt me, that means that you love me and vice versa,” he says. “And that’s the kind of sickness of complex love, I think. As long as you’re doing something — even if it’s negative — if it’s towards me, it’s about me, so then we’re connected.”
Sprinkling some capitalism onto a raging fire of toxicity, Margot Robbie, who produced the film and played Catherine Earnshaw, stated that “I believe you should make movies for the people who are going to buy tickets to see the movies. It’s as simple as that. I love working with Emerald because she always prioritizes an emotional experience over a heady idea.” This comment alone shines a spotlight on the major issue with this “adaptation”; most of the source material isn’t being adapted, especially not its “heady idea[s].”
Rebranding abuse as “complex love” and dismissing complex plots as “heady idea[s]” promote the oversimplification of inherently intricate stories such as Wuthering Heights. This messaging opens up doors to conflation without causation, which directly contributes to the social normalization of physical and mental abuse in relationships. Especially concerning is data from several research articles published within the last decade that demonstrate a correlation between being readers of Wuthering Heights at adolescent age and perceiving Heathcliff as a romantic anti-hero.
As Boynton emphasizes, “Young adult readers need texts that imagine romance outside of heteronormative, patriarchal, and abusive restrictions.” Rather than contributing to the longstanding tradition of watering down its complexity, adaptations of Wuthering Heights should take the impressionability of young audiences into special consideration. Perhaps more significantly, they should capture the essence of high literature in ways that prove intellectualism and entertainment not only can, but should, co-exist.
With Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell has shouldered the “huge responsibility” of adapting Wuthering Heights apparently to rebrand a multifaceted tale of tragedy, betrayal, and suffering as “the greatest love story of all time.” After finishing my eighth read of the novel several years beyond the age of 14, hearing Emerald say that she would be furious if the project had been headed by another director makes me certain I wouldn’t, and most likely neither would Emily Brontë.