A few years ago, I attended a production of Wuthering Heights that was so poorly executed that people actually walked out. During the interval, the bar was filled with loud conversations from the remaining audience members, all wondering what had gone so wrong. The accents were off, the imagery felt clichéd, and the characters seemed utterly lost. Those of us who stayed were met with an abrupt ending, well before the final third of Emily Brontë’s novel, leaving the room in a state of confused silence, followed by a hesitant, half-hearted applause. Later, over drinks, my friend and I tried to pinpoint the issue, but we could only come to one conclusion: Wuthering Heights is an unadaptable text.
That adaptation, along with all the other weak efforts like Andrea Arnold’s 2011 attempt with Kaya Scodelario turning Cathy into Effy Stonem or the 1939 take with Laurence Olivier that fully eliminated half of the story, didn’t – or simply couldn’t – keep up with the original 1847 text. It’s incredible, given that centuries have passed since its publication, that no one seems able to manage to capture the gothic classic in moving image. Now, all eyes are turned to Emerald Fennell as she steps up to the plate to try, but its success already feels rocky.
Instantly, Fennell has fallen into the trap that other adaptations have before. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have been cast as the two leads. That means two of Hollywood’s most attractive figures will be attempting to play classically rugged and rural characters from Yorkshire. Also, importantly, white Australian Elordi will be playing Heathcliff, a character of unknown origins but whose entire treatment hooks onto his outsider status caused by his race. He’s described as “a dark-skinned gipsy” or “a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway”. Falling at the first hurdle of casting doesn’t spell success.
But this conversation perfectly highlights why Wuthering Heights feels so unadaptable; people become fixated on one thing and neglect another. The classic novel is an incredibly adventurous tale at 416 pages long with a plotline that spans generations. The story cannot be easily summarised. It’s a tale of love, class, race, generational trauma. It’s a ghost story but also a deeply common story of forbidden love during the Victorian age, meaning it has to try and navigate both supernaturalism and realism. The characters, in order to carry off such a hefty story, are complex. Cathy, the central figure, has to be both likeable to allow the love story to work but then weak-willed and somewhat unsympathetic to keep Heathcliff as an anti-hero rather than a villain. It’s crucial that there’s a level of support for his character despite his evil streak, but that can only be done if the love story and Cathy are done right.
It’s a delicate cycle. Beginning with Cathy and Heathcliff as children and ending with their own children, this intricate and complex story only works if everything moves together perfectly and if everything is given exactly the time, care and attention that Brontë put into it.
Focus too much on one thing, and the rest collapses. That’s where other adaptations have fallen down. The 1939 version axed the whole plotline relating to the younger generation, essentially making Healthcliffe’s evil deeds pointless and his character somewhat pathetic. The 2011 version cared too much about Cathy’s conflict, making it feel stunted. The stage adaptation I saw cared too much about the setting and the pair’s early relationship, which, although important, left no room for the plot to be fulfilled in the thorough nature it requires. It’s difficult as Wuthering Heights is simply a long book with a lot going on, but maybe that’s why no two-and-a-half-hour film could ever hope to tackle it.
Also, there’s the argument that maybe they shouldn’t try. The beauty of Wuthering Heights, and why it’s endured as a beloved classic, is Brontë’s writing. Despite being a gothic novel, it houses some of the most incredible monologues ever penned on the topic of love. “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little visible delight, but necessary,” Cathy declared, “Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” This, along with the countless other passages of poetic prose, don’t feel like lines that quite work when read aloud. They crumble into melodrama off the page somehow if they’re not handled right. But with so much beauty in the book, there’s certainly a point to be made that maybe people should just read it instead.
However, Fennell’s role in the project feels slightly hopeful. Saltburn felt like her own take on a gothic novel, complete with uncanny happenings, creepy butlers, class commentary, grand houses, and the works. She also managed to tackle desire and devotion with the same eerie and obsessive edge that Wuthering Heights has. As Heathcliff declares, “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then,” in the hopes of keeping his lost loved one around him, it doesn’t feel too dissimilar to Oliver’s sinister lust for Felix, or Felix’s life.
But even then, it begs the question of why do it again? When Saltburn saw her master the gothic genre and essentially write a story close to the world of Brontë’s own, why go in for seconds? There’s no doubt that Fennell will be able to handle scenes like when Heathcliff digs up and crawls into Cathy’s grave with a glamorous yet gruesome edge. But when she already had Barry Keoghan do that at its shocking best in the infamous grave scene, why do it again? What’s the point of Fennell doing an adaptation when her own original already feels like a great take on the classic? And do we really need an adaptation of a story done so perfectly while still feeling so rich and engaging in its original form? It’s an exercise in futility. (Lucy Harbron)
Just as we had all relatively recovered from Netflix’s decision to change the relationship between Dorian and Basil to that of brothers in their upcoming adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar-winning director Emerald Fennell announced her decision to cast actors Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in her upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
Brontë’s 1847 novel is often regarded as a British literary classic, following the turbulent relationship between two families. Fennell allocating the beloved characters of Catherine and Heathcliff to the two Australian actors has resulted in what can only be called a public outcry, with Robbie’s age and the fact of Elordi being white at its forefront.
Whilst Heathcliff’s ethnicity is famously ambiguous in Emily Brontë’s novel, his description as “a dark- skinned g*psy”, his abandonment as a baby at a northern slave port, as well as a major plot point being the racist abuse he is subjected to by his adoptive family, all leads to the implication that he was not white. The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey even went as far to ask “Did anyone actually read the book before deciding this?”.
With the role previously accommodating actors Tom Hardy and Ralph Fiennes, the question of the chosen actors’ race seems to fall short. However, commenting on Elordi’s casting, Michael Stewart, director of Brontë’s Writing Centre, told The Daily Telegraph that “things are different now, the way we represent certain people in art and culture comes with a responsibility now that wasn’t there twenty years ago”. Essentially, the choice of casting doesn’t accommodate to the current cultural climate of increased casting scrutiny, failing to appreciate and work with the ambiguity given.
The fact of there being so many brilliant non-white Hollywood actors to choose from makes it even more disappointing, if not perverse. It also ignores the presence of imperialistic views within the text when Cathy’s family’s servant wonders whether “[Heathcliff’s] father was Emperor of China, and [his] mother an Indian queen.” Dev Patel being the forerunner of the online choice of replacement only incurs my wrath on this.
Whilst we can all agree that Margot Robbie does not look a day over 25, being cast as someone in their late teens at 34 is confusing. Robbie’s part, Catherine Earnshaw, being estimated 18 or 19 years old at her death makes Fennell’s casting seem even more like an attempt to use faces that are guaranteed a large audience and taking away opportunities from potential rising young talent. What part of Brontë’s characterisation of Catherine made Fennell say “let’s cast Barbie!”? Has the need to gain a large viewership taken over the desire to credit the original material used?
Having worked with Elordi in the 2023 BAFTA nominated film Saltburn, Fennell may be going down the Christopher Nolan route of coveting her personal favourites. Laurence Olivier being 30 whilst performing the same role in the 1939 adaptation provides the argument that she’s following a Hollywood trend. Yet, this still doesn’t distract from my discomfort.
At the very least, Elordi and Robbie are brilliant actors that I don’t doubt will somehow turn this unfortunate casting into something worth watching. Even if it is just to laugh at their Yorkshire accents. (mathildahines)
Two of the most famous and classic examples are Rebecca, originally published in 1938 by Daphne Maurier, and Jane Eyre, originally published in 1847 by Charlotte Brontë. Mirroring each other in many ways, the two stories, written just shy of 100 years apart, both feature lower-class female protagonists who get swept into the upper-class worlds of commanding and mysterious male love interests. True to the trope, both women live in the shadow of a former wife. Rebecca’s Mrs. de Winter is made acutely aware of this presence not long after meeting her man, whereas Jane is kept in the dark for most of her story until the worst possible moment. Both first wives, Rebecca and Bertha, respectively, exist as inner demons for the men they married. A catalyst for self-loathing and a blockage standing in the way of allowing their newfound marriages to work.
The two best (in my opinion) film adaptations of the novels are Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre (2011). Both convey the terror these women feel in different but effective ways: Hitchcock by leaning more into the noir while adding some psychosexual elements and Fukunaga by sprinkling classic horror moments amongst the romance. For most of the film’s runtime, Jane (Mia Wasikowska) encounters her predecessor basically as a ghost. Bertha exists as an unnamed presence until her reveal, someone Jane never sees but hears scurrying around at night, giggling behind closed doors, and causing violent chaos. Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) never sees Rebecca either, but she is made real by all of her belongings remaining in the house and the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) convincing Mrs. de Winter that she’ll never be the woman Rebecca was (for a more in-depth look at Rebecca, check out Melissa Strong’s previous SpookyJawn article). The two films serve as perfect and very spooky references for the “First Wife.” (Shayna Davis)
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