Female Characters and Their Representations

A new paper exploring the film Wuthering Heights 1939:

From literary text to film: Analysis of two female characters in Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë and their representation in the film directed by William Wyler (1939)
Ana Pérez Porras
Universidad de Granada
European Public & Social Innovation Review, 10, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.31637/epsir-2025-703

Wuthering Heights (1847) has been filmed and televised many times, and this paper proposes to study two female characters from Emily Brontë's literary text and their representation in the movie directed by Wyler (1939). In the novel, the author denounces the social discrimination faced by women through two characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Isabella Linton, and the aim is to analyse their representation in this film. This version stops to highlight Catherine's childhood, and the viewer needs to understand why this character chooses to belong to the Linton world. The film omits an essential part of Isabella Linton's story, that of an abused woman. Methodology: The methodology used for this analysis is Stoneman's reception and cultural dissemination aesthetics, providing a clear framework for our study. Discussion: The discussion will focus on the discrepancies in the representation of the female characters, highlighting the urgent need for critical analysis. Conclusions: This adaptation is a censored version that does not represent the social dismissal of women that Emily Brontë intended through her female characters.