There’s a chilling promise in the preface of “This Dark Night,” Deborah Lutz’s account of the life of a celebrated early-19th-century English poet and novelist. “With this biography,” writes the author, “I work to place Emily Brontë in the history of more modern ways of thinking.”
The phrase “more modern ways of thinking” may curdle the blood of the reader, who may brace for Ms. Lutz to inculpate her subject in matters of race, class and gender. Happily, there’s no cause for alarm. The reader’s blood can resume its easy flow. Such elements do appear in the book, but there’s no sense that Ms. Lutz has strained to find and exploit them. Rather than offering the usual tedious politics, she gives us lavish servings of literary aesthetics. By the end, the reader understands much of what went into Brontë’s making, and leaves feeling grateful, buffeted and a little awestruck by the intense, self-contained, short-lived author of one of the world’s most esteemed novels.
Had Brontë survived past 30, she might have worked yet-greater literary marvels, but as it is she left us with “Wuthering Heights,” a bravura work of melodrama published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. The novel was slow to sell and slow to find its place in the canon. Brontë was dead before it bore her name. Early reviewers, writes Ms. Lutz, found the book “too gloomy, savage, and eccentric.” She speculates that its harsh reception may have to some degree gratified its author who, after all, “did mean to write a savage, cruel, and gloomy novel.”
In “This Dark Night,” Ms. Lutz, a professor literature at Pennsylvania State University, deploys flash and elegance when tracing the wellsprings of her subject’s genius to their sources. Brontë was born in 1818 into a household acquainted with grief; her mother died in 1821 and her two eldest siblings within weeks of each other in 1825. She grew up primarily in the company of her sisters (Charlotte and Anne) and brother (Branwell), with their father (Patrick), in splendid seclusion in a parsonage near England’s West Yorkshire moors.
From her earliest years, Emily thrilled to the austere glories of the landscape, with its great desolate stretches of rocky turf and rushing waterways all shaped and pummeled by winds that whistled and “wuthered.” She was alive to folklore that told of fairies and elves and the lingering dead. She developed, writes Ms. Lutz, a “weird, witchy” sense of humor, doodled violent images in the margins of her books and made a specialty, in her poetry and prose, of the “nocturnal and crepuscular.”Most importantly, Brontë spent her formative years in a kind of grand literary apprenticeship. Most children toggle back and forth between reality and fantasy and leave imaginative play behind (or become incapable of engaging in it) around puberty. The Brontë siblings were able to extend their time of enchantment by staying at home, socializing with one another and committing wholly to living in realms of their own creation: Charlotte and Branwell in the fictive land of Angria, Anne and Emily in Gondal.
The siblings concocted complex lineages and histories for their countries, writing Angrian and Gondalian tales and verse in tiny homemade books. Their reading, writing and collaboration went on for years. It is hard to imagine a better hothouse for growing gaudy literary flowers, and therefore perhaps no surprise that all four Brontës would be published, but still it is a wonder that from this one crowded nursery should spring not one but two of the most distinguished novels ever penned: “Wuthering Heights” and, earlier the same year, Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.”
In adulthood, the need for ready money forced each of the Brontës to leave their creative idyll for a time—all of them worked as educators—before returning home. The three girls embarked on novels, writing alone during the days and meeting in the evenings to talk over points of plot and character.
The turbulent Branwell was the first literary Brontë to be published (a poem, not a novel), but also the first to die: drink, despair and tuberculosis put him in a grave at 31. Emily, 13 months his junior, was soon to follow, though even as she sickened (probably also from tuberculosis), she likely continued to disappear into the parallel worlds of her imagination. In her subject’s consciousness, writes Ms. Lutz, “through the scrim of the real appeared, indistinctly, a land where people and objects could shapeshift, where dreams provided texture. Something might lie behind or deep inside the mundane; almost anything could function as an entryway to the miraculous, the sublime.”
As to the elements of modern thinking, Ms. Lutz does explore Brontë’s love life. She alludes to a mysterious adolescent entanglement of which scholars know little (incredibly, for a woman who wrote so much, very little of Brontë’s correspondence is known to exist), and notes here and there the possible influence of lesbians.
In another nod to modern thinking, missing almost entirely from this vivid narrative is the role of Christianity in the life of a young woman who in girlhood said her prayers, who as a teenager carefully reproduced an engraving of an ascetic saint and who would have heard church bells ringing every day of her life. Brontë was fascinated by silent crypts and tormenting passions. These are aspects of the gothic sensibility, of course; they might also, for a clergyman’s daughter, have come from a different guiding philosophy. (Meghan Cox Gurdon)
According to
The Guardian, Emeral Fennell 'regrets not showing Margot Robbie’s ‘extremely hairy armpits’' in Wuthering Heights 2026.
Emerald Fennell says period-realistic scene emphasising Cathy’s lack of razors was shot but did not make final cut
The Wuthering Heights director Emerald Fennell said it was “unfortunate” that a scene showing Margot Robbie’s hairy armpits did not make the final cut, because women in period adaptations are often shown with clean-shaven underarms.
Robbie’s character, Cathy, had “extremely hairy armpits” in the 2026 adaptation of the novel, but “unfortunately the scene that we see them didn’t make it in there”, said the director.
Cathy having unshaven pits “was so important to me”, she said, adding that she often wonders “where are the razors that these women are using?” when watching Jane Austen adaptations.
“They’re all kind of hairless like eels. I’m like: ‘What’s going on? It’s completely mad.’”
Fennell spoke to an audience at Hay festival in Wales on Friday evening. Her sexed-up adaptation of Emily Brontë’s gothic novel, starring Robbie alongside Jacob Elordi, was released on Valentine’s Day this year.
Fennell described it as a “sister, not a twin” of the book, saying that she “couldn’t make” the original. “It’s so brilliant,” she added.
Asked about the infamous “skin room” – Cathy’s husband, Edgar Linton, gives her bedroom a bespoke design with walls that resemble her skin – Fennell joked that in marketing meetings the team considered asking Farrow & Ball to make a Cathy’s skin themed colour.
They also asked Robbie to send close-up images of the underside of her wrist in order to reproduce her veins on the walls.
Fennell also spoke about the much-discussed “fish scene”, in which Cathy sticks her finger into a dead fish’s mouth.
“I saw a fish in aspic and I thought: ‘I want to stick my finger in its mouth.’ And then I was like, ‘Well, I think if you were trapped, and you were extremely sexually frustrated, the first thing you’d do is …’
“We had all of the different fish, we had fish with lipstick on, we had real fish, fake fish, in the end that was a real fish. But poor Margot. I mean she had to do that. There were 12 of them.”
On her directorial approach, Fennell said that “being embarrassing, being cringe” is a “really big thing” for her.
“Especially now in our culture, we are so phobic and terrified of being cringe, or being earnest, and so we’ve got this deadening ambivalence about everything, and I feel, for me, I want to get in and go for it, and push it off a cliff.”
Fennell said she is taking time off from film-making to make jigsaw puzzles, see her family, disconnect from the internet and read Sarah J Maas novels.
“And I’m coming up secretly with something so depraved, so profoundly evil, that nobody’s going to make it.” (Ella Creamer)
In the era of BookTok, many fans find themselves drawn to stories fueled by yearning. Some might want to step into a romantasy, where bat-winged boys sweep their powerful protagonists off their feet, while others prefer a more real-world scenario with some sports thrown in to spice things up. So it comes as no surprise that when said readers discover the hyper romantic content of the past, they find themselves either entrenched or disappointed with the lack of fangirl appeal. Either the material doesn’t have the steamy passages found in more modern romances or there’re too many problematic elements getting in the way of diving deep into the fantasy.
One such example comes in the form of Emily Brontë’s tragic soap-operatic tale, Wuthering Heights. From the highly debated depictions of its lead characters to the evolving question of whether the central romantic pair are terrible people or victims of circumstance, there’s no shortage of topics to debate within this masterpiece. But when you add the controversial filmmaking choices of writer/director Emerald Fennell (Saltburn) into a new film adaptation, along with the casting of Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)? The fandom disputes get turned up to 11. Now, thanks to Warner Bros., this highly deliberated version has landed on home video. Are the hot takes surrounding it warranted? Or is it a misunderstood gem? The answer is as full of twists and turns as Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship. [...]
Thankfully, Warner Bros.’s home release captures the visual splendor of Fennell’s adaptation in sparkling quality. Not only does the 4K release showcase the cinematography in all its beauty, but the sound, in particular, replicates that of its theatrical release (which works to enhance the Charli XCX’s songs as well as the Dolby Atmos version did.) Similarly brilliant are special features. From the delicious commentary by Fennell herself which dives deep into her mindset while making the film to a multitude of behind-the-scenes featurettes, it’s wonderful to see a home release befitting the efforts that went into the film, something that feels rare for most new movies getting the 4K treatment these days.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you like this very different take on Emily Brontë’s classic or not, it goes without saying that Fennell’s adaptation is cinematic. Sure, it might be missing half of the story while also changing quite a number of the factors that make most readers love the original story, but there’s a degree of craft, detail, and genuine artistry found within every frame of this sumptuous romantic venture. It’s just a shame that this level of passion couldn’t have, instead, been poured into something we haven’t already seen many times over. (Dalin Rowell)
There are the faintest echoes of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in the Yorkshire Moors setting. (David Rooney)
The Independent shares a video of Maggie O'Farrell in which she mentions the Brontës as some of her literary influences.
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