'There is more savagery, more brutality, in the pages of Wuthering Heights than in any novel of the nineteenth century'

Collider ranks the best adaptations of Wuthering Heights, and it's worth a look.

Just like Cathy’s ghost, adaptations of Wuthering Heights turn up when you least expect them to haunt a new generation. The latest iteration comes from Promising Young Woman and Saltburn director Emerald Fennell, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as doomed couple Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. It’s already angered disparate chunks of the internet for various reasons, including: overt bodice-ripping, too-bright lighting, casting of Attractive White People as the leads, knocking off the Gone With the Wind poster for advertising, too-slick design, Charli XCX soundtrack, and, it cannot be overstated, sexing up of a sexless text. I can’t do better than the author par excellence of modern Gothic, Daphne Du Maurier, in arguing against Wuthering Heights’ description as a “supreme romantic novel.” In 1971’s Buffalo News she says “there is more savagery, more brutality, in the pages of Wuthering Heights than in any novel of the nineteenth Century, and for good measure, more beauty too, more poetry, and what is more unusual, a complete lack of sexual emotion…The emotion is elemental like the wind on Wuthering Heights.”

But it’s not like Fennell is the first person, or even the tenth, to try their hand at adapting Emily Brontë’s sole novel. Over the decades, there have been multiple adaptations of the classic tale most people forgot after being forced to read it in high school. Wuthering Heights is a strange text, featuring stories-within-stories, years passing between events, and potentially unreliable narrators giving secondhand accounts. Most film versions jettison the novel’s second-generation second half in favor of the “love story” in the first, giving a lopsided impression of the original. But that’s the fun and frustration of book adaptations, balancing between complete fealty to the source material and modifying it to stand on its own. Here are ten adaptations that, while not always honoring Emily Brontë’s original Wuthering Heights, at least do something interesting with it. (Danielle Burgos)

El País (Spain) wonders whether this adaptation will usher in a new romantic era.

“Te seguiría como un perro hasta el fin del mundo”. Si no la pronunciase Jacob Elordi, esta cita sería cuestionable. Pero el joven galán consigue que suene hasta actual en el criticadísimo tráiler de la nueva adaptación de Cumbres Borrascosas, que llegará a comienzos de 2026. Dejando a un lado la polémica de que el Sr. Heathcliff no sea interpretado por un actor racializado, lo más curioso es que una frase como esa no desentone en pleno 2025. Todo lo contrario, parece incluso que estas declaraciones de amor sean tendencia gracias al regreso de las comedias románticas y los dramas de época. [...]

Lo mismo sucede con el caso de Jacob Elordi, que toma el relevo de otros iconos generacionales como Laurence Olivier, Timothy Dalton o Ralph Fiennes en el papel del Sr. Heathcliff. Los mismos personajes, concebidos hace dos siglos, aún conquistan generación tras generación gracias al cine.

El arquetipo del Sr. Darcy es el mismo que cumple el Sr. Heathcliff en una versión más ruda y, según comenta, ha acabado por afianzarse en los manuales de escritura de Hollywood. Sobre todo, en las sagas juveniles. (Lucas Barquero) (Translation)

Heathcliff and Mr Darcy do not belong to the same archetype in their original novels.

Mental Floss lists '12 of the Most Unforgettable Books About Doomed Romances' and one of them is of course

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

This is the sole novel by Emily Brontë, one of a remarkably talented trio of siblings alongside sisters Charlotte and Anne. Wuthering Heights contains all the classic elements of the doomed romance novel: forbidden love, awful misunderstandings, jealousy, revenge, and tragedy. It was initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell and caused quite a storm amongst contemporary critics thanks to the brutal actions and perceived inhumanity of its protagonists, Cathy and Heathcliff. Yet the strange and dark charm of the book was evident from the start, and it’s gone on to become one of the most revered tragic love stories of all time. Plus, there’s the little matter of Kate Bush’s enduring song and accompanying video. (Chris Wheatley)

New York Sun has an article by Carl Rollison about 'How Writers Are Working To Revive Literary Biography'.

Who reads literary biographies these days? The question is pertinent because the audience and the advances for literary biography have been shrinking since the 1980s. Of course certain subjects, like the Brontës, are perennials, though even then their latest biographer essays a new angle: Graham Watson starts his book showing how Elizabeth Gaskell pried open the mysteries of the Brontë parsonage, superintended by a father who hovered about tending to the legacy of his famous daughters.