Not Healthy But Tantalizing

An op-ed in The New York Times begins with a confession:

It’s Not Wholesome. It’s Not Healthy. But ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Incredibly Romantic.

And now some truths. No matter what you think about Emerald Fennell's film or any of the previous adaptations. Nothing is able to match Emily Brontë's 

What was once shocking becomes quaint: That’s how it goes. The Charleston now looks like a silly dance, Elvis is just a sweaty guy, nobody’s fainting while watching screenings of “The Exorcist” anymore and jazz is now the province of turtlenecked nerds. We’re assured there was a time when van Gogh’s paintings horrified audiences, but today reproductions of them hang in college dorm rooms. This process is not tragic; as these things lose their power to shock, they reveal new virtues. Nothing stays boundary-pushing forever — except “Wuthering Heights.”

 If Heathcliff and Catherine are too wicked for heaven, at least they will not be alone in hell. Their love destroys everything in its path, but it is also their redemption. Neither can live among other human beings without lashing out at them, but they can live together in the wilderness. Brontë gives them as happy an ending as they can stand, implying that their ghosts are reunited in death.

Is this story healthy? No. But is it romantic? Very. (B.D. McClay)

Monocle talks with a couple of scholars trying to unpack Wuthering Heights 2026: 

To unpack the Saltburn director’s take on Wuthering Heights, as well as the role of decadence in the novel and why it is so misunderstood, Georgina Godwin was joined on Monocle on Saturday by Dr Jessica Gossling and Dr Alice Condé of the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London. (...)

Mariella Bevan and  Georgina Godwin: How true is the film to the book? And does it matter?

Jessica Gossling (JG): Adaptations are really interesting because of what they tell us about their cultural moment, and so what Fennell has decided to leave out or keep in is quite fascinating. If you’re going to watch this film because you love the novel, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want to watch it because you love the vibes and the essence of what we think of as Victorian – this kind of oversexed, bodice-ripping lusciousness – then I think it’s a great film.

Alice Condé: I agree. It’s not a faithful adaptation, and I don’t think Fennell has claimed it is such. But she says that she was trying to adapt the novel to correspond with her first reading of it at age 14. It’s a complex, nuanced novel, which actually at its heart is not a romance. It’s incredibly harrowing to read. Every page you turn, something more horrible happens to the characters. But what Fennell has done is take forward the enduring romantic appeal of Heathcliff and Cathy’s doomed relationship, and that is something that many younger people might respond to on first reading.

M.V & G.G.: Do you think the novel is capable of doing psychological damage to little girls or teenagers who found Heathcliff incredibly sexy and the story just compelling?

AC: That trope has persisted. Personally, that wasn’t what I took from it at all. What endured with me was the ghost scene at the very beginning of the novel, where what we see is Heathcliff’s outpouring of emotion. For a century very much known for its [particular] kind of emotional restraint, it’s incredibly groundbreaking and quite sensitively done on Brontë’s part. 

M.V & G.G.:What about the controversial race-blind casting?

JG: It’s so different to the novel that the casting decision is the easiest thing to latch on to in terms of what’s problematic about this adaptation. But also, Fennell strips out the sibling rivalry, incest and animal abuse, so there are lots of other important topics that are also removed. The only thing that remains [of the novel] in the film are some Sparknotes quotes and everything else is very much about how we feel Wuthering Heights should be. For example, there are references to Kate Bush in there. Fennell’s Heathcliff is completely chastised; he’s not the wolfish creature that Brontë describes at all.

Entertainment Weekly enters the club of websites and magazines listing the (many) changes between Emerald Fennell's film and Emily Brontë's novel. ScreenRant also quotes Emerald Fennell explaining how she changed the ending of the novel and why she did it. The ending is also the subject of this USA Today article. The Observer analyses Jacob Elordi's Yorkshire accent and how he learnt:

It was Lovesong by Ted Hughes that helped the Australian actor Jacob Elordi perfect his Yorkshire accent. The poem in question is not an account of soft affection: this love is all-consuming, violent, dysfunctional. (Xavier Greenwood)

Locals like poet Mark Ward and dialect experts praise the film's accent work for capturing Yorkshire essence without overly broad dialect that might alienate viewers, noting historical shifts from industrial grimness to modern tourism spots like the Brontë Balti House. Ultimately, it argues that passion trumps accent authenticity in the story's enduring appeal of lust, jealousy, and betrayal.

The Sunday Times thinks that this is the time to visit Brontë country, and not only because of the film:

Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847) is one of the great one-offs of English literature — a ferocious story of all-consuming childish love, told in fierce, attacking prose. This gothic melodrama set on the Yorkshire moors has inspired generations of rich reveries and wild interpretations, from Laurence Olivier to Kate Bush to the latest by the director Emerald Fennell, whose screeching bodice-ripper will surely send a new wave of drama girls north in the footsteps of Cathy and Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights was the book that made me a serious reader. My English teacher gave it to me when I was 11 years old, and I was intoxicated by this account of love as a terminal illness. Yet that’s not what I remember drawing me in; it was the picture conjured of two families, the Earnshaws and Lintons, separated by four miles of moorland but entangled — for generation after generation — in a web of revenge. I devoured the book in three days, relishing its landscape of sweeping heather, blanket bog and acid grassland.
More than thirty years later, on a wet and foggy January day, I climb the steep cobbles of Haworth, the little market town near Bradford in West Yorkshire that formed the Brontë sisters’ imaginations. One of Emily’s great achievements is to have forever transformed the grotty weather here. Conditions that elsewhere may be deemed a bit drab, if not depressing, feel the ideal romantic backdrop. (Johanna Thomas-Corr)

The Winston-Salem Journal praises the original novel that "still tantalizes our jaded palates":

  “Wuthering Heights,” originally published under the male-sounding pseudonym Ellis Bell, was slammed by reviewers, who denounced it as coarse, brutal and irreligious. After her death at 30, Emily was "defended" by her older sister Charlotte, who resorted to claiming that her sister was just a child of nature, living secluded in rural Yorkshire. She really "didn’t get" polite society.

But Emily has had historical payback after those disapproving reviews. “Wuthering Heights” stays reliably in print, thanks to people like me, who teach it, and thanks to the filmmakers, who periodically boost it lucratively into the headlines.

The new film beckons. But I hope that moviegoers will turn again to the book: a real Gothic shocker, which entertains while inviting us to ponder the dangerous and wonderful strength of human feeling, to consider the possibility that individual human identity is permeable, and that we may really be able to live in each other’s hearts and minds — perhaps forever. (Rosemary Haskell)

Stylist goes for the Brontë blonde, which apparently " is the low-maintenance shade you need to save for your next appointment". Bustle lists "Chic Items To Channel The Margot Robbie-Approved Brontë-Core Trend". Travel and Tour World sings the wonders of Hawort, "a hidden gem you must visit". Well, not so hidden, really. The Daily Telegraph has more pictures of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi and the Australian promotion of the film. Deadline publishes a box office update of the film:

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Warner Bros/MRC’s Wuthering Heights is heading to an $80M opening around the globe. On the foreign side with an expected $40M in 79 territories, that’s slightly ahead of the likes-for-likes start of The Housemaid‘s ($34.8M) in its first foreign weekends. Some rivals believe the Emerald Fennell-directed take of the Emily Brontë novel will fall into the mid $30M range at the end of four days stateside, but the see-saw between domestic and foreign is expected to land at $80M, which is the same exact price that Warners won the Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi package for over Netflix. Last night was $11M (including $3M previews). Warners sees a path to $40M in four days. The question in North America remains walk-up business and an expansion of the audience as 55% of the audience bought their tickets in advance. Also, men only gave the pic a 39% definite recommend next to 54% women. (Anthony D'Alessandro)

Variety interviews Charlotte Mellington, who doesn't seem too eager to actually read Wuthering Heights: 

Alex Ritman: Had you read the book already?

C.M.: I had not read the book. I probably should’ve. I got a copy of it but I think I started the first page and my eyes started to swim. But it’s Emerald’s version of “Wuthering Heights.”

A.R.: Have you read it now?

C.M.: Ha! No. But when I was auditioning I did try to watch some of the other on-screen versions!

The Wrap lists all the songs in the film.