Poshification, Classic Fairytale set designs and The Dry Eyed Sailor

Vulture critics advise against reading Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights before watching Emerald Fennell's new film adaptation. They argue that adaptations like this one—described as extravagant, moist, and focused on adolescent turmoil, explicit romance, and a soundstage feel—stand on their own without needing prior knowledge of the novel's convoluted plot or second volume. We don't agree at all, but we are not exactly objective, didn't we?

Vogue discusses a recent Vogue Book Club event where Emerald Fennell discussed her adaptation, emphasizing the novel's transgressive, sadomasochistic undertones that she first discovered as a teenager, rejecting sanitized interpretations of its passionate dynamics between Heathcliff and Cathy. A "memorable" addition is the imagery of crushed eggs under bedsheets, an inside joke between Heathcliff and Cathy that Fennell personally filmed by sitting on them.

Richard Benson in The Independent has a point when it says critics have accused the film of stripping Wuthering Heights of its racial and class dimensions — central themes in Emily Brontë’s novel’s exploration of social hierarchy and conflict. It argues that this critique reflects a wider “poshification” of culture in which middle- and upper-class creatives and narratives are increasingly dominant, marginalising working-class voices that historically resonate with many of the novel’s core preoccupations. Against this backdrop, the article highlights Ireland’s pioneering Basic Income for the Arts scheme — a policy intended to support diverse artistic talent by reducing financial barriers to creative careers — suggesting that structural change is needed so that more artists can tell stories with depth on class and power, much like Wuthering Heights itself.

House and Garden interviews Suzie Davis, production designer of the film:

At the start of production, Suzie's initial design ideas were more traditional, but she soon realised that wasn't the way forward for this unique take on the story – this was not going to look like every other period drama. Emerald, as she explains, was clear about wanting the crew to ‘zoom through the lens of her reading that book when she was 14’, and this was the key to some of the main anachronistic elements. Pushing back against the idea of faithful representation, the team began to incorporate elements and references that a teenage girl might have been obsessed and inspired by in the 1990s and 2000s. In fact, the contrasting sets of Wuthering Heights and Cathy’s later home, Thrushcross Grange, feel influenced by the archetypal villain’s lair and princess’s castle of classic fairytales and Disney films. ‘It was more about accuracy of feeling’, rather than accuracy of period, she adds. (Tilly Wheeler)

The Independent highlights a 2020 Penguin Classics audiobook of Wuthering Heights narrated by British actor Aimee Lou Wood (with Kristin Atherton), presenting it as a compelling way to revisit Emily Brontë’s only novel amid renewed interest sparked by the latest film adaptation. USA Today discusses how Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff dramatically lifts Margot Robbie’s Catherine in a visually intense scene that reflects the raw, physical passion of the film.

The Times interviews Olivia Chaney:

The spirit of the Wuthering Heights heroine Cathy has visited Olivia Chaney at key moments in her life. Writing the songs for her second album, Shelter, in 2018, she retreated to a tiny tumbledown stone cottage in the North York Moors, where she lived for a couple of months without electricity or heating as winter was setting in. “I’d wake up in the morning and have to light two fires to make coffee and defrost my fingers,” she says. “I pretty much gave up washing. I remember going for a long walk one day and finding myself in the middle of a hunt. The way the huntsmen looked at me made me realise I’d gone full Mad Cathy.”

More recently Chaney, 43, was approached by Emerald Fennell, who had heard the singer’s 2013 recording of the traditional folk ballad The Dark Eyed Sailor and wanted to use it — alongside the soundtrack by Charli XCX — as Cathy and Heathcliff’s theme in her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. The song is used to powerful effect in the film’s most pivotal scenes, when the lovers part and when they are reunited after Heathcliff’s long absence. (...)

As we sit by the wood-burner in her cosy kitchen in York, Chaney reflects on the serendipity of Fennell choosing her work for this particular project. “If you had asked me which literary adaptation I would most have wanted my music to feature in, it would always have been Wuthering Heights. It’s my favourite novel. It felt life-changing when I first read it.” (...)

Brontë was a keen pianist and the family are known to have owned Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of “literary ballads” edited by the novelist Walter Scott. “So these songs would have been very much part of their lives,” Chaney says. (Alice O’Keeffe)

According to Los Angeles Times, the moody, atmospheric aesthetic associated with Emily Brontë’s novel — characterised by dark woods, saturated colours like emerald and burgundy, and layered, warm lighting — is influencing current home-decor trends.

Halifax Courier highlights some of the local places where the film was filmed:

Bridestones Moor, famed for its interesting rock formations, sweeping moorland vistas and wildlife, is set to star on the big screen.

The striking landscape will be part of Emerald Fennel’s upcoming adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. (Abigail Kellett)

Anita Rani in the Daily Mail thinks that Jacob Elordi in this Wuthering Heights is too white. Numéro thinks that 2026 marks a cultural shift from goth-inspired aesthetics to a broader romanticism in fashion and lifestyle, fueled by major media like Wuthering Heights and Bridgerton, which are driving renewed interest in empire-waist silhouettes, Regencycore, and emotionally rich, historically-inflected styles. Elle Canada interviews Alison Oliver.