Shocking the Audience since 1847

Radio Times repeats something that, even though obvious, needs to be reminded:

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is controversial – but Emily Brontë’s classic novel has been shocking people for 178 years. (...)

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Juliet Barker, author of The Brontës, Lucasta Miller, author of The Brontë Myth, and Claire O’Callaghan, Editor-in-Chief of Brontë Studies – the official journal of the Brontë Society – talked us through the shocking past of the text.

"The scenes of violence, they’re so graphic that they almost go beyond realism," explained Miller. "Which is why I don’t think they can really be represented on screen unless it became a Tarantino-esque cartoon.

“If you imagine literally portraying on-screen a grown man rubbing a child’s wrist up and down on a broken window until the blood runs down. People would be running out of the cinemas.”

The 2026 movie – out in cinemas today – retains an element of that shock factor.

O’Callaghan, who works closely with the Brontë Parsonage Museum, explained: "The hyper sexualisation of the film right now and the controversy that that’s created is a complete echo of the controversy that came about when Emily published the book.

“In many respects, the fact that it’s pushed everyone’s buttons is actually really in keeping with the original reception of the text and it shows us how culture has changed.

“It shows us how we have very different attitudes to what’s provocative and what’s not. What the mistake with some of that though is to assume that Emily didn’t write a book filled with erotic tension because she did.

“There are really provocative scenes in the book. We can’t get away from that, even if it’s written in code. She’s working within Victorian conventions and alluding very, very strongly to just how comfortable and connected these two characters are with one another. And that’s the way the Victorians wrote about sex and desire and eroticism.”

She added: “One of the most famous reviews was ‘Read Jane Eyre, burn Wuthering Heights’. I haven’t seen anyone calling for people to burn Emerald Fennell’s film.” (...)

When Wuthering Heights was published, reviewers were shocked by the violence.

Brontë biographer Barker explained: "It’s the fact that it’s amoral. There’s all this casual violence in it, casual cruelty. Heathcliff setting the trap over the lapwing’s nest, completely unnecessary.

“When he hangs Isabella’s dog. There’s all these incidents of casual cruelty, and the way he treats Isabella when she’s his wife. You’ve got all this awful cruelty that’s completely casual and brutal. (...)

Wuthering Heights has fascinated audiences since its first retelling on-screen in the silent movie in 1920, which has been lost.

“The first adaptation on film, actually billed it as Emily Brontë’s great novel of hate, and that was the silent film that came out," explained O’Callaghan

“But one of the things that’s happened increasingly over the years, particularly with Hollywood, and I guess we’re seeing that again now, is this focus on the passionate elements of the narrative, and the bond between Catherine and Heathcliff and how that is positioned as a love story above all else.”

It was Laurence Olivier’s Oscar-nominated version (1939) that controversially spun Wuthering Heights into a tragic love affair. “You can date it all back to that film,” Barker said.

“The really interesting thing about the Laurence Olivier version [is that] it turns Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff in particular, into a romantic figure. And it becomes a romantic love story.

“It’s so far away from the book that it actually turns it into a tragic love affair, which it very much isn’t. That is a seminal moment, when that film comes out. I saw somewhere somebody described Heathcliff in the book as being an all-American hero.

“He goes away, he comes back and he’s a wealthy man. And that’s the American story.” (...)

There have been many retellings of Wuthering Heights onscreen and on-stage over the years, including Andrea Arnold’s 2011 movie version.

Miller said: “[Arnold’s version] is completely the opposite of what this new Hollywood blockbuster is doing. It’s very gritty. It’s very downbeat. It’s no make-up, no music.

“Candlelight, with a hand-held camera. It works well. It doesn’t mean a completely different take is going to work. No single version is going to get the full Wuthering Heights.” (...)

A point of controversy with some of the adaptations — including Arnold’s 2011 take, the 1970s film starring Timothy Dalton and Olivier’s Oscar-nominated movie — is they miss out the second half of the book. This is a choice which Fennell herself has also taken, and one that has often proved unpopular with Brontëites.

“It doesn’t make sense in any way,” Barker said. “The whole second generation is the redemption. And the redemption comes through education, because there is the second generation Cathy, Catherine, teaching Hareton, who has been brutalised and treated like Heathcliff had been.

“She teaches him to read. And that’s how it ends up. He builds her a garden up at Wuthering Heights. That whole sense of redemption comes through in those really important chapters.” (Lily Waddell)

The Irish Times makes a case for a Wuthering Heights 2. In other words, the adaptation of the second half of the book: 

Yes, it’s time to start fantasy casting “Wuthering Heights” 2 – or, by rights, Wuthering Heights “2”, because, like others before her, Emerald Fennell has opted to skip over the second half of the novel in her take, leaving a creaking door open for a “sequel” that finally gives the younger Cathy Linton – daughter of Catherine “Margot Robbie” Earnshaw – her due.

A film about the travails of the next generation would, admittedly, be difficult to pull off within the confines of Fennell’s universe, not least because “Wuthering Heights” excises Catherine’s brother Hindley from the narrative, making the future development of her offspring’s ultimately happy union with his son Hareton impossible.

Who knows? Maybe the woman who brought us the grave-humping scene in Saltburn has a line, and that line is marriage between cousins.

But it does seem like a lost opportunity that no one has bothered to make an iteration of Wuthering Heights that begins at the midpoint of the novel, with Catherine dead and Heathcliff tormenting everyone around him.

There’s more than enough plot for a proper horror. We could see his displaced rage and keenness for intergenerational revenge fuel decades of senseless violence against hapless children forced to pay for the sins of their deceased parents, while his favourite ghost pops up every now and again to say hi.

Eventually, the abuser becomes a spent force. Cathy 2.0 – tamer than her “mischievous and wayward” mother and, frankly, less of a dose – emerges as the real heroine of the story, and even gets to go back to her nice house at the end. Or does she?

The second half of Wuthering Heights is less a structural flaw, of course, than it is the entire point. It’s the earlier chapters of Brontë’s work that should be jettisoned from film adaptations, as starting with the arrival of “sullen” Heathcliff and dwelling on his nascent moorcentric friendship with Catherine soon requires a disconcerting change of heads, with compelling child actors often replaced by less convincing grown-ups. (Laura Slattery)

Daily Mail visits Haworth to check how the "Brontë village braces for Wuthering Heights overtourism tidal wave as TikTokers make for the moors."

One local historian, David Pearson, told the BBC this week that some uninitiated visitors even assume Haworth is a film set.  

Pearson said: 'Sometimes what is really disappointing is that people think it's not real! Increasingly you go there, and I live in the village - at the bottom of Main Street - and you get people saying "Do people actually live here?" - they think it's some sort of Disneyland.'

Around 7,000 people do live in Haworth permanently and, while there's no denying the commercial benefits that the Hollywood spotlight will bring, there are mixed feelings about the tourism deluge that's likely incoming, with some locals already fearful the village could be Britain's next overtourism victim. (...)

The Daily Mail spoke to Hollie Meikle, who works at the Cabinet of Curiosities, a shop selling hand-made gifts on Main Street. 

'I think there's definitely been a mixed reception', says Meikle. 

'I've seen both sides from locals; positive - because it's definitely good for businesses but in terms of things like parking, it is busier than usual - and parking has always been a bit of a struggle.'

Trade at the family-owned shop, which has operated for four decades, has been brisk for months - thanks to the hype surrounding the film's release. 

'From October through to December, on a weekend, and even during half-term, we were having to have extra staff to man the door, and queues of people waiting to get in. It was a bit unexpected, to be honest.'

Pamela Howorth has run The Original Brontë Stationery Store on Main Street for 23 years. 

Speaking to the Daily Mail ahead of the film's release this week, she said: 'I think we knew it was going to be busy but I think it's taken us a little bit by surprise - it has drawn a lot of interest. 

'When the promotion for the film started last year, we noticed an increase in visitors, and an increase in younger people visiting - people in their 20s to 30s, taking lots of pictures!'

Content creators have already been sharing their 'brand trips' online of recent visits.

TikToker Katie Kennedy, known as TheHistoryGossip, recently posted clips of her visit to West Yorkshire, where she ticked off the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Another user shared their tips on how to hike to 'the real life Wuthering Heights', while TikToker @Bronteeverafter suggested tourists should head to the Old Post Office in Haworth, where Brontë was said to have sent her Wuthering Heights manuscript to her publisher. (Joanna Tweedy)

Diari de Tarragona (Spain) interviews the author Nerea Erimia:

Glòria Aznar: Ella está obsesionada con que le escriba la necrológica Stephen King. Usted, si tuviera que escoger a un escritor o escritora para que escribiera su necrológica, ¿con quién se quedaría?

N.E.: Es una pregunta muy buena. Tengo varias opciones. Elegiría a Emily Brontë. Pero también a Keats porque tiene algunos poemas que me parecen superbonitos y que encajarían muy bien con una necrológica mía. (Translation)

Gibraltar Chronicle reviews The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea (first published in 2019):

With this week’s book choice, I’m transporting you back in time to 1686, and to a very cold Icelandic village—Stykkishólmur. Fans of Jane Eyre will definitely enjoy this gothic suspense. As far as Jane Eyre retellings go, it’s one of the best I’ve read.

Stylist makes an ode (verbatim) to the man in wet shirts:

There’s a surprising phenomenon of men in wet shirts in period dramas, from Mr Darcy and Anthony Bridgerton to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Here’s why the water-drenched look is such a sexually charged trope that can’t help but make our heroines swoon. (...)

 Yet sometimes it’s not so subtle. In Emerald Fennell’s erotically charged (and divisive) reimagining of Wuthering Heights, everything is doused in water and sexual energy. In what has already been dubbed an ‘incredibly moist movie’, the endless rain across the moors is an integral part of Cathy and Heathcliff’s twisted love and growing sexual tension.

Heathcliff is often seen wearing white shirts, albeit not always as crisp and clean as Mr Darcy’s (which serves to reinforce his class difference to Cathy), particularly early on in the film – soaked through, forming almost a second skin to reveal an outline of what lies beneath.

It’s enticing to Cathy; it piques her curiosity and desire to become more intimate with Heathcliff, as they steal rain-soaked glances at each other, exchange knowing blush-worthy looks, while Heathcliff tries to protect her from the rain with his hands around her face. The soaked-through moments are revealing without physically revealing very much at all.

Cathy’s corsets protect her modesty, but she’s also subject to the wet-shirt treatment (mainly on her sleeves) to mirror Heathcliff’s own yearning and curiosity. (Jess Bacon)

The Economic Times's Quote of the Day, as it couldn't have been otherwise, comes from Wuthering Heights. The Sydney Morning Herald thinks that the press tour of the film was beyond cringe and it was perfect for the film. A tour that the Daily Mail aptly defines as

It's been an epic worldwide promotional trip – and it’s seen Wuthering Heights stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s sizzling on-screen chemistry spill over into real life.

Yesterday the pair wrapped up their much-scrutinised press tour while home in Queensland for yet another viewing. 

Australians Ms Robbie and Elordi made a surprise appearance at a cinema in Brisbane for their 16th screening of the film. (Katie Hind)