On a Terry Eagleton high

Le Monde seems to be on a Terry Eagleton high when it claims Wuthering Heights is a 'political novel' that has been turned into 'a lifeless romance' aka Wuthering Heights 2026.

Fennell is not the first director to transform the darkness at the heart of this novel into a romantic film. In 1939, William Wyler released an adaptation produced by MGM, which became a global success and received eight Oscar nominations, establishing Wuthering Heights as a revered pop culture icon. In this version, Heathcliff – played by the devastatingly handsome Laurence Olivier – is a lovelorn, disappointed romantic, far more sympathetic than the character in Brontë's novel.

Gone, for example, is the abuse inflicted on children, on his own wife Isabella – whom he marries purely out of revenge – as well as on various animals, especially dogs. In the novel, Brontë often uses cruelty toward animals as a metaphor for domestic violence. "To show battered women directly would have been considered too shocking at the time. So what Emily Brontë does is transfer that violence from the woman's body to that of an animal," explained Athéna Sol, a literature teacher and researcher, in a YouTube video on the subject. The original Heathcliff hangs Isabella's spaniel from a hook before marrying her – a grim foreshadowing of what he will later put her through.

In Fennell's film, these acts of violence have not disappeared entirely, but have instead been reframed as part of a consensual sexual game with Isabella, in the vein of the soft-core erotic romance Fifty Shades of Grey, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and released in 2015.

What is entirely left out, however, is the racist violence suffered by Heathcliff. In the novel, he is described as a "gypsy" and "dark-skinned," whose appearance unsettles everyone. He is found by Catherine's family in Liverpool, one of England's main slave-trading ports in the early 19th century. Given that Brontë grew up amid fierce debate over the abolition of slavery, that detail is no mere accident. The film industry has often ignored it, instead casting White actors – from Olivier to the Australian Elordi. Only in 2011 did British director Andrea Arnold cast a Black actor for the role. Her version also included the hanging of Isabella's spaniel, scenes of domestic violence and a necrophilia sequence that is strongly suggested in the novel. In short, the work's deeply political elements remain largely ill-suited to the Valentine's Day tie-in. (Margaux Baralon)

Stylist recommends a stay at Denton Reserve in Yorkshire.

I find it quite serendipitous that my first ever trip to Yorkshire coincided with the cinematic release of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

As a Brontë-obsessed teen (and later, swoopy Kate Bush kitchen disco fan), I always had romantic notions about the stark landscapes these literary sisters existed within, holed up in their parsonage at the edge of the moors scribbling about doomed love while the wind howled around them like restless ghosts.

A whimsical image some would say, but let’s face it, indulging in a little bit of whimsy these days is good for the soul, which is why spending a weekend at Denton Reserve in the heart of the Yorkshire countryside was the perfect getaway for this Brontë superfan – if only to escape the scandalised chaos of Wuthering Heights content being unleashed on social media, and indulge in the fantasy that I’d be looking out across the same vistas that backdropped Emily’s gothic masterpiece over 150 years ago (albeit in a far more luxurious setting than some drafty old parsonage). (Amie-Jo Locke)

The Brontë Babe Blog has posted a review of Wuthering Heights 2026.

The i Paper has writer Claire Douglas recommend her 'Five best psychological thrillers' and one of them is

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“It was only while re-reading this book a few years ago that I realised this wasn’t just the coming-of-age story I’d always assumed it to be. First published under the pen name of Currer Bell in 1847, Jane Eyre is also a masterclass in psychological suspense with all the hallmarks of the genre: the first-person narrator with a dark past, the creepy old house, the strange noises and goings-on in the dead of night, the twists and turns, the lies, deceit, and fear.

“When Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall to be a governess, she soon picks up that there is something strange about both the mansion, with its rambling corridors and forbidden spaces, and its elusive master, Mr Rochester. Is the house haunted? And what is the secret in the attic?”