Jane and Rochester Take the Polygraph

University Times (Ireland) reviews Wuthering Heights 2026:

Adaptations have never been obligated to reproduce their sources with documentary precision and to some, it is entirely possible to enjoy a film that misreads its literary predecessor. As I’ve stated before in a review on Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein (2025), the question is not simply whether the film works, but what it works as. When a reinterpretation has stripped away major elements that give the classic novel its disturbing force, what remains may still function as an engaging piece of cinema, but only that. In my opinion, Fennell’s film succeeds in theatres, but not on the terms that matter most, and certainly not as Wuthering Heights. (Lily Braumberger)

Hidustan Times lists "savage reviews that are more fun than the movies they trash":

Wuthering Heights (2026). After two movies with no real plot, Emerald Fennell’s next victim was Emily Brontë’s classic. She turned the gothic novel about class and racism into smutty fanfic. Letterboxd user Allian complained: “Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.” RIP Margot Robbie’s Catherine, you would have loved Fifty Shades of Grey. (Tanya Syed)

The Times recommends watching the film, now streaming:

 Emerald Fennell directs this loose adaptation of the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Catherine in the Yorkshire moors, who are bonded by the shared trauma of abuse by her father (an excellent Martin Clunes). But when she is swept up into the world of a wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Catherine is torn between the desire for Heathcliff and the chance of stability and wealth. It’s a bold film that divided critics — now it’s your chance to decide from the comfort of your sofa. (Jake Helm and Tim Glanfield)

Also in The Times, Brian Cox jokes about the film:

Today Cox will even go “full Dundee” on a film he hasn’t even seen. I know Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon’s 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights is a favourite of his and wondered what he made of the new one starring Margot Robbie.

“ ‘Keith Cliff! It’s me, Cathy!’ ” he declaims suddenly in a cod Australian accent (Robbie was once in the Australian soap Neighbours). “‘How ya doing, Keith? Awright?’ ‘Yeah, I’m awright!’ ”

Cox enjoys a hearty chuckle before composing himself.

“Margot Robbie is far too beautiful for that role. I mean, I think there should be something more of the Gypsy about her but it’s wrong of me to judge. It may be a brilliant film.” (Michael Odell)

Movie-Locations publishes a comprehensive list of all the locations of the film:

The radical new version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights uses the real moors of North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, while surprisingly also including a little glimpse of Kent, too. Now find out exactly where.

Far Out Magazine retells the story of how the birth of Because the Night by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith... and, in a way, Emily Brontë:

However, the final piece of the puzzle comes from far off from New York. Part of it came from Michigan as Smith, on the track in one night, yearned for a call from her then-boyfriend but soon-to-be husband, Fred Smith, who was on tour at the time. But really, her masterclass in yearning came from years before and miles away, rooting all the way back to Haworth in Yorkshire, and to Brontë country. 

The Brontë sisters, and in particular, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, were by no means a new reference to her in the late 1970s. Instead, this was a book she’d loved since being a kid, but had come to understand better and better with each re-read as she grew up. By 1977, when she was now in her 30s and intensely in love with the man she’d marry, the adoration and emotion written by Brontë in that book took on new life. She was yearning for a man who was far away, just as Cathy and Heathcliff spent a lifetime yearning for one another. 

With the chorus of a love song on her hands, Wuthering Heights came to mind as the ultimate Patti Smith way to finish it off, allowing her to bring in poetry and literary reference. The result was a huge hit, giving Smith her first commercial smash and Springsteen another victory under his belt.

In 2014, Smith wrote a foreword for a new version of the book, musing, “In the writing of Wuthering Heights, she did not give what she wanted; she gave what she had”. It seemed to be the case for her song, too, as her more impassioned tune came together in one night. But her passion is matched by her love for the Brontë’s, as in 2013, she played a concert in the tiny Yorkshire town simply to raise money to keep their home open to the public. (Lucy Harbron)

A first edition copy of the novel, a thing we're sure Patti Smith would enjoy seeing, is at the Rare Books Collection at the University of Buffalo: 

With a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” now in theaters, interest in Emily Brontë’s iconic novel is once again on the rise. But more than 175 years before the story returned to movie screens, one of its earliest printed forms had already quietly found a home in Buffalo.

UB’s Rare Books Collection offers an illuminating window into one of fiction’s most enduring stories — and the lengths one woman went to tell it.

The collection holds a first British edition of “Wuthering Heights,” the only novel written by Emily Brontë. Published in December 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, the book was issued in three volumes — a common format for British fiction of the period, known as a “triple-decker” novel. While the exact print run of this edition is unknown, it is thought to have been only 250 copies. 

It is worth noting that “Wuthering Heights” comprises only the first two volumes of the set. The third contains “Agnes Grey,” a novel by Anne Brontë — a reminder that the triple-decker format sometimes bundled works together to meet the required length. (Denise Wolfe)

BBC Bitesize publishes a hilarious a "social media parody" with Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. Part of the Literally1 Social Media Parodies series:

Mr Rochester and Governess Jane Eyre take the on the polygraph lie detector test in this social media parody.´

Jane Eyre was chosen as the best novel to read on a rainy day, as it is recalled in Parade. 

More Jane Eyre references. Like this article in The Times about weddings from hell in fiction: 

Just in time for wedding season to kick off in earnest, The Drama is released in cinemas today. It joins a formidable canon of disastrous wedding stories stretching back to Victorian marriage novels (remember how Jane Eyre’s nuptials are rudely interrupted by the revelation that Mr Rochester is already married?), via 1930s Hollywood screwballs (there’s a beautiful shot of Claudette Colbert fleeing the altar in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, yards of tulle streaming out behind her). (Susie Goldsbrough)

Regrettably, not everybody loves Jane. The author Sarah Hall doesn't, as she confesses in The Guardian:

The book I could never read again

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Glad to have met Jane, but I seem to remember the book was quite whingey (forgive me, Brontë congregationalists). It led me to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which I gladly return to.

The Express Bank Holiday Quiz includes the question:

 Which Brontë sister wrote the novel Agnes Grey?

The New York Review explores the poetry of Alfred Tennyson:

The brooding atmosphere at Somersby rectory recalls that of the Brontës’ Haworth parsonage, eighty miles due north, and headed by another weapon-wielding, Cambridge-educated clergyman. Like the Brontës, the Tennysons shunned outside company and clung together in what sounds like intense trauma bonding. (Kathryn Hughes)

If you're interested in looking at how a bunch of TikTokers film in Haworth and Bronté country, and you enjoy second-hand cringe, check this post.