‘Wuthering Heights’: In Defense of Emerald Fennell’s Adaptation

BY NATE DAY

In the lead up to the release of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” adaptation, I have seen a number of opinions being shared online about the lack of fidelity to the source material, originally written by Emily Brontë in the 1840s.

These opinions mainly revolve around the gross and obvious anachronism displayed by the movie, featuring costumes, set, hairstyles and more that didn’t exist during the late 1700s, the setting of the (majority of the) story. Other arguments poke holes in the casting, particularly that of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, a character who is ambiguously described in Brontë’s book as a person of color. In criticizing Fennell’s film for what it isn’t, many viewers misunderstand not only this adaptation, but the purpose of adaptation itself.

The thing about the 2026 adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” is it’s just that: An adaptation. That means it is explicitly not Brontë’s vision being executed, but instead is that of the writers, director and producers. This version of the story has never positioned itself as a traditionally faithful adaptation. One of the first names to sign on was Charli XCX, for God’s sake, the architect of the ultra-post-modern Brat Summer.

There are dozens of adaptations of “Wuthering Heights” from across the globe, many of which prize transcription and fidelity as a central tenet – for those seeking faithful retellings, I suggest seeking those out – or, better yet, read the book – you can’t get a clearer depiction of Brontë’s vision than that. The expectation that this particular adaptation adhere to a strict mandate of fidelity is inherently anti-art, at the very least it fundamentally misunderstands how art functions. It greatly overlooks what every single person on a film set does, because it asks them to ditch their own creativity in favor of what somebody has already created (which is exactly what generative AI does, by the way). Film isn’t preservation, it’s a translation, which inherently involves change.

The vast majority of film adaptations of this story do not cover the full text, ending the story with Catherine’s death. In reality, the story continues and follows Heathcliff’s tortured final days at the titular manor. This is done to underscore the romance and make it more palatable for audiences than the dense and depressing text written by Brontë – one of the most important goals of any retelling or adaptation.

Fennell has always called this movie her personal version of “Wuthering Heights.” The title is in quotation marks on the posters to signal that this isn’t your grandma’s adaptation of the classic novel. Taking bold swings and reimagining classics in the context of the world we’re living in is artistic and thought-provoking. By its nature, this latest adaptation is very punk rock, which is to say it takes risks and challenges norms (themes that align well with “Wuthering Heights” itself). That’s why I’m fully on board with this adaptation. Whether it’s good is a moot point because this movie is engaging with art and imagination in a special and unique way that I wish more films and filmmakers were doing.

As for Elordi’s casting: Is it problematic that Heathcliff was not depicted as a person of color? Absolutely. This movie isn’t perfect, and I don’t think concerns about the casting are invalid. But I also don’t think fidelity to racial coding in “Wuthering Heights” is the clear ethical slam dunk people are treating it as.

Let’s examine why Brontë wrote Heathcliff as a person of color in the first place. Despite her family’s abolitionist sympathies, Brontë did not intend Heathcliff’s racialization as a progressive political statement. Instead, his skin color, the abuse he suffers, and the slurs hurled at him were narrative tools used to underscore the differences between Heathcliff and the Earnshaw family, particularly the class divide. His skin color was used to widen the gap between him and Catherine, not to offer positive representation – or any kind of representation at all. It’s instrumental rather than celebratory. He’s depicted as “other,” a framing that functions to justify the abuse he receives and ultimately his poor attitude later in life. Heathcliff being the only person of color in the story and being objectively manipulative and emotionally abusive could absolutely be seen as poor representation that weaponizes his identity, especially considering his romantic tension with Catherine doesn’t end well. While many readers and scholars interpret Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity through the lens of Britain’s imperial history, I’m more interested in how the novel uses racialized otherness structurally, as a tool of exclusion rather than representation. I’m not saying that erasure is explicitly better, only that fidelity cannot be treated as a bible of morality – especially for a text published nearly 200 years ago, long before modern frameworks for analyzing race and representation existed.

Not to mention, the overwhelming majority of visual adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” has depicted Heathcliff as white. That doesn’t mean it’s right by any means, but if you’re mad about Elordi’s casting, that criticism should be applied consistently, otherwise, the criticism risks being performative. Hollywood titans like Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Tom Hardy have played the role of Heathcliff over the last century, and not one of the TikToks I’ve seen complaining about Elordi’s casting has mentioned the men that have come before him. If those adaptations are overlooked but this one is treated as a moral failure, that’s just selective outrage.

I’d also challenge critics to examine the vehicle for this discourse a little more closely. How much of this criticism comes from Fennell being a woman? One of the great feats of this movie was that someone got Warner Bros. — one of the biggest movie studios on the planet — to committ tens of millions of dollars on this stylized, erotic and idiosyncratic movie. Do you think this discourse would have erupted if that person was a man? I’d guess we’d be patting him on the back for subverting that company’s money into progressively sex-forward art. Martin Scorsese, one of cinema’s most prominent male directors, recently told the story of the systematic murders of indigenous women from the perspective of a wealthy white man, and the movie was awarded with 10 Oscar nominations, after all. This is not an argument against Scorsese’s film, but an observation about which artists are afforded moral complexity without preemptive suspicion.

This is a question that we don’t have an answer to, but considering how modern audiences seem to be ready to pounce on women creators and retract those criticisms after more careful consideration (see: Blake Lively and the “It Ends With Us” drama), I feel this is a place where that pattern may be emerging.

2026’s “Wuthering Heights” adaptation is one of many, many attempts to translate Brontë’s epic tale to the screen – not to mention stage adaptations, radio plays, even novel translations, all of which inherently must include deviation from the source material because it’s not Brontë composing anew. Why then should Fennell, or any other director for that matter, create yet another version that fails to stand out from all of the others? Isn’t it more artistically generative to support filmmakers who take risks by imprinting their sensibilities onto familiar stories, rather than letting the ever-accumulating weight of countless other people’s work flatten their creativity? If every adaptation must answer for the past before it can speak to the present, then we aren’t giving them new life, we’re only embalming them.