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What is Wuthering Heights ?
A story within a story, Wuthering Heights follows the lives of two families tumbling through the trials and tribulations of the late-18th-century British class system, with the relationship between heiress Catherine and brooding blow-in Heathcliff embedded in its heart.
A staple of many high school curricula, part of why fans are so fierce around Wuthering Heights is the story’s ability to grow and unfold as the reader does.
Margot Robbie’s (left) LuckyChap production company has had a hand in all of Emerald Fennell’s feature films.
Universal/Warner Bros
“It is a book that keeps on giving,” says Claire O’Callaghan, senior lecturer in English at Loughborough University and editor-in-chief of Brontë Studies.
“You can read it when you’re 15 and take away one set of ideas and insights and then read it again years later and find new ideas in it.”
O’Callaghan says the subtext bubbling beneath the novel’s surface is what’s kept the text relevant for hundreds of years.
“The book’s complexity speaks to so many different themes that we are all still grappling with — the line between passion and obsession, the nature of revenge, belonging, family, the importance of friendship, complex relationships — familial and otherwise — and trauma, so much trauma,” she says.
“The book’s detail is extraordinarily rich, and it is a book that generates debates, discussion and division. Its themes remain relevant now; we’re still grappling with so many of the ideas and issues Emily wrote about.”
Who is Emerald Fennell?
Barely half a decade into her feature directorial career, Emerald Fennell has already, for better or worse, garnered the reputation of a provocateur.
Her debut feature, 2020’s Promising Young Woman , followed Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a 30-something med school dropout who practised vigilante justice in memory of her fallen friend.
“Promising Young Woman was an unflinching excoriation of male violence against women, led by a sterling turn from Carey Mulligan,” film critic Stephen A Russell tells ABC Arts.
“[Mulligan and Fennell were] willing to go to the darkest places without losing sight of mordant humour and a surreal sense of style. I, for one, was exhilarated by her punching-up pluck.”
Weaponising the concept of the “nice guy”, Promising Young Woman announced Fennell as a potential new Hollywood auteur — scooping up five Academy Award nominations and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Fennell.
Her follow-up, 2023’s Saltburn , saw Fennell once again playing in the world of power imbalances, this time shifting her focus from sex to class as she sent blue-collar Oxford student Oliver (Barry Keoghan) to infiltrate the upper-class Catton family at their lavish estate.
Bolstered by her dazzling debut, Saltburn outperformed Promising Young Woman at the box office but split critics.
“That ability to set cats against perturbed pigeons can be a double-edged sword, with many folks feeling Saltburn was a decided step-down in terms of original writing, in favour of the low-hanging fruit of flap-starting scenes,” Russell explains.
Jacob Elordi starred as oblivious rich kid Felix in Saltburn.
MGM and Amazon Studios
“The more morally ambiguous nuance of Promising Young Woman seemed to be thrown out with Saltburn’s playing-to-the-cheap-seats bathwater.
“Nothing we’ve seen so far of Wuthering Heights — acknowledged to be seen through Fennell’s teenage horn — suggests more of the former over the latter. We’ll see soon enough.”
What is the internet saying?
As a text heavy with history and meaning to millions of fans, questions of fidelity to the original story have arisen around Fennell’s modern Wuthering Heights .
Many were quick to point out that the casting of Caucasian Australian Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff strips the story of integral class context.
Fennell said seeing Elordi with sideburns while filming Saltburn inspired her choice for the actor as Healthcliff.
Universal/Warner Bros
“In the opening chapter [of Wuthering Heights ], Heathcliff is described as ‘a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect’ and then regularly described as Black or dark in various ways,” O’Callahan says, elaborating that other characters muse if Healthcliff’s origin is Indian or Chinese.
“To that end, even while being ambiguous about Heathcliff’s precise ethnicity, Emily constructs Heathcliff as a non-white and non-English character.”
In the run-up to the film’s release, some fans have pushed back on this interpretation to argue that the description of Heathcliff meant something different to those reading in the 19th century.
“Jacob Elordi’s casting overlooks Heathcliff as a person of colour, and this has raised concerns not only about how the book is represented but how this particular adaptation and casting decision reflects other issues regarding race and representation onscreen and in culture more widely,” O’Callaghan says.
Multiple other Caucasian actors have played Heathcliff in film adaptations, including Lawrence Olivier, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 1939 performance and then-newcomer Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 remake.
One of the few deviations was Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation, which saw Black actor James Howson as Heathcliff.
When directly asked about the casting choices, Fennell said her casting of Elordi was inspired by how she imagined Heathcliff as a teenager .
She told the Hollywood Reporter : “I knew right from the get-go I couldn’t ever hope to make anything that could even encompass the greatness of this book. All I could do was make a movie that made me feel the way the book made me feel.”
When the same question was pressed on Elordi, the actor also impressed that the film was a product of Fennell’s particular vision — pointing to the inverted commas in the title as a differentiation between film and text.
Fans also have raised concerns with the casting of Margot Robbie , who is in her mid-30s, as Catherine who is in her late teens for a majority of the book, as well as the modern costuming being at odds with the setting of the book.
“The images released from the film, especially Cathy’s white wedding dress, have again raised concerns about accuracy — here, historical accuracy,” O’Callahan says
“The poofy, white gown Catherine is shown to wear on-screen is more akin to the types of bridal gowns that came later in the 19th century.”
“Some have suggested that the style of Catherine’s gown is more reminiscent of Queen Victoria’s wedding gown worn from the 1840s onwards,” O’Callahan says.
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Anything else?
Beyond aesthetic interpretations, O’Callahan says there’s one important aspect to get correct in order for the filmed adaptation to be faithful to the text — that Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship is not one to aspire to.
“For me, the complexity of the fine line between love, loss and grief are paramount to Wuthering Heights, as is the tale of revenge,” O’Callahan says.
Fennell has said the inverted commas around her film’s title represent that it’s her teenage interpretation of Wuthering Heights.
Universal/Warner Bros
“I don’t know if the new adaptation will glorify or glamorise the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, but the novel certainly doesn’t do that.
“Heathcliff is a character that is loved and loathed by readers in equal measure — and in some cases, readers love to hate him too. He is reviled as much as he is pitied.”
What are early reactions saying about Wuthering Heights ?
While full critical reviews for Wuthering Heights are being kept under embargo until the film’s 12 February release, first reactions have started to pop up on social media.
Overwhelmingly positive, IndieWire editor Anne Thompson predicted the movie would “soar at the box office”.
Critic Kirsten Lopez praised the changes made to the text by Fennell, saying “Emily Bronte girlies like me are gonna eat up Wuthering Heights with a spoon”.
Multiple reactions also praised the performances of Elordi and Robbie, while also conceding the 2-hour-and-16-minute run time feels overly long.
US critic Randy Jones provided a more cryptic reaction, repeating the phrase Aretha Franklin gave when asked her opinion on Taylor Swift’s artistry and placing aspects of the film alongside forgotten literature adaptations Beastly and Red Riding Hood .