*Spoilers ahead!
Emerald Fennell’s much anticipated “Wuthering Heights” has hit theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day. The film is based on the beloved novel by Emily Brontë, which tells the tale of Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and their families. Though this film is marketed as a romance, the original text is anything but that. It is a tragedy that unfolds due to classism, racism, and cyclical abuse. Though many filmmakers have attempted to translate these events from words into film, Brontë’s raw and incisive novel has been said to be “unfilmable.” Unfortunately, Fennell’s film proves to be no different in this regard. Starring Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the film does have its strengths, such as the stunning cinematography of the English countryside and the surrealist and dreamlike sets. However, the film not only fails to do Brontë’s novel justice, but also completely disregards the story’s central conflicts and themes.
One of the most controversial aspects of the film is Jacob Elordi’s casting, which caused outrage on social media as audiences were rightfully upset about the whitewashing of Heathcliff’s character. Though Brontë never specifies his race in the book, she does describe Heathcliff as being “dark-skinned,” which causes him to be discriminated against and abused by Catherine’s brother, Hindley — a character noticeably absent from the film. The racism that Heathcliff faces leads to the start of the cycle of abuse within his and Catherine’s families, which is eventually dismantled by Catherine’s children and her nephew. Elordi being cast as Heathcliff not only takes a role away from actors of colour, but also erases one of the central and extremely pertinent conflicts in the story. Heathcliff has been known to be played by white actors — the only exception being Andrea Arnold’s adaptation in 2011 — yet it is still upsetting to see that nearly no progress has been made in the past century ever since filmmakers have been adapting Wuthering Heights for the screen.
In turn, the depth of Heathcliff’s character was diluted in Fennell’s film. Rather than being a victim of racially motivated discrimination who eventually torments those around him, he is boiled down to an archetypical sexy bad boy. Though he acts cruel at certain moments in the film, the sheer villainy of his character has been completely removed, rendering him incredibly underdeveloped. Instead of presenting a flawed and sometimes evil man who, despite his faults, is seen as an object of desire to Catherine, Fennell removes all of the complexity from his character in favour of making him a palatable love interest.
Wuthering Heights revolves around Catherine and Heathcliff’s torrid relationship, as it curses everyone around them, including their own children. Rather than presenting a doomed but passionate bond that lasts even beyond the grave, their relationship in the film is presented as nothing more than a typical enemies-to-lovers situation. Catherine and Heathcliff are friends as children, but are not very fond of each other as adults and are always arguing. However, after Catherine has a sexual awakening of sorts, the two suddenly cannot keep their hands off one another. Their supposed love for one another appears out of nowhere and is given no room for growth, making it seem like an afterthought instead of one of the story’s main threads.
Another disappointing aspect of the film was Fennell’s treatment of Isabella Linton, played by Alison Oliver. In the novel, Isabella marries Heathcliff, who takes her to live with him at Wuthering Heights. Isabella becomes a prisoner in Heathcliff’s house and is abused by him: he verbally threatens her, throws a knife at her, and kills her dog. Eventually, Isabella manages to escape the house, settling down far away from the dreary moors to raise her son alone.
In contrast, Fennell’s version of Isabella can be characterized as a weird girl, whose youthful naïveté leads her to marry Heathcliff even after he insists that he does not love her, will never love her, and will treat her horribly. Hence, it is not only uncomfortable to watch Isabella’s complacency in tolerating Heathcliff’s degradations but also trivializes the abuse she faced from him in the novel. The film presents her as willingly participating in this degradation, whereas the original text makes clear that Heathcliff’s treatment of her was abuse, not something she consented to. The romanticization — or rather the sexualization — of abuse in the film is vile to say the least, as it absolves Heathcliff of any wrongdoing and instead suggests that Isabella enjoys being dehumanized. Rather than accurately portraying the realities of abusive relationships, Fennell turns Isabella into Heathcliff’s lap dog, so that their relationship fits nicely into her oversexualized rendition of a brutally torturous tale.
The most important thing to know about Brontë’s work is that it is not an easily digestible story; it is gruesome, calamitous, and sickening. Her novel has long been considered a masterpiece due to its portrayal of racial Othering and exclusion in colonial England, the lasting effects of intergenerational abuse, and the link between obsession and violence. Conversely, Fennell’s adaptation is messy and watered down, all tied up in a pretty little bow that fails to mask its disingenuity.
Some may argue that the quotation marks around the film’s title suggest that it is merely an interpretation. However, Fennell’s film borrows too much from the source material to be thought of as anything other than an adaptation. As much as I tried to see this film as its own entity separate from the novel, at the end of the day it cannot be totally removed from the context of the original work. As hard as Fennell tried to depict Wuthering Heights in her own way, she missed the mark entirely, making a mockery of Brontë’s magnum opus.