Wuthering Heights May Not Be the Epic Romance You’ve Always Thought It Was—Here’s the Real History Behind It
The windswept moors, the doomed passion, the unrequited yearning—it’s hard not to get sucked into the tragic love story of Wuthering Heights. Many a teenage girl, myself included, read Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel for English class or for pleasure, then promptly declared it one of the greatest romances ever written. I admit I even used the famous line, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” on my wedding program.
It’s the greatest love story … at least according to the trailer for the 2026 film, which hits theaters on Feb. 13, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The latest in a long history of cinematic retellings, the upcoming film—written and directed by self-proclaimed Wuthering Heights fangirl Emerald Fennell—is a big, bold, sexy take on the intense relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine. And it’s about as controversial as Brontë’s classic.
There’s been an outcry over casting. There are concerns about the anachronistic costumes and soundtrack. And, of course, there’s the fact that the film has transformed a tragic, toxic relationship into a smoldering romance worthy of a Harlequin paperback.
It’s not the first time the story has drummed up controversy, though—it’s been making waves since the book’s initial publication. “It still has the ability to shock, and I think, like the Victorians, we’re still grappling with how to define it and what to do with it,” Clare O’Callaghan, a professor of Victorian literature at England’s Loughborough University and the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised, told the BBC.
With literary fans in an uproar before the movie’s release, we scoured the web to find the most revealing tidbits about the upcoming film and the novel it’s based on. Read on to uncover the story behind the story of Wuthering Heights.
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The classic Gothic novel was shocking when it was first published
With tragic characters haunted by the past, supernatural and mystery elements, dramatic and spooky settings, and themes of terror, dread and death, Wuthering Heights embodies the Gothic genre of books. Published in the Victorian era, the novel was quite scandalous for the time due to its intensely passionate, obsessive love—and violence, as Heathcliff seeks to harm those who wronged him in harsh and brutal ways.
Think the public uproar over Fennell’s 2026 flick is bad? Their critiques of the trailer are nothing compared to the public outcry after the book’s 1847 publication. Critics called it “utterly hateful or thoroughly contemptible” and “coarse and disagreeable.” They were shocked by its “vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors,” “stupid blasphemy” and “morbid imagination.” Even more shocking: Ellis Bell was a pen name, and the author was actually a clergyman’s unmarried daughter, which was revealed to the public after Brontë died in 1848 at age 30.
Discovered on The Guardian
This adaptation is controversial too, but in different ways
Some viewers of the movie trailer and early screenings have been surprised by certain elements (too lewd to mention here) that were added to the film. The way they see it, there’s enough disturbing material in the novel, even for today’s audiences—digging up graves, hanging a dog, domestic abuse—that it seems unnecessary to make the story more provocative than it already is. And although intimate relations between Heathcliff and Catherine aren’t explicitly discussed in the novel, the trailer plays up the sexual aspects of the story, with a lot of heaving bosoms, smoldering glances and suggestive touches, leading some book fans to wonder whether Fennell has turned the classic piece of literature into a bodice-ripping romance marketed as a date-night Valentine’s Day movie.
Discovered on Paper
The movie may not stick closely to the book—on purpose
Fennell’s last film, 2023’s Saltburn, which also featured an outrageous revenge plot (and coincidentally, another necrophiliac grave scene), was inspired by the novel Brideshead Revisited, though it focuses on original characters and plotlines. With her next film—and her first direct adaptation—Fennell wanted a similar freedom in telling a classic story, which is why the film’s logo includes quotation marks around Wuthering Heights. “I wanted to make something that was the book that I experienced when I was 14 … that made me feel like I felt when I first read it, which means that it’s an emotional response to something,” she said. “It’s, like, primal, sexual.”
Fennell even says there are things she thought she read in the book as a teen (think: amped-up passion and eroticism) but realized, when she reread it, weren’t there: “It’s where I filled in the gaps aged 14.” This film is definitely not a teen movie, but viewers can expect to see some of teenage Fennell’s imagined elements.
Discovered on the BBC
The original story is less romance than obsession
Fennell’s aim to turn Wuthering Heights into the “greatest love story” ever told, on par with romantic movies like Titanic and The Notebook, is at odds with the original text. What to a 14-year-old may seem like burning, all-consuming love is actually toxic and destructive. Catherine and Heathcliff are complicated characters who often act in cruel, manipulative and hurtful ways, reflecting how they were harmed by societal conventions: They couldn’t marry without Catherine losing status and security, and as a woman, her options are limited. As an outsider, Heathcliff is abused, marginalized and alienated, so he takes his revenge in similarly vicious ways.
Discovered on IndieWire
Heathcliff is the quintessential Byronic hero
If Heathcliff can be so cruel, why has he captured the minds of readers and viewers for almost 200 years in what’s considered one of the best books of all time? Because he is complex, neither all good nor all bad. English literature calls this a Byronic hero, named after the original bad-boy poet himself, Lord Byron. A forerunner of our modern-day antihero, this archetype is brooding, mysterious and tormented, often due to some trauma in his past. Even though he is flawed, his moody demeanor is alluring and captivating for his love interests, as well as for readers.
Discovered on PBS
Heathcliff’s race isn’t specified—but he isn’t White
Nearly 180 years after its publication, scholars are still debating Heathcliff’s exact race and ethnicity. He may be South Asian, Black, Romani or biracial. In any case, the original text is clear that Brontë did not intend him to be White, with descriptions of him including, “as dark almost as if it came from the devil,” “dark-skinned gipsy,” “dark face and hair,” “black hair and eyes,” “a little Lascar [sailor from India], or an American or Spanish castaway,” “who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen.”
Brontë intended Heathcliff’s appearance to be one reason he is othered and persecuted by other characters, which is often interpreted as a depiction of racism in the book. Heathcliff was also found as a child on the streets of Liverpool, England, which was a known slave port.
Discovered on The Telegraph
Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff has been called whitewashing
Only one adaptation, the 2011 film starring Black actor James Howson, has cast a non-White actor to play Heathcliff. In today’s current racial climate, many people saw Aussie actor Jacob Elordi’s casting as not only diluting the novel’s themes and ignoring the role of race in the story but also denying a person of color the lead role. Defending the casting, Fennell said that Elordi, who also starred in Saltburn, looked just like the picture on the book cover of her teenage copy of Wuthering Heights. Some have pointed out that Elordi’s father is from the Basque region of Spain, but while that ethnicity may have been looked upon as “different” in the past, Basque people today are considered White.
Dismissive comments from casting director Kharmel Cochrane haven’t helped. “Just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art,” she said, adding, “there’s definitely going to be some English lit fans that are not going to be happy.”
Discovered on Deadline
Other casting choices have also raised eyebrows
The casting of two other characters who are White in the novel was “colorblind”—that is, their race isn’t acknowledged or factored into the story. In this movie, Hong Chau plays servant Nelly Dean, and Shazad Latif plays the aristocratic Edgar Linton. Critics have noted it seems odd to employ colorblind casting in a story that originally incorporated racial dynamics and featured a person of color as the main character.
Although Margot Robbie’s casting as Catherine is not quite as egregious, she still doesn’t fit the bill, according to purists. Not only is the 35-year-old actress a couple of decades older than her teenage literary counterpart, but the beautiful, wild, headstrong Catherine is also meant to have dark hair and eyes; Robbie is a blue-eyed blonde.
Discovered on Collider
The movie isn’t exactly historically accurate
Although Wuthering Heights was written in 1847, which falls in the Victorian period, it takes place decades earlier, during the Georgian 1790s. Confusingly, the story is told in flashbacks (another device common in Gothic lit), with the narrators of the “present day” in 1801 to 1802.
Brontë’s novel was historically accurate to the time period she was writing about, albeit with a heightened, Gothic sensibility. But this film adaptation contains some anachronisms, most notably in the movie’s costumes. While the men retain fairly generic late-18th-century garb, Robbie’s costumes are a mishmash of Georgian and Victorian silhouettes, homages to 1950s period pieces, vintage Chanel jewelry, sunglasses, corsets and shiny fabrics. “Our dates are all confused in the sense that we’re not representing a moment in time at all—we’re just picking images or styles that we like for each character,” costume designer Jacqueline Durran says. In other words: It’s a vibe, not history.
Discovered on Vogue
The actors were inspired by music that was inspired by Wuthering Heights
In another anachronism, the movie will have a modern soundtrack, with music from pop star Charli XCX. Although fans have expressed hope that the film will also use Kate Bush’s song “Wuthering Heights,” it hasn’t been confirmed. (Bush is enjoying a resurgence of popularity thanks to her song “Running Up That Hill” appearing in Netflix’s Stranger Things.) We do know that the cast was inspired by the 1978 song, written when the singer was just 18 and yet another teenage fan of the story.
“We’d be playing the Kate Bush song, which you can’t avoid, but we’d play it on the moors in a small moment alone, and it was this really profound thing being Heathcliff and Cathy, sitting and watching the sunset on the moors as the spirit of their characters have for the last 200 years,” Elordi said.
Discovered on Fandango
This film is the latest in a long line of adaptations
Adapting books into hit movies is notoriously difficult, which may be why there have been so many attempts at this famously “unfilmable” novel. No fewer than five English-language adaptations of Wuthering Heights have graced the big and small screen since the Golden Age of Hollywood, beginning with the classic 1939 William Wyler–directed version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Other adaptations include the 1970 film with Timothy Dalton, a 1992 movie with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, a 2009 two-part British TV series with Tom Hardy, and the Andrea Arnold–directed 2011 version starring Kaya Scodelario and the aforementioned Howson.
Most versions omit the latter part of the book, in which Heathcliff is even meaner and more bitter toward the next generation of lovers, Catherine’s daughter and Heathcliff’s son. Focusing on Heathcliff and Catherine’s portion softens his character a bit and allows for a “tragic romance” ending. Will Fennell’s follow suit? We’ll have to wait and see.
Discovered on Literary Hub
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