I’d like to open this article by stating that, for obvious reasons, I will not be discussing the actual content of the movie. Opinions of the movie and certain scenes range from being described as “provocative” to “debauched.”
Regardless of which opinion you find yourself leaning towards, I don’t find a descriptive review of the movie to be very scholastic-friendly. Fortunately, the discourse surrounding this movie is more interesting than the film itself.
“Wuthering Heights,” published by Emily Bronte in 1847, is a classic English novel that most people have at the very least heard of. It was published after the success of her sister, Charlotte Bronte’s, “Jane Eyre,” an equally lauded novel.
While both books tackle deep and complex themes, “Wuthering Heights” is decidedly a darker story. It has held up as a classic gothic novel and has been studied and dissected for years. It consists of well over 100,000 words, and interpretations vary, with different people captivated by different parts of the story.
Objectively, however, it is a novel about revenge and the cyclical nature of abuse. Calling it a “romantic” story is a disservice to the inherently complex nature of the book and characters.
Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” 2026, the newest movie adaptation of the book, has been talked to death at this point, and the most common piece of criticism Fennell has received is the casting, or perhaps miscasting, of Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi.
Heathcliff, one of the most important characters in the book, is decidedly a person of color. While his exact race or ethnicity is never directly stated, he is a victim of racism throughout the book. In fact, the racism and abuse the character experiences during his developmental years is the driving force behind his actions in the novel.
At one point in the book, a character tells Heathcliff, “your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen.”
Elordi is Australian in case you were wondering.
At this point, it’s fair to admit the discourse surrounding Fennell’s adaptation has become exhausting. The same arguments are being recycled, that the story is being dumbed down to a romance, and the same defense is being offered, “It’s not that deep.”
That argument loses its effect when you remember not every book is a masterpiece. Mediocre novels have existed for as long as people have been able to read and write. The reason we treat the 1800s like every author was a literary genius is because the novels we have from that time are the ones that survived and gained cultural relevancy.
We don’t remember the forgettable books. We remember the ones that impacted us the most. It’s entirely possible that this movie will not survive, either.
In ten years, it may be nothing more than a cultural footnote, an overhyped adaptation people bring up in the same way they bring up bad remakes today: as a punchline.
The problem is not that Emerald Fennell made a bad movie. The problem is that she made a bad movie out of something that mattered.
“Wuthering Heights” is not a shallow romance. It is not “dark academia aesthetic.” It is a story about abuse, racism, generational trauma and what happens when cruelty becomes cyclical.
Heathcliff’s suffering is not an accessory to the plot; it is the plot. Removing the racial and social context of his character completely guts the story, and that is why this conversation isn’t about film quality. It’s about what happens when an adaptation strips a work of its meaning, then asks audiences to pretend nothing was lost.
