"WUTHERING HEIGHTS"... Allegedly
- savannahdarby6
- Mar 1
- 4 min read
Whatever two souls are made of, Emerald Fennell’s and mine are not the same.
By: Savannah Darby
Happy belated Jacob Elordi — I mean Valentine’s — Day to all who celebrate. If you’re anything like me, you were in that theater with all the other couples for the “Wuthering Heights” premiere, unknowingly about to experience the most awkward two hours of your life.
Unless you’ve previously watched porn in public with your significant other, which I hope you haven’t, get ready to feel like you just did. They were literally checking IDs at my theater — and not without good reason, I will admit.
The film was in typical Emerald Fennell style: beautiful cinematography and at least one twisted, borderline pornographic scene with Jacob Elordi (“Saltburn” bathtub scene, I'm looking at you). The lighting and scenery were stunning; coupled with the soundtrack — which Charli XCX absolutely killed — they evoked a greater emotional tension reminiscent of the book.
As for paying homage to the book, however, the title and main characters were about as far as Fennell went. As the quotation marks in the title suggest, this was indeed a very vague and vulgar interpretation of Emily Brontë’s originally complex Gothic tragedy.
Fennell is not the first to make a movie adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”, a beautifully tragic novel that everyone, including Fennell, would benefit from actually reading. She is, however, the first to turn it into smut that isn’t confined to the pages of someone’s high school Wattpad.
The reason the movie fell short for me, and likely for many other fans of the novel, is Fennell’s utter dismissal of many key features that made “Wuthering Heights” so beloved. If she wanted to make the bodice-ripping, smutty Victorian romance that she clearly did, she should have just made up her own characters altogether.
I found the entire casting confusing. While there was inclusion and diversity, I felt as though it was placed where it did not belong. Edgar Linton, a white, blonde man, was played by a man of color, and Nelly, a white, blonde woman, was portrayed by an Asian actress. Fennell also framed these characters disproportionately as either victims or villains.
Meanwhile in actuality, the villain was always Heathcliff, a monstrous, violent individual whose racial discrimination and abuse molds him into the complex character he is. However, in the film, he is reduced to an obsessive, toxic love interest for teenage girls to fangirl over.
The white man with an earring and the 30-year-old blonde woman we see on screen are so far from Brontë’s Heathcliff and Catherine — a distinctly brown man, likely of Romani origins, and a brunette, dark-eyed teenager — that I fear simply adding quotation marks around the title may not be sufficient.
As if whitewashing the main love interest wasn’t enough, Fennell also left out many major characters, and thus entire subplots, that helped drive the narrative of the novel. In place of them, she simply added more sex scenes so that the movie somehow dragged on for two hours, yet had little to no plot apart from two conventionally attractive, and insatiably horny, protagonists stuck in a late 18th century situationship.
As for the characters she did choose to include, Fennell drastically altered their roles and traits to fit within her warped interpretation of the novel. Isabella, originally a strong female character who fell victim to Heathcliff’s abuse, is reduced to what I can only describe as a degraded and dehumanized version of herself. She is used by Fennell to add unnecessary displays of grotesque kinks and sexual innuendos.
Representation in Hollywood has been a hot topic lately, and as a filmmaker like Fennell, one owes a certain amount of respect to the story they are adapting, rather than turning it into their 14-year-old wet dream.
Erasing minorities and feminist characters from mainstream media is not only harmful to those groups and their constant efforts toward equality, but also incredibly disrespectful to a novel that was so articulate about issues of gender, race, mental health and their implications.
If you loved the movie, I am not here to tell you to change your opinion. However, I will tell you that it is naive to simply consume media without considering the broader implications. While you may love seeing Jacob Elordi suck on Margot Robbie’s fingers with Charli XCX blasting in the background, take some time to consider why you prefer superficial, visually pleasing scenes over something more complex.
If your first reaction is to think, “Well, it’s just not that deep,” all I have to say is that, at least to Emily Brontë, it most certainly is.
Savannah Darby is a sophomore majoring in Health Science and minoring in Art, and she is so excited to join Rowdy for a third semester! She is an avid reader, a huge “Wuthering Heights” fan (the novel, that is) and a self-proclaimed professional movie and book reviewer.
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