Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" book was first published in 1847, yet it was still making waves nearly 180 years later by way of a new film adaptation from writer and director Emerald Fennell. Much of that conversation stemmed from discourse over the casting of Heathcliff, who was played by Jacob Elordi (previously the star of Fennell's 2023 feature "Saltburn"). The decidedly Caucasian Australian was not who many people had in mind for the role, considering Heathcliff is described in the text as "dark-skinned" and receives many racially motivated insults that heavily suggest he's a person of color.

To boot, Heathcliff being non-white factors heavily into the larger themes (namely class) that defines Brontë's seminal text. These elements all played a role in Heathcliff's whitewashing dominating the pre-release conversation cycle for "Wuthering Heights." Once the film was finally released, further controversy erupted over the drastic liberties Fennell had taken in adapting this project for the big screen.

Even the casting of Hong Chau and Shazad Latif in key supporting roles (albeit ones that didn't really comment on or thoughtfully use their racial identities) lent new critical angles to the previous whitewashing controversy. "Wuthering Heights" was a movie plagued by tremendous discourse, though that didn't stop it from grossing $241.6 million worldwide. (Lisa Laman)

6. Hathersage

Hathersage has strong literary connections - having inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre [not exactly]. The nearby North Lees Hall (pictured here) also became the main inspiration for Thornfield Hall. (Tom Hardwick)

Disabling Appetites: Hunger and Debility in Wuthering Heights

Hannah Markley

Studies in the Novel, Volume 58, Number 2, Summer 2026, pp. 121-137

This essay explores how debilitated appetites in Wuthering Heights spread among the novel’s characters as diseases. While critics comment on the ways Heathcliff’s hunger engenders Catherine’s anorectic refusals, Hindley’s alcoholism and Frances’s tubercular consumption also respond to Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights, exposing more complex entanglements of physical illness, emotional suffering, and traumatic experience. By situating these appetites in relation to nineteenth-century medical ideas about Anorexia nervosa, inebriety, tuberculosis, and miasma theories of disease, the disabling effects of racial persecution (Heathcliff), gendered confinement (Catherine and Frances), and social dispossession (Hindley) disclose biopolitical distributions of risk along the lines of race, gender, class, and disability that underwrote British racial capitalism, structuring both appetite and embodiment in the provincial scene of the everyday.

Double Fringe First winners Theatre Caddis are set to bring their comedy, Jane Eyre Convention to Edinburgh Fringe this August, following a run in London earlier this Summer.

The show is set at the world's first ever Jane Eyre Convention, where we find a group of slightly neurotic Brontë-aficinados [sic] gathered to reenact scenes from their favourite novel.

As the group share their passion for all things Jane Eyre, they squabble and fight over the best bits, and conflict over authentic interpretations; also experiencing real emotions as they follow the character of Jane on her journey, including wailing running across the moors! More memorable scenes from the book are relived, as the group attempt to rescue shackled Bertha from the attic.

In this fast-paced farce, the enthusiasts feel that they gain new insights and a better understanding of the story of Jane Eyre, and potentially one another. The show promises audiences a funny, uplifting and quirky jaunt - with unrealistic violence, bonnets, and minimal raunch! The show has enjoyed sell-out runs at Lambeth Fringe, and recent shows at the Bread and Roses Theatre, London.

The show may also appeal to Brontë fans who enjoyed the recent hype around Emerald Fennel's [sic] adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Theatre Caddis is a London-based theatre company known for staging new, eclectic work, showcasing performances that blend humor, literary homage, and character studies.

Jane Eyre Convention is performing at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 6th - 28th (not 10th and 18th) August at 12.25pm (60 mins), Just The Snifter Room at Just The Tonic at The Mash House venue number 288). (Stephi Wild)

Perhaps no artifact captures the intimacy of Victorian hair work quite like a small bracelet housed in the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Composed of six light brown braids belonging to each of the three sisters – Emily, Charlotte, and Anne – it remains one of the most talked-about pieces of hairwork in existence. The bracelet is technically unwearable now; the clasps are open and one of the braids has come loose. Its power lies not in its intricacy, as the braids themselves are simple up close, but in the identity of its owners. The fact that the Brontë sisters belonged to a lower-middle class family only reinforces how universal the practice was.

This very bracelet recently found its way back into popular culture. When Margot Robbie attended a London premiere of Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights, she wore a dress adorned with light brown braids inspired by the Brontë piece. Robbie even accessorized her look with a replica of the bracelet itself – a gesture that bridged Victorian sentimentality and contemporary red-carpet fashion in one deliberate styling choice.

Hair charms also appear in the literature the Brontës produced. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff removes a lock of Edgar Linton’s hair from Cathy Earnshaw’s corpse’s locket and replaces it with his own, sending a piece of himself and their love off with her spirit. The plan unravels when Nelly, the housemaid and narrator of the novel, entwines Linton’s hair with Heathcliff’s. Scholar Deborah Lutz described this act as opening up the possibility of a postmortem storm of jealousy between the two men. Though it is the only Brontë novel to directly reference mourning jewelry, the scene underscores how central hair work was to Victorian emotional life.

Cumbres borrascosas

Edición especial con sobrecubierta troquelada - La biblioteca de los libros prohibidos

Emily Brontë

Translation by Nicole d'Amonville Alegría

Foreword by Cristian Olivé

Editorial Molino

ISBN: 978-8427254589

February 2026

En los páramos desolados de Yorkshire, el amor y la venganza se entrelazan en una historia tan salvaje como el viento que azota la mansión de Cumbres Borrascosas. Heathcliff, un huérfano marcado por la humillación y el desprecio, consagra su vida a un amor imposible por Catherine Earnshaw, una obsesión que lo consume hasta la destrucción. Emily Brontë creó una de las novelas más intensas e incomprendidas de la literatura, desafiando las normas sociales de la época y dejando a su paso un reguero de censura y escándalos.