Exploring the feminine in Wuthering Heights: Ciucu Diana Nicoleta, School of Literary and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, Romania Journal of Media & Management Vol. 7 No. 10 (2025): Volume 7 Issue 10
The intention of the paper is to demonstrate the way in which the feminine in Wuthering Heights films is rendered on screen, in consideration of the historical, cultural and socio-economical context of the adaptations, but also on whether the director of the film was a woman or a man. This particular issue is of interest to me, as the feminine in the Wuthering Heights screenings, I shall consider overtly, speaks for the role of the women and the way in which they were perceived by the societies of those times. In my endeavour, I shall focus on analysing various Wuthering Heights adaptations in terms of their fidelity or lack of it to the source text; moreover, it is my intention to also address this inquiry in terms of intertextuality and with reference to the layering process that undergoes an addition in meaning, through the adding and or altering of previous re workings. The partial conclusion so far is that Wuthering Heights film adaptations imply both recognition and remembrance of the novel, while also carrying an individual aura within them in terms of the way in which the original material is filtered and staged. I contemplate that my project contributes to the field of adaptive studies, while also addressing instances of cinematic depictions, especially as regards the way in which the feminine is delivered to the public.
Variety has selected 'The Most Anticipated Albums of 2026' including Charli XCX, ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Feb. 13) Charli has been known to veer between pure pop and edgier modes, and her soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Emily Brontë movie adaptation is surely veering toward the latter, based on the first teased song, a collaboration with Velvet Undergrounder John Cale. So maybe it won’t show up as a meme affecting pop culture and even electoral politics, but even a side project from Ms. XCX is an event, post-“Brat.” (Chris Willman, Jem Aswad, Steven J. Horowitz)
A contributor to Mamamia discusses the 'unbothered wife'. I was scrolling on Instagram when I noticed that my feed was flooded with girls posting their engagement announcements (collaborated with their fiancé ofc), 15-slide carousels of anniversary celebrations (solely photos of him sitting across the table) and seven Instagram story slides recapping HIS birthday — complete with a caption that reads like an automated LinkedIn post written by Emily Brontë. (Emily (Em) Vernem) Contiki 'explores' Wuthering Heights. A contributor to El diario montañés (Spain) discusses it too. Paloma & Nacho (in Spanish) includes Cathy and Heathcliff among the 'most controversial couples' in the movies.
Korean Brontë scholars:
by Dongmie Kim (탁진영) and Jinyoung Tak (탁진영) Sejong University 한국통번역교육학회 통번역교육연구 제23권 제4호 (Korean Society for Interpretation and Translation Education Interpretation and Translation Education Research) Volume 23, No 4, December 2025.12 45 - 66
Literary works convey the author's ideas, emotions, and the central themes and messages of the text through their characters, who serve as vital intermediaries in the narrative. Therefore, analyzing the relationships between characters is a crucial first step in understanding the deeper meanings of a literary work. The analysis was conducted in four stages. First, the degree of connection between specific characters and others was examined. Second, the co-occurrence frequency of specific characters within the same sentence was analyzed to measure the weighted degrees of their relationships. Third, the relationships between “Jane” or “Rochester” and other characters in the original and translated text were analyzed. Fourth, the comparative analysis of character relationships was investigated in the original English and translated Korean texts. The results indicate that, although both the original and translated versions share the same conclusion, they differ in narrative flow due to a shift in the focal point of the main character.
World of Reel has some updates concerning Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights:
We’re still a month away from Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” which opens on Valentine’s Day, but there are a few updates concerning this latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel. Firstly, the film is officially in the can — yesterday, it earned an “R” rating from the MPA for “sexual content.” Not shocking. Test screenings had mentioned the notable amount of hyper-sexualized imagery — far more explicit than any previous adaptation of this material. Furthermore, the film runs at around 135 minutes. Just to compare, Andrea Arnold’s 2011 take on the novel ran for 129 minutes. There’s a lot of material to cover in the book, so this checks out as well. Although, by all accounts, Fennell will be taking her fair share of liberties with the story. Finally, tracking is all over the place on this one. The “official” numbers tell us it’ll open in the $20–25M range, while the reliable EmpireCity Box Office predicts a “smash hit” for Warner Bros in the $50M range. It’s anybody’s guess at this point. (Jordan Ruimy)
Metro recommends some 'Gripping books to read before they become film adaptations in 2026', including Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë’s revered 1847 gothic novel takes somewhat of an erotic turn in Emerald Fennell’s controversial adaptation of Wuthering Heights. It’s the most fervently discussed movie of 2026 after fans were stirred up first by director Emerald Fennell casting Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles, and then by the decidedly raunchy first trailer for Wuthering Heights. The trailer was met with shock and labelled ‘aggressively provocative’ by initial audiences, only adding to the anticipation for some. The film focuses on a love story betwee n Cathy Earnshaw and her adopted brother Heathcliff. The story takes place across decades in the Yorkshire moors and explores family ties, mortality, class, and agonising, destructive love. (Laura Harman)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Director Emerald Fennell’s much-anticipated take on Emily Brontë’s powerful tale of love, violence and obsession comes to the big screen this February. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi take the roles of star-crossed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, while Charlie xcx has written a companion album of original songs for the film. From the look of the trailer, the film appears to be loosely inspired by its original source material, but we still think it’s worth a dive (or another dive) into Brontë’s 1847 novel ahead of the film’s release, if only to whet your appetite for what promises to be a daring take on the classic. (Georgia Green)
NME lists the '20 unmissable movies to look forward to in 2026' including ‘Wuthering Heights’ Release date: February 11 Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi This is not just an Emily Brontë adaptation; it’s an Emily Brontë adaptation from Emerald Fennell, the disruptive director of Saltburn and Promising Young Woman. She’s described it as a “primal, sexual” take on Brontë’s Gothic romance and hired Charli XCX to write the soundtrack. Buttons will be pushed and pearls will be clutched.
In The Observer, Caroline Crampton writes 'A love letter to romance fiction'. The longer you try on definitions, the more impossible it seems that anything will fit. A good case can be made that Jane Eyre, an acknowledged classic of English literature from the mid-19th century, is a romance novel. So is Unhinged by Vera Valentine, a 2023 novella about a woman who falls in love with her front door. As a genre, romance is simply too prolific, too diverse, too fluid to be pinned down. Maddalena De Leo, from the Sezione Italiana della Brontë Society, reviews the recently published novel La Regina di Gondal: by Emiliano Vitali ISBN-13: 979-8277330111 2025
LA REGINA DI GONDAL: A PHANTASY SAGA BY EMILY BRONTË A review by Maddalena De Leo
An absolute first in the Brontë field comes from author Emiliano Vitali, who has reconstructed with meticulous care and detailed information the Gondal saga, conceived by Emily Brontë in collaboration with her sister Anne, initially in adolescence and then continued by her alone throughout her life. Together, the two created a world of fantasy and adventure to contrast with that of their older siblings Charlotte and Branwell (the Angria series), drawing inspiration from two imaginary islands located in the north Pacific Ocean, one called Gondal and the other, smaller, called Gaaldine, a colony of the former and a still unexplored land. On these desolate and wild islands, the two sisters imagined a succession of bloody wars and extreme passions, tormented love affairs and terrible revenge. Until now, only the many poems and various fragments of Emily Brontë's so-called "Gondal Cycle" were known, as the prose version, perhaps destroyed during the author's lifetime, had never been available. Consequently, reconstructing the cycle's plot and its saga solely from the poems has always been a difficult and ambitious undertaking, as logically organizing the adventures of the various characters who populate it has challenged the skills of Brontë scholars and experts for over a century. The only attempt was made in 1955 by Fannie E. Ratchford with her’ Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse’, an essay that reconstructed, in narrative form and in sequence, a possible plot that could serve as a common thread throughout the poems. The perfectly credible essay has been the primary source of information for this hypothetical reconstruction to date, where battles, kings and queens, victories and defeats follow one another around a single central character, the Queen of Gondal, called A.G.A. by Emily Brontë, and whose full name appears as Augusta Geraldine Almeda. The reworking that Emiliano Vitali proposed to us at the end of 2025 is a novel inspired by Emily Brontë's poetic saga, titled The Queen of Gondal, subtitled "A Song of Dark Times." It is all the more compelling because it channels the "gothic fantasy" genre, which has become immensely popular among young readers in recent decades following the success of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. With subtle wit, the author manages to fit the many characters and moments present in Brontë's Gondalian poems into their proper place within the supposed plot, incorporating dialogue and verses from them through painstaking research similar to the interlocking of a jigsaw puzzle. All this is imbued with a cryptic and mysterious atmosphere that perfectly matches the lyrical passion Emily intentionally desired. This technique, besides making the narrative much more fluid and credible, above all helps to create a sense of empathy in the reader with what is being told. It also stimulates their curiosity to continue reading to discover the protagonists' subsequent adventures. The overall result is more innovative and captivating than Ratchford's book, which, only in prose form, enumerated the various battles and events of the Gondal cycle. The undisputed protagonist of the entire novel, and therefore of the cycle, is Queen Augusta Almeda. Raised alone and orphaned from birth, she continually moves from island to island, initially to be with the love of her life, Julius Brenzaida, who died prematurely, and later to pursue power and establish her undisputed sovereignty over the kingdom of Gondal. What emerges from the verses and dialogues skillfully adapted from Brontë's poems is the capricious and authoritarian nature of the protagonist, a fickle and domineering young woman who more than ever recalls the basic characteristics of the future Catherine Earnshaw. Obsessed by a love that transcends time, Augusta is also the victim of powerful hatred and a vengeance that will ultimately lead to her death. As author Vitali rightly notes in the afterword, the world of Gondal "pulses with the dark, gothic, and incandescent substance of Emily Brontë's genius: passion that destroys and redeems, nature as a mirror and nemesis of the soul, destiny as an inexorable force," all themes that will later recur in her great novel, ‘Wuthering Heights’. Special mention should be made of the attention to detail in the illustrations that introduce the book's various sections and also appear at the beginning of the various chapters. The particularly evocative cover, depicting the Queen of Gondal advancing toward the Celtic cross beneath which her beloved rests, immediately evokes the surreal and mystical atmosphere of the moors, which as never before has a privileged place in the Gondal saga. In conclusion, an original work worthy of praise and great success, a perfectly accomplished attempt at "literary architecture."
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