Between Passion And Annihilation: The Imaginary Of Love And Death In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Ana-Blanca Ciocoi-Pop

Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, 42 (2025), pp 137-40

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has long been read as a tale of destructive love and haunting passion, but this article proposes to examine the novel through the prism of the imaginary of love and death. Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship transcends conventional social and psychological categories, entering instead a symbolic realm where love is inseparable from violence, transcendence, and mortality. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly Lacan’s concept of the imaginary order and Jungian archetypes, the study argues that Brontë constructs an alternative space of desire where union is achievable only in annihilation. Death emerges not as an end but as a continuation of passion, an “other world” where the lovers’ identities fuse beyond the constraints of society and narrative. The moors, spectral apparitions, and the Gothic atmosphere of the novel reinforce this imaginary, staging an interweaving of erotic intensity and existential dissolution. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights exemplifies how literature can project an imaginary where love is meaningful only through its proximity to death, offering both a critique of Victorian norms and a timeless exploration of the human psyche.

   

No wonder, then, that Fennell and Margot Robbie – our new Cathy, who is also a producer on the forthcoming romance and previously collaborated with Durran on Barbie – recruited the supremely talented Brit for their sweeping new epic, though they couldn’t possibly have guessed the column inches her work would generate long before the film even hit screens. From the moment the first grainy paparazzi shots surfaced from the set, the internet was ablaze with hot takes on the costumes’ period inaccuracies and general outlandishness.

Fennell, Robbie and Durran remain unfazed. Wuthering Heights was always envisioned as a kind of fantastical fever dream – a contemporary take on a ’50s soundstage melodrama which gleefully mixes historical references with glitzy modernity. As the film’s first trailers show, this Cathy would not be a pared-back brunette drifting through the moors in muted high-waisted frocks – she would instead be an exuberant blonde living it up in German milkmaid-esque corsets, high-shine showstoppers and Elton John sunglasses. And her co-stars – Jacob Elordi as a brooding Heathcliff, Alison Oliver as an angelic Isabella Linton, Hong Chau as a steely Nelly Dean and Shazad Latif as a swaggering Edgar Linton – would also be subverting our expectations. 

Ahead of the film’s release on 13 February, on the cusp of Valentine’s Day, Durran gives Vogue an exclusive closer look at her incredible work and some of the images on her mood board, and talks us through the most important looks. From Cathy’s translucent wedding night ensemble to a giant furry Russian hat, and the “latex dress” that’s got everyone talking (correction: it’s not actually latex), there’s much to unpack.

Firstly, how many costumes does Margot’s Cathy have in Wuthering Heights?

With overlaps and reuse, we created between 45 and 50 costumes just for Cathy.

Talk me through your mood boards.

So, Emerald had been working on Wuthering Heights for maybe a year, maybe longer, by the time we met to talk about it. She had this massive range of references, which had a bit of everything – the Tudor period, the 1950s, contemporary things sprinkled throughout. On our mood boards, there were images I’d received from Emerald, plus others we liked. There was some vintage Mugler and McQueen in there – there’s nothing in the costumes that are a recognisable homage to those designers, but they were definitely a big influence on my approach to the costume design. Our references ranged from Elizabethan through to Georgian and Victorian, and from paintings and historical dress to contemporary fashion and representations of period costume in 20th-century films. The challenge was to distill that into looks that told the story that Emerald wanted to tell.

The German milkmaid-style dress has generated a lot of buzz. Can you tell us about that outfit, and Cathy’s earliest looks in the film?

This is the first time we see adult Cathy. As the film opens, we’re trying to lay out our intentions – this is a stylised version of Wuthering Heights, and it’s difficult to nail this look because it has a nod to the period, a nod to contemporary fashion and also a nod to Old Hollywood. It has all the themes that we want to bring in visually to the movie, so it was about meshing it all together. It’s a costume and you know it’s a costume – and it’s not necessarily realistic or unrealistic.

What were the key inspirations and references behind Cathy’s incredible wedding dress?

The wedding dress was an amalgam of Victorian and 1950s fashion – from [Franz Xaver] Winterhalter to Charles James.

And there’s amazing vintage Chanel jewellery in the film too, in the form of pieces sewn onto Margot’s hair and costumes. What was that collaboration like?

Chanel are amazing. We needed jewellery for Cathy that was exquisite and bold – it was great for us if you could see the historical origin in the designs, which were at the same time so exciting and modern. I contacted Elsa Heizmann [Chanel’s global director of cinematic relations] and she went through their archives with a fine-tooth comb, uncovering the most wonderful vintage pieces. When the packages arrived we were beyond thrilled.

Then, Cathy has an unforgettable wedding night look. What went into creating it?

One image Emerald showed me was this amazing 1950s picture of a woman wrapped up in cellophane, like a gift with a bow around the middle. That was the starting point for this look, and we thought how can we recreate this? It’s about Cathy being a gift on her wedding night, making herself a gift.

And what about the red latex dress?

It’s actually not latex – it’s just an ultra shiny, synthetic, plasticised contemporary fabric. Red is a key colour for Cathy throughout the film, and she wears a few high-shine pieces. That idea of shiny surfaces is key to Cathy’s character and costumes. We used this look in this scene because it was about combining the dress and the set in a really artificial and highly stylised way, because it has this rubberised, high-shine red floor. They seem to blend into each other, and then the walls of the library are white like her blouse.

There’s also an extraordinary dress that’s made of this blueish black, high-shine fabric?

It’s something that takes you out of the period, but it was exciting to mix the shape of a Victorian dress with a fabric that was completely modern. This black dress was particularly designed to be worn in the moonlight. When [cinematographer] Linus [Sandgren] lit the scene, the way it bounces the light back… it feels almost like she’s exuding that moonlight, too.

Which one costume are you most excited for viewers to see?

I’m so excited to see how the costumes are in the finished film – I haven’t seen it yet – but there was one look which particularly transformed on camera. When Cathy returns to Wuthering Heights to see her father, she wears a red velvet cape and silver dress, and I loved watching Cathy walking through a snowy landscape in that bright red cape. Red capes like that are actually historically accurate for the era, though our cape isn’t particularly historically accurate. It’s very much like a costume, referencing the past but also 1950s melodramas. But, with that look, I was even more pleased to see what happened to the dress under the amazing lighting, designed by Linus for that scene. It has a kind of fractured overprint that’s icy, which looked incredible in that snowscape.

Cathy also wears a lot of bejewelled crosses.

This is an opulent, stylised Gothic story and Gothic crosses were a big thing, so we loved using them everywhere.

There’s also a dress which has an armour-like quality. What’s the story there?

Weirdly, that look is very historically accurate. It’s a Swiss peasant costume from the mid-19th century, and there are many different paintings of that look. It’s not exactly accurate for Wuthering Heights, but it’s more historically accurate than many of the other things. I just loved it so much. The version I used as inspiration was from a Winterhalter painting. I love the combination of the white and the velvet and the chains. I felt like it earned its place in our story.

What’s the significance of the chains in this story?

Maybe the implications of binding yourself in chains? But we didn’t want to be too specific.

And can you please talk to me about Cathy’s madcap hats?

There’s an oversized straw hat that she wears in a picnic scene which has shooting stars on it, which is a motif we liked. It’s playing on the idea of what you might wear to a picnic, but bigger and more stylised. And then there’s a Russian hat, which she wears at Christmas with a white dress that’s got this silver thread running through it. It’s glamorous and appropriate for the weather, and there’s also an icy cold brittleness to the whole image.

Coming onto Jacob’s Heathcliff, what are the details to look out for in his costumes?

He’s much more Georgian, and more historically accurate. 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. Heathcliff has always been a sort of Georgian-era hero, and we thought that really worked for Jacob. So, for him we lent into a kind of turn-of-the-century 1800s style. He wears dark colours – he’s obviously very brooding. He has these classic romantic hero white shirts, and a long black coat. It’s a heroic, Byronic look that’s been established over time in cinema and theatre.

And then there’s Alison’s Isabella Linton, who’s quite doll-like in her candy-pink gowns and bows?

Our references for her were much more based in the historical period than Margot’s – specifically the 1860s. I particularly love the skirt shape from the 1860s, and we looked in fashion manuals of the period for all the ways in which people would trim things and add bows and lace, and how complicated their dresses would be and how fussy. Isabella, as a character, is someone who’d spend all day making ribbons and bows and trimmings, so we just really went to town with that idea, and even overdid it potentially. It’s all quite childlike and naive, and it’s our own exaggeration of that historical period.

And finally, what about Hong’s Nelly Dean and Shazad’s Edgar Linton?

It was a challenge to find ways to bring Hong’s Nelly into the exaggerated world that we’d created with the other characters, so that it felt like they all belonged in the same film. We brought in textures and embroidery to add individuality. And with Shazad’s costumes, they were really quite unusual – we were trying to represent the new wealth that his character has, and you can see it in his house but also in the way he dresses. Everything was really incorrect for the period – shiny, sparkly, overdone – but the actual shapes and silhouettes of his clothes are quite accurate. We just chose fabrics that would never normally be used for a Victorian gentleman’s clothes. We wanted to heighten his looks so they fit into his heightened environment. (Radhika Seth)

Charli XCX - Wuthering Heights, Feb 13

How do you follow up Brat and its wide-reaching cultural impact? Charli XCX channels Emily Brontë with an album called Wuthering Heights that grew out of Charli XCX’s collaboration with Emerald Fennell on the filmmaker’s new adaptation of the novel. “Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living.” [...]

Wuthering Heights, February 13

Director Emerald Fennell scored a massive break-out hit with Saltburn (2023). Now she directs the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic tale of obsessive love on the Yorkshire moors, which stars Margot Robbie as the wilful Cathy Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as the brooding Heathcliff.

It was only shortly after Citizen Kane won him an Academy Award for writing that Welles was cast alongside Joan Fontaine in an adaptation of the classic novel Jane Eyre from director Robert Stevenson, a highly respected filmmaker who would go on to direct Mary Poppins, The Love Bug, and Beadknobs and Broomsticks for the Walt Disney Company. Welles may not have made any remarks about Stevenson’s direction, but he certainly had thoughts on the performance by Fontaine, which he described as “no good”.

Welles’ affinity for the source material isn’t surprising considering how well-read he was, as Jane Eyre is a novel that has fascinated filmmakers for years and has been adapted for the screen many times. So, it seems he was displeased by the way Fontaine was portraying the titular character, which he felt was inconsistent with the original material, and his frustration was heightened by the fact that he was not in the director’s chair to adjust her performance.

“She’s just a plain old bad actor,” he declared, adding salt to injury, “She’s got four readings, and two expressions, and that’s it, and she was busy being the humble governess, so fucking humble, which is a great mistake because she’s supposed to be a proud little woman who, in spite of her position, stands up for herself. That’s why she interests this bastard of a man.”

None of it mattered, however, because Jane Eyre didn’t end up being a particularly acclaimed film for either Fontaine or Welles, and the 1943 version was vastly outdone by Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 reimagining of the novel, which starred Mia Wasikowska in the titular role and Michael Fassbender in Wells’ shoes. (Liam Gaughan)

There's a new episode of the Behind the Glass podcast with the writer Holly Ringwald as a guest, and also a new video from The Brontë Sisters UK where Kate visits the Bankfield Museum in Halifax and their previous exhibition, Costume Drama (which included To Walk Invisible).