Many sites are commenting on the teaser shared by Charli XCX of a new song and shot clip of Wuthering Heights 2026. The Brat era is behind us, and it’s time for new Charli XCX music (and film projects)! On Thursday, the pop diva shared a short, eerie teaser of a new song called “House” featuring The Velvet Underground’s John Cale, set to be featured in Wuthering Heights. The song’s out Monday. On Instagram, Charli called it “the first offering from my album for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights.” She also shared a longer statement on social media, saying she felt “immediately” inspired to start making music for the film. “After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she wrote. “When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.” The video teaser Charli shared features eerie, horror film–like sound effects and the haunting sound of violins as Charli is pinned down by an elderly hand while staring directly into the camera. “Can I speak to you privately for a moment?” an ominous voice asks, as a raven-like bird flashes on screen. In her post about the song, she called herself a “huge fan” of the Velvet Underground and recalled a quote from Cale in the band’s documentary, when he said, “any song had to be both ‘elegant and brutal.'” Charli wrote: “I got really stuck on that phrase. I wrote it down in my notes app and would pull it up from time to time and think about what he meant.” The phrase came up as she made the music for this film, and so she decided to reach out to him for his opinion and they ended up collaborating. “That voice, so elegant, so brutal. I sent him some songs, and we started talking specifically about House. We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was… well, it made me cry,” she wrote. “I feel so lucky to have been able to work with John on this song. I’ve been so exited to share it with you all, sitting quietly in anticipation.” (Tomás Mier)
Spectator has several writers recommend their books of the year. Frances Wilson (whose own take on Muriel Spark, Electric Spark, is great, too) rightly suggests The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson (The History Press, £22) was published in the UK last year but received almost no notice until its US publication this summer. How could a book this riveting have slipped under the radar? Watson’s subject is the turbulent history of Elizabeth Gaskell’s classic biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë. It was written to expose everyone she believed had hastened her friend’s death, and Gaskell went at her task with an ice pick. Accusations of libel led to the appearance of the diluted edition with which we are now familiar. ‘I don’t think there ever was such an apple of discord as that unlucky book,’ Gaskell reflected. The Bookseller claims that, 'sequels give diminishing returns; prequels both reinvigorate and stand alone'. Perhaps the most admired sequel is Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, providing a back story for the first Mrs Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Anthony Gardner) BBC Countryfile lists the '15 dreamiest, most romantic British rural love stories on screen' including Jane Eyre (2011) Director: Cary Fukunaga The classic gothic romance, Jane Eyre treads a fine line between love story and thriller, as our governess heroine falls in love with brooding Mr Rochester while simultaneously being terrorised by a strange presence that stalks the corridors at night and seems determined to see everything burn. This 2011 adaptation is ably supported by the cast: Mia Wasikowska is a contained and non-histrionic Jane; Michael Fassbender makes an intense and desperate Rochester; Judi Dench gives Mrs Fairfax a steadiness that helps ground the far-fetched aspects of the tale. The Derbyshire Dales feature heavily: Haddon Hall becomes Thornfield Hall; Rochester's horse rears up in the woodland of Chatsworth House; and Jane flees in distress to the rain-soaked moors. Director Cary Fukunaga is loyal to the darkness of the novel, capturing its psychological grimness, and has said that the film's location was key. "Northern England – Yorkshire and Derbyshire, the moors and dales – they look like they're something straight out of a Tim Burton horror film. The trees are all twisted by the wind; the bracken and the heather on the moors have this amazing hue. And the weather is so extreme and it changes all the time. The house even, Haddon Hall, is just so steeped in history, the spaces, the galleries, they sort of just breathe and you feel the presence of the history." [...] Wuthering Heights (2011) Director: Andrea Arnold This 2011 adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic dark romance stars Kaya Scodelario as Catherine and James Howson as Heathcliff, although the first half is dominated by their younger counterparts, Shannon Beer as young Cathy and Solomon Glave as early Heathcliff. The film is formidable in its raw earthiness, rich with foreboding shots of the moor and whipped through with a biting wind that seems to inform every scene. Artfully weighty shots of a dying rabbit or hung pheasant and beautifully bruising panoramics of the landscape accompany the mean, harsh existence of life at the farmhouse. Everything is raw and brutal, creating a savage and uncomfortable love story that seems wildly unsuited to the word 'romance'. It is a hard, heavy experience, much like the life of its protagonists. Filmed in North Yorkshire, Cotescue Park in Coverham became Thrushcross Grange, while Moor Close Farm in Thwaite is Wuthering Heights. (Maria Hodson)
A new Wide Sargasso Sea scholar paper:
by Seema Gogoi Dibon Journal of Languages, 1(3), 253–265 (2025)
This paper aims to analyse Jean Rhys’ critically acclaimed novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, and the “other side” of the story of Antoinette, who is dehumanized in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The objective is to critically engage with the issues of gender, race, and ethnicity in the Caribbean Islands as portrayed in the novel with the purview of postcoloniality. The colonial mission and the rampant exploitation of the natives in their land can be seen as a kind of madness under the guise of bearing the torch of civilization. The research has been conducted through the Postcolonial reading of the text, and the lens of Postcolonial Feminism helps to discuss the intersectionality in the novel of gender, race, ethnicity, hybridity, and the burden of a colonial self. This novel is also a quintessential example of studying Caribbean literature and its colonial history. Rhys shows the colonial history and heterogeneous culture and ethnicity of the islands like Jamaica and Martinique, slavery and the dehumanizing effect of it, and the question of identity, especially of Creole identity. As Chimamanda Adichie in the speech “The Danger of a Single Story” reflects how one side of the story creates stereotypes and provides kind of incomplete information. In Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Antoinette, who is later named as Bertha by Rochester, is portrayed as a beast that does not have agency of her own and as she is from a colonized and “uncivilized” island. Jane describes her anatomy and behaviour as similar to that of a beast and refers to as “it” not as “she”. This one-sided narrative has been deconstructed through Wide Sargasso Sea and gives voice to the colonized beings. Rhys writes about the “the other” side of the story of Antoinette and how she and her mother Annette are driven into madness by their imperialist husbands. I will also analyse the major debate on madness in the novel- who is really mad Antoinette or the whole dehumanizing, exploitative imperialist mission. This paper will be analysed from the theory of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha and other Postcolonial thinkers, and also from the Postcolonial Feminist perspective.
A columnist from The Irish Times wishes students could take their class copies of books home. My sister and I studied Wuthering Heights, our copy was used by my eldest for her Leaving Cert. To my daughter, it was a physical connection to me, her, much tidier, more precise, notes joining my decades-old scrawls. She was particularly interested in who the various boys my sister was in love with, each name crossed out and replaced with another. An appropriate scribble considering the themes of the novel. But this will no longer be the case. No longer will each family have time capsules contained in their studied novels. That sense of heritage, of connection, will be broken. There will be no love hearts, no names, no scribbles, no notes in any book. You can’t mark a book if you’re only borrowing it. (Conor Murphy)
Australia is likely to be a middle power when it comes to theatre though it’s interesting to see in cinema and streamer television that Jacob Elordi can jump from Justin Kurzel’s Narrow Road to the Deep North to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein – about which there has been much debate – with the prospect of playing Heathcliff to Margot Robbie’s Cathy in an apparently off-beat Wuthering Heights: well, it’s not as though Emily Bronte’s story is anything other than craggy and black. Is there an affinity between Heathcliff and Milton’s Satan as antiheroes? (Peter Craven) Claire & Jamie recommends '7 Gothic romance novels to add to your TBR' and a couple of them are retellings of Jane Eyre. Salt and Broom by Sharon Lynn Fisher Salt and Broom is a retelling of Jane Eyre with a fun, magical twist. Jane Aire resides and teaches at the Lowood School for girls. She is a healer and an herbalist, a.k.a. a witch. She is sent to Edward Rochester’s estate, Thornfield Hall, to help rid the manor of a mysterious curse. As she tries to solve the mystery of Thornfield’s troubles, she begins to fall for Rochester. While it has magic, mystery, and a Gothic Victorian setting, it isn’t scary. This is the book to read if you are looking for a cozy, light-hearted love story with a happy ending. If you haven’t read Jane Eyre, add that to your TBR, as well. It’s a classic! [...] Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood Within These Wicked Walls is another fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre (okay, so just go ahead and read Jane Eyre). This Ethiopian-inspired retelling follows Andromeda, a debtera (an exorcist), who has been hired to cleanse Magnus Rochester’s home, Thorne Manor. As Andromeda dives deeper into the horrors of Thorne Manor, she also falls deeper into her attraction to Magnus. As the possession grows stronger, Andromeda begins to question if she can save herself or her beloved Magnus. While elements of this book obviously veer away from the traditional Jane Eyre (hello, this version of Jane is an exorcist), many elements and themes still ring true. It is full of magic, mystery, and an epic love story. (Brianna Jones)
This is an online course that begins tomorrow, November 7:
How have the Brontës and their works survived into the ‘afterlife’?
This online course, led by Gothic literature expert Dr Sam Hirst, will explore different aspects of this question. We’ll examine the histories of publication and discovery, looking at the ‘afterlives’ of the Brontës in biographies and biopics – as well as claims of the Brontës’ afterlife return!
We'll also look at how the Brontës' novels have inspired whole genres, rewrites and reimaginings, novels that speak back to the Brontës both critically and admiringly, and transformative works. This course will also include a book discussion group (with the text to be chosen by the class from a shortlist) and will have an optional creative element, working on our own concepts for adaptation.
Sam Hirst completed their PhD on the Theology of the Early Gothic and since then has worked as a lecturer in Romanticism, Nineteenth Century literature and the Gothic at universities around the UK. They published their first book Theology in the Early British and Irish Gothic in 2023 and have run a number of courses for the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
The Spinoff asks writer Nina Nola all sorts of bookish questions.
The book I wish I’d written Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, because this is the first grown-up novel I bought for myself, and it changed the world. I was flying to the former Yugoslavia for the first time at age 11 with my family to meet relatives, and I wanted a book that could protect me on the journey. My copy was a short, fat paperback with a picture of a wispy female on a lonely moor on the cover. I knew there was a world in those pages that could take me somewhere other than where my body was. It worked!
lists '8 Songs About Real Homes—From Lily Allen’s Brownstone to Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island Estate' including “Wuthering Heights” — Kate Bush Bush's 1978 debut single doesn't just reference Emily Brontë's 1847 novel—it's narrated from the perspective of the ghost Catherine Earnshaw haunting the Yorkshire moors estate that gives the book its name. Bush reportedly wrote the song after watching a 1967 BBC adaptation late one night, immediately sitting down to compose. The fictional Wuthering Heights farmhouse is widely believed to be based on Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse near Haworth in West Yorkshire, where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote. Bush's connection to the material deepened in 2018 when she contributed a rare public work: an inscription for a memorial stone dedicated to Emily Brontë on the Yorkshire moors between Haworth and Thornton, the sisters' birthplace. The inscription reads: “No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere”—a line from Brontë's poem “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” (Julia Cancilla)
Yardbaker lists 'The 20 movies that have the most remakes' and one of them is 'Jane Eyre' Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is one of those books that has been influential in a whole host of ways. Not only has it been adapted to the screen multiple times, but it has also inspired other works that follow its formula. In addition to several silent versions of the story, it has been remade several times during the sound era. Some of the more notable versions are the 1943 version (in which Joan Fontaine co-starred with Orson Welles) and the 2011 version (which co-starred Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender). (Thomas West)
BookClub has an AI-generated article listing '6 Classic Books That Are Easier to Read Than You Think' including Jane Eyre. More Recent Articles
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