Holed up in their mansion, Great Tomkyns, in Essex, she felt “deserted,” isolated and adrift without her art. It was around this time that she first began to sketch scenes from Wuthering Heights, the book on which she would ruminate for the next three decades of her life. Edna Clarke Hall was certainly not the first or last sensitive bourgeois girl to be creatively consumed by Emily Brontë’s vision of the North. The author’s fictional Gimmerton, with its heavy Northern vernacular, was quite far indeed from sunny Edwardian Essex, with its polite croquet and cucumber sandwiches. “It held me in its grip as no other book ever had,” Hall wrote. “Was it the long lonely days at home, the isolation of the house in the wider setting of the landscape, the beams of Great Tomkyns which I still felt in my bones and which so reminded me of this book?” But it was the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff that especially obsessed her. At times, Hall would dress up as the characters so as to model their clothes for her sketches. “I lived the characters of Heathcliff and Catherine myself, I simply was them,” she explained. “It was something that had come to pass in a deeply unconscious way. I just had to draw Wuthering Heights.” Imagining the story awoke something in the long-inactive artist. Brontë’s novel served as both an escape from and a reflection of her own unhappy marriage. (Unsurprisingly, there are no drawings dated after her husband’s death in 1932.) In “Heritage of Ages,” Hall described feeling almost possessed by the need to draw its characters. “I drew them all one evening, I was quite alone, Willie was away. I could not stop,” she wrote. She produced the same compositions in many different styles. “I had such a strong feeling for it, I seemed to work under a spell. I did one after the other, scattering the sketches about like a maniac … My obsession with Wuthering Heights was so persistent that for years these drawings used to slide out of my mind with complete ease.” Hall’s devotion to rendering the tortured lovers yielded hundreds of drawings, prints, and watercolors, many of which have been lost or squirreled away in private collections. A selection of her works spent the past decades mostly unnoticed in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Ashmolean in Oxford—until this spring, when a new illustrated edition of the novel united thirty of Hall’s sketches with the text for the first time. (Sarah Hyde)
The Candor joins the chorus of those who consider Wuthering Heights 2026 a failure. Although the first paragraph of the review is a bit bizarre:
Wuthering Heights is a divisive novel. It is, at times, called the “greatest love story of all time,” but rejected as a romance for the depravity of its content at others. At the time of its publication, Anne Brontë (???) often simplified and cushioned its ideas to make it more palatable to the sensibilities of the English audience.(??) (...) An ideal Wuthering Heights adaptation for the modern audience would aim to convey and draw attention to societal concerns similar to how Emily Bronte did. The Victorian problem of race is not much different than our modern one; how does an immigrant assimilate? What must a person of color do in a hostile environment to be respected? What does racism-driven abuse, or even abuse in general, do to a person? How do we break free of those cycles of trauma and anger? They’re all relevant questions! The novel’s cyclical nature could also be used to reflect how repetitive our modern lives often feel, and the Catherine-Heathcliff pairing could serve as a vehicle to explore intersectional issues of oppression and expectation. There is meaningful work that can be done with a novel like this; work that isn’t just entertaining romance, but rather something that carries on the legacy of the original author by addressing real problems and issues while still being undeniably beautiful. (Zoha Quadri)
Unsurprisingly, World Socialist Web Site has not love the film:
In other hands, this might be interesting. But Fennell is relatively indifferent to the actual pauperisation of Heathcliff, whose exclusion takes the form of being made a servant. She is more interested in Nelly, because this is an injustice within the middle class milieu she inhabits. Brontë’s primordial passion plays out often inarticulately in the mechanics of land ownership and household establishment. Fennell wants a passion disconnected from its social context. She is trying to create the impression of significance by a rather desperate recourse to ever more superficial effects. Is this all that contemporary audiences can hope or look for in Wuthering Heights? Hardly. Brontë’s visceral and astonishing novel is rooted not just in a brutal landscape, but in a real world of class distinction and savagery that must find reflection in the passions of our daily lives. It is, in this sense, a genuine and exceptional work of art.
Fennell is seeking only the blandest of consolations for a very limited fraction of the upper middle class. Brontë does not exclude consolation, but there is nothing simplistic or simplified in her novel of the emotions. There is far more there than Fennell can find. (Paul Bond)
Esquire lists the film among the "sexiest movies in 2026 so far": Love it or hate it, Emerald Fennell's visually hearty take on Wuthering Heights is all her own. (The poster refers to it as "Wuthering Heights," scare quotes and all, to convey that this is a conscious take on Emily Brontë's classic—not a canonical retelling.) One of Fennell's most notable insertions is sex, particularly that between Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). We see Cathy's sexual awakening—she watches people have sex through floorboards and masturbates soon after. And then, in the throes of her secret romance with Heathcliff, there's a montage set to Charli XCX's "Funny Mouth." Cathy and Heathcliff make out in the rain, then in a carriage, and she eventually rides him (in both contexts). He performs oral on her during a sun shower, and she sits on his lap outside among the wily, windy moors. They are almost entirely (and sumptuously!) clothed during these encounters. Later, they have more clothed sex on a table as they discuss Cathy's husband, Edgar, whom she is cheating on with Heathcliff. "This is how you love him?" asks Heathcliff as he thrusts into her. Though brief—and, again, covered up—these scenes were enough to prompt The Economist to blare in a headline: "Sex, sex and more sex." For the stodgy and easily scandalized, Fennell clearly hit a nerve. (Rich Juzwiak)
An alert for today, April 2, in Porto Alegre (Brazil): Ciclo “Filmes & Livros” Sessão de abertura O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes (Dir. William Wyler | 1939 | EUA | 103 min | Drama | 12A) Após ser acolhido por uma família rural inglesa, Heathcliff desenvolve uma relação intensa e destrutiva com Catherine Earnshaw. Separados por convenções sociais, seu vínculo obsessivo gera consequências trágicas que se estendem por anos. 02/04 | quinta-feira | 16h Sala Redenção – Cinema Universitário Rua Engenheiro Luiz Englert, 333 – campus centro da UFRGS (Via El Matinal)
According to InsightTrendsWorld, "Wuthering Heights [2026] Made the Basque-Waist Dress Fashion's Most Wanted Silhouette". The Yorkshire Evening Post has a sponsored article (and most probaby AI written) above cultural events celebrating the Brontë country this spring. Finally, check out this great diorama showing how the Parsonage area could look around 1845, made by Brontë Parsonage Museum volunteer Paul.
by Slas Clayton Wolf Moon Books ASIN : B0GLHR2VQV February 2026
What happens to Heathcliff in the years he disappears from Wuthering Heights? When Heathcliff vanishes from the moors, he leaves behind humiliation, hunger, and a house that never truly let him belong. Three years later he returns a wealthy, dangerous man—changed beyond recognition, carrying a fortune no one can explain. This novel enters that silence. Set against the brutal campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars, this dark gothic historical fiction reimagines Heathcliff’s missing years: from a London inn and a prison cell to the smoke-choked battlefields of the Peninsular War, where class dissolves under cannon fire and a man’s worth is measured by survival. Enlisting as a private, Heathcliff learns the cruel mathematics of war—how violence, discipline, and patronage can remake a man, and how power is gathered not only with steel, but with patience. As Europe burns, Heathcliff moves through army camps and battlefield chaos, catching the attention of men who see in him either a weapon or a threat. His fortune is not won by chance, but by blood, endurance, and a dangerous alliance that will follow him long after the guns fall silent. Haunting, atmospheric, and unflinching, this is a gothic reimagining of Wuthering Heights—a story of exile, ambition, and transformation, where love curdles into obsession and absence becomes a forge. For readers of dark literary fiction, historical war novels, and classic retellings with teeth.
LouReviews revisits all the film, TV, and stage play adaptations of Jane Eyre that the writer of the post has seen. A modern retelling of Jane Eyre. Natasha drew much of her inspiration from classic literature. "It's a bit like what Emerald Fennell said about Wuthering Heights," she said. "She's made a movie that captures how she felt about the book as a teenager." "When I read Jane Eyre as a teenager — in fact, I was only like 10... the overwhelming impression was of these very passionate people who got swept away with each other. It was all very, very vivid." In Jane Eyre, Jane longs to see the world before encountering her love interest, Mr Rochester. Revisiting the novel, Natasha wanted more for the protagonist than just love. "I feel like Jane kind of missed out on what she truly wanted in many ways," Natasha said. "I feel like there's an alternative ending, a different story that would be more satisfying…The Chateau on Sunset is, how could we give Jane Eyre the ending she truly deserves?" (Cassandra Green)
In Churches of Bradford, a new book published by Amberley, I take readers on a whistle stop tour of 50 of the district’s most intriguing churches. (...) The ruins of Old Bell Chapel in Thornton hold a special place in literary history. Patrick Brontë served here from 1815 to 1820, and Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell Brontë were all baptised within its walls. The font used for their baptisms now stands across the road in St James’ Church. (Simon Ross Valentine)
I’m sure Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is fun without an English major lamenting about the social context of the novel and pointing out the racism present in this adaptation. The film is visually stunning, it hits the right emotional beats, and the supporting performances are impressive. But by removing this social context something significant is lost. As I watched the film I couldn’t help but wonder what insightful race and class politics could be explored by a more ambitious director. I wondered what Isabella’s story would look like if it was more faithful, depicting a woman escaping abuse at a point in history where doing so was near impossible. I left the film not angry in the way I thought I would be, but frustrated. (Rosa Prior) On its own, the movie can still be an enjoyable watch because of its strong performances, cinematography and few well-crafted scenes. But as an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, it does injustice to Brontë’s work by replacing the novel’s complex exploration of morality, obsession and generational consequences with a more superficial focus on sensuality. Ultimately, the adaptation forces a question: how far can a classic literary work be altered in the modern retelling before it wrongs the original work? (Ruksha Shrestha)
Em “O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes”, o amor não aparece como abrigo confortável. Ele surge como força que aproxima, rompe, humilha, prende e consome — e é justamente por isso que essa história continua tão provocadora nas telas. (Gabriel Pietro) (Translation) Is it supposed to be camp? Is it supposed to be genuine? Who can say. As with Saltburn, you can’t camp it up and then ask us to care about the characters. Fennell possesses a crucial misunderstanding of tone. You’ll know something is off around the time Cathy sucks on her lower lip while her maid kneads dough, but by the time she commits an act of fervent self abuse on the moors you’ll be drafting a letter to your local representative to say down with this sort of thing. And then we are supposed to care, after scenes of Heathcliff tying Cathy’s sister (Alison Oliver) up like a dog and humiliating her, about the plight of these star-crossed lovers? Even those with an exceptionally high tolerance, even appreciation, for bad taste will find challenges here. In spite of itself, the movie is never boring to watch. Linus Sandgren’s sumptuous cinematography marks a high point in the DP’s storied filmography, with each moment so vividly rendered that it stands on its own as a tableau. And Suzie Davies’ production design is equally commendable, creating a dreamlike interpretation of a period setting that feels both vintage and futuristically alien. The Yorkshire setting of Wuthering Heights looks so fabulous that you almost want to live within it, just not with this cast of characters. (Declan Gallagher)
The [book] that you can’t stop thinking about: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. (Elise Dumpleton) Die Presse (Austria) visits Brontë country looking for the locations of Wuthering Heights 2026: Drehorte als Reiseziel: Stürmische Höhen im Yorkshire-Moor Zu den Schauplätzen von „Sturmhöhe“, Emily Brontës Klassikers, im Norden Englands reisen: literarische Pilgerorte mit Kinobezug. Schwarz ragt die Ruine der alten Bleimühle in den Himmel. Menschenleer liegen Hügel und Täler unter schweren Wolken. Das Gluckern des Flüsschens Old Gang Beck ist das einzige Geräusch, wenn nicht gerade ein Fasan auffliegt. Plötzlich erscheint Heathcliff unter einem Torbogen. Gleich wird Catherine sich in den Überresten des Torflagers der Bleihütte umdrehen und den sperrigen Antihelden der „ Wuthering Heights“ nach Jahren der Trennung wiedersehen. Dass Emerald Fennells Filminterpretation des Klassikers großzügig neben der Hälfte des Romans auch die meisten Figuren weglässt und die Handlung auf die Vergeblichkeit der unheilvollen Beziehung zwischen Heathcliff und Catherine destilliert, schmälert seine Wirkung nicht. (Stefanie Bisping) (Translation)
Some websites still announce that the film is available on streaming right now: Billboard, Forbes, Page Six... Sarah Collins Bookworm posts about her visit to Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage Museum. A Zoom alert for tomorrow, April 2:
Thu 2 Apr, 7:30pm Online via zoom
We are delighted to be welcoming author Essie Fox to the Brontë Lounge, where she will be discussing her latest novel Catherine: A Retelling of Wuthering Heights with host Helen Meller. Essie’s debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club. Dangerous, a Regency gothic crime thriller featuring Lord Byron in Venice, was selected as a Times Book of the Month. There will also be a chance to ask questions on the night.
171 years ago, Charlotte Brontë died in Haworth. Some websites remember the event: Estadão (Brazil), Good News Network's quote of the day... Coincidental or not, Parade informs how last night's Jeopardy! final Jeopardy was:
Final Jeopardy today was in the category “Fictional Characters.” The clue: Literary theories say the first name of this 1847 title character is meant to evoke plainness while the last name hints at a bequest. The answer: Who is Jane Eyre?
The Yorkshire Post tells about secret doors in Haworth's Oh La La - The Original Brontë Stationery Store: While renovating her business in Haworth, Pamela Howorth discovered secret doorways where the Brontë sisters would have bought their writing paper. In 2003, Pamela Howorth, 59, bought a rundown building on Main Street in Haworth and transformed it into a lingerie store called Oh La La. The business was rebranded into a vintage shop in 2020 with a change of name to ‘The Original Brontë Stationery’ and Ms Howorth, originally from Bradford, delved deep into the history of the building. (...) Through her research, Ms Howorth discovered that John Greenwood was the owner of the building in the 1800s when it was a stationery shop; Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte regularly bought their writing papers there. During the renovation of the shop undertaken by Ms Howorth, she discovered secret doorways that were used to get into the building. (...) During the 1800s, John Greenwood was running a general store in No. 36 Main Street. “He was a tea merchant during the Brontës' time,” Ms Howorth said. “Haworth Main Street at that time was a main turnpike road that took people from Toller Lane in Bradford through to Colne. “From 1843 he started selling paper specifically to the Brontë sisters who were asking him for it and it was very expensive at that time so he couldn’t hold a lot of stock of it. “But they would request him to get some paper for them and he would ride to one of the mills in Halifax, get the paper, bring it back for the Brontës to be able to do their writing.” It is thought that upstairs in the shop was where people hand combed wool in the Victorian era. Ms Howorth found out that the former owner John Greenwood kept diaries that she tried to find. (...) “John Greenwood kept some diaries and he kept records of his meetings with Charlotte Bronte and her sisters,” she said. “When Charlotte died, John contacted Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the biography of Charlotte, and provided her with his information of what he knew about the family and a lot of it came from his diaries. “She looked at his diaries and took excerpts from them but we don’t know where the diaries are, they never came to light. They may well have been destroyed.” (Liana Jacob)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë If you have only encountered Wuthering Heights through reputation, there is a decent chance you imagine it as a tragic, windswept romance. Emily Brontë’s novel is vicious, obsessive, inhospitable, and often emotionally feral. It is a novel about fixation, revenge, inheritance, cruelty, class, and the way desire can rot into something almost supernatural. That is why it remains so magnetic, and why 2026 is a good year to read it. Emerald Fennell’s adaptation has already brought the novel back into public conversation after its theatrical release, which means readers are once again arguing about what the book actually is. A romance? A gothic nightmare? A destructive anti-love story? The answer is, conveniently, all of the above. This is one of those classics that benefits from being read before you absorb too many takes about it. The novel is far rougher and more destabilizing than its cultural image suggests. (...)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre is the storm gathering behind the walls. The announcement of a new 2026 television adaptation is enough reason to bring Charlotte Brontë’s novel back into view, but the real reason to read it is that Jane Eyre still feels startlingly forceful from the inside. Jane is a moral intelligence, a will, and a voice. The novel fuses several things that do not always coexist easily: bildungsroman, gothic fiction, spiritual crisis, class conflict, and romance. It is intense without becoming shapeless. It is passionate without losing its sense of self-command. And because so many later novels borrow from it, reading Jane Eyre in 2026 can feel like discovering the hidden template behind countless stories of emotional self-definition. (...) Read the Brontës before discourse domesticates them. Read Austen before the algorithm turns her into posture. Read Dumas because narrative pleasure is not a lesser pleasure. Read Shelley, Stoker, and Wilde because the gothic never really went away, and 2026 seems determined to prove it. The classics are back, once again. The best move is to meet them on the page first. (Vincent Halles)
Both novels are listed in this AI-generated 'greatest romance novels in 2026 Vocal Media's BookClub post. RissWrites lists period dramas available on Prime Video:
Jane Eyre, 1983 Is this another one I feature every time I put together this annual best Prime Video period drama list? Probably. But I think it’s a version not talked about as much as newer ones, plus objectively speaking, a version of Jane Eyre is always a good fit on a “best” period drama list. Timothy Dalton plays the iconic Mr. Rochester character in this Charlotte Bronte classic. This is also one of the rare adaptations from the BBC's 1980s films that I do actually like. It’s moody as it should be, and while kind of “clunky” at times, it’s ultimately a solid production that I’ve seen more than once. (Rissi JC)
Cuando Charlotte Brontë publicó Jane Eyre en 1847, las escritoras británicas no tenían libertad para escribir. Cuando Sandra Gilbert y Susan Gubar escribieron La loca del desván, inspirada en el personaje de Bertha Mason de la novela de Brontë, se vivía en el mundo la segunda ola feminista. Era 1979. Hoy, casi 50 años después, la editorial Espinas ha reeditado el ensayo, considerado la primera crítica literaria feminista: una concatenación de mujeres recuperando el trabajo de sus predecesoras. (...) Bertha Mason, la esposa de Edward Rochester en Jane Eyre, vive encerrada en el ático de su mansión por decisión de su marido, quien cree que ella ha enloquecido. Mason representa a la mujer marginada por el patriarcado, llamada histérica o loca cuando decide no cumplir con lo que se espera de ella: ser dócil, servicial, pasiva y abnegada. Las filólogas Gilbert y Gubar vieron en este personaje, un arquetipo constante en las obras de escritoras victorianas, una forma de expresar el malestar y frustración que vivían las autoras. Una manera de liberarse y decir aquello que no estaba permitido: mostrar sus experiencias en un espacio literario dominado por hombres y por un cánon patriarcal. (Constanza Pérez Z.) (Translation)
The streaming premiere of Wuthering Heights 2026 (on both Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV) is mentioned in several news outlets: Cinebuzz (Brazil), Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, CinemaPlanet (Portugal), Decider, Collider, La Capital (Argentina)... I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s casting. Probably the biggest mistake of the movie is its failure to cast Heathcliff as a person of color. Heathcliff’s race influences his romance with Cathy, his way of viewing the world and the way he is treated by every other character. (...) By miscasting Heathcliff, cutting the second half of the novel and sugarcoating their depiction of 19th-century class dynamics in the name of focusing on romance, the film removes the teeth from Brontë’s social commentary. Perhaps more significantly, though, given their goal, this misinterpretation also takes away anything that might give Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship a claim to being “the greatest love story of all time.” (Alexa Smith)
A veces, uno tiene la sensación de estar frente a un spot publicitario de dos horas y cuarto, porque la factura técnica es impecable y tendente al excesivo esteticismo, aunque la oscuridad se apodere de las atmósferas fotográficas en determinados pasajes. No obstante, se nota ese intento de darle un estilo autoral a esta producción que no deja de ser gran formato, más centrada en lo formal que en el fondo de la cuestión y en profundizar en los personajes. (Manuel Ángel Jiménez) (Translation)
La réalisatrice reste fidèle à elle-même : érotique, excessive, délibérément dérangeante. Les landes du Yorkshire y sont âpres et charnelles, la demeure des Earnshaw suinte la violence et la misère, en contraste brutal avec l'opulence froide des Linton. Quant au duo Margot Robbie – Jacob Elordi, il partage les avis : certains succombent à leur magnétisme, d'autres estiment qu'ils n'atteignent pas tout à fait la démesure que leurs personnages exigent. (Translation) The plot chronology was confusing. Once Cathy and Heathcliff age up, there is no sense of time and little elaboration. Fennell focuses mostly on style and little on actual substance. The film is engrossing and thoroughly entertaining, with humorous moments intertwined (Isabella and the dolls, need I say more), but it has so many loose ends that the film ends with the viewer emotionally unchanged. She attempts to tie mutual obsession with erotic desire, but there’s a disconnect; it’s not passionate. There’s no burning and longing; it’s all physical lust. It lacks the emotional weight that an adaptation of the powerful and emotionally charged “Wuthering Heights” should possess. Fennell’s interpretation is like the novel in name only and best enjoyed if the viewer forgets that it’s meant to be an adaptation at all. (Sophia Benito)
Boktanker also reviews the film in Norwegian. 20 Minutos (Spain) visits both the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks. El Español (Spain) illustrates the dilemma of a young couple between watching Wuthering Heights, Santiago Segura's Torrente, presidente, or Pedro Almodóvar's Amarga Navidad. Vanity Fair (Italy) lists several cottages to live like Heathcliff and Catherine. More Recent Articles
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