Adaptations have never been obligated to reproduce their sources with documentary precision and to some, it is entirely possible to enjoy a film that misreads its literary predecessor. As I’ve stated before in a review on Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein (2025), the question is not simply whether the film works, but what it works as. When a reinterpretation has stripped away major elements that give the classic novel its disturbing force, what remains may still function as an engaging piece of cinema, but only that. In my opinion, Fennell’s film succeeds in theatres, but not on the terms that matter most, and certainly not as Wuthering Heights. (Lily Braumberger) Hidustan Times lists "savage reviews that are more fun than the movies they trash": Wuthering Heights (2026). After two movies with no real plot, Emerald Fennell’s next victim was Emily Brontë’s classic. She turned the gothic novel about class and racism into smutty fanfic. Letterboxd user Allian complained: “Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.” RIP Margot Robbie’s Catherine, you would have loved Fifty Shades of Grey. (Tanya Syed) The Times recommends watching the film, now streaming: Emerald Fennell directs this loose adaptation of the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Catherine in the Yorkshire moors, who are bonded by the shared trauma of abuse by her father (an excellent Martin Clunes). But when she is swept up into the world of a wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), Catherine is torn between the desire for Heathcliff and the chance of stability and wealth. It’s a bold film that divided critics — now it’s your chance to decide from the comfort of your sofa. (Jake Helm and Tim Glanfield) Also in The Times, Brian Cox jokes about the film: Today Cox will even go “full Dundee” on a film he hasn’t even seen. I know Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon’s 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights is a favourite of his and wondered what he made of the new one starring Margot Robbie. “ ‘Keith Cliff! It’s me, Cathy!’ ” he declaims suddenly in a cod Australian accent (Robbie was once in the Australian soap Neighbours). “‘How ya doing, Keith? Awright?’ ‘Yeah, I’m awright!’ ” Cox enjoys a hearty chuckle before composing himself. “Margot Robbie is far too beautiful for that role. I mean, I think there should be something more of the Gypsy about her but it’s wrong of me to judge. It may be a brilliant film.” (Michael Odell)
Movie-Locations publishes a comprehensive list of all the locations of the film: The radical new version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights uses the real moors of North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, while surprisingly also including a little glimpse of Kent, too. Now find out exactly where. Far Out Magazine retells the story of how the birth of Because the Night by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith... and, in a way, Emily Brontë: However, the final piece of the puzzle comes from far off from New York. Part of it came from Michigan as Smith, on the track in one night, yearned for a call from her then-boyfriend but soon-to-be husband, Fred Smith, who was on tour at the time. But really, her masterclass in yearning came from years before and miles away, rooting all the way back to Haworth in Yorkshire, and to Brontë country. The Brontë sisters, and in particular, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, were by no means a new reference to her in the late 1970s. Instead, this was a book she’d loved since being a kid, but had come to understand better and better with each re-read as she grew up. By 1977, when she was now in her 30s and intensely in love with the man she’d marry, the adoration and emotion written by Brontë in that book took on new life. She was yearning for a man who was far away, just as Cathy and Heathcliff spent a lifetime yearning for one another. With the chorus of a love song on her hands, Wuthering Heights came to mind as the ultimate Patti Smith way to finish it off, allowing her to bring in poetry and literary reference. The result was a huge hit, giving Smith her first commercial smash and Springsteen another victory under his belt. In 2014, Smith wrote a foreword for a new version of the book, musing, “In the writing of Wuthering Heights, she did not give what she wanted; she gave what she had”. It seemed to be the case for her song, too, as her more impassioned tune came together in one night. But her passion is matched by her love for the Brontë’s, as in 2013, she played a concert in the tiny Yorkshire town simply to raise money to keep their home open to the public. (Lucy Harbron)
A first edition copy of the novel, a thing we're sure Patti Smith would enjoy seeing, is at the Rare Books Collection at the University of Buffalo: With a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” now in theaters, interest in Emily Brontë’s iconic novel is once again on the rise. But more than 175 years before the story returned to movie screens, one of its earliest printed forms had already quietly found a home in Buffalo. UB’s Rare Books Collection offers an illuminating window into one of fiction’s most enduring stories — and the lengths one woman went to tell it. The collection holds a first British edition of “Wuthering Heights,” the only novel written by Emily Brontë. Published in December 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, the book was issued in three volumes — a common format for British fiction of the period, known as a “triple-decker” novel. While the exact print run of this edition is unknown, it is thought to have been only 250 copies. It is worth noting that “Wuthering Heights” comprises only the first two volumes of the set. The third contains “Agnes Grey,” a novel by Anne Brontë — a reminder that the triple-decker format sometimes bundled works together to meet the required length. (Denise Wolfe)
BBC Bitesize publishes a hilarious a "social media parody" with Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. Part of the Literally1 Social Media Parodies series:
Mr Rochester and Governess Jane Eyre take the on the polygraph lie detector test in this social media parody.´ Jane Eyre was chosen as the best novel to read on a rainy day, as it is recalled in Parade. More Jane Eyre references. Like this article in The Times about weddings from hell in fiction: Just in time for wedding season to kick off in earnest, The Drama is released in cinemas today. It joins a formidable canon of disastrous wedding stories stretching back to Victorian marriage novels (remember how Jane Eyre’s nuptials are rudely interrupted by the revelation that Mr Rochester is already married?), via 1930s Hollywood screwballs (there’s a beautiful shot of Claudette Colbert fleeing the altar in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, yards of tulle streaming out behind her). (Susie Goldsbrough) Regrettably, not everybody loves Jane. The author Sarah Hall doesn't, as she confesses in The Guardian: The book I could never read again Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Glad to have met Jane, but I seem to remember the book was quite whingey (forgive me, Brontë congregationalists). It led me to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which I gladly return to.
Which Brontë sister wrote the novel Agnes Grey? The brooding atmosphere at Somersby rectory recalls that of the Brontës’ Haworth parsonage, eighty miles due north, and headed by another weapon-wielding, Cambridge-educated clergyman. Like the Brontës, the Tennysons shunned outside company and clung together in what sounds like intense trauma bonding. (Kathryn Hughes) If you're interested in looking at how a bunch of TikTokers film in Haworth and Bronté country, and you enjoy second-hand cringe, check this post. A new exhibition at the Casa das Hist
órias Paula Rego in Cascais, Portugal, featuring her Jane Eyre series:
Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais 31 Mar '25 - 31 Jan '26
Partindo do núcleo de obras apresentadas na exposição Meninas exemplares, organizada pela FDL I/CHPR no Museu Grão Vasco, e outras que acompanharam a apresentação do filme de João Botelho As meninas exemplares em vários cineteatros de norte a sul de Portugal, a nova exposição na Casa das Histórias Paula Rego destaca as meninas-mulheres na obra da artista. O título desta exposição remete para o texto literário Meninas exemplares, da Condessa de Ségur (1799–1874), que cativou a artista desde a sua infância. Os contos da Condessa de Ségur e, entre eles, Os desastres de Sofia, editados em Portugal pela Coleção Azul, são por ela lidos avidamente quando ainda criança. Contam as histórias de raparigas bem-nascidas que se portam terrivelmente, causando problemas. (...) A soberania da dimensão psicológica destas meninas-mulheres não depende tanto das histórias de onde são quase sempre resgatadas; muitas vezes, o que exponencia a construção do caráter é a intensificação da sua presença nos desenhos, pinturas e gravuras, quando a solidez da sua matéria corpórea é evidenciada pelo virtuosismo da representação realista. Os corpos revelam vivências e estados emocionais que são expressos através da representação de sensações físicas, colocando-nos diretamente no seu centro afetivo. Exemplar neste aspeto é a última litografia da série “Jane Eyre” (Sala 3), Vem a mim, de 2001–02, que é decisiva para o tratamento psicológico da personagem principal, Jane, sugerindo a sua complexidade, a sua hesitação em aceitar um destino que será sempre, de certo modo, sacrificial. Estas litografias coloridas resultam de uma apropriação transformadora do romance vitoriano da escritora Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) e destacam o sofrimento, a determinação e o caráter independente da sua protagonista. Tanto nesta série, como na série “Bruxas de Pendle”, inspirada nos poemas homónimos de Blake Morrison (Sala 3), de 1996, há imagens que estabelecem uma poderosa relação entre a natureza feminina e o seu domínio da natureza (Amando Bewick, Pântano de Whinny, por exemplo).
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. More Recent Articles
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