Everything Wrong with Wuthering Heights (2026)
Ok, this post has been a long time coming but I finally mustered up the motivation to make it
The rage this movie ignited within me was otherworldly. Which is hilarious considering how little I cared about it when it was first being advertised. I didn’t even know much about the book until the movie came out and the public hatred for it got me curious.
So, here’s a complete breakdown of everything I hate about the Wuthering Heights movie, and how it completely annihilated the book.
Starting off with the most important part. Racism is at the absolute heart of Wuthering Heights. The entire crux of the story is, in a way, about race (and abuse cycles). The horrible person Heathcliff grows up to become and the horrible things he does are all a direct product of the abuse and prejudice he suffered as a child BECAUSE HE WAS NOT WHITE. From the moment he steps foot in Wuthering Heights, he’s treated with disgust and contempt by everyone inside, including the servants. He’s called ten slurs every two pages, and is literally treated as less than human, as a feral, dirty savage, because of his race.
His adoptive mother doesn’t like him and doesn’t want him in her house. His adoptive brother constantly subjects him to abuse, degradation, and humiliation, and kicks him out of the house, pauperises him, and turns him into a servant, and literally treats him like a filthy animal. Even Nelly, who is much lower in the societal ladder than the Earnshaws, sees him as lowly. Even when he comes back years later as a rich man and a ‘gentleman’, he’s still not treated the way a rich white man would be. He’s still seen as a secondary citizen, as other. The very reason he can’t marry Cathy—the reason they can never be together— is because of their difference in race (also class, but race is largely the main reason). No matter how deeply they want to, they can never, ever be together, even when he comes back as a rich gentleman, and not just because Cathy’s married. To marry him would degrade her. It would obliterate her family name, ruin her in every way, in society .
And then there’s Edgar Linton, who is in every way Heathcliff’s opposite. A perfect foil to him. A manifestation of everything Heathcliff hates and at the same time everything he’s ever wanted. He’s gentle and ‘civilised’ and ‘well bred’ and polite, and Heathcliff is portrayed as brutal and ferocious and wild. He’s a rich white boy with blond hair and blue eyes, and Heathcliff is a poor orphaned ‘dark skinned gypsy’ with dark hair and dark eyes. There’s literally a conversation between Heathcliff and Nelly where he says he wishes he was white and fair haired and blue eyed like Edgar. Edgar gets to marry Cathy and live in a big luxurious house. Edgar has it all, while Heathcliff has nothing. The difference in their appearance is further highlighted and exacerbated by their difference in worlds. And the movie not only completely obliterates this deeply complex and well written aspect of the story, but it practically laughs in it’s face. Heathcliff—whose entire character and plot line was shaped by his not being white—is white. And Edgar—whose entire character revolves around him being a rich white boy, contrasting with Heathcliff—is not white. Most of Heathcliff’s motivations for revenge are gone. The only reason he’s treated differently than anyone else is because he’s… poor. And a servant. And, by the way, this difference in treatment only appears to be by Mr Earnshaw. All the servants are cool with him. Cathy’s obviously cool with him. When he comes back as a rich gentleman, pretty much everyone’s cool with him. The deep psychological and emotional impact on Heathcliff’s psyche from constant abuse, discrimination, and contempt, ( which turns him into a complete psychopath) is reduced to a mere slap on the wrist.
He pouts about Cathy ignoring his feelings for like five minutes and is then completely fine once they get together. The entire reason that everything happens in the story is obliterated. Heathcliff has no reason to want to hurt anyone, wreak vengeance on anyone, and he doesn’t. All he does is Cathy, but we’ll get to that part later. All of his horrible actions are either completely erased, or the story is distorted to justify/modify them so he’s still a good guy. The very crux of the story—the very heart and catalyst to all of the events of the story—is deleted. The entire POINT of the story—racism and classism and revenge and obsession with revenge and inter generational trauma and cycles of abuse—is omitted for favour of a mindless, shallow, bland, ‘spicy’ (in name only) wattpad booktok fever dream of a fourteen year old girl.
Oh, this makes me so angry. Isabella Linton is one of the strongest and most progressive—if not themost—female character to be written in classic literature. More people need to realise this in context of when the book was written. A spoiled and sheltered teenage white girl who has lived in the lap of luxury and splendour her entire life, with a house literally made out of crystal with a room just for ribbons—willingly choosing to leave all of that behind, to let it go, to marry a poor dark skinned gypsy orphan and live in the miserable, crumbling manor that is Wuthering Heights.
Yes, Heathcliff’s rich now. Yes, he’s a ‘gentleman’ now. But he’s still not white. He’s still a former servant. She’s still white. She’s still the daughter of an aristocrat who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, WILLINGLY leaving that life behind for this man, KNOWING FULLY WELL what it means for her. Leaving behind the life of comfort and pomp and ease. Obliterating herself in society. CATHY wasn’t ready to do that! Catherine whatever-our-souls-are-made-of -his-and-mine-are-the-same wouldn’t marry Heathcliff! Because she knew it would degrade her! Ruin her! And Isabella grew up WAY more privileged than Cathy. She still did that! Leaving behind her family, her lavish lifestyle, for someone miles beneath her! In the 1770s! As a woman! Can you imagine the utter courage and bravery it takes to do that? The sheer willpower you have to have?
But that’s not the end of it. After leaving behind everything to marry this man , he turns out to be an abusive asshole who hangs up her dog in front of her on their wedding night, (impliedly) rapes her on their wedding night, treats her like crap, repeatedly belittling and mocking her, telling her that he didn’t and would never love her and only married her to torture Cathy, and physically assaults her. And she’s practically kept a prisoner in that house, and everyone else there treats her with contempt and disdain. Braver women than Isabella would’ve taken the easy way out. But no, she endures, and she survives, and she even tries to escape—even after he assaults her after her first failed attempt, she musters up the courage to TRY again, and SUCCEEDS. Again, in the 1770s, as a woman! Rights or laws to protect women were non existent, practically negative.
And with the way society was back then, if they had an abusive husband, too bad—they just had to stick it out till one of them kicked the bucket. The very notion of the thought of escape or leaving wouldn’t even enter their minds. But Isabella did more than just think about it, she DID it. WHILE PREGNANT. And she lived out ALONE in London for 12 YEARS, taking care of both herself and her son all alone as a woman in the 18th century. That woman is a QUEEN who deserves fifty statues built in her honour. And the movie turns her into a laughing stock. A gag for the audience to point at and make fun of. They turn her abuse and her pain into a fucking fetish. They completely erase her resilience and her bravery and courage and endurance. They say that everything Heathcliff did to her was 100% consensual, that she wanted it, that she enjoyed it. And then emerald fennell has the audacity to call it a fucking ‘win for feminism’.
Ah yes, erasing the horrors endured by a victim of domestic violence and their resilience and escape from it and turning it into a kink and glorifying the abuser. Classic feminism. And turning Heathcliff hanging Isabella’s dog in front of her while she cried and begged him to stop into Heathcliff collaring Isabella and having her bark like a dog for him on all fours and eat from his hand…. I don’t even have any words for how sickening and disgusting that it. It’s like Fennell’s laughing in the face of Emily Brontë, of lovers of the book, of domestic violence victims and survivors who loved the book. And it’s not just that, it’s that Isabella’s character in general is turned into comic relief. A quirky weird girl who’s socially awkward and comes off as creepy and unorthodox at first and is then unveiled to be a sexual deviant. A pathetic girl with a pathetic crush on a man who’s never going to return her feelings. The scene where they get married and she leans in to kiss him and he just walks away had my blood BOILING, as did all the comments beneath the video laughing at Isabella and making fun of her.
It’s like they’ve slapped a huge red sign on her: look at her! look at how weird and pathetic she is! isn’t it hilarious how pathetic she is? And they constantly paint Heathcliff out to be 100% blameless in all of it, going out of their way to make it very very clear that this man LOVES consent. After Edward Cullen-ing his way into her window after Cathy breaks up with him, he flat out lays the rules of the relationship for her and makes it very clear that he doesn’t love her and never will and will marry her only to torment Catherine. And with each line he asks her if she wants him to stop, and each time she says no. Aggressive underlining that Heathcliff’s a really good guy, you guys! She wanted it!! She knew what she was getting herself into! When in the book, Isabella was completely oblivious to heathcliff’s true nature until she married him. Yes, she made a mistake.
Yes, she was naive. But again—she grew up in such a sheltered, protected environment that she saw the world with rose tinted lenses. Emily Brontë makes it very clear that her worldview is almost childlike in it’s fairy tale-ness. She believes she can “shoot a shaft of light in Heathcliff’s soul” and change his ways. But she gets over this illusion the second she marries him. She realises what a monster she is, she survives that hellish landscape of a marriage, and gets out. And the 2026 movie just kicks all that to the curb and invites the viewers to openly point at her and giggle. Makes her complicit in her own abuse and uses her as a tool to further romanticise Heathcliff.
This, is Emerald Fennell’s genius vision of “exploring the sadomasochistic elements of Wuthering Heights.” Puppy play. Turning abuse into BDSM.
The classic submissive woman and dominant man. Completely missing the actualsadomasochistic elements of the book—skimming past the weird dynamics between Cathy and Heathcliff— where she literally asks for a whip as a present when her father goes to travel, greeting Heathcliff by spitting at him when they first meet, Nelly literally saying that Cathy exceedingly liked to “act the little mistress” and “use her hands freely” and “command her companions”, Cathy constantly mocking and degrading Heathcliff and utterly disregarding his feelings for her all of which only seem to make him more obsessed with her, Cathy taking delight in the fact that she could treat Heathcliff however she wanted and he’d still do her bidding and was indifferent to Mr Earnshaw despite the constant love he showered Heathcliff with, and the excessive attachment they have to each other—Cathy’s famous “I am Heathcliff” and Heathcliff’s “I cannot live without my soul! I cannot live without my life!” solidifying the insane codependency, and Cathy’s last words to Heathcliff literally being that she hopes he suffers as much as she did and him saying that he’d “writhe in the torments of hell” long after she was gone and “at peace” because her words would eternally be branded in his memory, and him dashing his head against a tree until they’re both covered in blood when she dies.
No. Let’s completely ignore that and instead go for the relationship clearly established as abusive. And the justification she gives for this is when Heathcliff says that Isabella has “an innate admiration for brutality” rather than being disgusted by it. (Which- by the way—taking Heathcliff as a reliable source of information is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like every rape trial where the rapist says that the victim ‘wanted it’ and ‘provoked’ them.)
Does she have selective memory or something? Does she not remember because the last time she read the book was when she was 14? Because as far as I can recall, right after Heathcliff says that, Isabella tells Nelly not to believe a word he says, that he was a lying fiend, a monster, and not human. That she’d tried to escape once but she didn’t dare do it again because of what he did to her last time, and for fear of what he would if she tried again. Truly a scholar, Fennell.
3. Hindley and Mr Earnshaw
Many people have said this before me, and many will say it after me. Erasing Hindley was possibly one of the dumbest decisions Emerald made for this film. Not only did she get rid of an incredibly important and pivotal character of the plot, but she also completely took away the framework of another character by mixing him with Hindley. Turning the kind and paternal Mr Earnshaw into an abusive alcoholic and a gambler, which really cemented the whole 14-year-old-wattpad-fanfiction feel the movie’s got going on for me. Plus, it literally makes no sense for Mr Earnshaw to be abusive towards Heathcliff. Hindley hurt him because a) racism b) he saw him as a usurper and a stealer of his parents’ affections because his own father favoured Heathcliff over him.
Why would Mr Earnshaw be abusive to Heathcliff? Just because he was an alcoholic? For no good reason he decides to regularly beat the shit out of the kid he took in because he was getting the shit beaten out of him by the people he lived with earlier? And why would Mr Earnshaw make Heathcliff a servant? HE was the one who took Heathcliff in to “make a gentleman of him.” Hindley pauperised Heathcliff and kicked him out of the house because of his jealousy and hatred. Mr Earnshaw does not only not have a valid reason to do it, but he has an explicitly stated valid reason for the contrary! Plus, Hindley was such a complex and interesting character! Yes, he was a horrible person. He was racist, and callous, and cruel, and full of envy and loathing and anger. His abuse and ostracisation of Heathcliff was what moulded him to become the psychopath he grew up to be. But he also loved his wife and his son. I’m going out on a limb here, but Frances might have been one of the very very few, if not the only, person in Hindley’s life to show him love. He was alone his whole childhood. His father loved Heathcliff more than him. Cathy didn’t particularly seem to care about him either. She—his real sister—also favoured Heathcliff over him. We don’t know much about his relationship with his mother before she died. But Frances loved him. She chose him. She put him first. She joined him in his rampage of hatred against Heathcliff. And then she died. And he was alone again. But he still wanted so badly to be a good father to his son, and wanted his son to love him. But his grief over Frances drove him deeper and deeper into a spiral, made him dependent on alcohol, get into gambling, (both of which Heathcliff worsened and encouraged) until he couldn’t even take care of himself, much less a child. And the idea of Heathcliff literally buying Wuthering Heights and “allowing” him to live there, and constantly being there could not have been good for his mental health at ALL.
I’m not in any way justifying Hindley’s actions btw—he WAS an abuser and a HORRIBLE person. But like every character in the book, he was incredibly complex and layered . And the movie throws that in the garbage and goes with the wattpad route of the main character having an alcoholic parent who’s abusive without even giving an explanation for it. It’s laughably stupid if it didn’t make me so angry. They sacrifice Hindley to turn Mr Earnshaw into a 2-dimensional, almost cartoonish villain.
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