Ghosts on the moor: The lost darkness of Wuthering Heights
- Victoria Hall
- Feb 18
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Trigger warning: This article discusses themes from Wuthering Heights, including domestic abuse, coercive relationships, and sexual violence.
Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one of those novels that stubbornly resists adaptation. It is structurally unusual, morally ambiguous, and driven as much by landscape, inheritance, and generational trauma as it is by romance.
I first studied the novel for my GCSE English Literature exam in the UK, and it has remained one of the few books I return to again and again. Every two or three years I find myself rereading it, and each time something new reveals itself in Brontë’s stormy world… a new cruelty, a new tenderness, a new layer of psychological complexity.
So when a new film adaptation arrives, curiosity is inevitable.
The latest version, directed by Emerald Fennell, offers striking imagery, beautifully composed shots and a modern musical score, but ultimately it reads as a rather naïve, and at times reductive, interpretation of Brontë’s novel, minimising a vast generational tragedy into an overly-simplistic gothic romance.
Still, the film is worth watching. Just perhaps not as a faithful translation of the book.
Heathcliff: The problem of miscasting
The first challenge lies with Heathcliff himself.
In the novel, Heathcliff is described as dark, rough, unsettling - almost feral in his intensity. He is not meant to be conventionally handsome. Part of his power comes from the fact that he is socially illegible. He is neither servant nor son, neither insider nor outsider.
Casting Jacob Elordi creates an immediate tonal shift. Elordi is simply too polished, too goofy and (dare I say it) too white. He’s more brooding heart-throb than untamed outsider.
Several of the film’s more stylised shots unfortunately amplify this effect, tipping into something slightly glossy when Heathcliff should feel dangerous and unknowable.
The mystery of Heathcliff’s origins
One of the most intriguing elements of Brontë’s novel is the mystery surrounding Heathcliff’s background.
Mr. Earnshaw apparently finds him abandoned on the streets of Liverpool and brings him home to Wuthering Heights. The child cannot speak clearly, his origins are unknown, and Earnshaw immediately favours him over his own children.
Liverpool at the time was one of Britain’s major port cities and historically connected to the transatlantic slave trade. Within the novel, Heathcliff is described in ways that suggest he may have had an “owner” in Liverpool before being brought to the Heights. The language used to describe him - dark-skinned, foreign, unwanted - suggests that Heathcliff may have been enslaved, trafficked, or displaced before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home.
Another possibility sometimes discussed by scholars is that Heathcliff may even be Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, perhaps the result of a relationship with an enslaved or marginalised woman close to his business dealings in Liverpool. This would explain both Earnshaw’s strong attachment to the boy and the resentment it provokes in the rest of the family.
Brontë never confirms Heathcliff’s origins, but the ambiguity is deliberate and powerful. The film largely avoids this complexity.
The missing Earnshaw conflict
One of the most puzzling changes in the film is the removal of Catherine’s brother, Hindley Earnshaw.
In the novel, Hindley’s cruelty toward Heathcliff is central. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley reduces Heathcliff from a favoured child to something closer to a servant. This humiliation is one of the main driving forces behind Heathcliff’s later campaign of revenge.
The film replaces Hindley with a darker version of Catherine’s father. This alters the power dynamics entirely and removes an important layer of Heathcliff’s suffering, namely that his degradation comes from rivalry within the family itself.
Desire without consummation
Another subtle but important aspect of Brontë’s novel is the absence of a physical relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff.
In the book, they never actually have sex. Their connection is defined instead by overwhelming emotional intensity and obsession… almost a merging of identity. Catherine’s famous declaration, “I am Heathcliff,” suggests something closer to a spiritual unity.
Their relationship is charged with sexual tension, but it remains unresolved and forbidden.
If Heathcliff were indeed Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, as some interpretations suggest, Catherine and Heathcliff would effectively be half-siblings. Whether Brontë intended this implication or simply left it deliberately ambiguous, the uncertainty adds another layer of taboo to their relationship.
In the book, their bond is expressed through longing, rage, jealousy, and destructive devotion rather than physical intimacy.
In this latest film adaptation, there is an attempt to resolve this tension by introducing overt sexuality. While understandable from a revenue and headline-making perspective (sex sells, y’ know!), doing so changes the emotional architecture of the story.
The power and intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship lies precisely in its impossibility.
The landscape becomes a backdrop
Perhaps the greatest loss in the film is the near disappearance of Wuthering Heights itself.
In Brontë’s novel, the house and the surrounding moorlands are personified and treated like major characters. The environment is harsh, elemental, and deeply tied to the personalities of those who inhabit it.
Wuthering Heights represents untamed nature, while Thrushcross Grange symbolises civilisation, refinement, and social order.
The film shifts much of its focus toward Thrushcross Grange, leaving the Heights strangely underdeveloped considering it is the title of both the film and original text.
Rewriting key encounters
The meeting with the Linton family is also rewritten.
In the book, Catherine and Heathcliff encounter the Lintons together, and Catherine ends up being cared for at Thrushcross Grange after she is injured. Heathcliff, however, is cast out, reinforcing his lifelong experience of social exclusion.
The film alters this encounter, weakening one of the emotional foundations of Heathcliff’s resentment.
Nelly, Isabella, and shifting power dynamics
Other characters undergo similarly dramatic transformations.
Nelly Dean, who in the novel is a complex and somewhat unreliable narrator, becomes far harsher in the film, almost melodramatically cruel.
What’s more, Isabella Linton undergoes a most striking reinterpretation. In Brontë’s novel, Isabella is naïve and romantically infatuated with Heathcliff. She imagines him as a Byronic hero and marries him against everyone’s warnings, only to discover that the marriage quickly becomes a nightmare. Heathcliff openly despises her and treats her with calculated cruelty. The novel strongly implies that she is physically abused and raped within the marriage, leaving her powerless and trapped in a relationship she cannot easily escape.
The film dramatically alters this dynamic. Instead, Isabella appears to actively invite Heathcliff’s degradation, almost enjoying being treated like a dog or a slave. In this interpretation, she seems to hold a strange form of control within the relationship that is not present in the book.
Catherine’s choice: Nature vs culture
One of the central philosophical moments in Wuthering Heights is Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar Linton.
Her choice is not simply about love. It represents a collision between nature and culture… between the wild bond she shares with Heathcliff and the social security Edgar represents.
Catherine understands that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her socially.
Yet she also knows that her connection to him runs deeper than conventional love.
Her decision ultimately sets the tragic machinery of the novel into motion.
The film reduces the weight of this conflict, flattening (although not completely eradicating) one of Brontë’s most devastating themes.
The disappearance of the second generation
Another significant omission is the second generation of characters.
In the novel, Catherine dies in childbirth but gives birth to a daughter, Cathy. Heathcliff later entangles Cathy with his own sickly son, Linton, as part of his revenge plot.
Eventually Cathy forms a relationship with Hareton Earnshaw (Hindley’s son) who has been reduced by Heathcliff to the status of an uneducated servant. Their relationship quietly restores the moral balance of the story. Together, they reclaim both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
This generational arc is one of the novel’s most important structural elements, yet it is entirely absent from the film.
Revenge, inheritance, and the long game
Brontë’s novel is not simply about doomed love. It is also about property, inheritance, and the slow machinery of revenge.
Heathcliff methodically manipulates inheritance law to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. His vengeance unfolds over decades and across generations.
The film makes far less of this strategic cruelty, shifting the story away from Brontë’s multilayered darker social commentary.
Death and the supernatural
The film’s ending also diverges from the novel in meaningful ways.
In the book, Heathcliff eventually dies and is found in Catherine’s old room. Catherine, Edgar, and Heathcliff are then buried beside one another… an eerie final arrangement.
The novel also contains strong supernatural undertones. Heathcliff famously opens Catherine’s grave, desperate to reunite with her even in death.
Throughout the story there are suggestions that Catherine’s spirit continues to haunt the moors... and perhaps Heathcliff himself.
These ghostly ambiguities are completely absent from the film.
A misreading, but still worth watching
To be fair to the director, every adaptation involves interpretation and not every angle of a story can be squeezed into a two hour film.
One senses that this version offers a sincere, perhaps slightly youthful reading of the novel, focusing heavily on the romantic tragedy at its centre.
However, that interpretation drifts away from Brontë’s larger themes of class, inheritance, generational revenge, colonial anxieties, and the feral power of place.
In that sense, the film feels less like a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights and more like a visually striking meditation inspired by it.
The cinematography and imagery is often painterly, and the film’s score and soundtrack add a contemporary look and feel that will undoubtedly appeal to modern audiences.
As its own piece of gothic filmmaking, it remains engaging.
Just don’t mistake it for Emily Brontë’s original storm.
Watch the Wuthering Heights (2026) trailer here:
x Victoria
About Victoria Hall
Victoria Hall is an English-born, Australian-based writer, artist and illustrator. As an avid reader of gothic novels, she draws inspiration from atmospheric storytelling, romance and the darker corners of imagination.
For more updates on Victoria’s creative projects, follow her on Instagram or check out her bio.
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