A movie that takes liberties with 'Wuthering Heights'? Scholars are OK with that

Emerald Fennell’s new “Wuthering Heights” sparked a familiar fight about book adaptations, but some Brontë experts say it still works

NEW YORK -- If you're looking for someone to debate the new “Wuthering Heights” movie with, you might want to start with Lucasta Miller. She's a British author, editor and critic who has published an acclaimed study of the Brontë sisters and wrote the preface for the Penguin Classics edition of “Wuthering Heights.”

When she had the chance to see Emerald Fennell's adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel last week, she was well aware of the liberties taken by the director, but was otherwise unbothered.

“It would be meaningless to criticize it for that, just as it would be to criticize a grand opera that plays fast and loose with the plot,” Miller says. “I wasn't asking for a faithful adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ but whether it works on its own terms. And my sense is that it does.”

Fennell's “Wuthering Heights” was the box office leader last weekend, bringing in more than $34 million in North America alone, despite mostly negative reviews that found the movie both overdone and unsatisfying. Even before its release, Brontë obsessives questioned some of Fennell's choices: casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff instead of a dark-skinned actor closer to how Brontë described the character; making explicit the sexual attraction between Heathcliff and Cathy that is suppressed in the book; having the famously dark-haired Cathy, her coloring a literary signpost for danger and allure, played by the blond Margot Robbie.

“All adaptations choices in terms of casting that don’t always fit character or character descriptions — and this film has certainly been in the spotlight for that reason,” says Brontë scholar Claire O'Callaghan, a senior lecturer at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. “In terms of Cathy, I was skeptical initially, but having seen the film, it is a good performance, and Margot Robbie really brings out Cathy’s spoiled and selfish nature in ways that other adaptations have paid less attention to.”