Wuthering Heights: Which is the right ending?

Why film adaptations that end Wuthering Heights with Catherine’s death, including Emerald Fennell’s version with Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, miss the point of Emily Brontë’s novel

Despite the quotation marks in the title, signifying a different take, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead, follows the time‑honoured template laid down in William Wyler’s 1939 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel.

The film, with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, Merle Oberon as Catherine and David Niven as Edgar Linton, ends with her death, keeping the focus on the love between the two. The Hollywoodisation of the novel, by concentrating on 16 of the novel’s 34 chapters, ensures Heathcliff’s Byronic‑hero status.

With Catherine’s death, the character of Heathcliff loses his counterbalance and ends up being pointlessly vengeful, banging about gloomy corridors making everyone’s life miserable. Filmmakers recognised that and decided to defang the anti‑Romantic novel by ending it with Catherine’s death and made it a story of undying, tragic love instead of a destructive car wreck.

Brontë’s novel, incidentally the only one she wrote, tells the story of a foundling of indeterminate race who is adopted by the Earnshaws, a wealthy family in Yorkshire. In Wuthering Heights, the Earnshaws’ home, Heathcliff finds love, respect and also unfortunately abuse.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Jacob Elordi in a scene from "Wuthering Heights." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP) | Photo Credit: AP

He forms a relationship with the daughter of the house, Catherine, and when she marries Edgar Linton, a rich neighbour, Heathcliff sets off on a path of revenge.