Wuthering Heights Was Not a Swoony Romance. Then Hollywood Got Involved

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Sam Hirst has noticed a pattern when teaching Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: students who dislike the novel often begin with the expectation that it’s primarily a romance.

Hirst, a lecturer in English literature at the University of Liverpool who also teaches at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, explains that people often begin reading these stories expecting a love story. However, they quickly realize the narratives depict something much darker – abusive relationships and terrifying situations.

Critics during the Victorian era generally agreed that Wuthering Heights was shocking and full of violence. The very first film adaptation, a silent movie from 1920 that’s now lost, even promoted itself as a tale of intense hatred. This makes it interesting that many people today read it as a love story.

According to Hirst, the 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, significantly altered how the novel is interpreted. The film omitted the second half of the story, softened the violent actions of Heathcliff, and emphasized the romantic relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy.

As a huge fan of Wuthering Heights, I’ve seen quite a few movie versions over the years! There was a Mexican film called Abismos de Pasión back in 1954, a Bollywood musical – Dil Diya Dard Liya – in ’66, and a British adaptation with Timothy Dalton in 1970. More recently, there was a French film, Hurlevent, in ’85, and Andrea Arnold’s take on the story in 2011. It’s interesting because, like the classic 1939 movie, all of these adaptations focus on the intense, but ultimately damaging, love between Cathy and Heathcliff. They all seem to stop there, though, leaving out the part of the book where Heathcliff really lets his darker side take over.

Following a long-standing practice, the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming 2026 film, featuring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, proclaims the source material “the greatest love story of all time.” The director has explained that the book is such an impressive work that she prioritized conveying the emotions it evoked, rather than strictly following every plot point. Fittingly, the movie will be released over Valentine’s Day weekend, and advance costume screenings across the U.S. are already completely sold out.

Even giving filmmakers some artistic freedom, critics are right to point out that cutting so much of the book and making Heathcliff less intense means the film misses many of the novel’s important ideas. Here’s a look at the plot points and themes from the book that weren’t included in the movie.

Wuthering Heights is about cycles of abuse

Wuthering Heights is a family story that unfolds over several generations, from 1771 to 1802. While the passionate relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy is central to the plot, Cathy tragically dies young, around the age of eighteen, leaving Heathcliff consumed by a desire for revenge. For the remainder of the novel, he relentlessly torments those around him – including his own son and the children of those who wronged him – as he carries out his plan.

Movie versions, such as the famous 1939 film, frequently omit these later characters. However, leaving them out means “you lose the feeling that violence keeps repeating itself,” explains Murray Tremellen, a curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

When Heathcliff was a child, Cathy’s brother, Hindley, relentlessly bullied and physically abused him, making him work as a stablehand. Years later, after Heathcliff unexpectedly became wealthy, he sought revenge on Hindley by taking control of Wuthering Heights and forcing Hindley’s son, Hareton, into a life of servitude within the estate Hareton should have inherited.

As a critic, I found that Cathy’s choice to marry the wealthy Edgar Linton, rather than the passionate Heathcliff, really set the stage for a lot of the drama to come. It absolutely fueled Heathcliff’s rage, and sadly, he took it out on those around him. He even manipulated Edgar’s sister, Isabella, into marriage, feigning affection only to become incredibly cruel. The abuse started immediately – a truly disturbing scene involving her dog foreshadowed her imprisonment at Wuthering Heights. Isabella eventually fled while pregnant, attempting to raise their son, Linton, on her own, but after her death, Heathcliff callously brought the sickly boy back to continue his cycle of revenge, subjecting Linton to the same mistreatment. It’s a deeply unsettling and frankly, heartbreaking series of events.

This brings us to Cathy’s daughter, who shares the same name. As a teenager, Heathcliff abducts her and compels her to marry her cousin, Linton, while also cruelly keeping her away from her father as he’s dying. This scheme ultimately allows Heathcliff to inherit Edgar’s property after both Edgar and Linton pass away.

Wuthering Heights isn’t really a love story

Heathcliff’s terrible deeds make us wonder if what he felt for the late Cathy was truly love.

As a lifelong movie fan, it really strikes me how often we see characters get away with truly awful things in the name of love. Take this example – a character kidnaps the woman he supposedly cares for and forces her into marriage! As Claire O’Callaghan, an English lecturer at Loughborough University, points out, it’s not just that she rejected him; it’s the choices he makes – the actively harmful things he does – that are so disturbing.

The famous 1939 film version of Wuthering Heights leaves out Heathcliff’s interactions with the children entirely, simply because the children aren’t shown at all. The movie jumps ahead from Cathy’s death to Heathcliff’s death years later, ending with a scene of Cathy and Heathcliff’s ghosts peacefully walking on the moors. Other adaptations made in 1954, 1970, and 2011 only feature Hareton (known as “Jorge” in the Mexican version) as a young boy and don’t show Heathcliff or Cathy’s other children.

By removing the second generation of characters and focusing on how terribly Heathcliff treats them, we realize he’s not targeting innocent people, explains Hirst. It becomes impossible to see the story as a romance if you accurately depict his actions, because his ‘love’ is actually a deeply damaging and frightening experience.

Initial reports about Emerald Fennell’s 2026 film adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ highlight several changes from the original novel. These include making Cathy a 35-year-old woman (she dies much younger in the book), casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff—a character whose ethnicity is intentionally unclear in the novel—and using costumes and settings that don’t accurately reflect the time period.

The new movie leaves out important parts of the story, specifically what happens to the children of Cathy and Heathcliff after Cathy dies. It even changes some established details – in this version, Cathy’s brother is already dead when Heathcliff arrives, and she names him after her deceased brother. The film also completely omits the story of Heathcliff and Cathy’s children.

That all tracks. It’s difficult to market a movie as a Valentine’s Day film if the main romantic interest kidnaps the leading lady’s child.

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2026-02-13 15:06