Is it hot in here, or is the image of Jacob Elordi’s one-armed corset lift of Margot Robbie in the newest Wuthering Heights adaptation still burned into my brain?
Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m a big fan of the original source material, Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights—which, if you’ve never read or listened to it, is a lot weirder, darker, and more confusing than you might think. I also adored Emerald Fennell’s new movie, “Wuthering Heights,” which intentionally uses quotation marks in the title to signal that the film is more personal interpretation than strict adaptation.
Whether you’ve yet to read or listen to the novel, or need a refresher on its events, I’m here to outline the major differences between Wuthering Heights the book and the 2026 film. For background, I have read the novel and listened to two versions on Audible: the acclaimed narration by Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt and a newer recording from The White Lotus’s Aimee Lou Wood, whose performance has stolen my heart like a foundling child from Liverpool arriving suddenly on my doorstep. Finally, despite how emotionally devastated the film left me, I’ve now seen it twice—once on opening night with my girlfriends, and again on Valentine’s Day with my husband. Apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment, like some characters in the film!
With that, let’s get into the major differences between Emerald Fennell’s new movie and Emily Brontë’s towering classic of gothic literature.
🚨🚨 Warning: Major spoilers ahead! 🚨🚨
1. Heathcliff and Cathy aren’t what you pictured—but their chemistry is.
The casting of white actor Jacob Elordi for the role of Heathcliff was an early controversy for the film. Heathcliff’s skin color is a key plot point in the novel, and though his ethnicity is left ambiguous, he’s described in the book as “a dark-skinned gipsy,” hinting he could be Romani, as well as “a little Lascar,” referring to sailors of South Asian, Arab, or Somali descent. Housekeeper Nelly Dean speculates that Heathcliff could be the child of the “Emperor of China” and “an Indian queen.” Ultimately, it’s not just Heathcliff’s class status that makes him an unsuitable choice for Cathy, but his race—and in 2026, this feels like a major theme to leave unexplored by a contemporary film.
Also, both Heathcliff and Cathy are portrayed as older than they are at key points in the novel: In the book, Cathy dies in her late teens, having just given birth to her daughter Catherine; in the movie she’s in her late 20s and dies from infection after a miscarriage from the same pregnancy.
The film’s blond Cathy, played by Elordi’s fellow Australian superstar Margot Robbie, is another departure from the novel, which clearly describes her as a brunette. However, Robbie exudes the regal good looks the novel attributes to Cathy (who’s described as “haughty” and “imperious” in the book), and the chemistry between Elordi and Robbie absolutely sizzles on screen. If the emotional truth of Wuthering Heights hinges at least in part on the burning passion of Cathy and Heathcliff, the film’s leads clearly understood the assignment.
2. The book’s whole second half and several major characters are missing from the movie.
A fascinating, and challenging to adapt, aspect of the novel is its exploration of how the doomed love of Heathcliff and Cathy continues to reverberate through their children, Linton and Catherine, creating a portrait of generational trauma that was ahead of its time. Just like the racial themes in the original novel, this feels like a bit of a missed opportunity since plots exploring generational trauma are timelier than ever.
And yet, most cinematic adaptations of Wuthering Heights also choose to cut the later storyline for clarity and time, especially since the central love story is so intensely compelling. More unusual is the 2026 film’s decision to eliminate the character of Hindley Earnshaw, Cathy’s older brother, whose brutal treatment of Heathcliff and descent into alcoholism is transferred to Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, in the film. This gives film Cathy some daddy issues while emphasizing the romantic bravery of Heathcliff as her protector from a full-grown and terrifying abuser, whose lashings leave Heathcliff with a physical manifestation of the cruelty and subjugation he experiences at Wuthering Heights.
Also, because Cathy dies after miscarrying in the film, there is no younger Catherine; nor is there Hindley and Frances’s son, Hareton, because neither Hindley nor Frances exist in the world of the film. In the film, Isabella and Heathcliff never have a child, so their son in the book, Linton, is also absent.
3. The movie is a lot steamier than the novel…
In the book, the romance between Cathy and Heathcliff is mostly confined to yearning and pining. There is a chaste kiss, some heaving breasts and locked embraces, and dramatic declarations on the order of “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” It is NOTHING like the capital S spicy scenes of the movie, which include the aforementioned corset hoist, a kinky scene between servants Joseph and Zillah (who are not romantically paired in the novel), and a torrid sequence of consummating scenes unleashed after Heathcliff says those fatal words to Cathy in the rain: “So kiss me again, and let us both be damned.”
Another divergence is Heathcliff’s treatment of Isabella—who is presented in the movie as Edgar Linton’s “ward” rather than his sister. In the book, Heathcliff treats the naively romantic Isabella with violence and sadism, beating her and killing her dog (a scene mercifully missing from the film). The movie does show Heathcliff beating Isabella, but leans more on BDSM scenes to show us Heathcliff’s depravity—as well as Isabella’s participation and wary consent to his treatment.
4. But the novel is spookier than the movie.
Where the film gives us sex, Brontë gives us spooky, weird, and dark. Absent from the film are some of the book’s most memorably disturbing moments of animal abuse, possible necrophilia, and ghosts. However, if you watch carefully, the film calls back to these moments from the book. Instead of the classic scene where Cathy’s ghost appears at the window of Lockwood, who is not even in the movie, there’s a scene where Cathy, curious about her new neighbors at Thrushcross Grange, peeks over their wall to spy on Isabella and Edgar in the garden. Isabella catches a glimpse of Cathy and catches a fright, screaming hilariously that it’s a horrible ghost, recalling how in the book, Lockwood’s panicked cries at seeing Cathy at the window rouse Heathcliff to run to his room.
The book contains a shocking reference to animal abuse when Heathcliff hangs Isabella Linton’s dog from a chair back, which might have been revenge for a dog attack Cathy suffers earlier in the novel, another sequence missing from the movie. Instead, the film shows a more sanctioned scene of animal violence when a pig is gutted by the servants outside, and Heathcliff stops Cathy from passing by too quickly, her skirt becoming stained with blood—a warning of the violence that lurks at the edges of their passion.
Finally, one of the novel’s most shocking scenes is in chapter 29, when Heathcliff persuades a sexton to open Cathy’s grave while he is burying her husband, Edgar Linton. Heathcliff describes lifting the coffin lid to gaze on her face, which he finds well preserved, and then removing the wood from one side so that when he dies he can lie right beside her for eternity. He also tells Nelly that the night of Cathy’s own burial, he had tried in a frenzied passion to dig her up, but ultimately was consoled when he felt her presence and abandoned his efforts.
The film steers clear of the cemetery, but ends with a heartbreaking scene between Heathcliff and his dead love that evokes these moments from the book. Arriving too late at Cathy’s deathbed, Heathcliff removes the covers to reveal her waxy, ashen face. Just as he removed the coffin lid in the book and declared that she still looked like herself, in the film he removes the covers and thinks she looks well enough to start frantically calling for a doctor. Eventually, reality sets in and he delivers some of the novel’s most immortal lines: “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” In the book, he says this outside Wuthering Heights after Cathy’s death, to Nelly, but here, on the deathbed of his love, Brontë’s words make for an emotionally devastating—if sudden—ending.
5. Nelly is more of a straight-up villain in the movie.
In the book, housekeeper Nelly Dean is the quintessential unreliable narrator. You’re never quite sure what her motivations are and how much of her story is true, especially as her account of events is filtered through Mr. Lockwood, whose character is completely absent from the film.
The movie leverages the literary mystery around Nelly to present a version of the character that is more unambiguously antagonistic. In a pivotal scene in which Heathcliff eavesdrops on Cathy and Nelly talking after Cathy has accepted Edgar Linton’s marriage proposal, Nelly clocks Heathcliff’s presence earlier than in the book, and encourages Cathy to say it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff, then never tells Cathy that she saw him there, even after Heathcliff’s departure stretches into months and years. In the book, Nelly does suggest to Cathy that Heathcliff might have been at the door; in the movie, Heathcliff actually notices that Nelly has seen him eavesdropping and tells Cathy about it later, leading Cathy to accuse Nelly of treason and threaten to fire her (which Edgar refuses to do).
The movie gives Nelly more of a backstory and motivation for her questionable behavior, which includes burning Heathcliff’s letters and keeping Edgar away from Cathy throughout her miscarriage and subsequent illness. In the film, Nelly and Cathy were childhood playmates, inseparable until Heathcliff’s arrival claimed Cathy’s attention for good. The daughter of a lord in the movie, Nelly is wonderfully played by Vietnamese American actress Hong Chau. Perhaps her ethnicity is part of why she is treated as a servant by the Earnshaws, though the movie does not delve into this. Though her actions have tragic consequences, there is a certain rationale in Nelly wanting to secure a more comfortable life at Thrushcross Grange by Cathy marrying Edgar rather than Heathcliff.
6. The movie is easier to enjoy than the novel.
There, I said it! With its tight focus on the novel’s first half and central love story, the film eliminates some of the most challenging parts of the book, though the question of Heathcliff’s race and themes of generational trauma themes are ripe for exploration today. Instead, we get a visual feast of romantic scenes, oozing textures, and rugged nature complemented by eye-popping and sometimes anachronistic fashion and interiors (and the hair, oh the hair!). The character of Isabella in particular is more interesting in the film, played by the scene-stealing Alison Oliver. And you don’t need to sort out the repetitively named second generation nor Joseph’s impenetrable 19th-century Yorkshire dialect, a rite of passage for everyone who braves the book (for that, take my advice and let Aimee Lou Wood’s Joseph wash over you like so much rain on the misty moors).
With the culture heavy in its romance era (Heated Rivalry, anyone?), the new “Wuthering Heights” certainly speaks to our current moment. And while this is one case where your enjoyment of the film might be heightened by going in cold, listening to Wuthering Heights afterwards will absolutely enhance your appreciation of the film.
Either way, the wild and windswept toxic romance of Wuthering Heights lives on for a new generation. Long may it haunt us, or as Heathcliff might say, be with us always—take any form—drive us mad!
