Content warning: Mentions of rape and suicide.
It’s no secret that I am a full-time Emerald Fennell hater. I saw Saltburn (2021) and walked out of the theatre in a state of shock at how bad it was. By now, I’m sure you’ve seen the trailer for her upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation, starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, set to the sweet sounds of Charli XCX echoing through late 18th-century Yorkshire. I even reread Wuthering Heights to see if I could gain any insight into Fennell’s vision here, and to be honest, I’m more baffled than ever as to how she is going to make this work.
Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, making it Emily Brontë’s only novel. It’s a sprawling story, following two main families through the turn-of-the-century Yorkshire moors with a focus on the intense romance between Heathcliff and Cathy.
The character of Heathcliff is the first issue with Fennell’s adaptation. It is integral to Heathcliff’s character that he is a person of colour, likely mixed. His racial identity is constantly used as a mark against him, with Nelly accusing him of having a “poor spirit” that is linked to his “two lines between his eyes; and those thick brows… and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies.”
In addition, his racial characteristics are used to degrade and subjugate him throughout the book, as well as to doubt his humanity, with Catherine calling him an “unreclaimed creature” and a letter from Isabella asking, “[i]s Mr Heathcliff a man? […] If not, is he a devil?”
Needless to say, casting Jacob Elordi as a man whose non-white racial identity is integral to his character, and the way all other characters perceive him, is a huge mistake. As Mathilda Hines writes, the casting of Elordi is a symptom of Hollywood’s love for the same faces, even at the expense of the source material. Andrea Arnold, in her 2011 adaptation, managed to get this right by casting James Howson as Heathcliff. Casting Elordi means that Fennell is actively disavowing the racial politics of the novel, in favour of casting a man who is arguably most known for being in the Kissing Booth films.
That’s not even to mention the intricacies of English class politics running through the novel, which brings me to my next point. Fennell is allergic to any kind of nuanced discussion of social issues in her works. Her directorial debut Promising Young Woman (2020) follows Carey Mulligan’s character Cassie as she enacts revenge on those who were complicit in the rape and suicide of her friend Nina.
My main issue with the film is that there actually isn’t any revenge – she tells people that rape is bad, and upon finding her friend’s rapist, proceeds to be killed off before the police arrive to fix everything. It is a deeply empty film, filled with a subpar script and candy-coloured images that water down anything the film was trying to say. The film is superficial and – I would argue – downright offensive to victims of sexual assault. It is evil and reckless in the way it paints its subject matter with harmful, broad strokes that say absolutely nothing at all.
Consequently, I don’t trust Fennell’s handling of difficult and important subjects. Promising Young Woman is a much smaller-scale narrative, and if she is unable to tackle tricky topics in that, then I doubt her ability to do it on a bigger scale.
Saltburn brought another issue with Fennell’s films to the forefront – her failure to understand the meaning between the images on the screen and what they actually show. For example, I’m sure we’ve all seen (or heard about) the infamous scene where Barry Keoghan’s Oliver has sex with the grave of Elordi’s Felix.
What I think Fennell wanted to convey here is the intensity of Oliver’s strange sexual fascination with Felix, and the lengths he would go to to enact this even after Felix’s death. However, an important piece of the film is the revelation that Oliver is not working-class as he first presents himself, but is secretly middle-class! The horror! The film then reveals how Oliver has been secretly a nefarious grifter all along, with the sole goal of gaining ownership of Saltburn House.
With this class interloper narrative in mind, what Fennell is actually showing in the grave scene is not a man driven mad by desire but instead a grifter displaying the lengths he would go to be seen on the same level as someone as rich as Felix. Fennell is not unlike Zack Snyder in this regard, a man skilled at putting a cool image on screen but totally incapable of perceiving what said cool image is actually saying.
Fennell does the same thing with shocking scenes of depravity and Instagram-ready cinematography that all carry the same message: poor people are evil, and they are clamouring to be rich and cool like us. Emerald Fennell is incapable of matching up her overly stylised imagery with actual pertinent meaning, and when she does so, it’s genuinely regressive.
To return to Wuthering Heights, there are rumours that Fennell might not be directly adapting the novel, instead envisioning Robbie’s character as an upper-class woman reading the novel and imagining herself as Cathy. This would explain the bizarre sexual imagery that takes up the vast majority of the trailer. I am more open to her doing something strange with the material than I am to a direct adaptation, as I do not think she will be able to do justice to a direct adaptation. I still doubt I will like it, as I think turning a revered classic into TikTok-style dark romance is cheap and sinister.
I’m not necessarily against somewhat anachronistic adaptations. Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet has a lot of fun with costuming and setting, but retains its reverence for the material through its dialogue. Emerald Fennell will not be able to do justice to the source material, and I doubt she cares enough to do so. Maybe the film will surprise me, but her track record with me is not exactly stellar. Emily Brontë will be rolling in her grave.
If you’re struggling with the subjects discussed in this article, please reach out.
You can contact the Greater Manchester Rape Crisis helpline on 01612734500.
Additionally, there is a Manchester Survivor Supporter Pack here. If you wish to report to the University or access support mechanisms, you can do so here.
If you need mental health support, you can call Samaritans on 116 123, or text ‘SHOUT’ to 85258 for support.
