The novel “Wuthering Heights” changed the landscape of romance novels as we know it. Cathy is a young woman subject to patriarchal norms, and Heathcliff is a Romani outsider — there is a dangerous allure to their entrapment. From the very first scene, Emily Brontë frames them as othered, a status that binds and destroys them. 

Emerald Fennell, the director of “Saltburn” and “Promising Young Woman,” has taken on an adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” as her newest project. Fennell’s divisive choice to cast Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, two of the most conventional actors working today, in a sex-focused spin is a disservice to the novel’s messaging.

On my first watch of the trailer, I was torn. The cinematography was interesting (if a little trite), and on its own, it looked like a movie I’d be excited to see. But it wasn’t “Wuthering Heights.”  While die-hard fans often nitpick casting that strays from the original descriptions, the casting of Robbie and Elordi is more than a surface-level complaint. 

Heathcliff’s status as a racial outsider is essential to Brontë’s critique of the destructive nature of hierarchies. Casting Elordi, a conventionally attractive white man, sanitizes the tension and strips away the race-related impact of the original text. Ultimately, we have to ask: What story is Fennell trying to tell with these actors? It’s definitely not Heathcliff and Cathy’s. It’s a kinky fanfiction, reimagined through the lens of desire and shock value.

The trailer heavily relies on aesthetics and sexual tension. Many viewers agree that Fennell “Saltburnified” the novel, recognizing aspects of the hypersexual and surprising movie from 2023. “Wuthering Heights” seemed sexy, shocking, and very divorced from the book’s original tone. The trailer leaned into sexuality, despite it being a less prominent theme in Brontë’s text than the overarching constructs that divide the characters. Lately, sexuality in film seems to be less about narrative development and more about attracting an audience. Explicit movies aren’t bad. I thought “Saltburn” was fine. However, “Wuthering Heights” is a genre-defining Gothic novel, not erotica. 

Classics are already well known, so they have a built-in audience that doesn’t need to be brought in by big names, which makes them great opportunities to showcase emerging talent. Lately, Hollywood has received criticism for recycling the same five actors across genres, and Elordi and Robbie fit right into that category. Elordi is an undeniably talented actor, but his position as a white actor limits his ability to represent Heathcliff in all of his nuance. With steeply declining theatre attendance, directors seem more reliant on gimmicks like unnecessary sex scenes and headlining big names. However, these are wastes of resources… The star is already there: Emily Brontë.

Brontë included characters and dynamics that challenged Victorian norms and were typically silenced, focusing on a young woman and a non-white social outcast. The book is not a love story; it is a testament to some of the unheard voices of her time. Stripping away the layers of social commentary is disrespectful to her original message and the people it represented. 

Casting director Kharmel Cochrane responded to these criticisms by saying, “But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book.” On some level, this is true. Adaptations are inherently flexible. Some of my favorites rely on the director’s creative interpretation rather than strict fidelity to the text. Shakespeare adaptations like “She’s All That” completely reimagine the original plots, using a modern setting to highlight continuous themes. These versions succeed because they superimpose a new context onto the universe of a text without attempting to be a replica. But when an adaptation keeps the historical setting but erases the complexities that drive the text, it feels less like adapting and more like flattening.

You might argue that Fennell’s not doing anything malicious; she’s simply taking an old story and putting a spin on it. Besides, it’s “just a book.” But it’s not. Books like these are made for the purpose of illustrating someone else’s lived experience that others can’t understand, perspectives that are still defining our conflicts today. 

For college students who are engaging in critical thinking on the past and the present, these adaptations aren’t neutral. They are an attack on how we view our history, watering down the beauty of literature. We need to think analytically about how the media portrays stories to us and challenge those stories if they have a harmful impact.