Stripped of agency … Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Photograph: Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved/PA
When a literary classic built on trauma and oppression is reimagined as stylised erotic spectacle, alarm bells should ring. That’s exactly what’s happening with Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Critics argue that her portrayal of Isabella Linton doesn’t just reinterpret the source material—it distorts it in a way that trivialises domestic abuse. In an era shaped by debates around the so-called “rough sex defence,” this creative choice feels less like artistic liberty and more like cultural carelessness.
At its core, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a gothic exploration of obsession, class, race, and generational trauma. Isabella Linton is not written as a willing participant in her own degradation. She is manipulated, abused, and ultimately forced to flee her husband, Heathcliff, to survive. Her escape is not romantic—it’s an act of courage. Yet in Fennell’s version, Isabella’s suffering is reframed through a sexualized lens, presenting her as a consenting partner in humiliation. That shift matters. It transforms a story about coercive control into something dangerously close to fantasy. For audiences unfamiliar with the novel, this adaptation risks rewriting cultural memory—turning victimhood into voyeurism.
Supporters of the film suggest that depicting Isabella as consenting gives her agency. But agency without context is illusion. True consent requires equality, safety, and freedom from manipulation—none of which define Isabella’s marriage to Heathcliff. By aestheticizing bondage and presenting degradation as mutual exploration, the adaptation blurs the line between consensual kink and domestic violence. In doing so, it echoes arguments historically used in courtrooms where perpetrators claim injuries were the result of “rough sex.” Legal reforms in the UK have sought to restrict that defence precisely because it shifts blame onto victims. When art mirrors that narrative without critical framing, it doesn’t challenge culture—it reinforces harmful myths.
The controversy deepens when considering broader criticism of the adaptation, including alleged whitewashing of Heathcliff and dilution of the novel’s class and racial tensions. Stripping away these structural themes reduces Wuthering Heights to a moody romance rather than a scathing indictment of social hierarchy and emotional brutality. Heathcliff is not meant to be “sexy.” He is a product of rejection and rage. Softening his cruelty or eroticising his abuse doesn’t modernise the novel—it sanitises its warning.
For survivors of domestic abuse, representation is not an abstract debate. It shapes how society understands power, blame, and survival. When Isabella is reframed as a participant in her own suffering, the emotional truth of Brontë’s work is compromised. Adaptations inevitably interpret, but they also carry responsibility. In a digital age where many viewers experience classics first through film, creative liberties can redefine meaning for an entire generation.
Key Insight:
When adaptations turn abuse into aesthetic spectacle, they risk normalizing the very violence the original work sought to expose.
The debate around Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is bigger than one film. It raises urgent questions about artistic freedom, cultural accountability, and how we portray consent in mainstream storytelling. Gothic tragedy should disturb us—not seduce us into misunderstanding it. As audiences, critics, and creators, we must ask: Are we honoring the emotional truth of classic literature or reshaping it to fit modern appetites for shock and spectacle?
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