EMERALD FENNELL’S REIMAGINING OF “WUTHERING HEIGHTS” 

Written by Sakshi Patil

Edited by Gabriel Mealor-Pritchard

Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is stirring the same kind of controversy that once shadowed Brontë’s novel, unsettling Victorian readers by refusing moral neatness. Audiences are divided over bold casting and fever-dream costumes.  

 

So, how much does historical accuracy matter in period dress? 

 

Inaccuracy from ignorant research comes across as careless to the audience. But when distortion is deliberate, costume becomes the narrative and a prominent theme of the film. It shifts from replication to interpretation.  

Jacqueline Durran aimed for that effect. Her costuming for this film is commendable for its wide range of references, spanning from Elizabethan through to Georgian and Victorian eras. Purposely not sticking to one period, to ensure that the anarchism theme fully thrives throughout the film.  

​

Among the 50 extravagant costumes made for this movie, there were a few notable ones. Adult Cathy is introduced to us in a German milkmaid dress, blending period silhouettes with traces of Old Hollywood drama, creating a layered visual language that makes a clear stance that this is not a typical replication of the novel. The silhouette of the milkmaid dress is traditionally associated with pastoral and folkloric themes. Yet it is ironic, as Cathy in the book is not all that. Perhaps, Durran’s costume choices were a deliberate act of rebellion rather than an attempt to reconstruct a historically accurate setting.   

The wedding dress is perhaps the clearest example of this time-bending approach. It fuses Victorian structure with 1950s couture: cinched waists, softened volume, a silhouette that feels both archival and mid-century cinematic. Although not historically precise, white wedding gowns weren’t widespread until after the period Brontë wrote about. Brides usually wore their best dress, often in colour. 

 

The dress is a combination of eras into a single, striking costume. The result is a dreamscape aesthetic collision that feels intentional rather than careless. The Telegraph said, "Cathy and Heathcliff's passions vibrate through their dress, their surroundings, and everything else within reach.” So by refusing to sit neatly within one timeline, the costume mirrors the anarchic tone Fennell seeks to evoke. 

Not all critics were so flattering. Keven Maher from The Times described Robbie as a "Brontë Barbie" and said that Fennell has "doomed Elordi with a fatally shallow characterisation, recasting Heathcliff as pouty man-candy with a shaky Yorkshire accent." 

 

 

Historical accuracy can be a form of respect. For stories rooted in specific cultural or political realities, precision matters. Details can preserve histories that might otherwise be flattened or forgotten. Fennell’s whitewashed casting of Heathcliff, whom Brontë repeatedly describes in racialised terms as dark-skinned and socially othered, alters more than surface appearance. It risks diluting the novel’s engagement with racial ambiguity and class exclusion. Heathcliff’s outsider status is foundational to the sadomasochistic dynamics of power abuse and social hierarchy that drive the story. To neutralise that dimension, casting Elordi reshapes the very structures of race, class and gender oppression that animate it. 

And it doesn't end there. The controversy continued at the feature's Los Angeles premiere, Margot Robbie wore a historic necklace commissioned by India’s Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, famously known as the “Taj Mahal” necklace. Yet when asked about the piece, the conversation centred on its association with Elizabeth Taylor, skimming past its layered imperial and colonial history. A jewel with centuries of political and cultural meaning was reframed through Hollywood provenance. 

 

Though the fantastical and dream-like costumes have sparked debate, the real critique lies with the casting and neglect of important social themes in the novel, which still resonate today.