The conversation around Wuthering Heights is focusing on all the wrong things. Yes it is inaccurate, but accuracy never seems to be Emerald Fennell’s goal. She seems more concerned with what feels sensational over what feels true. I was first introduced to her directorial style via Saltburn in 2023, a splashier yet less compelling version of The Talented Mr. Ripley that left me wondering why something that seemed so geared toward my taste on paper was so ineffectual in practice. By all accounts I should like Emerald Fennell. We’re interested in the same things. We both like themes of vengeance and when Jacob Elordi wears a little hoop earring. Where she loses me though is her ability to pull those things together into a cohesive story.

While I have not read Wuthering Heights I knew this was the sort of book-to-movie adaptation where that didn’t really matter. I wasn’t going for substance anyway I was going for spectacle. The spectacle ended up being a touch less titillating than I had anticipated. For a movie that opens with a hanged man getting an erection I have to say I was a little bit bored. The chemistry between Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie leaves something to be desired, though they each gave a decent performance in their own right. I say this knowing, of course, the controversy around their casting. Elordi as Heathcliff betrays the original character’s presumed racial identity, and Robbie is far from the adolescence of Brontë’s teenage heroine.

I do believe though that we should abandon all preconceived notions when discussing this adaptation. Staying true to the source material is clearly not what Fennell is going for, and so that is not what we should be focusing on. What we should be focusing on is Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton.

When we first meet Isabella Linton she is absolutely decked out in ribbons, fervently retelling the climax of Romeo and Juliet to a polite yet uninterested Edgar Linton1. Catherine Earnshaw is curious about the wealthy bachelor who moved in next door, and after weeks with no introduction she finally takes it upon herself to peek over the garden wall.

Catherine lives with her father, a drunk who has gambled away the family money. They share the residence with an assortment of servants, including Catherine’s companion Nelly (Hong Chau). One day, when Catherine is still a child, her father brings home an orphan boy. Catherine gives him the name Heathcliff and so begins their life in orbit of one another. Wuthering Heights, the home they live in, is as gloomy as the title suggests. Both the house and the people living in it are in various states of disrepair, so it is even more striking when over the garden wall we see the Lintons thriving. Edgar Linton’s home features a manicured lawn and powder-wigged staff. there are tea cakes and bright colors. Nothing is more brightly colored than the peculiar Isabella Linton.

Isabella Linton occupies a trope we see often in the genre, a sort of side character to the protagonist that in modern romance may be referred to as the funny best friend. Routinely these characters provide a sort of comedic relief in the story, and act as a foil to the protagonist. Our period piece heroine tends to be beautiful or well bred, and if she’s really lucky both, which affords her a temperamental streak that propels the story along. The side characters cannot afford such petulance. Where Catherine Earnshaw is headstrong, Isabella Linton is meek. In Jane Austen’s Emma the heroine Emma Woodhouse is independent and opinionated while her best friend Harriet Smith is sweet and mild. This character usually holds a certain naivety and goodliness that paints them as less complicated and compelling than the heroine of the story.

When we met Isabella she has wide eyes and tiny glasses. Her hair is large and unstyled save for the gigantic lace and ribbon headband she has fastened to the top of her head. Isabella is instantly attached to Catherine in an ‘I want to wear your skin’ kind of way. Alison Oliver plays the intensity perfectly, with a lilting voice and open expression that immediately draws you in. When Catherine marries Edgar, Isabella creates a doll emulating her and uses clippings of her hair because nothing else would do the color justice. This is a type of obsession that we see often in Fennell’s films, one that is destructively all consuming.

In Saltburn, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is overcome with fascination that bleeds to envy when he meets aristocrat Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Where Felix is charming and wealthy, Oliver is overlooked and poor. Together they represent the unique chasm of social class that still exists in England, a class system that is more clearly defined in the era of Brontë’s novel. However, Isabella’s obsession with Catherine doesn’t quite follow the Saltburn rubric. Isabella lives luxuriously and wants for (almost) nothing. She wears the finest fabrics and has an entire room dedicated to her ribbon collection2. Catherine sits below her in social class, and so her infatuation is not driven by a desire for wealth but by a desire to be wanted.

In Wuthering Heights, sex and money are ways to gain power. Every character interacts with this equation differently, but Catherine holds the key to all three. While Isabella is of higher station she is powerless to her motivations. She is sexless in her relationship with Edgar, who in this adaptation is not her brother so is perfectly capable of marrying her but doesn’t. She is even more sexless when she first meets Heathcliff and has to visibly fan herself in his presence, the pinnacle of the blushing virgin. Sex is often depicted here as vengeful and transactional, and Isabella finds herself unable to wield hers the way Catherine does. Catherine is a beautiful woman, the most powerful type you can be, and Isabella longs for that currency.

Wuthering Heights isn’t about Isabella Linton, but I could watch an entire movie set in her world. I’m drawn to the eccentric outsiders in these stories, perhaps because I feel that’s the role I occupy in my own. If I were in Isabella Linton’s position I too would make dolls for the people I love and spoil things by being extremely earnest. As much as I was meant to be compelled by Heathcliff and Catherine’s doomed love affair I only wanted to know more about her.

Emerald Fennell uses sex as a weapon throughout her films. In Promising Young Woman the main character seeks revenge for a friend who committed suicide after being sexually assaulted. In Saltburn Oliver Quick seduces and destroys every member of the Catton family to take what he couldn’t be born into. In Wuthering Heights Catherine and Heathcliff use sex against each other, her by marrying another man and him by eventually marrying Isabella as an act of revenge. There is no transaction as clear as Heathcliff’s seduction of Isabella. He breaks into her bedroom and tells her that he doesn’t love her, he never will, but he will marry her just to torment Catherine. He asks her if she wants him to stop, and she tells him no. The two enter a verbal contract where Heathcliff agrees to use her, and Isabella agrees to let herself be used.

In that scene, where Nelly walks in on Isabella chained to Heathcliff’s fireplace like a dog, we are seeing the depth of her devotion. It is devotion after all that kept her as Edgar’s ward in the beautiful house for all those years. It is devotion that earned her a friendship with Catherine, when she was a shiny new jewel in the Linton crown. It is through her devotion that she is of most use to Heathcliff, the man she desires yet knows will never desire her the same way. The portrayal of BDSM in Wuthering Heights is as sensationalized and incomplete as the rest of the movie, but the dog metaphor is carried across the film. So much of love in this story is about truly owning someone else, and Isabella is the only character that really wants to be owned.

When they are children Heathcliff is a sort of pet for Catherine. She even gave him his name when her father came home with him like you might a stray dog. Heathcliff is loyal to Catherine like a dog would be for much of the story. He protects her and keeps her company. Catherine is like a dog too, but more like a dog with a bone, or as Isabella puts it during a confrontation a dog in the manger. Catherine is in such possession of Heathcliff that she wouldn’t even allow Isabella to have so much as a crush on him. She tries to dissuade her by speaking of Heathcliff’s animalistic nature, calling him wolflike and claiming he would destroy Isabella if given the chance.

So the beautiful twist is that Isabella wants to be destroyed. She wants to be man’s best friend and his kicked puppy all at once, the two things she’s been training her entire life for. Alison Oliver lets us know this by giving a wink while she barks on all fours. From my research this is not the Isabella Charlotte Brontë intended, but it’s the Isabella that Emerald Fennell brought forward, and so I have to at least salute her for that. In a film that felt more lukewarm than steamy, Alison Oliver burned brighter than anything else.

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xo, Julianna