Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Cathy and Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering HeightsEmerald Fennell’s film version of Wuthering Heights is, to say the very least, not your grandma’s version of Emily Brontë’s gothic masterpiece.Although many Brontë purists have been less than pleased with the way the movie has chopped and changed the iconic source novel, Emerald has spoken in defence of her adaptation on several occasions, insisting she was trying to make “something that was my response and interpretation to that book and to the feeling of it”.In fact, that’s why she made the decision to show the film’s title in quotation marks and other promotional materials, including its title card.But just how much of the original novel is left in the recent big-screen adaptation of Wuthering Heights?Here are 11 major differences between the two…Emerald Fennell’s decision to depict Heathcliff as white faced backlash before filming had even begunThe topic that generated the most discussion long before Wuthering Heights hit cinemas was around Heathcliff’s ethnicity and background.As soon as Jacob Elordi was cast in the role, people criticised Emerald for “whitewashing” the character, who is described in the novel as a “dark-skinned gypsy” and a “little Lascar”, a term used to refer to sailors from India, South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East.Mr Earnshaw says he found Heathcliff at Liverpool docks, a location historically associated with the Transatlantic slave trade. Some scholars even believe that the author was using Heathcliff to comment on the Liverpool slave trade.Academics have long felt that the ambiguity of Heathcliff’s ethnicity and mysterious family background adds to the story, particularly with regard to how he is treated by Cathy’s family. Elsie Michie, a professor of English at Louisiana State University, told The New York Times that “the dynamics of this novel are about otherness in various ways, and that otherness is in Heathcliff”. By making Healthcliff and Cathy the same ethnicity, Emerald’s film relies on class differences to create a rift between the lovers.Asked about removing the character’s ethnic background and casting a white actor to play him, Emerald previously claimed: “Everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only kind of ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.”She also explained that, when casting Jacob, she was less concerned with the text and more with her own memories of reading the book. ″[He] looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read,” she added during an earlier interview.Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights film only covers the first half of the novel, and misses out on the second generation of the Earnshaws and LintonsEmerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights very specifically focuses on the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, but fans of the Gothic novel will know this is only one part of a bigger story.Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is less a romance and more a supernatural warning about intergenerational trauma. Emerald has chosen not to include these elements, instead turning Cathy and Heathcliff into tragic lovers frolicking on the moors.This latest adaptation covers only the first half of the book, ending the story just after Cathy’s death. In the latter half of the novel, a bereft Heathcliff dedicates his life to torturing those around him, including Cathy’s daughter, and the son he and Isabella later have.“The thing for me is that you can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book,” Emerald told Fandango in January regarding the charges.Emerald’s film is far from the first adaptation of Wuthering Heights to omit the second part of the novel, which scholars believe completely reframes the story’s message.“You lose that sense of a cycle of violence,” said the curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Murray Tremellen, to Time when explaining why failing to adapt the second part of the book waters down the story.Eliminating the second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws and Heathcliff’s treatment of them from the story “allows you to ignore that who he is persecuting are the innocent,” lecturer Sam Hirst told Time.“You can’t think of it as a love story if you actually honestly portray that part of the story,” because “what his love actually looks like is this horrifying toxic nightmare of a thing,” Hirst added.Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights gets rid of the narrator, completing erasing the Lockwood characterEmerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights fundamentally alters the novel’s structure, shifting the point of view from Lockwood and Nelly to a more linear narrative.The book is told through second-hand accounts, after Mr Lockwood moves into Thrushcross Grange and wants to learn more about the mysterious Heathcliff who lives nearby. He speaks to Nelly, who recounts the story of Heathcliff’s romance with Cathy and the impact it has had on the two households.Mr Lockwood does not appear in the recent film at all, removing the outsider’s perspective that the book gives readers.Emerald even joked to BuzzFeed: “Let’s be honest, no one misses him.”Cathy’s ghost haunts the moors in Brontë’s Wuthering HeightsBecause Emerald ends her film just after Cathy’s death, the book’s supernatural elements are also removed from the newest spin on Wuthering Heights.In the novel’s opening chapters, before Nelly starts telling the story, a ghostly apparition of Cathy appears to Lockwood, demanding to be let in through the window.Heathcliff claims to be haunted throughout Brontë’s novel, with villagers claiming at the end that they see him and Cathy’s ghost on the moor together. Cathy and Heathcliff are much younger in the book than they are in the Wuthering Heights filmMargot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s casting as Cathy and Heathcliff initially raised eyebrows because both are almost double the age of their characters in the book.In the novel, Cathy is six when she meets Heathcliff, while in the film, the younger versions of the characters are played by teenagers Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper. As the characters grow, 34-year-old Margot takes over as Cathy, with 27-year-old Jacob portraying the adult Heathcliff.In the book, meanwhile, Cathy is 12 when she meets Edgar, 17 when she weds him and 18 when she dies. Although Heathcliff’s backstory and age are more mysterious, it’s generally accepted that he is slightly older than Cathy.The book suggests that he leaves Cathy and Wuthering Heights aged 16 and returns three years later, rather than the five described in the film.It’s worth pointing out that the film does address the aging up of the characters, with Nelly referring to Cathy as a “spinster” in one scene.Owen Cooper and Charlotte Mellington as young Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering HeightsThe character of Hindley Earnshaw has also been completely erased from Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights filmIn the Emerald Fennell film, it’s established early on that Cathy’s brother (also called Heathcliff) is dead, and that she has no other siblings. By contrast, in the book, Cathy has a malicious and violent older brother, Hindley Earnshaw.Hindley is one of the main antagonists of the novel, abusing Heathcliff and exploiting him after their father’s death. It’s often considered that this abuse is what turns Heathcliff into a toxic, manipulative adult.When Mr Earnshaw dies, Hindley becomes the master of the household, forcing Heathcliff into servitude. In the latter half of the book, Heathcliff gets revenge by abusing Hindley’s son and forcing him to become his servant.Emerald told BuzzFeed that she saw Hindley as little more than a “narrative tool” that Brontë “doesn’t really extend any grace to”, which she found difficult to incorporate into her script.“You can have an outright villain in a novel. You can have somebody who,like, tries to throw a baby off a banister,” she said. “But for me, I’m always looking for the kind of tension in characters where you do have sympathy, always, no matter how reprehensible they are.”In Hindley’s absence, Mr Earnshaw becomes the villain in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering HeightsMartin Clunes plays a reimagined version of Mr Earnshaw in Wuthering HeightsMartin Clunes plays Cathy’s father, Mr Earnshaw, as an alcoholic brute, though his character is much kinder in Brontë’s source material. In the novel, he has goodwill for Heathcliff, arguably favouring him above his own children. Some fans of the book have gone as far as speculating that this close bond is intended to suggest that Heathcliff is his illegitimate son.In Emerald Fennell’s film, Mr Earnshaw and Hindley have been merged together, the result being “a sort of father character who was at once loving, charismatic, generous, and on the other side, cruel, malevolent, capricious”.The director told BuzzFeed: “It was about kind of looking at where Cathy and Heathcliff have kind of what they’ve learned, what behaviour they’ve learned, how they’ve learned to manage things, how they’ve survived up to a point.”Nelly’s supposed villainous traits are enhanced in the new Wuthering Heights film – although Emerald Fennell doesn’t want you to call her thatCompared to the original novel, Emerald’s take on the story depicts Hong Chau’s Nelly as less of a nurse or housekeeper, and more of a companion figure for Cathy.As one of the narrators in the book, she clearly has disdain for Heathcliff, but in the film, her role is much more opportunistic. In the absence of Hindley, Nelly becomes something of a villain in Cathy’s life – although some Brontë fans would suggest Nelly has always been a low-key “bad guy”.In the big-screen adaptation, Nelly encourages Cathy to accept Edgar’s marriage proposal, burns Heathcliff’s letters to her (in the book, she burns the correspondence between Heathcliff’s son and Cathy’s daughter instead) and ignores Cathy’s health complications, dismissing them as a childish tantrum. When Cathy takes to her bed in grief over Heathcliff’s wedding to Isabella, Nelly also ignores the state of her health, which ultimately leads to the sepsis that causes Cathy’s death.During her BuzzFeed interview, Emerald explained that she was inspired to change Nelly’s character by scholars who believed Nelly was the true villain of Wuthering Heights.“I think we all can relate to that person,” she claimed. “When you’re the sensible one and you’re the one who can see that something is a terrible idea, and you’re the one, perhaps in Nelly’s case, who doesn’t have as much power to affect the things around her.”She added: “I get why she does the things she does. Because looking at what’s happened, what is happening and then happens afterwards.”Hong Chau as Nelly in Wuthering HeightsWhile Nelly might be the villain of the story, it was important to the filmmaker that Hong’s character be given her “moment of grace at the end” where she realises that her dismissal of Cathy’s feelings ultimately contributed to her death.Edgar and Isabella Linton have a totally different relationship in the film compared to the Wuthering Heights movieIn Brontë’s work, Cathy’s husband Edgar Linton is the biological brother of Isabella (played by Alison Oliver), but in the film she is introduced as his “ward”, an orphaned minor who is placed under his guardianship.The Linton parents are also nowhere to be seen in the new movie, despite appearing in the novel, with Edgar acting as the master of Thrushcross Grange.Crucially, Emerald’s film also removes the romance from Edgar and Cathy’s relationship. While in both the book and movie, Cathy is motivated by class and money, the film removes any notion that she is in love with the man she married.Isabella Linton’s marriage to Heathcliff in the new Wuthering Heights film is nothing like the bookThe version of Isabella we see in Emerald Fennell’s film is almost unrecognisable compared to her literary counterpart.While she has always been portrayed as a delicate and immature character, Emerald brings out the more quirky aspects of Isabella in the latest adaptation.Both the book and film iterations of Isabella are obsessed with Heathcliff, but in the book, she is less aware that she’s being manipulated by him. Film Isabella, on the other hand, is much more calculating, and appears aware that Heathcliff is using her to make Cathy jealous. In the novel, she genuinely loves Heathcliff and regrets their union when he starts abusing her – even going as far as killing her dog – resulting in her trying to flee their home when pregnant with their son.Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Jacob claimed that the provocative scene in the movie, in which Isabella is depicted on all fours in a dog collar taking commands from her husband was the director’s way of “taking the killing of the dog and these really dark parts of the novel and putting them into this scene”. Alison Oliver as Isabella in Wuthering HeightsIn the same interview, Emerald said she felt it was important to acknowledge that Isabella winked at Nelly to indicate consent.The filmmaker pointed out that the dialogue in this sequence is almost the same as the novel.She said: “That scene in the book, I think that’s the reason why [Wuthering Heights] was eviscerated when it came out because I think it was just so shocking to people. Because there’s so much in what happens there that is… very, very complicated. Very transgressive – even for now, it’s shocking.“And, obviously, I visually added some things to that scene, but [the dialogue] is almost all Brontë.”Of course, one major difference between the novel Wuthering Heights and Emerald Fennell’s film is those sex scenesEmerald is definitely not a director who shies away from sex or nudity. While Wuthering Heights is, in many ways, tamer than Saltburn, her adaptation was still much racier than the source material.Brontë’s book portrays Cathy and Heathcliff as having a deeply romantic – albeit tortured – relationship, but they only kiss once in the novel, and it’s never explicitly stated that they have sex.In the movie, though, there is a whole montage dedicated to the couple’s sex life.“Wuthering Heights is an extremely sexy book,” Emerald said during a recent appearance on the podcast Happy Sad Confused. “It’s so sexy. Lots of people argue about that, lots of people feel that it is not a sexy book at all. I believe it is a very sexy book, I felt it was a very sexy book.“But, you know, nothing [sexy] happens [in the book]. So that’s the other side of things. But, you know, it’s interesting, the perception of something, and the thing itself, are so different.”Jacob has also insisted the movie’s sex scenes were “entirely in the spirit of the novel.”“Any image that comes from Emerald’s head is inspired by that depravity and love and obsession,” the Euphoria actor told USA Today. “They’re all in the language of what Brontë was driving at with this book, so it was never really a shock or a reach.”Cathy’s death is very different in the book in comparison to the filmOne of the biggest artistic liberties Emerald Fennell takes with her adaptation is its ending.In the novel, Cathy dies shortly after giving birth to her daughter (also called Cathy), Emerald’s film shows the character dying of sepsis after miscarrying.The director told Entertainment Tonight that she made this change because she wanted to expand the circular nature of the text.“It begins where it ends and ends where it begins. And that’s the thing about love, and it’s the thing about the book, right?” she said. “It’s that it’s forever and it’s cyclical, and so there’s no stop – even when there’s a terrible, sad, tragic stop, it’s not really a stop – because that’s what the book feels so much about. It’s about the depths of human feeling and how it exists in a profound way, not just a physical one.”Unlike in the book, Heathcliff does not visit Cathy before her death in the film, but in a fever-induced state, she imagines his younger self speaking to her.Emerald added that in Bronte’s novel there are “about three different meetings and three different speeches”, so her rewritten version of events was her way of “consolidating that”.“And so what I did was I brought a lot of the love forward, and a lot of those really important conversations forward, to give them some time so that it didn’t just happen at the end,” she offered.Wuthering Heights is in cinemas now.MORE WUTHERING HEIGHTS:7 Wuthering Heights Adaptations Available For You To Stream Right Now19 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets You Never Knew About How Wuthering Heights Was MadeWuthering Heights Director Explains What The Outrageous Opening Scene Is All About HuffPost UK – Athena2 – All Entries (Public) Read More