By portraying the young woman Heathcliff abuses as a sexily willing participant in her own degradation, Fennell’s adaptation betrays the book, and her audience
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ragedy is the beating heart of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; it’s a gothic novel that takes place in a society built on hierarchy and oppression, and exposes the fragility of love and how easily it is distorted into dangerous obsession. Unsurprisingly, there is no happy ending.
Although every character in the novel is stalked by tragedy, few suffer as much as Isabella Linton. Unaware of Heathcliff’s vindictive motives, she becomes trapped in an intensely abusive marriage, one she is only freed from by fleeing to London. While she is undoubtedly a victim, in the end the character also has agency; Isabella is able to escape her abuser, though not without considerable scars. It’s a pivotal moment for her character, and one that she’s been stripped of in Emerald Fennell’s quote-unquote “adaptation”.
Fennell is no stranger to courting controversy, with much criticism directed at the film, chiefly regarding the conspicuous “whitewashing” of Heathcliff and erasure of regional authenticity. Having already expunged Heathcliff’s ethnicity to facilitate a romantic fantasy, Fennell has reduced Isabella to a willing BDSM participant; chained and treated like a dog, she consents to this humiliation. Though this may seem like a tantalising scene for those unfamiliar with the source material, Isabella has essentially become the dog that Heathcliff hangs in the novel. Once you have that context, it’s rather difficult to look past the fetishisation of Isabella’s degradation.
