“Wuthering Heights” and the Future of Adaptation

Abstract

This is a brief personal essay that critiques Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, provides a brief overview of the field of classic novel adaptation over the past thirty years and proposes questions that go outside of the well-known, “how do we create interest?”. In this essay, I consider what the future of film adaptation looks like, and how Hollywood can move towards capitalizing on universal aspects of classic novels, as well as how it can utilize modern systems of knowledge, such as psychology, critical race theory, sexuality and gender studies, to provide an added layer of meaning, or represent what goes unsaid in many works of classic literature. Fennell’s adaptation serves as a jumping-off point to assess the current challenges of literary adaptations, and the novel Wuthering Heights is used as an example for creative ideation.