Wuthering Heights Director Addresses Controversial Isabella Scene

This article contains spoilers for Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights director Emerald Fennell is opening up about one of the biggest changes she made to the original story for her new big-screen adaptation.

Much has already been made of Emerald’s fast-and-loose approach to staying faithful to the source material in her new spin on Wuthering Heights, so much so that the title of her film is listed in quotation marks to indicate how much it’s her version of events.

One of the most polarising aspects of the new film involves Alison Oliver’s character Isabella, and what transpires between her and Heathcliff.

In the original film, Isabella and Heathcliff’s relationship is depicted as coercive, violent and abusive, with the latter even killing the former’s dog as an act of cruelty shortly after marrying her.

However, in the film, when Nelly drops in on Isabella and Heathcliff, it’s suggested that their relationship is more of a consensually submissive one, with Isabella chained up and acting like a dog, even quietly winking at her former housekeeper to indicate that she’s happy with the arrangement.

This transformation to the character of Isabella has not sat well with all fans of the Emily Brontë novel, with Digital Spy recently sharing a piece lamenting that “what Wuthering Heights did to Isabella is unforgivable”, and LadBible pointing out that this “BDSM scene” has “sparked controversy”.

During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Emerald Fennell pointed out that while the circumstances of the scene might be different in her adaptation, the dialogue largely remains from the novel.

“That scene in the book, I think that’s the reason why [the novel] was eviscerated when it came out because I think it was just so shocking to people,” she said. 

“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 it is almost all Brontë.” 

Jacob Elordi also said in the same piece that he thinks the scene represented “Emerald kind of taking the killing of the dog and these really dark parts of the novel and putting them into this scene”.

“I had so much fun because it’s at that point that Isabella and Heathcliff are completely off the deep end. They’re living in a kind of hell, you know?” he continued.

“For him, it’s a self-generated hell. It’s the moment that his obsession clicks over into something else – into a rabid desperation – and he loses any semblance of composure. It’s a nice point for the character, I think.

“You can see it in his face when it’s Nelly at the door, and it’s not Cathy. And it’s not working anymore, and the joke is over, which means it’s real, you know? And they have to face it.”

While promoting her new movie, Emerald has insisted that she stands by the changes she made to the original story.

Before the film had even begun shooting, Emerald’s Wuthering Heights had sparked backlash over her casting of Jacob as Heathcliff, a character who is heavily implied in the book to be a person of colour.

Reacting to to these “whitewashing” accusations last month, the Oscar winner said: “The thing is, everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so, you can only ever kind of make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.”