Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë is being released in theaters on Feb. 14, yet it’s been sparking controversy for months, or more specifically, since the initial casting was released back in September 2024. Many have been accusing Fennell for whitewashing one of the main characters, Heathcliff, by casting him as Jacob Elordi. I believe it is a major disappointment and a miss on Fennell’s behalf.
Multiple times in the story, Heathcliff was described as having black hair, dark eyes and dark skin. He was even referred to as a “lascar,” which is a word to describe a sailor from India or Southeast Asia. According to Brittanica, scholars tie his ethnicity back to the fact that he was adopted from Liverpool, and at the time period the novel took place in, Liverpool was a major port city of the transatlantic slave trade connecting West Africa and the Indies.
A major focus of this novel, especially at the time considering how radical this book was when first published, was the strict social hierarchy of the Victorian era. Many readers, including me, claim that his race is directly connected back to his outsider tendencies and why he was dehumanized and disliked by many immediately on sight of him. The way that the book focuses on race and class is a major, integral theme to the plot, and it is uninformed for Fennell to simply brush over it in her adaptation.
Now, it’s not entirely fair to say that Fennell is completely at fault when casting a white actor to play Heathcliff. She is certainly not the first director to choose a white man for their adaptation. However, in Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of the classic book, she chose James Howson to play the role of Heathcliff, marking the first ever person of color to play the classic role. I’m mostly upset in respect to Fennell, specifically, because she had the option to choose from her picks of actors to play the role, and yet she chose Jacob Elordi, most likely because of his previous fame. This book has had numerous adaptations in the past, and many of them have failed because of the continuous erasing of one of the main plot points.
Fennell states in an interview regarding Elordi’s ethnicity that “there’s no need to be accurate,” and “it’s just a book.” And while it might seem like “just a book” for her, it can be seen as discriminatory to many others. With the repetitive erasing of Heathcliff’s race in various movie adaptations, I think it’s insensitive for Fennell to brush off valid criticisms regarding her casting choices. Heathcliff’s race is a major part of his character, and on top of that, the theme of the book itself. Fennell had the choice to create an amazing, inclusive movie, but she looked past that to choose a famous, well known actor instead.
