margot robbie's wedding dress is the least concerning white thing in Wuthering Heights (2026)

ac writes: i don't care how pretentious it makes me sound i WILL put out writing about this movie and all the problems i'm sure it's going to have

Listen, sometimes I try to write really educated, well thought out pieces about what’s going on in the world. Sometimes, I try to write personal essays about my life, hoping that one of you out there resonates with it. But, EVERY NOW AND THEN, I need to just absolutely HATE something with every fiber of my being. This is that time.

I already knew I was not gonna be #Thrilled by the new Emerald Fennell (of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn fame) adaptation of Wuthering Heights when it was announced that 34 year old Margot Robbie would be playing 18 year old Catherine Earnshaw (yeah yeah, there’s a whole conversation that can be had about aging actresses in Hollywood but now is not that time). Every other piece of information I have learned since that fateful day has been both entirely against my will and makes me dread the upcoming release of this movie.

Kendrick has Drake. I have this movie.

There is definitely the chance that I could be wrong and Fennell’s doing some cool, edgy modernist take that intentionally strays away from the novel. But I do not know this yet, and so I am going to assume that I am right (of course) and this is just going to be a poor adaptation of Brontë. I will happily eat my words next year.

The discourse around this movie started after the Robbie announcement, coupled with the news that Jacob Elordi would be playing Heathcliff. Unfortunately for both Robbie and Elordi (who I have actually loved in other films), neither could convince me that they have never seen an IPhone before. I know that’s kind of trite to say, but I’m standing on it. I’m gonna get all of my petty grievances out of the way before diving into what actually irks me beyond belief.

So, let’s talk about the wedding dress. Pictured here (thank you Film Crave) as well as below. Don’t get me wrong, Robbie looks stunning. She is an incredibly beautiful person and this actually has nothing to do with her. Of course, yeah Catherine is supposed to be around 17 at this point in the novel, but sure! We can suspend some disbelief.

Outside of stunning, beautiful, very twenty-first century Margot Robbie, there is lots of discourse about the dress. Clearly from these photos, it is obvious that it’s a wedding dress. Cool, awesome, why does that matter? Honestly, I’m sure for many people who are going to read this, it doesn’t. And compared to what I want to get into later in this piece, it doesn’t really matter that much to me either. I’m just setting the scene for the anachronisms and missteps that it seems Fennell (whether knowingly or unknowingly) is taking in this film.

Long story short, white wedding dresses weren’t popularized at the time Brontë sets Wuthering Heights. I’m gonna defer a longer, much better discussion of the history of My Big Fat Wedding to my favorite podcast, Binchtopia, and their episode “Say Yes to the Debt.” I’ll keep it short and sweet, because a wedding dress is not the point of this rant. The white wedding dress was mostly made famous by Queen Victoria and her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. Per a JSTOR article on the history of wedding dresses:

“‘It is an emblem of the purity and innocence of girlhood, and the unsullied heart she now yields to the chosen one.’ Victorian ideals of weddings, romantic love, and purity were projected backwards to rewrite the white dress as a symbol of innocence and virginity rather than wealth.”

The first page of Wuthering Heights, narrated by Mr. Lockwood, informs us that his arrival to the Heights is in 1801. Some guess work informs us that Catherine’s wedding occurred about 18-20 years prior to this (around 1780, give or take). Basically… Catherine gets married a good 50-60 years before Queen Victoria shook up English fashion with her white wedding dress.

Much, MUCH, more importantly is the blatant (and honestly gross) misrepresentation of Heathcliff in Fennell’s adaptation. And I’m not just saying this as a pretentious English major who cares WAY too much about this book and doesn’t like Fennell’s casting of Jacob Elordi because it doesn’t match “my mental image” of what Heathcliff looks like. I promise I am not like those weirdos that freaked out when Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel or Rachel Zegler as Snow White because that’s not MY Heathcliff.¹ Rather, I think, truly, that Fennell is making an incredible mistake.

When Mr. Lockwood first meets Heathcliff in the introductory chapter of the novel,he is described as “a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect” (5).²³ While Heathcliff’s specific race is left ambiguous by Brontë, quotes such as this and, later, when Mr. Linton describes him as “a little Lascar⁴, or an American or Spanish castaway,” imply that he is different compared to the Lintons and Earnshaws (40).

The strong evidence that Heathcliff was a person of color makes his later success (intense wealth and, as Lockwood says, “in dress and manners a gentleman” (5)) so much more powerful. Yes, he is discriminated against as a child because he is not a “true part” (my quotes) of the Earnshaw family, but it would be ignorant to assume that he would face the same level of punishment and abuse from Hindley if he were white. It’s not that I don’t think Elordi has the capability to play the torrid, abused, absolutely vengeful character; he most certainly could. I just think that maybe maybe in the year of our Lord 2025, he probably should not.

All I’m gonna say is that if the Brontë Parsonage Museum has a page dedicated to the racial identity of Heathcliff and his possible ties to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, maybe don’t cast that guy who also played Elvis Presley.

Truly, I’m going to just have to hold out hope that Fennell isn’t adapting the book at all but instead is loosely retelling it in like a modern way (á la Ten Things I Hate About You and Taming of the Shrew). I don’t think that makes Elordi’s casting better in any way, but then at least we can see less discourse about Robbie’s anachronism of a wedding dress and more discussion regarding Heathcliff’s background and, frankly, Fennell’s complete erasure of his history.

I know this is not as much of a well thought out piece compared to some of the others I’ve written, and I know that it’s mostly word vomit. I hope I’m making some sort of sense (and, ideally, writing about Fennell’s film before it inevitably takes over Substack). However, as anyone who knows me can attest, I am a pretentious asshole when it comes to the Brontës and Wuthering Heights, and I did not spend a year of my life writing my senior honors thesis about their writing to NOT talk about how annoyed I am by the decisions regarding this movie so far. Yet, I am not an oracle, and maybe I’ll be wrong (though I fear I won’t be), so I (like many) will wait for the trailer and the film to (probably) talk about it again. I leave you with this interaction between me and Sarah this morning (that actually prompted me writing this in a haze of gothic-fiction induced anger).

epilogue: favorites recently

On a brighter note (read: I cried profusely), I devoured Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins’ newest addition to The Hunger Games franchise/universe. She. Is. A. Genius. A couple of months ago, I wrote about our lack of current dystopian fiction and mentioned that this novel was one I was desperate to read when it released, because Collins feels like the only 2014-era writer who is giving what needs to be given in the genre, and goodness was I right. I’ll save you from spoilers, for now, but the bridge that she builds connecting The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to the original trilogy through this book and also disrupts what we knew about the prior Games by showing the propaganda used by Panem to quench rebellions is just incredible.

Sticking with incredibly depressing media, I also watched the Netflix limited series Adolescence, which I think could be a front runner at the Emmy’s and, surprisingly, give Severance (which I also watched the finale of and WOW) a run for its money. Owen Cooper is a phenomenal actor and the use of one-shot episodes works so well with the development of this story. Ironically, given the subject of this newsletter, Cooper is slated to play Young Heathcliff in the new Wuthering Heights. Excited to see him develop as an actor, even if the movie is… questionable.

Finally, I spent last Wednesday binge-watching a bunch of rom-coms that I either wanted to rewatch or had never seen. Highlights include: a weird Donald Trump jumpscare cameo in Two Weeks Notice (dir. Marc Lawrence, 2002) (remember when he just did weird movie popups? A simpler time), You’ve Got Mail (dir. Nora Ephron, 1998) proving to me, once again, that Meg Ryan is an American Treasure, and the everlasting attraction that I have to both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, making me a prime candidate to enjoy Bridget Jones’ Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001). I would not have been able to choose between them that easily.

This is where I leave you for now. As always, take care of yourself. We’ll talk soon <3

1. Interestingly, there is a lot of discourse that I have seen recently about the “white washing” happening in the new Lilo & Stitch live action, with Lilo’s sister Nani played by a white/Filipino actress rather than a native Hawaiian. I don’t have much information outside of that (and that, per the trailer, they gave her a questionable tan), but most people seem (rightfully) pissed that this casting decision was made.

2. Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Edited by Alexandra Lewis, Norton. 5th ed. 2019, pp. 3-256.

3. Obviously this term is incredibly harmful and outdated now, and I use it and this quote only as evidence for Heathcliff’s background.

4. An East Indian sailor, per the Norton edition of the novel.