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Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights is not Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. We all knew this going in, so it shouldn't come as a huge shock that the Wuthering Heights ending is also… well… very different.
In Fennell's bodice ripping, high gloss version of the famous tale, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are star-crossed lovers who just can't quite be together because of money or something. It's not the epic, tragic gothic you read in school. Nevertheless, Fennell tries to give her characters a suitably tragic ending.
What happens to Cathy in Wuthering Heights?
A quick little recap of Catherine and Heathcliff's story in the film before getting into the Wuthering Heights ending. Cathy's drunken father brings back a foundling, whom he gives to Cathy as a “pet.” She names him Heathcliff. The pair become inseparable, frolicking together on the moors and putting up with Cathy's abusive dad. He says he'd do anything for her, and she promises never to leave him.
A few years later, the pair have grown up and are more into each other than ever. They have a few spicy encounters on the moor. Heathcliff sticks his fingers in a broken egg, Cathy watches her servants enjoying a BDSM moment in the stables while Heathcliff covers her mouth and eyes. All very sexy stuff, but it's not enough for Cathy, who really needs some money to save their crumbling old farmhouse. When rich Edgar Linton and his ward, Isabella, move into town, she swans over to seduce him. They marry, Heathcliff overhears her saying it would be degrading to marry him, and instead, he storms off for a few years to make his fortune. When he returns, he and Cathy begin an affair, but they fight, and when Heathcliff says some kind of scary stuff about wanting to murder Edgar, she cools things off. He runs off with Isabella to make her feel bad – and, apparently, she feels so bad, she starts to waste away in her skin room.
Meanwhile, servant-slash-companion Nelly is burning all of Heathcliff's letters to Cathy. At first, Nelly thinks Cathy is just being dramatic, but eventually, she realises she really is sick. Cathy has a miscarriage (a very bloody, gory image from Fennell) and dies from sepsis. Edgar calls a doctor, and Nelly calls Heathcliff, but both are too late.
Heathcliff gallops over and cradles a very grey Cathy in his arms as he cries and asks her to haunt him. We cut to a moment from their childhoods and see young Heathcliff telling young Cathy that he'll always love her.
How is Emerald Fennell’s reimagining different to the book?
Let me count the ways. The book's ending also sees Heathcliff grieving for Cathy – but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Fennell did away with the fact that Heathcliff is a person of colour – the controversial choice has already been widely discussed, but it's worth noting because Heathcliff's entire revenge plot hinges around the racist othering he faces throughout his youth. And, you know, it's one of the main reasons that Cathy ends up marrying into the more appropriate, more blonde Linton family. Fennell also did away with the entire second generation of Earnshaws, Heathcliffs, and Lintons – the children who carry the burden of their parents' unhealthy love and are equally doomed by it. She also gave her two romantic leads a juicy little sex montage halfway through the story, which, while kind of fun if you're into sex scenes, saps the relationship of its tragic irresolution that makes a line like “You said I killed you – haunt me, then! Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” work.
In the original, Cathy and Heathcliff, shockingly, don't get it on all over the moors. Instead, they bicker and fight their way through their mutual disappointment at the way they've been torn apart by Cathy's decision to marry Edgar. Eventually, Heathcliff and Edgar end up in a fight, Cathy ends up distraught, Heathcliff elopes with Isabella (Linton's sister in the book – and no, he doesn't ask her consent before he marries her purely for revenge, and, no she isn't secretly into it when he proceeds to abuse her – that's a conversation for another day).
Cathy slowly descends into an illness as she mourns the loss of Heathcliff and her childhood home. Nelly initially writes it off as a dramatic act, but eventually realises that she is actually pretty sick.
Heathcliff returns – but he isn't too late. They fall into each other's arms and spend an afternoon all over each other while Nelly watches on from the corner. Edgar finds them together, gets angry and Cathy gets even sicker. That night, she goes into labour and gives birth to a daughter named Catherine. She dies two hours later.
Nelly heads outside to the moors, where Heathcliff is waiting for an update, and delivers the bad news. It is there that he delivers his mournful, gothic “haunt me” speech – which bashing his head against a tree, mind you.
Margot Robbie’s version of Cathy is basically a period-crossing fashion Pinterest board.
What else happens at the end of Wuthering Heights?
A lot actually. Rather then rolling the credits after Cathy's death, Brontë goes on for another 100 pages or so. She continues the story of the new Catherine (Cathy's daughter), her cousin Linton (Isabella and Heathcliff's weedy, spoiled son), and Hareton, the new Cathy's other cousin, son of OG Catherine's brother Hindley (cut from the film).
Heathcliff essentially plays puppet master with the new generation as he slowly exacts his revenge on the families that, in his eyes, tore him and Catherine number one apart. Catherine number two marries frail cousin Linton, who dies, and later falls in love with the gruff, rough Hareton in a sort of history repeating itself thing.
When Edgar eventually dies, Heathcliff, in a very gothic turn, digs up Catherine's grave, revealing that she has been haunting him for two decades, but he still can't quite feel close enough to her – a dark, complicated image that surely should have been right up Fennell's alley, but hey ho.
Heathcliff eventually dies after wandering around the moors, refusing to eat, wailing for Cathy's ghost to visit him once again.
Introducing the unexpected star of Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated adaptation.
