Is ‘Wuthering Heights’ Actually the Greatest Love Story of All Time?

Catherine and Heathcliff are returning to the screen, but their passion burns brightest in a handful of sentences from Emily Brontë’s novel.

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Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights.”

Warner Bros.

By A.O. Scott

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review.

Feb. 4, 2026

Catherine and Heathcliff. Since 1847, when Emily Brontë published her only novel, “Wuthering Heights,” those ill-starred lovers have inflamed the imaginations of generations of readers.

Who are these two? Definitely not the people you meet on vacation. The DNA of “Wuthering Heights,” set in a wild and desolate corner of Northern England, runs through the dark, gothic, obsessive strains of literary romance. Heathcliff, a tormented soul with terrible manners and a worse temper, may be the English novel’s most problematic boyfriend — mad, bad and dangerous to know. What redeems him, at least in the reader’s eyes, is Catherine’s love.