Why 'masterpiece' Wuthering Heights is so misunderstood

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260202-why-wuthering-heights-is-so-misunderstood It still has the ability to shock': Why 'masterpiece' Wuthering Heights is so misunderstood Molly Gorman Feb 2, 2026 Ever since it was published in the mid-19th Century, Emily Brontë's tale of passionate love and ruthless revenge has captivated fans and confounded critics in equal measure. Authored by one "Ellis Bell", Wuthering Heights was met with rather mixed reviews when it was first published in 1847. Some were scathing, horrified by its "brutal cruelty" and portrayal of a "semi-savage love". Others acknowledged the book's "power and cleverness", "its delineation forcible and truthful". Many said it was simply "strange". Despite the popularity of gothic fiction at the time, it's perhaps unsurprising that Wuthering Heights shocked readers in the 19th Century, a time of strict moral scrutiny. "People did not know what to do with this book, because it has no clear moral angle," says Clare O'Callaghan, senior professor of Victorian literature at Loughborough University in the UK, and the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised. Three years after the novel was published, Charlotte Brontë revealed the true identity of its author – Ellis Bell was not in fact a man, but a pen name for her younger sister, Emily Brontë. Charlotte argued that critics had failed to do Emily's work justice, "The immature but very real powers revealed in Wuthering Heights were scarcely recognised; its import and nature were misunderstood." A gothic tale of two families set on the wild Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights went on to become a genre-defining classic – and yet, Charlotte's words still ring true. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1376xn/p0myn4sz.jpg.webp

Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights was met with scathing reviews when it was published in 1847 (Credit: Getty Images) Now, Saltburn director Emerald Fennell is poised to reveal her version of the story, with a film released on 13 February, starring Australian actors Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. Perhaps partly in response to the various controversies preceding her film – around the age and ethnicity of the lead actors, the erotically charged scenes and inauthentic costumes shown in the trailer – Fennell added quotation marks to its title, stating that she is not actually adapting the novel, but making her version of it, because the story is too "dense, complicated and difficult". Could she be right? And just why has this "strange" but captivating novel puzzled fans, readers and critics from the beginning? A tale of passion and revenge Fennell isn't wrong about the book's complex nature. Its non-linear, multi-layered structure and multiple narrators can be mind-boggling at first. Why does everyone have the same name? How many Cathys and Catherines and Lintons and Heathcliffs and Linton Heathcliffs can there possibly be in 300-odd pages? Fennell's film uses the tagline 'the greatest love story of all time', but the greatest revenge story of all time might be more apt Wuthering Heights is effectively a story-within-a-story. Jumping between the past and present, and spanning around 30 years, it is told by Lockwood, Heathcliff's tenant, and Ellen Dean, a maid at two houses called Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. Both narrators are unreliable. Lockwood, a gentleman from London with a superiority complex, serves as a nosey outsider and a vessel for the reader to uncover secrets from the past. Nelly, the revealer of said secrets, tells the story from a seemingly perfect memory. She controls the narrative and often interferes when perhaps she shouldn't – her emotional attachments to certain characters, and judgment of others, shine through. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1376xn/p0myn507.jpg.webp

Saltburn director Emerald Fennell's new film has already drawn criticism for its casting, costume and erotic content (Credit: Warner Bros) Fennell has spoken of how she was captivated by the novel when she first read it as a teenager. Her film uses the tagline "the greatest love story of all time", but the greatest revenge story of all time might be more apt. Of course, there is undeniable romantic passion in the story: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." But some readers may have latched onto this, while forgetting what ensues afterwards. It quickly becomes clear that Heathcliff is more of a tortured anti-hero than a romantic one. Catherine is challenging too – she is melodramatic and spiteful. Their unbreakable bond, while spirited and everlasting, is ill-fated ¬– and their unending misery creates a generational cycle of abuse and destruction begging to be broken. Love and vengeance are the engines of the book… there's no boundary to the depths to which [Heathcliff] will go to, to make people pay – Clare O'Callaghan The structure of Wuthering Heights cleverly plays into these themes of passion and revenge. The first edition was divided into two volumes, which could be perceived as the generational divide – the first focusing on Catherine and Heathcliff, the second focusing on their children. Brontë draws on our sympathy for Heathcliff in the first volume. Upon his arrival at the Heights as an orphaned young boy, he is othered, a "ragged, black-haired child… a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect". Catherine even spits on him. Later, he is physically abused by his drunkard adoptive brother Hindley Earnshaw, who treats him as a servant. Throughout, he is referred to as "dirty". His only solace is Catherine, with whom he roams the wild moors. But even then, despite her declaration, "I am Heathcliff… he is more myself than I am," and partly due to a misheard conversation, she marries the wealthy Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange. Heathcliff's revenge on Edgar and Catherine intensifies in the second half of the novel, after the latter's death. Brontë sorely tests any sympathy readers might have had for Heathcliff, as his monstrous tyranny reigns. He physically and psychologically abuses his wife (and Catherine's sister-in-law) Isabella through vile acts like hanging her dog. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1376xn/p0myn50y.jpg.webp

Heathcliff is more of a tortured anti-hero than a romantic one, whose revenge intensifies in the second half of the novel (Credit: Warner Bros) He also abuses the family's children. Hindley's son Hareton is forced to work as a servant just as Heathcliff was as a young boy. He kidnaps Cathy Linton, Catherine and Edgar's daughter, forcing her to marry his son, Linton Heathcliff, to secure ownership of Thrushcross Grange. Every action is deliberate, calculated and vengeful. The novel's complex legacy Some film and TV adaptations have skipped the second half of Wuthering Heights entirely, presumably because of its savagery and complexity – William Wyler's 1939 Oscar-winner ends shortly after Catherine's death, her ghost and Heathcliff wandering the moors. Robert Fuest's 1970 film starring Timothy Dalton also ends with her death, as does Andrea Arnold's 2011 film, which dedicates most of the screen time to the younger Catherine and Heathcliff. But her death comes halfway through the novel and therefore many adaptations have missed out a further 18 years or so of plot, softening the ending and sanitising its darkest parts. A few have attempted to cover the whole story – including the BBC's 1967 series, which inspired Kate Bush to write her 1978 hit. But it's the BBC's 1978 mini-series (aided by its five-hour running time), which is held up as being the most faithful to the whole text. Ignoring the latter part of the book "doesn't work", says Claire O'Callaghan. "I think love and vengeance are the engines of the book, and that's what so great about it… there's no boundary to the depths to which [Heathcliff] will go to, to make people pay," says O'Callaghan. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1376xn/p0myn51z.jpg.webp

The BBC's 1967 TV series inspired Kate Bush's 1978 hit song (Credit: Getty Images) Heathcliff lives a life of torment and uncontainable grief, but inflicts that suffering on everyone around him and feels no remorse in doing so. By not righting his wrongs, and letting him die without further punishment, O'Callaghan says, Brontë poses more complex questions to the reader, rather than giving them answers: What is love? Does the marriage system work? What are the limits of violence? That's part of the complex legacy of the novel. "Popular culture tends to tell us it's this great romance… when [readers] are encountering it for the first time, that jars, because the book is so different. It still has the ability to shock, and I think, like the Victorians, we're still grappling with how to define it and what to do with it," O'Callaghan says. Another popular misconception of the novel is that it's unremittingly bleak, when, at times, it's quite funny. Nelly and Zillah, the two servants, are major gossips. Linton Heathcliff is a mopey, sickly and bratty child, who provokes an eye roll from the reader. And when you can understand what the farm servant Joseph is saying through his thick Yorkshire dialect, he is often a witty cynic, who never has anything nice to say. When Catherine falls ill after searching for Heathcliff in the rain, he snarkily croaks, "Running after t'lads, as usual?" More like this: • Why Heathcliff and literature's greatest love story are toxic Lockwood's snootiness is amusing, too. "He is like a character from a Jane Austen novel who's walked into a Brontë world, and that, for me, is hilarious," says O'Callaghan. "If you read this book and take it as a kind of gothic satire to some extent, it's a completely different book. And I think that's one of the things, though. People take it very, very seriously, don't they? They're absolutely convinced that these are real characters, rather than this gothic, over-the-topness." Emily Brontë never saw the success of her only novel, but we know that she read initial reviews. Her writing desk is on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, and it contains five clippings of Wuthering Heights reviews, which were largely negative. She died at the age of 30 from tuberculosis, around a year after Wuthering Heights was published. Behind her she leaves a masterpiece. Whether you are a fierce lover or loather of Brontë's deeply flawed characters, the harrowing and unsettling plot and the toxic romance, Wuthering Heights has possessed its legions of fans throughout history – "driven us mad", you could say. We can be sure that Fennell's interpretation will not be the last. Whether anyone can do this book justice on screen, however, is a whole other question. Hopefully, at least, we can all agree with one anonymous critic, who reviewed Wuthering Heights in January 1848. "It is impossible to begin and not finish it," they said, "and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it." Wuthering Heights is released on 13 February.

AI Safety Report 2026

International AI Safety Report 2026 https://internationalaisafetyreport.org/publication/international-ai-safety-report-2026 AI Security Institute Dept. of Science, Innovation & Technology secretariat.AIStateofScience@dsit.gov.uk The second International AI Safety Report, published in February 2026, is the next iteration of the comprehensive review of latest scientific research on the capabilities and risks of general-purpose AI systems. Led by Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio and authored by over 100 AI experts, the report is backed by over 30 countries and international organisations. It represents the largest global collaboration on AI safety to date. .... Cyberattacks Key information • General-purpose AI systems can execute or assist with several of the tasks involved in conducting cyberattacks. There is now strong evidence that criminal groups and state-sponsored attackers actively use AI in their cyber operations. However, whether AI systems have increased the overall scale and severity of cyberattacks remains uncertain because establishing causal effects is difficult. • AI systems are particularly good at discovering software vulnerabilities and writing malicious code, and now score highly in cybersecurity competitions. In one premier cyber competition, an AI agent identified 77% of vulnerabilities in real software, placing it in the top 5% of over 400 (mostly human) teams. • AI systems are automating more parts of cyberattacks, but cannot yet execute them autonomously. At least one real-world incident has involved the use of semi-autonomous cyber capabilities, with humans intervening only at critical decision points. Fully autonomous end-to-end attacks, however, have not been reported. • Since the publication of the previous Report (January 2025), the cyber capabilities of AI systems have continued to improve. Recent benchmark results show that the cyber capabilities of AI systems have improved across several domains, at least in research settings. AI companies now frequently report on attempts to misuse their systems in cyberattacks. • Technical mitigations include detecting malicious AI use and leveraging AI to improve defences, but policymakers face a dual-use dilemma. Since it can be difficult to distinguish helpful uses from harmful ones, overly aggressive safeguards such as preventing AI systems from responding to cyber-related requests can hamper defenders. General-purpose AI systems can help malicious actors conduct cyberattacks, such as data breaches, ransomware, and attacks on critical infrastructure, with greater speed, scale, and sophistication. AI systems can assist attackers by automating technical tasks, identifying software vulnerabilities, and generating malicious code, though capabilities are progressing unevenly across these tasks. This section examines the evidence on how AI systems are being used in cyber operations and the current state of AI cyber capabilities. AI systems can be used throughout cyber operations Extensive research shows that AI systems can now support attackers at several steps of the ‘cyberattack chain’ (Figure 2.5): the multi-stage process through which attackers identify targets, develop capabilities, and achieve their objectives.392 394 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 In a typical attack, adversaries first identify targets and vulnerabilities, then develop and deploy their attack capabilities, and finally maintain persistent access to achieve their objectives, such as stealing data or destroying systems. Improvements in relevant AI capabilities such as software engineering have prompted concerns that AI systems could be used to increase both the frequency and severity of cyberattacks.451 452 ....... Conclusion This Report provides a scientific assessment, guided by over 100 experts from more than 30 countries and international organisations, of general-purpose AI: a rapidly evolving and highly consequential technology. Contributors differ in their views on how quickly capabilities will improve, how severe risks may become, and the extent to which current safeguards and risk management practices will prove adequate. On core findings, though, there is a high degree of convergence. General-purpose AI capabilities are improving faster than many experts anticipated. The evidence base for several risks has grown substantially. Current risk management techniques are improving but insufficient. This Report cannot resolve all underlying uncertainties, but it can establish a common baseline and an approach for navigating them. A year of change Regular scientific assessment allows for changes to be tracked over time. Since the first International AI Safety Report was published in January 2025, multiple AI systems have solved International Mathematical Olympiad problems at gold-medal level for the first time; reports of malicious actors misusing AI systems for cyberattacks have become more frequent and detailed, and more AI developers now regularly publish details about cyber threats; and several developers released new models with additional safeguards, after being unable to rule out the possibility that they could assist novices in developing biological weapons. Policymakers face a markedly different landscape than they did a year ago. The core challenge A number of evidence gaps appear repeatedly throughout this Report. How and why general-purpose AI models acquire new capabilities and behave in certain ways is often difficult to predict, even for developers.An ‘evaluation gap’ means that benchmark results alone cannot reliably predict real-world utility or risk. Systematic data on the prevalence and severity of AI-related harms remains limited for most risks. Whether current safeguards will be sufficiently effective for more capable systems is unclear. Together, these gaps define the limits of what any current assessment can confidently claim. The fundamental challenge this Report identifies is not any single risk. It is that the overall trajectory of general-purpose AI remains deeply uncertain, even as its present impacts grow more significant. Plausible scenarios for 2030 vary dramatically: progress could plateau near current capability levels, slow, remain steady, or accelerate dramatically in ways that are difficult to anticipate. Investment commitments suggest major AI developers expect continued capability gains, but unforeseen technical limits could slow progress. The social impact of a given level of AI capabilities also depends on how and where systems are deployed, how they are used, and how different actors respond. This uncertainty reflects the difficulty of forecasting a technology whose impacts depend on unpredictable technical breakthroughs, shifting economic conditions, and varied institutional responses. The value of shared understanding The trajectory of general-purpose AI is not fixed: it will be shaped by choices made over the coming years by developers, governments, institutions, and communities. This Report is not prescriptive about what should be done. By advancing a shared, evidence-based understanding of the AI landscape, however, it helps ensure that those choices are well-informed and that key uncertainties are recognised. It also allows policymakers in different jurisdictions to act in accordance with their community’s unique values and needs while working from a common, scientific foundation. The value of this Report is not only in the findings it presents, but in the example it sets of working together to navigate shared challenges.