Accuracy With Intention: Why “Wuthering Heights” Collapses Without Its Past, and Bridgerton Does Not

Illustrations by Grace McKenna

Every adaptation set in the past inevitably reignites the same question: how accurate should it be? With Emerald Fennell’s new take on Wuthering Heights, anticipation quickly gave way to scrutiny. Costumes, characterisation, tone, and thematic framing were placed under a historical microscope. Yet audiences continue to embrace the glossy, deliberately anachronistic world of Bridgerton without demanding documentary fidelity to the Regency era. This contrast suggests that the debate over historical accuracy is not as straightforward as it first appeared. Not all deviations are equal, and not all stories require the same kind of faithfulness.

At one end of the argument are those who view historical precision as a form of respect: toward the source material, toward the period depicted, and toward the lived realities embedded within it. At the other are those who see adaptation as interpretation, not preservation: an opportunity to reframe the past in ways that speak more directly to contemporary audiences. Both positions hold weight. Fidelity can safeguard meaning, but creative reinvention can generate new forms of resonance.

The question, then, is not simply whether a work is historically accurate. It is what function history serves within it. When a narrative like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is built upon rigid class structures, racial ambiguity, and social immobility, those historical forces are not ornamental – they are structural. Alter them and the meaning shifts. But when a series signals from the outset that it is engaging in stylised reinterpretation, audiences enter into a different kind of contract, one where we as viewers accept that this is a fantastical reimagining of Regency era aesthetics rather than a book accurate depiction of fact. The real debate, therefore, is not about hemlines or dialects. It is about whether history is foundational to a story’s stakes, or simply the backdrop against which they unfold.

In Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation, that foundation is destabilised. Costumes drift free of historical context, the setting feels geographically and culturally unmoored, and accents lack continuity. These may seem like aesthetic choices, but in a story so rooted in place, aesthetic incoherence erodes meaning. When the visual and social grammar of a period becomes inconsistent, the audience loses its sense of what governs these characters’ lives. More significantly, the adaptation diverges sharply from the novel’s  structure. Major plotlines are altered or removed, shifting motivations and weakening the generational consequences central to Brontë’s design. This is not simple condensation for runtime; it is structural revision. When an adaptation strays this far from its source without redefining its thematic purpose, it risks severing itself from the tensions that made the original endure. Most troubling is the whitewashing of Heathcliff in the decision to cast Jacob Elordi. In the novel, Heathcliff’s racial ambiguity is not incidental; it is fundamental. He is described as dark-skinned, an outsider, possibly of Romani or colonial origin. His otherness shapes the cruelty he suffers and the alienation that defines his trajectory within the Earnshaw and Linton households. Casting a conventionally white leading man erases this dimension entirely. This is not cosmetic; it alters the social and emotional stakes of the story. The racialised hostility embedded in Brontë’s text is muted, and with it, the structural forces that fuel Heathcliff’s rage. For a modern audience, this sanitises a narrative that could confront xenophobia and systemic exclusion, replacing discomfort with star power and complexity with safety.

Yet not every story set in the past requires the same level of fidelity. While Wuthering Heights relies on strict social and racial codes of its time, other works use history as a canvas rather than a cage. Some adaptations deliberately signal that they are reimagining the past, inviting audiences into worlds that are inspired by history but not bound by it. In these cases, bending or even breaking historical rules can enhance the story, allowing creators to explore themes, characters, and perspectives that the historical record might have excluded. Accuracy becomes less about faithfulness, and more about intention; when the past serves as a backdrop rather than an anchor, deviations can be liberating rather than damaging. 

Bridgerton demonstrates how this historical flexibility can be a strength rather than a weakness. The series is unapologetically playful with the Regency era, blending period costumes and architecture with contemporary music, modern dialogue rhythms, and a racially diverse cast. This deliberate anachronism signals that the show is not a historical document, but a reimagined world built for spectacle and emotional resonance. The show openly embraces its artifice, excess, and heightened theatricality through costume choices, musical moments, and casting choices. Importantly, the audience knowingly accepts that contract. Characters such as Penelope Bridgerton (née Featherington), Kate Bridgerton (née Kathani Sharma), Queen Charlotte, and Lady Danbury illustrate why this approach succeeds. Penelope’s intelligence and secret life as a social manipulator work because the series grants her a degree of agency the historical record would not, without breaking the internal logic of its world. Kate, as Anthony’s wife, brings another layer of modern resonance: her navigation of partnership, desire, and influence within the Bridgerton family reflects contemporary ideas of love and equality more than Regency constraint. Queen Charlotte’s commanding presence and stylised authority allow the show to explore power, race, and gender in ways a rigid period drama could not. Lady Danbury’s wit and defiance feel contemporary yet thrive within the series’ heightened tone.

This creative license enhances accessibility. By manipulating history, the show opens Regency society to viewers who might otherwise feel excluded by rigid hierarchies or narrow representations of aristocratic life. Audiences can engage with themes of love, ambition, identity, and social negotiation without being burdened by historical gatekeeping. The artifice is not a flaw; it is an invitation, a lush, emotionally-charged reinterpretation that retains the flavour of the period while reshaping its boundaries. In Bridgerton, historical accuracy is not the engine of the narrative. Because its stakes do not depend on strict social immobility, deviations from reality expand rather than diminish the story. By embracing theatricality and intentional anachronism, the series transforms historical fiction into a space for creativity and representation, proving that sometimes reinterpreting history is not careless, but generative.

Historical accuracy matters most when the conditions of a time period are central to a story’s thematic foundation, not merely its aesthetics. In a narrative like Wuthering Heights, the social realities of class, inheritance, race, and cultural exclusion are not decorative details – they drive the tragedy. Heathcliff’s outsider status is not simply personal turmoil but the product of systemic exclusion and social contempt, forces that make his relationship with Catherine Earnshaw volatile and devastating. When an adaptation strips away these structural pressures in favour of spectacle, it risks transforming a critique of social stratification into a hollow romance. Emerald Fennell’s reinterpretation reads less as a re-engagement with the novel’s historical core and more as a projection of personal aesthetic priorities that she desires to reflect. She has described the film as the version she remembers from adolescence, filtered through stylisation and long-held fascination rather than grounded excavation of 19th-century context, and has framed it explicitly as her ‘version’ rather than a faithful adaptation. Critics argue that this approach flattens the novel’s broader social critique, from the removal of its generational architecture to the whitewashing of Heathcliff, whose racial ambiguity is central to the friction of the original text. The danger lies here: when an adaptation departs from historical context not to interrogate it but to aestheticise it, the forces that gave the story weight begin to disappear. Casting choices that disregard identity, costumes and settings untethered from their era, and narrative compression that removes systemic constraint do not simply loosen fidelity, they redirect the story toward contemporary fantasy. In works where class, race, gender norms, and exclusion are the stakes, honouring historical context is not pedantry; it is preservation of meaning.

The difference becomes clearer when placed beside Bridgerton. In that series, the setting provides texture, glamour, and social scaffolding, but it is not the moral engine of the narrative. The show can bend racial hierarchies, modernise dialogue, exaggerate costume, and heighten drama because its core stakes centre on romance, personal growth, and social manoeuvring within a consciously reimagined world. Its historical framework is elastic by design. Wuthering Heights, by contrast, depends on rigidity. Its tragedy is born from immobility, inheritance law, entrenched class divisions, colonial anxiety, and the impossibility of social transcendence. Heathcliff’s exclusion, Catherine’s confinement, and the generational cycles of cruelty are not aesthetic flourishes; they are structural consequences of the 19th-century world Emily Brontë constructed. When that rigidity is softened, the story loses its gravity. Bridgerton thrives on elasticity because elasticity is its premise. “Wuthering Heights” collapses without constraint because constraint is its premise. That is the distinction.

Historical accuracy, then, is not a moral obligation but a creative responsibility. What matters is not whether a filmmaker reproduces every hemline or dialect with precision, but whether they understand what history is doing inside the story they are telling. When social structures, racial hierarchies, inheritance laws, and cultural exclusion are the engines of a narrative, as they are in “Wuthering Heights”, stripping them away does not modernise the story; it disarms it. Conflict becomes mood, oppression becomes backdrop, and tragedy becomes spectacle.

Bridgerton, by contrast, succeeds because it signals its intentions clearly. It does not claim fidelity to the Regency era as it was. It embraces fantasy, artifice, orchestral pop covers, lavish excess, and a consciously reimagined social order. The audience understands the contract. We are not asked to reconsider history; we are invited to inhabit a heightened, inclusive reinterpretation of it. That transparency makes its inaccuracy feel expansive rather than erasing.

The danger arises when deviation masquerades as depth, when a work rooted in historical constraint becomes untethered from the forces that made it urgent in the first place. Accuracy matters most when it safeguards meaning, when it preserves the stakes that shape character, power, and consequence, when the past is not aesthetic, but structural. 

Perhaps the real question is not ‘Is it accurate?’ but ‘Why is it inaccurate?’ Creative liberties that illuminate, broaden access, deepen empathy, or reframe neglected perspectives can be transformative. But liberties that flatten complexity or soften discomfort risk rewriting history into something easier to consume and harder to confront. Accuracy is not reverence for the past, but an expression of responsibility toward the meaning the past carries.