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Plot Twist: The battle of the Brontës is back

2026-02-18 · 16:29 UTC ·The Economist ·6 min read

Brief

Rachel Lloyd’s bonus “Plot Twist” newsletter traces how the reputation of “Wuthering Heights” reversed over roughly a century. The immediate catalyst is a new screen adaptation, but the core argument is historical: Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, now often ranked above Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” in all-time literary lists, began as a critical scandal. Contemporary reviewers recoiled at its brutality, and even The Economist preferred the comparative “vivacity” and “pathos” of “Jane Eyre.” Lloyd argues that canon formation turned on later reframing. Charlotte’s 1850 preface cast Emily as a singular, untamed genius shaped by the moors, helping establish a mythic author-image around the book. Only in the late 19th century did critics such as Swinburne begin systematically elevating it, and 20th-century modernists like Woolf converted its darkness from defect to virtue. The essay closes by noting that the Brontës’ achievement is inseparable from the misogynistic assumptions they wrote against, including skepticism that women could have produced such forceful fiction.

Why it matters

The Economist’s 2026 culture newsletter revisits the long-running critical contest between Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” and Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, prompted by a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”.

Key details

  • When both novels appeared in 1847, “Wuthering Heights” was widely condemned for cruelty and “unnatural horrors”, while The Economist praised “Jane Eyre” two months earlier as one of the most “striking” and “perfectly fresh” novels in years.
  • Charlotte Brontë helped rehabilitate Emily’s novel by issuing a new 1850 edition after Emily’s death and framing it in her preface as “moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath,” linking the book’s form and temperament to the Yorkshire moors.
  • According to Brontë biographer Lucasta Miller, “Wuthering Heights” remained relatively neglected until the late 19th century, when advocates such as poet Algernon Charles Swinburne elevated it; in the 20th century, Virginia Woolf called it a work of “gigantic ambition” and judged Emily “a greater poet than Charlotte.”
  • The piece also highlights 1840s gender prejudice: after rumors that “Currer Bell” was a woman, The Economist wrote it had “never believed, nor wished to believe it,” saying parts of the work would have been “odious” if written by a woman.
Cleaned source text

title: Plot Twist: The battle of the Brontës is back

author: The Economist

content_type: newsletter

publication: e.economist.com

published: 2026-02-18T10:29:55-06:00

source_url: gmail://19c719646eb11666

word_count: 1396

A bonus edition of Plot Twist

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February 18th 2026 For subscribers

Plot Twist

A weekly conversation about culture

The battle of the Brontës is back

Rachel Lloyd

Deputy culture editor

Welcome back to our bonus edition of Plot Twist, focusing on history. This month we are pondering the literary kind. The release of a new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” has reignited an argument that has been raging since the 1840s: is Emily Brontë’s novel better or worse than “Jane Eyre”, written by her sister Charlotte?

The two books have plenty in common: for starters, they both feature headstrong female characters entangled in complicated romances with brooding antiheroes. Yet “Wuthering Heights” is generally considered to be grittier and more complex. When literary critics rank the best books of all time, Emily’s story is often higher up the list than Charlotte’s.

“Wuthering Heights” has not always enjoyed a lofty reputation. When it was published in 1847, many found its characters’ cruelty disturbing. One critic said it was a story of “depravity and unnatural horrors”: “How a human being could have attempted such a book…without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery.”

The Economist_ , too, considered it “a most strange and mysterious story, calculated to excite any other feelings than those of pleasure.” We much preferred “Jane Eyre”, which we had reviewed two months earlier—and declared to be one of the most “striking” and “perfectly fresh” novels in years. “Wuthering Heights” did not have its counterpart’s “vivacity and its pathos”.

When did the critical consensus on Emily’s book begin to change? Charlotte played a part, publishing a new edition of the book in 1850, after Emily’s death. She wrote a preface that heralded her sibling as a solitary figure possessed by an unruly genius. Charlotte defended Emily’s book as “moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath”—a reflection of “the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors”.

Still, the book was largely forgotten until the late 19th century, Lucasta Miller, a biographer of the Brontës, says. At that point influential boosters such as Algernon Charles Swinburne, a poet, took up its case. In the 20th century, critics came to see the dark violence of Emily’s novel not as its sin, but its virtue. Virginia Woolf praised “Wuthering Heights” as a work of “gigantic ambition”: it “is a more difficult book to understand than ‘Jane Eyre’, because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte”.

Each reader is entitled to her opinion. (Call me soppy, but I prefer “Jane Eyre”.) Regardless of your camp, though, it is worth sparing a minute to marvel at the fact that Charlotte and Emily bothered to put pen to paper at all. Back in the 1840s it was unfathomable that women could demonstrate such startling creativity. Getting wind of the rumour that Currer Bell (Charlotte’s pseudonym) was a female author, _The Economist_ wrote that “we never believed, nor wished to believe it”, for aspects of the story “would have been odious in the writings of a woman”. Thank goodness the Brontës went ahead and wrote “Wuthering Heights” and “Jane Eyre” anyway.

Thank you for reading Plot Twist. Do you remember your initial impressions of “Wuthering Heights”? Let us know at plottwist@economist.com. Thanks to the many readers who told us what they think of ancient Rome. Bart Van den Bosch from Belgium thinks of “organisational efficiency” and “the first modern society”. Anne Davies from Geneva thinks of “lovable ancient ruins…fountains, statues, artwork”. Adam Judge from Maryland wonders: “If the Romans painted their statues and buildings in bright lively colours, does that mean that walking around ancient Rome the scenery would have been less like the solemn, tidy” place he imagines “and more like dropping in on Mardi Gras or Cancun?”

Editor’s picks

Must-read articles about Rome

From the archive

The Economist’s review of “Wuthering Heights” from 1848

Our critic, like many other readers at the time, was not a big fan of the novel

Gimme moors

Sex, sex and more sex: Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”

An outlandish take on Emily Brontë’s novel highlights the adaptation conundrum

Elena Ferrante and the Brontë sisters

The allure of literary anonymity

Elena Ferrante is in good company among women novelists hiding their identities

Making a masterpiece

How Charlotte Brontë came to write “Jane Eyre”

A new book seeks to discover the people and places that inspired the fiction

English fiction

Woman of substance

A vivid portrait of an angry writer

Plot Twist recommends

“ Emily”, on streaming platforms. This film fictionalises the short life of the author and the events that led her to write “Wuthering Heights”. It depicts her often-vexed relationship with her siblings, particularly Charlotte and Branwell, and imagines a formative, frustrated romance with a local curate. Emily—played by an excellent Emma Mackey—emerges as awkward, rebellious and fiercely talented.

There is an old saying that those who eat toasted cheese at night will dream of Lucifer. The author of ‘Wuthering Heights’ has evidently eaten toasted cheese.

— _Graham ’s _magazine, 1848

In case you missed our past bonus editions

▸| The straight truth about Roman roads

▸| How ripped should a Roman gladiator be?

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