What Did The Color Red Symbolize In ‘Wuthering Heights’?
Emerald Fennell’s latest adaptation of high school English Lit. classic, Wuthering Heights is not faithful to its source material or its historical era, but we give it a 10 out of 10 for pure unadulterated passion, and honestly costume and set design.
The color red was one of the more intriguing motifs woven throughout Margot Robbie’s various costumes, as well as the environment. Here’s all the different ways we broke down the symbolism of this artistic choice.
1. Violence
One of the first notable appearances of red is when Cathy goes to comfort Heathcliff after his beating, and notices he is bleeding. The small stains coming through his shirt represent both the violence enacted onto him, as well as his love for Cathy, the suffering he is willing to endure to protect her, and his loss of innocence.
When we see the older version of Heathcliff, and the many scars on his back, we realize how a childhood and adolescence full of abuse has permanently marked him, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. The butchering of the pig in the courtyard later illustrates the violence and filth of the work he is tasked with, and the gap it creates between him and Cathy. The things he is capable of withstanding are still things she needs to be shielded from.
2. Sexuality
That same scene has another meaning for Cathy’s character entirely. The “staining” of her skirts as she walks through the “threshold” and embarrassment she faces because of it are symbolic of menstruation and her reaching sexual maturity. In the context of her growing attraction to Heathcliff, it represents the way her loss of innocence looks different from his.
She understands that her father’s alcoholism and squandering of the family fortune will leave her destitute, and marriage is her only emergency parachute. She must battle her own sexuality and growing appetite for Heathcliff with the world’s appetite for her own sexuality. It’s both a power she wields, and a prison she cannot escape.
We see this illustrated throughout the evolution of her wardrobe. The stark contrast between whites and reds represents the dichotomy of purity and lust associated with female sexuality. She must be the “virginal wife” but also inspire lust in the men around her to manipulate them for her own self-preservation.
3. Rising Tensions
Red works its way up different surfaces throughout the film. It may start out as a ribbon bordering the hem of Cathy’s dress in one scene, and then a little later, her entire skirt is made of a red latex-like material. The same is true of the environments. The pig’s blood in the courtyard manifests to the red floors of Thrushcross Grange, and eventually the color takes over an entire hallway, which embodies Heathcliff’s complete devastation when he comes to see Cathy’s body.
Whether it’s their romance or their heartbreak, the intensity and frequency of the color increases as these chaotic and tumultuous aspects of the film heighten over time. They cannot be avoided or squashed, and the inevitability of the tragedy becomes all the more tangible through the accompanying visuals.
4. Cathy and Edgar As Complete Opposites
It’s no coincidence that we go on to see that Edgar’s bedroom is entirely green—the perfect depiction of him as the complete antithesis of Cathy, as well as her and Heathcliff’s violent passions, but it’s also pointedly the color associated with envy.
He knows what’s going on behind his back, and there is nothing he can do to stop it. It’s notably his decision (backed up by Nelly) to do “nothing” and ice his wife out during her “tantrum” that leads to Cathy’s demise.
5. Fatality
Emerald Fennell herself has spoken to outlets about this motif, and explained the decision was about the fatality of the story itself:
It felt like it needed this sort of arterial channel kind of through it, and so, the use of color and the use of shape were really important to me as kind of one of the, like, gothic motifs. But, yes, I think it was important that we had those kind of, like, visual signals, the expressionist kind of way of working that, you know, me and Linus (Sandgren) really like to make movies that you could understand emotionally with the sound off.
This rationale also ties in perfectly into the cause of death she rewrote for her leading lady. Cathy famously dies during premature childbirth in the novel, but Fennell flips the script and gives Cathy sepsis. The fact that they label this intentionally, after Nelly fails to believe Cathy when she says she lost the baby, links back to the visuals. By the time Heathcliff reaches that entirely red hallway, Cathy has been killed by the blood infection, and her pale grey face shows how the life/blood has left her body.
Final Takeaways
All of this symbolism may confuse some viewers because it’s applied so broadly to so many different aspects of the plot, characters, themes, and relationships, but hopefully it cues everyone to at least one of the areas our attention was being drawn to. Not everyone was a fan of the disruptive nature the color brought to the film, but that was intentional. We weren’t supposed to fully suspend our disbelief, lose ourselves in the romance, and forget we were watching a piece of art. Fennell kept us fully aware and alert and pushed the deeper meaning to the forefront for us until the credits rolled.