The 'radical transformation' of the Red House Museum

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner has an article concerning the closure of the Red House Museum among others in the area.

Councillors will be asked to agree the sell-off of some of Kirklees museums.
A plan to create a new Huddersfield Museum and Art Gallery looks set to move forward.
But three museums may close as Kirklees aims to cut £531,000 from the £1m museums budget.
The controversial plan includes axing Tolson Museum along with Dewsbury Museum in Crow Nest Park and Red House Museum at Gomersal – a showcase venue for Kirklees’ links with Charlotte Brontë.
At a meeting on Monday, Kirklees Council’s Cabinet members will be asked to give authority to the council’s chief executive to invite expressions of interest in the sites and buildings that are no longer required.
Cabinet Member for Creative Kirklees, Clr Graham Turner, said that the proposals had been drawn up following consultation with staff and the public.
He said: “Obviously the majority of people wanted to keep all the museums.
“During our budget consultation in January, 55% of people wanted the collections where they are, but 45% felt we should display exhibitions in community and business venues.
“We have responded to this in the vision by proposing a mix of site based activities and other opportunities.
“It is clear that many residents love and value the buildings we have, but if we do not close any of the sites it will be impossible to achieve the savings we need to make.
“With a constantly diminishing budget, we have to change the cultural offer. But I believe the proposed changes will ensure that we can deliver a service for the residents of Kirklees that tells our story in a different and more up to date way.
“Changing lifestyles and increasing culture and leisure choices mean that the museum and galleries service needs to radically transform if it is to be relevant and resilient in the 21st century and make an impact on the district’s priorities.
“It is vital that Kirklees continues to support a strong cultural offer.” (Nick Lavigueur)

Closing down a museum is a 'radical transformation' indeed! If you haven't done so yet, click here to sign our petition.

What'sOnStage has a video of rehearsals for the Villette play on stage at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

We popped into rehearsals for Villette at West Yorkshire Playhouse to chat to director Mark Rosenblatt and find out more about the radical reimagining of Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre.
On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth, this new adaptation by Yorkshire writer Linda Marshall-Griffiths celebrates her unique genius. (Ben Hewis)

Selected Shorts features Reader, I Married Him.

Guest host Cynthia Nixon presents a celebration of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
To mark the 200th anniversary of the classic novel, the writer Tracy Chevalier was approached to create an anthology, inviting contemporary writers to pen stories inspired by it.  The result was Reader, I Married Him:  Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre.  We invited Chevalier and some of her authors to a special evening at Symphony Space.
On this program, you’ll hear Tony Award winner Joanna Gleason (“Into the Woods”) read from the original.  Then, a rebuttal from Rochester, in Salley Vickers’ “Reader, She Married Me.”  Vickers’ novels include Miss Garnet’s Angel, Mr. Golightly’s Holiday, and The Cleaner of Chartres.  Reader Chris Sarandon’s films include “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Princess Bride,” and “Fright Night.” On television he’s appeared in “Orange is the New Black,” “The Good Wife,” and “Law & Order: SVU,” among other shows.
Our final story is by Audrey Niffenegger, who chose to look at an earlier period in Jane Eyre’s difficult life: her time at the orphanage.  But typically for the author of fantasy-tinged novels The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, and a favorite story of ours, “The Night Bookmobile,” this Jane has been transported to a dystopian world that is not Eyre’s London.   “The Orphan Exchange,” is read by Tovah Feldshuh, whose long career on stage, film and television includes roles in “Golda’s Balcony” and “Yentl,” “Holocaust” and “Law & Order,” and most recently “The Walking Dead.”

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Impact wonders whether Mr Rochester is a sinner or a saviour.

Charlotte Bronte’s Edward Rochester is a troubled, complex character, burning with a sense of pain and melancholia at his deranged wife’s condition, and his duty to tend to her lunacy by cocooning her in the attic of his manor.
This is, of course, the main point of contention between those who see Rochester as a sympathetic Samaritan and those who consider him a cruel captor. (Olivia Nichole Kittle) (Read more)

Virtue Online remarks on the fact that

Victorian literature does not shy away from exploring the tension between representation and reality. Charles Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell, and the Brontë sisters, in particular, focus on the ways in which the middle-class family could be troubled or unhappy or broken. (Jules Gomes)

A.V. Club reviews Meat Cake Bible by Dame Darcy.

What is Meat Cake about? Women, mostly, and girls, who inhabit a claustrophobic neo-Victorian landscape that seems to have been constructed out of jumbled memories of a kid stuck home with a fever for a week and binging on the Brontë sisters. (In 2006 Darcy illustrated an edition of Jane Eyre, surely one of the most perfect such pairings imaginable.) (Tim O’Neil)

This list of '11 Desk Accessories Every Book-Lover Needs In Their Working Space' compiled by Bustle is highly tempting. One of the items has a direct Jane Eyre reference:

7. A Literary Candle
Who doesn't want their room to smell like their favorite book? Now your very own desk can have the scent of Sherlock's study, Jane Eyre's rose garden, or Alice's mad tea party. These soy candles are based on locations in literary classics, and they're perfect for creating a relaxed work atmosphere.
Literary Candles, $16.00, Uncommon Goods (Charlotte Ahlin)

Straits Times reviews the music album Pigeonheart by DM Stith and finds that,

Each song usually begins quietly, without fanfare, before it unfurls its myriad shades.
"What would I do with your love right now/forehead to the door, keep you pounding outside," begins Sawtooth, with him babbling like a silly, lovelorn Heathcliff over incongruously bouncy disco beats. (Yeow Kai Chai)

Many sites date the publication of Jane Eyre as the 26th September 1847 but the actual date is 16th  October. BookRiot celebrates the 169th anniversary of its publication on the wrong date but the selection of '16 beautiful Jane Eyre book covers' is truly lovely regardless.

Nostalgia and Homesickness

A new Brontë-related thesis:

The Afflicted Imagination’: Nostalgia and Homesickness in the Writing of Emily Brontë
by James Thomas Quinnell
Doctoral thesis, Durham University, 2016

This thesis discusses homesickness and nostalgia as conditions that ‘afflict’ to productive ends the writing of Emily Brontë. Homesickness and nostalgia are situated as impelling both Brontë’s poetry and Wuthering Heights. To elucidate these states, close attention is paid to Emily Brontë’s poetry as well as Wuthering Heights, in the belief that the poetry repays detailed examination of a kind it rarely receives (even fine work by critics such as Janet Gezari tend not to scrutinise the poetry as attentively as it deserves) and that the novel benefits from being related to the poetry. Building on the work of Irene Tayler and others, this thesis views Brontë as a post-Romantic, and particularly post-Wordsworthian, poet. Much of her writing is presented as engaging in dialogue with the concerns in Wordsworth’s poetry, especially his ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’; her poetry and prose eschew Wordsworth’s ‘simple creed’ and explore ‘obstinate questionings’. In so doing, they follow his own lead; Brontë brings out how complex the Romantics are.
Chapter one focuses on the idea of restlessness as stirring a search for home. Chapters two and three, on Catholicism and Irishness respectively reflect on ways in which Emily Brontë used contemporary national debates in exploring imaginatively states of homesickness and nostalgia. The conceiving of another time and place to find a home in these chapters is developed in chapter four. This chapter considers Brontë’s internalisation of a home in her imaginative world of Gondal and argues for Gondal’s relevance. An imaginative home formed in childhood leads into chapter five which discusses Emily Brontë’s presentation of childhood; the chapter contends that Brontë imagines the child as lost and homesick, and rejects any ‘simple creed’ of childhood. Chapter six, which starts with the abandoned child in Wuthering Heights, focuses on the the novel as stirring a longing for home. The inability to find home, and particularly the rejection of heaven as a home, leads into a discussion of the ghostly as an expression of homesickness in the final chapter.

Read More

The likely closure of the Red House museum

Sad news concerning the Red House Museum reported by The Telegraph and Argus.

A museum with close links to the Brontes is set to close next month under key proposals to restructure museums and galleries in Kirklees.
Red House Museum in Gomersal is one of two museums that are recommended for closure as Kirklees Council centres on retaining three museum venues as part of its new vision for culture in the district. [...]
But it is the historic Red House, where Charlotte Bronte was a frequent visitor, immortalising the house in her second novel, Shirley, as well as Dewsbury Museum that are set for closure.
John Thirwell, chairman of the Brontë Society, said: "The Brontë Society is concerned and saddened to learn of the likely closure of Red House in Gomersal.
"However, we look forward to continuing our conversations with Kirklees Council to explore how the Brontes’ links with this historic building and the local community are not lost."
Local councillor David Hall (Con, Liversedge and Gomersal), leader of the Conservative group on the council, said he was disappointed at the recommendations.
“I would have hoped that the council could have come up with some innovative ways of keeping this facility open,” he said.
“Maybe teaming the site management with the public hall next door which itself is under threat.
“My fear is that if the museum closes it will fall into ruin unless a buyer is found imminently, and that would be a tragedy for Gomersal and for Kirklees.”
If Cabinet members agree to the proposals, expressions of interest will be invited for those museums that are no longer required. Collections will also be transferred to other museum buildings or to a storage facility. [...]
It is expected that Red House and Dewsbury Museum will stay open until at least the end of next month. (Jo Winrow)

If you haven't signed our petition yet, please do so.

Impact has chosen Polly Teale's After Mrs Rochester as the book of the month.

Impact Arts goes rogue this month, featuring a play rather than a book for this edition of Book Of The Month. What better way to celebrate all things Bronte than sinking your teeth into a work whose brilliance was inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre? A must have on the bookshelf of any Bronte lover.
After Mrs Rochester is a play that ties Brontë, Rhys and Teale together, showing the life of Jean Rhys and her true connections to the original Jane Eyre character, Bertha Mason. Set in one room in the Devon countryside, Teale creates her own ‘madwoman in the attic’ who refuses to open the door to the rest of the world. In two acts, Rhys’ life is panned out in front of us… Or is it Bertha’s? [...]
The play isn’t long, but it won’t let you put it down when you read it. The pace is quick, flitting between the past and present of Rhys’ life, a pleasure for any Jane Eyre or Wide Sargasso Sea fan. It would be recommended to read both texts before tackling Teale, not for understanding, but simply to gain a larger insight into the references made to the two fantastic pieces of literature. Teale, herself, has created an incredible adaptation that will leave you wanting more.
Easily 10/10, alongside women and madness literature such as Sargasso and The Yellow Wallpaper. (Jessica Rushton)

CCTV features the Chinese stage production of Jane Eyre which is making a comeback at  the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing on Thursday.

Jane Eyre -- a name that resonates in the hearts and minds of countless women young and old. It also represents a love story which overcomes all obstacles of time and social class.
The Chinese production of Charlotte Bronte’s much adored classic has won over audiences across the country in all 100 showings. It is now returning to Beijing's NCPA to the delight of Chinese fans.
"The beauty of theater art is that every time we make a new rendition of a play, we always find something new, whether it's the lines, the actors' performances. Unlike movies, you don't get the chance to make several takes, but you could always revisit the play and try to perfect it," said Wang Xiaoying, director of "Jane Eyre". [...]
Actress Yuan Quan, who played Jane Eyre in the play's debut in 2009, returns to the stage as the heroine once again.
"I’m as devoted to the role as ever. It’s my most adored role. It accompanied me growing up. Even after all these years, I can still find a spiritual nourishment from the role. It's as if I have gained some positive energy. If a play can give one actress that feeling, it must contain strength from faith alone," Yuan said.
And Wang Luoyong, who broke a western dominance on Broadway, is cast as the enigmatic master of Thornfield Hall, Edward Rochester.
He says his early days on Broadway helps him find the inner rage of Rochester.
The actors and actresses will take audiences through a thrilling, emotional journey at the NCPA from September 29th til October 6th.

Bustle has selected '10 Scary Stories For People Who Don't Like Horror' and one of them is

2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
A lot of people forget that Wuthering Heights has an actual ghost in it. Sure, Catherine's ghost could easily be a figment of Lockwood's imagination... but leaving it vague actually makes it even spookier. Plus, Heathcliff's whole domestic set up is pretty creepy. Wuthering Heights definitely doesn't belong in the horror section, but it is a Gothic novel with plenty of eerie (but not scary) elements to it. (Charlotte Ahlin)

Slant Magazine refers to Andrea Arnold's take on the novel in passing:

Arnold’s prior work has been high-concept while too direct in its camera language to be considered structuralist, the lens typically hovering within inches of actors’ faces—inviting moviegoers to consider the characters’ perspectives, using the screen as a sharp line of separation. Her 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights made Heathcliff both black and essentially mute, anchoring emotional presence, if not the entire frame itself, with her leading man while inviting the viewer to quietly weigh Heathcliff’s sensory impressions against their own. (Steve Macfarlane)

MangiaLibri (Italy) reviews Il pensiero religioso di una poetessa inglese del secolo XIX by our Emilia Giovanna Brontë.

Intorno al 1850 i moti spirituali e culturali di Haworth (West Yorkshire) assumono un semplice e infinito carattere. Sono soprattutto i Brontë ad attrarre l’interesse generale: e non solo del villaggio, ma di ogni persona colta, in modo speciale dei posteri e di non pochi animi eletti. Delle Brontë della contea, “Carlotta è la più conosciuta, sotto lo pseudonimo di romanziera, Currer Bell. Ma Emilia è la figura di gran lunga più originale”. Il cuore di Emily (1818-1848), difatti, alias Ellis Bell, “donna poeta” e autrice di uno dei più grandi e famosi romanzi del secolo XIX, Wuthering Heights, è tutto rivolto alla natura e ai più intimi affetti: sicché, in questa necessità di pensiero, non troviamo la sola educazione, ma l’abito di tutta una vita, “modestissima e solitaria, […] libera e spontanea”. Non per niente il fascino della poetessa si riverbera su ogni gesto e dentro ogni parola, e risente delle grandi forze, dell’ambiente e dell’anima profonda dei moors in cui vive. “La casa essendo sull’orlo dell’altipiano, prospettava sui moors. In quelli vagavano i bambini; e quelli con la loro severa poesia educavano, più che i libri, l’animo di Emilia”... (Amalia Lauritano) (Translation)

The pronunciation of Brontë is briefly touched upon by Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). Journey to Ambeth tells about a visit to the George Hotel in Hathersage, which we wouldn't go as far as describing as 'once a favourite haunt of Charlotte Bronte' though. Shoshi's Book Blog and Książki Moni (in Polish) both post about Wuthering Heights, A Quirky Kook shares pictures from a recent walk on Haworth moor.

Read More

Shirley in Dewsbury

The Dangerous to Know theatre company presents their new production, an adaptation of Shirley in Dewsbury:

Dangerous to Know presents
Shirley
27/09/2016
Doors @ 7 to begin at 7.30
The Parish Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Woodkirk, Dewsbury Rd, Leeds WF12 7JL

Shirley is an unapologetic, all-guns-blazing conception of Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel of the same name.
Set during the perfect storm of British workforce rebellion and violent international unrest, the piece reveals that the politics of work, war and love will not change while we are short of powerful, unified and positive calls to action. An eerie pre-echo of the UK’s current zeitgeist, this adaptation moulds Brontë’s hyperactive, multilinear plot into a slick, eloquent but vociferous appeal for reason and alliance.
This performance will be script in hand – the perfect opportunity to see Dangerous To Know’s latest work-in-progress!

Read More

Scholarly ambitions

The New Yorker features Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series.

Although social issues aren’t excluded from French’s first two novels—both involve schemes to raze a rare old property in order to build a profitable new one—they cluster at the periphery of a crisis with deeper roots. The images and language are archetypal, the stuff of ballads (“And who is it waiting on the riverbank . . .”) and fairy tales (Cassie imagines sewing herself and Lexie “together at the edges with my own hands,” like Wendy reattaching Peter Pan’s shadow). This is the terrain of the gothic, a fictional mode that, at its best (“Jane Eyre,” the novels and stories of Shirley Jackson), scrutinizes the boundary between the inner self and the outer world and finds it permeable. Identity is its abiding theme, and the house, a proxy for the psyche, is its organizing motif. (Laura Miller)

This columnist from The Chronicle of Higher Education talks about his early ambitions:

Like most would-be academics, I had dreams of a library book with my name on it. A book with a colon in the title and footnotes at the back. A book lodged in some quiet corner of a university library, to be discovered generations hence by an earnest graduate student researching the influence of intelligent design on Charles Darwin, and/or the poetry of Emily Brontë (my scholarly interests were somewhat in flux.)
Alas, it was not to be. (Noah Berlatsky)

Aftenposten (Norway) tells of the conclusion drawn by a professor after reading Claire Harman's biography of Charlotte Brontë.

Marianne Egeland, professor i litteraturvitenskap ved Universitetet i Oslo, understreker at virkelighetslitteratur slett ikke er noe nytt fenomen.
– Selv satt jeg i sommer og leste en biografi om den engelske dikteren Charlotte Brontë i forbindelse med 200-årsjubileet for hennes fødsel. Det viser seg at mye av det hun skriver om, har hendt. (Halvor Hegtun and Kristin Jonassen Nordby) (Translation)

An alert from the New Bern-Craven County Public Library via New Bern Sun Journal:

Let’s Talk About It is scheduled at 7 p.m. for a discussion of the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The session will be led by visiting scholar Helena Feder from East Carolina University. (Charlie Hall)

The Silver Petticoat Review posts about Jane Eyre 2006 on its tenth anniversary (!!). AnneBrontë.org discusses Anne Brontë's trip to the opera.

Read More

New Study Guides

Some new student study guides of Brontë novels:

Study and Revise for GCSE: Jane Eyre
Mike Jones
Hodder Education
ISBN: 9781471853609
Published: 27/05/2016

Enable students to achieve their best grade in GCSE English Literature with this year-round course companion; designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise Jane Eyre throughout the course.
This Study and Revise guide:
- Increases students' knowledge of Jane Eyre as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced teachers and examiners.
- Develops understanding of plot, characterisation, themes and language, equipping students with a rich bank of textual examples to enhance their exam responses.
- Builds critical and analytical skills through challenging, thought-provoking questions that encourage students to form their own personal responses to the text. (...)

Study and Revise for AS/A-level: Wuthering Heights
Andrew Green
Hodder Education
ISBN: 9781471854286
Published: 27/05/2016
Extent: 112 pages

Read More

"Why Bronte? Because it serves bran well?"

The New York Post posts about Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why by Sady Doyle:

Luckily, not every trainwreck is permanently shattered. In 1844, Charlotte Brontë melted down after she was ghosted by the object of her affections. As a young woman, she spent her childhood making up stories with her sisters, but she understood that her gender made the dream of a literary career impossible. Then she met Monsieur Constantin Heger, the intimidating, married proprietor of a girls school in Belgium where both Charlotte and Emily Brontë worked as teachers.
Heger took a professorial interest in Charlotte, encouraging her writing, lending her books to read and giving her special assignments. From Brontë’s point of view, at least, the two developed a passionate, enduring connection (it’s unclear if it was ever consummated, or even really reciprocated). Either way, Heger’s wife was not particularly fond of her husband’s adoring

protégé, and when Brontë left her job at the school, Heger cut off contact.
Brontë was heartbroken and wrote him letter after letter, each one more hysterical than the next. However, a few years later she bounced back and retaliated, Taylor Swift style. She wrote a series of novels about young women’s affairs with cold, older men — under a male pseudonym at first — including “Jane Eyre.” (Rachelle Bergstein)

The Straits Times (Singapore) presents the novel The Ornatrix by Kate Howard:

She also works in the university's trade union. Her long list of literary influences is heavily British, including the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. (Lee Jian Xuan)

The Derbyshire Times tells the story of Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall and also adds how

The hall itself has been the setting for films such as Jane Eyre, The Princess Bride and Pride and Prejudice, so you may well spot this lovely place in many a starring role.

#amReading recommends Gothic novels if you like the Brontë Sisters. The list begins with a novel of Anne Brontë, who happens to be a Brontë sister too:

 1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
If you’ve only read the works of her more prominent sisters, you should definitely check out this book by Anne Brontë. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tells the story of a mysterious young widow who takes up residence at Wildfell Hall. (Aubrey Fredrickson)

A reader of the Portland Press Reader mentions Jane by April Lindner:

I’m late to being a Springsteen fan (I’m a classical music woman) but have come to appreciate him. I found much about the thoughts of a serious rock musician in the book “Jane” by April Lindner. She used his personality in a retelling of the famous novel “Jane Eyre,” making his personality that of the dark, brooding hero. (Marilyn Crowley)

The Sunday Times reviews the restaurant Bronte in Trafalgar Square and a Brontë joke was unavoidable:

Now it’s been taken over and redesigned by Tom Dixon and called Bronte. Why Bronte? Because it serves bran well? No, because Nelson, the bloke on the post outside, was the first Duke of Bronté. (AA Gill)

361 Magazine (Italy) lists several literary England destinations:

Haworth
Non è possibile pensare ai romanzi delle sorelle Brontë senza far riferimento alla brughiera, affascinante paesaggio che fa da cornice alle opere delle sorelle scrittrici. E infatti è ad Haworth, immerso nel tipico selvaggio habitat dell’Inghilterra, che Emily, Charlotte e Anne vissero, tanto da far prendere alla zona il nome di Brontë Country. In questo villaggio della contea del West Yorkshire le sorelle crebbero respirando quell’atmosfera suggestiva che poi avrebbero impresso nei propri romanzi. Nella casa georgiana in cui le tre abitarono dal 1820 e in cui diedero origine ai loro celebri romanzi, è ospitato oggi il Brontë Personage Museum. Nei dintorni di Haworth sorge invece il Top Withens, una fattoria che pare abbia ispirato la casa di Heathcliff in Cime Tempestose. Ma numerosi sono i luoghi collegati alle sorelle e alle loro opere. Camminando per la brughiera dei dintorni, si può incorrere ad esempio nelle Brontë Waterfall, il Brontë Bridge o il Penistone Crag, la “grotta delle fate” menzionata più volte in Cime Tempestose. (Giorgia Lo Iacono) (Translation)

Il Librario (Italy) explores how attitudes about marriage have changed with time in literature:

Pensate a Jane Austen o a Elizabeth Gaskell, alle sorelle Brontë: la vita matrimoniale non interessa più, la protagonista celebra se stessa e la propria adultità con un patto, un contratto che la legittima come parte viva della società. Ma poi? Qualcosa s’incrina: basta leggere Middlemarch o Ritratto di signora per accorgersi che l’idea di matrimonio come prescrizione sociale rasserenante è entrata in crisi, e anzi la delusione delle aspettative iniziali accende un incredibile (e ancora attualissimo) motore narrativo. (Gloria Ghioni) (Translation)

Infobae (Argentina) discusses why we use the derogatory term 'chick lit' and not 'boy lit', for instance:

Hay cuentos y novelas escritas por hombres y por mujeres. Eso es literatura. Sin embargo, mayormente es así, a secas, cuando el autor es un varón. Si no, es "literatura femenina". Como si la visión del mundo sólo fuera universal cuando es de ellos. En Madame Bovary (1856), Gustave Flaubèrt habla de amor, de inconformismo y de adulterio, pero lo suyo es "realismo", mientras que a las hermanas Brontë, aunque todas sus obras son clásicos, se las encasilla en "romántico". (Daniela Pasik) (Translation)

Finally, a possible first edition of Villette will be on sale next September 29th. The George Mason friends (Fairfax County Public Library) have more information here.

Read More

Events at Wycoller

A couple of alerts for today, September 25. Both of them in Wycoller Country Park:

Walk & Ride Festival
Brontës and the Atom
Sunday 25th September. Start: 11:00
Duration: 4 hours
Distance: 6.5 miles
Grading: Medium

A walk to celebrate Charlotte Brontë's bi-centenary and The Atoms 10th anniversary. Fosters Leap Wycoller Dene and on the Brontë and Pendle Way through Germany to Wycoller village (and cafe) and back to the starting point.

Jane Eyre off the page! In Brontë Lancashire
by Pendle Borough Council
Sun 25 September 2016
14:30 – 15:45
The Aisled Barn
Wycoller, Wycoller Country Park
Near Colne, United Kingdom

To celebrate Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary in Bronte Lancashire. Join Sue Newby from the Brontë Parsonage Museum to bring Jane Eyre off the page in Wycoller, Lancashire.  With a really simple script and costumes we’ll re-create the early part of Jane’s story. Together we’ll dramatise her time with the awful Reed family and then her banishment to the most horrible school in literature – Lowood. Everyone gets to join in this FREE workshop. It’s suitable for children aged 8 years and above and all families are welcome - no drama skills required! (...)
After the workshop, enjoy visiting the atmospheric village which inspired the Brontës including the ruined hall which is the real Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre.

Read More

Branwell's death anniversary and Ponden Hall (through a ghost story)

A little belatedly we report the nomination of Ponden Hall in the 2016 Dorset Cereals B&B awards. In The Guardian:

Boasting a stunning location on the Pennine Way, Ponden Hall is a must-visit for literary enthusiasts. Built in 1634, the Brontë children visited the hall regularly, using the library. “Branwell Brontë wrote a short ghost story about the house,” Akhurst says, “and there is compelling evidence that Ponden provided inspiration for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. One of our three guest bedrooms, the Earnshaw Room, houses the ‘Cathy window’ – in the book, Cathy’s ghost tries to get in the house through the window when she’s searching for Heathcliff.”
To make the room even more special, Akhurst commissioned an 18th-century-style box bed like the one described in Wuthering Heights. With such attention to literary detail, it’s easy to see why Ponden Hall has welcomed famous writers, including Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring), and TV dramatist Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley).
Most guests come to Ponden Hall on the Brontë trail, so Akhurst recommends walks to the Brontë Waterfall, or to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse set in the exposed moorland location that inspired Wuthering Heights. Over the border into Lancashire, historic Wycoller Hall is thought to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
More Brontë history abounds in Haworth, at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where the literary family lived, and Akhurst used to work. For foodies, Akhurst recommends 10 the coffee house for coffee and cakes, Embers restaurant for dining, and, “For something more unusual, join a reading group at Cobbles and Clay cafe.”

Coincidentally, Vesna Armstrong Photography posts several pictures of Ponden Hall.

LitReactor posts a vindication of Branwell Brontë, on the 168th anniversary of his death and at the verge of next year's Branwell's own Brontë200:

Branwell Brontë died 168 years ago this weekend, on September 24th, 1848.  His cause of death was listed as “chronic bronchitis and marasmus”, a polite way of saying he was a coughing, half-starved, alcoholic, laudanum-addicted wreck who finally, mercifully, proved unequal to the struggle of drawing breath.
He lived just long enough to witness the first glimmering of what his sisters would become – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were published in 1847, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848.  This cannot have helped his condition. Once, too, Branwell had dreamed of becoming a celebrated author, but, like his other plan to set the world on fire as a renowned poet and portrait-painter, or to marry his one great love, his literary ambition had dissolved into the bottom of a brandy glass.  Charlotte, Emily and Anne deliberately kept Branwell out of discussions about their work. They knew their success would choke him.
They failed, however, to keep Branwell out of the legends that grew up after their deaths. He only published a few poems in his local newspapers during his lifetime, but Branwell’s name is forever associated with the nineteenth century classic novels written by his sisters.  The Brontë label is a powerful one, conjuring up lowering skies, windswept moors, unbridled passion and haunting poetry.  Although Emily, Anne and Charlotte’s novels are all unique, common threads run through all of the books. Theirs was the Romantic impulse at its most pure and intense. (Karina Wilson) (Read more)

BBC's Radio 4 in Four lists some baddies we love to love. Including:

3. Heathcliff
Since its publication in 1847, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has become one of the most admired and popular of all English novels. Heathcliff is more often thought of as a romantic hero, because of his love for Cathy than for his later years of retribution. In the second part of the novel he grows into a vicious, haunted man. His complicated, mesmeric and peculiar nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain.

The New York Times reviews The Bestseller Code by Jodie Marcher and Matthew L. Jockers:

Nonetheless, there’s an awkward charm in watching an algorithm discern the things that humans appreciate instinctively. In a section about syntax, Archer and Jockers point to “Reader, I married him,” Charlotte Brontë’s famous line. “Isn’t the entire point of so many stories to get that ‘I’ and that ‘him’ closely aligned, separated by an all-important verb like ‘married’?” they write. “So often, this is entirely why we keep turning the pages.” (Jia Tolentino)

Richard and Judy in The Daily Express disagree with the choice of Emily Blunt for the The Girl on the Train film:

But really – though I understand the pressures on producers to cast beautiful women in lead roles – it’s pretty ridiculous. I can’t watch Victoria because Jenna Coleman is so spectacularly lovely (although that doesn’t stop Richard) and Queen Victoria simply wasn’t.
It’s a shame. It would be like casting Marilyn Monroe as Jane Eyre. A travesty.

The Globe and Mail reviews Emma Donoghue's The Wonder:

One of the book’s most arresting phrases is about Anna’s last day of eating. First, communion is “the end of being a child.” Another strong refrain comes from Psalms: “[S]trange children have faded away.” Following the trail of novels such as Oliver Twist or Jane Eyre, the stop sign on childhood comes too soon, and this story’s conflict fades rather quickly as well. The Wonder’s ending fits a Victorian tale, but it could have used a little more salt. (Alix Hawley)

The Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune reviews the same novel:

So many things are right in this novel that I wished — almost angrily — that a few things had been better, most particularly the dialogues in which characters tell each other things for no reason except that the reader needs to know them. And the ending struck me as contrived. But then, I could say the same about “Jane Eyre,” which I love. The bottom line: Read it. The important things will stay with you while the clumsy ones will fade from memory. (Patricia Hagen)

The New York Observer is very critical with the producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who thinks that Hollywood is failing at the young male audience:

Perhaps, Lorenzo, you oily insider from the executive suite, you approached your in-house focus group – your sons, 18 and 15. Possibly, they were bellyaching that they had to readWuthering Heights in AP English – a novel BY A WOMAN — or attended a school-imposed workshop on how not to rape a sleeping co-ed.  (Thelma Adams)

The National visits the FutureFest in London:

The Tobacco Dock is a gated thoroughfare filled with glass box-rooms. And I couldn’t help but feel the echoes of the original Crystal Palace “Great Exhibition” of 1851, where Darwin, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and thousands of others gazed upon the inventive and productive plenty of the British Empire. (Pat Kane)

Bustle has a list of reader types:

1, The Classics Reader
This reader can often be found at rare bookstores, trying to track down the perfect copy of Jane Eyre. They've read every classic — not for class, for fun — and you're pretty sure that 80% of the things they say are actually book quotes. They're very sophisticated, and when you're looking for classy conversation, this is your go-to reader friend. (Julia Seales)

The Georgia Straight asks the author Kevin Patterson about the book that changed his life:

There is a window in adolescence and early adulthood when one is open to being rocked by books in a way that does not persist long enough. That feeling of watching a movie play in one’s thoughts, of losing even the sense of turning pages: for a lot of us it was Jane Austen, for others Tolkein (sic) , one of the Brontës, or Hemingway.

Jezebel discusses the apparent 'rise of the sexy period drama':

The costume drama, the argument goes, was once a reliable straight adaptation where sex was a mere afterthought, less valued than a lovingly accurate depiction of either source material or subject matter. It’s where Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the Brontes and important men of genius found a modern audience; it’s where the best of British culture and history was simultaneously preserved and adapted. The genre, it would seem, has devolved into a melodramatic romp in which important novels and influential historical figures are reduced to lumps of lusty flesh. A handful of critics bemoan the sexy costume drama and point to the usual suspects: the inevitable dumbing down of culture, Hollywood, and, of course, women. (Stassa Edwards)

El País (Spain) reviews The Houses of the Russians by Robert Aickman:

Como si Roald Dahl y Lovecraft hubieran tenido un hijo secreto (al fin y al cabo, esto es ficción) y lo hubieran mandado a los páramos de Cumbres borrascosas. O al Hotel Fawlty. (Carlos Primo) (Translation)

La Razón (Spain) reviews the film Lady Macbeth by William Oldroyd:

La trama ambientada en el siglo XIX se inspira en Shakespeare –poquito- y en la obra de Nikolai Leskov, quien ya andaba en la famosa película de Andrzej Wajda “Lady Macbeth en Siberia”. Este film acaba pareciéndose más a “Cumbres borrascosas”, eso sí, con muchos asesinatos. Francamente inútil. (Carlos Pumares) (Translation)

El País's Cinemanía (Spain) thinks more or less the same:

Como Cumbres borrascosas protagonizada por el estrangulador de Boston, digo yo. Lady Macbeth es la historia de Katherine (sí, como Catherine Earnshaw), una joven recién casada en un matrimonio de conveniencia a la que Oldroyd nos presenta como una víctima de la brutalidad de su marido y su suegro. (Andrea G. Bermejo) (Translation)

Página 12 (Argentina) describes the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in the Patagonia:

Las cumbres borrascosas del Paine –un nombre que significa azul y que, contradiciendo a Emily Brontë, “no traduce bien los rigores que allí desencadena el viento cuando hay tempestad”– nos dicen adiós. (Graciela Cutuli) (Translation)

The Queen's University Journal (Canada) thinks that Shakespeare is overrated. Not really a good idea to use the Brontës (big fans) to build up the notion:

The notion of star-crossed lovers: Try reading Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. Loss of innocence: Just pick up Lord of the Flies. Death, honour and revenge:Hello, Harry Potter, anyone? (Gabi Sandler & Clayton Tomlinson)

According to GraphoMania (Italy) Wuthering Heights was one of the favourite books of Henry Miller; this Vogue China photoshot is called Wuthering Heights. Bookstr talks about the Morgan Library exhibition on Charlotte Brontë.

Read More

Villette Re-imagined in Leeds

The West Yorkshire Playhouse Brontë season continues with a very singular new adaptation of Villette:

Villette
by Charlotte Brontë
Re-imagined by Linda Marshall-Griffiths
September 24th to October 15th (Post Show Discussion Wed 5 Oct)
Courtyard Theatre
Leeds

Lucy Snowe, alone and abandoned, boards a boat in search of purpose.
Arriving at an archaeological site digging for the remains of the elusive Lady of Villette, she works alongside the beautiful Gin, the prying Beck, the charming Dr John and the remote Professor Paul, though Lucy remains an outsider.
Absorbed in her work to find a cure for the next pandemic to secure humanity’s future, can she open herself up to the possibility of love and put the bones of the past behind her?
On the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, West Yorkshire Playhouse celebrates her unique genius with a daring new adaptation by a fellow Yorkshire writer, Linda Marshall-Griffiths. With echoes of the illness and loss that wracked Brontë’s own life, both novel and play explore the redemptive power of love and the uncertainty of holding on to it.

EDIT: The Ilkley Gazette adds:

A Playhouse spokesman said many people considered Villette to be better, more ambitious and complex than Charlotte’s more famous novel Jane Eyre.
Linda Marshall Griffiths has approached’ novel from a 21st century perspective, focusing on around Lucy Snowe, a brilliant virologist who could play a crucial role in finding a cure for a pandemic virus but is plagued by her a past which torments her at every turn.
As the urgency and burden of her work grow greater, she grapples with the promise and possibility of love and the fear of losing it.
Director Mark Rosenblatt said: ‘This re-imagining of Villette gets to the heart of the original novel but finds a way to connect it with a modern audience.
“It relocates and updates the action to a near-future world, placing Lucy in a position of isolation and distance as the last survivor of her kind - as Charlotte Brontë was the last of her siblings when she wrote Villette.” (David Knights)

Read More

Monica Lewinsky in Brontëland

Vogue features the book Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why by Sady Doyle.

Charlotte Brontë, whose pitiful, unreciprocated letters to her married former teacher and possible former lover are Monica Lewinsky-esque in their desperation. (Julia Felsenthal)

Broadway World sums up the plot of Samantha Ellis's play How to Date a Feminist:

Kate likes her men tall, dark and smouldering. She has a fatal attraction to bad men. Then she meets Steve... a feminist. Can she overcome her love of lipstick, cupcakes and Heathcliff? Can he forgo the ethical confetti and learn to be a little bit more exciting in bed? Can the two of them reinvent romance for the 21st century?

The Hindu has German author Line Hoven talk about her love of books.

“My dad, however, did manage to collect a shelf full of books. This, in a way, piqued my interest in comics right from a young age,” she says. “That apart, I like reading the classics — Jane Austen, Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens. I feel more attracted to that era,” she says. (Naveena Vijayan)

National Post lists Emily Brontë as a possible asexual.

“But what about people who aren’t attracted to anyone? That’s where the asexual people fall,” said [Anthony F. Bogaert, author of Understanding Asexuality], who, in his book, raises the possibility Isaac Newton and Emily Brontë were asexual, “although we can’t be sure of this, of course.” (Sharon Kirkey)

USA Today's Happy Ever After has writer Jessica Cluess select her 'Top 5 favorite historical miniseries' which include

Jane Eyre (2006). Anyone who’s seen this series knows it’s not really, well, tonally in step with Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Brontë’s Jane is a plain, quiet woman who masks her passionate feelings behind a feeble countenance, and her Rochester is a rugged madman who locks women in attics and is perhaps a bit melodramatic. In this TV version, however, Jane and Rochester are adorable dorks. They laugh and tease each other, she’s forthright and confident, while he’s a sweet curmudgeon. It’s the rom-com Jane Eyre, mixed with a bit of spice.The scene where Rochester tries to convince Jane not to leave, for example, features a heavy make-out session in her bed that will make you cry “historical inaccuracies!” while rewinding to watch it again. Frankly, all the reasons above make this fun. If you want to feel haunted, see the Cary Fukunaga version, probably the best adaptation of the novel ever. If you want a bowl of popcorn and a lovely couple of hours on a rainy day? Choose this. (Joyce Lamb)

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) discusses the film Love and Friendship directed by Whit Stillman.

Han blandar inte ihop sjuttonhundratalets cembaloslingor med artonhundratalets emotionella pianoforte, eller Austen med Brontë. De flesta scener är filmade som små tablåer dit skådespelarna kommer inströvande. De levererar, utan att lägga ner mycket känsla, Austens listigt uppbyggda dialog tills de enskilda slingorna flätats ihop till en komplicerad fuga. [...]
Det var lika givet att Stillman förr eller senare skulle bli tvungen att göra film av Jane Austen som det var att Andrea Arnold skulle ta sig an Emily Brontë. Men det är alltid vanskligt också, det där, att borra rakt in i en inspirationskälla. (Kerstin Gezelius) (Translation)

More Autumny quotes on Bustle obviously quoting Emily Brontë. Reference Recordings shares the fact that Fanfare magazine recommends Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights opera.

Read More

Crystal Spires

Another Jane Eyre derivative on Kindle-world:

Crystal Spires: Adele Varensby Aine Maxwell
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 785 KB
Print Length: 58 pages

The little girl from Jane Eyre is all grown up. Adele Varens embraces life in America with both talons

Read More

New signs at Top Withens

The Telegraph and Argus reports that the new, less glaring, signs are now up at Top Withens.

Now the company has installed new ones (pictured), on waist-height wooden plinths, featuring softer colours.
The signs, designed with the help of the Brontë Society, carry information about the ruined farmhouse, which was reputedly the inspiration for the setting of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
A Yorkshire Water spokesman said: “We hope people find these new signs useful and interesting.
“We carefully thought about a design more sympathetic to the landscape – and the wooden plinths help achieve this look.
“The historical information in them is also more engaging, but retains the safety message we originally wanted to communicate.”
The Bronte Society said it was pleased to be involved in the project.
A spokesman said: “Although the association of Top Withens with Wuthering Heights is a loose one, the site continues to hold a special significance for Bronte fans across the world.
“We are grateful to Yorkshire Water for providing the opportunity to work in partnership on signage more in keeping with this inspirational landscape.”

This mysterious image from the Gilmore Girls Instagram account has fans wondering about its meaning:

First kiss. First crime.

A photo posted by @gilmgilmooregirls on Sep 20, 2016 at 10:43am PDT

Sites like Seventeen, Citizen Oracle, Aceshowbiz and more all wonder about the meaning of those books, including of course Jane Eyre.

Lithub interviews Sady Doyle, author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear…and Why.

Noah Berlatsky: Why have we now mostly forgotten that aspect of Wollstonecraft. Is it a good thing that her scandalousness is no longer part of the mainstream historical memory of her?SD: She sort of got reabsorbed into the canon but at the cost of becoming a very boring figure, when she was anything but.
And I think many of her ideas now are boring. I mean, one of the big controversies is that she thought women should be allowed to use botany. Which believe it or not was a hot button topic because if you teach your daughter botany, she is indirectly learning about sex, learning about plant parts, and god knows what she’ll go out and do next now that she knows about pollination. When we just teach her ideas she can seem like a very staid respectable figure.
And you see this with Charlotte Brontë too. Her biographers nowadays and the people who stump for her kind of write around it. I remember reading the introduction to Charlotte Brontë’s selected letters, which has these incredibly raw, emotional break-up letters. And the introduction said, well, some of us may find this embarrassing, but keep in mind it may have been a writing exercise.
No it wasn’t! She had a terrible break-up, she had a crush on a man who was married, who may never have liked her at all, and she wrote these crazy-sounding letters. It’s not that embarrassing. She was a human being, she had a very lonely life in some respects, and when she found a human connection, losing it was painful to her.
So people try to write around all the scandalous part of these women’s lives because they’ve become canonical, respected figures. And I think diving into the juice and the rawness and the dirt of their lives, the fact that they were human beings trying to forge some new kind of gender politics in a world that was incredibly hostile to them—that makes them more relevant to us. I would hope that you’ll read this book and maybe one of the things you’ll do is stop thinking Mary Wollstonecraft was boring. Maybe you’ll like her a little more.

If she means the introduction by Margaret Smith, then we can't find her saying anything like that.

Autumn means one thing in Brontëland: It's 'fall, leaves, fall' time. Our first sighting this year comes courtesy of Bustle. The Books Are Everywhere compares Jane Eyre and its 2011 screen adaptation.

Read More

Cassocked Savage

Another Brontë-related novel to be found in the prolific world of vanity publishing:

Cassocked Savage: The Life of Patrick Brontë
Cenarth Fox
Fox Plays, August 13, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0949175090

Patrick Brontë, father of the famous sisters, was of lowly Irish birth. His father was kidnapped and became a slave. Pa
t's dad survived, married and Patrick was born. He had 9 younger siblings. He lived in a two-roomed cottage and from these humble origins became an amazing teacher then won a scholarship to Cambridge graduating with honours.
A priest in the Church of England, Brontë fathered six children, three of whom--Charlotte, Emily and Anne--became famous novelists. Their novels remain hugely popular today.
But Patrick copped a bad press. He asked the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell to write a biography about his daughter Charlotte. In her book, Mrs Gaskell gave Patrick a hard time. So hard that critics inferred he was 'a cassocked savage' and 'a mad dog who should be shot'. Really?
Biographers and publishers pushed the Gaskell line. Patrick's evil reputation was set in cemetery stone. But not any more.
Now his life-story can be revealed. And what a story. The redhead from County Down led an amazing life. He was a poet, novelist, hero and way ahead of his time. He gave his children a fabulous education with giant dollops of love. He inspired them to write. He was a fierce advocate for health, education and social reform. And he loved dogs! Meet the unsung champion from the wild Yorkshire moors.
Cassocked Savage is based on the play Saucy Pat by Cenarth Fox

Read More

Jo March pulls a knife on Heathcliff

Splash Magazine reviews the theatre production You on the Moors Now.

Drawing inspiration from iconic heroines of nineteenth century novels, You on the Moors Now imagines a universe in which Jane Bennett, Jo March, Cathy Earnshaw, and Jane Eyre band together to escape the expectation of marriage and forge their own path. Filled with gut-busting humor and outrageous twists, this feminist reimagining of classic literature layers a surprising amount of genune meaning into its madcap storyline. [...]
Still, it can’t be denied that the play has a delightful cast of characters. Drawing on the original stories and contemporary language and themes in equal measure, the show creates cartoon versions of its characters, with the men (Darcy, Laurie, Heathcliff, and Rochester) behaving like a hybrid of spoiled children and particularly poor interpretative dancers. The story turns into a literal battle of the sexes as the men and women openly declare war on one another, rallying minor characters to join the fight as well. [...]
You on the Moors Now is the type of art that I never realized I needed until I experienced it. Watching Lizzie Bennett call Darcy a dickbag or Jo March pulling a knife on Heathcliff is something I never anticipated doing, but I am extraordinarily glad I did. You on the Moors Now breaks the mold of what an adaptation can be and creates something that is bizarre, hilarious, and in spite of all that, moving. The show is an absolute delight. (Jessie Bond)

The Times Literary Supplement looks at 'the guises of Rochester', claiming that

This idea of the poet as little more than a libertine persisted, however – not helped by Samuel Johnson in Lives of the English Poets (1779): "in a course of drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with intervals of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness". Nonetheless Johnson's book inspired Charlotte to name her brooding hero Mr Rochester. It is conceivable that she was also familiar with William Henry Ainsworth’s Restoration potboiler Old St Paul’s (1841), in which Rochester, as usual characterized as a cunning lecher, appears in disguise – as, of course, does Brontë’s Rochester. (Alexander Larman)

Signature discusses 'flawed females in fiction'.

I studied English Literature at University and have had the privilege of adapting several great novels for stage and screen. What I have learned from the masters is that it is a character’s flaws that make them interesting. In fact, whenever I see the ‘likeability’ of a female character in a contemporary story discussed, I always wonder what Emily Brontë would have said if an editor had told her to ‘tone down’ Cathy Earnshaw’s behavior, or what Louisa May Alcott’s response to the idea that Jo March might be ‘a bit unfeminine’ would have been. Probably they would have been nonplussed. In both those iconic portrayals, character is entirely action, by which I mean there are few deliberated choices for Cathy or Jo; their intrinsic natures, for good or bad, drive their stories in Wuthering Heights and Little Women. (Anne-Marie Casey)

Signature also looks into '3 Medical Mysteries in Literature', one of which is Charlotte Brontë's cause of death.

But I’m certain that Haworth, England, the village where the Brontë family lived and died, was far from the tourist attraction it is today. Contaminated water and an inadequate sewer system made it one of the unhealthiest places to live in 19th-century England. All three sisters were thought to have died of “consumption,” which we now know as tuberculosis, an infectious disease of the lungs that’s highly treatable with antibiotics. But they could have succumbed to other bacterial infections such as typhoid, which befell a Brontë servant, or possibly, in Charlotte’s case, a nasty tooth infection (she reportedly had terrible teeth).
Some say Charlotte was pregnant when she died, and suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness marked by acute nausea, vomiting, and weight loss (the same condition the Duchess of Cambridge endured while carrying Prince George and Princess Charlotte), which could have contributed to her death in 1855. We may never know exactly what took the lives of these fascinating women. But one thing is clear from the Brontës’ novels and personal letters: illness and isolation were never far from their practical or creative minds. (Leslie D. Michelson)

The New York Times reviews the book Trainwreck. The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why by Sady Doyle and mentiones the reference to Charlotte Brontë cointained therein.

After establishing that the proto-feminist Wollstonecraft was also our earliest train wreck, Doyle then includes an array of women who fit into her category, like Charlotte Brontë; Sylvia Plath; and Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist author of “SCUM Manifesto,” who shot Andy Warhol in 1968. Doyle is most expansive when she shows how other categories, like race, further restrict women’s identity, with the consequence that women of color are even more likely to be dismissed as train wrecks than their white ­counterparts. (Salamishah Tillet)

The Nation (Pakistan) interviews actress/model Armeena Rana Khan.

Are you into books? If yes, which one’s your favourite? ARK: Books are my best friends. It’s like having a constant companion to speak with. They question your beliefs and perceptions of the world. They challenge you and shape your mind in a way that very little else can.  Who would I be without them? I love the classics as I feel they have withstood the test of time and just like with food I am very careful about the intellectual content I let into my mind. My favourite novel is ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë’ (Izah Shahid)

The Nation has also selected a few quotes on freedom, one of which is by Charlotte Brontë.

 “I  do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”-   Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre) The quote is taken from British novelist Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece ‘Jane Eyre’ which revolves around an orphaned but headstrong female lead character who stays unbroken in the worst of times and emerges as an independent woman. (Rimla Batool)

20 Minutos (Spain) has a list of 'on-screen' 'nannies'.

Jane Eyre, el drama con ribetes de intriga gótica surgido de la pluma de Charlotte Brontë, cuenta con una recordada versión en blanco y negro de 1944 con Joan Fontaine y Orson Welles, y una no menos notable versión que protagonizó Maria Wasikowska dirigida por Cary Fukunaga, el director de True detective, en 2011. (C. Rull) (Translation)

Lokal Kompass (Germany) recommends Jane Eyre among other classics. Das Kaminzimmer posts about the novel in German too.

Read More

Brontë in Southfields and a talk in México D.F.

Polly Teale's Brontë is being performed in Southfields, London these days:

Southfields Theatre Group presents
Brontë
by Polly Teale
St. Barnabas Church, Southfields, SW18
21st, 22nd, 23rd & 24th September 2016 – 7:30pm

It is 1845. Branwell Bronte returns home in disgrace. Plagued by alcohol and drug addiction, he has been dismissed from domestic service following an affair with the mistress of the house.
As their brother descends into alcoholism and insanity, bringing chaos to the household, the sisters write… Brontë beautifully evokes the real and imagined worlds of the Brontës, in a production in which their fictional characters come to haunt their creators.

And in México D.F.:

Lo joven y lo clásico
Cumbres Borrascosas. Discussed by the writer Karen Villeda

Sala Adamo Boari del Palacio de Bellas Artes
September 21, 19:00

La poeta y narradora inglesa Emily Brontë (1818-1848) publicó, un año antes de morir de tuberculosis, Cumbres borrascosas, novela que exalta las pasiones y muestra el lado oscuro del amor. La escritora Karen Villeda (Tlaxcala, 1985) comentará esta obra en la próxima sesión del ciclo Lo joven y lo clásico, el miércoles 21 de septiembre a las 19:00 en la Sala Adamo Boari del Palacio de Bellas Artes.

Read More

Lucy Snowe, virologist

Keighley News seems excited about a new take on Villette going on stage this weekend at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds as part of the Brontë season.

A daring re-imagining of Charlotte Brontë’s ground-breaking last novel Villette is being staged in Leeds.
The play, written by Linda Marshall Griffiths, opens at the West Yorkshire Playhouse on Saturday, September 24 and runs until October 15.
Villette is the centrepiece of the Playhouse’s Brontë which offers contemporary responses to the Brontë sisters across performance, dance and music.
The new play is said to remain true to Charlotte’s into longing and loneliness while exploring the kind of woman its central character Lucy might be today and in the future.
A Playhouse spokesman said many people considered Villette to be better, more ambitious and complex than Charlotte’s more famous novel Jane Eyre.
Linda Marshall Griffiths has approached’ novel from a 21st century perspective, focusing on around Lucy Snowe, a brilliant virologist who could play a crucial role in finding a cure for a pandemic virus but is plagued by her a past which torments her at every turn.
As the urgency and burden of her work grow greater, she grapples with the promise and possibility of love and the fear of losing it.
Director Mark Rosenblatt said: ‘This re-imagining of Villette gets to the heart of the original novel but finds a way to connect it with a modern audience.
“It relocates and updates the action to a near-future world, placing Lucy in a position of isolation and distance as the last survivor of her kind - as Charlotte Bronte was the last of her siblings when she wrote Villette.”
The Brontë Season includes a work-in-progress performance of Wasted (October 20-22), a new musical drama about the Brontës; Tiny Shoes, an audio drama available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and online; readings Brontë letters; panel discussion; and the digital project Know Your Place featuring stories of defiance. (David Knights)

Smithsonian recommends visiting the exhibition on Charlotte Brontë at the Morgan Library, with special emphasis on the manuscript of Jane Eyre.

How did Charlotte Brontë go from scribbling in secret to one of England’s (and literature’s) most famous names? Look for the answer in a passage in Jane Eyre, in which her famously plain heroine tells her husband-to-be that she is a “free human with an independent will.” That bold declaration is at the center of a new exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York—one that celebrates the author’s 200th birthday with a look at the forces that turned her into a writer.
Brontë has been at the center of literary legend since her first published novel, Jane Eyre, appeared under a pseudonym in 1847. The book was immediately loved and loathed for emotions that flew in the face of convention and courtesy, and the identity of its author became a much-contested question. But even after Brontë was discovered to be the person behind the pen name Currer Bell, myths about her childhood, her family members and the atmosphere in which she became an author have persisted.
The popular image of the Brontë sisters and their brother Branwell—all of whom died before they turned 40—has long been one of Gothic isolation and tragic pathos. But those ideas are far from true, and the Morgan’s exhibition Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will grounds Charlotte’s brief life in objects from her everyday world. From miniature manuscripts she wrote as a child to her drawings, paintings, letters and clothing, the exhibition is full of clues as to how a parson’s daughter living in Yorkshire could become a worldly and bold author.
At the center of the exhibition is a handwritten manuscript of Jane Eyre, Brontë’s most famous novel, which is in the United States for the first time. It is open to the passage in which its heroine, a poor and plain governess, reminds her would-be lover that “I am a bird, and no net ensnares me.” She refuses to marry Edward Rochester, a wealthy landowner, unless he accepts her as an equal and not a subordinate. That fiery sentiment was echoed by Brontë herself. In an era in which women of her station were expected to be governesses or teachers, she aspired to be a novelist. And even when her work gained fame, she challenged her readers to judge her by her output and not her gender. (Erin Blakemore)

We don't really know what The Guardian means:

Now, in a response to the recent re-establishment of “Brontë Land” on the other side of the Pennines, Wordsworth is leading a comeback for Cumbrian literary tourism, reminding visitors that if it was not for his work, and that of his fellow Lakeland Poets, we might never have felt so strongly about one of England’s most dramatic natural landscapes. (Vanessa Thorpe)

Recent re-establishment? Hasn't it been there for nearly two centuries?

Lithub lists A True Novel by Minae Mizumura among '10 Giant Translated Novels that Make a Mockery of “Subway Reading"'.

This transplantation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to postwar Japan became an immediate success upon its English translation in 2013, with the New York Times proclaiming it a “fascinating meditation on cultural borrowing and the dislocation of modernity.” The book begins with a prologue featuring the author herself as the main character, and from there it becomes a love story, set amid an investigation into what happened to Japan’s culture after the country was savaged in World War II. This book’s arrival in the States marked the long overdue English-language debut for one of Japan’s most interesting and prominent contemporary authors. (Scott Esposito)

Ghost Cult reviews the music album Realms by Darkher.

The Chelsea Wolfe-esque intonations of project founder Jayn H. Wissenberg arrive early in second track ‘Hollow Veil’: brief opening segment ‘Spirit Waker’ eliciting more of those Wuthering Heights-styled atmospheres. Possessing a fuller and more expansive sound than previously, exquisite drum patterns and sparse yet heady riffs crash into the swells whilst Wissenberg’s blissfully harmonic, touching voice laments in the foreground. (Keefy)

Buzzfeed Books lists '13 Of Your Favorite Books If Their Titles Were Honest'. Jane Eyre's actually name should be 'Always Ask about Their Ex'. Diario Vasco (Spain) features the new film Lady Macbeth and points to the fact that it was shot on the moors that inspired the Brontë sisters. The Guardian tells the poignant story of a young Syrian refugee now living in Germany who enjoys listening to classic audiobooks such as Jane Eyre. The Brussels Brontë Blog looks at translations of The Professor in Russian and Ukrainian. The Brontë Parsonage Blog has a guest poster write about Tracy Chevalier and Jessie Bruton's talk at the Parsonage on September 10th.

Finally, an alert from the Springfield, Missouri:

The Library Center, 4653 S. Campbell Ave.
Springfield, MO
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Brontë
Books You Always Meant to Read
7 p.m. in the Harrison Room for adults.
A classics book discussion.

Read More

Brontë to the Future! Educational Tour

This is the complete educational tour of the Montana Repertory Theatre's production of Brontë to the Future!:

Brontë to the Future!
Written by Laramie Deam

In this comedy by Laramie Dean, The Brontë sisters, Emily and Charlotte, having told their most well-known tales-Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, respectively-now want to leave the past behind and explore a future time in order to see what will happen to their characters in a more contemporary setting. Brontë to the Future! is a mashup that places the Brontës' beloved Jane and Rochester and Catherine and Heathcliff in the world of today-and possibly tomorrow-while retaining all the romance and Gothic splendor of the original stories.

September

2-3 Missoula / Masquer Theatre
6 Missoula / Hellgate High School
7 Ronan / Ronan High School
8 Potomac / Potomac Middle School
9 Missoula / Hellgate Middle School
12 Big Sandy / Big Sandy High School
13 Box Elder / Stone Child College
14 Malta / Malta High School
15 Poplar / Poplar High School
19 Lambert / Lambert High School
20 Sidney / Northeast Arts Network
21 Sidney / Sidney Middle School
22 Wibaux / Wibaux High School
24 Glendive / Dawson Community College
26 Miles City / Miles City High School
27 Colstrip / Colstrip High School
28 Rosebud / Rosebud Middle School
29 Lame Deer / Chief Dull Knife College

October

3 Red Lodge / Carbon County Arts Guild
4 Billings / Billings West High School / Billings Public Library
5 Joliet / Joliet High School
6 Gardiner / Electric Peaks Arts Council
7 Livingston / Sleeping Child Middle School
9 Lewistown / Lewistown Library
10 Lewistown / Lewistown Middle School
11 Choteau / Choteau High School
12 Power / Power High School
13 Great Falls / Great Falls Public Library
14 Browning / De La Salle Blackfeet Middle School
16-17 Quinns / Quinns Hot Springs Dinner Theatre
17 Thompson Falls / Thompson Falls High School
18 Plains / Plains High School
20 Warm Springs / Montana State Hospital
21 MEA
24 Kalispell / Linderman Education Center
25 Kalispell / Flathead High School
26 Philipsburg / Philipsburg High School
27 Boulder / Jefferson High School
28 Deer Lodge / Powell County High School
31 Missoula / Willard Alternative High School / Masquer Theatre

November

1 Victor / Victor High School
2 Missoula / Meadow Hill Middle School
3 Missoula / C.S. Porter Middle School
4 Missoula / Washington Middle School
8 Darby / Darby High School
9 Missoula / Loyola High School
10 Arlee / Arlee High School

Read More

Pathos and tragedy

Singer John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) is a fan of Wuthering Heights 1939, according to this interview from Vice.

What film or TV show makes you cry?There are films that move me. I can't bear any film where children are being tormented, I can't stand that. Wuthering Heights is fantastic, the original one. There's such great moodiness on it and such great pathos and tragedy, sadness. That kind of film I love. Because I can analyse the characters and see where they're going wrong and bring it back into my own life. (Biju Belinky)

While this columnist from BookRiot considers herself a 'book-to-film snob'.

The distrust only got worse when I caved and watched a Wuthering Heights adaptation. Beyond the fact that I found it hard to buy that Ralph Fiennes would be considered “as dark almost as if it came from the devil” (not to mention that I always thought Heathcliff was either Romani or black Irish, given the numerous “gipsy” references throughout the book), I actually, literally face-palmed when I realized that Catherine Linton was played by the same actress who played Catherine Hareton. And let’s be real, it’s pretty clear that makeup team didn’t put all that much effort into making her look younger, or Heathcliff older. I felt betrayed, you guys. WH has been my very favorite book for eleven years, and this felt like watching a middle school play adaptation of it. I turned off the TV and vowed to never, ever watch another WH adaptation again.
So far, I’m sticking. [...]
Giving another adaptation the chance to mess up Wuthering Heights for me, though? Yeah, let’s not go to Crazy Town. (Carolina Ciucci)

The Sisters's Room interviews Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsoange Museum:

 Among all the poems written by the  Brontës, which one is your favourite?Emily is definitely my favourite poet amongst the Brontës and I like quite a lot of her poems. I think my favourite is one of the short, really simple, poems she wrote called High Waving Heather which is just so evocative of the moors in Haworth, you know. But then I like some of the quite gloomy poems, the one about wild Decembers is a particular favourite, and I love the fact there’s so much repetition of the language in that which it probably would never get away with a modern editor, but it really kind of reinforces that passing of time… so definitely poems by Emily.

Digital Spy has a recommendation for film-makers in a review of the episode 5 of the current Victoria TV series:

Yes, we admit it, screenwriter Daisy Goodwin and, perhaps more importantly, the very watchable Coleman and Hughes, are doing a good job of convincing us that Albert is a worthy romantic lead for our feisty heroine – even if we do hold a teeny torch for [Rufus] Sewell's Lord M. (Note to period dramas producers: if you're remaking Jane Eyre or Rebecca, he's your perfect Rochester or De Winter). (Jo Berry)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch features an inspiring teacher.

Lynn Morrissey, a class of 1969 graduate who is now a writer herself, remembered walking into Goff’s class senior year and being surprised to see the desks in a circle facing each other.
“I had no idea what was going on, but I realized that was symbolic of her embrace of all her students,” Morrissey said. “We were all equal to her, all of our opinions mattered when we talked about literature.”
Morrissey said reading “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë in the class inspired her to stand by her views and values when dealing with her peers.
“That gave me the courage as a young woman to speak my mind,” she said. (Mike Faulk)

Savidge Reads interviews writer Susan Davis:

What is the first ‘grown up’, and I don’t mean in a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ way, that you remember on your parent’s shelves or at the library, you really wanted to read? Did you ever get around to it and is it on your shelves now? I discovered copies of ‘Fanny Hill’ and ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ in my dad’s dressing table drawer once, but they seemed dull at the time. When I searched again as an adolescent they had magically disappeared. I suppose the first ‘grown-up’ book must have been ‘Little Women’ which was one of the few books my mum actually owned and was much prized on her shelf. Is that grown-up enough? Followed closely by the usual suspects, classics like ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ which I loved.

HungryForever shares a recipe for a Jane Eyre-style seed cake. You can see Rita Maria Martinez 's recent reading in Florida here (starting around the 42 minute mark). Marina Saegerman writes about visiting Norton Conyers on the Brussels Brontë Blog. AnneBrontë.org has a post on Anne Brontë's godmothers. According to the Brontë Parsonage Blog the book Push Me Away seems to 'plagiarise' Sarah Fermi's Emily's Journal.

Read More