Watch the National Theatre's Jane Eyre liveAlso recommended by Craven Herald, The Hunts Post, The York Press, HITC, and so on.
The National Theatre’s series of live streams started with a bang last week, with more than two million tuning in to watch One Man, Two Guvnors. This Thursday, it’s the turn of Jane Eyre, directed by Sally Cookson – tune in from 7pm to see the acclaimed Charlotte Bronte adaptation. (Harry Fletcher)
Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?Inspired by Carl Miller’s rock opera about the lives of the Brontës, I read “Wuthering Heights.” What a book about inequality, sexuality, class. Beautifully atmospheric, too.The Cut recommends taking up short story collections such as:
Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories by Lily TuckIn Le Monde (France) writer Lydie Salvayre claims that lockdown is the dream state for writers. According to her,
In Heathcliff Redux, National Book Award winner Lily Tuck revisits the gothic romance of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to tell the deliciously spare story of a Kentucky wife and mother having an affair with a seemingly dangerous man. Formally inventive, the novella and following short stories are erotic, unforgiving, and pack a punch in very, very few words. —(Brock Colyar)
C'est la décision radicale d'Emily Brontë, qui prend le parti souverain de vivre retirée dans un village désolé du Yorkshire, loin des divertissements de la ville, loin de ce qui se pense et de ce qui s'écrit dans ces consensus confortables qui rassemblent les hommes, loin des intrigues et manœuvres dans lesquelles ils trempent pour parvenir ; et qui se tient à ce choix parce qu'il constitue à ses yeux le seul moyen pour que son esprit affronte ce devant quoi sans cesse les hommes se détournent : leurs gouffres intérieurs et ce que Bataille appelait « l'abîme du mal ». (Translation)Mujer Hoy (Spain) recommends 10 classic novels to read during lockdown, such as Wuthering Heights and Wide Sargasso Sea.
'Cumbres borrascosas' (Emily Brontë)Fotogramas (Spain) recommends watching Jane Eyre 2011.
Amores y odios tan tempestuosos como los páramos en los que viven los personajes: el paroxismo de pasiones en 'Cumbres borrascosas' es mayúsculo... y la calidad literaria de la única novela que nos dejó la mediana de las hermanas Brontë, también. [...]
'El ancho mar de los sargazos' (Jean Rhys)
Antes de que existiera la palabra precuela, Jean Rhys escribió una maravillosa, basándose en las pocas líneas que 'Jane Eyre' dedica a la esposa -criolla, loca, malvada, encerrada- del iracundo Rochester: en 'El ancho mar de los Sargazos' traza, con exquisito color y hondura, una biografía imaginativa y verosímil de aquella mujer. (Rosa Gil) (Translation)
21 Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011)The Guardian reviews the newly translated into English French novel Ça raconte Sarah by Pauline Delabroy-Allard.
No te fallará si... Estás falto de amor romántico.
Esta nueva adaptación de la famosa novela de Charlotte Brontë capturó la esencia oscura de su historia, que se debate entre el romance de manual y el cuento de fantasmas gótico. Protagonizada por Mia Wasikowska y Michael Fassbender, es una película perfecta para soñar con esos amores imposibles del cine de época. (Translation)
The passion has already become harmful here. The excitement of burning with desire has become exhausting, so they start to tear each other apart. There’s an arbitrariness in the destructiveness that makes it unconvincing. In the great novels of ill-fated passion – Wuthering Heights or Anna Karenina, say – the story is richly embedded in a social world that makes the lovers feel doomed partly by forces outside their control. Here the two women live ordinary middle-class lives, going to the theatre, taking the narrator’s daughter to school. I couldn’t quite believe in the necessity for them to destroy themselves. (Lara Feigel)Figaro (France) recommends taking up the Cazalet saga novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard during lockdown (we heartily recommend them, too!).
On peut choisir de replonger dans l’imposant Middlemarch de George Eliot, dans l’œuvre des sœurs Brontë, dans celle de Virginia Woolf. Ou encore remonter jusqu’à la bibliographie des merveilleuses Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner et Jane Gardam, pour ne citer qu’elles, qui n’ont cessé de porter un regard d’ethnologue sur les conflits intérieurs de leurs protagonistes. (Alexandre Fillon) (Translation)France Today features the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.
The film, which was shot in just six weeks on the rocky shores of Brittany and in a studio near Paris, also presented a new set of challenges, Sciamma acknowledges. “For instance, the castle where we filmed hadn’t been used since the period. We didn’t touch anything – the colour of the walls, the floors – we just accessorised it in a very minimalist way, so I did less intervention on the set. It was less theatrical. And I was also obsessed with the light, trying to make each frame like a painting. I wanted to create a Gothic Brontë sisters mood in the landscape by the cliffs, but the weather that week was very sunny,” she concludes with a laugh. (Lanie Goodman)Anonymous Eagle is doing recaps of old episodes of Dawson's Creek.
In English, Ms. Jacobs teaches Wuthering Heights to Pacey’s class. She asks about a moment in the book between Heathcliff and Catherine, and Nellie gets the straight interpretation of events correct, so Ms. Jacobs points out the underlying meanings. In short, and spoilers for a 150+ year old book, Heathcliff and Catherine never belonged together and their relationship was doomed from the start. She goes into more detail than that, but the important point here is that Pacey thinks this is a direct message from Ms. Jacobs to him and gets increasingly visibly upset about this. He is an idiot. (Brewtown Andy)L'Unione Monregalese (Italy) recommends Wuthering Heights. Tapinto interviews a local athlete who recommends Wuthering Heights.
The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 45 Issue 2, April 2020) is already available online. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music
Editorial
pp. 83-88 Author: Sarah E. Fanning
‘I would have touched the heavenly key’: Dissonance in Emily Brontë’s Fragments and William Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’
pp. 89-103 Author: Quinnell, James
Abstract:
This paper explores the dissonance created when Emily Brontë’s striving to find language that equals her ‘world within’ is constrained by the ‘world without’. The title quotation, the opening line of one of Brontë’s early fragments, highlights the intensity of her desire to wake the song that so moved her in the past. It is Emily Brontë’s struggle to wake the ‘entrancing song’ coupled with the pull of the ‘heavenly key’ that impels her poetry. In her treatment of desire to re-enter states of past bliss, Emily Brontë is an heir of Wordsworth. Reading her poems alongside Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’, I explore how Wordsworth’s cry of ‘Whither is fled the visionary gleam’ is also Brontë’s. Yet, this dissonance is for both poets, to use Emily’s own words, a ‘darling pain’. The longing, even with the pain, is a form of fulfilment. So, I conclude by arguing that this seeming dissonance is what gives Brontë’s poetry its ‘peculiar music’.
Wuthering Heights and King Lear: Revisited
pp. 104-115 Author: Moorhouse Marr, Edwin John
Abstract:
Apart from religious literature, King Lear is the only text referenced explicitly within Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. This article will expand existing scholarship within this field in order to argue that, by alluding to King Lear within her novel, Brontë invites us to draw implicit comparisons between the two texts. I will therefore analyse their comparable structures, their shared handling of violence and revenge, their depictions of the natural world and their exploration of the concept of nothing, to demonstrate how Brontë frames her novel against the backdrop of Shakespearean tragedy.
Wiser than thy sire’: Youth and Age in Emily Brontë’s Poetry
pp. 116-131 Author: Cook, Peter
Abstract:
A significant number of Emily Brontë’s poems explore the contrasting states of youth and age. In most of them Brontë creates a dialogue between personae representing the two states, and calls into question traditional moral values by examining the relationship between her personae and the natural world. Her conclusions and ways of working in these poems, and in Wuthering Heights, formed a seminal conduit between the ideas of Romantic writers and the mid-nineteenth century, and at the same time achieved a radical reworking of these ideas and values for her own time and place.
Queer Temporalities: Resisting Family, Reproduction and Lineage in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
pp. 132-143 Author: Datskou, Emily
Abstract:
Following two generations of families on the Yorkshire moors, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) focuses on family, reproduction and lineage, and thus seems to follow a heteronormative sense of time. However, as this article argues, when read within a queer theoretical context, we see that Emily actually produces a queer temporality in the novel through the duplication of characters and plot events. Because the characters and the plot structure largely repeat the events of the past, the novel’s plot cannot be said to progress but instead essentially turns back on itself. This article also suggests that reading the novel in this way may provide a new way of thinking about how Emily may have felt about her identity and her role in her family and nineteenth-century society.
Ghost Writing: Emily Brontë and Spectrality
pp. 144-155 Author: Marsden, Simon
Abstract:
This article considers the role of spectrality in Emily Brontë’s writing, focussing on her Gondal poem ‘Written in Aspin Castle’ (1842–3) and Wuthering Heights. Brontë’s use of spectrality demonstrates both her understanding of Gothic narrative conventions and her awareness of popular traditions of haunting. These influences are reflected in her use of sceptical narrators who encounter versions of sublime terror and in her insistence upon a connection between haunting and place. Yet ghosts also disrupt the places in which they appear, rendering the home ‘unhomely’ to its present inhabitants and disrupting clear divisions between past and present. Indeed, the disruption of boundaries is integral to Brontë’s use of the spectre and reflects her familiarity with the apocalyptic tradition as well as the ghost story. The article concludes by arguing that spectrality in Brontë’s writing is inseparable from the Romantic impulse to see beyond the surfaces of things: to open oneself to the experience of the sublime in nature is also to open oneself to the possibility of ghosts.
Heathcliff, Race and Adam Low’s Documentary, A Regular Black: The Hidden Wuthering Heights (2010)
pp. 156-167 Author: O'Callaghan,Claire and Stewart, Michael
Abstract:
This paper presents an interview discussion of race and slavery in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) in relation to Adam Low’s documentary, A Regular Black: The Hidden Wuthering Heights (2010) and Michael Stewart’s novel, Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff (2018). Our discussion originally took place after a screening of Low’s documentary on the first day of the conference, ‘Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music’, held in September 2018 in York to mark Emily’s bicentenary. The material presented here is based on a recording of our evening event, but we continued our discussion afterwards in person and via email. Where possible we have nuanced our original talk and developed aspects of the discussion.
Interpreting Emily: Ekphrasis and Allusion in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Editor’s Preface’ to Wuthering Heights
pp. 168-182 Author: Regis, Amber K.
Abstract:
In writing her ‘Editor’s Preface’ to Wuthering Heights in 1850, Charlotte Brontë reimagined Emily’s novel as a statue roughly hewn from ‘a granite block on a solitary moor’. The statue stands before us, wrought in words: an ekphrasis; a border-crossing between the arts, present here, in Brontë’s preface, as an attempt to render the visual and plastic in verbal form (and vice versa). The gesture is also multiply allusive, weaving together the language of Wuthering Heights, the judgement of literary critics, and ideas concerning poetry and permanence derived from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ (1818). This article performs an extended close reading of the novel-statue, exploring the rhetorical work it performs as part of Brontë’s careful negotiation of Emily’s posthumous print identity. As an editor, biographer and preface-writer, Brontë used the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights to transform Emily’s art: she inscribes a different legacy for her sister, reimagining the dead novelist as a poet yet to find her audience.
Muse, Sister, Myth: The Cultural Afterlives of Emily Brontë on Screen
pp. 183-195 Author: Shachar, Hila
Abstract:
This article was originally delivered as a keynote lecture at the Bicentenary Conference for Emily Brontë, Emily Brontë: A Peculiar Music (7–9 September 2018, Marriott Hotel, York). It explores the cultural portrayal and legacy of Emily Brontë through an analysis of several representative screen adaptations of both her biography and her novel, Wuthering Heights. It uses the recent BBC biopic directed by Sally Wainwright, To Walk Invisible (2016), as the guiding screen adaptation around which to discuss the various ways Emily Brontë has been adapted as a cultural persona on screen, imagined in various guises as a mystical author, a radical feminist ‘sister’, and a muse for our contemporary age. Moving from classic Hollywood film to recent independent and BBC productions, this article suggests that Emily Brontë has become implicated in wider and ongoing cultural debates about authorial identity, gender and myths of creativity that contemporary culture has inherited from the nineteenth century.
A Peculiar Illusion: Narrative Technique and the Lovers in Wuthering Heights
pp. 196-208 Author: Stoneman, Patsy
Abstract:
This paper draws attention to a curious but widespread illusion about Wuthering Heights: that Catherine and Heathcliff meet as adult lovers on the hilltop of Penistone Crag. There may be commercial reasons why film-makers promote this image, but many readers of the novel believe that they have read such a scene, and can hardly be persuaded that it is not there in the novel. In fact, we only read of Catherine and Heathcliff alone together out of doors at a time when they cannot be more than twelve years old. I want to suggest that this illusion depends on aspects of the novel’s narrative technique which have such a powerful effect on us that they persuade us that we have ‘seen’ what is not actually there in the novel — the image of Catherine and Heathcliff, as adults, speaking their love to one another on top of Penistone Crag.
What drew you to staging Jane Eyre? It’s a story I’ve loved since I was a child although I didn’t read the novel until I was in my 20s. As a kid I was intrigued by the black-and-white film noir version with Orson Welles as Rochester and music by Bernard Herrmann. When I read the book at drama school, I thought: that film completely misses the point. It might as well have been called Rochester. The book is a clarion call for equal opportunities for women, not a story about a passive female who’ll do anything for her hunky boss.Evening Standard on how to watch it and which other shows to expect after Jane Eyre.
I was struck by how modern Charlotte Brontë’s Jane seemed – her spirit and strong will, her peculiar and brilliant mind. She lashes out against anything that prevents her from being herself. I just thought: wow, I’d love to be someone like that. It’s such an epic story and has been so often turned into film, TV, theatre and ballet versions. I was intrigued as to why we keep going back to it.
Was it a daunting project, knowing that the book is so loved?Adapting a novel like that is challenging – it’s taken on legendary status. If you’re going to be as bold as to do another version, you have to put all that to one side and trust that you’ve got a right to tell this story and it’s going to be how the people in the room want to tell this story. So I was initially anxious but quickly forgot about it.
When you read the novel again, did it surprise you at all? As a child, I had been drawn to the romance of the film. In my 20s I was attracted to the feminism. As a mature woman, I was struck by the individual human rights and the weight the novel places on them. Jane understands from a very early age that you need to be emotionally, spiritually and intellectually nourished to thrive. She didn’t have any of these things given to her. They are basic human needs we all require to flourish. That’s what I wanted to bring to the fore. [...]
Did you always have Madeleine Worrall in mind for Jane? She was Wendy in a version of Peter Pan I did. I knew she’d be perfect. She is such an intelligent and tenacious actor – and very like Jane Eyre in many ways. She never stops investigating and is not at all frightened of failing or making a fool of herself. A lot of Jane’s text was invented by Madeleine. (Chris Wiegand)
These are the picturesque towns and villages which would usually be teeming with tourists at this time of year.The Michigan Journal recommends the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.
But these pictures show how the streets of some of Britain's most popular postcard villages are now practically empty, with tourists at home in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.
With the sun shinning and the four-day East Bank Holiday approaching, residents of these lovely locations would usually be preparing for an army of tourists to flock in from far and wide.
But this weekend is likely to be different with the government still advising against all non-essential travel.
Streets, usually clogged with tourists, walkers and sightseers are now empty and eerily silent.
The picturesque village of Haworth, West Yorkshire, is famed for its connection to the nineteenth-century literary family, The Brontës. But Haworth is usually packed with tourists walking its quaint streets, often going to or coming from Haworth Parsonage, where the Bronte sisters wrote many of their novels
That is certainly the case in the picturesque village of Haworth, West Yorkshire, famed for its connection to the nineteenth-century literary family, The Brontës.
The sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, [were born] in nearby Thornton, but wrote most of their novels while living at Haworth Parsonage - which remains a popular tourist attraction. (James Robinson)
Much of this film reads like Wuthering Heights, the large, sprawling countryside punctuated by occasional people on horseback, which reads much like the song that we see at the bonfire, the women all singing “they are flying” in French, which in some ways speaks to how when someone flies away, the smaller those who are watching seem to be. (Benjamin Jones)Rumbos (Argentina) interviews writer Mariana Enríquez about her latest novel Nuestra parte de noche.
Podríamos decir que tu antihéroe pertenece a dos mundos, pero no la pasa bien en ninguno. Juan está totalmente condenado. Al escribirlo, yo tenía dos referentes literarios muy claros: Frankenstein, que está entre la vida y la muerte, muy solo y abandonado por sus creadores, pero que a la vez es dueño de un poder total y una capacidad de daño enorme. Mi otro referente era Heathcliff, el personaje de Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë: un huérfano robado y absolutamente resentido, un personaje cruel pero muy atractivo para los lectores. (Ximena Pascutti) (Translation)Tổ Quốc (Vietnam) has an article on the 'tragic fate' of the Brontës. Brontë Babe Blog begins a series of posts about 'People and Places from the Brontë Juvenilia: Glass Town and Angria'.
Editorial
pp. 1-2 Author: Amber M. Adams and Josephine Smith
The Brontës and Christmas
pp. 3-12 Author: Choe, Jian
Abstract:
This essay considers the Brontë sisters’ engagement with Christmas in their lives and art and examines the extent to which they shared the contemporary vision of Christmas. With the invention of the modern Christmas by the Victorian urban bourgeoisie, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed a vast proliferation of Christmas publications and culture. The sisters’ literary representation of the season could be regarded as a response to the new trend. Charlotte’s depictions seem both to endorse and to contest the dominant ideology of the Victorian Christmas. Emily casts a nostalgic eye on the old English Christmas, harking back to the diminishing tradition in the age of modernisation. Anne’s vision of Christmas is characterised by its distinct moral and spiritual undertones. In their brief lives, the sisters’ Christmas celebrations, modest and untainted, were reflected in their writing. To explore the Brontës’ Christmas is to encounter Christmas untouched as yet by the needs of industrial capitalism and its concomitant bourgeois culture, which would fundamentally transform the whole fabric of modern society.
The Impact of Clinical Depression on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
pp. 13-26 Author: Carlson, Susan Anne
Abstract:
Charlotte Brontë’s clinical depression influenced her process of writing Villette, her subject matter and the construction of the novel’s narrator, Lucy Snowe. When Charlotte wrote Villette, she described her own mental disability through the character of Lucy Snowe. Using the perspective of disability studies, this article interprets Lucy as a narrator who shows clear signs of mental illness, suffers a breakdown and then navigates a world in which her depression must remain a secret. Charlotte Brontë saw Lucy Snowe as the culmination of her worst fears: a woman who could not escape her own damaged self.
'We think back through our mothers if we are women’: Virginia Woolf and the Brontës
pp. 27-45 Author: Newman, Hilary
Abstract:
Virginia Woolf’s literary mothers included Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Unfortunately, at the time Woolf was writing, during the earlier part of the twentieth century, Anne Brontë was very much the neglected Brontë sister, and Woolf did not buck this trend. There are many references to Anne Brontë’s sisters, Charlotte and Emily, however, which occur across the various genres in which Woolf wrote, including her novels, essays, polemics, letters and diaries. The Hogarth Press, which Virginia Woolf established in 1917 with her husband Leonard, published several books of criticism on the Brontës. Woolf engaged with some of these critics in her own essays. Her comments reveal that she wanted to respond to the Brontës as a fellow-writer and not simply as a reader.
Nationalist Discourse in Wartime (1937–1945): Wuthering Heights in China
pp. 46-62 Author: Min, Li
Abstract:
About half a century after its publication in 1847, Wuthering Heights came to China and became part of the historical process of this country; as a result it was constantly transformed to meet the demands of Chinese political and cultural reality. It was adapted into two dramas in the 1940s: To Die for Love by Sun Daolin (1921–2007) mainly performed in the Japanese-occupied areas; and Everlasting Resentment by Zhao Qingge (1914–1999) mainly performed in Kuomintang-controlled areas. The dramatization of Wuthering Heights involves the construction of nationalist discourse to meet Chinese social demands during wartime.
The Spatial Experience of the Sky in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights
pp. 63-70 Author: Lindskog, Claes
Abstract:
Discussions of the sky in the Brontës’ works have tended to limit themselves to the weather, making Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights seem very similar to one another in this regard. If, however, attention instead turns to the sky as a spatial phenomenon, there is a considerable difference between the two novels, symptomatic of a greater difference in the possibility of personal freedom. Thus, while the sky represents a sense of liberation in both novels, in Jane Eyre it really provides a refuge for the mind and in Wuthering Heights it rather signals the impossibility of relief.
REVIEWS
The Brontë sisters: life, loss & literature
pp. 71-73 Author: Duckett, Bob
Charlotte’s angels
pp. 73-74 Author: Powell, Sarah
Emily Brontë reappraised: a view from the twenty-first century
pp. 74-76 Author: Duckett, Bob
Brontës, Bohems’ and the Fellowship of Dreams 1834: The Formative Years
pp. 76-81 Author: Watson, Graham
I have a low tolerance for conspiracists at the best of times, and have ended taxi rides early and left rooms to avoid being enlightened about Princess Diana’s death, told “the truth” in hushed tones about JK Rowling – she’s just an actress impersonating an author – and scoffed at for believing it was actually Emily Brontë who wrote Wuthering Heights (when “everybody knows” that it was her older brother, Branwell.) (Celia Walden)Many websites are excited with the possibility of seeing National Theatre productions like Jane Eyre on YouTube: ScoopSquare24, Frome Times, IBC, Quién, Jornal da Manhã, This is Reno, East Bay Times, The Irish Examiner, Observer Today, Awards Circuit, Verde News, Time Out, El Periódico, Business World, MaxMag, Playbill ...
Almost 170 years on, Charlotte Brontë’s story of the trailblazing Jane is as inspiring as ever. This bold and dynamic production uncovers one woman’s fight for freedom and fulfilment on her own terms.The Bookseller interviews the writer Malorie Blackman:
This acclaimed re-imagining of Brontë's masterpiece was first staged by Bristol Old Vic in 2015 and transferred to the National Theatre in the same year with a revival in 2017.
During this unprecedented time, which has seen the closure of theatres, cinemas and schools, National Theatre at Home is providing access to content online to serve audiences in their homes. (John Baker in Gazette & Herald)
Caroline Carpenter: What was your favourite book as a teenager?The San Francisco Chronicle and re-reading the classics in corona times:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, closely followed by Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie.
When I was in college a million years ago, it was the beginning of the countercultural exhortation to “throw out all the dead white men” in the Western literary canon. As one who leaped at every opportunity to rebel, I took the suggestion to heart and read all the African (Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, et al.) and Latin American (Marquez, Borges, Jorges Amado) literature I could get my hands on and eschewed Dickens, Tolstoy, Proust and the like. I even avoided Jane Austen and Emily Brontë. Despite the fact that they weren’t men, they were both white and dead. (Barbara Lane)Milwaukee Magazine recommends songs:
“Bad Company” by Bad CompanyHumour for the zoom/meet times in Campus Times:
“That’s why they call me bad company … bad company till the day I die,” I growl with a dramatic flick of the air guitar, before sanitizing my hands and cracking open my copy of Jane Eyre and a packet of earl gray for my afternoon teatime. (Archer Parquette)
We now know things that we could’ve gone our whole lives without knowing. We know that the guy who likes to mansplain gender issues in “Jane Eyre” doesn’t wash his hair and only owns one shirt (the Steely Dan arena tour t-shirt with chili stains). (Jane Pritchard and Stella Rae Wilkins)The Cinemaholic discusses where Belgravia is filmed:
Country houses were quite the rage for the nobility back then. The idea behind the country house was to escape the problems of the bustling city (London) for a breath of fresh air. In many classic historical novels like ‘Jane Eyre’, or ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ country houses are often mentioned in the capacity of a leisure lair or as the guardian of family secrets. (Richy Jacob)Lonely Planet recommends a virtual visit to Brontë-related places:
The Brontë sisters' homesThe New York Times reviews The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni:
The countryside of Yorkshire and Derbyshire played a key role in inspiring the Brontës, the famous 19th-century literary family, to produce some of their most famous texts, including Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Why not take an online tour of the sisters' homes and see if the experience gets your creativity flowing as well.
The castle’s copies of the Brontës, Ann Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins and, most tellingly, “Frankenstein” engender a love of reading in Bert that ultimately leads to the book we’re reading — an elegant touch of Gothic mirroring that multiplies our own pleasure even as Bert’s search becomes more urgent. (Carol Goodman)Linkiesta (Italy) discusses the melancholic influenza-related literature:
Charlotte Brontë was the last to die of her sisters in childbirth. Another thing that almost makes you laugh today. But they declared tuberculosis and in any case they said he always coughed. Coughing never occurred to me as a child. All friends and companions always had a cough and I never, not even after influences. Some even had whooping cough for months at school and nobody looked at them badly. They then smiled in the class photo, before giving another cough. Today I am in quarantine, at the first mention. Today we know everything but some things we can't beat, even darker than this little monster. ( Benedetta Grasso ) ( Translation )Living Cesenatico (Italy) and a top ten of novels to read at least once in a lifetime:
Cime Tempestose by Emily Brontë
Un romanzo romantico e maledetto, racconta la storia dell’amore tra Catherine e Heathcliff, cresciuti come fratelli ma appartenenti a classi sociali diverse. Fraintendimenti, convenzioni sociali, matrimoni di convenienza e sentimenti di gelosia e vendetta, danno luogo ad un amore assoluto, passionale, distruttivo. Imperdibile per veri romantici. (Translation)
The acclaimed, inventive adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel is being shown as part of National Theatre at Home, a new initiative screening a selection of much-loved productions from the company for free over the next two months.
The innovative re-imagining of Jane Eyre was a collaboration between the National Theatre and Bristol Old Vic. Almost 170 years after it was written, Charlotte Brontë’s story of the trailblazing Jane is as inspiring as ever, and this bold, dynamic production uncovers one woman’s fight for freedom and fulfilment on her own terms.
From her beginnings as a destitute orphan, spirited Jane Eyre faces life’s obstacles head-on; surviving poverty, injustice and the discovery of bitter betrayal before taking the ultimate decision to follow her heart.
This acclaimed re-imagining of Brontë’s masterpiece was first staged by Bristol Old Vic in 2015 and transferred to the National in the same year with a revival in 2017. It will be shown on the National Theatre’s You Tube channel on Thursday at 7pm. (Emma Clayton in The Telegraph & Argus)
National Theatre of London’s At Home series is bringing world-class productions to your home and you can see a fresh take on Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” The story of one woman’s fight for freedom and fulfillment on her own terms is a timeless one, and you’ll be cheering for Jane as she deals with poverty, injustice and the bitter pill of betrayal. (Aimsel Ponti in The Press-Herald)
Spokeswoman Elaine Jones said: “Almost 170 years on, Charlotte Brontë’s story of the trailblazing Jane is as inspiring as ever. This bold and dynamic production uncovers one woman’s fight for freedom and fulfilment on her own terms. (Phil Hewitt in Hastings & St Leonards Observer)Also in The National (UAE), The Scotsman, Twin Cities Geek, The Cougar Chronicle, Mancunian Matters, Taunton Daily Gazette Startsat60...
Charlotte, Anne, Emily, and Branwell had no Middle Earth, Westeros, or Earthsea. Many consider their work some of the earliest examples of epic fantasy world building. None of this was meant for publication, and the source material is full of unfinished plots and meandering storylines. For Greenberg’s graphic novel adaptation, she chooses to ignore much of these rough edges of Angria and instead focuses on specific characters, using an older Charlotte Brontë to frame the imaginary world and its creators.The Scotsman makes some YA Easter recommendations:
Greenberg interweaves Glass Town with the Brontë’s lives. The imaginary seeping into the real in a beautiful dramatization which Greenberg points out in an opening letter is fictitious, using broad strokes of biographical information. When we meet a middle-aged Charlotte, she is wandering alone along the dull blue coloured moors of Haworth only to be greeted by Glass Town inhabitant Charles Wellesley in his otherworldly mustard yellow coat and dark glasses. The two reminisce. They begin at a funeral with the four Brontë siblings as children, the second funeral they’ve been at in one year, the funeral of their sister Elizabeth who died six weeks after their other sister, Maria. Death hangs over their lives, and so they escape to Glass Town where it has no power. (...)
Glass Town is a graphic novel that warrants patience and thought. Its deep intersecting worlds create relationships that will delight fans of the Brontës’ work and make others want to read the likes of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It is the only hint of Branwell’s work that we will ever see. It is an adaptation of the raw imaginary world of grief-stricken restless frustrated children, attempting to put Glass Town into context of their lives while creating something utterly original. Charles compares the characters of Glass Town to wind-up toys who will eventually wind down and stop moving, and it appears that Isabel Greenberg has kept them trundling forward for a while longer. (David Tierney)
One of the best recently published retellings is Jane Eyre: A Retelling by Tanya Landman (Barrington Stoke, £7.99). A superb adaption of the beloved classic, it beautifully captures the emotion and intense narrative voice of the original. The author has skilfully stripped back the story to the core essentials, cleverly retaining all the cherished scenes and dialogue from the original. For those who love Charlotte Brontë’s original, this is the perfect partner. For those new to the story, it is the perfect introduction. (Hannah Sycamore)In The Guardian, one book that Mark Haddon doesn't recommend is Wuthering Heights. His loss:
The often soothingly melodramatic plots, yes, but equally the syntax and the cadence – language written by people with more time to write, for an audience with more time to read, or indeed to listen. Eliot, Dickens, Gaskell, the Brontës, Wilkie Collins, Trollope… pretty much anything except Wuthering Heights (why were we so seduced for so long by a dog-strangling sex-abuser?).Reading to rediscover our empathy in Notre Dame Magazine:
Are we frustrated or sympathetic with Hamlet’s reluctance to avenge his father? When Jane Eyre discovers Mr. Rochester is married, do we urge her to flee Thornfield, or to stay? (Beth Ann Fennelly)The Irish Times interviews the authors Helena Close and Kate Elizabeth Russell:
Martin Doyle: What was the first book to make an impression on you?
Wuthering Heights. I still love it but it’s no love story.
“It was a gradual thing,” Russell says of arriving at that realisation. “It’s hard to say what my idea of a love story was when I was young. I would have allowed for a lot of darkness and obsession and violence – I mean, look at the Brontë novels. (Tanya Sweeney)Sabine Ganz recommends Jane Eyre in Volksfreund (Germany):
Auch sie will nur diesen Mann, muss ihn aber wegen ihrer moralischen Prinzipien als – wenn auch unglücklich – Verheirateten abweisen – bis die Lage sich nach einer für beide langen Lei-Elle (Spain) does the same:
densphase wendet.
Der über weite Strecken autobiografische Roman zählt zur Weltliteratur und die Lektüre ist heute lohnender denn je. Zunächst, weil das, was im Jahr seiner Veröffentlichung, 1847, ein Skandal war,
heute als selbstverständlich gilt und die Geschichte modern macht: Eine Frau setzt sich gegenüber männlichen Machtansprüchen zu Wehr, verschafft sich Respekt, geht unbeirrt ihren eigenen Weg und nimmt sich das Recht, ein leidenschaftliches und romantisches Liebesideal zu leben. Dann zählt auch folgende Betrachtung: Während die Erkenntnis der Härte, oft auch Kürze, und der Unbarmherzigkeit des Lebens heutige Leser während der Corona-Pandemie erschrecken mag, war sie früheren Generationen und so auch der Autorin und ihrer Titelheldin stets präsent.
Die intelligente und gefühlsstarke Romanfigur Jane Eyre kennt die Waffen, die dagegen einzusetzen sind. Sie bietet dem Leben und den Männern die Stirn mit Zähigkeit, Eigensinn und Treue gegenüber den eigenen Idealen: Jane Eyre wächst als armes Waisenkind im Haus einer hartherzigen, erwitweten, angeheirateten Tante auf, deren drei Kinder auf sie herabsehen und sie nach dem Vorbild ihrer Mutter schikanieren. (Translation)
Aparentemente, 'Jane Eyre' es una novela de amor; detrás, se esconde mucho más. Fue la primera obra publicada por una de las hermanas Brontë –aunque la tuvo que firmar con el seudónimo Currer Bell, para evitar los prejuicios por ser mujer– y narra la historia de una joven huérfana que llega a Thornfield Hall, donde es contratada por el orgulloso Edward Rochester, por quien se siente atraída, para cuidar de su hija Adèle. (Begoña Alonso) (Translation)Wysokie Obcasy (Poland) recommends books in general:
No i zawsze można liczyć na happy end. Jeśli wolisz gotycki romans, dobre są siostry Brontë z ich mrocznymi i gwałtownymi bohaterami, silnymi bohaterkami, ponurymi wrzosowiskami i tajemnicami zamkniętymi na klucz na strychu. (Katarzyna Wężyk) (Translation)Bookish in the Mitten posts about Jane Eyre. AnneBrontë.org celebrates the life of Charlotte Brontë. Maddalena De Leo posts about Anne Brontë's life as a governess on The Sisters' Room.
Friends: A Poem for Every Day of the Year
Edited by Jane McMorland Hunter
Pavilion Books
ISBN: 9781849945899
2019
365 poems celebrating friendship, love and constancy.
This wonderful collection of poems celebrates friendship every day of the year. There are poems on the joys of companionship, encouragement, consolation, humour and love, making this a perfect gift for friends, family and partners.
Poems featured include Emily Brontë’s ‘Love and Friendship’ and Stevie Smith’s ‘Pleasures of friendship’, as well as writings from Keats, Norman MacCaig, Waldo Emerson and Amy Lowell.
Some of the most beautiful poems ever written are collected here to give us insight into the important things in life.
Poems on NatureIncluding two poems by Emily Brontë: Ladybird! Ladybird! and Fall, Leaves, Fall.
Edited by Gaby Morgan
Introduced by Helen MacDonald
Pan MacMillan (Macmillan Collector's Library)
ISBN: 9781509893805
2019
The poems in Poems on Nature are divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter to reflect in verse the changes of the seasons and the passing of time. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by Helen Macdonald, author of the international bestseller, H is for Hawk. Since poetry began, there have been poems about nature; it's a complex subject which has inspired some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Poets from Andrew Marvell to W. B. Yeats to Emily Brontë have sought to describe the natural environment and our relationship with it. There is also a rich tradition of songs and rhymes, such as 'Scarborough Fair', that hark back to a rural way of life which may now be lost, but is brought back to life in the lyrical verses included in this collection.
Faute de présenter la pièce Hurlevents à la salle Pierrette-Gaudreault de Jonquière, un événement auquel les amateurs de théâtre auraient dû assister ce soir (samedi), le Théâtre La Rubrique a trouvé la meilleure manière de composer avec les contraintes imposées par la pandémie. Il a invité la dramaturge Fanny Britt à participer à un entretien qui aura lieu aujourd’hui, à 20 h, par le truchement de Facebook.You can watch the meeting here.
C’est ce qui a poussé Fanny Britt à imaginer une histoire bien d’aujourd’hui, alors que sa première intention était de plonger dans le roman d’Emily Brontë, Les Hauts de Hurlevent.
L’élément déclencheur de la pièce est un souper organisé par Émilie, à la veille de son départ pour l’Angleterre, où elle doit compléter une maîtrise en littérature. Des amis sont présents, tout comme Marie-Hélène, une professeure qui assume également le rôle de mentore auprès de la jeune femme. Très tôt, on réalise que leur conception de la vie et de l’amour bouscule l’aînée du groupe.
« C’est un hommage à la jeunesse. J’avais le goût d’écrire sur des vingtenaires qui, tout en étant conscients des enjeux de société, ont confiance dans la solidarité, croient en l’importance de rêver, de ne pas tout miser sur le travail. Cette idée m’inspirait beaucoup, d’autant que l’une des missions du Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, où la pièce a été créée, consiste à présenter des oeuvres au jeune public », a énoncé la dramaturge au cours d’une entrevue téléphonique accordée au Progrès.
Le contrepoint est offert par Marie-Hélène, qui, sur les planches, empruntait les traits de la comédienne Catherine Trudeau. Apprenant que l’une des convives, Isabelle, vit une aventure avec un professeur, elle affiche clairement ses réticences.
« C’est cette femme qui représente ma génération, le point de vue d’une adulte. C’est aussi elle qui porte la connaissance à propos des soeurs Brontë, décrit Fanny Britt. À ses yeux, le professeur est un prédateur, alors qu’Isabelle lui répond : “C’est à moi de considérer si c’est de l’abus ou pas.” C’est l’affrontement entre une vision protectrice et celle qui consiste à se laisser porter par le désir. »
Le lien avec les soeurs Brontë réside dans cette volonté qu’elles avaient de forger leur destin, advienne que pourra. Prendre la décision d’écrire des oeuvres de fiction dans l’Angleterre du 19e siècle et de s’y investir totalement, avec une ferveur quasiment religieuse, nécessitait une force de caractère à laquelle Fanny Britt, comme des générations de lectrices, a durablement succombé.
« Elles ont voulu mener une vie différente de celle qui leur était destinée, ce qui devait aboutir à un mariage. Emily, par exemple, a été totale dans ses choix et comme ses soeurs, elle a été une précurseure. Leur mode de vie a influencé beaucoup de femmes écrivaines », rappelle l’invitée de La Rubrique. (Daniel Côté) (Translation)
László Nemes, réalisateur (Le Fils de Saul, Sunset)The Tyee gives tips on falling in love in coronavirus times:
"Désolé de gâcher la fête, mais je n’en vois que deux : Les Hauts de Hurlevent, d’Andrea Arnold, et La Dernière Piste, de Kelly Reichardt. Deux films fragiles, courageux, qui proposent des points de vue très spécifiques et ont vraiment une âme. Je n’ai pas envie d’en citer d’autres, parce que les dix dernières années n’ont pas été très brillantes du point de vue de la réalisation et de la prise de risques." (Frédéric Foubert) (Translation)
Take heed from writers who knew that less is often way more when writing about matters of the heart.The Independent reviews My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell:
The best lines from Charlotte Brontë’s romantic masterpiece Jane Eyre?
“Am I hideous, Jane?”
“Very, sir: you always were, you know.” (Dorothy Woodend)
It was only after Russell started reading trauma theory during her PhD, at the University of Kansas, that Russell realised what she was writing was not a love story but a more complicated tale of abuse, complicity and consent. Russell had grown up thinking romance meant Heathcliff and Cathy tearing each other apart in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, or that happiness meant Jane Eyre marrying the deceptive Mr Rochester. According to Russell, “the way that we conceptualise and practise romance, and especially heterosexual romance, is very much tied to trauma”. (Annie Lord)The Canberra Times celebrates Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca:
Rebecca, in both book and film, has echoes of earlier Gothic novels like Jane Eyre. tells the story of a diffident young woman whose name is never revealed. (Ron Cerebona)Il Friuli (Italy) recommends reading Jane Eyre; Fanpage (Italy) is more into Wuthering Heights:
Pagine cariche di passione sono quelle che raccontano la tormentata storia d'amore tra Heathcliff e la sua amata Catherine. Tra i due si innesta una tenero rapporto, minato, però, dalle troppe differenze sociali tra i due. Ambientato nella brughiera inglese di inizio Ottocento, Cime tempestose, l'unico romanzo scritto da Emily Brontë, è un vero capolavoro letterario e linguistico. (Translation)Onedio (Turkey) also recommends Emily Brontë's novel for these self-isolation days:
İngiltere’de XIX. yüzyılın ikinci yarısı orta sınıfın yükselişini, gösterişli yaşamların moda oluşunu simgeler. Brontë kardeşler, kadının edebiyatla uğraşmasının hoş görülmediği bu yıllarda, önce erkek kimliğiyle şiirler yazmış sonra kendi adlarıyla, klasikler arasında yer alacak üç önemli romana imza atmışlardır. Emily Brontë 1848’de öldüğünde dünya edebiyatının en güzel yapıtlarından birini, ilk ve tek romanı Uğultulu Tepeler’i bırakmıştır ardında. Bu Victoria dönemi romanı, kimine göre dünyanın gelmiş geçmiş en büyük aşk romanı; kimine göre her okunuşunda değişik tatlar veren çağlar ötesi bir eser ya da insanın içine işleyen bir anlatımla dile getirilmiş uzun bir şiirdir. (Beyza) (Translation)More Turkish recommendations:
Örneğin 250. doğum yılını yaşadığımız büyük besteci Beethoven’ın müziği eşliğinde Nâzım Hikmet’in şiirlerini okumak (üstelik sesli) çok anlamlı. Şiir sonrası sessizlik içinde, Charlotte Brontë’ın “Jane Eyre” romanını okumak hem öğretici hem de gelecek günler için umut verici oluyor. (Televizyon Gazetesi) (Translation)Noticias de Navarra (Spain) insists on Wuthering Heights:
La figura del atormentado Heathcliff domina "Cumbres Borrascosas", novela apasionada y tempestuosa cuya sensibilidad se adelantó a su tiempo. Los brumosos y sombríos páramos de Yorkshire son el singular escenario donde se desarrolla con fuerza arrebatadora esta historia de venganza y odio, de pasiones desatadas y amores desesperados que van más allá de la muerte y que hacen de ella una de las obras más singulares y atractivas de todos los tiempos.But Ritz Magazine (India) prefers Jane Eyre:
Aunque ahora se considera un clásico de la literatura inglesa, el recibimiento inicial de la obra de Emily Bronte fue tibio en el mejor de los casos. Su estructura innovadora, ha dado lugar a muchas adaptaciones, incluyendo varias películas, dramatizaciones radiofónicas y un musical. (Lucía Egurbide) (Translation)
Jane Eyre provided a story of individualism for women. The novel’s eponymous character rises from being orphaned and poor into a successful and independent woman. The work combines themes from both Gothic and Victorian literature, revolutionizing the art of the novel by focusing on the growth in Jane’s sensibility with internalized action and writing.Politiken (Denmark) on literature in pandemic times:
Da Julie vågner og ser Romeo død, begår hun også selvmord. Tuberkulosen, der jo tog mange romantiske kunstenere med i døden og blev romantiseret som enædel og værdig sygdom, ramte også de tre Brontë-søstre, Emily, Anne og Charlotte, med døden til følge i årene 1848-55. (Anders Fogh Jensen) (Translation)Eklecty-City (France) interviews the creator of the YouTube channel Demoiselles D'Horreur:
Cela dit, ma chanson préférée au monde reste ‘Wuthering Heights‘ de l’inénarrable Kate Bush. Et ça tombe bien, parce que ‘Les Hauts de Hurlevent‘ est le roman qui a changé ma vie. (Thomas) (Translation)Il Giornale (Italy) reviews Tiffany MacDaniel's The Summer that Melted Everything:
Eppure la forza letteraria di Tiffany McDaniel è di non metterci mai dalla parte di chi giudica, ma di consegnarci un romanzo che ha anche echi ottocenteschi come quelli di Emily Brontë: le cime tempestose sono le stesse, certo i tempi sono cambiati. (Gian Paolo Serino) (Translation)The Random Reader posts about Jane Eyre. Ann czyta and Myśli z głowy wylatujące (both in Polish) post about Wuthering Heights.
Some recent poetry compilations including poems by the Brontës:She is Fierce
Brave, bold and beautiful poems by women
Anna Sampson
MacMillan's Children Books
ISBN: 9781529003154
A stunning gift book containing 150 bold, brave and beautiful poems by women – from classic, well loved poets to innovative and bold modern voices. From suffragettes to school girls, from spoken word superstars to civil rights activists, from aristocratic ladies to kitchen maids, these are voices that deserve to be heard.
Collected by anthologist Ana Sampson She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Women contains an inclusive array of voices, from modern and contemporary poets. Immerse yourself in poems from Maya Angelou, Nikita Gill, Wendy Cope, Ysra Daley-Ward, Emily Bronte, Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Berry, Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish, Imtiaz Dharker, Helen Dunmore, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Christina Rossetti, Margaret Atwood and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few!
Featuring short biographies of each poet, She is Fierce is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf.
Including High Waving Heather and Stanzas by Emily Brontë; Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Morning by Anne Brontë and Speak of the North! by Charlotte Brontë.Poems to Fall in Love WithIncluding Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë.
Chosen and Illustrated by Chris Riddell
Pan MacMillan, October 2019
ISBN: 9781529023237
In Poems to Fall in Love With Chris Riddell has selected and illustrated his very favourite classic and modern poems about love.
This gorgeously illustrated collection, Chris's follow-up to one of the Bookseller's best poetry books of the last 25 years, Poems to Live Your Life By, celebrates love in all its guises, from silent admiration through passion to tearful resignation. These poems speak of the universal experiences of the heart and are brought to life with Chris's exquisite, intricate artwork.
This perfect gift features famous poems, old and new, and a few surprises. Classic verses sit alongside the modern to create the ultimate collection. Includes poems from Neil Gaiman, Nikita Gill, Carol Ann Duffy, E. E. Cummings, Shakespeare, Leonard Cohen, Derek Walcott, Hollie McNish, Kate Tempest, John Betjeman and Roger McGough and many more.
The book I wish I’d writtenI. ’m not sure I wish I’d written it – because how on earth could I possibly have done so? – but I wholeheartedly admire and adore Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. If I could only save one book from a supernatural conflagration of all books ever written, it would be this one.The Times recommends the best books to listen to such as
Jane EyreVanity Fair has Cyndi Lauper answer the Proust Questionnaire.
by Charlotte Brontë
Read by Thandie Newton (Audible)
Riveting, accomplished — you’ll want to hear Newton narrate more. (Patricia Nicol)
Who are your favorite writers? The Brontë sisters, and I love Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Lisa See, Haruki Murakami, Patti Smith, and Charles Dickens.The Irish Times features the novel My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell.
“It was a gradual thing,” Russell says of arriving at that realisation. “It’s hard to say what my idea of a love story was when I was young. I would have allowed for a lot of darkness and obsession and violence – I mean, look at the Brontë novels. (Tanya Sweeney)Esquire interviews her about it too.
ESQ: That’s a huge period of emotional and physical growth that you were writing the book over, how did it change over the course of your writing? KER: When I was younger I saw it as a love story, but my idea of what a love story could be left a lot of room for abuses, darkness and obsession. I was a bookish kid and loved Brontë novels. I thought Wuthering Heights was the height of romance and that is certainly a story with obsession and violence. It wasn’t until I was in mid-to-late twenties and I learned more about how symptoms of trauma can manifest in a person, especially prolonged trauma from sexual abuse, that I started to see it differently. The more I learned about that the more I recognised Vanessa, and so it was a matter of still holding onto this idea of it being a love story – because that’s something Vanessa clings to in the novel – but also understanding what PTSD can do to the brain and body. (Olivia Ovenden)Forbes asks several travel writers for books to travel from your own home.
Amy Alipio, Senior Editor National Geographic TravelBuzz gives perfectly sound advice for lockdown (read what you feel like reading) by putting readers off several books:
[...]
“For me, books have always been linked to wanderlust. To paraphrase Walter Kirn, journeys begin in the mind, with an image or a story, and finish in the world. I read Wuthering Heights, and wanted to travel to Britain’s moors; I recently read A Gentleman in Moscow and of course now I really want to visit Moscow.” (Tamara Thiessen)
Read the classicsScreen Rant recommends '10 Movies To Watch If You Loved Emma'.
We'll tell you a secret, lots of the classics are pure shite. Wuthering Heights? Dull. Mansfield Park? Godawful. Moby Dick? Call me uninterested.
While we do promote reading, you don't have to spend your time in lockdown reading books that people tell you you should 'read before you die'.
Read whatever the hell you like. Read chick-lit without guilt. Read thrillers to your heart's content. Read the back of a cereal box if it makes you happy. (Fiona Kelly)
7/10 Jane Eyre (2011)The Telegraph features the wonderful Julie Walters and her latest film, The Secret Garden.
On the other end of classic British literature is Charlotte Brontë, who serves almost as a far dark and complicated version of Jane Austen. If you're missing some atmospheric shots of abandoned moors, Jane Eyre is the film for you.
The film stars Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, and Judi Dench in some really stellar roles. It also serves as a visual feast and is gorgeous to look at, with Cary Joji Fukunaga directing it superbly. It contains a lot of the similar set dressing and costuming as Emma. but with a little bit harder of an edge. (Matt Berger)
We are sitting in this hotel in west London because Walters is promoting her latest movie, a lusciously beautiful adaptation of The Secret Garden, which has been given a rather clever Brontë-esque twist by its director Marc Munden. She plays the harsh, dictatorial housekeeper, Mrs Medlock, alongside the psychotically depressed widower Lord Archibald Craven, played by Colin Firth. Their quiet, secretive lives are transformed by the arrival of Craven’s niece from India, the difficult, strong-willed Mary Lennox, brilliantly portrayed by Dixie Egerickx. (Louise Gannon)Billboard lists '12 Metal and Hard Rock Albums MIA on Spotify' such as
Celtic Frost, Cold Lake (1988)El Periódico (Spain) looks into Daphne du Maurier's 'complex sexuality' and her novel Rebecca.
This Swiss group were experimental pioneers of the '80s metal underground, infusing dark orchestrations and avant-garde quirkiness into their grinding, doomy, and sometimes thrashy sound. Their early music certainly captured the thrash zeitgeist, and they challenged perceptions of genre limitations on their first three releases. They even quoted Charles Baudelaire and Emily Brontë in their lyrics. And then came... Cold Lake. (Bryan Reesman)
El malentendido es que la novela siempre se ha leído como una intensa historia de amor, la de una cenicienta y su príncipe azul, una especie de edición renovada de ‘Jane Eyre’, en la que la loca en el altillo, la difunta, es exquisita e imponente, una supermujer que en vida pisaba fuerte y hacía su voluntad (¿alguna objeción a eso? ). Pero en realidad, a poco que el lector o la lectora suspendan en algún momento su credulidad y eviten dejarse manipular por la asfixiante y hábil trama, se comprobará que él es un Barba Azul que paradójicamente se nos muestra como víctima, y ella, alguien encantado de conocer esa ‘mancha’ en el historial de su marido. Porque alguien que ha asesinado a su esposa tiene su corazón de nuevo en circulación. (Elena Hevia) (Translation)
The first of a projected four-volume series of translations of Charlotte Brontë's letters:Lettere di Charlotte Brontë Vol.1 (1829-1847)(via iCrewplay)
Translated by Alessandranna D'Auria
Darcy Edizioni
31 March 2020
Scrisse della malattia, del pianto, della solitudine. E scrisse della volontà, della caparbietà, di segreti, di verità, di dubbi e forza interiore, di sicurezze e debolezza d’animo. Per quanto nei suoi romanzi Charlotte Brontë abbia riversato ogni cosa di sé, anche negandolo, è nelle lettere inviate alle persone che la circondavano, a dirci proprio tutto, tutte le sue verità, tutte le sue bugie.
Primo (1829-1847) di quattro volumi.
If you had planned a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum for Easter, you might want to consider donating the money you would have spent there, for instance.Due to our inability to fulfil orders at the present time, our online shop is also now closed. If you would like to support us in a different way, please make a donation via our website at https://t.co/f7ltQnV6vF. Thank you.— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 2, 2020
Mood: utterly spent but still wanting to feel at least a little bit smart. I’m looking for genre fiction that goes down easy without making me feel dumb. A mood I know well! [...] Maybe also throw in a little Lyndsay Faye — I’m a fan of Jane Steele, which reimagines Jane Eyre as a serial killer. (Constance Grady)The New York Review of Books discusses Caleb Crain’s novel Overthrow.
This is a stylistic tic, a bit like Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë glossing an English region as “––––––shire,” and yet to anyone who has the most basic familiarity with New York, Crain’s coyness quickly takes on an unintended comedy. (Jason Farago)Martlet features Emily, University of Victoria’s feminist newspaper from the 1980s.
In the very first issue of the Emily, from Oct. 28, 1982, there is an editorial that attributes the naming of the publication in recognition of significant Emilys in history — Emily Brontë, Emily Dickenson [sic], Emily Carr, Emily Murphy, and Emily Pankhurst are all specifically noted. (Emily Fagan)National Review has an article on Autumn de Wilde's screen adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma.
Thus in Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice, we were given Austen by way of Emily Brontë, with primness abandoned for earthiness, an emotive, miscast Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet, and a Darcy in Matthew Macfadyen whose undone shirts made him look less a prosperous landowner than a Byronic intellectual on the make. (Ross Douthat)Newsday has asked 'a range of Long Islanders about their current “comfort movie”'.
Kerry Kearney, blues musician, Breezy PointShortlist offers readers the possibility of voting for 'The 45 best book-to-film adaptations ever'. Wuthering Heights 1939 is one of them.
“I’m not a drinker, I’m not a partier. I don’t really go out much,” Kearney says – something of a surprise coming from a lifelong bluesman. Another surprise: His new comfort movie is “Ryan’s Daughter,” David Lean’s romantic World War I epic from 1970, starring Sarah Miles, Christopher Jones and Robert Mitchum. Kearney DVR’d the film from a recent TCM broadcast and watched it over the course of three nights. “I’m a blues guy, and so people always think of the blues as kind of rough and dirty,” Kearney says. “But I love ‘Wuthering Heights’ and really sappy movies from another era.” (Rafer Guzmán)
30. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
Film: 1939
Director: William Wyler
Laurence Olivier – the actor’s actor – portraying the brooding Heathcliff and the elegant Merle Oberon playing opposite him as Cathy are the pair that bring to life one of literature’s greatest (and doomed) love affairs. For brevity’s sake, Wyler omits the second half of Brontë’s masterpiece, but this adaptation captures all the gothic majesty of the book. (Marc Chacksfield)
Picturing Charlotte Brontë’s Artistic Rebellion? Myths of the Woman Artist in Postfeminist Jane Eyre Screen Adaptations
Catherine Paula Han
Adaptation, https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apz034
Published: 29 March 2020
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) has been regularly adapted for the screen since the silent era. During the 1990s, a trend emerged in which cinematic and television versions of Brontë’s novel paid increased attention to the protagonists’ identities as amateur artists. To explain this phenomenon, this article examines Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli, 1996), Jane Eyre (ITV/A&E, 1997), Jane Eyre (BBC, 2006), and Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011). It proposes that these productions contribute to the evolution of Brontë’s authorial mythology by heightening their heroines’ similarities with the writer, another amateur artist. In so doing, these adaptations benefit from the reputations of Brontë and her work as rebelliously feminist. Nevertheless, these women artists’ rebellions are distinctly postfeminist. To demonstrate its argument, the article contextualizes contemporary Jane Eyre adaptations within their postfeminist cultural landscape. Postfeminism, however, is a contested term. Hence, this analysis participates in broader debates that interrogate postfeminism as a concept and its persistent fascination with nineteenth-century creative women. Through comparisons of the adaptations, this article will delineate the development of the woman artist trope to reveal how postfeminist conceptualizations of women’s creativity have shifted since the 1990s. In particular, the woman artist displays an increased desire to ‘return home’. Such retreatist narratives exploit but also obscure the fact that Brontë has long signified the perceived tension between traditional, highly domestic female gender roles and women’s creativity. As such, these postfeminist adaptations have a shaping effect on the myths that continue to circulate about Brontë’s feminism and authorship.
The impact of psychology in novels of women writers of Victorian age: With special reference to Brontë Sisters, George Meredith, George Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell
by Dr Anshika Makhijani, Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal
Journal of Composition Theory, 2020
The Victorian Age is one of the most glorious epochs in the history of England. It witnessed an unprecedented progress in all the fields of life. It was an age of material affluence, potential awakening, democratic reforms, unrest, educational expansion, humanitarianism, idealism and imperialism. It was essentially an age of prose and the novel. In this perspective we find that many women writers came into sight at this vital moment in history when women were importunate to be given voice, to achieve their rights and to be given an opportunity to come out of the shells of quiet acquiescence enforced upon them and achieve something of their own. This paper attempts to evaluate their contributions towards achieving women’s rights in English history.
