Things you can do

A few Brontë things that you can do, today.

You can love the Brontës:

As a point of comparison, we need only to look at the number of great women novelists from Britain. From Jane Austen to the Brontes to George Eliot to Virginia Woolf to Doris Lessing, Britain’s women have produced extraordinary novels that have stood the test of time. They’re still read, studied, and loved today. (New York Inquirer, A Dearth of American Women Novelists? by Ruiyan Xu)

You can cordially, or not, detest them:

As a bookworm teen, I began reading novels tied to movies as an escape from scholastically enforced reading, like the tedious "Wuthering Heights" and neverending "Scarlet Letter." (Amanda Shipman in The Ledger-Enquirer).

8. Give each of the characters in that boring book you have to read a different funny voice or accent. Think how much more entertaining Charlotte Bronte’s characters would be if they all had Bronx accents and spoke in Ebonics. (The Mirror-UNC)

You can travel to Haworth to see and touch what they saw and touched:

Haworth is part shrine to the Brontes and part tourist honey pot although there are mercifully few of ‘Ye Olde Bronte Shoppes’. There are some really different shops, a gloriously untidy film memorabilia one, run by a lovely Scottish lady and some Roald Dahl inspired shops selling old fashioned sweets like sherbet fountains, rhubarb and custard bombs and aniseed balls, from an era before ‘Snickers’ took over the world. (...)

The Bronte Parsonage has been restored to resemble the early nineteenth century, there are plenty of Branwell’s paintings exhibited and it’s easy to see why he didn’t make it as an artist. (...)

We walk to the isolated Bronte Falls and this being Yorkshire on a bleak windswept hillside a group of old men are lovingly tending to and spreading grass seed on a cricket pitch. The dry stonewalling has been white washed at either end to make a rudimentary sightscreen. (Mr. Read on How Not To Teach, part 10)

You can see a theatre play based on one of her works:

The Barter contributes between 30 to 70-thousand dollars every year for educational programs that bring area students to the theatre. More than 500 students watched “Jane Eyre” on the main stage on November 8. Barter officials say bigger profits at the box office this year will mean even more educational programs in the future. (On the recent performances of Jane Eyre in the Barter Theatre, Abingdon, Virginia. More information on this post of ours. Pictures, as the one on the right, here.)

You can be a Brontëite and socially active:

TWO authors are backing a campaign to block the construction of an eco-village in Colden. Juliet Barker, a broadcaster and biographer of the Bronte family and William Wordsworth, and the poet, playwright and novelist Glyn Hughes have thrown their weight behind a growing community-led campaign. (Halifax Today)

You can read Wuthering Heights and completely disagree with those that think it's an unchristian book:

When I began reading Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, I was under warning from several sources that it wasn't worth reading for a Christian. It's too dark, it glorifies evil, it doesn't have any redeeming factors, etc. (...)

In reality, what I read was a story full of grace, though it may not be easyto see. The problem arises when we expect our grace to come in comfortable packages. The idea of darkness and evil are relegated to the devil and his cohorts. We will take our grace with sugar and cream, let the sinners have the vinegar. (Micah David on The Pigeon master blog)

Categories: In the News, Wuthering Heights, Theatre, Jane Eyre, Brontëana