The house in Jane Eyre

We have discovered thanks to Alan Bentley from the Brontë list the following radio program, OpenBook, recently broadcasted (December 24) by BBC4:

Open Book celebrates the house in literature in a special programme recorded on location at 18 Folgate Street in London's Spitalfields, the house which artist Dennis Severs restored to its 18th century condition.

In a special Christmas edition of Open Book recorded in an 18th century house in London's Spitalfield round an open fire and lit by candles, novelist Helen Dunmore, writer Francis Spufford and academic and critic John Mullen celebrate the house as a character in literature.

The haunted house, the house with a past, the house with a secret attic, are all staple features of the novel. But do houses have to be old in order to create sufficient atmosphere to sustain a narrative, how do contemporary novelists respond to the creative potential of modern houses, and why does the house always feature strongly in childrens books?

Includes readings from the following books:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Afterward by Edith Wharton
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

You can listen it, clicking here (RealAudio needed).

[In the program] it [is] suggested that critics decided that Currer Bell was a woman because of thedetail domestic description, something that a male author could not have done. It is an interesting thought but I think that Dickens does fairly well with his domestic descriptions.

Alan (on the Brontë list)

Categories: Audio-Radio, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre