The collected works

A couple of news items today complement previous mentions on BrontëBlog.

The Blog According to John highlights something from a review by Alan Jacobs on The Things That Matter by Edward Mendelson.

Mendelson also sees the implications of the books’ obviously encompassing themes. For instance, here’s a sentence from the conclusion of the chapter on Jane Eyre, comparing that novel with the masterwork of Charlotte Brontë’s sister Emily: “The unity of Catherine and Heathcliff is so complete that it excludes everyone else. The marriage of Jane and Rochester is so fertile that it embraces others.” (Says Jane at the end of her story, “My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise.”)

There's food for thought. Check our own review here.

The Edmonton Sun confirms that playwright Vern Thiessen is still working on his very own version of Wuthering Heights, as we reported a few months ago.

The genial playwright is currently working on five plays, including two commissioned by the Citadel, a version of Wuthering Heights and a play built around one of Canada's great battles of the First World War, called Vimy. (Colin MacLean)

The TRIC Awards have already taken place but we are sorry to report that Jane Eyre hasn't won :(

Marianne Leone recently wrote a funny article for The Boston Globe on being the wife of a celebrity (she is Chris Cooper's wife). She included this very graphic, easy-to-relate-to comment.

My weight is typical for a middle-aged woman. That means when I’m in a herd of starlets, I am sasquatch, she of the thunderous footsteps lumbering behind. The mother in me wants to fling these little shadows onto gurneys and attach IVs to their puny arms, but my inner middle-schooler quakes in the presence of so many queen bees and wants only to bury her nose in a book by any of the Brontes and be transported to an alternate reality.

The Little Professor also gives us something to mull over when she looks into Jane and Rochester's courtship.

As it happens, my older students are rarely "enthralled" by Rochester's courtship either, largely because so much of it is, you know, carried out while he's still married. (Or are we supposed to be over all that by now?) And much of it is frequently manipulative and downright unpleasant--the mindgames Rochester plays with Jane and Blanche, for example. Moreover, the novel condemns the initial phase of their courtship: yes, they fall in love, but they do so by elevating their relationship to each other over their relationship to God. As Jane repeatedly acknowledges, their "love" turns into idolatry. (Marianne Thormahlen is quite good on this point.) You can make a good case that the most significant part of the "courtship" is their enforced separation after the failed marriage ceremony. So, yes, Jane Eyre is a "romance," but it's really not such a good idea to appropriate it for this ideological purpose.

And finally for the baffling mention of the day. Payvand's Iran News relays Fatima Bhutto's article from The News International, where she states:

Khanum Emami's publishing house includes translations from Nietzsche, books on civil society in the Islamic world and the collected works of Emily Bronte.

Even if it did include the bulk of Emily's poetry (translated into Farsi?) we'd still think 'the collected works' was an overstatement. We can almost hear Emily chuckling at that.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights