The inner lives of the Brontës

Some interesting things to be found on the net today. And given it's the weekend and spring is here, why not profit from an article in the Belfast Telegraph if you are in the are? It's the walk of the week: Ballyroney walk, Co Down.

The neighbourhood is also the homeland of Patrick Bronte, father of the famous Bronte sisters and born in the townland of Emdale in 1777.
Drumballyroney Church, a former Church of Ireland Church, was built in the townland of Aughnavallog in 1780 for the cost of £990.00.
The deconsecrated church at the top of the hill is used as an evening venue for music events and the quaint schoolhouse next door now houses an interpretative display on the Brontes. At the school house is a newly erected mosaic depicting a scene from 'Wuthering Heights'.
To get to Drumballyroney Church and the start of the linear 10 mile Bronte Homeland Drive which takes in other sites associated with Partick's early life, take the B7 (Tirkelly Hill Road) from Ballyroney towards Rathfriland. At the first crossroads take the road signed for the Bronte Homeland on the right. (Linda McKee)

The Acting Company who, as you well know, are touring the United States with Polly Teale's stage adaptation of Jane Eyre are now updating their blog with short entries on their performances. Do check it out, and remember you can still see them on stage!

A recent interview can be found on Jennifer Vandever's blog, the author of The Brontë Project.

Kansas City looks at the sad state of the gossip columns and the author of the article and whishes for something else:

I’d like to know the private life of writer Emily Bronte, or the ambition of Julius Caesar. (Louise Pollock Gruenebaum)

But then again Emily is not called the 'Sphinx of English literature' for nothing :)

We don't know what our Sphinx would make of this article from The Flat Hat (the Student Newspaper of the College of William and Mary since 1911). It's on nakedness and we find this gem in it:

Forgetting my body, which is free of garments, I can focus on the misadventures of Clarissa Dalloway, Heathcliff and Dracula. When I’m naked, “I am Heathcliff.” (James Damon)

Well then, perhaps Mr Damon found the real meaning and sense of that puzzling sentence. But then again perhaps he didn't.

Someone is else who likes Wuthering Heights, though we don't know her reading habits, is author Nadia Bozak, Orphan Love, who is interviewed in Epoch Times:

Stephen Clare: What books or authors have most influenced your life?
NB: Southern gothic stuff – Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Cormac McCarthy. Also, Wuthering Heights was huge for me.

Outlook India considers that 'we urgently need art that reflects injustices to which most Indians are tethered'. In their opinion the Brontës wrote 'passive realism'.

Both realism and romanticism can be either passive or active. Passive realism usually aims at a truthful depiction of reality without preaching anything, as in the novels of Jane Austen, George Eliot or the Bronte sisters. Sometimes, passive realism highlights fatalism, passivity, non-resistance to suffering and social evils. (Markandey Katju)

We highly, strongly disagree. The Brontës didn't moralise or write self-help novels but they most certainly didn't write 'non-resistance to suffering' novels either. Who can forget Jane Eyre's tirades on women rights and equality? Caroline Helstone's wish for proper work for women? Helen Huntingdon's modern take on life? Perhaps they didn't completely spell it out or say, 'here is the moral you are to derive from this, reader' but if their novels caused such a stir in their time it wasn't for their 'non-resistance to suffering'.

But to end on a lighter, cuter note. Bookshelves of Doom has done it again. After the hilarious 'Heathcliff is a prat' T-shirt she now brings us this new one with a unique quotation from Jane Eyre. Lovely :)

Categories: Brontëana, Brontëites, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Patrick Brontë, Theatre, Websites, Wuthering Heights