Ailments, reviews and more

BBC News publishes an article about the ailments affecting classic fiction's heroines. The article is based on A Nasty Case Of The Vapours, a Radio 4 program broadcast today at 11.30am (listen again here) (originally aired in June 2005)

To read classic fiction is to know that if the heroine gets wet, a swift descent into brain fever and death bed scenes is assured within a chapter or so.
But, dear reader, have you ever wondered what was actually wrong with these swooning creatures? (...)
I asked doctors of both medicine and literature to consider three heroines - Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, Cathy in Wuthering Heights and the glacial Lady Dedlock in Bleak House - and to tell me, please - what ailed them? (...)
Everyone gets not just wet but soaked in Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's story of the elemental elements and the elemental passion between the brooding, yearning Heathcliff and the distinctly unhinged Cathy.
She dies in childbirth (having starved herself) and then proceeds to haunt everyone.
Surely Wuthering Heights, in which 11 characters die - many having had conspicuous coughs - is the classic tale of TB?
Professor John Sutherland, Northcliffe Professor of English Literature at University College London, reminded me of Emily Bronte's own background.
"The one thing that everyone knows about the Bronte family is that there was a virtual holocaust of TB among them."
So Bronte was writing from experience.
But Professor Warbuoys is having none of it. "Consumption - which we always take today to mean TB - was not a medical diagnosis in the Victorian era but referred to symptoms of wasting and coughing which were common to many respiratory diseases that afflicted 19th century Britain."
A tale of bronchitis caused by not wearing vests on the moors then?
Sutherland disagrees altogether.
"Cathy's death is the result of self inflicted hunger," he claims.
Dr Vickers has yet another diagnosis. A nasty attack of spirits.
"It's a plot device to make a ghost of Cathy as quickly as possible, so that she can haunt both Heathcliffe and us". (Vivienne Parry)

TV Scoop chooses their top ten literary adaptations. Jane Eyre 2006 is among them:

7. Jane Eyre
The most recent adaptation on the list, 2006’s four-part version of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 classic romance cast unknown Ruth Wilson as our steely heroine with Toby Stephens on moody-mode as Rochester. The programme earned plaudits both here and in the US, and despite a few, very slight discrepancies maintained the haunting quality of the novel. (Katie Button)

Movie2Movie.nl reviews the recent DVD Dutch release of the miniseries (in Dutch).

The Toledo Blade publishes a reminder of the performances at the Adrian College of Jane Eyre: The Musical that we presented on a previous post.

Directed by Michael Allen, a professor of theater at the college, the musical retells the story of the orphan Jane, who grows up to become a governess at Thornfield Manor, where she falls in love with the enigmatic Edward Rochester, an earl with a dark secret. (...)
The cast includes Mackenzie Fader as Jane, Nicolas Fuqua as Rochester, Gerianne Ditto as Blanche Ingram, Jessica Kobel as Mrs. Fairfax, and Deveny Lopinski as Mrs. Reed. (Nanciann Cherry)

The Newcastle Chronicle publishes a review of the recent performances of Jane Eyre by The People's Theatre:

THIS play is one of the most interesting if not peculiar interpretations I have ever seen.
The introduction is perfect with the three sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne introducing themselves then clairvoyantly addressing their successes that we recognise today, highlighting their most famous work and the impacts they have made. They return later in the play in this form to remind us of other events that will happen in the future.
The stage is effective in that it is simple, with an invisible corridor marked by piles of books and empty picture frames on the walls of the single room. This, along with a television screen behind to show various effects, works well to set the tone and get us used to the surroundings, as the set does not change.
Throughout, the three girls and their brother Branwell converse and dream about the outside world, of their longing to leave the confines of their house and the windy moor, and to escape their mundane day-to-day activities. However, the girls’ ideas and outlooks on how they should live their lives contrast and they often provide arguments and moments of dramatic tension which keep you on the edge.
We also feel great sympathy for the girls who, having little experience of life outside their home, often blame themselves and don’t hold much self-esteem. We then discover how the girls cope and make up for their lack of excitement by becoming lost in the world of writing.
As Emily writes, her alter-ego Cathy frequently appears and, likewise when it is Charlotte’s turn, her inner feelings and desires are shown by the exotic Bertha.
The actors also multi-task, with the impressive Rachel Ramsey briefly playing her character Charlotte’s alter-ego Jane Eyre, and the brilliant Simon Stevens as the excited brother Branwell and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.
Jenny Strawson as Anne is also great but for me the best is Melanie Dagg as the troubled Cathy.
Dagg radiates class in her character.
Genie Khmelnitski as Bertha dazzles as the inner passion of Charlotte and truly brightens the stage, especially when Charlotte’s father compliments Jane Eyre and she dances happily on stage revealing Charlotte’s delight.
Lots of themes intertwine in this depressing but magnificent insight into the Bronte family’s life. We are shown the women behind the classic books in detail, and the performances and effect overall will leave a lasting impression.
This has definitely ignited my interest in the Bronte sisters’ literature – I suggest you see it as soon as possible. (Sean Thompson)

A couple of articles (this and this) appear today in Keighley News concerning different tourism issues in Brontë country.

On the blogosphere today: Book Outlook posts about Ambiguity in Wuthering Heights. Great Yorkshire Pubs devotes an article to The Black Bull. The Coldfront Magazine reviews Attemps at a Life by Danielle Dutton, a poetry book we presented some time ago:

The book begins with the poem “Jane Eyre,” a stripped down version of the familiar novel, in which the basic outlines of the plot and character are presented with quick and careful sketching:

It started out I was hungry and smaller than most. Not pretty, but passable. Rest easy, for this is not another story about a girl and her father; I never even knew mine.

The poem continues with the same remarkable ease that it begins with. The poem is ultimately less about the experience of reading Jane Eyre than the experience of re-reading Jane Eyre—the poem moves forward with an intimacy that can border on fatigue (familiarity breeds what, dear reader?)—but the final effect is something that’s hard to describe. It’s not quite elegiac, although it does have that slight obituary quality of covering the full life in a tiny space. It’s also not quite exhaustive, although it does dip into all of the crucial contours of the novel. It’s most like love—the way that something familiar and known can continue to excite past the point of discovery. That the fact of the beloved remains a source of wonder even after it has ceased to be a source of surprise. (Jason Schneiderman)

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights