Is Gregory House the new Edward Rochester?

Some journalists really do need to show off their knowledge, even if they seem to have only just come by it through the Wikipedia or something similar. The following belongs to an article from The Independent on Italian artist Batoni, whose work is currently the object of an exhibition at the National Gallery in London.

One of the exhibition highlights is the Portrait of Sir Humphrey Morice, which for many years hung yellowing in Norton Conyers, the grand Yorkshire house that was the inspiration for Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, where it is part of the collection of Lord and Lady Graham. In a rare move for a work from a private collection, the National Gallery has restored the portrait of Sir Humphrey, the son of one of London's leading slave merchants and a renowned animal lover, which is thought to have been responsible for the trend for sitters to adopt a reclining pose. (Ciar Byrne)

Either the journalist was bored and googled it just to pass the time or the article was turning out to be shorter than expected and had to be filled with something else. And incidentally, the claim that Norton Conyers was the inspiration for Thornfield Hall is debatable and, most probably, not absolute.

BlogCritics Magazine looks at the similarities between Jane Eyre and... House (the TV series). Apparently they consider Gregory House a 'Romantic hero' just like Rochester is.

So, back to this “Romantic Hero” stuff. I've been an avid reader of The Victorian Novel since I was in high school (and trust me, that was a LONG time ago.) My favorite of that genre will always be Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The male protagonist (Jane is the heroine of the novel) Edward Rochester is the quintessential Romantic Hero of Victorian literature. He has a dark past, including a secret marriage to a madwoman whom he keeps locked in the estate attic.
Manipulated into this tragic marriage by his father and father-in-law when he was a sensitive and idealistic young man, Rochester finds solace through self-indulgence and debauchery. Until he meets her — Jane Eyre. And it is through Jane that Rochester seeks redemption of his weary and “soul-withered” self. Though he offers marriage when he is not free to do so, we still have sympathy for Rochester’s plight and long for him and Jane to ultimately be (re)united. And teenage girls and women alike are captivated generation after generation by this classic Victorian novel (and the brooding Rochester) and others like it. It’s not that the heroes are “bad boys.” It is that the heroes are wounded; in need of healing — doing “good” despite themselves and captivating us in the process.
Like Bronte’s Rochester, Gregory House is a Romantic Hero. The Romantic Hero is a loner — damaged and wary of people; cynical and melancholy. He is outside the circle — an outcast; introspective and flawed. He is often alienated or isolated and has his own (often quite strong) sense of morality and ethics that is outside the conventional. He is a hero whose heroism is not involved in upholding the social order, but operating outside of it and sometimes in contradiction to it. (Barbara Barnett)

This House-Rochester connection has appeared previously on BrontëBlog.

And yet one more date to write down on your diary. Jane Eyre will be on stage in Huntingdon (UK) in a couple of weeks according to The Hunts Post.

IT'S been a classic text, a hugely successful television drama, and now Jane Eyre, the tale of romance, love and longing, is coming to the stage in Huntingdon.
Charlotte Bronte's famous novel follows Jane, a plain and intelligent girl, through a miserable childhood and into an adulthood that is pained by a prohibited love.
Directed by Michael Black, the Huntingdon Drama Club will be performing Willis Hall's stage version of Jane Eyre in November, with one of the performances in aid of the Mayor of Huntingdon's charities.
Jane, played by Anwen Pugh, escapes from her childhood nightmare to work as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a move that sparks a long and complicated romance.
While working as a governess she falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester (Bob Pugh).
She agrees to marry him, but at the altar, Mr Rochester's secret is revealed. He is already married and has an insane wife he has secretly hidden away in his house.
Jane makes a hasty departure from Thornfield Hall, but is eventually reunited with Mr Rochester who, in a cruel twist of fate, has been blinded in a fire.
The play features a cast of 20 and is sliced into numerous short scenes that take place on an almost bare stage - only a chair, blackboard or another prop are used to suggest the location.
This is the way Willis Hall intended his production.
He once said: "What is important to the early 19th century feel of any production is the close, claustrophobic sense produced by small acting areas contained in pools of candlelight."
So expect an intimate production.
The play will also help Councillor Jennifer Sarabia's chosen charities.
The performance on Thursday, November 15, will raise money for the West Anglia Crossroads Caring for Carers, Huntingdon Volunteer Bureau and Gabriel Newton's Educational Foundation.
There will also be performances of Jane Eyre on Friday, November 16, and Saturday, November 17.
INFORMATION: All performances will start at 7.30pm and take place at the Commemoration Hall in Huntingdon High Street.
Tickets cost £8 for adults or £6 for concessions. To book tickets for the charity performance, call Jenni Jones on 01480 388687, or for any of the other performances, phone 01480 456634.

Talking about dates. Tonight ITV1 will broadcast live the ceremony of the National Television Awards. If you remember Jane Eyre 2006 has three nominations: Most Popular Actress: Ruth Wilson; Most Popular Actor: Toby Stephens; Most Popular Drama Programme: Jane Eyre. These awards are the results of a public poll so fingers crossed!

Let's conclude with a look at a few blogs. 6 Million Smiles talks briefly about the film version of Wuthering Heights starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. Conscientious Objector puts Rochester at the top of her 'Top Ten Men I Love That Might Accidentally Kill Me While I Sleep'. Existir Apenas Levemente has written a tribute-poem to Wuthering Heights in Spanish. And Letters to the World reviews Charlotte Brontë's The Secret, recently published by Hesperus Press.

Stars: 3/5

Charlotte Bronte's The Secret, written when she was a teenager, is a collection of six novellas, essentially fairy tales set in the imagined kingdom of Angria(in an unidentified part of Africa) which Charlotte invented along with her brother Branwell. The stories could really have been set anywhere; there's nothing in them exclusive to or characteristic of Africa or any one country in particular, but as Sally Vickers points out in her foreword to the book, Africa was probably the place most foreign and exotic-sounding to Charlotte and her siblings. In literary merit, the novellas alone are probably worth only 2 or 2.5 out of 5 stars, but I admit to quite enjoying this book in spite of everything. The stories are much like Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase(which I do love, by the way) in that they are the melodramatic, gothically-tinged overwritings of a teenager who would go on to become a brilliant writer. Most of the characteristics of gothic and romantic writing are present; the heroes are flawless, brave, and gifted at everything(and remarkably boring for the person who would go on to create Edward Rochester and M. Paul Emmanuel - but perhaps she was able to create such compelling flawed heroes later on in reaction to this early idealism), the heroines are classically beautiful, innocent, and sweet, and there's always a hint of the supernatural in her depiction of the evil characters/forces which conspire to keep the hero and heroine apart. Of the six, the first two, the title story The Secret and its semi-companion Lily Hart, are the longest and most compelling; Lily Hart was probably overall my favorite of all the stories, mostly for its ending, and had odd echoes of A Tale of Two Cities as well as Cinderella in it. Albion and Marina had the most traditionally gothic ending and one which I actually quite enjoyed, as a former Poe enthusiast. Three characters appear several times in the stories(hardly surprising since, although it's hardly mentioned, they're all supposed to be set in the same land of Angria); the Marquis of Duoro, his wife(not to be confused with Marina, a character with a similar name), and the Lady Zenobia Ellrington, who ironically if slightly despicably turns out to be one of the more interesting and fully developed characters in Bronte's montage. Bronte takes whatever liberties she chooses, even raising a character from the dead at one point over the course of two stories, which I found an amusing turn of events, but overall these are atmospheric, flawed, and somewhat fascinating reads, particularly in tracing the early devlopment of this beloved author. Even at this young age and in these overstrained plots, the themes and voice that would come out in her later novels are so clear - as Sally Vickers says "In their very awkwardness the themes of hidden emotion, loss and suffering become poignant presages of both the life of this author and the greater works that we know were still to come". (Amber)

Categories: Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Juvenilia, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights