Mr Currer Bell goes to a spa

John Mullan's recently published Anonymity is the star of today's news. The Bell Brothers/Brontë sisters references are constant. The Telegraph goes so far to entitle its article: No woman could have penned Jane Eyre:

Charlotte Bronte, who wrote as Currer Bell, insisted: “I am neither Man nor Woman – I come before you as an Author only.” Yet readers of Jane Eyre became obsessed with determining its author’s gender, poring over incidental detail to bolster their case. “Although ladies have written histories and travels and warlike novels… no woman could have penned the ‘Autobiography of Jane Eyre’,” announced one. (Robert Colvile)

Charlotte's quote comes from a letter to William Smith Williams from August 16th, 1849. And the mentioned review was published in Era (14 November 1847) by a, most appropriately, anonymous reviewer. The complete paragraph reads:

Bulwer, James, D'Israeli, and all the serious novel writers of the day lose in comparison with Currer Bell, for we must presume the work to be his. It is no woman's writing. Although ladies have written histories and travels and warlike novels, to say nothing of books upon the different arts and sciences, no woman could have penned "The Autobiography of Jane Eyre". It is all that one of the other sex might invent, and much more ... The tale is one of the heart and the working out of a moral through the natural affections; it is the victory of mind over matter; the mastery of reason over feeling, without unnatural sacrifices. The writer dives deep into human life, and possesses the gift of being able to write as he thinks and feels. There is a vigour in all he says, a power which fixes the reader's attention, and a charm about his "style" and "diction" which fascinates while it edifies.

Another review can be found in The Brisbane Times.

Jane Campion writes in The Guardian a fascinating account of how she met Janet Frame (from whom she adapted for the screen the very gripping An Angel At My Table). It seems that the author of Owls Do Cry was a Brontëite:

I met her on December 24 1982. (...)
"Are you doing anything special for Christmas?" I asked.
"Yes, I am going to spend it with some very old friends," she replied: "I am going to have Christmas with the Brontë sisters, Emily and Charlotte."

More brief news. The Washington Post reviews The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell, a book already mentioned on BrontëBlog. Bookstack talks about Maureen Adams's Shaggy Muses. In attesa dell'alba praises Helen Burns in Italian.

Finally, The Guardian's travel section seems to think that the Heathcliff-Cathy couple can be a paradigm of fierce lovemaking:

Ah, romantic breaks! What a wealth of optimistic nuance is concealed in such an innocent little phrase: candles, champagne, dinner à deux, sunsets, moonlight, seashores, camiknickers, shared baths, swooning kisses, Barry White, a man in a balaclava abseiling through your window with a box of Milk Tray. All these things leading inexorably to the bedroom where - freed from the shackles of domestic routine - elemental lovemaking on a par with Cathy and Heathcliff will splice your tremulous souls forever. (Rowan Pelling)

Categories: Books, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights