Did Charlotte live in a glass house?

The Telegraph has chosen Derbyshire for its walk of the month. Charlotte Brontë features prominently, of course:
Picture Source.

The handsome Tudor house of North Lees Hall stands close under Stanage Edge. Its tower spawned a tale in the mind of a 19th-century governess, a fable that has earned an immortality to equal that of Robin and his Merrie Men. Charlotte Brontë first caught sight of the pale stone tower in 1845 when she came for a three-week stay in Hathersage with her friend Ellen Nussey, sister of the village vicar.
The local surname of Eyre caught Charlotte's inner ear, too. Soon Jane Eyre would apprehensively approach the dark tower of Thornfield Hall, lair of the saturnine Mr Rochester: "It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman's manor-house, not a nobleman's seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look."
Those battlements were the setting for one of the most dramatic scenes in literature, as poor mad Mrs Rochester made her final bid for freedom from a terrible fire she had started: "...she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off... She...had long black hair; we could see it streaming against the flames as...Mr Rochester ascended through the skylight...we saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement."
For five minutes I stood at the gate, staring up at the tower, struck still and dumb by the power of that tremendous moment. (Christopher Somerville)

While North Lees Hall is one of the candidates to being the base for Thornfield Hall and has its name and its Apostles Cupboard to support the theory as well, there are other contestant such as Norton Conyers which once had a madwoman in its attic and whose interiors are quite similar to those of Thornfield or even Ellen Nussey's home the Rydings, whose battlemented façade is highly reminiscent of Thornfield as well. Thornfield Hall is the result of all these places (and perhaps a few others) rolled into one in Charlotte's brilliant imagination.

Some articles published today use the Brontës's novels to give a sense of atmosphere. In The Independent there is a fascinating account of a visit to Stokesay Court, the real location of Tallis House in the recent film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement:

It is fortunate that filming took place in the summer, as the light in winter is far less consistent. As I watch, clouds envelop the view from Briony's nursery, and the wail of a single rook, invisible behind naked trees, heightens a looming sense of drama. It feels more like Charlotte Brontë's vision of Thornfield Hall than McEwan's Tallis House. (Charlotte Philby)

The San Francisco Chronicle visits Inverness (the one in California):

In winter time, when it's often enshrouded in dripping moss and mist, and glassy Tomales Bay is disturbed only by the ripples of murres, surf scoters and the occasional dip of a kayak oar, Inverness resembles a page from a modern-day Brontë novel - its jumble of weathered buildings seemingly frozen in a state of graceful decay. (Bonnie Wach)

The Belfast Telegraph talks with Cat Malojian (an Ulster music band):

We've played in some amazing places too. The folk crowd seem to like us best. Our best show ever was at the Brontë Homeland church in Rathfriland. It's an unbelievable place to play and it's way out in the middle of nowhere. It looks just like the setting from Wuthering Heights.

Most appropriate, we think.

The (in)famous words of Charlotte Brontë criticizing Austen (you know, the-passions- are-perfectly-unknown-to-her) are once again quoted in what it seems to be a belated defense of Ms Austen. You know what BrontëBlog thinks of this kind of sterile discussions, but this is what Monica Perry writes in The B.C. Catholic:

The novel, Jane Eyre, is a melodramatic one. In the story, a downtrodden soulful girl named Jane meets the mysterious Mr. Rochester. They quickly discover that they have been meant for each other from all eternity, and decide to promise "to feed forever from the same trough" (P.G. Wodehouse).
Just as they are about to exchange this promise at the altar, it is discovered that part of Mr. Rochester's mystery is that he already has a wife, a mad one, to be precise, whom he has been keeping locked away in the tower of his spacious house. There follows a temporary separation for the lovers, until fate works out the nitty-gritty details: the mad wife dies when she burns the house down. Very neat.
As an unabashed fan of Jane Austen's novels (the best of which are Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility) I was astounded to read a criticism of her work by Charlotte Bronte, the author of Jane Eyre. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Bronte wrote: "She (Austen) ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her.... Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition.... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death, this Miss Austen ignores."
Rightly so, I would add.
Bronte finds Austen's work lacking in drama and profundity. She couldn't be more wrong. Austen's genius lies in her ability to intricately delineate the lives of people who manage to improve somewhat in virtue. Pride and prejudice are overcome. Sensibility learns sense. The couples thus improved end up uniting for life. They have merited each other. They have learned to understand each other. There is no question of their not being entirely happy together. One could not ask for a better love story.

Austen as the antecedent of a Disney happily-ever-after Christian Bildungsroman? Who would have ever thought?

The Guardian asks several English musicians which songs they think could better define Englishness. And Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is selected:

Sarah Cracknell of Saint Étienne
Kate Bush: Wuthering HeightsI can't imagine this song going down well anywhere apart from England. Her stance is very quaint and English: the way she sings, her accent, the drama of it all. She had the audacity to put out a single that was going to stretch people's imaginations. I'm old enough to have heard it when it came out, and seeing her on Top of the Pops will be forever etched on my mind: it was a watercooler moment before they had watercoolers. Everyone talked about it at school the next day. In its style and atmosphere, it feels a bit late in the day, like it's from the hippy era. It's a bit of escapism from 1978 England. But it's a typically English thing to be so out there and taken on board by the general public. I've never met her, but funnily enough she's just moved down the road from me in Oxfordshire. Maybe I'll see her in the farm shop. She's a genuine eccentric.

The Globe and Mail's columnist Warren Clements entitles his article today Jane Eyre and E'ver, we can understand more or less why reading the article's teaser (it's for subscribers only):

The challenge was to imagine that present or past movies and TV shows had to be lengthened and to amend the titles accordingly. Almost everyone submitted The Mary Tyler More Show and All in the Extended Family.

Simcoe reviews Bruce Meyer's Heroes (already presented on BrontëBlog). Lights, Camera... History! continues its description of Jane Eyre 2006 and British Literature her reading of Jane Eyre. It seems that she is liking it a little better than The Sapient Sutler. LacasademiAbuela talks about the Brontë sisters in Spanish, although her comments about Anne Brontë are rather misleading.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References