Jane Eyre meets Robert Smith

Let's open with a new Brontë fashion victim. From the New York Fashion Week coverage in The Moment (NYT Blogs):

Derek Lam

The dead bride of The Cure’s Robert Smith. The girls looked very Victorian — lots of black, layers, ribbons and bows. Funereal. Jane Eyre reinterpreted by a Goth girl in love with Robert Smith. We saw more of the French-twist bouffant hair, with ruby lips and a yellow wash on the eye. The music, Goth anthems from the vampire movie “The Horror,” I believe, was especially great. I need to find it on iTunes.” (Melissa Ventosa Martin)

One award went to the Stagecoach production of Jane Eyre - The Musical (Gordon & Caird) in the 6th Annual New Hampshire Theatre Awards:

Best Supporting Actress (Musical)
Joan Storey - Jane Eyre (Stagecoach Productions)

More details and pictures of the event in The Nashua Telegraph.

John Mullan himself writes in The New Statesman about his new book Anonymity:

When Jane Eyre first appeared, under the name "Currer Bell" - gender uncertain - reviewers argued about whether it had been written by a man or a woman. The descriptions of cookery and women's clothing were scrutinised: more than a man could know? Or not accurate enough for a woman?

Some days ago we posted about the premiere of the latest play by George Packer: Betrayed, in New York. The New York Times and the New York Sun publish today reviews and once again its Brontë references are highlighted. From the NYT:

The reflective Adnan speaks of his lifelong sense of “nonbelonging.” Laith is a Metallica fan with a dry sense of humor and a rich collection of American slang. Their female colleague, Intisar (Aadya Bedi), an Emily Brontë fan whose courage is born of an innate sense of defiance, maintains that her dearest wish has always been to ride a bike through the streets of Baghdad, an activity forbidden girls and women. (Charles Isherwood)

From the New York Sun:

Intisar (Aadya Bedi), a frustrated feminist who refuses to wear the hijab, honed her English by rereading "Wuthering Heights." (Joy Goodwin)

The York County Coast Star recommends some Valentine's presents. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights apparently qualifies as a good one:

If your taste runs more toward the classics, you can't do better than "Emma," Jane Austen's story of gossip and love in a small village ($8) or Emily Bronte's classic "Wuthering Heights" ($7). (Laura Dolce)

Laudator Temporis Acti posts an excerpt of Branwell Brontë's translation of Horace's Odes:

Virgins, sing the Virgin Huntress;
Youths, the youthful Phoebus, sing;
Sing Latona, she who bore them
Dearest to the eternal King:
Sing the heavenly maid who roves
Joyous, through the mountain groves;
She who winding waters loves;
Let her haunts her praises ring!

Sing the vale of Peneus' river
Sing the Delian deity;
The shoulder glorious with its quiver;
And the Lyre of Mercury.
From our country, at our prayer —
Famine, plague, and tearful war
These, benign, shall drive afar
To Persias plains or Britains sea.

Y yo que me la llevé al río reviews Ancho Mar de los Sargazos (Wide Sargasso Sea) in Spanish. But there’s no sign of warning in the siren’s call talks about Jane Eyre in French. Colortrend surprises us with an imaginative use of Jane Eyre.

Categories: Branwell Brontë, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights