Dark, brooding Heathcliff

Richard Wilcocks posting on the Headingley Literary Festival Blog covers in detail yesterday's talk by Robert Barnard, co-author of A Brontë Encyclopedia, that we announced here:

Robert Barnard gave a talk entitled People the Brontës Knew this afternoon, to a large and appreciative audience sitting at tables in the New Headingley Club, fortified with home-made cake and Yorkshire tea. It was connected to A Brontë Encyclopedia: the indefinite article signifying academic modesty is officially favoured, but this major (definitive?)work (published a few months ago) should soon be up there with the likes of Juliet Barker's The Brontës. Up there with Clement Shorter too. (Read the complete post)

The Independent publishes an article about male/female attractiveness stereotypes and its scientific(?) base. Heathcliff makes an appearance:

The researchers, whose study shows that across different races, lighter-skinned women are seen as the ideal, say the attraction is driven by preferences based on moral assumptions.
Men are subconsciously attracted to fairer skin because of its association with innocence, purity, modesty, virginity, vulnerability and goodness, according to researchers at the University of Toronto. Women are attracted to men with darker complexions because these are associated with sex, virility, mystery, villainy and danger.
From Desdemona to Nicole Kidman, fair-skinned beauties have been celebrated by artists and poets for centuries. Meanwhile, millions of women have been drawn to dark, brooding males, from Heathcliff to actor Javier Bardem. (Roger Dobson)

You can read online the original article by Dr. Shyon Baumann, to be published in Poetics, The moral underpinnings of beauty: exploring the meanings of light and dark complexions in advertising and form your own idea about the 'scientific' approach of the study.

Martina Devlin, author of Ship of Dreams, is interviewed in The Independent (Ireland):

Sexiest hero/heroine in literature?
Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre. I don't get Mr Darcy at all. (Madeleine Keane)

We still don't get why we have to defend one attacking the other, but nevertheless we add her to many other Brontëites.

The Boca Raton News talks with Maureen Corrigan, author of Leave Alone, I'm Reading!, an old acquiantance of BrontëBlog:

“While I was reading The Perfect Storm, I was also reading Anna Quinlan’s Black and Blue in which a woman flees an abusive marriage. I thought maybe there is a version of the extreme adventure tale that is specifically female that takes place within the home. I started reading the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen and I saw in a lot of those novels that specifically extreme adventure tale in which a woman’s existence is threatened — taking care of six children, taking care of elderly parents, battling her way through the marriage market. In these novels, we see women in extreme situations, sometimes battling for their sanity and their social status.”
Corrigan will make three appearances while in Boca Raton. On Wednesday, March 26, she will speak in the Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall on the topic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough: Women’s Extreme Adventure Tales.” Thursday she’ll appear at Lynn’s monthly poetry coffeehouse at 6:30 p.m. in the Knight’s Court. (Knight’s Court is on the second floor of the Student center.) Friday she will appear as a special guest panelist for “Palm Beach Reads” at 7 p.m. in the Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall. (Prudy Taylor Board)

A walk around the blogosphere brings today new fans of Jane Eyre 2006: Writings of the Loud Librarian and Ramblings of a biscuit who reviews all the episodes (1, 2&3 and 4). Scarlet's Culture Garden speculates with the idea that Heathcliff was Mr Earnshaw's natural son.

Finally, if you want to know what can possibly have in common Sri Lanka, a wild Australian cat and Wuthering Heights, we suggest you read this story in The Sunday Leader of Sri Lanka.

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