The Full Brontë

In an article about the new miniseries Lost in Austen, Neil Phillips from the Bucks Free Press wonders about what could come afterwards:

‘Damned in Dickens’, perhaps, where the layabout 21st century videogame addict tumbles back in time to a Victorian era workhouse to see what hard graft is really like. Or ‘The Full Bronte’ where modern-day Yorkshire steel-working strippers wander into some bad 18th century weather looking tortured, haunted and angry.
Or perhaps not.

Now that would be an original take on the Brontës, that's for sure.

WORLD Magazine comments on how modern annotated editions of the classics always have footnotes where religious references are drawn:

Meanwhile, in the Penguin Classic edition of Jane Eyre, when Jane says of her aunt, “But I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did,” the editor is ready with a footnote, lest the reader miss that Jesus likewise forgave his persecutors. Similarly are half a dozen references to the Sermon on the Mount faithfully footnoted, so the reader will catch their import. [...]
If you don’t understand Christian dogma, as it turns out, then you won’t really understand Dracula or Jane Eyre, which perhaps explains the illegible introductions prepended to each of their Penguin Classic editions. (Tony Woodlief)

We don't really get that last bit, though. Footnotes are heaven-sent indeed, and not just when they are about religion. Many in Jane Eyre correspond to contemporary books or customs of the time or anything that might help the reader understand the novel as a contemporary of the author would. Not just because of the gap in time, but also because there are readers all around the world reading the classics, not just Westerners who may or may not have a better Christian background.

A few, varied blogs for today: Reading, Writing, Working, Playing writes about the sencond episode of The Brontës of Haworth. Angle de vue recommends - in French - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. And finally Clarity & Chaos discusses Wide Sargasso Sea.