Ravish, Anger and Visiting

Three alerts for today, October 10:

1. At the Litquake. San Francisco's Literary Festival, a new chance to see Rosanna Gamson's Ravish dance piece:

Festival 3: October 8-12, 2008
OFF BOOK: Stories that Move

Friday – Saturday, Oct 10-11 at 8pm: A Bay Area Premiere!
Sunday, Oct 12 at 7pm
Rosanna Gamson/ World Wide in Ravish
ODC Theatre

Ravish is an evening-length dance theater piece for five women (one played by a man) inspired by the Brontë family. Featuring an integrated video projection by Barnaby Levy, Ravish reimagines the creative hothouse in which the Brontë sisters wrote intensely Romantic fiction without the benefit of real-life experience (Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). "an erotic fever dream that merged dance, theater, music and literature." -The Wall Street Journal.

2. A talk in the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia:

The Aesthetics of Anger: Style and Colour as Sites of Contested Meaning in Nineteenth Century Fiction

Mari Webb - MPhil Candidate, EMSAH

Friday 10 October
1 - 2 pm (can extend to 2:30pm if required)
Level 4, Room 437
Michie Building
St. Lucia Campus, University of Queensland

This paper examines some of the social and moral connotations of women’s colour and style choices for clothing, and the metaphorical use of the colour red, in nineteenth-century fiction. It will specifically examine several texts that subvert such connotations in different ways. Hester Prynne flaunts her categorisation as a ‘scarlet woman’ in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter by turning the ignominious scarlet letter she is required to wear into an elaborate fashion statement. Lucy Snowe is accused of superficiality and lack of taste in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette because she wears a pink dress. It becomes evident, however, from the byplay about this dress which occurs between M. Paul Emanuel and Lucy that she rather enjoys knowing one person who doesn’t assume she is the model of prim governess correctness. ‘Good taste,’ in the British society of Brontë’s time, is specifically attached to soberness in colour and style of clothing for women of Lucy Snowe’s social position. The meaning of the colour red is even more metaphorically significant in Jane Eyre, the novel Brontë published before Villette. The colour red is persistently associated in these texts with inappropriate expressions of passion, whether this is sexual feeling expressed outside the bounds of marriage or uncontrolled anger. Brontë uses irony to undercut this connection, and Hawthorne’s validation of Hester’s humanity, apart from the crime she has committed in the eyes of her community, causes the reader to question the meaning of the scarlet letter she is forced to wear. Indeed, the meaning of the letter changes by the end of the text as a result of Hester’s own actions. By writing such novels, Brontë and Hawthorne contest the accepted idea of the time that anger and sexual passion are inappropriate feelings for women to express.

3. The first of a series of talks at the Bettendorf Public Library, Bettendorf, Iowa: Visiting the Brontës:

Bettendorf Public Library will host a four-part book discussion series featuring classics written by Charlotte, Anne and Emily Bronte led by Augustana professors Ann Boaden and Laura Greene. “Jane Eyre,” will be the topic of the first discussion at 3:30 p.m. Friday.
Books are available at information desk on a first-come, first-served basis.
Visiting with the Brontes is sponsored by the Bettendorf Public Library Foundation.

Categories: Alert, Dance, Scholar, Talks