The inmortal pen of the wrong sister

Laura Miller writes in the Wall Street Journal about the irresistible appeal of the vampire archetype. Maybe inspired by the numerous Brontë references of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, she mentions the Brontë sisters' works:

The fusion of the romance and vampire genres isn't as unlikely as it might seem. The archetypal romantic hero owes a lot to two characters from Victorian literature: Mr. Rochester in "Jane Eyre" and Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights." The two sisters who wrote those novels, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, were, like most literary women of their time, great admirers of Lord Byron, whose stormy, passionate heroes (based on his own bad self) served as patterns for Rochester and Heathcliff.

The Taunton Gazette publishes an article about the upcoming Theatre III's Jane Eyre. The Musical production which we presented yesterday. The author of the article is not really very informed about what she is talking about:

Fans of the Bronte sisters’ novels, your time is now.
Jane Austen has been enjoying her day in sun, about two centuries long and counting.
But now, the other Jane of romantic literature – the equally immortal “Jane Eyre” of Emily Bronte’s pen – still holds her claim among the most, well, romantic heroines of fiction.
She’s more than “note” worthy, as Theatre III of Acton brings to the stage, “Jane Eyre: The Musical,” which – as you probably figured out from the title – is the classic, Gothic love story with singing in it.
And an orchestra, a live orchestra, to be even more romantic.
It’s the practice of Theatre III to open each new drama season with a musical, and when the rights became available to produce “Jane Eyre,” there was an air of serendipity as the drama group prepares for its 54th season.
With Austen enchanting a new generations, it was perhaps inevitable, and only fair, that her literary peers, the Bronte sisters, glean appreciation for their works. (...)
“The show is written in the model of a lot of shows over the past 20 years, the most obvious being ‘Les Miserables,’” said Theatre III publicist Tom Melander.
Like that play, “Jane Eyre: The Musical” reflects contemporary sentiments but strives to stay true to the darkly rich atmosphere of the story’s era.
Melander observed, “The music is meant to convey the story. I think there is a lot of resonance in the style of music as well as the play.” (Margaret Smith)

Bloomberg reviews the current London exhibition Yes I No by Sam Taylor-Wood (more information on previous posts):

Upstairs at Mason's Yard, there is a series of photographs of terrain similar to that in Emily Bronte's 19th- century novel ``Wuthering Heights.'' These look a lot like the bleak landscapes minor Victorian painters often turned out (one in the Tate, titled ``The Joyless Winter Day'' by Joseph Farquharson may give you the idea). (Martin Gayford)

According to the reviewer of the Newcastle Chronicle, Hayley Westenra's live rendition of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is

the best version I have heard since the original. (Gordon Barr)

In the Spanish press, El Periodista Digital interviews the writer Eugenia Rico who confesses her obsession with the Brontë sisters. The Spanish newspaper Público publishes an article about a controversial study about the discrimination of female sport in the media. The particular votes of some of the members of the Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía contain a Brontë reference:

¿[Podría] alguien en su sano juicio suscribir una propuesta en los EEUU tendente a matizar, reducir o suprimir las retransmisiones televisivas más vistas y sustituirlas gradualmente por el billar o un poquito de esgrima?". (...)"Con toda probabilidad, pasaría a formar parte, con Jack Nicholson, del reparto de Alguien voló sobre el nido del cuco o, directamente, irse al piso de arriba de Jane Eyre". (Google translation) (Olivia Carballo)

El Cultural interviews Margaret Atwood who insists in her economical theory of Wuthering Heights:

Me convertí en victoriana. Ése fue mi campo de estudio en la Universidad, fue la época por excelencia en que las tramas giraron en torno al dinero y la gente estaba empantanada en estallidos de capitalismo. Cumbres borrascosas está guiada por el dinero: Heathcliff gana una fortuna y regresa para comprar la casa a sus anteriores dueños. A Madame Bovary podría haberle ido bastante bien si se hubiera mantenido dentro de su presupuesto. No fue el adulterio, sino las deudas, lo que la hundió. (Google translation)

Heliothaumic posts about Jane Eyre and uploads an original illustration. And finally, Oxford reader posts an enthusiast review of Justine Picardie's Daphne.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Jane Eyre in Gainesville

A new production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical opens today, October 31, in Gainesville, Florida:

Gainesville Community Playhouse
at The Vam York Theatre

Jane Eyre. A Musical

Follow the classic romantic story of Jane Eyre, a young impoverished governess, who journeys to an isolated English mansion to teach the ward of the estate's enigmatic master, Rochester. The attraction between Jane and Rochester is immediate, but so are Jane's suspicions as she begins to realize that the house and its master harbor a dark secret. True to its source, this is a musical that is stuffed with big emotions - cruelty, despair, courage, forgiveness and, above all, an all-consuming love.

Music, Lyrics & Book by John Caird
Music & Lyrics by Paul Gordon
Directed by Rhonda Wilson Oct. 31 - Nov. 23, 2008
Wednesday - Saturday at 8 p.m.
Sunday at 2 p.m.
Preview Performance Oct. 30 at 8 p.m.
Audition Dates: Sept. 7 and 8 at 7 p.m.

The Gainesville Sun gives more information:

Picture source. Credits: Aaron Daye. Elizabeth Dean, right, who plays Jane Eyre and Ed Mackay, left, who plays Edward Rochester act out a scene in the musical Jane Eyre at the Gainesville Community Playhouse on Thursday, October 23, 2008.

Charlotte Bronte's famous heroine has transcended the pages of dull and dreary Victorian England and transplanted herself on center stage in Gainesville.
The musical adaptation of Bronte's gothic novel "Jane Eyre" opens Friday at the Gainesville Community Playhouse's Vam York Theater. A preview performance will take place tonight.
True to its 19th century origins in classical literature, the musical "Jane Eyre" is a lavish blend of emotions, passion, faith, forgiveness and, most of all, the eternal healing power of an all-consuming love.
Director Rhonda Wilson's said the musical's absorbing story and lyrical score will appeal to audiences.
"The music gives a brighter touch," said director Rhonda Wilson. "The story glows. You can see the musicality in it."
Jane Eyre, a plain-on-the-outside but poignant-on-the-inside orphan, survives a horrific childhood to become governess at Thornfield Hall, an estate steep in a rich tradition of smothering secrets and crazed cackles. Here Jane locks eyes with the biting and thoroughly unpleasant Edward Rochester, her soul mate whose darkest secret just happens, unbeknownst to her, to be sequestered in the attic above.
"It has a happy ending," Wilson assured, "but it takes a bit to get there. On the way, you're drawn into the characters."
Those are the same characters that move effortlessly in and out spoken lines and sung lyrics. The spirit - and the spirituality - of this dark story is captured by turning the original text from the novel into lyrics for the musical.
The cast of characters has taken lessons in linguistics, choreography, formal Waltz, posture and walking in preparation for the upcoming performances.
Actor Edward McKay, who traces his heritage back to Scotland and, accordingly, took naturally to an English accent, plays Rochester in the musical. He said he is drawn to the music and its recurring themes. It's a good thing, too, because he lends his voice to 17 songs in total, solos and ensembles alike.
"The music is fantastic," he said. "This is deep, meaningful stuff people will be singing for years once they get it in their head."
His counterpart is 21-year-old student Elizabeth Dean, who takes on the leading role of Jane Eyre. Although she admits to not having read the novel until after she received the part, Dean has perfected the somber style of her character. And it didn't come easy.
"I think I get to smile twice in the whole thing, an actual smile," she said with a laugh. "That's very hard for me." (Hailey MacArthur)

Categories: Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre

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An easy, juicy, emotionally-stirring page-turner

The Ampersand interviews author Rachel Kushner who recommends Jane Eyre:

What book would you give a 15 year old?
Jane Eyre, because it’s such generous literature, an easy, juicy, emotionally-stirring page-turner that can make a reader of anyone. I can’t wait to give it to my son when he’s 15, or younger maybe. This is a long way off. He’s only 14 months old, but I imagine him reading it, home from school with a touch of fever, maybe. In pajamas, with just a faint flush to his cheeks, like Jane Eyre herself, that healthy flush that fever, or Victorian orphandom, gives, and not wanting me to bug him because he’s totally absorbed in Bronte, and decides thereafter that big novels are actually more fun than skateboarding or whatever else he’s gotten himself into by that point, god forbid. (Interview by Mark Medley)

The Boston Globe presents the upcoming performances (November 7-22) of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical by the Theatre III Company.
Picture source: Featured in Acton's Theatre III musical production of "Jane Eyre" are: (front from left) Lindsay Holland (Jane Eyre), Perry Allison (Mrs. Fairfax), Eva Ricci (young Jane), James Sheehan (Lord Ingram), Kaliegh Ronan (Adele); (back row) Ben Adams (John Reed), Pat Lawrence (Mrs. Reed), Evan Kelly (Richard Mason), and Ben DiScipio (Edward Fairfax Rochester).

The cool interior of a West Acton church has been transformed into the cold and brooding landscape of Victorian England. Actors and actresses form a somber backdrop in period outfits of charcoal, black, and ivory. Dressed like a drab brown wren, Jane Eyre (Lindsay Holland) sings of her desire for a brighter life, despite all evidence that she is destined for a colorless existence.
Bit by bit, color and passion appear. First in the form of a new employer, vermilion-clad Mrs. Fairfax (Perry Allison) and a pupil, Adele (Kaliegh Ronan), splendid in blond ringlets and sky blue frock. And then the young governess encounters that bad-boy Byronic hero, Edward Fairfax Rochester (Ben DiScipio), a dark cloak shading his light suit.
Thus Theatre III in West Acton presents the story of one of the most famous heroines in English literature in "Jane Eyre: The Musical" which opens Nov. 7.
It's no small task.
"The cast has put in an enormous amount of time," said musical director Gina Naggar during a recent rehearsal. "It's a beautiful show. It's a really passionate show. It's a dark show."
And yet, it's a show with light as well as shadow, with its themes of love, sacrifice, and independence.
"Every time I hear the music I cry," said DiScipio, with a laugh and distinctly un-Rochester-like honesty. "It is very touching."
Indeed, cast members speak of how much they adore the music - which is important as the production is very ambitious for a community theater. There are about dozen principal singers and a large chorus who all have to tackle complicated, often discordant music.
"We've had to rely a lot on body language," said director Shawn Cannon. "You have to be able - in this small theater - to get across the emotion of what [the characters] are trying to say. Especially in that period in England, they never really said what they meant, so sometimes you have to do a lot of body language. Character development is really huge in this; there's so much background."
Based on the 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, the musical features the music and lyrics of Paul Gordon and book by John Caird; it premiered on Broadway on Dec. 3, 2000, and ran for 209 performances.
The Theatre III production features Eva Ricci as a poignant, young Jane; Ben Adams as her nasty cousin, John Reed; Patricia Lawrence as the equally nasty Mrs. Reed; Jeff Adams as the sanctimonious schoolmaster, Brocklehurst; Miranda Gelch as the saintly Helen Burns; and Jared Forsyth as the handsome yet passionless St. John Rivers. Casting was difficult as a record 88 persons auditioned for about 30 acting slots, said Mary O'Loughlin, the company's executive producer.
"We had to turn away some gorgeous voices," O'Loughlin said.
The musical's plot is rife with Gothic imagery: a hero with a secret and a mad woman locked in an attic, for example. It deals with issues that may startle modern sensibilities, "not the least of which, Rochester is 20 years older than Jane," DiScipio noted.
Above all, Jane Eyre is a love story between two opposites; the unworldly, naive governess and the world-weary, cynical playboy.
"There's something about the theme of redemption he sees in her," DiScipio said. "She acts as his confessor."
And yet Jane more than holds her own. "She is so virtuous and so conservative, but she does play with him a little bit. And I think he finds that exciting," he said. (Stephanie Schorow)

More upcoming theatre performances: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review announces another production of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep at the Open Stage Theatre in Pittsburgh that opens today October 30:

The company begins its season-long celebration of American comedy with the late Charles Ludlam's tour-de-force farce, "The Mystery of Irma Vep."
Two actors play all the characters -- male and female -- in this campy romp through melodrama, mummy movies and vampire flicks. The script is peppered with bits of plot from and allusions to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, the Bronte sisters and William Shakespeare.
Open Stage artistic director David M. Maslow will direct the production, which features actors Dean Novotny and Robert O'Toole.
"Irma Vep" begins tonight and runs through Nov. 15 with performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, except for the 10 p.m. performance this Friday, 2 p.m. Sundays, 7 p.m. Monday and 2 p.m. Nov. 15.
Open Stage Theatre is at 2835 Smallman St., Strip District, but the entrance is from the free parking lot in the rear of the building. (Alice T. Carter)

And The Brontës.nl announces a new Dutch theatre play which will be premiered next year (October 1, 2009) by the Toneelgroep Dorst Company: De Brontë Sisters by Matin Van Veldhuizen. With Petra Laseur, Trudy de Jong, Elsje de Wijn en Theo De Groot. Directed by Kees Hulst and with costumes by Yan Tax. More information here. EDIT (22/11/08): Interview with Elsje de Wijn on ED.nl.

The Northern Echo talks about Coronation Street's new developments with some Brontë references:

NOT since Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre has there been such a secret in the attic.
The captive in Coronation Street (ITV1) isn’t mad, she’s hopping mad. Rosie Webster hasn’t taken kindly to being locked up by former lover, crazed cabby John Stape, in his dead grandmother’s house.

The reference is explicit as we read in The Dominion Post (New Zealand):

I loved Rosie's line about needing a shrink till she's 70 to get over her abduction and her empathy for Mr Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre, which John wants her to read in an attempt to do a remake of Educating Rita. (John Bowron)

Jill Parkin writes in the Daily Mail about white lies we tell our children and we have these paragraphs quite amusing:

There's one set of white lies I still use even though my children are in their teens and take no notice. I can't help myself; it's these ancestral Yorkshire voices in my head.
A daughter goes out in a plunging neckline and I come over all Wuthering Heights. 'You'll catch your death going out like that on a day like this,' I say, portentously, scarcely stopping myself from adding: 'Mark my words, young Catherine Earnshaw.'
As for going to bed with damp hair, I know it won't really give them water on the brain, but somehow my father takes over my powers of speech and I just have to say it, even if it's under my breath. They take no notice, of course.
They snap back with some witticism, like: 'Why not consumption?'

The Times and the Evening Standard talk about For You, the new opera by Michael Berkeley (who in 1992 premiered his own operatic setting of Jane Eyre):

Must every Michael Berkeley opera be born with an accompanying drama off-stage? Nine years ago his half-completed score for Jane Eyre was stolen and never recovered; it had to be rewritten virtually from scratch. This year, the first performances of Music Theatre Wales’s For You, his collaboration with Ian McEwan and the author’s first libretto, were cancelled when the singer playing the antihero withdrew at the last minute. (...)
But if For You has a faultline, then it’s how this macabre short story finds its connection to Berkeley’s score. Jane Eyre was close-focus and tightly written; so, too, is For You. (Neil Fisher in The Times)

On the blogosphere, Note Songs has visited Haworth.

Categories: Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre

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Brontë Studies. Volume 33, Issue 3

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 33, Issue 3, November 2008) is already available on-line. We provide you the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial : pp. iii-iv(1) Author: Adams, Amber M.

ARTICLES

'This Shattered Prison': Confinement, Control And Gender in Wuthering Heights
pp. 179-191(13) Author: Crouse, Jamie S.
Abstract:
The recurrent plot device of confinement, both physical and psychological, as a means of establishing power over others and its consequences in Wuthering Heights are explored within the nineteenth-century social framework of traditional gender roles. The primary instigators of confinement in the novel, Catherine and Heathcliff, exhibit differing gender-related patterns. Catherine primarily views herself in relation to others and her acts of confinement become self-destructive whereas Heathcliff, in valuing hierarchy, is destructive of others. Emily Brontë shows that as both Catherine and Heathcliff follow traditional gender roles, neither is able to achieve the communion they had as children together. A brief review of earlier work on the subject and background in psychological studies are given.

'The Awful Event' in Wuthering Heights
pp. 192-202(11) Author: Inman, Laura
Abstract
In Wuthering Heights death dominates the narrative, drives the plot, and is expressed thematically and symbolically; however, its centrality has not been identified or explored by other analyses. Emily Brontë's own experience with death serves in part to explain the focus on death in the novel and, in particular, the presence of numeric symbols of death, which have gone unnoticed by critics. Further, her poetic proclivity is the basis for understanding why Wuthering Heights is a veritable meditation on death.

Marriage in Jane Eyre: From Contract to Conversation
pp. 203-217(15) Author: Phillips, James
Abstract
Jane Eyre contends that marriage is irreducible to a contract; it must be sustained by the conversation of equals. Yet the marriage of equals that the novel's conclusion describes between Jane and Rochester cannot be confused with the legal entrenchment of sexual inequality in early nineteenth-century marriage laws. A political message is inscribed in the ending. Equality cannot survive without legal recognition and, in early nineteenth-century Britain, this means legal reform: Jane cannot be Rochester's equal if she is simply his mistress and she also cannot be his equal if the laws concerning marriage are not reformed. Jane and Rochester come together in conversation, inventing each other for themselves, and reinventing marriage as the social form of such freedom.

'I Heard Her Murmurs': Decoding Narratives of Female Desire in Jane Eyre and Secresy
pp. 218-231(14) Authors: Fisk, Nicole Plyler
Abstract
Ellen Moers, Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar all validate the idea that the Brontës could have engaged in a literary dialogue with some of their female predecessors, thereby contributing to early feminist discourse. Reading Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) as a companion text to Eliza Fenwick's Secresy [sic] (1795) offers a new perspective on various elements in the novel, including female friendship and Bertha's laugh. Ultimately, this author suggests that, in the featured texts, there is both a narrator and a listener, with the greater responsibility being on the latter. In Jane Eyre and Secresy, Jane and Caroline must decode the language of women imprisoned by the patriarchy and attempt to free them. Caroline is more successful than Jane, not simply because Sibella's narrative is more coherent than Bertha's, but because Caroline is more willing than Jane to challenge the prevailing practice of male domination and female repression.

A Trip to Yorkshire — 1842
pp. 232-241(10) Author: Fermi, Sarah
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to put into the public record a private letter written at the time of the Chartist riots during the general strike of August, 1842. This letter reveals details of upper middle-class social life in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the Brontë era and sheds light on a prominent local family well known to the Brontës by reputation, a family related to several others with whom the Brontës had a personal connection. The letter was written by Maria Brewitt, the sixteen-year-old sister of the bride of John Greenwood Sugden of Steeton Hall, and describes the journey of the bridal party as they travel from the Essex home of the bride, Mary Hatton Brewitt, to Leeds by train and, thence, by coach to Steeton via Eastwood House in Keighley, and the first few days of the visit. It ends on a tense cliff-hanger with the family awaiting the arrival of the Chartist rioters at their very door.

The Rout of the Reverend Redhead: Gaskell and Longley
pp. 242-244(3) Author: Wilks, Brian
Abstract
The aim of this article is to draw attention to the account that the Bishop of Ripon gave his wife of the tale of the Reverend Redhead's experience at the mercy of Haworth villagers objecting to his appointment as their minister. This version pre-dates and differs from Mrs Gaskell's account in her Life of Charlotte Brontë.

A Brontë Reading List: Part 2
pp. 245-255(11) Author: Ogden, James
Abstract
This is the second part of an annotated bibliography of essays, mostly in scholarly and critical journals, 2000-2007. The first part was published in Brontë Studies, 32:2, July 2007.

REVIEWS pp. 256-270(15)

Categories: Brontë Society, Journals, Scholar

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Susannah York's full circle

The Scotsman talks to Susannah York, who will be on stage in Edinburgh next week playing Nelly Dean in April De Angelis's adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

In a career that spans nearly 50 years and has covered stage, television and film, it's not surprising that for York, 67, there are few firsts. Appearing as Nelly Dean, the narrator of Emily Bronte's powerful and passionate story of doomed love set on the wild Yorkshire moors, York is reminded of another Bronte role she played. It was 1970 and she was starring alongside George C Scott in a film of Jane Eyre.
"I loved it," she says. "It's one of my favourite films that I've made. There was something unlikely about me playing Jane, I felt more akin to the Wuthering Heights subject, but actually I loved Jane and the thought of getting under her skin. It's a nice coming of full circle now being in one of Emily's." [...]
The passion comes from the desire to explore characters, to become other people. She may have felt that need for more than 50 years and appeared in more than 80 films but for York, this hasn't changed.
"Becoming, really feeling that you are them, becoming them," she says trying to explain what she loves about performing. "I have a sort of little mantra I suppose," she says with a slightly embarrassed laugh. "Before I go on stage I say I am Peter (when playing Peter Pan], I am Nelly Dean, I am Nelly before I go on in this play. It's about becoming. The charge always laid against actors is that they're always performing, so where are they? And yet in another way, I think it was George Bernard Shaw when he was talking about Henry Irving in a letter to Ellen Terry, who said Henry acts to escape himself, you act to become yourself. In a weird way, that's what I think I do."
• Wuthering Heights, November 4-8 at the King's Theatre. For tickets, call the box office on 0131-529 6000. A Life in Colour, 29 October at 7.00pm, The Cameo. For tickets call 0131-228 2800 (Claire Black)

The York County Coast Star has an article about bogs:

The words used to describe bogs all share a haunting quality: Peatland is a generic term applied to any wetland where the accumulation of organic matter exceeds decomposition and at least one foot of peat has accumulated. Muskegs, moors, mires, heaths and carrs are all peatlands and all conjure up gloom, horror and despair. Think about the stormy moors of "Wuthering Heights," the dark menacing moors found in "The Hound of the Baskervilles," or the creepy corpse-filled Dead Marshes (a vast network of mires) of "The Lord of the Rings."(Sue Pike)

And finally, Movie City News, inspired by High School Musical 3, makes the point that not everything for children needs to be educative: children have as much right as adults for some 'mindless' entertainment:

Is the writing in most of the kiddie-lit books on par with the Brontes or Mark Twain or Lousia May Alcott? Of course not, and it's not intended to be. (Kim Voynar)

Categories: Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Sam Taylor Wood's Ghosts: Yes & No

A couple of newspapers carry articles on Sam Taylor-Wood's Yes I No exhibition in London. Sam Taylor-Wood herself writes a piece for The Independent focusing particularly on the Ghosts section of the exhibition, which is devoted to Wuthering Heights-inspired photographs:

How Wuthering Heights inspired a series of wild and romantic photographs
I shot the new Ghosts photographic series, based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, on the Haworth moors, Yorkshire, near the farmhouse ruins of Top Withens. This place has long been associated with the Earnshaws' fictional home in the novel, and the surrounding moors were a possible inspiration for it.
I hadn't read the book until last year, but I picked it up because I had it in my head that it would be fantastically romantic. I was at our second home in North Yorkshire at the time, not far from the moors, and it just seemed the right book to read on a November evening, in the howling winds.
Reading it made me want to get up there on the moors, with my camera, to experience the wild landscape, which was the only thing that felt redemptive in the whole novel. I wanted to feel the turbulent emotional weather of that book and the harshness of the landscape that had inspired her.
I set off in February, with my assistant, struggling unromantically across the wild moors, in heavy sleet, with lots of cameras, almost as if I intended to photograph the wind. I wanted to do something that didn't have people in but was peopled in its romanticism in our memory. It was the right time of the year to be going, in the freezing cold. I wanted to capture the sense of the unremitting weather there.
Filming was over about three days and we started work at 7am to catch the dense mist that rolls in during the morning and typifies the Yorkshire landscape, and we worked right through until dusk.
Wuthering Heights is one of those books on a list of books that you should read in your lifetime. It is amazing when you read it that there is not one redeeming feature about any of the characters. It is just unremitting pain and relentless torture of each other throughout.
I was amazed at how Heathcliff has become such a romantic figure. There is an underlying, burning passion and love that holds them together, even though it is projected in pain and misery. But within the constantly sadistic relationships and the unremitting cruelty I was trying to find in my pictures some sort of redemptive quality in that landscape, as well as capture the bleakness that those characters are set against in Brontë's novel.
All the photographs were taken in a four-mile radius of where the fictional Wuthering Heights is supposed to be set. I don't think any of the pictures are too direct in their links to the actual book. Wuthering Heights served as a backdrop. I soaked up the landscape that Brontë's inspiration came from and then made it my own. (Picture sources: 1 & 2)

The Independent also includes a gallery of pictures featured in Ghosts, some with an explanatory note. A great resource for those not able to make it to London.

However, the Guardian gives it two stars out of five:

A linked show is at White Cube Mason's Yard. Upstairs are landscape photographs of the Yorkshire moorland where Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights. The sequence is called Ghosts; the idea is that traces of the book are inscribed on the landscape. In one, a burly tree seems to be Heathcliff to another's gnarly Cathy. Such pathetic fallacies should be resisted: if Ghosts does anything artistically useful, it is to send us back to the novel.
From downstairs wafts ardent music that sounds, in this context, like the incidental score to a Sunday night Brontë adaptation. Taylor-Wood's video installation, Sigh, features members of the BBC Concert Orchestra, playing Anne Dudley's specially commissioned score - without their instruments. (Stuart Jeffries)

The image on the right is the one Mr Jeffries refers to. The Independent picture gallery has a note on this image by Sam Taylor-Wood:

Ghosts II: This picture of two leafless trees is one of the ones I call 'Cathy and Heathcliff' to myself for obvious reasons. It feels like their roots are intertwined and they are inhabiting the same land. But everything is rumbling on beneath the surface and those two solitary figures are standing opposed to each other.

EDIT: In the White Cube Mason's Yard website it can be found a video of the artist discussing her work.


Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Wuthering Heights

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The Joule-Brontë-Chopin Effect

Today, October 29, a very curious and fascinating event will take place in Manchester. One of those few chances that link together two of the passions of this half of BrontëBlog: the Brontës and physics (and excuses for the personal note):

Wednesday 29th October at 6.30pm

The Joule-Brontë-Chopin Effect: a study in connections

A talk by Dr Grenville Jones, Physics Dept. Salford University

Organised through Manchester Science Festival in conjunction with the Institute of Physics, The Cockcroft Institute, Daresbury Laboratory.
The Joule-Kelvin effect is a well-known physical phenomenon that depends upon direct interaction between particles. The Joule-Bronte-Chopin effect is a social phenomenon in which the 'particles' are people and the interaction is mediated via third parties. The condition necessary to observe the effect is a critical mass: large enough to sustain a distribution of gifted individuals but not so large as to preclude mutual familiarity. Such a milieu existed in 19th century Manchester. In this talk we discover what brought two Bronte sisters and Frederic Chopin to the city in the 1840s (Joule was a resident) and the connections between.

Since the days of Herbert Dingle, who wrote a biography of Emily Brontë in 1974 entitled The Mind of Emily Brontë, we have not seen many physics-Brontë connections.

On the other hand, a more standard alert can be found at the Bethel, CT:

Wednesday October 29, 2008
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Morning Book Discussion at Express Yourself Craft Store, 36 Grassy Plain St., Bethel Tell a Friend
Contact: Adult Services Desk 203-794-8756 ext. 4
Today's selection is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester. This classic Gothic novel has it all--a huge English house with inaccessible rooms, danger, madness, unfair limits to achievement, especially for women, based on social class, and dark secrets.

Copies of books are available at the Circulation Desk approximately one month before the meeting. Express Yourself Scrapbook and Craft Store is located at 36 Grassy Plain Street. Park around back or in front. No registration required

EDIT:
Another alert for today from Innsbruck, Austria:

Austro-Bristish Society Tyrol
Wednesday 29 October
Talk: The Genius of Charlotte Bronte
by Sandra Milne-Skinner
preceded by sale of English books
Venue: University Hörsaal 1(Josef-Moeller-Haus)
Time:18:30 (Book Sale), 19:00 (Talk)
While keeping her father company after a cataract operation in Manchester, Charlotte Bronte started writing Jane Eyre, one of the most famous and enduring novels in the English language. This talk explores the influences on her genius, her extraordinary family, her life and her work – a fascinating insight into a writer who strove, above all, to live as an individual in a world where women were defined not as themselves, but by the men who ruled their lives.

Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre, Scholar, Talks

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Brontë pre-history

Mammoth Screen joint managing director Damien Timmer writes for Broadcast mostly about the why and wherefore of the recent Lost in Austen, but he also slips in a comment about their forthcoming Wuthering Heights for ITV.

Truth #2 is that the big titles are coming around faster and faster. Mammoth Screen's upcoming Wuthering Heights comes 11 years after the previous version, which now seems like pre-history.

He is right in that. When it comes to Wuthering Heights, many people feel that no version has even come close to doing justice to the novel, with the arguable exception of Wuthering Heights 1939, which by those standards must be pre-pre-pre-pre-history. With Jane Eyre, on the other hand, a good many people have a favourite version which they claim is as close and loyal to the novel as possible, but - as we see it - that is not the case with any version of Wuthering Heights generally speaking.

And, of course, there is also the fear of producers to tackle lesser-known works (*cough* Villette *cough*, *cough* Shirley *cough*).

Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series quite refuse to abandon our newsrounds. From The Globe and Mail:

Informed less by millennia of vampire tales, or centuries of fiction, then films, Twilight is also grossly indebted to Jane Eyre and that novel's own brutish, wild Edward (Rochester), dangerous pastoral setting and plain-Jane heroine.
While Meyer's Bella reads Jane Austen, it puts her to sleep: The sexually omnivorous imagination of Charlotte Bronte is awakened when, as with Rochester meeting Jane, Edward meets Bella and behaves like a furious animal, which, of course, makes him all the more, meta-Harlequin alluring. (Lynn Crosbie)

'Brutish, wild Edward', huh?

But Stephenie Meyer is not the only one inspired by Jane Eyre. Singer Laura Marling tries to describe to the Guardian what her new album will be like.

Marling also read Jane Eyre three times in the three months before she made the album. 'I love that Brontë era, the creepy, dark romance. It's funny how much what you're reading influences what you think.' (Alice Fisher)

Salon.com reviews Margaret Atwood's Payback:

That fiery gypsy Heathcliff may have loved and lost Cathy, but he paid her back by snatching up her encumbered estate. (As Atwood drolly notes, "The best nineteenth-century revenge is not seeing your enemy's red blood all over the floor but seeing the red ink all over his balance sheet.") (Louis Bayard)

And Eureka Street also uses Wuthering Heights as an example to introduce an article on 'migrants':

In a famous scene in English Literature, conventional Lockwood, the outsider unable to find his way home, is doubly displaced when he is forced to stay the night at Wuthering Heights, a house so strange as to be a foreign land. During the night he experiences a dream-haunting: Catherine, dead 20 years, comes to his broken window and begs and pleads to be let in. Lockwood, terrified, rubs her wrist to and fro upon the shards of glass.
Migrants are like Heathcliff's Cathy, tapping persistently at the window of the past. They realise they can never truly go home again, yet their hearts and spirits continue to yearn. (Gillian Bouras)

Kent News (the news website of the State University of Kent, Ohio)has an article on theatre labs, and a costume lab currently working on Jane Eyre turns up:

Kent's theater productions also benefit from the lab classes. Currently, students are working on costumes for the School of Theatre and Dance's production of "Jane Eyre," opening next semester. "They are making orphan costumes because we have lots of orphans," Russell said, "so we figured it would be a good project for them." (Lauren Crist)

On the blogosphere we find a couple of new readers: The Walking Canvas is reading Jane Eyre and YU has just started The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Hopefully the latter will take some things with a pinch of salt.

Finally, the Brontë Parsonage Blog posts a link to a report from BBC's Look North where the matter of clamping in Haworth is debated.

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

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Jane Eyre: a positively good read

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch looks at the website Positively Good Reads, created by Marianne Gross with the purpose of proving that literary fiction doesn't alway have to be depressing (?). Jane Eyre is on the list:

Most readers are at least loosely acquainted with the story of Jane Eyre, and indeed many probably studied the Victorian novel in a high school English class. Why revisit the novel? The characterization of Jane Eyre is a reason; she could be a role model for women of our own day. Mistreated at the home of her guardian, then abandoned at an inhumane school for impoverished girls, then supporting herself in the lowly status of a governess, Jane maintains her self-respect and integrity. Yes, she gets her man at the end, but she had no hope or expectation of doing so and amply proves herself up to the challenge of self-support. Moreover, when they finally marry, Mr. Rochester is more dependent on Jane than the other way around.
Some of the plot of Jane Eyre is fantastical, from the madwoman in the attic to Jane's rescuers turning out to be her cousins to the fire that lays low the hero. Gothic details attracted readers in Brontë's time. Not everything stands up to modern scrutiny (the treatment of mental illness, for instance). But this is a book to be read for its psychological penetration into its main character's soul. Jane Eyre is a plain, unprivileged woman who struggles against an oppressive society for self-determination and independence — a theme that is as relevant today as 160 years ago.

No other Brontë novels feature on the list, though.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Websites

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The Visiting Act of Maggie O'Farrell

An alert from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Maggie O’Farrell in Haworth

Novelist Maggie O’Farrell will be speaking about and reading from her latest novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and discussing the influence of the Brontës on her writing, at the Old Schoolroom, Haworth on Wednesday 12 November at 3.30pm.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox tells the story of a woman edited out of her family history, exploring themes of sanity and madness, and parallels have been drawn with Jane Eyre.

Maggie O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. Her debut novel, After You’d Gone, was published to international acclaim, and won a Betty Trask Award, while her third, The Distance Between Us, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award.

Her visit to Haworth is part of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s contemporary arts programme.

Admission is £5.00. For further details and bookings contact the Brontë Parsonage Museum, 01535 640188/ jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

The Old Schoolroom is located on Church St, Haworth, opposite the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Categories: Alert, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Talks

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Villette at the RADA

With some delay, we report the current performances of Judith Adams's 1997 adaptation of Villette at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, UK:

VILLETTE

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

Third year students reprise the gothic adventures of Lucy Snowe

Lucy Snowe, unreliable narrator, hidden heroine of her own story, embarks on a journey which takes her from the life of a 'nobody' in England to Villette a town in Belgium, where chance catapults her into a girls' boarding school. Deborah Paige commissioned Judith Adam's adaptation of Villette for the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where it received its premiere in 1997.

Venue: JERWOOD VANBRUGH THEATRE

Adapted by: Judith Adams
Director: Deborah Paige
Designer: Atlanta Duffy
Date(s): Thursday 23rd October - Saturday 1 November 2008
Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre - 7.30pm (Mat. 2.30)

Categories: Theatre, Villette

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Familiar horses and wimps

First of all, an item of interest for anyone in the Chichester (UK) area. As the Chichester Observer reports,

Chichester Festival Theatre have teamed up with the Chichester Observer to offer free sets of tickets to a couple of shows coming up.
The CFT are offering four pairs of tickets for Circus Of Horrors on Friday November 7 and also three pairs of tickets for Wuthering Heights plus programmes on Wednesday November 12.
Simply email your name, address and day-time telephone number to ents@chiobserver.co.uk, putting either Circus Of Horrors or Wuthering Heights in the subject line. Or write to Circus Of Horrors or Wuthering Heights, c/o Phil Hewitt, Chichester Observer, Unicorn House, Eastgate Square, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 1JN. The closing date for the Circus Of Horrors is midnight on Nov 4; for Wuthering Heights it is midnight on Nov 9.

Good luck to any readers entering the contest! The Wuthering Heights production is the April de Angelis's adaptation recently premiered in Birmingham. It will be performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in November 12, 13, 14 and 15. More information here.

The Times comments on the the BBC's Little Dorrit and for some silly reason this passing mention made us laugh:

Even the horses and their driver look familiar: from Jane Eyre, I think. (Andrew Billen)

To keep things screen-related, John Farr from The Huffington Post chooses the best under-exposed horror movies. One of them is I Walked with a Zombie:

"Zombie" [is] a stand-out, due to its sublimely creepy atmosphere, a literate script (reputedly based on "Jane Eyre"!), and charismatic turns by both the gorgeous Dee and Conway.

The Orange County Registers reviews a local production of the play The Heiress (1947).

We're not used to seeing female characters this icily remorseless in an era of frills and petticoats. Compared to "The Heiress'" Catherine Sloper, the creations of the Brontë sisters are wimps. (Paul Hodgins)

Given that 1947 marked the exact 100th anniversary of the publication of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey we find it quite a sweeping, void, ignorant statement to make. Even if the play is set in the 1850s, even if it's based on Henry James's Washington Square (1880), the mindset of the playwrights in 1947 was radically different to that of the Brontë sisters when they created their 'wimps'.

Music OMH describes singer Seth Lakeman as follows:

Anyone who thought the Dartmoor-based folkster a latter-day Heathcliff would knowingly nod. From the mystical wilds known to urban types as 'the countryside' comes the romantic hero, the better to brighten days. (Michael Hubbard)

If you say so.

Our fellow site, the Dutch Brontës.nl reports a recent survey whose results were:

Brontës.nl made the call at the end of August when visitors to its Bol.com to vote for the best English book of all time. Charlotte and Emily found not to have scored poorly: Jane Eyre ended at number 6, Wuthering Heights is at number 9. It will not be a surprise that the list is topped by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. What is remarkable is that Jane Austen does it better than JK Rowling. Her Pride and Prejudice is on the second place, followed by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The entire top 25 can be found here. (Google translation)

And finally fragilidad has created a Jane Eyre 2006 wallpaper.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Theatre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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A Brontë Evening and Sunset

An exhibition and a one-woman-show:

1. In Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK:

Peter Brook
Just look at the state of the bloody Pennines!

AC Gallery
11 Byram St, Huddersfield
Runs until next Friday, October 31.

“JUST look at the state of the bloody Pennines!”
It’s an odd and rather humorous title for Peter Brook’s big exhibition at the AC Gallery, Byram Street, Huddersfield.
The exhibition, which runs until next Friday, once more shows us a great deal of his love affair with those hills, particularly when they have a white covering.
“My pictures are a good deal to do with the weather, whether it’s snowing and what kind of snow,” says the Brighouse artist. (...)
Aside from the original there are many limited edition prints in this show. I particularly enjoyed two contrasting ones, Late Evening, Skye and A Real Bronte Sunset. [in the picture, source].
This is a very large exhibition, with hundreds of works.
(Read more) (Sarah Bull in The Huddersfield Daily Examiner)

2. And tomorrow, October 28 in Champaigne, Illinois, a new chance to see Patricia Hruby Powell's one woman show, An Evening with Jane Austen, Emily Brontë & Emily Dickinson:

Patricia Hruby Powell — storyteller, dancer, mime, actress and award-winning author — will perform “An Evening with Jane Austen, Emily Brontë & Emily Dickinson” at the Champaign Public Library on Tuesday, October 28, at 7 pm. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be in Robeson Pavilion Room A & B. Registration is not required.
These three great women writers dared to break the male monopoly on literary greatness in the nineteenth century. In her unique presentation, Hruby Powell breaks with tradition by combining movement with storytelling. In her three-decade career as a solo modern dancer, Hruby Powell has performed throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe, gradually integrating spoken word and shifting her emphasis to storytelling accented with dance.
The program begins with Jane Austen writing “Emma” in the winter of 1814. Next, the audience meets Emily Brontë soon after the publication of “Wuthering Heights,” sharing memories of her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, a day after the funeral of their brother, Branwell. Finally, Hruby Powell portrays the reclusive Emily Dickinson writing her pithy, enchanting poetry in Amherst.
The program is supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. The library is located at 200 W. Green St. For more information, call 217/403-2070 or visit www.champaign.org.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Theatre

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Bastards are popular

The Financial Times briefly discusses last Tuesday's broadcast of Imagine: A Love Story which included more than one Brontë reference:

Alan Yentob's inquiry into love's literary and cinematic forms (Imagine, BBC1, Tuesday) was satisfyingly self-improving, and confirmed, if in a more refined way, that bastards are as popular in the up- as well as the downmarket. Wuthering Heights tops the romantic favourites (Heathcliff: the bastard gets his) followed by Pride and Prejudice (Darcy: bastard turns out good, especially when Pemberley is taken into account). (John Lloyd)

The Buffalo Times reviews Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction by Susan Cheever which contains Brontë references as well:

Time and again she concludes that addiction, sexual or otherwise, replaces what trauma and abuse have destroyed — peace, security, reliability, acceptance. Other works have concluded the same, but not by citing NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” “Wuthering Heights,” Larry King, their own life, “Anna Karenina” and interviews with eminent researchers Helen Fisher, Dr. Martin Kafka and Dr. Judith Herman. (Lauri Githens Hatch)

The book also includes a couple of Jane Eyre references.

BellaOnline has an article with ideas for creative writing lesson plans:

It’s interesting to note that some of our greatest literary giants, such as authors of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Jane Eyre’ started off in this small way, creating tiny, tiny illustrated homemade books of short stories, some cobbled together out of sugar bags, or whatever else was going spare in the kitchen. They had never heard of lesson plans but, left to themselves in a freezing moorland parsonage with only each other for friends, they weaved dreams of imagination, wars, adventures and magical lands into tales that would rival today’s Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling!
Luckily for the Bronte children, and for us, they were not chivvied to abandon such ‘trifles’ for more solid pursuits or worthier lesson plans as their vicar father was too busy going about his own work and ministry to interfere! Not only that, he actively encouraged his children to express themselves, as students, through all the arts, reading, writing, poetry, music and painting. These creative expressive arts obviously bore talented fruit in great literary works of genius and point us in the right direction when looking for ways to inspire and motivate our children today with creative and child-friendly lesson plans to suit their individual needs as unique students. (Siobhain M Cullen)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune talks to Anne Rice who is promoting her new book Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession:

"Called Out of Darkness" also is a memoir of the reading -- and writing -- life. Rice says that reading was difficult for her as a young person, though she fell in love with Bronte and Dickens at a relatively young age, and that books really didn't open up for her until she was a graduate student. (Susan Larson)

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram presents the new album by the New York band TV on the radio, Dear Science, like this:

The Brooklyn quintet’s Dear Science, one of 2008’s best albums, is a thrilling artistic accomplishment, one which swings from dizzy electro-clash collages (such as fried-nerve opener Dancing Choose) to florid gothic fever dreams, as exemplified by Science’s wooziest track, Family Tree. Lit from within by co-lead vocalist Tunde Adebimpe’s luminous baritone, Tree obliquely sketches a forbidden courtship evoking Wuthering Heights as illustrated by Edward Gorey. (Preston Jones)

The song can be played on the band's MySpace.

Another band with a Brontë twist is Alphabeat (more on previous posts) which is mentioned in The Independent.

The refrain of forthcoming single "What Is Happening" is the cue for hands-in-the-air jubilation, and it's one of many: "10,000 Nights" (which namechecks "Wuthering Heights") and the encore of "Fascination" itself (which namechecks "Easy Lover" and "All the Young Dudes", or at least seems to until you read the booklet) are two more, the latter given a brilliant big-tease build-up.

And let's now finally take a walk on the blogosphere: Susan's Thoughts and Ramblings interviews author and artist Debbie Ridpath who is now re-reading Jane Eyre. RockDaniela's story posts about Jane Eyre in Romanian. Skidmore's island recovers and old interview with Maureen Peters, author of several Brontë-related books (among them A Masque of Brontës, Child of the Earth, The Genii, The Child of Fire or The Haunting of Houses) who had this curious theory about Emily's death:

She had just come back from an extended holiday. Two days in Hawarth [sic], the capital of Bronte Country.
“I love it. It’s still the nineteenth century there with cobbled streets. It’s where they made the Hovis advertisement. In the apothecary’s - NOT the chemist’s - they still sell Dolly Blue and wear 19th century dress. I was disappointed they didn’t have laudanum when I asked, but they said they weren’t allowed to sell it.”
Magic mushrooms had been found in Top Withas [sic], the setting for Wuthering Heights, and Maureen wondered if Heathcliffe[sic] and girlfriend got their kicks from chewing them. Alas, the discovery came too late for her biography of Emily Bronte, “Child of the Earth”, which took her three years of research and is written in novel form from Emily’s letters.
Maureen wondered if Emily was an early euthanasia case. “She was bitten by a rabid dog and could have caught hydrophobia. There was some mystery about her death. Her Uncle Hugh was brought over from Ireland when she was ill and went back a totally changed man when she died. He would never talk about her death and the family maid at that time was left £300 in Pastor Bronte’s will, which was a fortune in those days. I wonder if Uncle Hugh assisted the death. The Parson couldn’t and Emily would not have been allowed to take her own life. It’s all fascinating.”

Well, the rabid dog incident is undated (although Juliet Barker speculatively places it in 1833), but Romer Wilson, in her 1928 biography of Emily Brontë, already traced parallels between Shirley's description of the incident and the actual incident. As a matter of fact, in chapter XXVIII of Shirley (which by the way today celebrates its 159th anniversary of publication) it says:

'You know, in case the worst I have feared should happen, they will smother me. You need not smile: they will - they always do. My uncle will be full of horror, weakness, precipitation; and that is the only expedient which will suggest itself to him. Nobody in the house will be self-possessed but you: now promise to befriend me - to keep Mr. Sympson away from me - not to let Henry come near, lest I should hurt him. Mind - mind that you take care of yourself, too: but I shall not injure you, I know I shall not. Lock the chamber-door against the surgeons - turn them out, if they get in. Let neither the young nor the old MacTurk lay a finger on me; nor Mr. Greaves, their colleague; and, lastly, if I give trouble, with your own hand administer to me a strong narcotic: such a sure dose of laudanum as shall leave no mistake. Promise to do this.'

Concerning Hugh Brontë's visit to Haworth after Branwell's death: it is merely a rumour, although Chitham mentions it in his biography of Emily Brontë.

Categories: Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Shirley, Wuthering Heights

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Disrupting Victorian Studies

Talks, papers and exhibitions, all of them related to The Victorians Institute:

The Victorians Institute, 2008
DISRUPTING VICTORIAN STUDIES:
Inconvenient Facts, Shocking Discoveries, Surprising Events, Forgotten Voices, Unknown Writings, Mangled Texts.

University of South Carolina, Columbia
October 3-4, 2008

The program included:

FRIDAY, October 3
11.00-12:15 am

Session 2B: Two Brontës
Kitty Elton (Univ. of New Brunswick): “Anne Brontë: The Buried Sister.”
Kristen Pond (UNC Greensboro): “Silently Disrupting Identity: Lucy Snowe and Unethical Constructions of the Other in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette.”
Robin Barrow (Univ. of Tennessee): “The ‘Draught and Glow’ of Sexual Violence in Jane Eyre.”

SATURDAY October 4
10:45 am-12:00 noon

Session 8A: Short Fiction
Kathryn Crowther (Georgia Inst. of Technology): “Reclaiming Charlotte Brontë’s The Green Dwarf.”

Session 8B: Charlotte Brontë
Chair: Deborah Logan (Western Kentucky University).
Leila May (NC State Univ.): “Reductio ad Materialismus: Overplaying the Materialist Card in Villette”
Adam Pridemore (Univ. of South Florida): "Jane Eyre on the Stool: Exploring Ignored Questions of Narrative Authenticity in Brontë 's Jane Eyre."
Abby Mann (Indiana Univ.): “’Chain[ed] . . . to a putrefying carcase’: George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, and Renunciation.”

FRIDAY 5:30 pm-7:00 pm
Reception, Exhibition Opening (Graniteville Room)
Sponsored by the Thomas Cooper Society
Brief greetings: John Lee (President, Thomas Cooper Society).
Exhibition: “The Shapes of Victorian Writing” (Mezzanine Gallery)
--first editions of Victorian authors from Carlyle, Darwin and Dickens to the Brontes, Rhoda Broughton, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Bridges, and featuring William North (1825-1854).

The USC Times & Headlines gives more information on the exhibition:

North's novel The City of the Jugglers; or, Free-Trade in Souls (1850) is among the most original and surprising works of Victorian fiction. Yet, with only two copies recorded as surviving in any library in North America, it is now much rarer than the first edition of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847), which is also on display.

The latest issue of the Victorian Institute Journal (Number 35, 2007) also contains a Brontë article:

Grace Moore and Susan Pyke
Haunting Passions: Revising and Revisiting Wuthering Heights, p. 239

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Journals,Scholar,Talks

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A Dolls' House and Kate Atkinson

ArtDaily and The Oxford Times report an upcoming auction at Christie's which will include a Brontë-related item:

Christie’s announce that they will offer the fascinating private collection of Roger Warner at South Kensington on 20 and 21 January 2009. One of the most renowned and admired British antique dealers of the 20th century, Roger Warner ran his legendary shop in Burford, Oxfordshire for 50 years between 1936 and 1986, and during this time attracted an impressive list of visitors and customers including Queen Mary, Princess Margaret, Walt Disney, Peter Ustinov, John Fowler, Bruce Chatwin, Christopher Gibbs and the Mitford sisters. In the 1960s and 1970s, he regularly appeared as an expert with Arthur Negus on the BBC’s Going for a Song, the forerunner of The Antiques Roadshow. The auction will offer approximately 700 lots from the private collection of Roger Warner, passionately assembled throughout his lifetime, and is expected to realise in excess of £800,000. (...)
Andrew Waters, Director of the Private collection and Country House sale department, Christie’s: “Christie’s is honoured to have been asked to oversee the auction of Roger Warner’s private collection. Roger’s discernment gave him a legendary reputation and a lasting importance. This auction will open the doors to an astounding treasure trove of fascinating pictures furniture and works of art - the very personal and private collection of a modest but remarkable man.”
Highlights of the auction include William Wordsworth’s desk chair from Rydal Mount, a Dolls House decorated by Charlotte Brontë, a remarkable botanical still life collected by Lawrence Johnston at Hidcote Manor, a Royal Tudor coat of arms from Gillingham Castle, rare Lambeth Delft chargers and Reniassance gold-ground portraits of saints. Further details will be announced at a later date.

We asked Ann Dinsdale, Brontë Society Collections Manager, about the dolls' house and she told us:

It featured in an exhibition in the 1980s and according to the catalogue notes [Roger Warner] put together, he purchased it from the Greenwood family and it was always claimed within the family that the interior had been decorated by Charlotte during her time as governess to the Sidgwicks.

John Mullan in The Guardian talks about a personal favourite of BrontëBlog, Kate Atkinson's first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum highlighting a Brontë reference:

Ruby's self-destructive adolescent urge to smash her hand through the patio window is explained by her likening of herself to Cathy's ghost in Wuthering Heights.

Kate Atkinson's references to Wuthering Heights are not unusual. In her latest novel, When Will There Be Good News? it can be read:

She had always preferred North and South to Wuthering Heights. All that demented running around the moors, identifying yourself with the scenery, not a good role model for a woman.

The New York Times reviews Diane Johnson's Lulu on Marrakech:

There are some names you can't ignore. When you find them attached to a particular fictional character, you can't assume that blind coincidence prompted the writer's choice. Call your girl-heroine Jane and there may be echoes of Jane Eyre, but the association is not forced on you. And a Cathy does not need to meet a Heathcliff. But the name Lulu? Lulu is a different story. Lulu has a pedigree. Even if the defiant anti-heroine of Frank Wedekind's books isn't at the forefront of your mind as you say the name out loud (your lips will purse, as if you're about to kiss) there's an innocent-yet-louche ring to it. Travel to Marrakesh with Lulu, and you ought to be in for a hell of a ride.
Better, I fear, to stay at home with Cathy and Jane. (Erica Wagner)

The Times interviews Tessa Jowell, UK's Paymaster General and Minister for the Olympics, a Brontëite:

Quickfire five
Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet? Jane Eyre (Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester)

Wuthering Heights is one of the recommended books in an article about the local library in The Sudbury Star:

'Wuthering Heights," by Emily Bronte is a wild passionate story that reveals a love between Catherine and Heathcliff so passionate and intense that it outlives the grave. (Kaija Mailloux)

Mary Beth Miles in the Dallas Morning News writes about the joys of reading fiction:

Yes, I could eat along with Diane Mott Davidson's delicious culinary mysteries. And I could pray, though not with the evangelical fervor found in The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. And I could love, relishing the unrequited elegance of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

The Spenborough Guardian talks about the 2009 calendar which has been produced by Spen Valley Civic Society:

The calendar, which is in full colour, depicts many historic and outstanding locations in the Spen Valley as well as linking into the society's successful Spen Fame Trail project which commemorates famous local people including the discoverer of oxygen, Joseph Priestley, and sweet manufacturer Toffee Smith.
Among the 12 illustrations are images celebrating the valley's Bronte heritage, historic buildings which the society has helped to save and the valley's manufacturing industry showing the only car manufactured in Cleckheaton, along with the famous Panther motorcycle and the Cleckheaton viaduct. (Margaret Heward).

The Cleveland Plain Dealer talks to several experts about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga:

The appeal stretches to avid college women who wear "Twilight" T-shirts and jewelry to class, to the mild amusement of professor Sara Hackenberg, who teaches an English course called "The Vampire Tradition" at San Francisco State University.(...)
"Stephenie Meyer has cited 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre' as influences," Hackenberg said, "and certainly Heathcliffe and Mr. Rochester are classic types -- dangerous, magnetic, doomed to hurt the one they love, the Byronic hero. Meyer seems to want to put Edward in that tradition." (Karen R. Long)

The Ampersand interviews author John Connolly. Not a Brontëite but a Bushite with a Brontë twist:

Who wouldn't you mind being stuck in an elevator with?
The singer Kate Bush. I've had a crush on her since childhood. Wuthering Heights was the first single that I ever bought with my own money, but she doesn't write, she doesn't call . . . (Interview by Mark Medley)

The Year of Musical Thinking is not very excited with the Gordon & Caird musical setting of Jane Eyre. Dagelijks iets dagelijks has a long post about the Brontës' works in Dutch. gln555 reviews Wuthering Heights 1939.

And finally an alert for today, October 25. From the Burke County Public Library, Morganton, Nort Carolina:

Villette by Charlotte Bronte will be discussed on Saturday, October 25th at 3:00 in the Morganton Public Library Meeting Room

Categories: Alert, Brontëana, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Villette, Wuthering Heights

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B is for Brontë

If you're already looking for Christmas presents this might come in handy.

There was recently a press release on PR Web about a website called Clever Cuties, described as

A family clothing design web site that offers kids and parents alike dozens of original, witty, and geeky designs. Now parents can get well-designed onesies for their kids that say "Future Engineer" or "A is for Austen, B is for Brontë." Most are not just text but cleverly designed images with computer, science, music, literature and geek themes. Some are general enough that the average person will understand it and some require specific knowledge in the field.

You can see the "A is for Austen, B is for Brontë" design on the left. And it's not just for onesies, but also for bibs and T-shirts, both for children and adults. Click here to check it out. We do think it's a clever, cute idea indeed, and only wish they had added the umlaut to the design.

Categories: Weirdo

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