Literature and economy

The financial crisis continues reaching bookish areas. The publisher Wordsworth has just announced that they will publish only half the number of books they released last year 'just in case' according to The Bookseller. The plan doesn't sound too bad, but their marketing hopes seem a little shaky:

As well as the Darwin giveaway, the classics publisher received a boost when its edition of D H Lawrence’s infamous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover appeared on "Eastenders". Bleak House, Cranford and Little Dorrit are also doing well on the back of recent adaptations, and Wordsworth is anticipating adapations [sic] of Frankenstein and Emma later this year, as well as a film about the Bronte sisters. (Catherine Neilan)

We sincerely hope that they are also pinning their hopes on the new Wuthering Heights, as the Brontë biopic, from where we stand, looks as remote as ever.

The Seattle Weekly discusses another aspect of the same problem: library use is on the rise, and many bookshops - new and secondhand alike - are going down.

Yet at precisely the same time that layoffs are afflicting the region, when consumer spending is down, and the economy is mired in a recession, used book stores are failing? It doesn't make any sense. Paying a buck for a dog-eared Penguin edition of Jane Eyre is an entertainment bargain. It used to be that used book stores sprouted like mushrooms at every major Metro stop in the city. They were the distressed building owner's best friend: If you couldn't rent a vacant storefront space to, say, the Gap, a used book store could move in its entire inventory, plus cat, and start attracting customers. Secondhand retailers may not pay top-dollar rents, but they keep shoppers on the sidewalk, which helps raise all boats. (Brian Miller)

Salon reviews the new book by Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers. American Women Writers. From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx:

Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century -- Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell -- while America did not? That question could (and sometimes does) lead to a lot of speculation on the national characters of the English-speaking peoples, but Showalter mentions an equally plausible, practical cause: "While English women novelists, even those as poor as the Brontës, had servants, American women were expected to clean, cook and sew; even in the South, white women in slaveholding families were trained in domestic arts." Quite a few of the short biographical sketches she offers feature women complaining about being compelled by parents to learn to make pies or mend when they would rather write. In 1877, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps made the heroine of her novel, "The Story of Avis," fume, "I hate to make my bed, and I hate, hate to sew chemises, and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen."
Housework in America has never been an uncomplicated matter. The class system in Britain consigned a certain set of people to this humble labor, while America promised the enterprising among them an opportunity to make something more of their lives. Nevertheless, the cooking and cleaning still had to be done -- especially on the small family farms that were the economic engines of early America -- and so the responsibility for it was transferred from a servant class to the female relatives of the new republic's self-made men. (Laura Miller)

While we are unable to discuss the matter properly, not knowing much about the Brontës' American counterparts, two things must be said here. The Brontës were poorer than the other women writers mentioned here but they weren't workhouse-poor. They were middle-class. And again while unsure as to how their house chores workloads compare to the American women of the time's, the Brontës were by no means free of responsibilities. They may not have gone down on their knees and scrubbed the floor everyday but they had gentlewomen's tasks as sewing, running the household, the typical parish duties of a parson's daughters, etc. Emily Brontë famously baked bread while studying German and Charlotte Brontë openly declared:

By the way, I have lately discovered I have quite a talent for cleaning, sweeping up hearths, dusting rooms, making beds, etc.; so, if everything else fails, I can turn my hand to that, if anybody will give me good wages for little labour. I won't be a cook; I hate cooking. I won't be a nurserymaid, nor a lady's maid, far less a lady's companion, or a mantua-maker, or a straw-bonnet maker, or a taker-in of plain work. I won't be anything but a housemaid. (15 April 1839)

Later in December of that same year:

We are at present, and have been during the last month, rather busy, as, for that space of time, we have been without a servant, except a little girl to run errands. Poor Tabby became so lame that she was at length obliged to leave us. She is residing with her sister, in a little house of her own, which she bought with her savings a year or two since. She is very comfortable, and wants nothing; as she is near we see her very often. In the meantime, Emily and I are sufficiently busy, as you may suppose: I manage the ironing, and keep the rooms clean; Emily does the baking, and attends to the kitchen. We are such odd animals, that we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a new face amongst us. Besides, we do not despair of Tabby's return, and she shall not be supplanted by a stranger in her absence. I excited aunt's wrath very much by burning the clothes, the first time I attempted to iron; but I do better now. Human feelings are queer things; I am much happier black-leading the stoves, making the beds, and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.

So, even if it was temporarily, the Brontës could do - and did - household works as well.

The Ticker reports that The Weissman School of Arts and Science is offering two new scholarships to juniors studying English and requiring financial assistance:

The scholarships are the Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship and the Donald J. Loff Scholarship for Excellence in English. While both scholarships are for those with an interest in English, each caters to a specific topic in English.
The Sarah Guttesman Lubin Memorial Scholarship is awarded every spring to an undergraduate studying 19th century British and/or American literature. Baruch alumnus Melvin Lubin (’48) created the scholarship to honor his late wife Sarah who passed away in December 2007.
Sarah was very involved in getting young people to enjoy literature, Lubin said. "She was always trying to get young people to read Trollope or Dickens, or the Brontes or Walter Scott, or Mark Twain and Melville, or whatever she was reading at the moment," said Lubin. (Ning Mao)

And the latest Wuthering Heights is 'working' for the Kansas City Star:

3. "Masterpiece Classic." I'm not a fan of PBS's long-in-the-tooth British import series, but its current reimaginings of such classics as "Wuthering Heights" and "Little Dorrit" are fresh and even exciting.

The novel seems to have worked on the blogosphere as well: Precipice Express writes about it, LitCritique gives it a 3/5 and Babbles of the Critically Sane discusses 'Heathcliff - Monster or Misunderstood?'.

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights