Old Haworth

The Telegraph & Argus reminds us of an interesting talk taking place tomorrow, May 1, in Haworth:
Picture: A horse and cart makes its way up Main Street (Source)

Friday 1st May

Old Haworth:

Well known local historian Steve Wood is giving his popular illustrated talk on the fascinating history of Haworth, including some previuosly unseen pictures. West Lane Baptist Chapel, 7.00pm. Tickets £4.00, (including refreshments) available on the door.

Previously unseen photographs of old Haworth are to be revealed as part of a campaign to raise more cash to support the shrine to the Bronte sisters.
Historian Steve Wood’s talk is the first event by the fledgling Friends of the Bronte Parsonage Museum group.
The audience who turn up at West Lane Baptist Chapel in Haworth tomorrow at 7.30pm will be taken on an illustrated tour of the village.
Mr Wood is the author of ‘Haworth: A strange uncivilised little place’ which was published by Tempus in 2005.
He is working on a ‘then and now’ book of pictures of the village to be published later this year.
A spokesman for the group said: “The Friends of Bronte Parsonage Museum are a small group of Parsonage staff who are trying to raise funds for the museum.”

Another event in the Brontë Parsonage Museum gets reported here:

Following the success of their play adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre at the School’s Arts Centre at the end of last term and an exciting USA tour which followed, Year 11 and 12 students from Ellesmere College recently travelled to West Yorkshire to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth for a final day of performances.
At the invitation of the Bronte Society, scenes from the play were staged in the Parsonage front garden on a surprisingly warm and sunny Easter Monday to large and appreciative audiences throughout the day. The play’s director, Margaret Hutchings, who also teaches English and Media Studies, commented, ‘It was an exciting experience for the pupils to bring their production of this much-loved book back to the author’s own home and share it with visitors from as far away as Japan and Canada . The whole experience of touring a play from Ellesmere to Boston and back again to Yorkshire has really taken the cast’s drama skills and confidence to a new level as well as broadening their cultural horizons.’
Pictured are The Ellesmere College cast – Jane played by Charlotte Boffey & Edward Rochester played by Ben Lingard-Lane.

The news agency France-Presse has released a news item related to Tamasha's Wuthering Heights Bollywood adaptation which is featured today in several newspapers in Asia and Australia. For instance, The Age:

The classic British novel Wuthering Heights is moved from the windswept moors of Yorkshire to the searing heat of India in a Bollywood-style production hitting the London stage this week.
British TV actor Deepak Verma has given Emily Bronte's tale a drastic makeover, tapping into the fast-rising profile of Bollywood.
In the production at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in west London, the novel's main character, the brooding Heathcliff, has been renamed Krishnan and his search for love is played out against a dazzling swirl of colour.
The director of the play, Kristine Landon-Smith, who is half-Indian and half-Australian, said the biggest hurdle she faced was taking the original story of love and heartbreak in the 18th century and setting it to music.

Incidentally, Stuff I See in London reviews the Lyric Hammersmith performances of the play and it's not really very thrilled:

I also found it a little funny that they just called it Wuthering Heights. I mean, couldn't they have given it a different name and said it was based on Wuthering Heights? At least have some element of creativity.

Business Standard (India) reviews Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth:

In an interesting aside, Wilson compares the relationship of William and Dorothy to that between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. She even suggests that Brontë may have based her iconic characters on the brother-sister duo. Certainly, Brontë’s story owes fantastically to intense sibling love, as Wilson explains:
“Catherine and Heathcliff, raised as brother and sister in the same family, evolve from childhood inseparability into a hybrid of such inward-looking self-consumption that the disappearance of one means the nonexistence of the other...The two of them shift between dread of separation and fear of engulfment.”
Further, she explains how the romantic ideal of Catherine and Heathcliff—and indeed, of William and Dorothy—is sexless:
“Like Dorothy and William, they [Catherine and Heathcliff] have sexual desires but not for each other. Sexual desire feeds on distance and separation, and what Catherine and Dorothy describe is proximity and sameness.” (Vikram Johri)

Briefer mentions: Noisy motorists in The Bexley Times and Mr. Wright's characteristics include

He once read all the Bronte sisters novels in an afternoon

according to Steph's Musings on Associated Content.

On the blogosphere we find that Ingrids boktankar posts about Agnes Grey (in Swedish), and Ocean Dreams and Teen Book Monsters talk about Jane Eyre.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights