A post-colonial zombie

The John Crace's Digested Classic published today in The Guardian is no other that Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. Highly recommended:

They say when trouble comes, close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The negroes hated us, too. "You ain't nothing but white cockroach niggers," the young Tia said, stealing my dress as I bathed alone in the lush sensuality of the biblical garden pond.
They were all the people in my life - my mother, my brother Pierre and my nurse Christophine - since old Cosway, my father, died five years back when all the old slave-owners left. Some said it was drink, some said madness, but emancipation surely did us no good.
I was a bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason, but though he restored us from the steamy undergrowth of our sweaty impoverishment, we could not escape the madness of the post-colonial reinterpretation of Jane Eyre
"Why must I flit from one half-remembered scene to another," I asked, "each more laden than the last with the heavy, humid symbolism of female oppression and neo-Marxist alienation?"
"Because you are a creole, Antoinette," Christophine said, "and I am an old Jamaican negro, steeped in the old ways of obeah." (Read more)

Also in The Guardian we read an article by Elizabeth Gaskell's biographer Jenny Uglow about the English Heritage grant for the rehabilitation of the writer's house in Manchester:

Some good news in glum times. A grant from English Heritage of £260,000 has come just in time to save Elizabeth Gaskell's house in Manchester, which was collapsing with cracked walls, rotten windows and general rot and age. This is just the beginning: the hope is to restore it completely, open it to visitors and recreate the ground-floor rooms as they were in Gaskell's time - there are plenty of photographs - as well as providing space for the local community to use. Gaskell was thrilled when the family moved to 84 Plymouth Grove, Ardwick, Manchester in 1850. "And we've got a house," she wrote to a friend. "Yes! We really have. And if I had neither conscience nor prudence I should be delighted, for it certainly is a beauty." The house was large enough for bedrooms for her four daughters, a study - not a room of her own for Mrs G, but a den for William, Unitarian minister of Cross Street Chapel - and two large downstairs rooms for parties, charades, reading, sewing and, of course, writing. It had attics, kitchens, a scullery, pantry, outhouses and a large garden, where Gaskell planted cabbages as well as flowers. Although she often escaped the Manchester smoke, most of her novels were written here, and her many visitors included Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, who stayed three times in the "large and cheerful, airy house".
The Italianate house, which is owned by the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, was built around 1838. It is one of the few survivors of early Victorian villas in Manchester, but for years has been threatened by dry rot and water seeping through the roof, and it has been on English Heritage's at-risk register since 1998. Dame Judi Dench, whose touching portrayal of Miss Matty in the BBC's adaptation of Cranford won a host of new readers for this often underrated classic, cheered the grant for Plymouth Grove: "I am delighted that English Heritage is offering a grant to carry out the work that is needed on Elizabeth Gaskell's house. This is a major historical building and it will be wonderful to see it restored to its former glory."

Northern Rail has finally clarified its position concerning his refusal to partipate in the Brontë Country Partnership advertising campaign. As read in the Keighley News:

Northern Rail has expressed regret for any “confusion” over a decision to turn down an advertising design for Brontë Country.
Members of the Brontë Country Partnership (BCP) reacted angrily last month to news that their proposed design — meant to appear on a pair of railway carriages — had been rejected.
The BCP markets Keighley and Brontë Country as a tourist destination.
It was told last year that Northern Rail was making the passenger carriages available to have images of local tourist attractions emblazoned on them.
The scheme is being funded by the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, the Keighley Town Centre Association, Keighley Town Council and the BCP.
At last month’s BCP meeting, group members said Northern Rail had behaved unprofessionally by not clarifying what type of design it was willing to accept.
Responding this week, a company spokesman said: “We are working with the KTCA to finalise the images and look of the train to promote Keighley and the surrounding area.
“We are sorry for any confusion over the initial design but are confident that the finished train will be a fantastic advert for the town.”

The Times talks about possible sequels to the just-published zombie version of Pride and Prejudice:

And it won’t be the last: later this year Elton John’s Rocket Pictures begins shooting Pride and Predator, and both Wuthering Heights (Catherine’s ghost gets proactive) and Jane Eyre (not just a madwoman in the attic) are being measured for mash-up potential. (Tom Gatti)

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga continues to appear in the daily newsround: in an article published in Le Point and in a press release promoting Shmoop:

Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com), a new educational website that aims to make learning fun and relevant for today’s students, christened its new “Book Club” section with the best-selling novel Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. The immensely popular book series spawned a blockbuster motion picture in 2008. Shmoop challenges students, teachers, and librarians to answer the question, “is Twilight great literature, or simply entertainment?” (...)
Shmoop also helps students connect Twilight with other great classics, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. “We want to encourage young fans of Twilight to explore other great works of literature that they didn’t even realize they might love,” said Ana [Rowena] McCullough[, VP of Content at Shmoop].

The Washington Post reviews Joe Queenan's Closing Time. A memoir. Remembering his father, the author recalls:

Sober, he could speak with eloquence, and when he wrote the occasional letter to the editor, it sparkled: He "had a touch of the poet; his turn of phrase and choice of words were things of beauty. He had read Charles Dickens, Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, the Brontës. . . . His jeremiads were, accordingly, laced with poignant imagery, edifying turns of phrase, and a lofty tongue-in-cheek style he may have appropriated from Mark Twain." (Jonathan Yardley)

Another review with Brontë mentions can be read in the Los Angeles Times. The novel is All the Living by C.E. Morgan:

This is a book about life force, the precious will to live and all the things that can suck it right out of a person. It is a first novel, and the writing is simply astonishing: The way small movements betray a character, the effects of hard labor, the damaging power of communication withheld. It is the writing of a much older (at times, even world-weary) author. Descriptions of the landscape of the rural South remind a reader of Willa Cather. The characters' utter lack of a sense of entitlement calls to mind Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." (Susan Salter Reynolds)

The Spanish magazine Qué Leer compares the controversial heroine of Sherry Jones's novel The Jewel of Medina to Jane Eyre:

Otra cosa muy distinta es que esa supuesta falta de rigor sea relevante a la hora de juzgar una novela cuyo mayor mérito reside en la invención de una Aisha fascinante, mitad heroína de las Brontë y mitad femme fatale de cine negro, tan deudora de Germaine Greer como de la sensualidad exuberante de Las mil y una noches. (Google Translation)

The Argentinian cultural magazine Página 12 reviews a collective exhibition of local photographers at the Museo Sarmiento (Buenos Aires). Talking about the work of Laura Glusman:

Laura Glusman, en esta muestra, por fin ha sido comprendida como lo que es: una fotógrafa con sensibilidad pictórica ante el paisaje, una creadora de ficciones más que de meros registros de lo real. Tanto los reflejos de luz como el particular punto de vista de sus tomas la instalan de lleno en el terreno del paisaje visionario, cargado de un misticismo panteísta cercano al de Emily Brontë en "Cumbres Borrascosas": una espiritualidad secular, inmanentista, a la que Martínez Quijano asocia con la novela gótica. (Beatriz Vignoli) (Google translation)

Le Figaro Magazine presents the French translation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (also translated to Dutch as published in 8Weekly) and Le Point does the same with Mark Crich's Sartre's Sink (which in France is retitled as... ahem... La baignoire de Goethe).

Trainwreck Avenue posts about Wuthering Heights, arlene-rosalie publishes yet another set of Jane Eyre 2006 icons, It's all about Books briefly reviews Agnes Grey and Chez Emjy reviews positively the recent Yann & Édith's Les Hauts de Hurlevent (Volume 1) comic:

J'ai pu cette semaine découvrir avec un immense plaisir le tome 1 des Hauts de Hurlevents. J'ai été conquise par cet album (dont le scénario est de Yann et les dessins d'Edith). Pourtant, ce n'était pas gagné, j'ai eu des à-prioris négatifs en feuilletant quelques pages. Le style du dessinateur ne me plaisait pas trop au premier abord et puis au final, je dois dire qu'il m'a absolument convaincue !
C'est vrai que l'artiste a un trait un peu particulier mais je trouve qu'il sert plutôt bien l'ambiance ténébreuse du récit.
J'ai été ravie de constater que les personnalités du roman ont été respectées. Ce qui n'est pas toujours le cas des adaptations ciné ou tv ... Je pense notamment à la récente mini-série dans laquelle Catherine semble bien plus sympathique que dans le roman !
Dans la BD, elle est égale à elle-même, caractérielle, passionnée, emportée et méchante aussi, par moments (n'ayons pas peur des mots ! ).
J'ai aussi beaucoup apprécié la palette des couleurs, qui une fois encore, restitue très bien l'aura lugubre et sombre du roman.
Par contre, une petite chose risque de déranger les fans du livre (dont je ne fais pas vraiment partie, je dois admettre que je préfère Charlotte à Emily) ... Le changement narratif me semble un peu étrange. C'est Catherine qui raconte son histoire et non Nelly, la servante et gouvernante. Je ne demande qu'à lire la suite, et découvrir les raisons de ce choix mais je trouve tout de même que c'est un peu surprenant ! (Google translation)

Finally, an alert for tomorrow April 19 in Tampa, Florida:

The Upper Tampa Bay Regional Library presents Victorian literature scholar William Scheuerle speaking at a celebration of the 193rd birthday of Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre). Victorian costumes are encouraged; the party is at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the library, 11211 Countryway Blvd., Tampa. (Colette Bancroft in St. Petersburg Times)

Categories: Agnes Grey, Alert, Art-Exhibitions, Comics, Elizabeth Gaskell, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights