Find your inner Brontë sister

Emily's 191st birthday celebrations online have begun:

Finding Dulcinea looks at her life and accomplishments ( a word which - in its 19th century context - Emily would have loathed):

“Emily Brontë wrote so little in her short life that it is difficult to appraise her work ... One point is generally agreed upon: that in both her prose and poetry there is ... a rare power,” said British poetry scholar Paul Lieder. Tuberculosis claimed her at age 30, but her sole novel, “Wuthering Heights,” and single volume of poetry made Emily Brontë an integral member of the Western literary canon. (Rachel Balik) (Read more)

The Halifax Reader takes a look at the fiction inspired by this 'independent, spirited young woman' and her family:

July 30th is Emily Bronte's birth anniversary. Would this independent, spirited young woman ever have suspected her one novel would have had such a legacy? Not only are all the Brontes' characters of enduring interest, but the Brontes themselves lived lives which have continued to fascinate us two hundred years later.
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have inspired a number of examples of Fanfiction. Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne have been the inspiration for novels, sometimes speculating about lesser known parts of their lives, and sometimes transporting them through time. (Maureen)

And Proporta is celebrating with a discount:

Emily Bronte is a giant name in English Literature, even though she only published one novel, and died when she was just 30 years old. It helps, of course, that the sole novel was Wuthering Heights, and the passionate romance and dark, menacing hero of that book have made it, and its author an immortal part of British culture. Whether it’s Laurence Olivier’s turn as a brooding Heathcliff, or just a crazy song by Kate Bush, Emily’s characters live on in our imaginations, and, less happily perhaps, our GCSE syllabuses.
Emily would have been 191 this July 30th, and to celebrate this great lady’s life Proporta would like to give 15% off to all customers on her birthday. Simply type in the code ELLISBELL on the cart page to claim your discount. Tall, dark and handsome strangers are, unfortunately, not included...
*Please note that this offer is only available on Thursday 30th July 2009 and only on orders of Proporta branded hardware purchased from http://www.proporta.com/.

EDIT: More celebrations: Risky Regencies, Cultuurspectrum (in Dutch), The Internet Writing Workshop, the Brontë Sisters, and Lady Lazarus.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati Literature Examiner studies men and women from different points of view, one of them being Wuthering Heights.

Moving forward, it is necessary to spend some time with Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, as not only was Bronte one of the first prominent female novelists, but moreover, she had a firm grasp on the prodigious male-female archetype—that is, the androgynous aspects of human beings. She states effervescently, “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary…I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself—but, as my own being…”(Bronte, 1995, p. 82). In this short monologue, Emily’s character, Catherine, admits that her love for Heathcliff is vital to her sustained existence. In essence, he embodies the ideal masculine compliment for her effeminate being, and in so doing, is regarded by her own self to be her lifeline—her companion for all things that require the transcendence of merely the singular male or the singular female. Alone, these two entities are moribund and desolate, desperately seeking an equalizer for their particular sex. Hence, Bronte resembles the female archetype, Aphrodite, in that not only is her novel highly sexual, but both Bronte’s character and Bronte’s own life moved on a path toward self-actualization. Victoria Schmidt (2001) asserts in reference to Aphrodite, “Her biggest motivator is self-actualization….She needs love, connection and creativity to be happy” (p. 25). In sum, Bronte’s animated nature and need for a sexual partner and life companion is best characterized by her obsession with her character, Heathcliff. (Kyle Reynolds)

And The Telegraph (Calcutta) looks at famous threesomes.

Theirs was a love that knew no boundaries. They grew up together and were nearly inseparable. Till of course she decided to marry Edgar Linton. Heathcliff stormed away leaving Catherine to suffer while Edgar picked up the pieces. How can one not like a man who’s not around to pick up the pieces? So the story stands thus — Catherine and Edgar, Heathcliff and Isabella. And Heathcliff and Catherine. Where’s the trio? We don’t know. We’re still confused! And as if that wasn’t enough, there is Catherine’s assertion that she and Heathcliff were one person. Is that two people or one? Help!

Articlesbase has an article by Nicholas Raven on '"A Doll's House" and "Wuthering Heights", an investigation into setting'.

News Blaze talks about Ernest Dempsey's The Blue Fairy and other tales of transcendence:

Janet Grace Riehl (Village Wisdom) said, "There is something about the somberness of his search for moral principles that reminds me of Victorian poets such as Tennyson, Bronte, Kipling, and Hardy writing in the 19th century. Bringing these themes into 21st century views is an interesting task."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discusses love letters and brings up a fragment from on of Charlotte's famous passionate letters to her Brussels professor Constantin Heger:

Another note that probably should have met with an open flame is this one from Charlotte Bronte to a married professor who doesn't seem to have returned her affection:
"Monsieur, the poor have not need of much to sustain them -- they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. … Nor do I, either, need much affection from those I love. I should not know what to do with a friendship entire and complete -- I am not used to it. But you showed me of yore a little interest … and I hold on to the maintenance of that little interest -- I hold on to it as I would hold on to life."
Whoa, girl, you'll melt his spectacles.
You may remember Charlotte Bronte as the author of "Jane Eyre," a book about a girl with a self-esteem deficiency and a passion for her brooding employer, who tries to marry her even though he already has a crazy wife who burns the house down and blinds him. Breaking up is hard to do. (Samantha Bennett)

The San Francisco Chronicle wonders whether a pill can help make you more intelligent and had us laughing out loud at the following:

I snag a prescription, pop a 100 mg pill, and await the emergence of my inner Brontë sister. (Joanne Chen)

And finally this is what the blogs bring us today: Mariakäfer (in German) is not very favourable to the process of adapting classics to children, mentioning the recent Real Reads editions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Joy writes about Jane Eyre, Anna Winberg Knows Good Books (in Swedish) has just got a volume of the collected novels of the Brontë sisters and Celtic Twilight reviews (in French) Daphne du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (or Le Monde infernal de Branwell Brontë in its French translation).

Categories: Books, Brussels, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Fiction, Wuthering Heights