G.I. Jane Eyre and her stash of pornography

The latest novel by Alice Hoffman (an inveterate Brontëite), The Story Sisters, is reviewed in The Philadelphia Enquirer:

Shades of the Brontes: Three sisters have created an imaginary world of fairies and demons, queens and minions. (...)
When Charlotte Bronte and her siblings were children, they invented the worlds of Angria and Gondal. Their mother and two oldest sisters were dead; they lived in a cold, remote area of northern England, and they already knew far too much of alcoholism, illness, and death in their immediate family.
Hoffman's Story sisters endure their parents' divorce, but they also live in a comfortable house in a well-off neighborhood on Long Island. Their grandparents have homes in Manhattan and Paris, which they visit regularly. (Susan Balée)

The Guardian carries an article by Jenny Uglow about Edward Lear's Lake District sketches now on exhibition (Edward Lear, the landscape artist) at the Wordsworth Museum & Art Gallery (Dove Cottage, Grasmere). The author being Jenny Uglow it is not surprising that a reference to Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell appear:

The sketches show a landscape at once familiar and strange to the modern eye. The first, for example, is the postcard view from the landing stage at Lowwood, on the eastern shore of Windermere south of Ambleside, looking across the lake and up the distant valleys to the Langdale Pikes, the peaks just emerging from the drifting clouds. In his sketch tourists gather, pointing westwards, as they would always do - it was here that Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell would meet, and talk, and drift on the lake - and it looks much the same today, although crowded with yachts and boats.

The Times has an article about Britain's sea resorts and curiously the Brontës appear not in connection with Scarborough (as usual) but with Filey:

Filey, where Delius and Charlotte Bronte spent holidays, still has a pleasantly Edwardian feel, reflected in its annual festival, which ends tomorrow with a Last Night of the Proms. (Stephen McClarence)

The Daily Finance is one of the last news sources in pairing Wuthering Heights and the Twilight saga:

The four-book Twilight series became a worldwide publishing phenomenon, selling 53 million copies and occupying the top four spots on USA Today's Top 100 Titles of 2008 list, evoking comparisons to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Readers in France snapped up copies of Emily Brontë's classic Wuthering Heights because Twilight heroine Bella discusses the 19th-century classic in Eclipse, the third Twilight book. (Jonathan Berr)

The Wrap publishes an extraordinary exclusive:

You’ve heard of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Pride and Predator”? Well, we can exclusively report on the latest mash-up of a public-domain masterpiece and genre staple … “G.I. Jane Eyre”! Amazingly, Demi Moore has taken time out from her busy Twittering schedule to reprise the “Suck my dick!” role she did for Ridley Scott … while wearing leftover costumes from “The Scarlet Letter." Here’s an early look. Subtle! (Michael Adams)

And The Guardian, talking about Elizabeth David's colourful annotations in her cookbooks, makes a really effective comparison:

These scribbles were personal, written purely as aides-mémoire or occasionally as expressions of joy or outrage. Still unpublished, they were written with no view to posterity yet they reflect her erudition, her humour and her legendary waspishness. But to a David agnostic such as me they are also little short of an epiphany. Trawling through her notes is like reading an undiscovered stash of pornography by Charlotte Bronte or a long-buried draft of early chick-lit from Ernest Hemingway. (Tim Hayward)

The RepublicanAmerican talks about Charles Ludlam's 1984 play The Mystery of Irma Vep full of Brontë (and many other) references:

Expect plenty of melodrama and cross dressing in Yale's wildly comic production. Austin Durant, a tall and large-framed actor steps into the roles of Lady Enid Hillcrest, who is supposed to be frail and delicate. He also plays Nicodemus, the one-legged caretaker; Alcazar, and Pev Amri. Max Gordon Moore plays Lord Edgar, the intruder, and housekeeper Jane, who is a send-up of Bronte's Jane Eyre. (Joanne Greco-Rochman)

The Daily Express talks about bibliotherapy:

The Reader Organisation in Merseyside, a charity set up in 1997 by former university lecturer Jane Davis, runs more than 80 weekly outreach projects across the region in schools, GP surgeries, hospitals and day centres, as well as libraries.
It was while teaching English Literature to adult education classes that Jane, 53, began to camaraderie and support systems” within the group. When one woman, a doctor with a terminal illness who’d never had much time to read, said it had made her last fi ve years bearable Jane knew she was on to something. It gave her the idea that reading for therapy would also benefit people who weren’t academic.
In 2001 with a £500 grant from Liverpool University she started running Get Into Reading groups. Within five weeks she had 14 participants with dinner ladies, manual workers, young single mums and unemployed and retired people queueing up to join her groups.
"We started with a short story and by the end of the course people were volunteering to read out loud. A builder who’d come to us because he was feeling down after being laid off asked if we could read Shakespeare’s Othello. We then went on to spend five months on Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, which everyone really enjoyed.” (Tina Walsh)

Le Figaro reviews the French translation of Sam Savage's Firmin and mentions Jane Eyre tasting of lettuce:

Dévoreur intempestif dans un premier temps - il ingurgite du Faulkner et du Flaubert sans faire la différence -, ce Ratatouille version érudit se forge peu à peu un goût sûr jusqu'à devenir un fin gourmet de la littérature (à ses yeux, Jane Eyre a une saveur de laitue...). (Isabelle Courty) (Google translation)

Scéna and České Noviny (Czech Republic) recommends Jane Eyre 1944 which airs tomorrow in ČT2:

Filmové návraty: Jana Eyrová (Vysílání: 05.07., 16.55 hod., ČT2)
Viktoriánský román Charlotte Bronteové Jana Eyrová (1847) patří k oblíbeným knížkám mnoha generací paní a dívek a také k nejčastěji adaptovaným literárním látkám. Existuje nejméně dvacet filmových a televizních přepisů. V našich kinech se v roce 1973 objevil britský film Jana Eyrová (1970) se Susannah Yorkovou a Georgem C. Scottem, ale mnohem populárnější v té době byla čtyřdílná inscenace Československé televize (1972), v níž hlavní role ztělesnili Marta Vančurová a Jan Kačer. Asi poslední verzí, která se u nás hrála (byť jen na videu), je Zeffirelliho adaptace z roku 1995 s Charlotte Gainsbourgovou a Williamem Hurtem. Jedna z nejznámějších (a také nejlepších) verzí vznikla v Hollywoodu v roce 1944, tedy v době jeho největší slávy. Pro studio 20th Century Fox byl snímek jedním ze stěžejních titulů roku s tehdy poměrně vysokým rozpočtem 1,7 mil. dolarů. Režií byl pověřen anglický tvůrce Robert Stevenson, který se do Hollywoodu dostal díky producentu Davidu O. Selznickovi a který se později prosadil jako režisér populárních disneyovských snímků (např. Roztržitý profesor a zejména Mary Poppins). Scénář filmu vycházel z rozhlasové adaptace Orsona Wellese, proto je pod ním kromě známého spisovatele Aldouse Huxleye podepsán také divadelní producent John Houseman, který s Wellesem úzce spolupracoval. Orson Welles měl na konečnou podobu díla větší vliv než jako pouhý hlavní představitel, ale nabízený kredit producenta údajně odmítl. Jeho partnerkou ve filmu byla Joan Fontaineová, jež se na začátku 40. let ocitla na vrcholku popularity díky úlohám ohrožených novomanželek ve dvou Hitchcockových snímcích, v Mrtvé a živé podle románu Daphne du Maurier a v obdobném psychologickém dramatu Podezření, za něž dostala Oscara. Za zmínku ještě stojí hudební doprovod pozdějšího Hitchcockova spolupracovníka Bernarda Herrmanna a herecká účast malé Elizabeth Taylorové v úloze Janiny kamarádky v sirotčinci. (Google translation)

La Jornada Aguascalientes (México) begins an article about Michael Jackson's death referencing Wuthering Heights (!):

No me refiero a la hermosa novela clásica pero sí a la escena que me sugiere el título de este libro. Me provoca imaginar el sentimiento que invade al que con esfuerzo llega a donde pocos, a la cima que por los nimbos quizás no deje ver hacia abajo, al terreno de los mortales, de la gente común que aún alienta los prejuicios victorianos, como en la época de la autora, Emily Brontë. (Marco García Robles) (Google translation)

ЯРНОВОСТИ publishes a survey about preferences in reading made in the Yaroslavl Oblast (Russia). Even there, Jane Eyre is chosen as one of the favourite books of 3,5 % of the participants.

Things I googled for but didn't find questions Jane Eyre's feminism, Literary Transgressions reviews (not enthusiastically) Agnes Grey and The Grim Reader is also not very interested in Villette.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Villette, Wuthering Heights