Hardly the stuff of fairytale romance

A new review of Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope appears today in The Guardian:

Dillon's subject, though, isn't simple physical deterioration but rather the tricks the mind plays on the body - or hypochondria. In his accounts of nine individual sufferers (including James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, and Marcel Proust), Dillon shows how often work is connected to the disorder. For Boswell, fear of inactivity and sloth became a mania ("Resolve: be busy and recover mind.") For Brontë, Darwin and Nightingale, being permanently half-ill enabled them to withdraw from society and devote themselves to their projects. Proust cultivated his invalidism like some exotic plant, and "worked, ate, socialised and sometimes slept" in his bed. (Jerome Boyd Maunsell)

The film An Education by Lone Scherfig is also reviewed in The Guardian:

It is also a pity that in order to build her up as a rebellious outsider, Jenny's two closest chums are presented as giggly admirers and the other girls in her class as dull, unimaginative frumps incapable of responding to King Lear and Jane Eyre with a sensitivity and intelligence comparable to Jenny's. (Philip French)

Susan Daly is not really very happy with Rochester knighted as literary hero number one. She writes in The Independent (Ireland):

I take it quite personally that Mr Darcy (first name Fitzwilliam, but best not to dwell on that) has not topped a new list of the most romantic literary heroes as voted by Mills and Boon readers. That spot went to Mr Rochester, keeping wives in attics since 1847.
I understand that taking umbrage over which 19th century figment of the imagination fills his fictional breeches better is a bit like debating whether Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran was the finer band of the '80s. They were both a bit ridiculous, if we're honest.
Nonetheless, the first literary hero you take under the covers with you, reading by torch when your mother yells up the stairs to turn out the light, is special. Edward Rochester was not a man you would want to be alone with in a darkened room.
In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, he was dismissive of his daughter, uncharitable towards his wife and menacing towards Jane. Reader, I despised him.
At one point, when Jane refuses to become his mistress (because that's what she would be, what with the first Mrs R still wearing a hole in the floor upstairs) he threatens that he may not be able to control his passion. "His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild licence," wrote the breathless Bronte. An implicit threat of rape -- hardly the stuff of fairytale romance, is it?
Mr Darcy was not without his faults but the whole attraction was that he repented and changed his ways through the love of a good woman. The words leopard and spots had yet to become linked in my very limited lexicon of love. Rochester, I seem to remember, needed to be blinded and crippled before he came to his senses. (...)
On the other hand, Wuthering Heights has somehow seen Heathcliff and Cathy's doomed passion recast as epic romance in screen versions. It helps with the bosom-heaving that he has been portrayed by the very beautiful Laurence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes. I have a suspicion that although we're all meant to be feminists now, the adolescent attraction to unsuitable bad boys lingers. Heathcliff -- so singularly demonic that he doesn't even have a last name -- is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Yet there is not one girl-child of the 1980s who has not looked wistfully out her bedroom window, practising her best Kate Bush wail: "Heathcliff, It's me, It's Cathy, I've come home ... "

The point here is that Jane Eyre is hardly the stuff of fairytale romance. It's much more.

The formula for a perfect marriage is discussed in The Scotsman:

If only Cathy had been just a couple of years younger, might she and Heathcliff have escaped from the gloomy Yorkshire moors and settled down to a life of domestic bliss in a town house in Kensington? (Dani Garavelli)

According to the Trinidad & Tobago Express the collective book Trinidad Noir edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason contains a story with Wide Sargasso Sea echoes:

Meanwhile, Vahni Capildeo, Trinidadian now living in Oxford, England where she studied Old Icelandic, submitted a terse story that intertexts with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. (Sheila Rampersad)

The Malta Independent has a weird Brontë references describing a clip of a 'real' exorcism:

In the clip, the woman was barking, swearing and crawling on all fours (her face was obscured) much like Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre. (Pamela Pace Hansen)

The Bristol Herald Courier has also another weird reference. From a review of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey:

Although phrenology eventually did become somewhat of a real science when brain studying got involved, and although some still saw phrenology for what it was (a scam), many prominent people went head-over-heels for personal “skull readings.” Author Walt Whitman was said to have carried his reading with him for years. George Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens added phrenology to their stories.(Terri Schlichenmeyer)

A couple of authors and Brontëites: Stephanie Morrill is interviewed on aTeenzFaith.com:

Who were your favorite authors or books as a teen?
My favorite book as a teenager was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, although saying that makes me sound like I’m much more of an “intellectual” than I really am.

And Isabelle Merlin on sassisam:

Do you have a favourite writer or a novel?
It’s not easy to pick just one but two novels I loved as a teenager and still re-read with lots of pleasure are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stewart. In fact I love all Mary Stewart’s books, she’s probably been the biggest influence on my writing.

The Independent devotes an article to Hebden Bridge's extraordinary rate of suicides and the documentary Shed Your Tears and Walk Away. Sylvia Plath is buried in Hebden Bridge and Requin Art and Design devotes a post to her poetry including her poem Wuthering Heights. Something this foggy day posts her husband's (Ted Hughes) poem on Emily Brontë.

the Brontë Sisters has some new posts. Mundane Mirror and Cynthia (in French) are reading Jane Eyre, Thềm xuân posts about Wuthering Heights in Thai. British Invasion Brontes (good name, indeed) proposes a Halloween derivative of Wuthering Heights:

“Wuthering Frights”
When Heathcliff goes out at night to commune with the spirit of his lost love, he discovers Cathy’s ghost isn’t the only specter haunting the moors. In this spine-tingling update of the classic love story, Emily Bronte’s Byronic hero takes on a legion of ghouls and zombies in his own uniquely bad-tempered style, and strives to keep the moonlit meadows safe for his own other-worldly romantic interludes.

On Flickr, a picture of Top Withens uploaded by Tidalist and Ade McO-Campbell uploads some new Jane Eyre illustrations.

Finally, Brontës.nl highlights several Dutch and Belgian reviews of the Theater Artemis production of Wuthering Heights:
De Morgen:

(...) Schrijver Jeroen Olyslaegers bewerkte Brontës klassieker op vraag van regisseur Floor Huygen. Beiden hebben duidelijk elk hun visie op het verhaal en die tweespalt laat zich nog voelen op scène. Focust het eerste deel voornamelijk op Huygens fascinatie voor de tegenstelling tussen cultuur en natuur met een weids sfeerpalet aan geluid en beeld, dan wordt daarna overgegaan op het psychologisch huiskamerdrama dat Olyslaegers er bijna Ibsen-gewijs van maakt. Olyslaegers focust vooral op het eerste deel van het boek, de uitwaaierende verhaallijnen (vooral het tweede deel van het boek) laat hij slim genoeg in enkele lijnen samenvatten door de meid Nelly. An Hackselmans vertolkt deze subtiel, tegelijk grappig relativerend, maar ook als een soort visionaire heks. Olyslaegers ingedikte versie alsook de acteerprestaties maken van Brontës verhaal een brok dynamiek. De wilde liefdesdansgevechten tussen Theus en Smit en de dronken steeds zieliger wordende broersfiguur (Fabian Jansen) voorop. Enkel de matte vertolking van Roos van Vlaenderen als Cathy's schoonzus Isa , ontgoochelt. Dat strekt zich ook uit naar het slot van de voorstelling: de rek raakt eruit, het feitelijke drama (niet Catherines dood wel haar noodlottige niet-keuze) is allang gepasseerd. Dan rest enkel nog de obligate tearjerkerscène met een muziekje, maar daarvoor hebben we Vitaya al.(Read more) (Liv Laveyne) (Google translation)

de Volkskrant:

(...) De slanke blonde Joris Smit als ongeciviliseerde Heathcliff gaat slinks om met zijn verholen woeste inborst. Niemand is sympathiek in deze regie van Floor Huygen. Dat maakt de voorstelling zwaarmoedig maar ook vreemd fascinerend. Zoals het boek. (Annette Embrechts) (Read more) (Google translation)

Deadline.nl:

Dat is jammer. De zes spelers gebruiken soms vage, bijna clichématige zinnen als ‘Hij is meer mezelf dan ik ben.’ Deze zweverige uitspraken onderscheiden zich niet van zinnen die gebruikt worden door een dozijn waardeloze amateurschappen. Door het totaalplaatje wat simpeler te houden, zou de impact van het stuk veel groter kunnen zijn. Niet bepaald een moet-je-heen dus, maar de gezelschappen zijn ook niet ten dode opgeschreven. (Ykwinno Hensen) (Read more) (Google translation)

Brabants Dagblad:

(...)Tekstschrijver Jeroen Olyslaegers speelde het klaar zonder de roman van Brontë onderuit te halen. Hij bracht het aantal rollen terug tot zes en vatte het hele tweede deel van het boek samen in enkele regels van de dienstmeid Nelly. Een slot dat alles in het verhaal mooi op zijn plaats laat vallen. De doordachte regie van Floor Huygen maakte er ook echt een indrukwekkende belevenis van, waarin de hoofdlijnen van de roman goed tot hun recht komen. (...) (Mieske van Eck) (Read more) (Google translation)

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights