"My secret as a kid was sitting in my room and reading the Brontë sisters" ~ BrontëBlog

Sunday, February 14, 2010

"My secret as a kid was sitting in my room and reading the Brontë sisters"

Sunday, February 14, 2010 1:02 pm by M. in Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights 1 comment

On a day like today, we have news about:

Two recent usual suspects: Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Joe Johnston's The Wolfman:

[Dennis] Lehane says he wrote the book to focus on the crossroads in psychology in 1950s America.
“I always loved gothics,” he says. “My secret as a kid was sitting in my room and reading the Bronte sisters. So I always wanted to do a gothic. Also, after some of my other books, I felt the weight of people’s expectations and I was afraid of being pigeonholed.” (Cindy Pearlman in Chicago Sun-Times)

“I said with Shutter Island,” Lehane told Dave Welch for Powells.com, “that I would write a book that was an homage to gothic, but also an homage to B movies and pulp, and that the levels that it worked on would not be readily apparent.” He called it a hybrid of the Bronte sisters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (Dr. Katherine Ramsland on In Cold Blog)

“All three films to me are very modest, but they have to do with memory and time,” [Martin] Scorsese notes. “‘I Walk With A Zombie’ is really ‘Jane Eyre’ in the Indies. Terrible title but a great film. ‘Cat People’ is a beautiful film. You can take it on the supernatural level, or you can take it on the level of suggestion. (Amy Longsdorf in Northeastern Pennsylvania Times Leader)

When The Wolfman was announced way back in 2006, it was touted as a sharp, faithful remake of the classic 1941 horror. Four tortuous years later, it's turned out more like Wuthering Heights meets Chewbacca with a migraine. (Robbie Collin in News of the World)

Haworth and Brontë Country.

The Orange Country Register devotes an article to the Brontës in relation to Haworth and the moors:

The North Yorkshire world of the Bronte sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – was more often than not gray, hard and grim. The romantic gloom of the moors permeated the young women's novels – "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."
If their books offer a view of love darker than Jane Austen's, their lives fared far worse. While Austen struggled with writing and failed at love, the Brontes endured short, brutish lives and early deaths, with all but one never knowing their work was a success.
Their sweeping stories were penned in a two-story parish house surrounded by a graveyard in the bleak, claustrophobic village of Haworth in the Pennine moors of North Yorkshire.
Most of the places that shaped the sad arc of the sisters' lives are just steps apart in the tiny cobblestone center of Haworth. (Read more...) (Gary A. Warner)

And, of course, Valentine's day and romance:

The Times selects the world's most romantic places to stay:

Apartment 1, North Lees Hall, Derbyshire

This is Britain’s lushest literary love nest — it inspired Thornfield Hall, the setting for Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester’s fateful romance in Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Drifting in a sheep-nibbled Derbyshire dale, it survives just as the author described it — “a gentleman’s manor-house... battlements round the top” — and, thanks to restoration by the Vivat Trust, it looks the part indoors, too. The master bedroom has log-lit hearths, swirling stucco ceilings and a thrillingly theatrical four-poster, dripping with Elizabethan drapery. (Vincent Crump)
A three-night weekend for two, self-catering, starts at £335; 0845 090 0194, http://www.vivat.org.uk/

The Lower Columbia Daily News lists romance that you'll love:

• "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte. This is another one of my favorite books. It is a somewhat dark and brooding tale that is also a beautiful love story. The book is the story of Jane's life and the convoluted path that it takes as she seeks her place in the world and love. While it takes some time for Jane and Mr. Rochester to be together it is very well worth the wait as Bronte is a brilliant writer.
• "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte. Charlotte's sister wrote an even darker, more brooding novel set on the moors and featuring the passionate, but unrequited, love story between Heathcliff and Catherine, and the collateral damage caused by their thwarted love. (Chris Skaugset)

The New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung even recalls William Weightman's Valentines episode:

I recently read a biography about the famous Bronte sisters whose novels and poetry remain as popular as when they were first written well over one hundred and fifty years ago.
The three sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne were raised by their hard, cold and often violent father and their religiously strict aunt after their mother had died shortly after giving birth to the youngest girl.
A young minister, Reverend William Weightman learned that during their rigid up-bringing none of the girls had ever received a Valentine and decided he would bring some joy into their lives.
Knowing Mr. Bronte would probably disapprove, Weightman walked all the way from their home in Haworth in northern England to Bradford and back again – a distance of 20 miles to present them each a card without their father’s knowledge or permission.
It was said that the young minister so carefully chose a special verse for each of the three girls and that it touched them so deeply that Weightmans’s kind gesture inspired some of their later writings. (Mike Fitsko)

Sadly, I haven’t yet met a super suave Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind) in real life, or the passionate and disturbed heroes created by the Bronte sisters. (Rupa Gulab in Asian Age)

And... a Brontë cottage in Spenborough (Spenborough Guardian), The Valve joins us in wondering,

How did Wuthering Heights ever come to be thought of as a paradigm of intense romantic love that, alas, could not be fulfilled? (Bill Benzon)

The Compulsive Reader interviews author Angela Morrison who talks about her future projects:

TCR: Is there anything that you can tell us about your next book? (Or what format you'll be writing it in!)
(...) MY ASSASSIN, a time-slip adventure novel that I've decided to turn upside down. I'm adding a Bronte-esque Victorian heroine to the mix. So it's going to be something like Jane Eyre meets the Terminator--but my assassin is no robot.