Instant capitulation

Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune, has been seduced by Jude Morgan's prose in Charlotte and Emily: A Novel about the Brontës (aka The Taste of Sorrow):

My latest literary snap decision came apropos of Jude Morgan's "Charlotte and Emily: A Novel of the Brontes" (St. Martin's), a fictional biography of the sisters who wrote "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights." It was published in Britain last year, but had its American debut this month.
The novel opens with the death of poor Maria, mother of Charlotte and Emily and a passel of other big-eyed urchins as well. Morgan makes it excruciating, painting the scene with pain and dread, noting "the recurring cry that rises to a scream, just as the dry, loutish wind idles and grumbles about the house and then assaults it suddenly with a gust and a shriek." Sold. The rest of the novel fully justified my instant capitulation.

The Telegraph & Argus brings back from its archives some articles about the relation between Charlotte Brontë and Lothersdale:

In the summer of 1839 the young Charlotte Bronte was living at a grand country house near Lothersdale. The then 23-year-old was employed as a governess to the wealthy mill-owning Sidgwick family of Stone Gappe.
Charlotte, who would shortly write the classic novel, Jane Eyre, appeared to have liked Lothersdale, but not a life devoted to looking after children.
Indeed, in a letter to her younger sister, Emily, she described her young charges as “riotous” and “unmanageable cubs”.
However, she was kinder in her description of Mr Sidgwick, who appears to have born a striking resemblance to Edward Rochester – the employer and eventual husband of her fictional heroine Jane Eyre.
Mr Sidgwick, who Charlotte describes on a walk with the children, even had a Newfoundland dog – much like Mr Rochester’s large black and white dog, Pilot. (...)
Many years later, in 1907, the Craven Herald passed comment on the death of Charlotte’s husband, who had died a few weeks earlier at the age of 90. (...)
Mr Nicholls had bequeathed George Richmond’s famous portrait of Charlotte, painted in 1850, to the National Portrait Gallery, and in 1907 it had gone on public display for the first time.
The Craven Herald suggested that Charlotte, who wrote under the name of Currer Bell, might have got the name from one of two sources.
“It is supposed that she either took the name from Currer Hall, near Beamsley, or else, as it is more believable, from the Currers, who then lived at Kildwick Hall, the greater part of whose magnificent library is now at Eshton Hall.”
The year before he married Charlotte, the Rev Nicholls had attended the consecration of St Mary’s Church, Embsay.
Initially, Charlotte’s father, who reportedly had a vicious temper, would not hear of the match and, 10 days after his visit to Embsay, Mr Nicholls was forced to leave the area A one-time headmaster of Skipton Grammar School, Dr Cartman, was a great friend of Charlotte’s father, Patrick.
In a letter to her father written from London on June 7, 1851, she wrote: Dear Papa, I am very glad to hear that you continue in pretty good health, and that Mr Cartman came to help you on Sunday.”
The Rev Patrick Bronte died in June, 1861 and Dr Cartman was one of the pallbearers at his funeral in Haworth.
In July 1910, the Craven Herald again passed comment about Charlotte.
Ninety of her letters were to be sold at Sotheby’s in London and one of them had been to a friend, while Charlotte was again employed as a governess – her first job after leaving the Sidgwicks.
In her reply to her friend, who had invited her away for a weekend, she had described the response she had got from her employer on asking permission.
“As soon as I had read your note, I gathered up my spirits directly, and walked, on the impulse of the moment, into Mrs … presence, popped the question, and for two minutes received no answer.
“Will she refuse me when I work so hard for her, thought I. ‘Ye-es-es, drawled Madame, in a reluctant, cold tone. ‘Thank-you Madame’, said I, with extreme cordiality, and was walking from the room when she recalled me with, ‘you’d better go on Saturday afternoon then, when the children have holiday, and if you return in time for them to have all their lessons on Monday morning, I don’t see that much time will be lost.’ You’re a genuine Turk, thought I.”
The Craven Herald concluded that the lady in question was a Mrs White – based on the evidence of Anne Bronte’s diary of 1841.
In it, she wrote about Charlotte and her attempts to be a governess. “Charlotte has left Miss Wooler, been a governess at Mrs Sidgwick’s, left her and gone to Mrs White’s.”
The paper went on to comment that Mrs Sidgwick was the mother of a Mrs Cooper, of Skipton.

The Telegraph reviews Wild Romance: The True Story of a Victorian Scandal by Chloë Schama:

Bigamy was especially marketable to the era’s sensation-loving readers: Jane Eyre had blazed the way for two of the century’s biggest popular successes, East Lynne and Lady Audley’s Secret. (Miranda Seymour)

The Guardian interviews Helen Dunmore, who discusses mothership and authorship:

Dunmore hesitates for a long time, finally settling on a tangential, academic answer. "When I was a teenager, the women writers I admired were the Brontës, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf. The message seemed to be that if you were a woman you might possibly write something fine – but that there was something disabling about the production of children. And I wondered, was this true? That you had to cut yourself off from the whole domestic, child-populated world?" (Sarah Crown)

The Boston Herald talks about the performances of the Second City sketch comedy company in Boston. Not the first time that their Emily Brontë routine is mentioned in a review:

The show’s finest moment featured [Dana] Quercioli performing stand-up as Emily Bronte, cracking jokes about “the haunted moors” and shooting death-stares at the drummer when he hit a rimshot. (Jenna Scherer)

The Miami Herald presents the film The Four-Faced Liar which will be shown at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (April 28, 7:30 pm, Regal 17)

But then Molly catches her eye when the four meet at a Greenwich Village bar. Greg and Trip bond over sports. Molly and Bridget talk a lot about Wuthering Heights, which is obviously more sexy than sports, because soon enough they're having a fling. (Connie Ogle)

The Toronto Star presents The Long Song, the latest book by Andrea Levy who is presented like this:

Addressing her “reader,” our Jamaican Charlotte Brontë allows that her mythic birth was in fact rather more prosaic. (Nancy Wigston)

JoongAng Daily (India) talks with author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about her latest novel, One Amazing Thing:

In addition to The Canterbury Tales and “Wuthering Heights,” I was drawing on works such as “The Decameron,” “The Arabian Nights” and the Indian wise-animal tales “The Panchatantra,” which I particularly love because my grandfather used to tell me those stories when I was a child. (Reuters)

The Sydney Morning Herald talks about the curious case of David Andrews/David Morrisset:

Andrews the novelist quotes Rumi, and both Heathcliff and Cathy from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights as he publishes snippets of novels inspired by his varied career.

La Voz de Asturias (Spain) reviews the essay Mentes prodigiosas a través del cine by Pilar de Castro y Campo which includes in its study Les Soeurs Brontë 1977.

Pero la presencia de superdotados o de protagonistas con altas capacidades en el cine es de lo más variada. Pilar de Castro une personajes reales y de ficción y habla de el agente 007, es decir, James Bond, Hércules Poirot, Pepe Carvalho, superhéroes como Spiderman, Superman o Batman, mujeres como las hermanas Bronte y Frida, o Will Hunting. (Google translation)

Revista 80 días (Spain) suggests a Wuthering Heights route in the Pennines and Brontë country. Público (Spain) does the same mentioning the Welcome to Yorkshire campaign: 1, 2, 3 al escondite inglés.

Heathcliffe (sic) y Catherine, los protagonistas de Cumbres Borrascosas, la inmortal novela de Emily Brontë, huyeron juntos al inmenso páramo de The Moors para vivir allí, alejados de todos y de todo, su apasionado amor. Eligieron precisamente este enclave, lleno de belleza y de suaves montículos, esperando a ser explorados.
Dales High Way nos ofrece una ruta con más de ciento veinte kilómetros de recorrido a través de la región, llena de increíbles parajes naturales. Y no debes perderte, ni la catedral de Bradford, con más de quinientos años de historia, ni el Brontë Parsonage Museum, la casa de las hermanas Brontë, en la que se gestaron algunas de las más románticas novelas de la literatura. (Google translation)

Vicente Valero remembers a visit to Haworth in el Diario de Ibiza (Spain):

En el pequeño y retirado pueblecito de Haworth, en el norte de Inglaterra, durante una visita a la casa de las hermanas Brönte, pude percibir por primera vez el aroma de la luz fría, nevada, de la prosa de ‘Jane Eyre’ o de ‘Cumbres borrascosas’. Desde aquella casa rectangular, por entre las lápidas del jardín de la iglesia, todo era llanura desnuda y desolada, bajo un sol que recuerdo muy blanco. (Google translation)

Of course this touristic Yorkshire is very far from the Yorkshire described in the Red Riding Quartet by David Peace (and in their TV adaptations) as can be read in Die Welt (Germany).

The Helsingborgs Dagblad (Sweden) talks about Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey (recently translated into Swedish):

"Vad skulle Anne Brontë ha varit utan sitt ryktbara efternamn? Alldeles okänd? Eller tvärtom, en prominent författare i egen rätt?
Ja, helt klart har Anne hamnat i skuggan av sina mer namnkunniga systrar Charlotte och Emily.
Men lika klart är hon en författare som förtjänar att läsas på egna litterära meriter, inte bara som fotnot till historien om en genialisk familj. Detta gör "Agnes Grey" mindre fängslande än uppföljaren "Främlingen på Wildfell Hall", en rasande skildring av en alkoholists väg till undergången och en kvinnas väg till frigörelse. Men det är fortfarande fråga om en stark berättelse om en ung kvinna som försöker skapa sig ett självständigt liv i en tid full av begränsningar, följsamt översatt av Maria Ekman.
Anne Brontë är en observatör av rang, en vass personporträttör och skarpsynt iakttagare av sociala seder – så har hon också jämförts med Jane Austen. Ja, stundvis är hon en blixtrande ironiker. Och hon skriver med ett lågande engagemang som är allt annat än skugglikt." (Ann Lingebrandt) (Google translation)

On La Presse (Canada) we read the following comment which made us smile:

Faut pas rêver: un séjour à la bibliothèque ne transforme pas un esprit dispersé de mon calibre en Charlotte Brontë 2.0. (Sylvie St-Jacques) (Google translation)

A local Board of Library Trustee and Brontëite in the Townsend Times; The Oregonian presents yet another production of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep (May 11-29) by the Bag&Baggage Company in Hillsboro, OR; The Guardian defines as fluffy last year's Tamasha Wuthering Heights performances à la Bollywood; a library-restaurant in Ruabon (Rhiwabon) (Wales) where you can "peruse the works of the Brontës" in the Daily Post North Wales; Becky's Book Reviews doesn't like Wuthering Heights but Lit and Life participates in the Fizzy Thoughts Wuthering Heights read-along; The Enchanted Serenity of Period Drama discusses the Brontë-shifting in period adaptations; Restless Violet posts about Jane Eyre, which El Diario Vasco (Spain) considers "la heroína por antonomasia de la literatura femenina" (the quintessential heroine of women's literature); Milenio (Spain) puts the Brontës as one of the examples of 'travestism' in authorship.

A finally, the week's blunder. It comes from El Norte de Castilla (Spain) which attributes the authorship of Pride and Prejudice to Jane... Eyre.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Brontëites, Haworth,Humour, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights