Riots in Yorkshire

John Mullan selects the best riots in literature for the Guardian:

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
Riots have become common in the north of England, as mill owners such as Brontë's Robert Moore introduce machinery that threatens workers' livelihoods. Shirley and Caroline Helstone witness an attack on Moore's mill. "The mill-yard, the mill itself, was full of battle movement. There was scarcely any cessation now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting between."

Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South also makes an appearance.

The Guardian talks about the recent Bradford murders connecting them with the 1970s Yorkshire Ripper and ... the Brontës:

All those years back, it seemed as if [Peter] Sutcliffe's paranoia, his work as a gravedigger, his hearing voices, the atmosphere of anxiety that his deeds and manner of operating unleashed, had a connection, however mysterious, with West Yorkshire and its past: the death-dogged Brontës, the moors, the industrial depression, the waste it left behind and the violence it generated. (Nicole Ward Jouve)

The British Guild of Travel Writers has released the results of a poll about Britain's Best Picnic spot. The Guardian and The Telegraph both announce that Top Withens has made it to number ten.

Top Withens near Haworth in West Yorkshire, home to the abandoned farmhouse which featured in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights novel.

Actually, the farmhouse didn't feature in the novel as such. At most, she used the place where it stood.

The New York Times reviews the book Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue:

By this logic [Adrienne Rich’s seminal — sorry, it is a phallo­centric popular culture — 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” which proposed a lesbian continuum” that includes all relationships between women, regardless of their sexual orientation], “Thelma and Louise” is a lesbian film even though its heroines don’t have a sexual bond, and “Jane Eyre” a lesbian novel because Jane, though heterosexual, develops (chaste) crushes on an older girl and her head­mistress. In fact, Donoghue regards “Jane Eyre” as the “founding text of the tradition” of narratives in which young women are collected in institutions like boarding schools, convents and colleges, where, isolated from men, they discover same-sex love. (Kathryn Harrison)

The Commercial Appeal lists the Memphis-area High School Musical Theatre Awards. A local student Jane Eyre production gets an award:

Lighting Design: Hutchison School for “Jane Eyre.”

The Cyprus Mail talks about Bronte (Sicily) and makes a predictable Brontë joke:

The Bronte brothers, black wine and their nuts... (...)
As we enter Bronte we are a far cry from the sisters of Haworth and Heathcliff’s wild moors of Yorkshire. (Lauren O'Hara)

The Hindustan Times reviews the film Brick Lane by Sarah Gavron:

Kaushik’s Mr Ahmed is however inclined towards more literary tastes. His spoken English may be far from perfect. He can still quote from memory Chaucer and the Brontë sisters, is interested in Hume and the birth of modern philosophy, loves equally Thackeray and Proust…(Mayank Shekhar)

The London Evening Standard discusses private tutors and a reference to Jane Eyre is compulsive:

'We're returning to the days of Jane Eyre,' says Bonas [MacFarlane]. One of his tutors is living in a hotel five minutes from his charge's elite boarding school: 'His parents want him to get the grades.' (Helen Kirwan-Taylor)

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner interviews film director Ben Sweet (second assistant director in Wuthering Heights 2009) who will shoot a movie in Yorkshire locations:

The locations round Huddersfield are second-to-none and you can’t recreate Yorkshire.
“Yorkshire is getting so much more interest from the film industry with the success of films like The Damned United and Wuthering Heights.

The Perthshire Advertiser reviews a concert of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain which included their celebrated cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:

The show was a singing, twanging, toe-tapping ukulele magical mystery tour visiting Spaghetti Western territory, Life on Mars and Wuthering Heights[.] (Alison Anderson)

De10 (México) lists Wuthering Heights in their list of one-hit wonders:

"Cumbres borrascosas". Escrita por Emily Brontë, la novela cuenta la épica historia de "Catherine" y "Heathcliff", situada en los sombríos y desolados paisajes de Yorkshire, constituye una asombrosa visión metafísica del destino, la obsesión, la pasión y la venganza. (Rodrigo Fraga) (Google translation)

Elle Magazine (Spain) devotes an article to a visit by the writer Espido Freire (author of Querida Jane, Querida Charlotte) to Haworth and Yorkshire. The article appears with some nice pictures by Ximena Garrigues but regrettably they mistake the Parsonage with a Haworth shop (Peters of Haworth!):

"Para mí es un lugar misterioso la zona en la que crecieron estas mujeres y fueron infelices. ¿Por qué? ¿Qué les dio esta tierra? Devanar ese misterio me ha llevado años y me sigue intrigando. Creo que todavía no he agotado del todo el screto, y que aún seguiré viajando allí". (Susana Cifuentes) (Google translation)

Le Soleil (Canada) presents the exhibition Typically british, La peinture à l'époque de la reine Victoria:

Soixante fenêtres picturales sur la société qui a nourri les univers de Dickens et de Charlotte Brontë offriront l'occasion aux Québécois d'étoffer leur connaissance de l'Angleterre victorienne, cet été, au Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) (Josianne Desloges) (Google translation)

And the Associated Press 'Thought for Today' is by Charlotte Brontë:

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last

And a Brontëite and mum who loves Jane Ayre[sic] in the Evening Gazette, a bookstore owner and Brontëite in Åland in the Ålandstidningen, Aneca's World reviews Wuthering Heights 2009, Faith Adeline Reviews posts about Agnes Grey giving the novel 7 out of 10 stars, YouTube user wartburgengland2010 uploads a video discussing a visit to the Brontë Parsonage and both Electroluminiscence and nuvole upload to Flickr pictures inspired by Wuthering Heights.

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