The Brontës: their lives and works

Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë is briefly reviewed by the Rosemount Town Pages.

“Romancing Miss Brontë,” by Juliet Gael (Ballantine, $25): I never had much time for Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 blockbuster “Jane Eyre,” although my late mother loved it dearly. Too romantic for my taste, I guess. But I just got a bang out of a new novel based on the life of Brontë and I’ll bet my mother would have as well.
It concerns the goings on of the Brontë family, various suitors and others who come to call at Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontës live.
It’s sometimes overdone, especially the hopeless drunken brother, Bramwell [sic] Brontë. But there’s sweetness, too, in the person of Charlotte’s admirer, the curate Charles Nicholls. (Dave Wood)

We are afraid that the scenes featuring a drunken Branwell Brontë were sadly quite real. Perhaps the reviewer might do weel to take a leaf out of another columnist's book and read Jane Eyre again. Adam Wolstenholme writes in the Spenborough Guardian:

While I've avoided the World Cup, I've been engaged in a more sedate, but no less patriotic activity - discovering Charlotte Brontë.
Reading the Brontës was always one of those things that seemed worth doing, but infinitely postponable, like upgrading the vacuum cleaner.
Now, nearing the end of Jane Eyre, I wish I'd discovered it earlier.
It's riveting stuff, full of passion, poetry and wisdom. And for me, the hot-blooded Rochester with his secret mad wife hidden in the attic is a far more intriguing hero than the brooding rich boys of Jane Austen's novels.
But I've always found the obsession with the Brontës as individuals bizarre. People come from all over the world to see the buildings where they lived and taught, and congregate with the devotion of pilgrims upon a spot in the River Calder where Patrick Brontë saved a boy from drowning.
This interest in the lives of artists rather than their work is curious, and I wonder why devotees of the Brontës are particularly prone to it. Maybe, after I've moved from Charlotte's novels to Emily's to Ann's [sic], and then got through the poetry, I'll find myself toddling up the cobbled streets of Haworth to visit the pub where Branwell drank, and walk the same moors that inspired Cathy and Heathcliffe [sic].
I doubt it, though. The work of any great writer is usually more fascinating than their lives. We do them a disservice when we forget that.

We must admit to never having known any Brontëite go on a pilgrimage to that spot in the River Calder so if it's actually true it must be an integrist-like cell within our ranks.

But seriously, we don't find any disservice whatsoever in being interested in the lives of the Brontës, and most people who get to find out about their lives got there by reading their works in the first place anyway. There's something about their way of writing that makes you want to know more about the person holding the pen. Take almost any other widely read author such as, say, Dickens and you won't find so many people transitioning from his work to his biography. And in the particular case of the Brontës their lives are as fascinating as their writings.

Such as Charlotte's hypochondria, as examined by Brian Dillon in his book Tormented Hope, reviewed again today by The Independent:

From Charlotte Brontë's nervous anguish and Charles Darwin's nameless, over-treated crises to Andy Warhol's Aids-related dreads and Glenn Gould's blend of "self-medication and self-neglect", the imaginary wounds of Dillon's subjects seem inseparable from the great works they undertook. (Boyd Tonkin)

All of the above is also relevant when it comes to this statement in a review of Claire Harman's Jane's Fame in The North Coast Journal.

Even her [Jane Austen's] centennial was modestly marked, in contrast to the popular acclaim accorded to the more florid novels of the Brontë sisters (Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre). (William Kowinski)

It must be true about the grass always being greener on the other side, because we would have thought exactly the opposite to be true.

And Twilight time. Politics Daily on not just teenagers loving the saga:

A wisp of caution lies in my niece's observation. Maybe we shouldn't breeze by the notion of some older women seeking solace in the arms of a virtual lover who has traits of Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester merging into one. (Judy Howard Ellis)

FoxNews finds yet another thing to compare to Wuthering Heights:

The Volturi look like characters out of “Wuthering Heights”; they are cool in their capes and cloaks and poetic pallor. The Volturi dispense justice, in their vampire-y way, but they are not merciful. In “Eclipse,” they settle an issue in a way that will jar the audience, although the violence, like most of the violence in the film, is either offscreen or so sped up that one can’t follow the gore. As Edward explains to Bella in one of the novels, the Volturi might seem like villains to a mere mortal, but in the vampire world, “They are the foundation of our peace and civilization.” (James P. Pinkerton)

Right. The foundation of peace and civilization in Wuthering Heights being...?

And Dose.ca has a quiz on Twilight Trivia, one of the questions being about Bella's favourite book (and the answer commenting on the Twilight-looking covers of the HarperCollins editions of Wuthering Heights).

The California Center for the Arts has just announced its 2010-2011 season, as reported by the North County Times, which includes

"Jane Eyre" ---- Fullerton Civic Light Opera presents this musical based on Charlotte Brontë's redemptive 19th-century love story about a lonely governess and her mysterious employer; 8 p.m. Nov. 5 and 6; 2 p.m. Nov. 6-7; $40-$65. (Pam Kragen)

Les Brontë à Paris posts in French about Arthur Bell Nicholls. Maritas bibliotek writes in Swedish about Agnes Grey. And finally, Laura's Reviews All About the Brontës Challenge comes to an end but she wonders whether people are willing to do another round next year (we would certainly vote in favour of it!).

Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights