"Jane is the first modern feminist heroine"

Jacqueline Wilson publishes an extraordinary article in The Times about her personal discovery, reading and loving Jane Eyre. Regrettably the article is for subscribers only and we can only quote a few sentences, but it's one of those not to be missed:

I started browsing in a rather bored way inside my parents’ bookcase. Most of the books there were not very exciting: Victorian Sunday-school prizes inherited from my grandparents, a set of encyclopaedias, a few fat novels by J. B. Priestley and H. E. Bates — and a little red leatherette edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I didn’t like the slithery feel of the cover. The tiny dense print inside was not promising. But I started reading — “There was no possibility of taking
a walk that day” — and I was hooked. I discovered that the narrator is 10, as I was. She likes reading, too. When she chooses a book from an adult bookcase she takes care that it is one “stored with pictures”. Jane’s an odd one out, a tiny fierce, discontented child bullied by her hateful cousins. But when she hides herself away on the windowseat and turns the pages of Bewick’s History of British she’s happy. I was interested to see that she didn’t properly read the book, she made up stories to go with the pictures — my own favourite activity. (...) Most show cosy countryside scenes, often comical or coarse. Jane doesn’t even glance at these. She’s interested only in the strange, the eerie, the deliciously Gothic. Three pages into the story we’re seeing through Jane’s eyes, and we have a feeling that this dark and Gothic tale — but one so fiercely imagined that it will seem as if every word is true, and that it is really the autobiography it declares itself to be on the title page. (....)
I think it belongs in the Top 10 greatest novels of all time because because Jane herself is such an original heroine, an ugly little orphan who grows into a poor, plain young woman — a governess who looks like a mouse, but has a lion’s passion and spirit. She’s looked for love all her life, clutching her childhood doll, clasping the dying Helen in her arms, lying her head on Diana’s lap, and melting in Rochester’s embrace. Jane is no fairytale heroine waiting to be awakened by a loving kiss — she’s a brave quester after her own good fortune, who rescues her beloved again and again. Jane is the first modern feminist heroine.

The Guardian surprises us with an article by Ian Sansom about Branwell Brontë (the title is Great Dynasties of the World: The Brontës, but the focus is on the brother). The excuse for it is the current exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage, Sex, Drugs and Literature (until May 20, 2011):

Everyone now has heard of the Brontë sisters, of course – the "three weird sisters", Ted Hughes called them. (...) But what of the fourth Brontë sibling, the only brother, Branwell? He was the fourth of the six Brontë children – two older sisters died young. As he was the only son, expectations were high. (...)
As the sisters began to achieve recognition – a joint collection of their poems was published to critical acclaim in 1846 – Branwell sank deeper into depression and despair. He began drinking heavily, and taking laudanum. He had failed to gain admission to the Royal Academy, failed as a portrait painter, and had begun working variously as a tutor, and as a clerk at a railway station, posts from which he was dismissed for incompetence, or worse – in one case for conducting an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. Daphne du Maurier, in The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), her brilliant and bizarre biography of Branwell, hints darkly at Branwell leading one of his young charges astray. Emily described her brother at this stage of his life as a "hopeless being".
Branwell's one and only famous painting is the only known portrait of the three sisters together: see left, now at the National Portrait Gallery. He had originally painted himself in the centre, but obliterated his image. The paint has faded, so that his ghostly presence now hovers ominously beside his sisters.
After Branwell's death in 1848, aged only 31, Charlotte wrote to her friend William Smith Williams: "I do not weep from a sense of bereavement – there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost – but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light."

The New York Times describes writer China Miéville as follows:

Tall and buff, he has a shaved head, a row of earrings curving sharply around the edge of his left ear, a Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics and a mind that skips easily from “Jane Eyre” to welfare reform to the joys of bicycling around London. He is also a serious Socialist who ran for Parliament in 2001. The Evening Standard called him “the sexiest man in British politics.”(Sarah Lyall)

The Times of India talks about best-sellers in India not forgetting the classics:

The classics have always had a formidable presence, with the Brontë sisters and the Austens constantly jostling for space in bookshops. (Biswadeep Ghosh)

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about film locations in Derbyshire. The information
is a bit outdated:

It appeared in the films Elizabeth and The Other Boleyn Girl, in two productions of Jane Eyre and the bawdy TV adaptation of Moll Flanders. There is a rumour of yet another Jane Eyre coming to Haddon soon, with Australian actor Mia Wasikowska in the title role.

No rumour and not soon. The film has already been shot.

When director Susanna White used Haddon in 2006 as Thornfield, Mr Rochester's home for the TV version of Jane Eyre, she devised a spectacular fire sequence that was so realistic the local fire brigade received more than 100 calls from residents convinced the place was burning down. (...)
Other houses in the district that have hosted film crews include the handsome neo-classical Kedleston Hall near Derby, designed by Robert Adam. Like Chatsworth, the approach to Kedleston shows off its elegant pillared facade, which appeared in The Duchess and Jane Eyre. (Caroline Baum)

The Guardian reviews Day for Night by Frederick Reiken. The book contains at least a Wuthering Heights reference:

Later, she catches him talking in his sleep about a surprising affection for a Wuthering Heights character. It's a beautiful moment of tenderness after the horrors that have gone before. (Patrick Ness)

The Age reviews a book about Australian football: Best on Ground edited by Peter Corris and John Dale. A Heathcliff mention appears:

[Malcolm] Knox recalls from his childhood an image of Francis Bourke, ''running out of defence with his floppy black hair like Heathcliff galloping across the moor for Cathy''. (Greg Baum)

Charleston Movie Examiner talks about important movie moments:

It's 1943. Robert Stevenson's version of Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, as the title character, is starting to come to grips with the depths of her feelings for Edward Rochester (ably played by Orson Welles). Hillary Brooke is Blanche Ingram: young, desirable and anxious to get her claws into Rochester. Across a room Fontaine's eyes meet with Brooke's. Only for an instant, but everyone in the theater knows the gauntlet has been thrown down. (Michael Wolff)

In the Seattle Writing Career Examiners, Jennifer Conner reviews Melanie Jackson's The Ghost and Miss Demure:

"What’s the appeal of watching people fall in love in the scariest of settings? I think it’s twofold. One, it’s tradition—look at the enduring popularity of a story like Wuthering Heights. Thanks to the Brontës and other early gothic writers, the haunted house has been chic for centuries, at least in novels.

A Haworth summer walk in The Times:

Haworth Hills, West Yorkshire.
Even at tourist high tide, the hills around Haworth retain their brutish, Brontë-esque appeal. In town, you can hobble across the cobbles to the family to the family graves, and pick up souvenirs at the apothecary’s shop where doomed Branwell Brontë bought his laudanum. To seek the unquiet ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy, though, you need to strike out west across Penistone Hill and onto the bleakly beautiful Pennine moors. A farm track leads to the Brontë waterfalls, where the sisters composed verse while enthroned on a chair on a chair-like boulder. Not much has changed but the finger posts (now in English and Japanese). Cross the beck and keep on west to Top Withens ruin, a blasted farmhouse at 1,400ft. The guidebooks say it is Wuthering Heights but we say it’s nowhere near grand enough — though the desolate atmosphere seeps straight from the Brontë novel. From here, pick up the Pennine Way northeast to Ponden Hall, thought to be the model Thrushcross Grange, the rather less forbidding home of the Lintons. Double back now, returning to Haworth via Stanbury village. (Vincent Crump)

Tim Butcher reviews Shades of Greene by Jeremy Lewis in The Times. The book follows the saga of the Greenes and the saga of the Brontës is also mentioned:

Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell grew up in a highbrow household: their father Patrick was a curate who loved to read to read and write poetry, and subscribed to literary magazines. The siblings wrote together as children wrote together as children but, while the sisters went on to produce classic works, Branwell became an alcoholic and published only a handful of poems.

More comments on the Brontë Parsonage Blog about Anne Brontë's grave. By the way, the Restore Anne Brontë's Grave Facebook group has published the following on its wall:

I have received an email from a Trustee of The Brontë Society who has informed me that they have a meeting, at the end of August, with the Reverend of St. Mary's Church to discuss what can be done to resolve this situation. We now have over 200 members and support that something needs to be done. Keep spreading the word. Thanks everyone. (Dave Selby)

The Basler Zeitung (Switzerland) discusses Twilight:

Bloss: Auch selbstbestimmte Frauen strömen ins Kino, um sich «Twilight» anzusehen. Die englische Journalistin Mathilda Gregory, die sich mit Genderthemen befasst, kann mit dem feministischen Aufschrei deshalb nicht viel anfangen. «Twilight» spreche die romantische Ader von Frauen an, vergleichbar mit den düster-emotionalen Geschichten einer Emily Brontë. (Philippe Zweifel) (Google translation)

Finally, Kate's Books reviews Jane Eyre.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References