"We're going to the Brontës' house"

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reviews a few biofiction novels, including both Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland and Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael.

Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë
Laura Joh Rowland Overlook Press, 349 pp., $24.95
Charlotte is not merely a popular, successful novelist; she’s also a spunky, adventurous sleuth complete with loyal sidekicks. Naturally, she also has a handsome suitor who happens to be an international spy.
“Bedlam” owes its genesis more to the adventure novels of Jules Verne than to the work of any Brontë, but Rowland does cleave to the known facts of Brontë’s life — otherwise, undoubtedly, Charlotte would have been given Nancy Drew’s titian hair.
When we join our heroine, she’s concerned over the disappearance of her “dear friend” John Slade, who has undertaken a secret assignment for the Crown. Imagine her shock when, upon an outing to be entertained by the sights at Bedlam, the infamous insane asylum, she glimpses a man who must surely be Slade’s identical twin, for it couldn’t possibly be Slade . . . could it?
Complete with mad scientist, archvillain and weapons of mass destruction, this lighthearted romp is a veritable festival of the Penny Dreadful.

Romancing Miss Brontë
Juliet Gael Ballantine Books, 416 pp., $25
“Jane Eyre” was a sensation upon publication: Jane commanded her destiny through wits and will, not beauty and fortune. Jane faced great adversity in her quest to love and be loved, but emerged triumphant.
Charlotte Brontë’s story is at least as tragic as Jane’s: Reared in the austere chill of a Yorkshire parsonage, Brontë endured the death of her mother and all five of her siblings. She was left alone with the responsibility for her irascible, ailing father.
Brontë used her wits and will to become a celebrated literary figure, but romantic love may have eluded her. At the age of 38, she married her father’s curate, a move many biographers view as one of convenience.
Julia Gael presents a more compassionate interpretation of the facts of Brontë’s life. With delicate line and light she draws a picture that suggests that she did indeed share an abiding love with her husband, the more cherished for being hard won.
Devotees of Brontë will find this novel deeply satisfying. (Marcia Hecker)

Perhaps not exactly devotees of Brontë, but the band Babe Shadow have surprised us with the following conversation with TourDates.

So then, skip forward to now and Babe Shadow have already completed their Florence tour, released their startling debut single, ‘Sea Serpents’, and are – well – basically quite a bit more famous than they were when we did the interview (though we’re pretty sure they still live in Dalston because we’ve seen them in the bank). Think of this as a retrospective if you will… We don’t reckon these days they’d admit to the frankly quite geeky Emily Brontë visit though!
Hey! Where are you?
Tom: We’re driving through Leeds to pick my brother up and get his stuff; and then we’re going to the Brontë’s house.
How very educational! Why the Brontë’s house?
Tom: Because it’s near Leeds. We had to go up there to get my brother so we thought we might as well go and see something on the way.
Dave: I went a long time ago, and now I’m reading Jane Eyre so I wanted to go back. There’s lots of nice villages around there too. It’s nice to get away from concrete.

It would seem that the writer of the article would have thought that Jane Eyre was written by Emily Brontë, though.

At any rate, artist Ashley Jackson is rather more open about his Brontëiteness in conversation with his biographer Chris Bond for the Yorkshire Post.

"I'm a Wuthering Heights man," he says, answering a question about why in his paintings it's either raining, about to rain, or just finished raining. [...]
Ashley's love affair with the Yorkshire landscape began almost from the moment he first clapped eyes on it.

The Vine analyses the son The Way you Lie by Eminem featuring Rihanna.

In fact, “Love The Way You Lie” expresses a particularly Capital-R Romantic view of love. For the Romantics (and we’re talking 19th century types like Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë, rather than the band that did “What I Like About You”), love was tragic; irrational and uncontrollable. Think Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – he was a brooding, violent type without many selling points, and they never really got along. But still they were drawn to each other almost animalistically, irrationally, and their union inevitably ended in tragedy and death. One of the great tragic love stories. Apparently. This Romantic view of love never really went away – our current cultural mega-phenomenon, Twilight, is Capital-R Romantic to the core, and very much like Wuthering Heights in a lot of ways. And for better or worse, I don’t need to explain Twilight to you. (Tim Byron)

Well, we don't really know about Heathcliff and Cathy 'never' getting along and we are not sure either whether we would define Twilight as 'Capital-R Romantic to the core'. Oh well.

Toby Stephens briefly comments on his role as Mr Rochester in 2006 in The Times.

[A] glowering Mr Rochester in the BBC’s 2006 adaptation of Jane Eyre — although he fears being trapped in breeches and period pieces. “Anyway, if they made a film of Jane Eyre, they’d want Russell Crowe, not me.” (In fact, a film version is under way, starring Michael Fassbender as Rochester.) (Lesley White)

On the blogosphere, Shelley's Vintage Variety suggests reading Jane Eyre and Glass Milk posts about Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation. Veo.tv has a post on Emily Brontë in Spanish and Kako's World pays a tribute to Emily Brontë with a picture.

Categories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Charlotte Brontë, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights