Chinese Industrial Revolution and the Brontës

Giles Coren in The Times has an explanation for the current success of Jane Eyre in China:

China loves Jane Eyre? Reader, I understand it.
(...) By far the majority, however, if Thursday’s Times is to be believed, will be worrying most of all that if it goes on much longer they will not be home in time for the latest instalment of of Jane Eyre, and thus may never find out who is making the racket in the attic up at Thornfield Hall. “Surely,” they will say to themselves, as they tear off and chew another scrap of floor carpet for sustenance, “It cannot be that Mr Rochester has a crazy first wife who has been locked up there for years without it having been previously hinted at? No, that would be mental. It’s only the dehydration that’s making me think like that.”
For the Chinese have gone crazy for the 19th-century English novel. Or, rather for BBC adaptations thereof. “Chinese fall in love with Jane Eyre — the egalitarian heroine”, this paper reported, and went on to announce that a digital broadcaster in China has snapped up BBC films not only of Charlotte Brontë’s post-Gothic romp but also of novels by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and William Makepeace Endellion Thackeray. It is the first sale of BBC digital content to the world’s newly crowned second-biggest economy and, along with the huge success of a stage version of Jane Eyre in Beijing last year, points to a surprising fascination with 19th-century English literature in a land where you would not have thought it had much to say. But clearly Chinese audiences see something that they can identify with. Can it really be, as The Times report suggested, that Jane Eyre’s assertion of the heroine’s “equality” with Mr Rochester strikes an ideological chord in the land of Mao? That it is seen as a tacit endorsement of the principles of communism? Of course not. It is because English writers of the 19th century were responding to socioeconomic conditions that, while long forgotten here, are absolutely in place over there. The Chinese are taking the literature of of our industrial revolution and “reading” it during uring theirs. It’s a fantastic piece of cultural recycling.(...)
But a Marxist critique of the rise of the novel (which is presumably the kind the Chinese Government approves of, moribund though it is in universities here) would see her work, and the Brontës’, very much as a response to the emergence of a modern capitalist economy whose material freedoms helped to generate a bourgeois notion of self that led directly to the rise of the “psychological” novel. (...) It’s no wonder Jane Eyre is suddenly so popular, with its tale of an abandoned girl child who survives her deprivations to come good in the end. China, with its mushrooming power stations, its dark satanic mills, its rapid deruralisation, its burgeoning foreign interests, is just exactly where Britain was at our time of greatest literary fecundity. (Giles Coren)

Erica Wagner in The Times is not particularly fortunate when she says:

Now, perhaps you imagine that I have a photographic memory of every book I’ve ever read. You imagine that I could be my very own parlour game: go on, shout “T. S. Eliot” at her and she’ll launch into The Wasteland, “Charlotte Brontë” and she’ll give you Wuthering Heights till she’s blue in the face. Not to put too fine a point on it: No.

As we know that Erica Wagner knows her Brontës we will attribute the blunder to the mysteries of Internet publishing.

In the Miami Herald there's a nice story of the last first day of high school as seen by a mother:

This year a part of my life is ending. The part that has signed endless school forms and replied, on occasion, to admonishing teachers' notes. The part that has dutifully attended open houses, science fairs and high school football games. The part that has nagged, harangued and threatened. The part that has declared, ``If you want to spend your life behind the counter at McDonald's, then go ahead. Don't read Jane Eyre.'' (Ana Veciana-Suárez)

BBC News talks about the last episode of the world's longest-running sitcom The Last of the Summer Wine and particularly about the Last of the Summer Wine tour bus. It seems that in spite of the cancellation of the show, tourism in Holmfirth is still far from dying:

Tour guide Colin Frost says visitor numbers this summer are up, and - despite the fact the cameras have stopped rolling - he predicts TV repeats and DVDs will win over new generations.
"Ask yourself - how long have the Brontës been dead? And how busy is Haworth?" he grins. "There's still interest from all over the world. It'll never die." (James Alexander)

The Iran Book News Agency quotes author and translator Reza Najafi:

At Session "An Analysis of the History of English Literature" of the "Literary History of Nations" held Tuesday evening with presence of Amir Ali Nojumian at the House of the Literati, Reza Najafi said (...) "Among prominent figures of this period one can mention Thomas Hardy – with his Naturaist work 'Jude the Obscure', Robert Louis Stevenson – with his 'Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde' [sic], Brontë sisters – particularly Emily Brontë writer of 'Wuthering Heights' – and Jane Austin [sic] with the well-known 'Pride and Prejudice'."

Pakistan Daily News reviews Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert:

The writer, on the other hand, duels with her deep seated insecurities and reveals the sort of marriage she is likely to have — “wifeless, motherless and husbandless” — which simply means that neither would be obligated to fulfil the traditional role of housekeeper or breadwinner. It also means that she will proudly defend the decision to join an “Auntie Brigade” instead of enlisting in the “Mommy Corps”. Members of the exclusive brigade will be pleased to learn that they are in great company — Tolstoy, Capote, Lennon and the Brontë sisters, all raised by doting aunts.

Pat Benatar is interviewed in Boston Globe and she is quite clear about singing her cover of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights... now:

We have "the holy 14" that we have to play all the time. And then we have to plug in other ones. Spyder and I have worked on a lot of different things. We have a bunch of medleys this year. But I do have to tell you, when you make 13 records and you spread out the big anthems? Easy. When you string them together at 57? I want to cry. (Laughs). I sing "All Fired Up," "Shadows of Night," "Invincible," "Let's Stay Together," and "We Belong" in one big chunk. I don't have to work out ever. It's such gymnastics, it's insane. Every night someone yells out "Wuthering Heights" and I tell them "you sing it." (Sarah Rodman)

El Periódico del Mediterráneo (Spain) talks about Jane Eyre among other literary characters:

Editada por primera vez en 1847, en Londres, la novela Jane Eyre de Charlotte Bronté [sic], cuenta la historia de una joven que debe luchar para sobrevivir y realizarse sin ayuda del dinero, la familia o el privilegio de clase. La huérfana Jane está atrapada entre dos impulsos contradictorios. Por un lado es estoica, modesta y abnegada. Por el otro, es una persona apasionada, independiente, disconforme y rebelde frente a la injusticia que se encuentra en todas partes. El camino hacia el verdadero amor con el señor Rochester constituye un argumento romántico que permite seguir hablando en favor de las mujeres inteligentes y con aspiraciones en el contexto patriarcal de la Gran Bretaña victoriana. (Bellés) (Microsoft translation)

Boosh News includes Emily Brontë on their list of famous Leos; a Kindle winner with Brontë interests in a SmartPlanet contest; normblog interviews Rachel Carter, webmaster of Creative Writing:

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Ah - or Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Another Haworth picture in Saltaire Daily Photo and a story by Antonia Arslan published in L'Avvenire (Italy) with a Brontë mention.

Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Haworth, Music, References, Wuthering Heights