Heathcliff, the troubled guy

Here's today's newsround after filtering everything related to the just-unveiled Jane Eyre 2011 trailer.

The Independent (Ireland) talks about the opening night of another production of Jane Eyre, the one starring Andrea Corr on stage in Dublin.

IT was a family affair for the first night of Andrea Corr's new stage role.
The singer was flanked with support from her sisters Caroline and Sharon at the opening night of 'Jane Eyre' at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
The lead singer of the Corrs donned a period dress for her title part in the eponymous romantic drama in which she stars opposite actor Stephen Brennan.
Amongst the crowd were numerous stalwarts of the theatre scene with the Gate's artistic director Michael Colgan, actress Alison Doody and writer Alan Stanford amongst those in attendance.
Arriving at the theatre along with husband Brett Desmond -- the son of financier Dermot Desmond -- the Dundalk-born pop star was also watched by actors Bryan Murray and Michael McElhatton as well as Gay Byrne and his wife Kathleen Watkins. (Ken Sweeney)

The Woman section of the same newspaper categorises different types of men, one of which is,

The troubled guy
Women love a man who poses a challenge -- why else would we be so captivated by troubled, brooding types?
In literature we loved Brontë's Heathcliff now we have the intensity of Christian Bale and the smouldering Robert Pattinson.

Book Southern Africa makes a similar point from a literary point of view:

The bad boy vampire is a character that people love to hate. Like Dracula and Lestat, he’s been around as long as the genre itself. Does the attraction go back to every girl’s desire to change the guy from the wrong side of the tracks? Smith believes bad boys are not confined to vampire fiction. “The fascinating villain is often what makes a story fly. Look at Heathcliff or Richard III.” (S.A. Partridge)

Author Anna Shevchenko picks her 'top 10 novels set in Moscow' for the Guardian. One of them is Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov about which she remarks,

This play is often compared with the story of the Brontë sisters, but I find it very Russian for all its melancholy, nostalgia and layered emotions.

The World Socialist Website has posted an edited version of the talk Socialism and Cinema which Arts editor David Walsh gave on October 25 at the University of Salford. He said,

Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Edith Wharton and others examined the world, as well as their place in it, with an extraordinarily clear and unflinching gaze and, on that basis, produced indelible work. There is nothing comparable in the recent period, changing what must be changed, and for definite political and ideological reasons.

On the blogosphere, ScribbleManiac shares a couple of videos from North Lees Hall. Case Open Case Closed posts about Wide Sargasso Sea.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Theatre, Wuthering Heights