The madwoman in the east wing

The Guardian review of the musical adaptation of The Secret Garden at The Rep, Birmingham, includes a small burst of Brontë:

With its gothic mansion and dark secret lurking in the east wing à la Jane Eyre, its wild desolate moors like Wuthering Heights, and a miracle scene – crippled boy walks – to rival Heidi, Frances Hodgson Burnett's original novel is quite operatic enough without added songs, however pleasant. (Lyn Gardner)

We believe, though, that the reviewer is mixing together Jane Eyre (where the dark secret actually lurked in the attic) and Rebecca (where the west wing had been the first Mrs de Winter's domain).

The School Library Journal quotes from Jane Eyre when discussing children's difficulties with language when it comes to expressing their feelings:

It’s hard to be a child, having no words to truly describe what you are feeling. Adults—well, some of us, anyway—have learned to talk about our feelings, to analyze them, to come up with reasons for the vast tides of emotion that heave in, foaming, and smack us with oceanic power. But kids, not so much. In Charlotte Brontë’s magnificent book Jane Eyre, a kindly apothecary asks 10-year-old Jane what made her unhappy:
“How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings or express them in words.” (Lynne Jonell)

Anne Rice is interviewed by The New York Magazine and asked about Twilight:

Do you have a take on the way in which Twilight serves Stephenie Meyer’s Mormon beliefs?
I don’t know enough about Mormon beliefs to see it in that context. What I saw there was woman’s romance. And I don’t mean that in a denigrating way. I saw the same thing that works in the work of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the idea of a young and vulnerable young woman falling in love with essentially an older, stronger, mysterious person. In Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester is threatening but he’s also protective and loving, and eventually comes around to be totally subdued and tamed by Jane. And that’s really what I saw in Twilight, in the two movies I saw. Young girl falls in love with this boy who’s capable of killing people, he’s a vampire, but he really loves her and protects her. And it was the same old story. Of course, there’s been a lot of writing in the world about why that particular romance functions. Is it about a young girl and her relationship to her father, as people have argued? Is it about the weaker feminine in love with the stronger masculine? It has a lot of deep layers of meaning, and I think Stephenie Meyer hit on that again in the Twilight books. And she did this stroke of genius thing of having these menacing vampires go to high school. (Gwynne Watkins)

The NPR features Mark Twain's Autobiography and recalls the Wuthering Heights anecdote. Man of la Book reviews Jane Eyre and The Memory of Rain is giving away a copy - US only though - of the 1945 version of the novel with wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. Definitely quite a treat!

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights