Everyone who's read Emily Brontë's classic "Wuthering Heights" has theories about the origins of Heathcliff and such supernatural elements as Cathy's ghost. Author Clare B. Dunkle has turned her theories into an intriguing, enthralling prequel. (...)
"House of Dead Maids" may be a prequel, but it's an original in its own right, and you don't have to have read "Wuthering Heights" to appreciate it. Beautifully written and compelling, it loses a little steam at midpoint but quickly picks up again. Tabby's tale will carry you along to its chilling end. (Sarah Bryan Miller in Saint Louis Post-Dispatch)
The San Antonio writer, known for her gothic fantasy novels and her dystopian science fiction, knows whereof she speaks. A glance at her website turns up the equivalent of a small dissertation's worth of research into every nook and cranny of Emily Brontë's life and her unlikely novel. Dunkle admits that "Wuthering Heights" snared her as child and that the spell remains unbroken. Thus did she come to write "The House of the Dead Maids," a prequel to Bronte's masterpiece. Herein we learn the mysterious origins of 19th century English literature's most mysterious character, Heathcliff. (...)Deseret News reviews April Lindner's Jane. Take care because the 'review' contains several spoilers. The reviewer seems to be horrified by the differences between the original Jane Eyre and Jane which is a bit perplexing. If you want to read exactly the same novel, why don't you just pick up Charlotte Brontë's original?
Given its "Young Adult" category, one is tempted to class "The House of the Dead Maids" along with other contemporary scary fiction of the "Twilight" variety. Except this is literature. As such, Dunkle leaves no literary allusion untouched, no symbolic leaf unturned, in her quest to reveal the origins of Heathcliff and his unearthly yearning for Catherine Earnshaw-Linton. And real literature is a generally a good deal more frightening, when it intends to be, than any pulp horror story could ever hope to be. (Bryce Milligan in San Antonio Express-News)
Fans of Charlotte Brontë's gothic novel "Jane Eyre" will most likely pick up April Lindner's "Jane" with great anticipation.The Telegraph (Calcutta) reviews Rabindranath Tagore — Portrayal of Memories by
The cover is perfect, haunting and lonely. And the idea, a modern retelling of Bronte's classic, intriguing. It's unfortunate, however, that "Jane" does not live up to expectations. (...)
From the first pages, readers will want to like this book, and they probably will — mostly. Lindner captures the ambiance of "Jane Eyre" perfectly. The mood and pacing are spot on.
Jane has the right amount of timidity and Nico (Mr. Rochester to Brontë fans) is arrogant and compelling.
But Lindner's characters are flawed, and this is where the story goes awry.
Spoiler: In Brontë's version, Jane is pure and holds fast to her morals. Her relationship with Mr. Rochester remains chaste. In Lindner's novel, Jane sleeps with Nico before he even proposes. Though tastefully told, there's more to this scene than necessary. The innocence that makes "Jane Eyre" a classic is lost, and that's disappointing.
The language in "Jane" is also jarring. The use of the f-word and other profanity feels out of place and slows the reader, rather than pulling them in.
There are so many positives in "Jane" that one wants to like it. And for those less sensitive to language or not as worried about staying true to source material, "Jane" will be an enjoyable read. But for many, the negatives will outweigh the positives. (Jessica Harrison)
Bela [Rabindranath Tagore's five-year-old daughter] wrote that as her mother had been reading all day, it was not possible for her to write to her husband. Mrinalini [his wife] could have been engrossed in a new story by her sister-in-law, Swarna Kumari Devi (one of the earliest Bengali women novelists), a Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay novel — or perhaps an edited version of Jane Eyre...Read on Petronella Wyatt's column in the Daily Mail:
Decatur Daily talks about ghosts stories:
“The romanticism of ghost stories, especially to white women, appeals to a lot of people,” [Jessica Penot, author of a new book, Haunted North Alabama] said. “I think it connects with the same type of people who would like Gothic romance novels, like Wuthering Heights. (Paul Huggins)The Star (Malaysia) mentions Jane Slayre in an article about mash-up novels; Laura's Miscellaneous Musings talks about the new Jane Eyre 1970 DVD release; The Occasional Sin reviews Wide Sargasso Sea; A Novel Idea: Confessions of book buying addict posts about Jane Eyre 2006. A curious picture on Flickr: the cover of a Portuguese 1965 edition of Jane Eyre by rgrant_97. Finally, ratoviejo has uploaded to YouTube a video with stills from Cumbres Borrascosas 1976, a Venezuelan soap-opera that adapted Wuthering Heights in... 48 one-hour episodes! The writer was Delia Fiallo.
Another YA retelling of Jane Eyre that has been published recently (October 11 in US and Canada) or will be published in the next few days (November 4 in UK): April Lindner's Jane. We will publish a review in the near future.JaneNewswise has more information on this title:
April Lindner
# Publisher: Poppy (October 11, 2010)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0316084204
# ISBN-13: 978-0316084208
What if Jane Eyre fell in love with a rock star?
Forced to drop out of an esteemed East Coast college after the sudden death of her parents, practical and independent Jane Moore takes a nanny job at Thornfield Park and finds herself in the midst of a forbidden romance with her magnetic and brooding employer, Nico Rathburn—who just happens to be a rock star.
But there's a mystery at Thornfield, and Jane's much-envied relationship with Nico is soon tested by an agonizing secret from his past. Torn between her feelings for Nico and his fateful secret, Jane must decide: Does being true to herself mean giving up on true love?
Lindner read Jane Eyre for the first time when she was 16, and has reread it every few years since then, either to teach it to her students, or for pleasure. “The book has so many layers that every time I read it I discover something new. And I always get caught up in Jane’s story – her thwarted love for Mr. Rochester and her inner strength."Categories: Books, Jane Eyre
Noting that many adults crave more from the authors they read in their youth – like the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen – Lindner says they may feel bereft after they have read through each writer’s canon. “I think this explains the popularity of these sequels we see being written – like Mr. Darcy’s Daughters, a continuation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or modern retellings, like “Clueless,” the movie based on Austen’s Emma – two hundred years after the first book was published. People hunger for more from their favorite characters.”
For her part, Lindner says her debut novel was inspired by a similar sentiment. “I so loved the character of Jane Eyre that I wanted to see if she could exist in the modern world. ”
Last Night the RTÉ1 programme The Late Late Show interviewed Andrea Corr, who will be playing Jane Eyre, adapted by Alan Stanford, in Dublin next November 9. The interview can be watched here (starting around 25 min 15 s). Apart from a promotional picture and some brief comments nothing very relevant about the production was said.The producers of "Jane Eyre" have announced that the musical's run at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, has been canceled.The Times reviews the book Proust's Overcoat. The True Story of One Man's Passion for All Things Proust by Lorenza Foschini (illustrated by Eric Karpeles):
The show, the latest stage adaptation of the classic Charlotte Brontë novel, had been scheduled to open a short run Nov. 5. But Griff Duncan, general manager of Orange County's FCLO Music Theatre (which produced the project and is just wrapping up its world-premiere run there), said that "dismal" advance ticket sales made the staging financially impractical.
Those already holding "Jane Eyre" tickets are advised to call the arts center at (800) 988-4253. (James Hebert in San Diego Union-Tribune)
Literary relics are or aren’t interesting, depending on your point of view. The text should be the thing, and nothing else matters. Emily Brontë’s desk, Hemingway’s typewriter, William Burroughs’ heroin needles — these artefacts are the detritus of a life, a life support system for the disembodied brain.There’s something fetishistic about the effects of a dead author; we’re drawn and then repelled, sent back to the words, which are what count. (Linda Grant)We wonder which Jane Eyre the author of this article in the New Zealand Herald has in mind:
The Karaka-based scream park is set in the blustery, Jane-Eyre-like surrounds of the old Kingseat Psychiatric Hospital. (Jacqueline Smith)Probably a Jane Eyre reminiscent of Jane Eyre 1944 where Mr Brocklehurst was played by Henry Daniell. Varsity talks about his role in The Body Snatcher:
Neglected Henry Daniell, previously responsible for a terrifying Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre and a reptilian Moriarty in The Woman in Green emerges triumphant here. (James Swanton)If you want to see the film (Jane Eyre 1944) next Wednesday there is a chance in Milwaukee:
She's a governess, he's the brooding master of the house - of course, they'll fall in love, or her name isn't "Jane Eyre."The Boston Phoenix reviews a local production of The Turn of the Screw. You know, when a governess is spotted, Jane Eyre has to be mentioned somehow:
In the atmospheric 1944 telling of Charlotte Brontë's romantic drama, Joan Fontaine is Jane and Orson Welles is the smoldering Mr. Rochester. You can see their torment, and triumph, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Charles Allis Art Museum, 1801 N. Prospect Ave. Admission is $5; $3 for seniors, students and veterans; and free to museum members and active members of the armed forces. (Chris Foran in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel)
Rice's interest in the gothic stems from a childhood spent reading Dickens, the Brontës and ghost stories from the New Orleans public library. (Emma Brockes)The Arizona Republic describes Joanna Newsom's latest album quite graphically:
Y, por muy improbable que resulte, nosotros nos lo creemos y la novela funciona. En Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë disfraza al señor Rochester de gitana y consigue que nosotros (y los huéspedes de Thornfield) le sigamos la ocurrencia. (Manuel Rodríguez Rivero) (Microsoft translation)La Voce d'Italia (Italy) about Coco Chanel:
Trasformò il "modesto" in "minimalista" e il "lineare" in "sofisticato". Lo stile campestre divenne urbano, quello maschile divenne femminile,L'Humanité reviews the latest book by Peter May, The Blackhouse, which is first published in its French edition (L’Île des chasseurs d’oiseaux):
le tunichette che da bambina affamata riceveva in beneficenza dalle suore rinacquero sotto forma di tubino e la sua infanzia da Jane Eyre sfociò in una marcia trionfale, con un happy end privo di marito. (Agnese Bazzoni) (Microsoft translation)
Dans un décor qui évoque les grands romans anglais du XIXe, les Hauts de Hurle-Vent, d’Émily Brontë, comme les Trafiquants d’épaves, de Stevenson, parcourant des landes fantomatiques, gravissant des falaises vertigineuses, Fin Macleod ne sera pas long à comprendre que la clef de l’enquête risque d’ouvrir une porte derrière laquelle sont enfermés depuis longtemps des secrets qui le concernent directement. (Roger Martin) (Microsoft translation)Le Monde and Il était une fois le cinema review the film Les Nuits de Sister Welch (2010):
Malheureusement, la direction d'acteurs de Jean-Claude Janer est trop approximative, et sa réalisation trop inscrite dans le premier degré pour nous embarquer, en dépit des clins d'œil à l'univers romantique des Hauts de Hurlevent et des sœurs Brontë, au Narcisse Noir de Michael Powell. (Jean-Luc Douin) (Microsoft translation)
Avec ses décors soignés de mers déchaînées, de falaises profondes et de ciels en flammes, évoquant "Les Hauts de Hurlevent" et l’imaginaire romantico-gothique anglo-saxon, ce film inclassable, mais pas déplaisant, aura toutefois du mal à trouver son public, sauf ceux qui aiment un cinéma qui dérange. (...)De Pers (Netherlands) talks about the Xbox 360 game Fable III:
Ce n’est pourtant pas un énième film sur les ados boutonneux, Les Nuits de sister Welsh (à ne pas confondre avec Sister Act), avec ses décors soignés de mers déchaînées, de falaises profondes et de ciels en flammes, rappelle aussi les films qu’on adorait naguère et qui évoquaient les Hauts de Hurlevent et tout l’imaginaire romantico-gothique anglo-saxon. (Jean-Max Méjean) (Microsoft translation)
En laat me raden, toen kwam je uit op een League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen-achtige wereld waarin goed en kwaad om voorrang vechten? Een wereld waarin mannen zich als Oscar Wilde-achtige dandy’s aan de dames in Jane Eyre-achtige hoepelrokken presenteren, waarin onze moderne tijd via koper-en-stoomtechnologie al aan de horizon gloort, maar nog precies genoeg op afstand wordt gehouden om ons niet aan moderne zorgen te herinneren? Origineel! (Arjan Terpstra) (Microsoft translation)Die Welt (Austria) compares the Brontës' imaginary worlds to Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow's family's:
Aber wie ein kurzes Menschenalter zuvor die Brontë-Schwestern hatten auch die Reventlow-Geschwister ein geheimes Fantasieland, das "Königreich Reharere", dessen Topografie und Geschichte die Ausstellung mit einigen Skizzen enthüllt. (Ulrich Baron) (Microsoft translation)Several Hungarian news outlets talk about the release of a Hungarian edition of Jane Eyre (October 26) among the collection Pannon Lapok Társasága. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is scheduled for next December 7.
1. Sam Taylor-Wood's Ghosts exhibition opens today, October 30, in Brooklyn, New York:Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts”Picture: Sam Taylor-Wood (British, b. 1967). Ghosts VIII, 2008. Chromogenic photograph, 43 x 55½ in. (109.2 x 141 cm). © The artist, courtesy of White Cube, London
October 30, 2010–August 14, 2011
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Brooklyn Museum
Ghosts, Sam Taylor-Wood’s 2008 photographic exploration of the Yorkshire Moors, was inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic Victorian novel Wuthering Heights, whose famously atmospheric descriptions of the bleak, wild landscape almost turn that locale into the novel’s third major character. For many years Taylor-Wood kept a country house in the same West Yorkshire region where Emily Brontë and her literary and artistic family lived. In the ten images from the series to be shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Taylor-Wood captures the stark and haunting character of the windswept moors and gray skies surrounding Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged setting of Wuthering Heights. Drawing inspiration from the Brontë sisters’ gothic romantic fiction, the artist followed the footpath from the stone parsonage where the Brontës lived and died up across the moors to Top Withens.
Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts” is the latest exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which is devoted to subjects that explore the significant contributions of the women named in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.
This exhibition is organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.
Hebden Bridge Literary FestivalCategories: Arts-Exhibitions, Biography, Talks
Juliet Barker ‘The Brontës Revisited’
12 noon at The Little Theatre, Holme Streeet, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8EE
Tickets: Hebden Bridge Bookshop, 7 Crown Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8EH: tel 01422 843686
Juliet says: "Despite being a patron of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival for many years, it’s been a long time since I did an event in the town, so I’m pleased to have been invited to talk about my new edition of The Brontës for the literary festival organised by the new Hebden Bridge Bookshop. A small town that can boast two fantastic independent bookshops has to be worth visiting!"
Jacket Copy: What was the most interesting book that you were assigned in school?And The New Yorker's Book Bench says,
Daisy Hay: It wasn’t assigned, precisely, but when I was 13, a wonderful English teacher suggested I might like to read Charlotte Brontë’s "Jane Eyre."[...]
JC: Did you read the book?
DH: You bet. I went home, found it on my parents’ shelves and devoured it in a single weekend. I had a nightmare about Grace Poole on the Saturday night and felt privately furious when some cousins turned up on the Sunday afternoon to show off their new baby. I was right in the middle of Jane’s reunion with Rochester and couldn’t believe my parents were actually making me put the book down to be sociable.
JC: What did you learn from it? Why did it stand out?
DH: It stands out because it was the first time I’d read a "proper" literary novel, and I’d expected to find it a bit of a slog. But instead I was completely gripped, as I’d never been by a book before. Or at least, I’d been gripped by books before, but once read they were easily forgotten. I’d re-read them happily, but the experience didn’t stay with me, or change me, like reading "Jane Eyre" did. I can honestly say that it was that weekend which switched me on to English literature and that it was then that I decided English was my thing. I can date a whole set of subsequent decisions -- to study English at advanced level at school, to read English at university -- from that moment. It showed me the huge possibility of literature, that there was a world out there waiting to be discovered. I learned I loved literature because of it. (Carolyn Kellogg)
[Republican candidate] Christine O’Donnell: This Delaware sensation’s MySpace page lists “The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Theology of the Body Explained, and Jane Eyre,” as her favorite books. (Ian Crouch)And let's end with two classic films. From Alt Film Guide:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck is a sort of Jane Eyre-like melodrama (I haven't seen it, yet), starring Gene Tierney, then at the height of her popularity, and Vincent Price. (Andre Soares)From the New York Times:
Romance is not forbidden in zombie circles of course. Long before the fad of Jane Austen mash-ups like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” the 1943 classic “I Walked With a Zombie” drew its story line from Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” (Alessandra Stanley)Categories: Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV
A first edition of the novel Wuthering Heights formerly owned by a Norfolk parson has been sold at auction for £163,250.EDIT: Although it is known it was an US dealer.
Described as "very rare" by London auctioneers Sotheby's, it was expected to fetch between £50,000 and £75,000.
The three-volume edition was once owned by Rev Nathaniel Micklethwait, who lived at Coltishall Hall.
There is no information about the buyer of the book, written by Emily Brontë in 1847.
Mr Mickelthwait's name was written in the book.
Lot 17 - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: hammer price with buyer's price: 85,250 GBP (estimate: 60,000 - 70,000 GBP).EDIT: More places that echo this news: Daily Mail, Norwich Evening News, Whitby Gazette, IANS, EDP24...
Lot 18 - The Professor: hammer price with buyer's price: 2,500 GBP (estimate: 2,000 - 3,000 GBP).
Lot 19 - Villette: hammer price with buyer's price: 9, 375 GBP (estimate: 2,500 - 3,000 GBP).
Lot 20 - Jane Eyre: doesn't seem to have been sold.
Lot 21: Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey: hammer price with buyer's price: 163,250 (see above) (estimate: 50,000 - 75,000 GBP).
Scholar books with Brontë content:The Ideas in Things
Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel
Elaine Freedgood
Paperback
University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226261638
Published October 2010
While the Victorian novel famously describes, catalogs, and inundates the reader with things, the protocols for reading it have long enjoined readers not to interpret most of what crowds its pages. The Ideas in Things explores apparently inconsequential objects in popular Victorian texts to make contact with their fugitive meanings. Developing an innovative approach to analyzing nineteenth-century fiction, Elaine Freedgood here reconnects the things readers unwittingly ignore to the stories they tell.
Building her case around objects from three well-known Victorian novels—the mahogany furniture in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the calico curtains in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and “Negro head” tobacco in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations—Freedgood argues that these things are connected to histories that the novels barely acknowledge, generating darker meanings outside the novels’ symbolic systems. A valuable contribution to the new field of object studies in the humanities, The Ideas in Things pushes readers’ thinking about things beyond established concepts of commodity and fetish.
Chapter one is entitled "Souvenirs of Sadism: Mahogany Furniture, Deforestation, and Slavery in Jane Eyre".Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic after Thirty YearsSome of the essays have explicit Brontë associations:
Edited with an Introduction by Annette R. Federico
Foreword by Sandra M. Gilbert
University of Missouri Press
December 2009
ISBN 978-0-8262-1869-8
When it was published in 1979, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination was hailed as a pathbreaking work of criticism, changing the way future scholars would read Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, George Eliot, and Emily Dickinson. This thirtieth-anniversary collection adds both valuable reassessments and new readings and analyses inspired by Gilbert and Gubar’s approach. It includes work by established and up-and-coming scholars, as well as retrospective accounts of the ways in which The Madwoman in the Attic has influenced teaching, feminist activism, and the lives of women in academia.
These contributions represent both the diversity of today’s feminist criticism and the tremendous expansion of the nineteenth-century canon. The authors take as their subjects specific nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers, the state of feminist theory and pedagogy, genre studies, film, race, and postcolonialism, with approaches ranging from ecofeminism to psychoanalysis. And although each essay opens Madwoman to a different page, all provocatively circle back—with admiration and respect, objections and challenges, questions and arguments—to Gilbert and Gubar's groundbreaking work.
The essays are as diverse as they are provocative. Susan Fraiman describes how Madwoman opened the canon, politicized critical practice, and challenged compulsory heterosexuality, while Marlene Tromp tells how it elegantly embodied many concerns central to second-wave feminism. Other chapters consider Madwoman’s impact on Milton studies, on cinematic adaptations of Wuthering Heights, and on reassessments of Ann Radcliffe as one of the book’s suppressed foremothers.
In the thirty years since its publication, The Madwoman in the Attic has potently informed literary criticism of women’s writing: its strategic analyses of canonical works and its insights into the interconnections between social environment and human creativity have been absorbed by contemporary critical practices. These essays constitute substantive interventions into established debates and ongoing questions among scholars concerned with defining third-wave feminism, showing that, as a feminist symbol, the raging madwoman still has the power to disrupt conventional ideas about gender, myth, sexuality, and the literary imagination.
Enclosing Fantasies: Jane Eyre by Madeleine Wood
Jane Eyre's Doubles?: Colonial Progress and the Tradition of New Woman Writing in India by Narin Hassan
Revisiting the Attic: Recognizing the Shared Spaces of Jane Eyre and Beloved by Danielle Russell
The Legacy of Hell: Wuthering Heights on Film and Gilbert and Gubar's Feminist Poetics by Hila Shachar
Every week I would phone my parents and say, ‘Guess what came into the lab!’. Sometimes it was a batch of Rembrandt etchings. Sometimes it was an original score by Mozart. And once it was a small group of letters written by Charlotte Brontë.We read in the Daily Mail about the financial backup of Wuthering Heights 2011:
Of course I read them. My primary memory is that they all contained some reference to either illness or death. In one letter, written in brown ink on mourning stationery (black-edged), Charlotte wrote of the death of her brother Branwell, lamenting ‘the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and shining light’. It was one of the best things I ever worked on at the Morgan; perhaps one of the best things I’ve ever worked on. I couldn’t quite get over the fact that I was working on a letter that Charlotte Brontë had written with her own hands. She had selected the paper, dipped her pen in that brown ink; her hand had moved across the page in direct connection with her thoughts. Letters are such intimate things, even when the subject matter is unremarkable. All that lay between Charlotte’s mind and my own was the mere matter of 150 years. (...)
But letters written by Charlotte Brontë don’t come your way very often. They didn’t even require much work. Long recognised as valuable things, they had been cared for well and only had some splits along old fold lines to repair, easily done using a fine Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste.
Arts aficionado Lord Browne is taking a close interest in new British film Wuthering Heights. For I can reveal the multi-millionaire former BP chief has invested £500,000 in a fund run by Goldcrest Capital Holdings, which is bank-rolling the movie, starring unknown young actress Kaya Scodelario.The Times talks about high tea:
Experts say Browne, appointed by David Cameron to recruit business leaders to Government boards, could save up to £180,000 through his canny, tax-efficient investment. Goldcrest Capital Holdings, an offshoot of the Goldcrest film company, whose hits include Chariots Of Fire, is worth £20million.
Browne made his investment, the largest allowed under the programme, this year. He was one of 27 investors in the first round of the scheme. A friend of the businessman points out that if the scheme collapses, he loses all his money.
A spokesman tells me: ‘Lord Browne regards his personal finances as private. This investment was encouraged and sanctioned by the UK tax authorities.’
In her novel Shirley, Charlotte Brontë writes: “Yorkshire people, in those days, took their tea round the table; sitting well into it, with their knees duly introduced under the mahogany.”(Jane Wheatley)Also in The Times, David Aaranovitch includes a piece of Jane Eyre 1944 trivia:
Let us start with the underwear. I know Orson Welles wore a girdle all though filming Jane Eyre, so it’s not as though men have never had help.Eye Weekly interviews Gemma Arterton about her role in Tamara Drewe:
Did you fear that Tamara would end up seeming too brittle and unlikeable?Library Science Degree selects Heathcliff as one of the 50 most hated characters in literary history:
I deliberated as to whether I should do this part or not because I didn’t know if I could empathize with her. You don’t have to like the characters you play but you do have to try to understand them. I still don’t like her but you’re not meant to like her, even though she is the heroine. Her character is similar to Bathsheba [the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, on which Tamara Drewe is loosely based]. It’s the same thing with Cathy from Wuthering Heights. She’s another one who makes you think, “You’re such a spoiled brat but I want to watch you because you’re so dramatic and lost and I feel sorry for you.” I hope that’s why we watch Tamara. It was a struggle to find a balance between femme fatale and someone with more depth. (Jason Anderson)
8. HeathcliffEDIT: Thanks to Traxy for pointing out that as a matter of fact there were other Brontë characters on the list that we missed:
Some fans of Wuthering Heights tend to interpret Heathcliff as a romantic figure, but a hefty portion of readers hate him for his abusive, manipulative and negligent behavior towards the people in his life.
18.) Catherine EarnshawMountain Xpress reviews I Walked With a Zombie (1943):
Like many other romantic heroines on this list, the fiery Catherine seems to be divided between lovers and haters with equally weighted passions. Those who can’t stand her see a character just as venomous and relentlessly cruel as her negligent lover Heathcliff.
23.) Edward Rochester
As one of the quintessential brooding men of Victorian literature, Edward Rochester enjoys his fair share of fans. However, modern audiences are turned off by his callous, dishonest treatment of the titular heroine. Though leaving Bertha in the attic and causing her to mentally deteriorate even faster makes for an even more appalling offense.
Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (1943) probably holds the place of honor as the most ludicrously titled great film ever made. It was a follow-up to Cat People (1942) and RKO Pictures wanted a suitably horrific title—even if what Tourneur and producer Val Lewton were giving them was essentially Jane Eyre in the Tropics (well, that with some voodoo trimmings, which I believe Charlotte Brontë neglected to incorporate into her novel). (Ken Hanke)The Herald (Ireland) has an article about dating after a divorce.. with a Brontë mention:
Yes reader, I am to marry him. I know that's Brontë, not Austen, here's how:Xomba suggests a Wuthering Heights meets Cannibal Holocaust plot:
When this piece is published a lot of people will find out I'm getting married. I have stayed very quiet about it -- I learned a lot from the first time around. (Suzanne Power)
Wuthering Heights HolocaustSeattle Writings Career Examiner posts a nice personal story with Jane Eyre:
Italian movie. Heathcliff’s sister has disappeared in the moors. He leads and expedition there and faces horrors beyond belief. Contains animal cruelty: a hedgehog is forced to watch Steven Seagal movies shot in Bulgaria.
Then I read one of my favorite books of all time, Jane Eyre. What could be more perfect for a twelve-year old, all awkwardness and pudgy knees? Was I transported into tragic longing and beautiful brooding characters? Did I learn that reading can make you feel someone else's pain, at an age where self-centeredness is all? I wonder if that's why I read, then; to understand others. I don't remember, but I'm sure my skin problems were nothing compared to Jane's tortured life and love.EDIT: An alert from Madrid, Spain.
Jane Eyre took on a completely different meaning at fifteen. As a result of a car accident, I had a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma. What I recall of that time are pages of the books I had read flashing thorough my mind. They were more real to me than what was happening when I woke. For many weeks, I was in the hospital relearning everything from how to walk and talk to how to tie my shoes.(...) (Read more) (Jennifer Conner)
Semana Gótica de Madrid, 2010Killin'Time Reading reviews The House of Dead Maids; Fly High! reviews Bianca Pitzorno's La Bambinaia Francese; The Squeee reviews Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter; Meangelx (in Swedish) and a thousand dreams review Jane Eyre.
Casa de Vacas, Madrid
16:00 Mesa redonda “Eros y Thanatos en la literatura Gótica”:
Noelia Malla García(UCM): “Eros y Thanatos en Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë”
Bookings for Mirfield's Brontë-themed Christmas all-charity fund raising events. Some Brontë descendants of Rev. Patrick Brontë's brothers and sisters to be present at some of the events.Categories: Music, Talks, Theatre
Friday, 26th November
Literary Lunch at the Yorkshire Puddin, Mirfield. Helga Hughes, curator of Red House Museum, Gomersal, to give a talk with slides: A Writers's Friendship between Charlotte Brontë and Mary Taylor. After lunch, Brontë sisters poems to be read. This is a fund-raising lunch for Holly Bank School (formerly Roe Head where the Brontë sisters attended), Mirfield. The school is now a residence for severely disabled young people from 5 to 25 years who are cared for and educated. The lunch is £25.
Saturday, 27th November
Costumed Brontë Ball at Northorpe Hall, Mirfield. We ask for those who attend to come as a character from one of the Brontë novels. Food, music and dancing in a superb setting for Northorpe Hall dating back from the late 1500s. Tickets £15.This is a fund-raising event for two charities: the Northorpe Children's Trust and Coeliac disease.
Sunday, 26th November
A Brontë walk in the footsteps of the Brontës when they walked from Roe Head school to St Mary's parish church, Mirfield, and see what is left of the former Blake Hall site, where Anne Brontë was a governess. Then back to the church hall where one can purchase refreshment and food and see the exhibition about St Mary's church history and the Brontë connection. The walk starts at 1pm across from Holly Bank School, Mirfield, at the top of Whitley's garden centre to be led by Ken Dews from Kirklees Ramblers. All are welcome - just turn up. It will take about one and a half hours at the most.
Friday, 3rd December
Full Brontë Night programme starts 7.30pm with the History Wardrobe to present Jane Eyre, the well-dressed governess talk with costumes then Christmas hymns/carols in the second half. London vocalist Val Wiseman to sing from her Brontë album Keeping the Flame Alive. Tickets £10 with refreshments. This is a fund-raiser for two children's charities: the Huddersfield children's hospice The Forget-Me-Not Trust and Holly Bank School Trust.
Saturday, 4th December
Brontë Quiz at the Navigation Tavern, Mirfield, at the side of the canal in the evening. Fund-raiser for Kirkwood Hospice, Huddersfield. For further information on this event, contact the Navigation Tavern, Station Road, Mirfield.
For all other events and for further information and booking, contact Kirklees Brontë Group. Telephone 01924 519370 or send a self-stamped addressed envelope to Kirklees Brontë Group, 18 Quarryfields, Mirfield WF14 ONT.e-mail david.marsden9117@ntl.com.
A few things on the afterlife of Wuthering Heights today:In 1955, Mr. Johnson, who had acted on stage and television for a decade, turned to directing. His first assignment: piece together a one-hour adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” for NBC’s noontime “Matinee Theater” in just four days. It was the first of 78 live productions Mr. Johnson would direct for “Matinee Theater” in a little more than two years. (Dennis Hevesi)He also directed a Jane Eyre episode in 1957 for Matinee Theater. EDIT: The Times publishes an obituary.
His late father, Alfred Newman, won nine Oscars during a career that helped define the lush Hollywood sound of classics like 1939's "Wuthering Heights" and 1951's "All About Eve." Emerging from such an imposing shadow couldn't have been easy, but today Newman is casting a shadow of his own, working at a rarefied level few composers will ever reach. (Kevin Cassidy)Andrew Lincoln, who played Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights 2009, is interviewed by the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex:
G.M.: Had you ridden horses before?Mississauga News talks about the Toronto performances of Jane Eyre currently at the Theatre Erindale:
A.L.: My wife is a very good rider, and she would say not really. In [2009's] “Wuthering Heights,” I rode; (Gina McIntyre)
Theatre Erindale has set the bar incredibly high in commencing its 18th season with an exceptionally well-executed performance of Jane Eyre.On the topic of the classics, the New Straits Times says,
Stacey Arseneau offers a superb performance in the title role, narrating her own story and observing as her younger self played in the earlier scenes by Tiffany Feler. This is a monumental role for any performer, not only because of the dramatic range, but also because Jane is onstage virtually the entire show.
Arseneau draws the viewer into Jane’s story from the moment the play begins and doesn’t release us until a post curtain-call epilogue. It’s a perfect match of a performer with a part. She has sturdy support notably from Paolo Santalucia as the troubled Edward Rochester, Kristen Zaza as his housekeeper and Sheelagh Daly as his ward.
Peter Urbanek’s set offers an effective set of playing levels, smartly used to delineate the various locations of the far-reaching tale. Joanne Massingham’s stunning costumes perfectly capture the style and look of the period, matching Jane’s sombre mood with a stark black dress.
The intimate space of the studio theatre provides an idea setting for this piece, bringing the audience close to the action. The fine discipline of the performers along with excellent diction ensures the words come across as well as the meaning.
Charlotte Bronte’s novel has inspired a number of adaptations over the years. None has completely solved the episodic nature of the source material.
Robert Johnson’s version does manage to focus the story, and director Scott Denton has paced the production to maximize the impact of the most dramatic moments.
In other productions on stage and screen, the tale of Jane Eyre starts to fall flat after she leaves Thornfield. Not here. The audience is swept into Jane’s world right from the start, largely because this production doesn’t treat it as a revered classic. Instead it brings the story vividly to life. (Mark Andrew Lawrence)
I WILL not tell you to read more of the classics. Because Melville and Tolstoy and Fitzgerald aren’t something you can force.And The Telegraph and Argus has an article on the local Withins Skyline Fell Race:
Because they are, along with Austen and the Brontës, something that we grow into. For there is an age for each and every one of them. There is a time for those timeless expressions of life, of truth, of beauty. But I will not discourage you from trying.
Starting from Penistone Hill Country Park near Haworth, the seven-miler proved a challenge as a muddy Brontë Moor made for treacherous terrain and more than a few tumbles. (Claire Mabey)YouTube user FloraThompsonWriter has uploaded a 2007 video showing the garden in front of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
A new book recently published which will be reviewed in the next days:Letters to Charlotte: The Letters from Ellen Nussey to Charlotte BrontëPink Paper reviews the book:
Caeia March
* Paperback: 290 pages
* Publisher: Pink Press; First edition (14 Oct 2010)
* ISBN-10: 1907499431
* ISBN-13: 978-1907499432
In January 1831, two adolescent schoolgirls meet at Roe heading boarding School in Mirfield, and are instantly drawn to each other. One is Ellen Nussey; the other is Charlotte Bronte - Through a blend of journal entries, real and fictionalised letters, this touching narrative charts the intimate relationship between the pair as they become friends, confidantes and spiritual lovers. It is both a fascinating social document, and an account of how two remarkable women responded to the joys, fears and sorrows of their age, and to the deep emotional bond they found with each other.
Publishing her first non-fiction at 25, Caeia then moved into the feminist world of women's literature, history and poetry in her 20s and 30s. She taught social anthropology at Avery Hill College then creative writing and women's international history at Goldsmith's College.
Caeia has two married sons and three tiny granddaughters. Caeia published many short stories, six novels and a collection of poetry, Moonseanight. Her best selling novels The Hide and Seek Files and Three Ply Yarn are set partly in Yorkshire where she has travelled widely, giving readings of her work.
The two women became lifelong friends and the book charts this passionate and devoted association chronologically, with real letters in italics to distinguish them from March’s imaginings. The resulting narrative is interesting and well-written, but I found the mixing of fact and fiction oddly unsatisfying, as if making a jigsaw puzzle with only half the pieces while a companion described for me what she imagined the rest of the image might look like. Others may have no such complaint about the book; the style of the fictionalised sections are certainly in keeping with that of the real entries, and the relationship March re-constructs is a compelling one. (Eden Carter Wood)Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë, Fiction
I can see it might be quite fun to present Aunty Mabel (she's always been a laugh) with a saucy tome such as Fever in France where she's the star. But to kick Jane Eyre and Rochester out of bed so you can replace them with Jane Doe and Mr Rogers from down the road – are you serious?The Mancunion is also indignant about an online poll where J.K. Rowling is at the top and Charlotte Brontë is nowhere to be seen.
The whole point of Jane Eyre is ... the character of Jane Eyre. Have we so lost sight of great literature, are we so irredeemably self-obsessed that we have forgotten why characterisation matters to literature and why it is at the heart of so many great novels? To wrap yourself into the leaves of a book and to believe in and engage with a character that lives – really lives – in the imagination of writer and reader is a literary pleasure hard to describe. I still believe in the imagined reality of Charlotte Brontë's heroine. The very name Jane Eyre brings to my mind the subtle anger and determined stoicism of that character. In a nutshell, Jane Eyre is not about you, just as Tom Sawyer is now and forever always will be Tom Sawyer and no one else.
An online survey of the Top Five female authors (albeit a survey with very few votes), has placed Sophie Kinsella and J K Rowling in its Top three. When considering the ‘Top’ authors, it seems that some people have forgotten the greats, the classics, the timeless masterpieces, in favour of those with recent places on bestseller lists and Hollywood success. Can we really brush aside the likes of Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë, whose greatest works have endured centuries and show no signs of losing popularity, to make room at the top for Becky Bloomwood and Harry Potter?Well - surely it's mainly young adults and teenagers voting, hence the trendy authors. We don't think this sort of poll is anything to go by.
Included in the collection are editions signed or annotated by Ms. Rice, and many have her library markings on the spines. The collection showcases her love of literature and writing and reveals a true intellectual curiosity — classic philosophy, the Brontës, biblical archaeology, and Louisiana history are just a few of the subject areas represented.Hollywood Reporter reviews the film Juliets:
None of documentary filmmaker Shen’s previous output (not even “Baseball Boys” which swept the board at 2009 Golden Horse Awards) can prepare us for the irresistibly sexy film language and narrative artistry of “Two Juliets.” In a seaside village in the 80s, a vaudeville performer’s daughter Julie (sizzling singer Lee Chien-na whose family runs genuine vaudeville shows) and a puppeteer’s son (River Huang) are forbidden to love because of their fathers’ feud. A mental asylum becomes their love nest — or prison?A hilarious comment is found in the transcript of a recent NPR programme:
This vignette comes closest to “Romeo and Juliet”’s plot yet its ending has a wicked sting that subverts the Bard’s motif of undying love. The atmosphere is as fantasmagorical as Victorian Gothics like “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” The narrative structure, which traverses two eras and connects two love-lorn women, has the sophistication of a feature length film. (Maggie Lee)
To mark LeBron James' arrival in Miami, NPR member station WLRN and its newspaper partner, the Miami Herald, are sponsoring a contest - a poetry contest. [...]Taylor Swift's song You Belong with Me is again likened to Jane Eyre by The Phlog - a Boston Phoenix blog.
[Michelle] NORRIS [host]: Thats pretty good. But most people I guess actually do know who LeBron James is.
Mr. GRECH [Dan Grech, radio news director of WLRN Miami Herald News]: Yeah. We had one - that was a haiku. And we had one person write in who said that LeBron James sounded like a character out of Wuthering Heights.
NORRIS: Now I can't get that image out of my head with those mutton chop sideburns.
Mr. GRECH: Exactly. LeBron James.
Good news for readers of BrontëBlog and all thanks to Libby Sternberg, author of Sloane Hall. See this:Off the Shelf. Festival of Reading and Writing2. In Wellesley, MA, Erin Blakemore presents her book The Heroine's Bookshelf:
Meet the Author Sarah Freeman
Tue 26 October 2010 @ 2pm
Crystal Peaks Library
Sarah Freeman will be talking about her book, Brontë in Love, which explores Charlotte Brontë’s life and tells her tragic love story.
Erin Blakemore, author of “The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder,” will be at Wellesley Booksmith, 82 Central St., on Wednesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. for a presentation and book signing.3. In Sioux City, IA, a new chance to see Patricia Hruby Powell's one-woman-show An Evening with Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson:
“Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder” is a testament to inspirational women throughout literature. Her exploration of classic heroines and their equally admirable authors shows today’s women how to best tap into their inner strengths and live life with intelligence, grace, vitality and aplomb. This collection of unforgettable characters includes Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara and Jane Eyre, and authors Jane Austen, Harper Lee and Laura Ingalls Wilder. (The Wellesley Townsman)
Morningside College will host actress, storyteller and award-winning author Patricia Hruby Powell for "An Evening with Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson" at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 26 in the UPS Auditorium in Lincoln Center, 3627 Peters Ave. This event is free and open to the public.Categories: Talks, Theatre
Powell describes these three writers as women who dared to break the male monopoly on literary greatness in the 19th century. She portrays them largely using their own words - either things they wrote or were reported to have said.
Powell is visiting the college as part of the Dr. R. Franklin Terry Women's Studies Lecture and Faculty Development Series. This series is named for Dr. R. Franklin Terry, who joined the Morningside faculty in 1967 and served the college for 25 years. (Sioux City Journal)
Have had one of the best days in months!Such a buzz being back on a set and doing what I love! But Yorkshire is feckin freezing mate!
1:21 AM Oct 20th
Reviewing the book Did You Know? West Yorkshire – A Miscellany, The Telegraph and Argus - or rather the book itself - also makes a Yorkshire-Brontë connection: The book is packed with Bradford references, some of which are familiar – such as the Grey Lady ghost story at East Riddlesden Hall and the Haworth moorland providing inspiration for the Brontë sisters – and some of which are less so. (Emma Clayton)Off-the-Shelf - a Cape Cod Today blog - posts a funny thing about (imaginary) 'poet, writer, essayist, blueberry picker Thomas J. McSheey'.
In order to make ends meet, the poet Thomas J. McSheey took paying jobs from time to time. One such job found him working for an eccentric book publisher who had the strange notion to combine certain classic literary works so the reader could enjoy two famous novels at the same time.Another sort of mash-up.
In that vein, McSheey edited the texts for a number of novels, dovetailing the plots and characters in ways to present both stories in one abbreviated format, yet while keeping intact some of the main themes. [...]
Other edited works by McSheey included Of Mice and Moby Dick (featuring the novels of Steinbeck and Herman Melville), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Jane Eyre (by Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlotte Brontë), War and Prejudice (by Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen), and Wuthering Women (by Emily Brontë and Louisa May Alcott). (Jack Sheedy)
We are very grateful to HBG-International for sending us a review copy of this book.Wuthering Bites
Author: Sarah Gray
Pub Date: August 31, 2010
Imprint : Kensington
978-0-7582-5408-5
'Is he a ghoul or a vampire?' I mused. I had read of such hideous incarnate demons. And then I set myself to reflect how I had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. 'But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?' muttered. (Wuthering Heights, Chapter XXXIV)Nelly Dean's explicit exposition of Heathcliff's vampiric trends in the final chapters of Emily Brontë's novel mark one of the many layers with which Emily Brontë wrapped Wuthering Heights. This one, bordering on the Gothic horror stories is not entirely inconsistent with the nature of a novel which, at times, seems closely associated to Romanticism (and, of course, John Polidori's novella The Vampire (1819) comes to mind(1)) and particularly the German Romantics, where the liebestod and the Vampiric tradition (explicit or not) were quite present(2).
It seems all great poets and writers have foraged through October's wealth of material and found the making of a masterpiece: John Keats, Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Theodore Roethke, W.S. Merwin, Charlotte Brontë, C.S. Lewis and Emily Dickinson - just to name a few - each have famous writings with October named or implied in the title, or somewhere in the first few lines. (Ina Hughs)We are not very sure which novel or Brontë writing the journalist is thinking of. Maybe Emily Brontë and her poem Fall, Leaves, Fall?
In person Jaques, who grew up in an isolated Oregon farmhouse with elderly grandparents and now lives in another farmhouse with his wife and two young children, is elegant and affable, with a quick wit and the sort of impeccable manners that would make the Brontë sisters swoon. (Suzanne Burns)Certainly not the same ones that inspired Kate Beaton's cartoon.
