The Deccan Chronicle (India) reviews the film Guzaarish by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and gives a Jane Eyre reference worthy of nomination to the most surrealist/bizarre Brontë reference of the year:
The film opens with a song about “aching, breaking, worthwhile, smile”, while Ethan’s nurse Sophia (Aishwarya), her back and brows arched, takes sharp right-angle turns and goes about cleaning and feeding him. Her long, dark silhouette with red trimmings, born out of Bhansali’s fetishes and obsession with perfection, is annoying. She is part Jane Eyre, part flamenco dancer. But above all, she is Mary Magdalene.
Mint (India) finds a
Wuthering Heights reference in the same film:
We are unable to relate to a present day where women wear Victorian gowns, men dress in bow ties and people use rotary phones and cellphones in a house that looks inspired by Wuthering Heights. (Udita Jhunjhunwal)
Detroit News reviews April Lindner's
Jane:
Lindner puts her own spin on the story, but keeps the core story line true to the original.
"Jane" is a captivating modern love story of a young woman who refuses to compromise her values, and fans of Brontë's "Jane Eyre" are sure to praise this rousing retelling with its rock 'n' roll twist.
The actress Sue Jenkins is interviewed in the
Daily Post North Wales:
The mother of three has also done numerous radio plays, and admits her favourite was playing Cathy to Derek Jacobi’s Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights, in an adaptation for Radio 4.
The adaptation was aired in 1981 and has also Fiona Walker, Gabriel Woolf and Shirley Dixon in its cast.
Southern California Public Radio interviews arts student
Jennie Cotterill's about her Master of Fine Art exhibit:
On Work Avoidance, A Comprehensive Exploration of First World Time Mismanagement:
The exhibit has a carnival feel, but it’s firmly based on 28 year-old Cotterill’s real-life procrastination, such as the countless hours she puts into personal grooming. That inspired the first part of the exhibit: a magnifying mirror attached to the wall, framed grooming tools, and six acrylic paintings. (...)
Next to the mirror is a bookshelf full of titles she’d drop anything to pick up and read: Jane Eyre, a Georgia O’Keefe biography and books by rebel author Charles Bukowski. (Adolfo Guzman-Lopez)
Lansing City Pulse reviews a Michigan State University production of Shakespeare's
As You Like It:
[Curran] Jacobs’ Orlando at times conjures up a confused Heathcliff, brooding because it pains him to love. While his performance is powerful and energetic, it also works in dissonance to Strauss’s positive energy, muting instead of magnifying any potential sexual chemistry.
The Guardian also finds Brontë echoes in the adaptation of
The Secret Garden performed by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre:
There's a touch of the gothic and also of Jane Eyre in Burnett's portrayal of Mary's transformation, and certainly of the house with its closed-up secrets where redemption can only be found in the wild, neglected garden. (Lyn Gardner)
More reviews.
The Globe and Mail talks about Cynthia Ozick's
Foreign Bodies:
It's not just alliteration that Ozick is crazy for: Exclamation points abound, as do literary allusions both coy (a rest home called Suite Eyre, pronounced as in Jane Eyre) and dark (a reference to “black milk” taken from Paul Celan's Death Fugue). (Janice Kulyck Keefer)
The Toronto Star reviews the English translation of Dominique Fortier's
Du bon usage des étoiles:
On the proper use of stars:
Happily for us, Fortier also throws open windows on life back home. Jane Franklin travels, she assiduously makes maps, she entertains. She reads Wuthering Heights, her dogs, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, at her feet. Through her eyes, Sir John appears less pompous than malleable. A political animal, Jane negotiates the tedium of society life to secure her own and her husband’s goals. (Nancy Wigston)
The
Yorkshire Post talks about some of the Yorkshire locations in the latest Harry Potter film: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Part 1. Indeed, the
Limestone Pavement in Malham Cove (Yorkshire Dales) was also
used in
Wuthering Heights 1992. Not the only newspaper which links together Wuthering Heights and Harry Potter.
Il Corriere della Sera (Italy) in a different context:
Di solito, nel passaggio dalla pagina allo schermo si cerca di salvare lo spirito di un libro, e pazienza se adattando Cime tempestose si taglia via tutta la seconda parte del romanzo della Brontë: in fondo basta il disperato urlo «Heathcliff!» che si perde nella tempesta di neve per restituire il sapore della storia. (Paolo Mereghetti) (Microsof translation)
California Chronicle's weekly TV Quiz comes with a (very) easy Brontë-related question:
23 Which future Bond actor played Mr Rochester in a 1983 adaptation of Jane Eyre?
The Financial Times has an excellent article about modern parenting with a passing Brontë reference:
I can recall my own mother vaguely calling upstairs “Have you done your homework?”, but I cannot recall her rolling up her sleeves to work side by side with me cutting out pictures of rice paddies for a project about Vietnam, or monitoring how many pages of Wuthering Heights I had read. (Katie Roiphe)
Cherwell publishes an article about the "superiority" of books over films (or anything else) that seems to be written in the 1920s by a contemporary snobbish elitist:
No one will ever put on an audiobook of Wuthering Heights to set the mood post-Kukui, let alone suggest a reading of favourite passages. (Chris de Beneducci)
In the
Deccan Herald (India) there's an article about the Lake District:
Then onwards it’s a voyage of discovery as we move across countryside where Beatrix Potter first made her nature sketches; William Wordsworth walked into a patch of ‘golden daffodils’ and Emily Brontë saw the roofless ruin standing on windswept moorland that is believed to have inspired her to write Wuthering Heights. (Rachna Bisht-Rawat)
La Ventana (Cuba) transcribes a recent talk by Maryse Condé:
Otro fue un libro [importante fue] Cumbres borrascosas. Cuando me lo dieron no sabía que ella era inglesa, un niño de la Guadalupe no hace mucha diferencia. En el medio de ese libro había un elemento: el amor; buscaban a la gente que se había ido, y lograban vivir junto a ellos. Me ofrecieron dos lecciones muy importantes: la literatura existe para que el hombre pueda soñar, ofrecer bellas imágenes, hermosas historias; y, al mismo tiempo, existe para decir un poco la verdad. Esto lo aprendí cuando era una niña. (Dr. Rafael Rodríguez Beltrán (simultaneous translation). Edited by Xenia Reloba y Maité Hernández-Lorenzo) (Microsoft Translation)
Luz Vargas, editor of the literay magazine
Casa de Citas writes in
El Comercio (Peru) about its last issue devoted to madness:
En “Jane Eyre” (1847), famosa novela de Charlotte Brönte[sic], se narra la vida de una modesta institutriz inglesa que pasa de soportar maltratos a sostener un romance con el dueño de la mansión donde trabaja. Cuando el noble, pero soberbio Edward Rochester, está a punto de desposar a Jane se descubre un terrible secreto: él ya estaba casado con una antillana que padece de demencia, a quien mantiene encerrada en el ático de la residencia. Aunque Edward convence a Jane de que el verdadero prisionero ha sido él, ella no vuelve a su lado sino hasta que la demoníaca señora Rochester provoca un gran incendio en la casa que deja a Edward ciego y manco, pero al fin viudo. Jane regresa, entonces, a casarse con el hombre que ama y que dependerá de ella por completo y para siempre.
“Jane Eyre” y su final feliz desataron fuertes polémicas en la Inglaterra decimonónica, pero la reacción más interesante ocurrió en pleno siglo XX con “Ancho mar de los sargazos” (1966), novela de la caribeña Jean Rhys. Se trata de una precuela de “Jane Eyre” que otorga a la monstruosa loca del ático una infancia atormentada en una colonia inglesa y un nombre propio: Antoinette Cosway. Rhys nos revela las formas veladas y explícitas con que la sociedad enajena a su heroína hasta colocarla al borde del desequilibrio. Rochester llega a la isla y conquista a Antoinette por interés. Una vez consumado el matrimonio y en legítima posesión de sus bienes, Edward le recuerda su condición de “cucaracha blanca”, como se denomina a las criollas del lugar. Así, vuelve crónico su desvarío y puede trasladarla de la cárcel social de la isla al conocido ático inglés. El fuego con el que arde la mansión adquiere entonces una función liberadora para Antoinette. (Microsoft translation)
Clarín (Argentina) recalls an anecdote from the Brontës' lives a bit too imaginatively:
Cuando en diciembre de 1837 la tía Branwell decidió despedir a la antigua servidora de la familia, las hermanas Brontë dejaron de comer a modo de protesta. De acuerdo con la señora Gaskell, su primera biógrafa, ellas también eran vegetarianas. La vieja y fiel Tabby se había roto una pierna al resbalar en el hielo de la calle principal de Haworth. Durante más de diez años había poblado la imaginación de las niñas junto a la lumbre de la cocina contándoles historias de aparecidos y fantasmas de los páramos del Yorkshire. Merced a la huelga de hambre, Tabbita (sic) continuó horneando pasteles de avena en el hogar del párroco Brontë durante veinte años más. (Laura Ramos) (Microsoft translation)
Bookin' with Bingo reviews and gives away copies of Erin Blakemore's
The Heroine's Bookshelf and
No Vampires Allowed reviews April Lindner's
Jane.
El País (Spain) mentions
a recent Spanish translation of Wuthering Heights. The
Brussels Brontë Blog publishes an article on theinteresting research they have carried out about the present whereabouts of the house of the Rev. Evan Jenkins, the British chaplain in Brussels whose home was often visited by the Brontë sisters:
The Jenkins family played an important role in the Brontë Brussels story, introducing Emily and Charlotte to the Hegers and their Pensionnat, yet the only concrete address we've ever had for the family's home in Ixelles is from W. Gérin's famous biography of Charlotte Brontë, wherein she cites the address as Chaussée d'Ixelles, 304. This lies near the Place Flagey end of the Chaussée. It would have proved a long enough walk for the Brontës, coming from downtown Brussels on their Sunday visits to the Jenkinses. However, our new research has shown that the address provided by Gérin is incorrect.The Brontë biographer repeats an erroneous address listed in the 1840 Indicateur Belge, used by her as a source book. If one looks at other Indicateurs, or address books, for Brussels in the period 1838-1848, the Jenkins address is clearly given as Ch.d'Ixelles, 388. The Ixelles Commune's Population Census for 1846 confirms this address.(Brian Bracken)
Categories: Brussels, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
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