"Now, I understand"

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune recommends a trip to Brontë country. The journalist has been at Haworth and shares his experience with the readers:

I'm standing on the doorstep of the 300-year-old Old White Lion Inn, trying to decide where to walk first. Straight in front of me is Haworth's cobbled Main Street, which snakes down a steep hill. Off to my right is the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which was home to the world's most famous family of writers from 1820 to 1861. And just behind me is the start of a country hike called "Walk to Wuthering Heights."
It's an easy choice. Even though it's starting to rain, I'm eager to work off my steak, along with three foam-topped pints of Black Sheep ale, from last night. With a group of tourists and a guide named Steven Wood, I march out of town and onto the heather-edged paths of Penistone Hill Country Park. (...)
Is that Top Withens in the distance? It is. Was it once a house? It was. When we make it, we collapse for a rest next to walls without roofs and collections of old stones.
Just when I'm wondering how this made Brontë think of romance, there is a blast of wind. A fat cloud retreats and we get a sword-thrust of sun. The moors we've stumbled over light up in sections as if in a play. Over here is luminescent green. Here is violet. And there is the brown and white of a stream. Deep in the distance are the steeples and houses of Haworth.
Now, I understand. I pull out my pen and some paper to see if I can do some writing myself. Or maybe a sketch. But Wood is waving his cane. It is time to begin the long hike home. (Peter Mandel)

A visit to the Parsonage is also recommended by The Telegraph: fun things to do with kids in Yorkshire:

Misunderstood teens and romantic souls reading the Brontës get a fascinating insight into one of the world’s most literary families who lived here in Haworth amidst the brooding moors. Don’t take small ones, though – Charlie played havoc running into roped off areas. We took solace in Branwell Brontë’s local pub The Black Bull, where we pretended to Phoebe that we hadn’t heard the barman mention the pub was haunted. (Ben and Dinah Hatch)

The New York Post asks Patti Smith about some of her favourite books. As we know, Villette is one of them:

My sister Linda, whom I’m very close to, begged me to read this about 15, 20 years ago. It’s very autobiographical. Charlotte was a governess in Belgium for a while, and I believe she fell in love with her employer, a married professor. She did nothing improper, but she dreamed of him. I think this begat the story of Lucy Snowe and her long, complex and tragic romance. (Barbara Hoffman)

Buffalo News reviews Morning, Noon and Night: Finding The Meaning of Life’s Stages Through Books by Arnold Weinstein:

To give a sample of Weinstein’s richly connective humanism, here he is on Jean Rhys’ 20th century “Jane Eyre” prequel, “Wide Sargasso Sea”: “I have come to see it as the saddest book in my teaching experience . . . It hits me —the professor of comparative literature who lives in three countries, speaks a batch of languages and routinely teaches literature from all across the Western canon—where it hurts: it explodes the myth of cross-cultural understanding.” Weinstein’s, I think, is a critical acquaintaince to be treasured. (Jeff Simon)

The Telegraph talkes a look at the BBC South Riding:

The cast were uniformly good, the social realism is unlikely to have put anyone off their supper and there was even a Jane Eyre-like climax with the revelation that Carne’s hysterical fruitcake of a wife was not dead, as we’d been led to suppose. Instead, she’s still with us in some yet-to-be-revealed demented, disfigured or otherwise undivorceable state. (John Preston)

The Edmonton Journal reviews Daniel Vann's Caribou Island:

David Vann’s second novel is a sort of Lord of the Flies meets A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, but as if it had been written by Tennessee Williams in collaboration with Jack London, both drunk and on downers, and set in the rain forests of Alaska (yes, there are such things). The claustrophobic gulag imagery starts right away. Instead of the infinitude most people believe Alaska to be, in the rainforest of Caribou Island the horizon is three feet in front of your face — you are hemmed in on every side and a savage animal (kind of like London’s White Fang) could pass you by so close you could touch it. Dark imagery, kind of like Wuthering Heights, only not. (Richard Sherbaniuk)

Several news outlets seem fascinated with Noel Fielding's Kate Bush impersonation (à la Wuthering Heights) in Let's Dance for Comic Relief: Unreality Primetime, Chortle, What's on TV, Digital Spy or Metro.

Daily Kos talks about the Gothic genre:

No, not Goths.  Gothics.  You know, Gothics.  Those bastard offspring of early 19th century potboilers by “Monk” Lewis and E.T.A. Hoffman and the Brontë sisters that feature a lovely, naïve young woman comes to a remote house/castle/abbey/ranch/mansion to tutor the children/catalogue the library/restore the tapestries/train the horses in Devon/Wales/Maine/the Loire Valley, meets a brooding, devilishly handsome dark-haired man, falls in love despite warnings from every other person in spitting distance, and faces unimaginable torments before she defeats a ghost/previous wife who’s gone mad/family curse/lack of Internet access before she finally marries her beloved and gets the deed to the house/castle/abbey/ranch/mansion as a wedding present.  It’s a formula that’s been around ever since a clever publisher figured out that stripping Jane Eyre of the feminism and political commentary was a dandy idea.  The heroine is always virginal and somewhat stupid, the hero is always handsome and somewhat cloddish, there are always Dark Secrets and Mysterious Passageways, and the supernatural trappings turn out to be as menacing as the rubber masks worn by the villain in the most recent Scooby-Doo cartoon. (Ellid)

The Scotsman interviews Jasper Fforde, author of The Eyre Affair; The Worcester Telegram & Gazette informs that the Sutton’s Full Court Press book group will read Jane Eyre; Grama's Space Bubble publishes the article "A Brief Examination of Moral Realism in Brontë’s Jane Eyre" by Trudy A. Martinez; Love Letters to the Library posts about Charlotte Brontë's book; Pasión por el teatro musical (in Spanish) briefly talks about Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre musical; Katherine's Journal is reading Wuthering Heights; YouTube user Dougandthefunnies comments on several recent reads and gives a C to Sarah Gray's Wuthering Bites. And another YouTube user, DinaDobrou, has uploaded a video taken around the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Abigail's Ateliers has been posting lately about her Brontë presentations and extensive research. About her Charlotte Brontë presentation, her Emily Brontë research and her impressive writing slope desk replica, her Charlotte Brontë gown and another very interesting one about Emily Brontë including her dress style of course. All of them worthwhile.
Picture credits: © Lyn Marie Cunliffe - www.abigailsateliers.com.

Precisely Les Soeurs Brontë uses pictures of her designs in beautiful snowy Brontë country landscapes to discuss the harshness of the winters in the Brontës' days. The Brontë Sisters is exploring Mary Taylor's story in New Zealand in these two fascinating posts (1 and 2).

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Emily Brontë, Haworth,Jane Eyre, References, Villette, Wuthering Heights