The Battle of the Brontës goes on and other news

The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy features the Eyresses zine release party in New York last night and interviews the moving force behind the project, Mikki Halpin:

Speakeasy: What gave you the idea to put together a  Jane Eyre zine?
Mikki Halpin: I was home sick and I think I watched every single BBC adaptation on iTune or Netflix; I was spending time with more people in bonnets and corsets than I was with modern humans. Also, when I heard about the new movie coming out, I just had this image of the Jane Eyre fashion trend, of people walking the runway in these Victorian outfits. It felt like all my friends had something to say about  Jane Eyre.
I love doing zines, and I've done them since the late 80s and early 90s. So I put out a call for entries on tumblr and it went from there. 
Why does this book have such a pull for female readers, for feminists, and for film-makers?
Jane Eyre very much fits into a tradition of the heroic journey. Jane has no family, friends, money or title. She's not good looking. She literally goes into the wilderness she does end up starving and thinking about stealing food! In between those periods she's looking for shelter, meeting people in strange communities like Lowood and Thornfield, and trying to fit into their moral order. But she keeps being asked to compromise herself. So she moves on.
There are other books that have that thrilling journey starring a woman but it s the most bare-bones. Rochester is just one of her experiences. It's about Jane being true to herself. And women audiences want to see it
Jane doesn't go shopping or sit around talking with her friends. She's more like Bruce Willis in  Die Hard. Every once in a while Hollywood realizes women want to see strong women onscreen and they bring her back. Also Jane Eyre is not a rich person, so she's a good recession-era heroine. 
What are some of the more unexpected topics we might find in Eyresses?
I'm excited that there are different types of pieces there is a sonnet. There's a  Jane Eyre community cookbook
with recipes for each character. There's an amazing photo essay. Several people wrote about [Jane's childhood friend] Helen Burns, too. They really identified with her inability to focus, her punishment for not being understood. 
Where can we find a copy of Eyresses?
People can email eyresses@gmailcom if they want to order it by email. It should be at Word bookstore in Brooklyn and possibly at Housing Works. (Sarah Seltzer)

Recordnet has asked several 'experts' to choose their favourite book-to-film adaptations.

Still he [Jim McBride, from Delta College] lists Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights," Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," Alan Le May's "The Searchers" and Robert Redford's version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" as films that successfully made the transfer. (Lori Gilbert)

We suppose he means the 1939 adaptation, which is also included on a list of '10 Best Period Romance Movies' by Screen Junkies.

The New Yorker's The Book Bench features the Morgan Library exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives, which includes some of Charlotte Brontë's papers.

In Charlotte Brontë's small, light-green school Atlas, from 1843, when she was teaching and taking classes at a boarding school in Brussels, presents a mischievous scrawl that reads,
Brussels, Saturday Morning, October 14th 1843. First class -I am very cold - there is no fire -I wish I were at home with Papa, and doodles of the type that materialize when the mind wanders. (Chloe McConnell)

The 'with Papa' bit is quite intriguing and we wonder if accurate as Winifred Gérin in her biography of Charlotte gave the full quotation as:

14th October '43 Brussels, Sat. morning
First class - I am very cold - There is no fire - I wish I were at home - it is a dreary life - especially as there is only one person in this house worthy of being liked - also another, who seems a rosy sugar plum, but I know her to be coloured-chalk.

The Daily Beast has an article on the Battle of the Brontës.

One is "poor, obscure, plain and little"; the other is a "wild, wick slip." One marries, and lives happily ever after. The other dies, and haunts her childhood home as a restless ghost. Forget Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. As a new version of Jane Eyre opened last week, to be followed by an adaptation of Wuthering Heights later this year, the debate of 2011 is shaping up to be: Charlotte or Emily Brontë ? (Jennie Yabroff) (Read the full article)

Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights seems to be going through a revival. Defamer says of it,

Twenty years on, I developed a new appreciation for the track, realising that interpretative dance potential aside, it is actually an amazingly beautiful song and that guitar outro? Oh god. I lose my nut over it every time. (Jess McGuire)

And The Telegraph:

Pitching her vocal gloriously, irresistibly between banshee wail and siren call, Bush announces her arrival on a pop scene awash with the cynical snarls and sneers of punk. Ethereal, mystical and slightly bonkers, her first and biggest hit sounded like nothing else around at the time, indeed like nothing before or since. "Out on the wiley, windy moors",she sings, insisting: "Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home." The 19-year-old Bush hadn't read Emily Brontë's novel. (Marc Lee)

The Telegraph also takes a look at the 'Top 5 Kate Bush spoofs', which include a couple of Wuthering Heights 'versions':

Noel Fielding Wuthering Heights Let's Dance for Comic Relief, 2011
Fielding made it to the final of the Comic Relief talent show in February with his dance parody of Bush's video for her early smash hit 'Wuthering Heights'. He didn't win, but his moves were impressively accurate. [...]
Tineke Schouten  Wuthering Heights
The Dutch comedian's 'Wuthering Heights' parody must have been inspired by Bush's original video where she flaps and wafts her fingers an awful lot:
But now I have a new nail polish/ It still feels a little sticky and rough/ but that's the disadvantage of waterproof, waterproof, waterproof. (Daisy Bowie-Sell)

The Ladue-Frontenac Patch suggests Jane Eyre as good reading material for the Spring Break.

Associated Content is full of Brontë essays these days. Here are a few: Franco Zeffirelli's 'Jane Eyre': A Flawed Gem, Jane Eyre: Best Adaptation, Heaven and Hell: A 1939 Film Portrayal of Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights', Ralph Fiennes Makes One Sexy Heathcliff.

Inkwell Inspirations posts about Jane Eyre, Shelby's Blog wonders about the ending of the novel and Motion Pictures on the fly writes about the 2006 adaptation. The Indiscriminate Reader reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. O Jovem Escritor writes in Portuguese about Wuthering Heights.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Journals, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights