"Emily Brontë’s book endures because the kind of passion that she wanted to convey is shocking in any age"

The Telegraph anticipates what will be a very Brontë autumn in the UK:

This coming autumn marks the battle of the Brontë films. As reported here last week, the new version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, already a Stateside hit, opens in Britain on September 9.
Sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, from British director Andrea Arnold, follows it into our cinemas just three weeks later.
There is talk that Wuthering Heights is a candidate for competition in Cannes, where Arnold’s talents are well-regarded. Her film stars Skins television actress Kaya Scodelario as Cathy, and newcomer James Howson (a genuine Yorkshireman) as Heathcliff.
If you’re thinking these novels get frequently adapted for the screen, you’re right: this will be the 23rd film or television version of Jane Eyre, and the 15th of Wuthering Heights. (David Gritten)

So many Jane Eyre reviews are beginning to affect film critics. This one from Time Magazine is on Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch:

You could say that Sucker Punch is a nymphet version of The Snake Pit or Shutter Island,
or [...] in its backstory about a decent girl deprived of her inheritance and consigned to grow up in a prisonlike environment, a gloss on mid-19th-century classics from Jane Eyre to Little Dorrit. (Richard Corliss)

The Guardian discusses some 19th century literary aunts:

But the twin apogees of Austenian aunts are, of course, are the supine Lady Bertram, welded to her sofa, and the ghastly Mrs Norris, in Mansfield Park. The latter's insidiousness and subtle power almost outweighs the brutality of Charlotte Brontë's cruel creation Mrs Reed, who consigns her niece Jane Eyre, monstrously, to the red room. (Charlotte Higgins)

and John Mullan's Guardian's Ten of is devoted to locked rooms:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The third-floor staircase door at Thornfield, "which of late had always been kept locked", conceals a sealed apartment where Mr Rochester's servant, the enigmatic Grace Poole, presides. One day Jane hears a terrible mirthless laugh from behind it, "a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber". What could it hide?

The Independent joins the ranks of those scandalised by the profanity of the upcoming radio adaptation of the novel by Jonathan Holloway. None of them has listened to the programme yet:

Talking of books, a Radio 3 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is going to contain four-letter words. I feel a little queasy about that. Emily Brontë was no doubt a feisty character and harboured strong emotions, but there's no record of either her or her masterpiece letting rip with expletives.

I'm even more surprised by the reasoning given by the man doing the adaptation. Playwright and theatre director Jonathan Holloway said: "For me Wuthering Heights is a story of violent obsession, and a tortuous unfulfilled relationship. This is not a Vaseline-lensed experience. The F-words are part of my attempt to shift the production to left field, and to help capture the shock that was associated with the original book when it was published."

That's a curious logic. Many great works were shocking when they first appeared, but the way to re-create that shock is not simply to throw in a few swear words. Violent passion still shocks, all by itself, without any gratuitous swearing. I wonder what else Radio 3 has in store. That mouthy Jane Eyre is surely ripe for a John McEnroe style-outburst. (David Lister)

And the Belfast Telegraph:

Fresh off the back of that Marie Stopes pregnancy ad, it now transpires that Radio 3 is to air a version of Wuthering Heights - on a Sunday evening - which will contain more effing and blinding than breakfast at Buck Pal when the latest red-top revelations regarding Airmiles Andy drop from the corgi's jaws.
Really, no one could call me a prude - I'm not so much Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells as Blase of Brighton - but it is my very worldliness, I feel, that makes me resent how 'grittiness' is now forced on us, like the artistic version of being moaned at about eating one's five-a-day? (Julie Birchill)

Fortunately, Erica Wagner in The Times is much more balanced:

Few things make me so glad as an old book that can still cause a stir. I’m talking about a book that was described this way, shortly after it was published: “This is a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”
Strange was definitely the word that the critics could agree on: “a strange inartistic story” another review began; and again, “a strange sort of book, baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it”. Readers, indeed, have been talking about it ever since — ever since Mr Lockwood paid his first visit to Mr Heathcliff (“A capital fellow!”) and described how apposite was the name of his neighbour’s house: Wuthering Heights.
And now it’s going to be on the radio — with swearing. I could say, in what I fantasise is the idiom of the era, that you could knock me down with a feather, or I could say, in more up-to-date fashion — oh, no, I won’t, but I will let you guess what might have to be asterisked out. I wouldn’t want to shock you, after all: is that what Jonathan Holloway, the playwright who has adapted Wuthering Heights for the radio, is trying to do? (...)
Read the reviews of Wuthering Heights and you will see that this is a book that bothered its first readers.
“Impossible to begin and not finish it”: you sense a wish that the urge could have been resisted — but the book was simply too overpowering. Too strange. Too compelling. Too troubling. So where does swearing come into into this? Now, I haven’t heard the dramatisation, so I can’t comment on its quality. Holloway (co-founder of the Red Shift theatre company in the early 1980s) is an experienced dramatist and adaptor of the classics; but I wouldn’t call him a safe pair of hands — that’s a bit boring. I think he wanted to remind his listeners that this book was shocking when it appeared; it is, after all, an account of uncontrollable, uncontainable sexual passion, and it was published in 1847. We like to think that they didn’t have that kind of thing back then — but they did; and Emily Brontë’s book endures because the kind of passion that she wanted to convey is shocking in any age. I’ll swear to that, and be glad of it.

The Oxford Times briefly mentions the current performances of the Shared Experience production of Polly Teale's Brontë in Oxford:

The Beaumont Street theatre’s new resident company Shared Experience took to the stage for the first time on Thursday, to present a new play about the authors of masterpieces Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
The production of Brontë, written by Polly Teale, is set in 1845, as drug-addled Branwell Brontë returns home to the home of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne in Haworth, Yorkshire, where they were working on their masterpieces of Victorian fiction. Actor Mark Edel-Hunt, who plays Branwell, said: “The opening night was such good fun. It was great to get in front of an audience.”

The Guardian also mentions the production.

The Scunthorpe Telegraph follows the Hull production of Jane Eyre. The Musical, particularly two of the younger members of the cast:

Two young friends have swapped their 21st century school-uniforms for the Regency styles of 1845 to star in the stage musical of Jane Eyre.
Elsham youngsters Frances Foster, nine, and Abigail Brumby, ten, are starring as pupils of Lowood School in the musical of one of Charlotte Brontë's greatest love stories.
This week Jane Eyre is on stage at Hull New Theatre with an orchestrated score from Paul Gordon, with lyrics from John Caird. (...)
She said: "It was really good. The best bit was when we first walked on stage. I got butterflies but it was because I was enjoying it. It's my second time performing at the theatre so I knew where I was going and I was less nervous.
"When I'm on stage I feel like acting is for me. I want to do more acting in the future. I like my costume but it isn't something I would want to wear every day. We have watched the DVD and thought that was good and we remembered which part it was during rehearsal." (...)
She said: "The opening night went well and I really enjoyed it. Seeing people's costumes was the best bit for me. I wasn't nervous at all about my parts and it was good to have my mum in the audience.
"Our grey dress with a white apron is very different from the school uniform we wear today but my school uniform is much better."

This article in The Guardian is spot-on about the love-hate relationship that the Brontës and the inhabitants of Keighley and Haworth have:

[Keighley i]s a spirited town – knocked about a tad in the 60s, but who wasn't? The Brontë family of Haworth just about sums up the area: hard and hardy as millstone, tender and compassionate as a lamb.
The case against… The Airedale Centre: how, when, why? Haworth's regular inundation with Brontë and (Kate) Bush fans: thousands seeking eeee-by-gum folksiness that the village, sadly, more than delivers. (Tom Dyckhoff)

Ann Arbor talks about a very curious project:“Flopped,” the latest production by the Thurston Community Players:

Set in 1985, students of the fictitious Arborville Academy of the Arts are preparing for their school play, a musical version of the literary classic, “Jane Eyre.” But when Hollywood movie-makers get wind of the production, it eventually becomes an ever-changing movie set going from '80s romantic comedy to a “Star Wars” sing-along. (Danny Shaw)

Another curious performance-art production is Blue Man Group in Washington (Warner Theatre). From the Washington Post:

Giant iPhone-like panels emblazoned with app icons appear next to the Blue Men and proceed to relay factoids about spam, or display goofy reductions of literary classics (“Wuthering Heights,” “Hamlet,” etc.) in Twitter-feed-like format. (Celia Wren)

Crosswalk features Jane Eyre in an article about the importance of saying no sometimes:

Power, even omnipotence, is useless to the lover in the face of intransigence. In the novel Jane Eyre, Jane is unwilling to break the laws of God despite her passion for Rochester. Rochester knows he could take her body–Jane is unable to stand against him–but he wants her voluntary love. He longs for her soul and the soul can only be given freely. (John Mark Reynolds)

Film Journal uncovers an anecdote we werent't aware of. It seems that Jane Eyre 1970 was one of the first films that used Dolby sound:

Dolby’s cinema program began in November of 1970, with the experimental application of A-type noise reduction to excerpts of the film Jane Eyre, then in production at Pinewood Studios in London. (Bill Mead)

The Wellingtonista (New Zealand) mentions Mary Taylor's Wellington connection:

Above the cutting runs Paterson St, one more potential victim of the hungry highway. The tunnel, a shortcut born of Depression, cheap labour and a dogged faith in the automobile, is preparing for further expansion. It’s time has returned.  Among the threatened houses is number 7, tucked back behind a nondescript block, but with a “fancy colonial” style and sweeping driveway that attest to its grander history. It was built for Waring Taylor (politician, fraudster, “well-meaning muddler”), and is likely to have been visited by his sister Mary (shopkeeper, pioneer feminist, delicately described as a “close friend” of Charlotte Brontë). (Alf Rune)

The Manila Bulletin interviews Susannah Carson, author of A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Writers On Why We Read Jane Austen:

How did you first come to know Austen?
SC: I was in my early teens when I first read Jane Austen. My grandmother liked to read old-fashioned historical romances, such as those by Victoria Holt and Georgette Heyer. I should confess that I read these modern adaptations first in my eagerness to read “grown-up” novels. When I discovered that these were modelled on the novels of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, I read them all in quick succession and haven’t stopped re-reading them since. (Karen Anne C. Liquete)

We are shocked to know that according to Inc., Watson (IBM's artificial intelligence computer system) doesn't know its Brontës:

He recently spoke with Inc.com's Christine Lagorio about fostering innovation within a mature company, leading diverse workgroups, and what exactly Watson doesn't know. (Hint: Don't ask him about the plot of Wuthering Heights).

Fiona Walker talks to the Daily Mail:

I have never been able to get into Dickens, despite many attempts. I know I should love him, but I like to read - and write - at a furious pace and I find his novels too mannerly and laborious. A part of the problem is probably that my first taste of Dickens was Little Dorrit, a set text for A-Level which seemed to take an eternity to get going; the other set text was Wuthering Heights, and there really was no contest.

The Newcastle Chronicle interviews singer Camilla Kerslake:

Kate Bush is my favourite singer. When I lived up in Preston, at 10 I entered the North West Talent Competition and I sang Wuthering Heights. There were 4,000 people there. (Gordon Barr)

The Hindu reviews the film Barney's Version:

Until Miriam enters Barney's life — and Barney's Version — we witness the unremarkable milestones of an unremarkable man. But when he rids himself of Wife Number Two, and when he declares, dramatically, to Miriam that he'll do anything for her, she tempers his throbbing passion with practicality. She does not want to be Catherine to his Heathcliff — merely wife to his husband. (Baradwaj Rangan)

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is reviewed in The Guardian:

McLain retells [A Moveable] Feast [by Ernest Hemingway] from Hadley's perspective, in the tradition of novels such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, giving voice to a pivotal and yet comparatively silent woman from a classic book. (Sarah Churchwell)

Red Deer Advocate presents Against the Wall Theatre’s world premiere production of Dead Lover's Day:

Definitely there are people who cling onto things for years and years,” said Goldade — whether it’s the memory of a failed marriage or any relationship long after it’s over.
Think of Heathcliff’s obsessive longing for his dead soulmate Cathy in Wuthering Heights or, on an even scarier scale, Glenn Close’s fixation on Michael Douglas’s character in the movie Fatal Attraction. (Lana Michelin)

Reason Magazine publishes the obituary of its founder Lanny Friedlander:

Jesus, how did he so quickly become a ghost at the very mag he'd started? It wasn't due to some sort of Balzacian heist or gothic double-cross that's just as common at magazine startups as it is at Web 2.0 ventures. Though to be honest, there is a bit of Jane Eyre to it. (Nick Gillespie)

The Hartford Courant asks 'What's That College Education Worth?':

It's also fine to be a Gina-type, who revels in the liberal arts and ponders the mysteries of "Jane Eyre," but these days, you sort of need a rich daddy to major in such stuff. (Laurence Cohen & Gina Barreca)

The Daily News reviews Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson:

Shades of Jane Eyre meets Sherlock Holmes, circa 1776: two murders near a country manor in West Sussex; a Lord accused; and insanity, fire, orphans. (Karen Corvello)

El País (Uruguay) reviews  Los peligros de fumar en la cama by Mariana Enriquez:

No es casual que las referencias a las locas encerradas -que retrotraen a la fundacional Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë- estén aquí traídas una y otra vez, llenando de terror al lector mientras le llega el viento molesto del amarronado Río de la Plata.  (Andrea Blanqué) (Translation)

Il Sole (Italy) reviews American Gothic by William Gaddis:

Gaddis è un narratore impegnativo. Spesso i dialoghi terminano con sospensioni che non ci danno l'esatto concetto ma ce lo fanno intuire, e Gotico americano (che allude al famoso quadro di Grant Wood) è un collage post-modernista sorprendente in cui la citazione ha larga parte: infatti, incastonati nel testo, troviamo rivisitazioni di Charlotte Brontë, Robinson Jeffers, Joseph Conrad, nonché brani da pubblicazioni scientifiche reali e persino scene di film di Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Hitchcock. (Renzo S. Crivelli) (Translation)

and Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm:

Alcuni personaggi sono esilaranti: il cugino predicatore, un animale che sputa come un mantice parole di fuoco a memento dell'inferno che tutti attende; o lo scrittore con la fissa del sesso che si è ritirato in campagna per scrivere la biografia del fratello delle Brontë e dimostrare che era lui il vero autore di Cime tempestose. (Translation)

Le Devoir recommends a visit to Haworth:

Si vous avez le temps: Haworth, dans le Yorkshire, pour les soeurs Brönte (sic) (Les Hauts de Hurlevent et Jane Eyre). (Lio Kiefer)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) talks about manga kids at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

Virginia und Petra, zwei Fans der enorm erfolgreichen Beyblade-Videospiele (sie Kampfkreisel: Der große Dreh), halten es mit Terry Pratchett ebenso wie mit Charlotte Brontë. Wenn sie schreiend und fuchtelnd ihre Kampfkreisel aufeinanderhetzen, ist schwer vorstellbar, dass auch Cathy und Heathcliff zu ihrer Welt gehören. (Daniel Haas) (Translation) 

Cheap Brontë books in The Hindustan Times; SMR mentions the Judith Caldwell's Wuthering Heights painted steel panels in the Alexandria Building in Seattle; Masdearte (Spain) talks about the Penagos Award given to Paula Rego and mentions her connections to Charlotte Brontë; The Arts Blogger posts a lengthy and not always fortunate review of Jane Eyre ("the only notable book [Charlotte Brontë] she wrote"), film and novel. Diana Quincy Romance Author has reread the novel; Phantasma posts about Wuthering Heights; La professora d'inglese posts about Wide Sargasso Sea (in Italian); Bibliojunkie plans a Wuthering Heights read-along; Rosey's Reviews posts about the Jane Eyre audiobook read by Josephine Bailey; Huujuu posts about the Three Graces masonic lodge in Haworth.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights