Charlotte Brontë on censorship and other news

A positive review of Jane Eyre 2011 can be read in The Daily Cardinal.

I am so glad that my fear of novel-butchering did not keep me from watching this blissfully-wrought version of "Jane Eyre," and although it's currently only a limited release, this should become the version without any of my former hesitation in seeing it. (Abbie Kriebs)

The Digital Trends review is also positive although they feel the need to make it clear that this is not a romantic comedy.

Jane Eyre won’t appeal to everyone, but it is hard to fault the film for what it presents. Not everyone will enjoy the bleakness that begins the life of Jane, but from a technical standpoint, the movie is a success. Charlotte Brontë would be proud, and so will fans of the book. (Ryan Fleming)

IndieWire sums up what Jane Eyre could mean for Focus Features:

Focus Gets Classy Numbers From “Jane Eyre”: After having a tough time with late 2010 releases like “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and “Somewhere,” Focus has found lovely numbers thanks to Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë‘s “Jane Eyre.” Leading up to the release, folks wondered whether its non-presence in Sundance or Berlin was suggestive of a weak sophomore effort from “Sin Nombre”‘s Fukunaga. But strong reviews and a four-week total of $3,505,366 proved them wrong. With further expansion on the way, “Jane” could give Focus a $10 million hit. (Peter Knegt)

Alt Film Guide aptly recalls Charlotte Brontë's views on censorship in the light of the censored version of The King's Speech which opened last weekend in the US.

Now, what made me take the trouble to write this post on the King's Speech censored rerelease was a coincidence. At no. 15 on the North American box-office chart, The King's Speech is only two slots below Cary Fukunaga's film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 19th-century novel Jane Eyre.
I'm currently rereading Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, whose 1850 edition — two years after Emily's death — was introduced by Charlotte. In it, she writes the following:

"A large class of readers … will suffer greatly from the introduction into the pages of this work of words printed with all their letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial and final letter only—a blank line filling the interval. I may as well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power to apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those expletive with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does—what feeling it spares—what horror it conceals."

Remember, this was written more than 150 years ago. It's disturbing — and quite revealing — that Brontë's wise remarks remain just as relevant in the United States in the early 21st century. (Andre Soares)

And her words are also suitable for the Wuthering Heights radio dramatisation controversy, which goes on and on. Yesterday's letter to the Guardian is now addressed by another letter to that newspaper:

Peter Silverton may be right about Heathcliff intending to call Nelly Dean a Jeremy (Letters, 4 April). A simpler explanation is that for 19th-century people, "bitch" was as offensive an epithet as the C-word is today. Anyone who owns a female dog and has watched its behaviour on heat will understand why. Nelly's wondering why people are offended by one animal's name when they aren't by another is merely one example of her emotional illiteracy. And this in turn is part of Emily Brontë's paradoxical strategy of using narrators – Lockwood is another – who fail to understand the significance of the events they are recounting.
James Richards

The Huffington Post interviews Stephanie Cowell:

You wrote about Monet's first wife and muse, Camille Doncieux, and yet little is known about the real Camille. Do you have rules for creating fictional portraits of real people?
[...] And then there is the important realization that real people do not always seem the same through the eyes of those who knew them or biographers who look back at them. To some biographers, for instance, Charlotte Brontë was a generous saint; to others she was caustic and critical. (Susan Dormady Eisenberg)

Another writer interviewed is Kate Cann on Books Southern Africa.

Do you think a YA book that appeals to both sexes is the ideal?
Not necessarily. There are some ‘male’ books – like Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies – that appeal to girls too but that doesn’t in my opinion make them better than Jane Eyre – a book that very few boys will read! (Sally)

The New York Press reviews Sisters of Fortune: The First American Heiresses to take Europe by Storm by Jehanne Wake and concludes,

But if you’ve already read Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters (all of whom crop up in the sisters’ story), the Catons will be welcome company. (Mark Peikert)

The Omaha World-Herald takes a look at the name 'Janet' and mentions its use by Rochester in Jane Eyre.

Les Soeurs Brontë posts about the Pillar Portrait and an odd personal experience connected to it. Sunset Hope's Blog, Sapi Dan Bukunya and Reflections of a Book Addict post about Jane Eyre, the novel. While the new film is reviewed by Biblio Beau, Tales of a Madcap Heiress, Insideout NYC and Lesson... Learned??? Teadevotee hasn't really liked Agnes Grey. And AbigailsAteliers wonders 'What Did Emily Brontë really believe?'

Categories: Audio-Radio, Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights