Jane Eyre: only for discerning Anglophiles

The news of the day is of course the royal wedding. However, a couple of sites describing Westminster abbey are getting something wrong. See, for instance, the Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg):

The resting place of monarchs including Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, it holds the soul of England also, in the graves of writers such as William Blake, Robert Burns, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and the Brontës. Just so, commoners and kings, princes and poets all have helped make England one of the most influential nations the Earth has ever known.

The fact that the Brontës (and it's the same with Jane Austen) have a plaque in Poets' Corner doesn't mean that their graves are there - the plaque is merely a tribute to them while their actual resting place is in a vault under Saint Michael and All Angels church in Haworth. (Jane Austen is buried in Winchester cathedral, by the way).

Strollerderby - a Babble blog - makes the same mistake.

But that's not all there is about the royal wedding today. The Telegraph (EDIT: and the Daily Express) has an article on Harriet Martineau given that she was an ancestor of Kate Middleton's.

Her circle included Thomas Malthus, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Brontë and Wordsworth. These people, the heralds of change, thought they could improve the world and, to a greater or lesser extent, did so. Buoyed up by their vision of the new, Harriet yearned to experience nascent cultures for herself, and at a time when few of her age or class undertook such solo trips, she sailed to the United States in 1835.

Erm... actually, most of Harriet Martineau's literary output was published long before Charlotte Brontë's writing could even begin to 'buoy her vision up'. And, anyway, their friendship was quite brief and ended on an angry note which continued even after Charlotte's death.

Time Magazine makes a sweeping statement about Anglophiles enjoying the whole royal wedding thing:

The most galling thing about Anglophiles, who worship a class of people that many English people hold in contempt, is that they are oblivious to what makes England great. The English have given the U.S. many wonderful things — our legal system, King Lear, Keith Richards, Jane Eyre, Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch, Fawlty Towers, the Protestant Reformation, Twinings' English Breakfast Tea — but these are not the things about England that Anglophiles admire. Anglophilia, a demented form of cultural fetishism, is directed not at the things that make Britain great but at those — bowler hats, Harrods, people with names like Bonham-Carter — that make it twee. (Joe Queenan)

We wonder why you can't, say, like both Harrods and Jane Eyre, for instance.

Anyway, we have a few more reviews of Jane Eyre 2011 for the upper class of Anglophiles. From Tulsa World Scene:

The new film of Charlotte Brontë's novel "Jane Eyre" should come with a warning: This picture may induce both romantic swooning and emotional devastation. [...]
This "Jane Eyre" equally owes its vibrancy to beautifully austere photography and a story that works on three levels: as love story, social commentary and Gothic thriller. [...]
The movie's excellence is solidified by its faithfulness to those parts of the novel depicted in a two-hour film - including themes of madness and atonement - without going to melodramatic lengths to portray these factors, as seen in previous productions.
For those who think that Brontë's novel has been adapted so frequently for the screen and stage that if you've seen one, you seen them all, know that this "Jane Eyre" is one for the ages. (Michael Smith)

The North Coast Journal has liked the film too:

Indeed, it is the darker aspects of the novel that this film adaptation of Jane Eyre so wonderfully captures. Screenwriter Moira Buffini expertly recreates both the spirit and substance of the novel in this filmic translation without twisting the material into something else. In particular, both the critique of the social structure and the Gothic aspects of the novel are preserved. Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) contributes some very clean direction with appropriately beautiful, stark images from cinematographer Adriano Marianelli [sic: the cinematographer's name is Adriano Goldman while the music is by Dario Marianelli]. (Charlie Myers)

The Vancouver Courier recommends the film quite emphatically:

If you haven’t already seen it, throw on your best empire-waist dress and head straight out to delight in Jane Eyre, the Charlotte Brontë novel re-imagined by Cary Fukunaga. Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) stars as our much put-upon teenage heroine, up against Michael Fassbinder’s Rochester. And if you don’t know that St. John Rivers is pronounced “sin-jin,” you shall be dispatched with, post-haste. (Julie Crawford)

Timothy Sullivan reviews Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre on Technorati. Some reviews of Jane Eyre 2011 on blogs: Movie Wave and middecalsswhitenoise review Dario Marianelli's soundtrack and Amber Blue Bird, needcoffee (on video), Virtual Margin (adding a comment about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea), Gay RVA and The Grizzly Growler post about the film itself; Urbantramper Lyrics & Music posts the lyrics of a song inspired by Jane Eyre: The Ballad of Mr Rochester; 30 Day Book Challenge, Tribulations d'un Oeuf (in French) and Welcome to Love review the original novel and Reading with my Twin is reading Villette.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Villette, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights