A Brontë on the notes

On Yorkshire Day, Diana Wallis, Euro MP for Yorkshire and Humberside, has a very fitting petition to make to the Bank of England. We read in the York Press or the South Yorkshire Times:

Diana Wallis, an MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, says somebody famous from Yorkshire should be included on a future Bank of England note.
Ms Wallis has now written to Mervyn King, the governor of the bank, urging him to acknowledge the region.

And on her website we find her exact words:

"Yorkshire has been woefully underrepresented on Bank of England bank notes since the 'pictorial series' was introduced in the 1970s. In fact, my research suggests that not a single Yorkshire man or woman has been on any note in that time*.
"Ahead of Yorkshire Day, I have written to the Governor of Bank of England Mervyn King, who is responsible for designs of banknotes, to suggest it's time to put a person from Yorkshire on the notes.
"I am sure everybody has their own thoughts on which Yorkshire individuals should feature. My own personal choice and the one I have suggested to Mervyn King is the Brontë sisters. Arguably the Brontës are the world's most famous literary family and, of course, Haworth Parsonage near Bradford was their home from 1820 to 1861. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë were the authors of some of the best loved books in the English language.
"Having the Brontë sisters on a future note would also improve the ratio of females overall which hitherto has been poor also. One could also think of Amy Johnson, the world renowned aviatrix from Hull."
"It would be nice to get an agreement on Yorkshire representation by the time of the next Yorkshire Day in 2012."

More Yorkshire people. The actress Lisa Riley is interviewed in The Yorkshire Post:

Do you have a favourite walk – or view?
I love Haworth and Brontë country, and in particular the area beyond the church and behind the school. The main strip of the village is pretty touristy but if you look around you’ll find where you can walk for miles.

In the Beaver County Times there is a reminder of the upcoming release of the Jane Eyre 2011 DVD:

JANE EYRE (Universal; $29.99, DVD; $34.99, Blu-ray Disc; Aug. 16; B): Mia Wasikowska ("The Kids Are All Right") and Michael Fassbender ("Centurion") star in this romantic drama that's set in the 19th century. It's based on Charlotte Brontë's novel that's set on an isolated island estate and follows a governess and her relationship with a man hiding a secret. Cary Fukunaga ("Sin Nombre") directed. Quality rating based on website and wire-service reports. (121 minutes) A nude image, adult themes, brief violence. (PG-13)  (Lou Gaul)

The nude image turns out to be a painting on the wall. Oh well.

World Socialist Web Site reviews the film and gives a Marxist vision of the novel (à la Terry Eagleton):

Writing in 1854, Karl Marx stated that Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens were a “splendid brotherhood of fiction writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together.” (...)
While the latest version has some weaknesses—there is a certain rigidness in Jane and Rochester’s relationship—the performances by Wasikowska and Fassbender are generally good and well-supported by Judi Dench. The two-hour feature is beautifully photographed and it is refreshing to see a ‘young’ Jane. Mia Wasikowska was 19 when the film was shot, roughly the same age as Jane when she first meets Rochester.
Brontë’s novel is an exceptional piece of literature. Written during the mid-1840s when mass strikes and protests by the Chartist movement shook the British political establishment, the story is filled with biting social commentary and contempt for the hypocrisy of organised religion and for social conventions that poison healthy human relations. It evinces a genuine concern for the poor and is underpinned by a self-confidence and determination that society must change. (Richard Phillips)

Bookslut talks about humiliation in books and quotes from Anne Carson's The Glass Essay:

In “The Glass Essay,” Anne Carson, or the woman in her poem, fears turning into Emily Brontë whenever she visits her mother’s house. “my lonely life around me like a moor,/ my ungainly body stumping over the mud flats with a look of transformation/ that dies when I come in the kitchen door.” When she reads the section of Wuthering Heights where Heathcliff clings at the lattice in the storm and sobs, “Come in! Come in!”, she falls to the carpet and sobs, herself. “She knows how to hang puppies/ that Emily.” Anne, or her protagonist, is enthralled by Emily Brontë's biography, by the details of her real life, her real body, the real or invented lives and bodies in her collected works. Anne herself, or the poem-girl, remembers too much, according to her mother. (Elizabeth Bachner)

The Globe and Mail talks about anonymous sources in journalism and the Brontës are handy for background reference on anonymity:

The Brontë sisters published their first work under male noms de plume. (Neil Reynolds)

A Brontëite in the Plattsburgh Press-Republican staff:

In my college years, I read everything by Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, Charles Dickens, Tennessee Williams and others. I thought "Wuthering Heights" was the best love story I ever read — still do. (Lois Clermont)

Nell Dixon interviews the writer Rowan Coleman:

What's your favourite book to read?
I love, love, love Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Last summer I got to see a few pages of the hand written manuscript in the British Library. I cried, it was so moving to be so 'close' to a writer that as inspired me for most of my life. (...)
If you could invite some book characters or authors to dinner, who would you choose and why?
Oh, I'd really like to have a girls night in with all my favourite lady writers, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and her sister, George Elliot, and all of the very man great contemporary women writers there around today - including you, Nell! I think we would have a blast.

Fluttering Butterflies asks yet another writer about favourite books. Catherine Bruton says:

‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys – which is the story of the mad woman in the attic from ‘Jane Eyre’ before she got locked in the loft and went loopy. Rhys turns Brontë’s novel on its head, makes you despise Rochester, think differently about madness, and it is written in the most luscious, dense, clotted prose that is so extraordinary it almost makes you feel like you’re losing your mind yourself.

MaryAnn Myers posts about Jane Eyre and Douglas Christian Larsen about Les Miserables Versus Wuthering Heights, both on Associated Content; Bollywood, Books and Baking reviews Withering Tights; Pensamentos de Uma Batata Transgênica reviews (in Portuguese) Jane Eyre 1949; The English Emporium is posting useful questions about Jane Eyre for English teachers; the Brontë Sisters is collecting remembrances of Emily Brontë and namraf has uploaded to Flickr a whole series of pictures of Top Withins and surroundings.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights