Racism, inheritances and reincarnation

The Guardian has a column by Sophie Mayer on why 'The new Wuthering Heights does not ignore racism; it tackles it full on':

As a film critic, I have been struck by the skin-deep tokenism by which Hollywood cinema wishes to conjure up a "post-racial" world. Performers with an array of skin tones are cast as secondary characters who may serve to counsel, counterpoint or liberate the white protagonists, but have no discernible history of their own – and certainly no antagonism towards the white characters. Spike Lee popularised the term "the magical negro" to describe this persistent, consoling fantasy of the character of colour's role in a "post-racial" world.
In Arnold's film Heathcliff's blackness is neither decorative diversity nor affirmative action: we are shown him being cussed, beaten and forced to break rocks – a startling image that locates the impact of slavery at the centre of the English literary canon.
This is emphasised by making Heathcliff the film's point-of-view character, another radical departure from conventional adaptations of the novel, and by the use of a 4:3 ratio rather than the widescreen we might expect. Like Heathcliff, the viewer feels trapped in the narrow frame afforded him in a racist society. As Rose notes, Arnold's Heathcliff is racially insulted by his adoptive brother, who also beats him. Brutally pejorative reactions to his ethnicity come to define his character, "degrading" him as Catherine says.
Arnold makes powerful sense of Brontë's novel and its passionate argument, long recognised by feminist critics in relation to Catherine: that there can be no true love, because there is no true freedom in a society where there is any form of power and domination. Rose concludes: "Through Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights unsettled formerly stable boundaries of 19th-century Britain, including racial ones, and it is apparently still doing it today." In comparison with the shallow cosmetic surgery of the "post-racial", Arnold's film, by emphasising the consequences of racism, shows a way to excise its deep and lasting wound.

HeraldNet thinks that Michael Fassbender 'smoldered' in this year's adaptation of that novel.

And the Oxford Mail recalls the previous BBC adaptation in an article about Ruth Wilson:

Ruth - who starred in a TV adaptation of Jane Eyre - insisted there was no pressure recreating the classic [Anna Karenina].
She said: "Not really - I've done it before with Jane Eyre, so no."

The New York Times discusses inheritances:

It turned out that disinherited people, including those being punished with greatly reduced inheritances, were everywhere — in the news, in historical documents, literature, other people’s families — a whole silent population of the suffering and disavowed. There were Cordelia and Jane Eyre, of course, but also real-life characters. How had I landed in such an easy sisterhood with Jane Fonda, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tori Spelling, Paris Hilton? It was beyond me; I’d never even been blond. I learned that only in America do parents routinely disinherit their children. The act itself — personally, morally, legally and culturally — is practically unimaginable in most of the world. (Mary Beth Caschetta)

Examiner reviews Jewelle St. James's The Lennon-Brontë Connection:

Early on in the story Jewelle discovers that not only was Lennon the reincarnation of Bronte, she was Bronte’s sister Emily (author of the classic Wuthering Heights); but Emily barely features in the book. One might say that “this time around” Branwell is the one up front and center stage, thanks to the fame of his reincarnation, John Lennon. Unfortunately, as Lennon’s spirit tells Jewelle in the book, “Branwell was my unsuccessful side.” While his sisters were the prolific authors of the family, Branwell’s talent was shrouded by his alcoholism and drug abuse as well as grief over a failed relationship--all of which killed him at a very young age. Quickly forgotten, his short legacy was buried along with him by his sisters’ fame. [...]
While I wish the book had more photos of her travels to England---the Salisbury Plain, the countryside of Mere, the churches and gravestones, perhaps more at the Bronte Parsonage, and Bronte's “drinking chair” at the Black Bull Pub where she actually encountered his spirit face to face---there are some goodies. There is a downright stunning comparison of Bronte’s self portrait to Lennon that shows the striking resemblance. There is also a detailed list of parallels between Lennon and Bronte’s lives that suggest the retention of various aspects of our personas from lifetime to lifetime.
Bronte’s beautiful poem Remember Me is flanked by his silhouette at the closing of the book. It says it all. This tortured artist who died too young in obscurity is finally getting some press—and surely through the efforts of this story, he is no longer a forgotten English poet. (Shelley Germeaux)

Included on a playlist by the Guardian is

Kate Bush Snowflake The 50 Words for Snow opener takes me back to Wuthering Heights. Not because the songs are similar, but the feel: windswept Haworth moors, and beautiful desolation. (Dave Simpson)

Mjarre posts about passion in Jane Eyre. Wanderlust Pixie Dust shows off her 1875 edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë.