Haworth in literary amber

The Haworth Parish Church has been able to raise the money for the reparations but it now seems that they need even more.We read on BBC News:

The cost of repairs to the church where the novelist sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë are buried has unexpectedly risen by up to £50,000.
St Michael and All Angels Parish Church in Haworth, West Yorkshire, had raised the £65,000 needed to secure £100,000 in funding from English Heritage.
But rising costs of building work now means it requires up to £50,000 more.
The roof of the church is badly damaged and water has damaged the original wall paintings.
Discussions are under way to decide whether the offer of an English Heritage grant will still stand.
An English Heritage spokesperson said: "We're disappointed to hear that Haworth Church has met this last minute funding challenge.
"We know how important the repairs to the church are and want to support them as much as possible in getting this fantastic historic church repaired."
John Huxley, secretary at Haworth church, said: "We were overjoyed to learn we had reached the total, then knocked sideways by finding out building costs had gone up by so much.
"The reaction from the public to help raise funds has been absolutely phenomenal."
The church said a meeting would be held on Tuesday to discuss further fundraising options.

The Telegraph & Argus adds:

But as that target was reached yesterday church secretary John Huxley said he received the “gut-wrenching” news that due to escalating building costs it would need tens of thousands of pounds more than it had originally thought.
He said English Heritage was being “very helpful, very supportive and very sympathetic” and was looking at ways it could help. “What was due to be one of the most joyful days in the church’s history has turned very sour,” he said last night.
“This morning we thought we were home and dry. To get this bombshell as the day has gone on has been gut-wrenching.”
Fundraising events and schemes have been organised by residents and people keen to help restore the church, which is the burial place of the Bronte sisters.
They included the production of a “Haworth Couldn’t Wear Less” calendar and the donation of proceeds from the sale of 100 limited editions of a painting of the Bronte sisters by artist Stella Vine.
Mr Huxley said: “A lot of money has come in from well-wishers.
“We have raised something in the region of £40,000 ourselves which is an unbelievable result for a church of our size.
“Once we have got over the disappointment we’ll have to dust ourselves down.
“Where we’ll get the money from I don’t know. We’re just hoping there’s someone out there who can help us.
“Lots of people have been very generous and kind but we’re throwing ourselves on their mercy again.”
Donations can be made online at haworthchurch.co.uk or cheques made payable to ‘Haworth Church Restoration Fund’ can be sent c/o the treasurer to 17 North View Terrace, Haworth, BD22 8HJ. (Tanya O'Rourke)

The Yorkshire Post includes a video.

The Haworth housing development projects are discussed in a very good article in The Telegraph:

There is a Brontë Hotel in Haworth, and a Brontë minicab company, and Ye Olde Brontë Tea Rooms. Not forgetting the Brontë Balti House (free delivery for orders over £6).

Charlotte, Emily and Anne would have been amazed to discover how ubiquitous their family name has become. The sisters were unwitting authors of an industry when, in search of childhood entertainment, they began making up stories, personal histories of the toy soldiers given to their brother Branwell by their father Patrick, perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels.

The Brontë myth enshrouds Haworth and its overlooking moors even more completely than Shakespeare's does Stratford. This corner of the industrial West Riding is captured in literary amber.

"Haworth expresses the Brontës; the Brontës express Haworth," wrote Virginia Woolf after a visit to the village in 1904. "They fit like a snail to its shell."

Climb the steep, cobbled high street to the parsonage where the family lived and the modern world fades. The churchyard is dark even on a clear blue winter afternoon, its tall, gothic gravestones bent this way and that, blackened, mossy faces recording lives snatched away by consumption, typhoid and malnutrition. Crows mourn overhead, completing the melancholy. Even the Japanese coach parties, up to five a day in the summer, cannot dispel its essential silence.

Haworth may suffer to a degree from chocolate-boxitis, as many British tourist "experiences" do, but the tea and gift shoppes cannot disguise the enduring moodiness of the place. Best to come in bad weather, when the Pennine wind slaps the face and the rain is horizontal.
"If Patrick Brontë walked out of his front door he would recognise the buildings, he would recognise the same field patterns," says John Huxley, chairman of Haworth parish council. "But if he were to go down to the bottom of the village 10 years from now he wouldn't know where the hell he was."
Mr Huxley is talking about a piece of vandalism that could be dreamt up only by the men who, in an earlier incarnation, gave us system-built, high-rise flats and no-go housing estates. Bradford council's planners want to build 600 houses in Haworth, a settlement of 2,500 homes now, surrounding the village with "executive" homes and cheaper, more humble dwellings. Brownfield sites, home to old textile mills, will be used, but green belt also.
Haworth, Britain's second literary tourist attraction after Stratford- upon-Avon, is falling victim to this country's hunger for new homes. Bradford council wants to see 48,500 houses built within its boundaries by 2028 to accommodate a growing population, including immigrants from south Asia and Eastern Europe. Haworth and neighbouring villages in the Worth Valley such as Oakworth, setting for the film The Railway Children, must take their share, say the men in the town hall.
They have government on their side. The Coalition is preparing to tear up 1,300 pages of planning regulations and replace them with just 52 in an attempt to stimulate house building. Following the Telegraph's widely supported Hands Off Our Land campaign, there are signs that ministers are preparing to rebalance the proposals, giving more emphasis to the environment, but there will still be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, whatever that is, and more freedom to build in the green belt.
"If you talk to people in Haworth, they don't like Bradford council," says the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, Patrick Brontë's successor at St Michael and All Angels. "We are not saying 'No' to any housing. But we are saying, 'be sensible'. If you had a factory making lots of money, would you knock half of it down? Well, this is a tourism factory.
"A lot of people make the mistake of thinking people come solely because of the Brontës. In fact, only about 10 per cent of tourists visit the parsonage. They come for the beauty of the village as a whole."(...)
"From the earliest days there was this myth that the Brontës inhabited a house surrounded by wild moors, living in total isolation," says Andrew McCarthy, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. "This was never true because the Worth Valley was an industrial area even then, mainly textiles. The Brontës lived on the dividing line between industry and untamed moorland to the west. You don't have to walk far to enter another world. The fear is that, with more and more housing, this world will disappear in stages." (...)
If built, the executive villas will be visible from the edge of the moors, filling in more of the precious fields around Haworth. Visitors will have more need to look away – there is already plenty of ugly housing from the Sixties surrounding poor Oakworth.
"Six hundred houses in a small place like this is massive," says Mr Huxley. "People coming into the village will be met by executive housing estates. We are an iconic part of the North, and what we look like – the view of the village from across the valley – is absolutely crucial. If we are a tourist destination, we should be respected as such."
English Heritage considers Haworth a village at risk and has offered to pay 80 per cent of the cost of returning shopfronts to their original appearance. That won't make much difference if Haworth ceases to be a village and becomes a commuter town.
"The Brontës as writers are synonymous with landscape," says Mr McCarthy. "They had a deep attachment to this place; they were continually drawn back to this source of inspiration. They would not be happy to see it spoiled."
Plus ça change. In 1879 John Wade, Patrick Brontë's successor, pulled down the old church and rebuilt it, to wails of protest from Brontë admirers. Only the clocktower remains from the Brontës' time, pockmarked by musket balls fired by Patrick to scare away the ravens. Wade was a veritable Brontëphobe, refusing to christen girls Charlotte, Emily or Anne.
Mr Mayo-Smith must fight another battle while fending off developers: finding £1.25 million to repair his weather-beaten church, the south-facing roof of which is taking in water. Criminals have done their bit, stripping lead from the roof three times in the last 18 months.
The vicar finds solace in walks on the moors. The ground is hard with frost, the undergrowth brittle white, as he explains their beauty. A single leaning tree and a signpost (in English and Japanese) break the horizon. "It was May, an awful day. The rain was lashing in from the moors, the wind was strong, and I came up here to pray. It was barren, forlorn, elemental. Wonderful."
Nearby, a henge of books erupts from the ground, stone books, moss-covered sculptures, a tribute to the inspirational power of this lonely expanse.
"My sister Emily loved the moors," wrote Charlotte. "Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty." (Neil Tweedie)

The first reviews of the Sundance screening of Wuthering Heights 2011 are coming:

Look, Emily Brontë's novel is a bad love story full of deplorable characters. It's a brutal vision of love (which, this combined with "Fish Tank" makes Arnold a fascinating person to analyze on that subject) and it's wrought even more brutally here.
But I do like what Arnold has done with it. It's very observational, very visceral. When the narrative catches up with Heathcliff and Catherine later in life, actors James Howson and Kaya Scodelario dance beautifully together. Their younger counterparts, Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer, provide a solid base for the gut-wrenching romance to unfold. Arnold has wisely done away with the extraneous Lockwood character and just plunged the viewer into the streamlined story.
The photography is a bit gimmicky throughout. Many images are beautiful, though a rack focus motif feels unmotivated and overused, while other things, like the blurred POV of teary eyes, come across as too creative for their own good. But I like that there's an experimental stroke throughout. (Kristopher Tapley on HitFix)

And reviews of Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy are being published:

Margot Livesey now pays her own tribute with "The Flight of Gemma Hardy" (Harper, 447 pages, $26.99), which relocates "Jane Eyre" from 19th-century northern England to remote 1960s Scotland. This time our neglected orphan is named Gemma, a native of Iceland being brought up by a nasty aunt and bullying cousins in a manor near Perth. She gains admission to a boarding school, but her life there hardly improves—on scholarship as a "working girl," she spends more time peeling potatoes than attending classes.
It is only when Gemma takes a job as a nanny in the far-off Orkney Islands—"the back of beyond," an incredulous friend calls them—that she begins to perceive a future in which she is loved and valued. There she meets her Mr. Rochester, a "curmudgeonly banker" named Hugh Sinclair, whose courtship both thrills and frightens her.
In Brontë's passionate work, Jane Eyre aches for her own independence but also for a place to call home (one of the book's revelations is that these two needs are not incompatible). On these themes, Ms. Livesey's novel is a somewhat docile revision. Although Gemma is courageous and headstrong, her major interest is in discovering her ancestry and finding a family that accepts her.
But though there are countless points of comparison between the two novels (like Jane, Gemma feels a spiritual affinity for birds, for instance), the nicest thing about "The Flight of Gemma Hardy" is that its story is absorbing on its own terms and does not rely on a close knowledge of the original. (Sam Sacks in the Wall Street Journal)

 When Margot Livesey was 9 years old, growing up motherless and lonely in Scotland, a book on her father’s shelf caught her eye: “Jane Eyre.” Livesey’s discovery of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece was transformative. The promised friend between the covers, a character whose indomitable spirit has consoled and inspired readers for over a century and a half, allowed ­Livesey to understand that “life is change.” “Like Jane’s, my life had changed for the worse,” Livesey wrote in an essay a few years ago, “and like hers, it could also change for the better. Time would, irrevocably, carry me to a new place.”
And back again. “The Flight of Gemma Hardy,” Livesey’s appealing new novel, is, as she has explained, a kind of continued conversation, a “recasting” of both “Jane Eyre” and Livesey’s own childhood. Set mostly in Scotland in the late 1950s and ’60s, the narrative follows the fortunes of a young girl, Gemma Hardy, who is beset by bad luck. Born to a Scottish mother and an Icelandic father, she was orphaned by the age of 3, when she was taken from Iceland to Scotland by her mother’s brother. There her original Icelandic name was discarded. (...)
It isn’t, however, until the final third of the novel, when Gemma, risking her own life, is forced to leave what she loves and act independently, that “The Flight of Gemma Hardy” becomes its most satisfying self. Here Livesey’s reach is extended — she too must leave what she loves — and we stop ticking off her clever updatings of “Jane Eyre,” lulled by the sense that we know just what will happen next.
Gemma’s act is life-altering, and so the geologically complex landscape of Iceland seems a fitting place for her to experience that change. “I saw the twisted black rocks, the pointed shapes of old volcanoes,” Gemma tells us, adding that “the countryside was wilder and emptier than any I had ever seen.” For Gemma, this is strange terrain indeed, and yet some part of her knows it well: it’s where she was conceived, where she was first named and first loved. Only by returning to such archaic places and taking conscious flight from them, Livesey seems to imply, can we hope to marry what we were to what we are, and to find ourselves truly air- (or is it Eyre-?) borne.  (Sarah Towers in the New York Times)

The Saturday Monitor (Uganda) discovers Brontëites in every corner. Like Olivia Kaguliro Mulerwa, storyteller and aspiring writer:

As a romantic, I admire the love that Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte) has for Mr Rochester. It is so pure and so real. An unattractive heroine and a troubled man with a complicated past, I can’t think of a more compelling love story. (Beatrice Lamwaka)

Or the actor, author and playwright Robert Leleux in the Huffington Post:

I suppose I always did that anyway. I did that with "Jane Eyre." I wanted to marry Mr. Rochester. When she says, "Reader, I married him," I was so jealous I wanted to kill her. I feel like that's just what little gay boys do.

Or the French writers Guillaume Musso and Annie Ernaux:

Dans ses sources d'inspiration, Musso cite volontiers Emily Brontë, qu'il a « dévorée » à l'âge de quinze ans[.] (Thierry Gandillot in Les Echos) (Translation)

«La littérature n'est pas seulement témoignage. La littérature apporte des modèles d'existence. C'est extrêmement important. J'ai lu très longtemps pour chercher le sens de ma vie, comment je pourrais vivre. J'ai été frappée en relisant, 50 ans plus tard, Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. J'étais absolument ahurie de voir que beaucoup de choses me sont venues de ce livre. Comment Jane se construit, s'interroge et ne veut dépendre de personne. C'est très beau.» (Chantal Guy in Le Point) (Translation)

The travel section of The Guardian lists several cottages in the Lake District and Yorkshire, including one in Haworth:

Or head to the wild and windy moors of Brontë country – sitting in the Pennines above Haworth is the Brontë Barn (sleeps six, available throughout the peak season, £960), where exposed beams and stonework mix with cool contemporary design. (Catherine Nelson and Isabel Choa)

The York Press talks about the David Hockney's London exhibition: A Bigger Picture which may boost the tourism in East Yorkshire:

They will do now, or so hopes the Country Landowners Association (CLA), which anticipates a tide of tourists in this age of “staycation Britain”, in much the way that All Creatures Great And Small boosted the Dales and all bookish things Brontë furnish the Moors.

A couple of fashion references. The New York Times talks about the latest Comme des Garçons collection:

All these elements felt warmly and securely Comme des Garçons, but perhaps the most appealing thing about the show today was the silhouette: longish and free at the waist, with those full shorts (or knee-length skirts) and, naturally, hairy calves before the splash of pink at the ankles. One impulse was romantic — Jane Eyre, I thought — the other punk. (Cathy Horyn)

It seems that the last collection of Emporio Armani has some Wuthering Heights inspiration:

Un inguaribile romantico che vola al di sopra della moda senza mai esserne condizionato. "Penso a libri come Cime Tempestose o Lady Chatterley e a uomini dall 'aria misteriosa ma che si pongono in modo pacato, mai aggressivo", spiega Armani alla fine della sua sfilata. (Paola Bulbarelli in Il Corriere della Sera) (Translation)

Ha riletto 'Cime tempestose' e 'Il nome della rosa' Giorgio Armani nel tratteggiare il suo uomo romantico che ha una storia dietro e dentro di sé. (Eva Desiderio in Il Quotidiano) (Translation)

Al via allora a cappe di lana, cappelli, mantelle alla Heatchcliff di Cime Tempestose, pantaloni morbidi a metà stada tra quelli per fare jogging a quelli più classici. (Paola Montanaro in GQ) (Translation)

Giorgio Armani si ispira ad Emily Brontë e al romanticismo poetico di Cime tempestose. La sua è una poesia fatta di eroismo, laddove interpreta con grande stile capi intramontabili come il montgomery, sottolineandone l’affidabilità di Emporio Armani. (Stylosophy) (Translation)

The Millions discusses 'the literary pedigree of Downton Abbey':

We experience the grandeur of Rochester’s Thornfield Hall only through the eyes of Jane Eyre, the governess. Class roles are more fluid in Wuthering Heights, but between Heathcliff and Catherine, one is always on the way up and the other on the way down. (Garth Risk Hallberg)

Grantland lists several great writers who wrote for Hollywood:

Aldous Huxley. He fared pretty well, adapting Brave New World, Ape And Essence, and A Woman's Vengeance from his own work, and contributing to successful versions of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and the biopic Madame Curie. (Molly Lambert)

Newsday quotes from the new Elizabeth II biography "Elizabeth The Queen" by Sally Bedell Smith:

Throughout her girlhood, Elizabeth had time blocked out each day for "silent reading" of books by Stevenson, Austen, Kipling, the Brontës, Tennyson, Scott, Dickens, Trollope, and others in the standard canon.

The Sunday Herald reviews The Locked Ward by Dennis O'Donnell:

It might have tried to banish the image of the first Mrs Rochester starting fires in Jane Eyre, or Renfield biting down on an insect in Dracula, or Patrick McMurphy staring into space after his lobotomy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Those images are old ones. But they stick. (Mark Smith)

Bootsnall lists several people's homes turned into museums. Such as the Brontë Parsonage:

The Brontë sisters, much beloved by British and foreign classics lovers alike, live on in the heart of England with the preservation of the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, where the sisters lived, grew up, and were inspired to write their novels. Brontë Country, as the area around the place where they lived is collectively known, features a collection of quaint villages and large expanses of moors such as the ones in which the fictional Heathcliff and Catherine, the protagonists of Wuthering Heights,  lived out their passionate love. The Brontë parsonage is maintained by the Brontë society, which endeavours to preserve the possessions of the sisters, as well as the house’s original furnishings. (Denise Pulis)

E!Online makes some Oscar predictions. Michael Fassbender is a clear contender in the Best Actor role for Shame:

Arguably the biggest breakout of the year—appearing in box office blowout comic book stuff like X-Men: First Class to the lovey dovey classical lit adaptation of Jane Eyre—it was for Shame that Fassbender will likely land an Oscar nom. (John Boone and Ted Casablanca)

The Philippines Star interviews the actor Paulo Avelino:

His current major is sharing the lead with Julia Montes and Coco Martin in Walang Hanggan.
Loosely adapted from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Paulo plays Nathaniel Montenegro, the rich guy who’s hopelessly in love with Katarina Alcantara (Julia Montes), the rich girl who only has eyes for the poor boy, Daniel Valencia (Coco Martin). “My character here is a person who is bulag sa pag-ibig. With Katarina, he’s thinking, ‘I’m not really expecting you to love me. I’m just giving you my love without expecting anything back,’” Paulo says. Ain’t love grand? (Cai Subijano)

Badische Zeitung (Germany) reviews the Matthias Breintenbarg's Wuthering Heights adaptation on stage in Freiburg:

Breitenbach kann sich auf sein Schauspielerquartett verlassen: Mit Verve, mit Spielfreude, manchmal mit einer angemessenen Portion Ironie und Komik meistern Drieschner, Melamed, Albrecht und Happel bei der Premiere die nicht leichte Aufgabe, über 75 Minuten in diesem Stück präsent zu sein. Eine feine Ensembleleistung in einem Stück, das gut neben dem Roman von Emily Brontë bestehen kann, weil es ihn ernst nimmt. Warmer Applaus. (Heidi Ossenberg) (Translation)

Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany) interviews the Belgian author Jan de Leeuw. We understand his point but we mostly disagree:

Trotzdem bin ich davon überzeugt, dass das Privatleben eines Autors seine Bücher nährt, und dass es ihnen neues Leben verleihen kann. Die Brontë-Schwestern würden wohl kaum noch gelesen werden, wenn wir nicht wüssten, wie sie gelebt haben, in Haworth, und dass sie an Tuberkulose gestorben sind. (Translation)

Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) talks about Mike Leigh's filmography and mentions "the Brontë motto" in Career Girls 1997:

We "Współlokatorkach" (1997) Katrin Cartlidge i Lynda Steadman grają przyjaciółki ze studiów, które spotykają się po latach w Londynie i przeprowadzają bilans życia. Tworzą kontrastową, dopełniającą się parę: jedna jest "rozważna", druga "romantyczna", jak w powieści Austen. Obie, samotne z wyboru, wywikłały się z nieudanych związków, mają pracę, prezentują się elegancko. Obroniły siebie, ale czy zwyciężyły? Co zostało z ich aspiracji? Co mogą z siebie dać innym? Próbują, jak kiedyś, dla żartu, wróżyć sobie z "Wichrowych wzgórz", otwierając książkę w byle jakim miejscu: "miss Bronte, miss Bronte, czy wkrótce znajdę prawdziwe szczęście?". Palec wskazuje słowo "męka". (Tadeusz Sobolewski) (Translation)

The Ft. Lauderdale Movie Examiner and North West Indiana Times  think that Jane Eyre 2011 will be nominated to the Best Costume Design Oscar (the last one also thinks that it has some chances in the Best Edition category); Hoofddorpse Courant (Netherlands) reviews the film;  Old-Fashioned Charm posts a Brontë Unscramble Game; the Brontë Sisters discusses the sisters' railway investments; Benalmádena Digital (Spain) talks about a new local book club (Escribir en Femenino) which will open reading the Brontës.

Finally, Laura's Reviews has a guest post (by us), part of the Victorian Challenge 2012.