Red House: combining Brontë history and Brontë fiction

The Red House story is beginning to reach local papers. The Spenborough Guardian reports many locals are against the closure:

Red House – ‘a cultural and educational gem’ – could be lost forever under council plans to sell it off.
Kirklees says closing the award-winning Gomersal museum and moving its exhibits to other museums would save £116,000 over two years.
However the plans have caused anger with critics saying it is yet another example of north Kirklees making the biggest sacrifices.
MP Mike Wood said: “We knew Kirklees was considering reducing the opening hours, and that was bad enough, but to hear they want to close it altogether was a bombshell.
“Red House is a credit to our area, and we cannot sacrifice it in a forlorn attempt to save money at all costs. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. [...]”
Gomersal councillor Lisa Holmes, said she and her Tory ward colleagues would do their utmost to fight the plans.
“It’s an absolute shame,” she said. “I have spoken to the staff who are devastated, not just for their jobs but because they know the vital service it provides. We realise we have massive savings to make, but we will do whatever we can to find an alternative to closure. There is a big challenge ahead of us but we must protect our heritage.”
Vice-chairman of Spen Valley Civic Society Gordon North said: “People cherish Red House and I am sure they will be as disgusted as we are that the one museum in the Spen Valley could go.
“It attracts local, national and international visitors, and it’s not just because of its Brontë links. The Taylor family was incredibly important in the story of the Spen Valley – Mr Taylor was one of the first woollen manufacturers and opened the Bank of Gomersal, while his daughter Mary Taylor was at the forefront of the feminist and equality movements – and you might think that a Labour council might recognise that.”
Red House was bought by the old Spenborough Council in 1969 to be opened as a museum telling the story of the Spen Valley.
Former Spenborough councillor Michael McGowan, who went on to become an MEP, said only last year he had taken a group of visitors from New Zealand to Red House, because of Mary Taylor’s links with their country.
“It’s a fantastic resource, a cultural and educational gem, and we mustn’t lose it,” he said.
The move has also been condemned by Carol Brontë, who first visited Red House as curator of the Brontë Museum in Northern Ireland. Her husband, James Wallace Brontë, is the great-great-grandson of the Rev Patrick Brontë’s youngest brother.
“I’m absolutely devastated,” she said. “Why close this famous tourist destination? It’s a very special place and I would urge Kirklees to think again.”
Brontë Society trustee Stephen Whitehead said: “The Taylor family was so important to Charlotte that she featured them as the Yorkes in Shirley and Briarmains is an exact description of Red House. It is an irreplaceable asset and this is not the way to manage your heritage.”
President of Cleckheaton Rotary Club Bill Stevenson said they had great concerns about the length of time for objections – February 7 – and urged the public to attend Tuesday’s Spen Valley area committee meeting to air their views.
The meeting is at 7pm at the town hall, Cleckheaton.
A spokeswoman for Kirklees said difficult decisions had to be made.
“The proposal to close Red House Museum is one of a large number of measures up for consideration which have been proposed to fill a very big gap in the council’s budget and reduce expenditure,” she said.
No decision has been made yet and people are invited to make their views know by contacting communication@kirklees.gov.uk or Communities and Leisure, Museums and Galleries, The Stables, Ravensknowle Park, Wakefield Road, Dalton, Huddersfield, HD5 8DJ. (Margaret Heward)

The Telegraph and Argus looks at it from a Brontë point of view:

The director of the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth has condemned proposals to close a popular museum with strong connections to the famous literary family.
The future of Red House Museum, Gomersal, will be discussed at Kirklees Council’s Cabinet meeting on February 7 as part of budget talks.
But parsonage director Andrew McCarthy said: “We appreciate the challenges faced by local authorities in terms of balancing the budgets at the moment but it does seem a pretty drastic step that can be made in haste and repented at leisure.” [...]
It is said ‘Briarmains’ – the house Charlotte wrote about in her second novel, Shirley – was based on Red House and some of the characters were thought to have been inspired by the Taylor family.
Mr McCarthy said: “The Taylor family as merchants, bankers and mill-owners did a huge amount to shape that part of the West Riding and they are a great part of the heritage of the area and there is this very strong link with the Brontës, particularly Charlotte.
“She stayed there on many occasions in the 1830s as a guest of her close friends Mary and Martha Taylor.
“There are very few buildings which combine Brontë history and Brontë fiction in the way Red House does. It would be a huge loss.” (Sally Clifford)

Please keep letters/email coming to local authorities (see list in this post) and if you haven't yet, do sign this online petition. And spread the word too!

Another fighting front is the repairs of the Haworth Parish Church. The news of the many initiatives that have been done (and have to be done) to raise the money have crossed borders and are mentioned in quite a good article in El País (Spain):

El organismo público English Heritage se comprometió a donar 120.000 euros para la primera parte del trabajo si la iglesia conseguía recaudar 75.000 euros. El plazo acababa el viernes 20, después de ser prorrogado en un par de ocasiones. "En las últimas horas hemos conseguido el último céntimo del dinero que necesitábamos, hemos conocido que English Heritage nos dará su donación pero también nos han dicho que la obra nos costará 50.000 libras más, una auténtica patada en la boca" explica Peter Mayo - Smith, el párroco anglicano de Haworth. El dinero ha tardado tanto en llegar que el precio de la obra se ha elevado. "English Heritage nos ha dado permiso para comenzar la obra de la parte sur del tejado en primavera pero es nuestra responsabilidad lograr la diferencia con el precio actual y, teniendo en cuenta que hemos tardado más de un año en recolectar 75.000 euros, no las tenemos todas con nosotros. Sin embargo, tengo esperanza y transmito a la comunidad, que tanto ha ayudado. Esto es como una carrera de triatlón. Ya hemos superado la prueba de la natación pero nos quedan el ciclismo y la carrera a pie para dar por concluida la obra". (Maruxa Ruiz del Árbol) (Translation)

Anyway, some things never change, and one is John Mullan's Brontë mentions on his '10 of the best' for the Guardian. Today he looks at nightmares:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.  Poor Lockwood gets snowed in on a visit to Wuthering Heights and has to stay the night. He dreams that he puts his hand through the bedroom window and has it seized by "the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand". There is a sobbing voice and suddenly a terrifying child's face. It is Cathy, and the rest of the novel is an explanation of this dream.

Strange, though, that he has left out Jane's in Jane Eyre.

This columnist from The Hindu should read the books he mentions before he preaches about their 'social purpose':

Realism and romanticism can be either passive or active. Passive realism usually aims to depict reality truthfully, without preaching anything. The novels of Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontë Sisters are examples. In this sense, they are socially neutral. However, sometimes passive realism preaches fatalism, passivity, non-resistance to evil, suffering and humility. (Markandey Katju)

Sure, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to name but one novel is as 'socially neutral' as a book can get.

TIME Magazine wonders,

But why were Victorian writers so into orphans? Oliver set the trend (the novel was eight chapters into its serial run when Victoria was crowned queen, in June of 1837),  and then there’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff and Daniel Deronda and Dickens’ own Pip and Estella, in Great Expectations, to name just a few. (Radhika Jones)

Mainly because there were many of them in real life too.

The Guardian comments on the bookishness of this year's Oscars:

It's not classic novels that attract movie-makers. Of the books turned into nominated films this time, only Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (1982) was not published in the noughties. The others are Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret (filmed as Hugo), Jonathan Safran Foer's 9/11 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Moneyball by Michael Lewis (the second non-fiction sports title by him in three years to generate a Best Picture nominee, as he also wrote the source of Blind Side), and two debuts, Kaui Hart Hemmings's The Descendants and Kathryn Stockett's The Help. It's the first time for quite a while – conceivably since 1940, when Gone with the Wind won and Wuthering Heights was among the nominees – that versions of two novels by women have been listed for the most coveted Oscar. (John Dugdale)

Too bad Jane Eyre (and Wuthering Heights too, why not) haven't been featured more prominently.

Connect Savannah is fascinated by Michael Fassbender's versatility:

As part of his four-score from 2011, Michael Fassbender turns up in A Dangerous Method as Carl Jung, the Swiss doctor often deemed the father of modern psychology. Watching him tackle Jung as a cautious, conflicted man, it's hard to see the same person who was so brooding in Jane Eyre, so, uh, magnetic in X-Men: First Class, and so raw in Shame. Yes, there's a reason so many of us think Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender sounds a helluva lot better than, say, Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill. (Matt Brunson)

Film School Rejects on Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights at Sundance:

To see Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, one of my most anticipated films of the festival. A gorgeous visual feast, it’s a sumptuous and sensual film, just heaven on the eyes. Emotionally, though, it’s a toughie – for the sole reason that the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff are awful, selfish, wretched people. Their love story is one of destruction of all kinds, and Arnold rendered it in a way that is true to its source material. (Kate Erbland)

And de Volkskrant (Netherlands) talks about the premiere of the film at the Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR).

The Chicago Tribune discusses fictionalised biographies:

Or "Charlotte & Emily" (2010) by Jude Morgan, if your curiosity runs to the famous scribbling sisters who turned out"Jane Eyre" and"Wuthering Heights" in between bouts of melancholy. (Julia Keller)

And Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy makes it to The New York Times' Editors' Choice.

THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY, by Margot Livesey (Harper/HarperCollins, $26.99.) An appealing novel about a young girl that recasts “Jane Eyre.”

The New Zealand Listener sums up a Midsomer Murders episode:

Midsomer Murders (Prime, 8.30pm). Midsomer sticks it the the actors: in A Tale of Two Hamlets, an arrogant actor (Charlie Beall) is killed in a summerhouse explosion, and then the director of one of his movies is electrocuted. It seems there’s a feud going in in Upper and Lower Warden over the works of a Victorian male writer called Ellis Bell – which, literary geeks, was the pseudonym of Emily Brontë. (Fiona Rae)

EFE covers the Spanish premiere of Albert Nobbs and lists several films where women are dressed like men. Including Les Soeurs Brontë 1979:

Otros ejemplos destacables los encontramos en "Las hermanas Brontë" (1979), con Isabelle Huppert como una de las célebres escritoras[.] (Carlos Palencia) (Translation)

Las Provincias (Spain) revisits the zombies and mentions a mashup that cannot be other than Wuthering Heights and a Werewolf...and a Zombie Too:

Los zombis, los muertos vivientes, los caminantes putrefactos, demarran a principios de los años 30 con 'La Legión de los hombres sin Alma', de Victor Halpernin. Desde entonces no han parado de crecer y ahora la zombificación es total, completa, rotunda, exitosa, con lo cual sospechamos que están aquí para quedarse pues el género no sólo se ha consolidado en el cine y en la pequeña pantalla ('Walking Dead'), sino que ha saltado al comic y a la literatura, revisionando clásicos como 'Cumbres Borrascosas' o avanzando al galope gracias a norteamericanos como el hijo de Mel Brooks, Max Brooks (véase su 'Guerra mundial Zombi', o a paisanos nuestros como Juan Miguel Aguilera y Javier Negrete. (Translation)

Ginger Generation talks about the Valentino collection in the Paris Fashion Week (in Italian):

La moda italiana chiude in bellezza la settimana della moda parigina. Impalpabile, leggera, sognante: la moda Valentino è tutta un tulle. Abiti dal sapore vittoriano, che sembrano usciti da un romanzo delle sorelle Brontë: colli alti con fiocco, maniche a sbuffo e gonne ampie.  (Francesca Parravicini) (Translation)

Michel Vivoux remembers first loves in La Depeche (France):

Soudain, la petite fille se rue sur moi, me serre dans ses bras, me fait un énorme bisou sur la bouche, et me dit un de ces « je t'aime » comme on peut en entendre dans « Les Hauts de Hurlevent » ou autre « Autant en emporte le vent ». (Translation) 

Good reviews for the theatre play The  Sisters Three: das Leben der Schwestern Brontë performed at the Linzer Posthof theatre:

Die einengende Welt der „Three Sisters“ wurde auch durch die Videoprojektionen (Renate Schuler) und atmosphärische Musik (Willy Hackl) heraufbeschworen. Joachim Rathke hätte in seiner Inszenierung allerdings durchaus mehr auf die Kraft der Literatur vertrauen können. Das erfreulich zahlreich erschienene Publikum war bei der Premiere am Donnerstagabend trotzdem großteils sehr angetan.Vorstellungen. (Birgit Thek in Neues Volskblatt) (Translation)

Eingebettet in zahlreiche Originalzitate aus Briefen, Tagebüchern, Romanen vermischen sich Wirklichkeit und Fiktion, Tragik, aber auch Komik zu einer intensiven Stunde, die in der Regie von Joachim Rathke darstellerisch aus dem Vollen schöpft, manchmal nahe an der Grenze zu Theatralik und Parodie. Das Bühnenbild ersetzen, bis auf Tisch und Stühle, Renate Schulers atmosphärische Videoprojektionen: als Fenster in die Öde, als in den Gedichten viel zitiertes Meer der Seele.
Willy Hackls Klangkulisse unterstreicht die Emotionen, wobei ihm oft ein hartes Pochen genügt, um Beklemmung spürbar zu machen. Langer Applaus für einen fast schon zu intensiven Abend.
Neu und gut also discusses this production. (Karin Schütze in Nachrichten) (Translation)

The Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany) talks about the 250th Anniversary Catalogue of Henry Sotheran Booksellers:

Auch die literarischen Klassiker sind vertreten. Der erste Gedichtband der Brontë-Schwestern, schlicht „Poems“, veröffentlicht noch unter den männlichen Pseudonymen Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, war 1848 ein Misserfolg - und ist heute eine Rarität, die man für 2250 Pfund erhält. (Mareike Hennig) (Translation)

The MocArty RMF Classic (Poland) nominations have been announced. Dario Marianelli's Jane Eyre soundtrack has been nominated for Best Film Music.

Sydsvenskan (Sweden) interviews the author Ingrid Elam:

Vilka mer eller mindre väl dolda fiktioner vill jag lyfta fram? Nyfiket skärskådar hon Charlotte Brontë i ”Jane Eyre” och konstaterar: (Katarina Tornberg) (Translation)

The Times looks at the price of literary manuscript, remarking on the £690,000 recently fetched by Charlotte Brontë's unpublished juvenilia manuscript. Pete Medway posts about an old edition of Wuthering Heights. And the Brontë Sisters shares a picture of a man baptised by Patrick Brontë; Dilettabrizzi reviews Jane Eyre on Paperblog.