How can you not love the Brontë gals?

First of all, an alert for today, March 9th, about Jennifer Adams's Little Miss Brontë: Jane Eyre. From Salk Lake City's City Weekly:

Join us for a fun-filled evening of Alice in Wonderland style treats and the latest in Babylit. Our own Jennifer Adams will be signing copies of her stylish new board books, Little Master Caroll: Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Primer and Little Miss Bronte: Jane Eyre. The worlds of Carroll and Bronte are brought to the nursery with this clever yet simple text by Jennifer Adams, paired with beautifully vivid designs and illustrations by Alison Oliver.
Date: Mar 9, 2012
Time: 6 pm
Phone: 801-484-9100
Address: 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City, 84105
Where: King's English

Daphne Merkin publishes a very nice article about Haworth in the New York Time's Style Magazine:

(...) Behind the graveyard is the Brontë Parsonage Museum, where the family lived from 1820 onward.The house itself still has the bare, slightly scrubbed look that led Charlotte’s biographer Elizabeth Gaskell to comment, “I don’t know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean.” The present director, Andrew McCarthy, shows me around and points out that he is at pains to keep it from becoming a “Brontë reliquary.” (...)
On my last morning, I linger over my breakfast of eggs and toast, finding it hard to leave Haworth’s bleak charms. There is something about this out-of-the-way place that has gotten under my urban skin; I can understand why the sisters were drawn back to it, especially the elusive Emily, who flourished in its seclusion. I pay a last visit to the graveyard, where the rooks caw and a black cat follows me around proprietarily.
For a moment, I think of picking up and renting one of the former worker’s cottages, leaving aside the familiar for the rugged embrace of this part of the world. I suppose there is always the hope that whatever led the Brontës to pull great books out of themselves might work again if one only entrusted oneself to the same brooding surroundings. Unimportant things seem to fall away here, or maybe I am only imagining it. And then reality asserts itself: I remember a car is waiting for me and then a plane, and I tell myself that the spell of Brontë country will keep until I find my way back again.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin has an article on the Brontës:

In a Brontë novel, the characters are generally moody, sharp-tongued and inflamed by wild passions. The women are articulate and assertive. The men are frightening but misunderstood, with a penchant for nutty first wives stashed in the attic.
How can you not love the Brontë gals?
They spent much of their short lives in the Yorkshire town of Haworth, near the hilly moorlands that provided a backdrop for "Wuthering Heights." As an admirer, and as a change from bustling London, I made arrangements to get there.
This involved two trains, one bus and a couple of hours of my time. It was well worth the effort. [...]
It's now a museum loaded with a startling number of Brontë family items.
The downstairs highlights include a rocking chair where Anne rocked away some of her final days and the sofa where Emily died. Upstairs are dozens of personal effects, mostly Charlotte's: a dress, shawl, glasses, nightcap, apron, mittens, cuffs, stockings and boots, even locks of her hair in a brooch and in an envelope.
In other words, you could almost assemble your own Brontë. Science ought to get to work on that.
Also preserved are the sisters' writing tables, the portable sort that rest on your lap. Pen nibs and other small items are still in the open drawers, just as the sisters left them. Even their dog's collar is on view.
The Brontë heirs never threw anything away. It's a good thing "Hoarders" never got to them.
The museum is really something. It's even got one of my favorite "Jane Eyre" quotes painted on a wall: "Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!"
You tell him, Jane. [...]
A part of me wished for a time machine to ferry a doctor back to the 1840s to give Emily, Anne and Charlotte proper care.
I'd choose a complex, surly, strong-willed doctor too. That would perk them right up. (David Allen)

The Telegraph publishes an obituary of the composer and pianist, Adrian Gerald Foley, 8th Baron Foley (1923-2012):

In 1958 Foley was invited by Huntington Hartford, the A&P supermarket heir, to perform in his Broadway adaptation of Jane Eyre. Foley took the part of Lord Ingram and also played piano behind a screen. The New York Times was scathing about the production, but reserved some praise for Foley, describing him as “the most realistic English Lord ever seen on Broadway”.

The Huffington Post is asking readers to vote for 'The Most Iconic Female Writer From History'. Charlotte Brontë is among them:

Along with her sisters Emily and Anne, Charlotte Brontë was forced to publish her first collection of poetry under a pseudonym to mask her gender - not that it stopped any of them highlighting the oppression faced by women of their era or changing the course of narrative fiction for ever. Although all the Bronte sisters are icons of literature, Charlotte was the first to find success with Jane Eyre - whose radical protagonist made it one of the most important early feminist novels ever produced. (Sam Parker)

And connected to International Women's Day yesterday, IndieWire's Women and Hollywood shares the Women in Film and TV (UK) 2012 Power List. Both Andrea Arnold and Alison Owens (Jane Eyre 2011 producer) are there.

The Independent reviews the DVD of Jane Eyre 2011 (UK):

Cary Fukunaga's handsome production is good on Jane Eyre's brutalising schooldays and upbringing, and it starts ambitiously with a less linear structure (beginning with Jane's escape from Thornfield Manor); but other than that it's a pretty standard adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's gothic masterpiece. Mia Wasikowska is okay as the spirited Jane; Michael Fassbender is better as scowling, self-loathing Mr Rochester. Ultimately, though, it's just a bit underwhelming – efficient storytelling that lacks a bit of oomph. (Ben Walsh)

And The Arts Desk reviews it too:

In many respects it's hard to fault director Cary Fukunaga's take on the Charlotte Brontë classic. Fast-rising Australian actress Mia Wasikowska brings appropriate strength and moral clarity to the title role, while Michael Fassbender makes a mocking, sardonic Mr Rochester (albeit a rather too photogenic one). The lovelessness of Jane's early years with her unfeeling aunt, Mrs Reed (Sally Hawkins), is wincingly drawn, and her time at the grim Lowood school leaves the viewer feeling as beaten and abused as the heroine herself. Chuck in a quietly sparkling turn by Judi Dench as Mrs Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall, and a commendably pious performance by Jamie Bell as whiskery clergyman St John Rivers, and you're pretty much good to go.
If there's a snag, it's that the production is almost too meticulous. Adriano Goldman's cinematography is exquisite, with panoramic shots of thunderstorms and moody sunsets over the Yorkshire moors as eloquent as any of the characters. His lighting of the interiors of various bleak stone houses with candles or oil lamps is so striking that it deflects your attention from what the actors are up to. It's as if you're being walked through a series of art installations rather than being involved in a story of emotional isolation, loss and longing. Attention to costumes, hair and decor - and even reasonably persuasive Yorkshire accents - is equally fastidious, but tends to airbrush the harshness and struggle of the characters' lives.
In case it seems perverse to blame Fukunaga for doing his work too well, I shall hail the way he has teased out Brontë's proto-feminist subtext, caught especially well in the scene where Jane gazes out across miles of rugged moorland and yearns to see what's happening in the world beyond the horizon. The Rochester-Jane interplay, too, is smartly caught, with Jane's stubborn tartness proving a match for Rochester's tetchiness and brusqueness. Yet Gothic passions, and the madness of the first Mrs Rochester, are sold short. (Adam Sweeting)

And Flickering Myth quotes from Michael Fassbender on his work in this production. Empire gives away a copy of the DVD (deadline: March 16).

Di-Ve has an article on Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights:

Producer Robert Bernstein said: “What hadn’t been done before was casting the actors the right ages. When Andrea came in and wrote her version she wanted the children to take up as much time on the screen as they do, which is a very bold approach.”
“The decision to have it more or less exclusively from Heathcliff’s point of view was also, I think, a big, bold one,” he said. “Our goal was to facilitate Andrea’s vision. Authenticity and truthfulness are very important to her and I think that comes across in all aspects of the film. It has a grittiness and a realness about it, which is interesting in a period piece, and is very much what it would have been like. We set out to make a provocative piece and that’s what we’ve got.”
Of the resulting film, producer Kevin Loader said “I think it’s extremely faithful. I think everyone’s been corrupted by the older and the Gothic and the melodramatic versions about this great, fantastic love affair -- whereas actually it’s a dark story of obsession and despair and it’s very tragic. It’s rather amazing to see that story.”
For Bernstein, “Ultimately we set out to make something with Andrea that was uncompromising, with integrity, and I think we’ve done that.”

The Independent reports on the Independent Bath Literary Festival:

By 2pm, no fewer than 65 local women and schoolgirls had queued patiently for their turn:  bringing to yelping life the words of Fay Weldon, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson and Charlotte Brontë. (John Walsh)

Publishing Crawl interviews the writer Lena Coakley who explains her next project.

Well, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that a sequel does happen! And speaking of what you’re working on now… Can you tell us a bit about it?
Well, I think I can spill. My next work is tentatively titled The Worlds Below and is about the four Brontë siblings. The Brontës, including Charlotte Brontë who wrote Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë who wrote Wuthering Heights, were schooled mostly at home in a remote part of England during their teens. Spurred on by each other and by the remoteness of their situation, the four of them—three girls and one boy—invented imaginary worlds, which they wrote about in great detail. The premise of my book is that those worlds were real places that they had the ability to travel to—but for a price. I’ve now traveled to the Brontë parsonage twice in order to research the book, and the last time I went I even got permission to access the Brontë archives! In short: I am becoming a real Brontë nerd.

And the New York Daily News PageViews has created 'The Urban Dictionary history of Western literature' where the definition of Brontë is as follows:

Bronte: A girl of her own sexiness, her own way in life. Doesn't care what people think. Very blissful and beautiful. (Alexander Nazaryan)

For Book's Sake visits Top Withens and talks about its Brontë connections;  Fluttering Butterflies chooses The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in a romantic novels top ten; Bokstugan (in Swedish) talks both about the Classical Comics' and the 2011 Jane Eyre adaptations; Cuore d'Inchiostro (in Italian) reviews Romancing Miss Brontë; nosólotécnica (in Spanish) and DarwinCatholic post about Jane Eyre; Secluded Charm reviews Jane Eyre 1944.