Independence of Mind and Courage

Irish Central is thrilled that an Irish actress will play Charlotte Brontë in the Off-Broadway revival of William Luce's Brontë opening next week in New York:

Not everyone knows that the Brontës, England’s most accomplished literary family, were actually half Irish. Anne, Emily and Charlotte were raised by Patrick Brontë, a strict father who was born in Co. Down on St. Patrick’s Day, 1777, and who maintained his close ties to the nation all of his life.
That’s why this week’s news that an Irish actress is set headline an Off Broadway revival of a famous play about Charlotte Brontë is so welcome.
Beginning on May 3, Irish actress Maxine Linehan will step into the role of Charlotte Brontë, the most celebrated of all three sisters. It’s the first revival of William Luce’s 'Brontë: A Portrait of Charlotte' since 1983 and it will play at Theater 511 in New York City. (...)
Linehan’s an ideal pick to embody the fiery Charlotte, whose independence of mind and spirit shocked her own age. It’s for Charlotte's bracing clarity of her thought, her refusal to be relegated to someone else’s limiting ideas of what a women is or should be, and for her startling eloquence when it comes to matters of the heart that she has remained as relevant now as the day she first picked up her pen. (...)
“I originally read the play in one sitting and I just felt crazy parallels to my own life. I knew about Charlotte Brontë, but in recent months doing research I’ve discovered she was completely ahead of her time as a feminist as a writer. I want to share all this with the audiences." (Cahir O'Doherty)

GateHouse News Service interviews Eve-Marie Mont, author A Breath of Eyre:

Q. Be honest: Did your interest in Rochester partially inspire this story?
A. Well, maybe just a little. … Seriously, I know of few Jane Eyre fans who didn’t have a crush on Rochester at some point in their lives. Sure, some women get over their attraction to a brooding, romantic hero, but for me, Rochester still has tremendous appeal, which I think translates well into young adult literature. Girls will always be drawn to the mysterious bad boy who hides a vulnerable side. My protagonist has several stand-ins for Rochester in her real life — one of them, her English teacher — but it isn’t until she actually meets Rochester in the flesh that that she begins to give up her desire for an unattainable hero and open her eyes to the real love that may be standing right in front of her. (...)
Q. In “A Breath of Eyre,” you actually take the reader to the brink of changing the ending to “Jane Eyre.” Gutsy, considering the thousands of devoted Jane Eyre fans. What made you decide to trespass on what to some is hallowed ground?
A. Honestly, this did scare me a bit, but that scene you’re speaking of is so vital to Emma’s growth that I knew it was right for her story. And I made it very clear that while Jane still gets her happy ending, Emma has to tear herself out of Jane’s story in order to find her own.
Q. What emotional well did you draw from for “A Breath of Eyre”?
A. I’ve heard from some readers of “A Breath of Eyre” that they were surprised by how serious the story gets at times — they were expecting a more light-hearted romp through Victorian England and a little forbidden romance with Rochester. And believe meR, I love those escapist stories, too, but I guess I use my fiction to explore my fears and to try and make sense of the world and my place in it as Emma does. Jane Eyre treads on a lot of thorny issues like identity, abandonment, class, gender, morality, autonomy. I wanted to echo some of those themes in a modern context. For this book in particular, I drew on my own sense of loneliness and insecurity as an adolescent — a time in which I knew deep down I had something important to say but hadn’t yet gained the confidence to think anyone would listen. (DA Kentner)

The New York Times reviews The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman:

Constructed, “Wuthering Heights” style, as a succession of narratives told to Edward Mason by Miss Mary and her employees on his daylong tour of the Retreat, “The Right-Hand Shore” represents an outing of some of America’s most troubled ghosts. (Fernanda Eberstadt)

Pipe Dream mocks the lyrics of Carly Ray Jepsen's Call Me Maybe:

I’ve read John Milton and Bill Shakespeare. I’ve studied Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, Chaucer, Salinger, Hesse and Rowling.
No matter how critically successful the work of the aforementioned authors may be, all pale in comparison to the lyrical brilliance and cultural importance of Carly Rae Jepsen’s autobiographical account of love at first sight, “Call Me Maybe.” (Jason Blackman)

Another student newspaper, The Maneater jokes about Heathcliff and Economy classes:

If that bully Economics has mistreated you in your scary new campus home, revenge won’t gain you any compassion. If you’re mourning the loss of an academic scholarship, will snarky comments really help you cycle through the five stages of grief any faster? Probably not. Will they change a teacher set in his or her ways? Doubtful. Do teachers even read those things? Open to interpretation.
Before you walk away from that completed evaluation form, before the wickedly triumphant feeling fades and you’re left wallowing in your own sorrows, consider Heathcliff’s precedent. Schemes of revenge, even if they succeed, yield little more than wasted effort and renewed sorrow. (Claire Landsbaum)

Keighley News announces some of the events to take place at the next Keighley Festival (July 6-13):

There will also be a chance to walk in the footsteps of the Brontës, challenge a table tennis-playing robot, sail model boats on Keighley Tarn, and explore Utley Victorian Cemetery There will be community days in several areas including Haworth, Bracken Bank and Thwaites. (David Knights)

The latest 2012 Go Local Sunday is featured by Keighley News:

The 2012 Go Local Sunday event featured eight different venues. The day was organised by the Brontë Country Partnership, which markets Keighley and Brontë Country to visitors.  (...)
Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, said: “We had 236 local people take advantage of the day. That’s about par with previous years even though it wasn’t a great day weather-wise, which would have put quite a few people off.” (Miran Rahman)

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner remembers that the Old Estate Office at Kirklees Hall is on the market but doesn't seem to remember who wrote Shirley and visited Kirklees Hall:

The hall is also mentioned in Emily Brontë’s (sic) famous classic, Shirley, and Ms Brontë was a visitor to Kirklees Hall.
Its garden was designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, the creativity behind 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain.
The five-bedroomed Old Estate House is listed for sale with Boultons on John William Street. (Joanne Douglas)

The Globe and Mail talks about Donald Trump's controversial (putting it mildly) ideas and the Brontë country wind farm plans are mentioned:

Apart from Mr. Trump's fight, the highest-profile wind-farm contretemps is happening on “the wild and windy moor” (as Kate Bush sang) where Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw fell in love. A 60-metre high test mast will soon go up near Top Withens, the ruined house set in desolate moorland that inspired Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The Brontë Parsonage Museum, located in the house where Emily, Charlotte and their siblings grew up, joined the campaign against the mast, which it fears could lead to the construction of four giant wind turbines.
“One of the things that draws people here is the landscape,” said Andrew McCarthy, director of the museum, which hosts 80,000 visitors a year. “People do want to go out onto the moors and experience the wilderness that the Brontës knew. The proliferation of wind turbines within that landscape is at odds with that.” (Elizabeth Renzetti)

Susie Boyt makes a Brontë reference on her Financial Times column:

Did Oliver Twist, when enjoying his later life prosperity, eschew a roast beef dinner for a bowl of wholesome workhouse gruel? You betcha! Was Jane Eyre, when redecorating, ever half-tempted to paint her bedroom red? You never know. Friends will seek their glamorous absent fathers in the men they choose and feel utterly disheartened in the same old soothing way. It’s perfectly normal.

The Foster's Daily Democrat presents the work of 16-year-old Catherine Geiger:

Also this month Geiger was notified of her placement in the NH Semi-Finalist for Letters About Literature 2012. This is co-sponsored by Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library in Concord. Her letter to Emily Brontë about Wuthering Heights is one of 45 selected as a state semi-finalist from 736 entries received from New Hampshire students in the competition. Catherine enjoyed the experience of "writing back" to an author whose work inspired her.

The Saturday Monitor (Uganda) chooses Jane Eyre as an all-time favourite book:

This is one book I can read over and over without tiring. Its descriptive nature is what has made me love it. All the Brontë sisters have a way of using description but for me Charlotte beats them all. She does it with such ease that you may think it’s the easiest style and anyone can do it. (Sharon M. Omurungi)

The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Colm Tóibín's New Ways To Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families:

New Ways To Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families is a collection of essays in criticism, rather more biographical than literary in their emphasis. Toibin's concern is how writers cope with their parents. The opening chapter, ''Jane Austen, Henry James and the Death of the Mother'', is the densest, and an exhilarating take on the history of the novel. In broad terms, its argument is that the novel charted the movement away from the familial and tribal mindset towards the creation and fostering of the individual consciousness. You couldn't have mothers in the novel; they crimped and suffocated. You had aunts. They were at arm's length and might be encouraging or might be a pest but they wouldn't cast too heavy a shadow on the blossoming heroine (and it usually was a heroine); consider Jane Austen or Jane Eyre.  (Gerard Windsor)

ORF (Austria) reviews Wuthering Heights 2011:

Dazwischen standen Monate des mühsamen Drehs im Schlamm, mit einer Gruppe von größtenteils - wie stets bei Arnold - Laiendarstellern. Genau auf diese Weise kann man Bronte näher kommen: zarte Seelen in einer harten Landschaft. Der Film wird der Literaturvorlage so gerecht, wie es eben möglich ist, auch wenn man zwischendurch gemeinsam mit den Charakteren ein wenig verzweifeln mag in diesem hügeligen, depressiven Teletubbyland. (Simon Hadler)  (Translation)

Dziennik (Poland) reviews the recent first Polish translation of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

Ale "Lokatorka Wildfiell Hall" to również powieść o tym, jak dużą krzywdę może wyrządzić plotka i bezpodstawne pomówienie. W czasach, w których powstają specjalne media o tematyce plotkarskiej a internet stanowi doskonałe pole do tego typu praktyk, problem poruszony przez Annę Brontë zdaje się być jeszcze bardziej aktualnym. (Anna Sobańda) (Translation)

El Periódico de Extremadura (Spain) briefly reviews Jane Eyre 2011; the Chipping Campden Literature Festival, includes a screening of Wuthering Heights 1939 next May 2 (via Gloucestershire Echo); Rope of Silicon announces that Wuthering Heights 2011 will be screened at the upcoming Seattle International Film Festival (incidentally, the film will also be screened at the Maryland Film Festival, May 3-6); the film gets reviewed on L'Étoile and Filmsbloggurin; Anna's Words reviews in Romanian Agnes Grey; alivre-ouvert (in French) posts about Jane Eyre and Kirjavinkit (in Finnish), vintage bluebell about Wuthering Heights; The Squeee tries to be equanimous with Michelle Carter's Charlotte Brontë's Thunder;  ReelMusic Online posts about Bernard Herrmann's Jane Eyre 1944 score; col underhill uploads a Top Withins picture to Flickr. Finally, we recommend a visit to the Brontë Parsonage Blog which has recently changed its layout.