Rochester's Serpent vs Porcelain Skin. Voiceover by Felicity Porter

Maxine Linehan, who is performing Charlotte Brontë in the new performances of William Luce's Brontë in off-Broadway, talks with Irish Examiner and discovers unexpected Brontë family relations:

Her new one-woman play, Brontë: A Portrait of Charlotte, opened off Broadway on Wednesday.
It was while researching her role that Linehan discovered a unique connection to the Brontës.
"I found out that Patrick [Emily and Charlotte’s father] was born in Rathfriland just outside Newry," she said. "I know that part of the world pretty well, although I haven’t lived there for a long time, but I never knew this.
"And then, as I delved further, I discovered that my mother’s brother-in-law, Seán McClory, has an ancestor called Alice McClory, who was Charlotte Brontë’s grandmother.
"So on top of everything, I’m kind of related to the Brontës," she said laughing. "I can’t claim direct lineage but my first cousins are descendants and I’m very proud of that."
This intensely emotional play is an often funny but more often sad account of one day in the Jane Eyre author’s life as she reflects on her grim prospects in the isolation of the Yorkshire moors after burying the last of her siblings. (...)
But she has never looked back since leaving the legal profession after her London company transferred her to their New York office which is why she feels a kinship with Charlotte Brontë and the manner in which the author’s career was never fully realised.
"She tries to keep writing while she takes care of her father. But she never got to focus on it. It would be like me being forced to live in a place without theatres.
"The Brontës existed in this tight network. Charlotte always said she would never have been able to write Jane Eyre without Emily. They would bounce ideas off one another, spend evenings reading what they’d written that day.
"When all her sisters were gone, she lost all that. But if she’d gone to London, she could have written so much more." (John Riordan)

The Times talks with Eve Sinclair about her newly-released erotic retelling of Jane Eyre:

Eve Sinclair — a pseudonym — is the anonymous, Essex-born, 42-year-old author of another much-hyped example. Jane Eyre Laid Bare is described by its publisher as an erotic adaptation of the classic text wherein its heroine “subtly” uncovers her sexuality. Sinclair, who is married with children, admits to having read the novel by Charlotte Brontë only twice before writing her version, and that she found the novel “boring” when she first read it as part of her O-level English syllabus.
She predicts that her version will revive interest in what she believes to be “a difficult text to get your head around”. “I did say to my husband, ‘How many children will end up reading this version instead of the actual Jane Eyre?’.”
Does she think that teenagers will forgo the Brontë classic for her “mash-up” version? “I think they will. It will actually be quite fun to have them reading because I’ve so much of the original and the story’s the same.”
Sinclair condenses the 350,000-word original into 84,000 words (“I’ve lopped off the beginning”). Starting and ending with Jane ’s arrival at and departure from Thornfield Hall, Laid Bare includes sex scenes that she says are in keeping with Brontë’s 19th-century masterpiece.
“I felt very strongly that because it’s Jane Eyre, it comes with a sense of responsibility.” One paragraph comes to mind: “[Rochester] took [Jane’s] hand and pressed it hard against the buttons of his breeches, which sprang up to attention, as though a great sea serpent were attempting to rise up and break free from the deep.” It is a passage that Sinclair claims is in keeping with Brontë’s style, having diligently researched the mores, vocabulary and dress codes of the era. Was the euphemism “serpent” familiar to the inhabitants of 19th- century stately homes? “I used some artistic licence,” says Sinclair. But dictionary lists of slang of the era — “rod”, “tube”, “root”, “bean tosser”, “bauble” — make no mention of “serpent”. In another scene Jane describes taking off her “pants”. It is an authentic term, says Sinclair. Most etymological dictionaries disagree. The correct term in Brontë’s lifetime would have been “pantaloons”. (...)
Sinclair may claim to have “enormous respect for the original text”, but English literature specialists disagree. John Sutherland, Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature at UCL, told The Times that he considered such distortions of the classics as “meretricious, unnecessary and clumsily done”. (...) But, says Sinclair, abridging one of the classics into a work of erotic fiction “was something I really thought carefully about and tried to do in a really sensitive way, but at the same time had a really good laugh doing it”. This will be why, during one of her numerous sexual encounters, the re-imagined Jane describes how her “head seemed to explode like a shattered mirror”. A new character in the form of “Emma Wilby” reveals Jane Eyre’s bisexual side. Sinclair says: “I don’t see the problem with bringing it to market if people are crying out for it.” (Stefanie Marsh)

We wonder what kind of Brontë novels (certainly not the same ones as ours) Amelia Proud from the Daily Mail means when she describes the actress Ashley Greene (from the Twilight saga) :

In that porcelain skin, pinched cheeks Brontë heroine kind of way of course... and as Bella proved after her gruesomely, visceral demise during childbirth, it can do wonders for a girl's hair.

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is quite right when he says in his Telegraph blog:

If you ask a silly question, then you'll get a silly answer. And in this morning’s paper one is asked: “Does a female novelist need to have experienced motherhood truly to understand human emotions?” (...)
Charlotte Bronte writes brilliantly of love, death, grief and sorrow in Jane Eyre in which she creates one of the most interesting heroes in Mr Rochester. She had no children either.

Another reply to the original article can be read on The Frisky.

The Irish Times reviews The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack:

Jack describes the scene in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in which Jane delights in having free access to her uncle’s library, though her cousin, John Reed, tries to stop her and one day takes the book she has been reading, throws it at her and causes her to fall, cutting her head. Sometimes reading The Woman Reader feels like this, with Jack as John Reed, constantly snatching away the book in which we had just begun to be engrossed, but with the added indignity that we had started to look into it with her encouragement.  (Susan McKay)

Sometimes googling something is not enough and a double check is necessary. Alison Killins in MyKawartha is (far too) wrong when he says:

I love this quote from Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, one of my favourite books of all time.
In it she shines a light on this question, for this Victorian author had seen more than her fair share of personal tragedy in her short life of 38 years.
"I guess when your heart gets broken, you sort of start to see cracks in everything. I'm convinced that tragedy wants to harden us and our mission is never to let it."

The quote as a matter of fact is by J. J. Abrams and belongs to the Pilot episode of the TV series Felicity.

The Scotsman reviews Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy:

Livesey revels in portraying Orkney life, its traditions and history; the landscape is perfectly cast to surround the unfolding heightened drama as Hugh and Gemma seem set to marry. But off-stage, the fickle finger of Brontë precedent waits to nudge true love off course and set Gemma in flight – as the title foretells.
It is only then, in the novelistic sense, that the book at last takes wing, becoming freed of its Jane Eyre shackles as Gemma throws herself upon providence, heading due south via Inverness to Aberfeldy, alone, distraught, with all her possessions lost en route. (Tom Adair)

The Guardian has an article about food as art and literature-inspired dishes:

[F]or another take on this, as well as Jane Eyre cardamom seed buns and Toni Morrison tribute beloved blackberry tart, check out Cara Nicoletti's yummy-books.com. (Jane Brocket)

The exact entry can be found here.

We are still laughing after reading this linguistic blunder reported in The Globe and Mail:

Maureen Fisher was startled to read, in a Globe letter to the editor last Saturday, that former U.S. vice-president Al Gore had once compared the search for unconventional sources of oil “to the behaviour of advanced heroine addicts.” Oh sure, they start off with Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, but soon they want the derring-do of Hermione Granger and Alien’s Ripley. (Warren Clements)

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reviews some of the productions performed at the Minnesota Fringe, including

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Second Youngest Sister Chicago's RE/Dance Group explores the blurry lines between fiction and reality inside a writer's mind (perhaps a Brontë sister, given the work's 19th-century gothic feel). (Graydon Royce)

The Grey disease is officially a pandemic. Il Corriere della Sera (Italy) publishes:

“Cinquanta sfumature di grigio” si presenta come un romanzo d’amore. Una lettrice, Laura R., mi scrive paragonandolo a “Jane Eyre” di Charlotte Brontë (“Fanciulla innocente si innamora di un uomo ricco e potente che nasconde un tremendo segreto”). In effetti, ripeto, è parapornografia letteraria.  (Beppe Servegnini) (Translation)

In the Daily Mail:

If you read the full Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy Ana and Christian's relationship is - frankly - a bit bonkers at times. 'Emotional rollercoaster' doesn't begin to cover it. What with their will they/won't they relationship, bouts of jealousy, po-faced speeches, grand passion and then assorted lunatic exes, helicopter rides and stalking, their life together comes across as Heathcliff-and-Cathy-meet-James Bond. It sounds exhausting, even before the epic amounts of sex. Thankfully, real life is - as you'd hope - considerably more sedate and, well, fun. (Sophie Morgan)

Dziennik (Poland) talks about the recently published Agnes Grey Polish translation:

Powieść Anne Brontë zatytułowana „Agnes Grey” doczekała się swojego pierwszego polskiego wydania. Napisane w połowie XIX wieku dzieło najmniej znanej z sióstr pisarek w dużej mierze oparte jest o biograficzne fakty z życia autorki. Powieść Anne Brontë pokazuje trudności, z jakimi borykały się inteligentne i ambitne kobiety w XIX wiecznej Anglii, które wbrew panującym zwyczajom, chciały zawalczyć o własną niezależność. (Anna Sobańda) (Translation)

Incidentally, Książki (nie) tylko z górnej półki (in Polish) reviews the book.

Marie Claire (France) reviews Jane Eyre 2011:

L’avantage des grands romans est d’avoir une thématique indémodable. Soit, ici, la diffi cile émancipation d’une femme heureusement dotée d’un caractère en acier trempé. En outre, Fukunaga a su restituer à merveille l’ambiance gothique et quasi fantastique de ce mélo envoûtant à la beauté ténébreuse. (Christophe Carrière) (Translation)

More reviews on Il a osé! and Grignotages de mimylasouris.

Eidos comments on education.

Reading is a kind of “virtual reality.” As Plato says in Phaedrus, books are dangerous, but they do allow experiencing an emotion at second hand. This is not perfect, but it does prevent many dangers. A romantic can learn and train his heart by reading Wuthering Heights without having to live on wuthering heights.
I can testify that the man who makes Heathcliffe’s (sic) mistakes rarely survives long enough to learn from them! (John Mark Reynolds)

A high school junior who has 'tolerated' Wuthering Heights in the Fort Way News-Sentinel; the Brontë Sisters posts about knitting in the eighteenth century; Al Cor Alzira (in Catalan) talks about the Brontës; Ryan's Bookcase (in Hungarian), Lin's Studio and Letters from Lauren post about Jane Eyre;  Kids Book Review reviews Death of a Schoolgirl by Joanna Campbell Slan; daciejeanne has created on Polyvore two collage sets for Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw.