Team Eyre or Team Earnshaw?

What's On Stage reviews the stage adaptation of Jane Eyre currently at the Coliseum Theatre, Oldham, and gives it 3 stars.

In Willis Hall’s adaptation, directed by Kevin Shaw, the cast bring to life this enchanting love story set on the Yorkshire moors with passion and vigour. The performers remain on stage throughout and work tirelessly to create the howling winds Brontë describes snaking around Thornfield Hall, the sounds of the birds in the trees, fire and the sounds you would hear in a market place to great effect.
The entire cast also provider the narration throughout which is a nice touch and prevents there being long self absorbed moments of Jane attempting to deal with the situations she finds herself in and helps to keep the pace of the play moving along at a suitable speed.
Caroline Warhurst’s Eyre captures the innocence yet great intelligence of the character well and visibly diplays much of the turmoil Eyre feels and experiences through the story. Gillian Harker as Bertha Mason is suitably maniacal although at times lacking the subtly this part also requires at times. John Mulleady’s Mr Rochester although amusing and clearly in love with Miss Eyre lacks the brooding acerbic side to Mr Rochester that teases Jane and forces her to speak about her emotions, feelings and desires for the future. He is is quite simply too nice at times and needs to make more of the tortured soul side of the character, particularly in relation to his conflicting emotions about Bertha Mason.
Overall this is a pleasing production and captures well the dramatic love story and journey of self-discovery Brontë wrote. However, the overriding issue with it is that everyone on stage speaks too quickly; losing diction and clarity and causing several performers to trip and stumble over the words. (Ruth Lovett)

Jane Eyre 2006 is being broadcast today in Germany, Belgium and France (Arte) and several newspapers discuss it. Stern (Germany):

Ein Klassiker irgendwo zwischen Romanze und Grusel: Die schaurige Geschichte der Jane Eyre hat unzählige Leser in Bann gezogen. Viele Male wurde der Roman der früh gestorbenen britischen Schriftstellerin Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) verfilmt.
Arte zeigt "Jane Eyre" am Donnerstag (6.9./20.15 Uhr) zum ersten Mal in deutscher Sprache den BBC-Vierteiler von 2006. Doppelfolgen flimmern an zwei Abenden über den Schirm und bringen das viktorianische Zeitalter ins Wohnzimmer. (Translation)

Süddeutsche (Germany):

Kamera, Musik, Ausstattung Landschaftsaufnahmen, alles an dieser Produktion ist aufwendig, opulent, betörend; eben State of the Art und ein Beispiel dafür, wie das Fernsehen in gewissen Sparten wächst und das Kino überflügelt. Auf die Spuk-Effekte der schauerverliebten Charlotte Brontõ hat man verzichtet; vernünftig, 165 Jahre nach Erscheinen und nach der x-ten Verfilmung hat sich rumgesprochen, dass auf Thornfield kein Gespenst umgeht, sondern nur die geistesverwirrte Frau von Mr. Rochester.
Dramaturgie und Dialoge des Buches wurden hier und da respektvoll gestrafft und modernisiert, sicherlich auch im Hinblick auf die Zielgruppe, denn die ist nicht anders als die Zielgruppe fast aller Historiendramen: Frauen von 35 an. Und die finden die Liebesgeschichte zwischen der erwachsenen Jane Eyre und dem mysteriösen Mr.Rochester sicherlich fesselnder als Janes entbehrungsreiche Jugend. Und, wenn alles gut geht, sogar interessanter als das Wi-Fi; zumindest diese vier mal 52 Minuten lang. (Rebecca Casati) (Translation)

Moustique (Belgium) gives it 3 out of 4 stars:

Alors que de nombreuses et inégales adaptations ont déjà vu le jour, la BBC, qui s’était déjà lancée dans l’aventure en 1983, récidivait en 2006 avec un tout nouveau casting. Et la formule fonctionne plutôt très bien.
Composée de quatre épisodes, cette mini-série suit fidèlement le déroulement du récit et prend ainsi le temps nécessaire pour retranscrire l’ambiance du roman, de l’enfance malheureuse de Jane Eyre à son retour au domaine de Thornfield Hall, où vit reclus le tourmenté M. Rochester.
Intégrant dans leur jeu un soupçon de tension sexuelle et une dose d’humour bienvenue, les deux acteurs choisis pour incarner ce couple mythique fonctionnent parfaitement.
On retient surtout l’interprétation de la jeune et très expressive Ruth Wilson: lorsque son visage sombre et irrégulier s’éclaire d’un sourire, c’est toute la personnalité de l’héroïne, tiraillée entre raison et passion, qui s’exprime alors. (Translation)

In France, Libération and Le Figaro also mention it.

The Daily Nebraskan seems to think that the actual novel is still better than any of its adaptations, though.

“Jane Eyre” — There have been dozens of interpretations of this classic but every time it falls short. There’s something about the darkness in this book that lends itself to page better than the screen. (Rachel Staats)

And speaking of adaptations, Bayside Patch mentions Andrea Arnold's in its Fall Movie Preview while 1450 WHTC features Tom Hardy and recalls his role as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights 2009.

Freelance film writer and self-proclaimed Tom Hardy aficionado Jenni Miller tells Hollywood.com, "He's charming, he's funny, and he's honest about his screwed-up past. He is very handsome to a wide variety of people, regardless of gender or sexuality." Not to mention actor has a wide range of ability. He can go from bashing heads in RocknRolla to staring wistfully upon the moors in Wuthering Heights. "He's got this tough guy/soft heart thing going on. I mean, hello, he was in Wuthering Heights! And that video of him rapping with a baby! It makes my brain hurt," adds Miller. (Kelsea Stahler)

The Telegraph is inspired by the new film adaptation of Anna Karenina to discuss heroines:

But so, I hear you say, do such titans of the literary firmament as Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary. Well, I have created a litmus test that encapsulates why a celebrated tragic heroine is not necessarily the one we end up loving best. It all boils down to this: are you part of Team Eyre or Team Earnshaw? Do you identify with Cathy Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, who destroys everything she touches and whinges endlessly about her love for Heathcliff resembling the rocks beneath? Or do you prefer Jane Eyre, who, despite being no great shakes in the looks department and having been brought up in care, doesn’t hesitate to see herself as the equal of the enormously rich Mr Rochester – and tells him so. (She also shows good practical skills when dealing with knife wounds.)
For as hauntingly poetic as Cathy Earnshaw’s words are, however profound the feelings she evokes, I cannot help but feel that if I actually met her (or worse, had to be her), I would be bored with her self-indulgent and overly dramatic “Nelly, I am Heathcliff” wittering within minutes. Jane Eyre, on the other hand, would be more of a laugh, always up for taking down a self-important clergyman, or keen adventures like going to have your fortune told. One works perfectly on the page; the other translates better into real life.
Yes, I’m with Keira Knightley. For me, it’s Jane Eyre and Lizzie Bennet all the way. (Glenda Cooper)

Coincidentally, Vogue (UK) talks to Keira Knightley about her role as Anna Karenina.

Knightley currently stars in Anna Karenina - Joe Wright's film version of the 19th Century Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy. Although the star has tackled many famous literary roles - from Pride & Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennett to Atonement's Cecilia Talis, she found Anna the most challenging.
"She's a really hard one," she told us. "All the characters that I've played have, on the whole, been quite likeable. Everyone wants to be like Elizabeth Bennett and even with Cecilia Talis, she was quite cold - but that was only because she was so pent-up. Anna is a little more intense, she's needy and manipulative. It makes you really dislike her sometimes, but then you look at her and think: 'Fuck, have I ever behaved like that?' And, most of us have, let's face it. She's so consumed by lust, she doesn't see what's in front of her. I mean, most of us have been there haven't we? She's a bit like Cathy from Wuthering Heights - both characters aren't girls you'd particularly want to go for a drink with, but you can sort of understand why they're acting the way they are. As an actor, it's my job to try and work out why people do the things they do." (Ella Alexander)

Another interviewee who mentions the Brontës is writer Kate Moore on USA Today's Happy Ever After.

Joyce: In its review of your 2012 RITA-nominated Regency, To Seduce an Angel, Bookaholics Romance Club calls the characters "unconventional." What's unconventional about them? Kate: Readers find Dav and Emma unconventional, I think, because they both experienced an early, lost youth. Instead of going to school and learning to dance or coming out, both have endured imprisonment. They are old souls in young bodies though it's their young bodies that alert them to the love they lack in their lives.
While it's not surprising to have a young heroine, it's rare to have a hero as young as Dav (except in Dorothy Dunnett or J.K. Rowling). Dav's deadly assurance comes not from years of being "a man on the town" in London or from vast sexual experience, but from surviving on his own with his band of urchins in the almost lawless dark center of London at the time of the Regency. The danger for him is that such extreme self-reliance can lead to becoming a person who no longer connects with others. Emma, at least, hears the voice of her cousin Tatiana, Tatty, in her head, reminding her of her lost dependence on family. I think of the story as a little bit like La Femme Nikita meets Jane Eyre. (Joyce Lamb)

And yet another interview: The Millions talks to writer Tatjana Soli.

TM: “The vision is out of your control.” I love that, and it makes me think of another parallel in the two novels, which is that the main characters in each — Claire and Minna both in The Forgetting Tree, and Helen, the American photojournalist in The Lotus Eaters — have left the worlds they grew up in to live elsewhere. Place is incredibly important in both novels, too. Not to get all psychobabble about it, but I know your mother immigrated to the United States with you when you were a child. Is that experience, do you suppose, involved in that subject matter choosing you?
TS: Well, I don’t want to get psychobabble in reply, but I can’t imagine anything more boring than writing about my own experiences. The way I look at it is that all of us, writers and non-writers, are a product of what happens to us. But for the writer, experience creates unique areas of sympathy. The types of stories that call out to you and not someone else. I was born in Salzburg, Austria, and came to the United States as a child, so being displaced is something that I have experience with, and displacement happens to be a major, worldwide phenomenon of our century. Due to wars, poverty, discrimination, genocide, or even opportunity, for whatever reason, lots of us are far from home, and we are probably never going back.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a major text in The Forgetting Tree. I remember my writing professor in college recommending for me to read it. She said, “This book will change you.” I think she meant that you will always question the accepted text afterwards, in this case, Jane Eyre. But what it did for me is make me want to be a writer. I totally got Jean Rhys from the first lines: “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks.” Rhys was always on the side of the underdog, the outsider. She was born in Dominica and spent most of her life in Europe, primarily in England, which she claimed to hate. In the last part of Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s confinement in England is terrifying. I can picture Rhys reading Jane Eyre the first time and shaking her head: No, this isn’t the way it is.
It’s funny because I can put these ideas together retrospectively, but I never was conscious of it as I was writing. Even on my third novel that I’m working on now, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but again it’s about characters far from home. (Meg Waite Clayton)

The Herald Sun (Australia) begins a review of Naomi Wolf's Vagina: A New Biography as follows:

Why do women love bad boys, such as James's sexually deviant billionaire Christian Grey and Emily Brontë's Heathcliff?
Why does S&M - and all that other stuff Grey gets up to with wide-eyed uni student Anastasia - increase arousal?
Wolf says the ``badness'' women are attracted to isn't a literal badness _  it is the sexual appeal of ``otherness, wildness, the dimensions of the unknown'', a part of a women's sexual journey.
It is also about the role of the autonomic nervous system, which she explains at length in Vagina: A New Biography. (Blanche Clark)

Now for a few crazy ideas. A suggestion from a columnist at the Yorkshire Evening Post:

Some eighty-five per cent of statues in the UK are of men, and the rest are of Queen Victoria. Which doesn’t leave a lot of immortalised females.
In Yorkshire, there are just 12 listed statues of women, six of them depicting the aforementioned Victoria and the rest representing mythical figures, which I find dispiriting.
Probably Victoria would too, as most of them show her in her plump, dour-faced old age rather than as the hot-blooded, pretty young thing she apparently once was.
Who would I like to see cast in bronze? Well how about Charlotte Brontë or, better still, how about all three of them: Charlotte, Anne and Emily standing together at Top Withens, with the moorland winds sweeping over their sensible Yorkshire boots and thick cloaks? What a marvellous sight that would be. (Jayne Dawson)

Would that really be marvellous? And at any rate they already have a statue in the Brontë Parsonage garden.

This is what The Sydney Morning Herald says about the movie Kath and Kimderella:

A plot with elements of Cinderella, Jane Eyre and Dynasty's Moldavian massacre episode can't really bring it to life. (Philippa Hawker)

Metro Showbiz on Geri Halliwell and Russell Brand as a couple:

It was like the teaming of Cathy and Heathcliff or Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. They were a pairing that was easy to believe and hardly surprising (Amy Duncan)

One News reports on New Zealand Fashion Week:

TSN Designers Anjali Stewart and Rachel Easting adapted designs from previous collections for their Autumn/Winter range I Thought You'd Never Ask, inspired by influential female novelists such as Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. Prints included sickly-sweet strawberries and candy hearts paired with jelly sandals and pom-pom beanies, which, as was expected, ticked all the boxes. (Jessica Beresford)

Yes, that would seem to explain why the Brontës and Jane Austen were all turning in their graves yesterday.

Uriel posts about Jane Eyre in Spanish and Cinema discusses in Portuguese the 2011 adaptation. Life of a Bookworm is looking forward to reading Aviva Orr's The Mist on Brontë Moor while A bibliophobic is waiting for Tina Connolly's Ironskin.

Finally, a couple of tweets:

‏@BronteParsonage:
What pleasure to show @tiffanymurray round the Museum. Reading her Wuthering Heights reinterpretation, Diamond Star Halo, has made our week

@tiffanymurray
Everyone! Go to the @BronteParsonage - Oh, my - what a brilliant jewel. The best weekend I've spent for a long, long time!