The Madwoman in the Moors

We wonder which kind of Brontës the writers of Fashion Police had in mind when they became so excited about this dress worn by Anne Hathaway. Certainly not the real ones:

Before you start wondering whether there was a secret Brontë sister that Emily and Charlotte kept hidden in the storm cellar where she lives to this day, talking to her tea sets and fashioning doilies out of cobwebs safely away from the respectable sorts, refrain. (Lesley Gornstein)

Heat Fun Stuff reviews Eve Sinclair's Jane Eyre Laid Bare:

The plot: Like every other thing in the whole world, Jane Eyre has now been given a Fifty Shades Of Grey makeover. In this new era, where discussion of heavy- duty S&M raises less of an eyebrow than ordering a full-fat latte, the unspoken sexual tension between Jane and Mr Rochester simply won’t cut it. Hence, this sexed-up fan fiction “erotic reworking” of the original.
What’s right with it? It’s a given that, because of all the original prose, Jane Eyre Laid Bare (see what they did there?) has got heaps more literary merit than the original Fifty Shades series, so if you’re snobby about your smut then it’s a good buy.
What’s wrong with it? There’s actually not that much sex in it, meaning that if you already know the story and want to just skip through to the saucy bits, you’ll reach the climax (oh God, now we’re at it) rather speedily.
Verdict: If it’s steamy sex you’re after, you’d be better off waiting for the new Jackie Collins, which is reviewed in next week’s heat. 3/5 (Anna Lewis)

Portland Monthly praises Tina Connolly's Ironskin:

A young poverty-stricken governess alights at a crumbling house on the moors; a haunted man, his strange child, and a horrible mystery await within. Sound like Jane Eyre? It also describes Ironskin, local author Tina Connolly’s entertaining and thought-provoking debut novel. (...) Connolly’s novel masterfully illuminates our fascination with these bygone times, setting the story in a time and place reminiscent of early 20th-century Britain—a time of great technological and social change. We are thrust into the middle of this disruptive era along with protagonist Jane Eliot, who was wounded by flying shrapnel five years previously during the Great War between humans and the bodiless, capricious spirits called “fey.” Like all fey wounds, it “leaks” emotion unless she keeps an iron mask—an “ironskin”—clamped to her face to hold it in. Her disfigurement draws her to that half-ruined house on the moors, where the secret she uncovers is far worse than a madwoman in the attic: she finds herself the only one standing between humanity’s survival and the ultimate fey victory. (...) Tina Connolly will read at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing on Oct 18 at 7. (MeiLin Miranda)

The book is reviewed on Forever 17 Books.

The writer Celia Lyttelton explains to the Western Mail how she conceived The Scent Trail:

When I wrote The Scent Trail (Bantam, £8.99), it was an olfactory odyssey that took me to the wilder shores of Socotra, the island of Dragons Blood in the Arabian Sea, into the high Yemen to seek out precious myrrh and frankincense trees and to the edge of the Sahara to find roses cultivated for scent since Phoenician times. (...)
However, it was only when I returned home with suitcases full of exotic, precious perfumes to my house on Brontë moors, three miles as the crow flies to Top Withins, more commonly known as Wuthering Heights, could I then sit down and form the flesh around the skeleton that was to become the book.

The Staten Island Advance talks about the exhibition Haunted Houses by Corinne May Botz:

The first thing that inspired the project were writers like Edith Wharton, Charlotte Brontë and even Toni Morrison, (...) Often, these ghost stories were written by women as a means of articulating domestic discontents. I was interested in the idea of a woman being trapped in the home or by domestic space and how this was expressed in history.

The Irish Times reviews Naomi Wolf's Vagina: A New Biography:

A chapter on sexuality and creativity is equally trite. She picks a few 19th- and early-20th-century female writers and claims their creativity was connected to the fulfilment of their “sexually passionate natures”, conveniently ignoring the fact that many of the writers she cites, including Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Brontë, were virgins when they wrote their passionate work. (They may have masturbated, of course, but in Wolf’s world that doesn’t count). (Anna Carey)

Huron Bullet News reviews The Truth about Dandelions by Hayley Linfield:

The book centres around Mara’s life as a typical university student studying classic English literature. She spends too much of her time partying and sleeping around, trying desperately to bury her childhood emotional scars. It seems so contradictory that Mara reads Charlotte Brontë and Thomas Hardy novels, full of society’s expectations of what is proper and yet she behaves like a tramp. (Jennifer Cox)

Business Insider is not very happy with some of the education policies of the Obama administration:

One result will be that children at all levels will read less literature and more speeches, journalism and other “informational texts” to prepare for life after graduation.
I had to reread this a few different times in order to let the magnitude of this statement sink in.
So much for Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, and other great works that have inspired so many students over the years to pursue great thoughts and their own great works in the world of arts and literature.
Do you as I get a little bit concerned wondering just whose speeches our children might be reading? Do you think the material selected might be subject to very real bias? Journalism? Do you share my view that to a very large extent real journalism in America is now dead? “Informational texts?” Are you kidding me?
This shift in our nation’s public reading program is ALARMING.
Are we dumbing down our future to the point that the great literary works will become mere relics? Are we replacing Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Homer, and so many other great writers with the stimulating works produced in US Weekly, People, and other thought provoking writing commonly found at most checkout counters? (Larry Doyle)

Cape Cod Times doesn't seems to agree neither with the Common Core programme:

In an effort to improve the state of public education, 46 states have voluntarily adopted "Common Core" standards that emphasize critical math and English skills.
But some feel the English standards still fall short.
"Massachusetts is testament to the value of literature," said University of Arkansas Professor Sandra Stotsky. "Its literature-rich standards include a recommended list of classic authors... . As a result, the commonwealth's students have consistently scored at the top on national reading tests... ."
Unfortunately, Common Core reduces the amount of literature students will study compared to the former Massachusetts standards, according to the Pioneer Institute, a privately funded research organization in Boston.
Among the items missing from Common Core are a list of recommended authors and titles and British literature apart from Shakespeare.
Most honors- and Advanced Placement-level courses in Massachusetts high schools still offer a healthy dose of English and American literature, but it's entirely possible to graduate from public higher education in Massachusetts without ever reading Shakespeare, Brontë, Emerson, Thoreau or other literary giants.

ScreenRant reviews the film House at the End of the Street by Mark Tonderai:

If you read that synopsis and were left wondering whether House at the End of the Street is a thriller about the dirty truth behind a prosperous town’s shiny veneer – or perhaps a drama about a mother looking for a fresh start with her daughter – or maybe even a Jane Eyre-style tale about an enigmatic man who’s got something to hide – the truth is, it wants to be all that (and more). (Sandy Schaefer)

The Independent reviews the latest Anna Karenina by Joe Wright:

Which brings me to the film of Anna Karenina, now going the rounds and not quite getting, it seems to me, the praise it deserves. Its director, Joe Wright, first endeared himself to me when he filmed Pride and Prejudice with a seasoning of Wuthering Heights, thereby knocking on the head the fallacy, put about by the Brontës themselves, that they were hot and Miss Austen was cold. (Howard Jacobson)

Well, 'the fallacy' technically was put about Charlotte Brontë, as the other Brontës were already dead.

The Times has an article about Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry:

He now lives perhaps half an hour’s drive from the Brontë vicarage, and there may be a little Heathcliff in the way in which the wildness and isolation settles his soul.

The Seattle Times reviews T.C.Boyle's San Miguel:

Marantha's adoptive daughter, Edith, a spoiled teen, at first enjoys the freedom of roaming the island and fantasizes that she's the heroine of her own "Wuthering Heights" or "The Tempest," but she is soon serving as Cinderella to her domineering stepfather. (Agnes Torres Al-Shibibi)

Reformatorisch Dagblad (in Dutch) describes like this the writer Julie Klassen:

De Amerikaanse auteur Julie Klassen wordt door sommigen in één adem genoemd met de bekende Engelse schrijfsters Jane Austen en Charlotte Brontë. Haar boeken spelen zich af in het weerbarstige Engeland aan het begin van de negentiende eeuw, met een overvloed aan historische details, uitgebreide beschrijvingen van kleding en interieurs, voorwerpen en gebruiken. (Ann-Minke Hakvoort) (Translation)

The Daily Star (Bangladesh) quotes from a speech of the Nigerian poet and writer Niyi Osundare:

They proffered a setting, a universe of imagination, panoply of experience, a demography of characters, even a certain nuance of narrative and language that we found strange and familiar, quaint and curious at the same time. Their language is not that of our homesteads and marketplaces; their human population has a colour and custom not exactly our own. Their creators probably never knew about our existence. But somehow, something in them resonated powerfully with our common humanity, we wept with Lear on the heath, our hair rose with the horrors in Wuthering Heights, our ears throbbed with the plaintive notes of Keats's nightingale, we accompanied Gray as he walked through the graveyard and felt replenished by his moral meditations, while Wordsowrth's Tintern Abbey connected powerfully with our youthful sensibility, our will to growth. (Kajal Bandyopadhyay)

Leitoras Compulsivas (in Portuguese) and Y Reid Books? posts about Wuthering Heights;  Unputdownable Books reviews A Breath of Eyre; Simply Samantha talks about Jane Eyre; Madame La Gruccia (in Italian) posts about fashion and Jane Eyre 1996; Filmparadiset (in Swedish) and Rukmini Singh's Blog reviews Wuthering Heights 2011;  The Ruminator publishes an alternative Wuthering Heights chapter.

The tweet of the week comes courtesy of Zoë Eckman:

Charlotte Brontë locked her madwoman in the attic; Emily let hers run mad on the moors.