WBUR's
Cognoscenti features Margot Livesey writing about
Jane Eyre, which was published on a day like today in 1847.
On October 16, 1847 Charlotte Brontë, the oldest surviving daughter of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, published “Jane Eyre.” She was 31-years-old. The novel received many reviews, most praising, some scolding, and the first printing sold out within three months. It has remained in print for the last 165 years and if you still have a local bookshop, you can almost certainly buy a copy there.
My beloved mentor Roger read “Jane Eyre” in India, during the Second World War. He was the navigator of a small plane and missed a landing strip, not fatally, because he had to find out if Jane and Rochester would get married.
I read the novel when I was 9-years-old, just a little younger than Jane is in the opening chapter, and have since re-read it a number of times to teach, and for pleasure. For the last five years I’ve refrained from opening the book only because I’d been working on my own 20th century re-imagining of Jane’s journey. “The Flight of Gemma Hardy” was published this spring so I’m now free to return to Jane once more. (Read more)
Fox 23 News also mentions the anniversary.
Diário Digital (Portugal) recommends the novel among other classics.
«Jane Eyre», de Charlotte Brontë
«Escrito por Charlotte Brontë e publicado pela primeira vez em 1847, este clássico da literatura inglesa combina, de uma forma magnífica, ingredientes da literatura gótica com paixão, mistério e suspense. Jane Eyre, órfã de pai e mãe, recebe uma educação severa, primeiro na casa da tia Reed, que detesta, e depois na escola Lowood. Esta infância solitária e infeliz fortalece-lhe o espírito e a independência, que serão postos à prova quando Jane se torna preceptora da jovem Adèle em Thornfield Hall. É aí que Jane e o Sr. Edward Rochester se apaixonam. No entanto, um segredo terrível separa-os, obrigando Jane a fazer uma escolha…» (Translation)
Publishers Weekly lists
Orwell's Cough as one of the best new books of the week.
The project originated with individual articles, first published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, on the two titular authors, who now bookend eight other, chronologically arranged chapters (Emily and Charlotte Brontë share one). (Gabe Habash)
ABC (Spain) mentions the same book too.
Shakespeare, George Orwell, Emily Brontë... Los grandes literatos británicos pasan por la consulta del médico John Ross en su libro «La tos de Orwell. Diagnóstico de las enfermedades y estertores de los grandes escritores». En él, este especialista en enfermedades infecciosas, nos cuenta los efectos de la enfermedad sobre la vida y obra de algunos escritores ingleses más conocidos.
Ross echa por tierra viejos mitos biográficos, y sugiere diagnósticos nuevos para estos grandes literatos. Así, apunta a que Shakespeare tenía sífilis y pone como prueba la escritura trémula del genio en sus últimas seis firmas; mientras, George Orwell tuvo el sarampión, la tos ferina, dengue y la tuberculosis, y Emily Brontë pudo haber tenido el síndrome de Asperger, mal que comparte supuestamente con el poeta John Milton, autor de «Paraíso perdido». (Translation)
High Country News reviews
San Miguel by T.C. Boyle:
The first two sections follow the pattern of classic gothic horror stories, like Wuthering Heights, a novel that Edith rereads to the point of boredom. Indeed, Marantha and Edith's life on San Miguel is reminiscent of feminist horror stories like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." Will traps Edith and Marantha on the island and forces them into roles that are counter to everything they value, even to the point of insanity and death. (Jenny Shank)
20 Minutes (France) has the French translator of
50 Shades of Grey acknowledge the '
Jane Eyre origins' of the novel.
The Southeast Review interviews poet Kathryn Nuernberger:
Q: Jealousy seems to play a bit of a role in many of your poems. Which poet’s childhood do you most envy?
A: I definitely envy the Brontë sisters their dark, isolated childhoods and their deep friendship with other literary geniuses who happened to be each other. Their play consisted of creating these amazing, complex imaginary kingdoms of Angria, Gondol [sic], and other nations in the Glass Town Federation. Moreover, they had the tremendous good sense to make themselves the geniis of these worlds. Also, there was a lot of psychological torment and very cold winters. What more could a person want out of childhood? (Jen Schomburg Kanke)
Quite a callous thing to say given that the young Brontës would have surely preferred to have their mum and sisters back.
The Courier-Mail (Australia) joins other news outlets in the realisation that the classics are feeding the silver screen lately.
Seven of the novels being crafted into film are by authors born in the 19th century, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, L. Frank. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit - proof that these best-selling, highly regarded and much-loved tales have enduring themes and characters that remain relevant in a modern world. [...]
While Wright chose a highly stylised interpretation, the latest Wuthering Heights is also winning acclaim - for its raw and natural qualities.
The Andrea Arnold movie features mainly first-time actors, is filmed totally on the Yorkshire moors and has no music soundtrack, just the wailing wind and the sounds of wildlife. (Fiona Purdon)
ABC (Australia) discusses 'Heathcliff, race and yellowism' inspired by Andrea Arnold's adaptation too.
Meanwhile, a film version of Wuthering Heights released this week featuring a black Heathcliff suggests the tale of tragic love and terrible revenge is also a commentary on race and colonialism. Director Andrea Arnold's decision to cast mixed race actors Solomon Glave and James Howson in the role of Heathcliff has sparked debate about both race in casting and in Emily Brontë's original text. The issues raised by Arnold's portrayal of Heathcliff are similar to ones in Australian theatre and film around Aboriginality. In January this year, indigenous writer Jane Harrison explored this complex terrain in Indig-Curious: Who Can Play Aboriginal Roles?, an essay in the Currency House Platform Papers series (you can hear her talking to Waleed Aly on RN Drive in February). (You can listen to it here)
Speaking of films,
The Independent features Alexandra Roach, who played the young Margaret Thatcher in the film
The Iron Lady.
She would, she says, much rather do a comedy than a period drama. Hunderby, which she fondly refers to as "filth in a bonnet", happily combines both. "I didn't get through one scene without laughing. Some days it was impossible. I had to think to myself that it was my Jane Eyre, my Tess of the D'Urbervilles." (Alice Jones)
Digital Journal looks at the latest goings-on in
Coronation Street:
"I'm going to have to sit down as me and bubba are really tired now, ok?" she swooned melodramatically (like some tragic Brontë heroine)! (Jane Reynolds)
The
Guardian reports that 'the RSPB has laid a formal complaint with the commission against the UK government' about the Brontë country moors.
The wild Brontë moors between Yorkshire and Lancashire, home of grouse, golden plover and sturdy sheep, are set to get a new type of visitor: lawyers and investigators from the European commission.
For only the third time in its history, the RSPB has laid a formal complaint with the commission against the UK government, claiming that its wildlife and habitat quango Natural England has failed to protect the bleak but hugely important landscape.
Investigators from the group, whose 1,075,000 membership is more than double that of all three main political parties, have tramped the 4,382 hectares (10,828 acres) of the Walshaw Moor estate for the past six months, recording activity to promote grouse-shooting. The moors where Charlotte Brontë was reminded of her dead sister Emily by "by every knoll of heather, branch of fern, bilberry leaf and fluttering lark or linnet," have been criss-crossed by new or restored tracks, drainage ditches and JCB excavators to help grouse-shooting, images on Google Earth show. (Martin Wainwright)
And now for a blunder repeated verbatim by the
Daily Mail in an article about a plaque for Sir Billy Butlin:
On the www.butlinsmemories.com forum he said: 'The Blue Plaque Association have put a plaque on the wall of the Grand hotel honouring Charlotte Brontë who simply lived in Scarborough for a short while to recover from an illness.
'They deem this to be more important than Sir Billy Butlin owning that hotel for 20 years, building the largest holiday camp in the world in that area and being responsible for bringing thousands of tourists each week!'
And indeed
here is the original post. Any Brontëite will instantly spot the few things wrong with that statement: it was Anne Brontë - accompanied by her sister Charlotte - who went to Scarborough in the hope of recovering from TB. It was a short stay indeed as she died a couple of days after arriving there. And of course the Grand Hotel wasn't even there, as
the blue plaque itself acknowledges: 'Anne Brontë [...] died in a house on this site'.
¡Soup! (in Spanish) posts about
Jane Eyre 2011 while
Incubus Publishing and
Hunting Grey Wolves review
Jane Eyre Laid Bare.
Something This Foggy Day and
A-List Reviews write about
Wuthering Heights 2011;
The Knitting Genealogist posts about the Brontës knitting sticks. Flickr user
juliettetang has been inspired by the novel to create a still life.
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