Brontës in a Banner

Joanna Biggs in the London Review of Books talks about the Save the Women's Library Campaign closing her article with a reference to an item seen at the current exhibition held at the Women's Library: The Long March to Equality: Treasures of The Women's Library.

Just as the librarian announced that the library was about to close for the evening, my eye was caught by a WSPU banner in the suffragette colours of green, white and purple. No slogan, just a stylised rose and two names: CHARLOTTE BRONTE EMILY BRONTE. I wondered if they’d lend it. If suffragettes thought those names enough to get us the vote, they must be enough to let us keep our library.

If someone visits the exhibition, please tweet or post a picture of it, we would love to see it.

The Oregonian reviews the Cindy Sherman exhibition, Untitled Film Stills:

In the adjacent "Untitled #512," 2010/2011, Sherman has inserted herself into a dark, brooding Romantic landscape, whose sullen browns, blues and grays evoke the desperate, windswept moors of "Wuthering Heights."  (John Motley)

La Presse (Canada) reports the publication of the comic album Jane, le renard et moi (Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault and written by Fanny Britt):

Existe-t-il un lecteur qui n'a pas, un jour, plongé dans un livre afin d'échapper à ceux qui le ridiculisaient? Et qui, ce faisant, s'est soustrait à la méchanceté tout en trouvant, dans les pages de ce livre, un peu de réconfort? C'est le propos d'un roman graphique chavirant et subtil, inspiré par Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë: Jane, le renard et moi, texte de la dramaturge Fanny Britt, illustré par Isabelle Arsenault. (...)
Hélène, âgée d'une douzaine d'années, subit les railleries sans fondement de petits tyrans de cours d'école. Son histoire se déroule dans le milieu des années 80, à Montréal, avec des références discrètes à The Police, aux ninjas et au nombre croissant de familles monoparentales. Seule «tricherie» assumée par l'auteure: la chanson Les fros de Richard Desjardins, évoquée dans cette BD tout public, n'est sortie qu'en 1993. Mais sinon, l'histoire d'Hélène, c'est celle de Fanny.
Fanny Britt en convient, Jane, le renard et moi est un journal intime rétrospectif, parsemé de «noms fictifs» pour préserver l'anonymat des véritables protagonistes. «C'est presque impudique comme texte, ajoute-t-elle. C'est vraiment quelque chose que j'ai vécu, quand les filles de ma classe ont décidé de dire que j'étais grosse et ceci et cela. C'est l'année où j'ai réalisé que les pas fines existent.»
Remplies de détails charmants, les illustrations de la vie quotidienne d'Hélène sont entrecoupées de vignettes colorées. Lorsqu'elle lit Jane Eyre, à laquelle elle s'identifie, la fillette voit littéralement la vie en couleurs. Mais quand elle doit aller dans une colonie de vacances en compagnie de ses intimidatrices, c'est le noir qui prédomine. «Je voulais une imagerie victorienne, qui rappelle l'époque de Jane Eyre, explique Isabelle Arsenault. Je me suis inspirée des films d'époque, très contrastés.» (Marie-Christine Blais) (Translation)

Susie Boyt presents in the Financial Times her latest novel The Small Hours and slips in two Brontë references:

As I grew older, the grinding teaching methods in Hard Times thrilled me. I always liked the aspects of school that were most Draconian and bizarre. The commands of “Silence!”, “Order!” and the “strange shreds of rusty meat” for dinner at Lowood school, where Jane Eyre is a pupil, were so austere that they were exotic. (...)
The school scene, real or imagined, that has had the most profound effect on my imagination is the passage at the end of Villette when Monsieur Paul gives the difficult, secretive, severe and passionate Lucy Snowe a school of her own, perhaps the best piece of present-giving in the whole of English literature. It conveys school not merely as a medium for progress, growing and education, a place in which multiple rites of passage will occur, but it shows school as something even more valuable to a fraught soul: a home. Taking her into a faubourg of small neat houses, at the end of a long walk, Monsieur Paul opens one and leads Lucy through its cosy rooms, finally opening a locked room for her:
“I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupulously clean, though bare, compared with those I had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards were carpetless; it contained two rows of green benches and desks, with an alley down the centre, terminating in an estrade, a teacher’s chair and table; behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two maps; in the window flowered a few hardy plants; in short here was a miniature classe – complete, neat, pleasant ... ‘Will you have the goodness to accept ...?’”
I know I would.

The same newspaper interviews the author C.K. Stead:

Who are your literary influences?
The list would have to include, early on, the poems of John Donne, Wuthering Heights, the marvellously interminable sentences of Walter Scott’s Rob Roy, the prose of David Copperfield, and the romance of The Great Gatsby. Later, I was powerfully influenced by the novels of Günter Grass and Alberto Moravia.

A letter to the Spenborough Guardian happens to mention the Brontë-Hartshead connection:

Richard Bell has written a booklet, Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire, which includes Hartshead.
The walk beings at the church where Patrick Brontë was appointed curate. A corner of the churchyard is said to contain unnamed graves of Luddite men. (John Appleyard)

Do you really think that Emily Brontë could be a precedent of a sexy geek? Asbury Park Press thinks so:

Great moments in sexy geek history:
1847 — Emily Brontë publishes “Wuthering Heights,” quickening the pulse of Victorian geeks and modern geeks for years afterward.  (Chris Jordan)

The Winnipeg Free Press discusses Shakespeare's Tremors and Orwell's Cough by John J. Ross:

Emily Brontë showed a complete lack of interest in social interaction and preferred the company of her pets. Asperger syndrome might explain this as well as account for her literary ability, in Ross's view. (Ursula Fuchs)

Creative Loafing Charlotte publishes a lukewarm review of Wuthering Heights 2011:

This won't replace the 1939 Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon classic as the definitive screen take, but Arnold's atmospheric direction and the stunning camerawork by Robbie Ryan (who's already won several international awards for his lensing here) help counteract a certain degree of lethargy in a respectable retelling that fails to scale any new heights. (Matt Brunson)

Toutlelaculture (France) thinks that it's an irregular film:

 Parfaitement menée, la première partie du film est un bijou. Les dialogues se font rares, la réalisatrice préférant suggérer l’idylle naissante en capturant, comme à la dérobée, les échanges muets des héros. Toute en retenue, la performance des acteurs incarnant Catherine et Heathcliff enfants, Shannon Beer et Solomon Glave, est criante d’authenticité. La narration, entrecoupée de plans rapprochés de la faune des landes, et de grands panoramas saisis sous tous les soleils, se déroule, suivant avec lenteur le rythme calme des saisons. Elevant le paysage au rang de personnage, le film d’Andrea Arnold est d’une rare beauté plastique. Les grandes étendues désertiques sont particulièrement bien mises en valeur, permettant au spectateur d’apprécier la violence du climat et l’aridité de ces terres sauvages, comme de deviner la manière dont cet environnement est susceptible d’influencer le caractère de ses habitants. Cette mise en image de l’atmosphère crépusculaire du roman de Emily Brontë est sans doute la plus grande réussite du film. (...)
La langueur du rythme, au départ séduisante finit par lasser. La récurrence à la nature devient redondante et l’adaptation s’enlise progressivement dans un parti pris trop esthétisant. A trop vouloir tendre vers le film d’ambiance, Andrea Arnold finit par bâcler la dramaturgie, en traitant à égalité des événements d’importances disparates. Malgré sa qualité d’image, le film tombe donc à côté. Preuve s’il en est, que les livres des sœurs Brontë, complexes et rigoureux, peuplés de personnages insaisissables, résistent encore à la transposition cinématographique. (Aïnoa Jean-Calmettes) (Translation)

The film opens in France next December 5 but it will be screened previously at the Quinzaine Anglaise in Carcassonne (1-15 November) (Source); 4rfv announces that Andrea Arnold will present her film at the Foyle Film Festival (November 21-25). A.V. Club recommends yet another Wuthering Heights adaptation: William Wyler's which is aired tonight on TCM (US):

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon are terrific in one of the best literary adaptations ever made. If you’re getting ready to go see Andrea Arnold’s recent, excellent adaptation, you could do worse than watching this one as another take on the same story. (Todd VanDerWerff)

Levante (Spain) uses William Wyler's film as a metaphor for describing the Manchester City's situation and future.

Comicus interviews Andrea Baricordi, editor of Kappa/Ronin who says about the Italian edition of the Hiromi Iwashita manga adaption of Wuthering Heights:

[E] ovviamente anche a Cime Tempestose, il primo volume della collana “La letteratura coi manga”, che è stato accolto con un calore quasi inaspettato sia dal pubblico generalista, sia da chi legge fumetti.  (Cris Tridello) (Translation)

L'Express (France) reviews the film Lili à la découverte du monde sauvage:

Pour l'histoire - une poule de batterie s'évade, adopte un oeuf, s'entiche d'un canard ténébreux, copine avec une loutre et a des démêlés avec, euh, une sorte de belette -, c'est un mix gentil de La chèvre de monsieur Seguin et Chicken Run , avec un Heathcliff version Colvert pour la pincée Hauts de Hurlevent. (Sandra Benedetti) (Translation)

Voir (Canada) reviews Agnes Grey; Teenage Fiction and The 100 Books I Brought to New Zealand post about Jane Eyre; the Brontë Sisters posts about one of the possible inspirations for Charlotte Brontë's pen name; The JK Review reviews The Flight of Gemma Hardy; And Out Comes All These Words posts about Wuthering Heights; Recenzje książek (in Polish) reviews The Professor; Entre Libros Anda el Juego (in Spanish) reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1996; Heroes and Heartbreakers posts about Jane Eyre Laid Bare; Under The Radar, Drama & Romance (in Portuguese) and Cine... y lo que surja (in Spanish) talk about Jane Eyre 2011; FantYAstic Volumes reviews Tina Connolly's Ironskin. Finally a couple of nice pictures seen on Flickr: Haworth Churchyard and the Brontë Bridge.