Are you a Rochosexual too?

Here's a fresh batch of reviews of Wuthering Heights 2011. The Chicago Tribune gives the film 2 1/2 stars:

I saw the film, a noble mixed bag full of sharp objects, a few weeks ago. What I remember most clearly about it now is its paradoxical dankness. Photographed like a breathless nature documentary in windy, swampy, muddy North Yorkshire by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who has worked on all of Arnold's feature-length and short films to date, this "Wuthering Heights" exists on a deglamorized planet far, far away from the best-known film adaptation of the story to date, William Wyler's 1939 showcase for Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. [...]
Arnold's interpretation is taciturn, often entirely without dialogue, though it becomes increasingly conventional in its scene structure as it goes and as the actors hand off the key roles. In reality it's a bit of a slog. The gulf between the cast's first-time film actors and their more seasoned cohorts is considerable. The young performers have their moments, but they're rarely fully felt or dramatically incisive. The movie plays like an idea for a "Wuthering Heights" adaptation.
And yet parts of it stick with you. As adventurous concepts go, this one travels in the exact opposite direction of the new Joe Wright-directed "Anna Karenina," another intriguing mixed bag, though that adaptation risks suffocating on its own elaborate layering and thematic embroidery. Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" is many things, and not others, but it comes with the lowest possible embroidery count.
To say nothing of its frippery count. (Michael Phillips)

The (East Central Illinois) News-Gazette gives it 3 1/2 stars out of 4:

To be sure, Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" probably won't appeal to purists of Brontë's work or Wyler's adaptation. However, I found it to be a revelatory experience, as the story finds new life in being seen through such a stark lens, raising the stakes where love, passion and revenge are concerned and giving merit to all that Heathcliff and Cathy endure and suffer. (Chuck Koplinski)

ChicagoPride also reviews it:

Focusing on the obsession, cruelty and brutality of the story, in equal measure, this version of "Wuthering Heights" is as far from Sir Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as you can get. While Arnold's vision for this version is an admirable experiment, it is ultimately unsatisfying, bordering on pretentious. Arnold is better off sticking with the contemporary stories she tells so well. (Gregg Shapiro)

Interesting how all three remark on the distance from William Wyler's take on the novel.

RedEye finds more recent films to which it can be compared and gives it 3 out of 4 stars:

Writer-director Andrea Arnold’s last film, 2010’s “Fish Tank,” starred Michael Fassbender in one of many fantastic performances that all but guaranteed he'd be a huge star. One year later, Fassbender held his own in Cary Fukunaga's big-screen take on Charlotte Brontë's “Jane Eyre,” which has been covered so many times it will probably be adapted again tomorrow.
Now, completing this little circle, Arnold takes her turn at a Brontë classic with her stark, breathless version of “Wuthering Heights.” Purists may find it too atmospheric; personally, I bring no reservations about the material (never read the book in English class) and think the film more successfully communicates old-fashioned feelings to a modern screen than Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” or Joe Wright’s recent “Anna Karenina.” (Matt Pais)

The Daily Herald reviews the film as well:

Andrea Arnold’s bold re-imagining of Emily Bronte’s classic book “Wuthering Heights” will go down as one of the coldest movies ever made. Not only because of the barren wintry landscapes, whistling winds and the cast’s frosty breath, but because the characters emanate all the warmth of dry ice. (Dann Gire)

The Telegraph reviews Mike Newell's Great Expectations:

And Pip’s London dining society, with their Bullingdon Club manners and desperately on-trend haircuts, seem to have blown in from another version again: a wilder adaptation in the same vein as Andrea Arnold’s elemental Wuthering Heights, or Cary Fukunaga’s achingly beautiful Jane Eyre, both of which were released last year. (Robbie Collin)

News Shopper discusses film adaptations of the classics after watching Jane Eyre 2011.

Having just finished watching yet another film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, I feel I am yet again left with the same feelings as the last. The film was all very fast-paced – which I do not adhere to, as I understand the need to condense a novel into a two-hour period – However, I found myself thrown into a flurry of activity. From a storm, to the fight between Jane and John Reed, where she is locked in the haunted “Red Room”, and knocks herself out in a petrified fit. It is useful to note that this was all within eight minutes of the film’s beginning. I dare say that I am overwhelmed, but understand the need for this to entertain the modern audience.

This columnist from XOJane claims to be a 'Rochosexual' (and wonders why she is).

Here's the thing, though: I might have fallen in like with my husband because of his prose, but I fell in love with him because of Charlotte Brontë's. When I finally did meet Matt, I discovered he looked like Edward Rochester, and I'm not going to lie -- that's what really did it for me.
I am a Rochosexual. I have been ever since the eighth grade, when I read Jane Eyre in Mrs. Buchanan's English class. Come Gilbert and Gubar, come Jean Rhys and Kate Beaton and even Julieanne Smolinski, my attraction to the type has persisted: older, swarthy, laconic, melancholy, a little rude, broad-shoulderaaaablaaahhh I'm getting all hot and bothered just writing this.
Were you to meet any of my past, er, intimate partners, you’d have to be Blanche Ingram not to see Mr. Rochester in disguise. I’ve dated a lot of older men, including my husband, who's 14 years my senior. I’ve also dated many British men, loners, and people who are now incandescently gay. (Psst: in the era of no-fault divorce, "madwoman in attic" has been replaced by "closeted homosexuality” as the leading cause of sexy, mysterious torment in a man’s eyes.) (Anna Latimer)

While she decides where the attraction comes from, BoldSky has included both Mr Rochester and Heathcliff on its list of '10 Bad Guys Who Are Literary Heroes'.

Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights
Talk about falling for the Devil himself; Heathcliff is a man who is drenched in evil but Cathrine can love no other man. Cathrine's famous lines "I am Heathcliff" can never be forgotten.
Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre
Ugly, cruel and authoritative, Mr Rochester initially scares Jane, the governess of his child. But then she falls passionately in love with her. (Anwesha)

La Presse (Canada) shares some recommendations for young readers and among them is

«Jane, le renard et moi». Un coup de c?ur de la rentrée littéraire. Cette bande dessinée sur la méchanceté entre filles saura toucher ceux qui se sont sentis un jour seuls, moches ou à part des autres. C'est-à-dire à peu près tout le monde... Comment Jane Eyre et l'amitié redonnent des couleurs à la vie. Un sujet sensible destiné aux grands, mais qu'on peut faire lire sans crainte. À partir de 11 ou 12 ans. Fanny Britt et Isabelle Arsenault, La Pastèque, 104 pages, 26,95$. (Translation)

Wuthering Heights fans might enjoy tracking this down. From the South Wales Evening Post:

A Welsh Government project, the Library of Wales, created to ensure that Wales's literary heritage written in English was made available to modern audiences, has reached its 50,000th sale.
Titles selected for the Library of Wales are unavailable, out-of- print, or merely forgotten, and published by Parthian.
They range from well-known classics by Raymond Williams, Gwyn Thomas and Dannie Abse, to forgotten works such as Lewis Jones's Cwmardy, and Turf or Stone, the "Welsh Wuthering Heights", by Margiad Evans.

The following, unfortunately, seems impossible to find. From the obituary of ballerina Lois Bewley from The New York Times:

Her other choreographic works included “Visions Fugitives,” brief skits set to music by Prokofiev, and “Children of Darkness,” a ballet based on “Wuthering Heights,” for which Ms. Bewley designed the costumes and the set (consisting of her own photographs of the Yorkshire moors, projected on front and rear scrims) and played the lead role of Catherine. It had its premiere with the Pennsylvania Ballet in 1973. (Bruce Weber)

A columnist from The Memphis Daily News reminisces about one of his teachers.

She knew some weird and wonderful people, and she introduced us. To Coleridge, his Ancient Mariner and that dead bird around his neck. To the Shelleys, both the precious Percy and the monstrous Mary. To Byron and the Brontë girls. To the brooding Faulkner, his bear and Emily’s rose. To a whole world of carefully chosen words, made immortal by their choice. (Dan Conaway)

Actualitté (France) has an article on the Houses of Fiction exhibition. Hathaways of Haworth imagines a world without the Brontës, or the Parsonage as a B&B. Broken Smile and Hojeando mundos... (in Spanish) post about Jane Eyre. More from Thoughts and Stuff on the 1983 adaptation of the novel. Chema Benítez Arte Gráfico posts several illustrations based on the novel. Girl Lost in a Book reviews Joanna Campbell Slan's first installment of her Jane Jane Eyre Chronicles, Death of a Schoolgirl. Lauren's Crammed Booshelf has a guest post by Libby Mercer, author of the upcoming Unmasking Maya, where she tells about the Jane Eyre connections of her novel. Book Reviews by Shiny Kitten Stickers posts about Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow. Stitch and Style reveals the origins of this poster. Screencaps from Les Soeurs Brontë by grande_caps.

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Brontë Studies.Volume 37. Issue 4

The new issue of Brontë Studies (Volume 37, Issue 4, November 2012) is already available online. The issue contains the proceedings of the 2011 Brontë Society Conference: The Brontës and the Bible: Influences both Literary and Religious. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:

Editorial
pp. iii Author: Pearson, Sara L.

The Religion of Patrick Brontë
pp. 267-271(5)   Author: Winnifrith, Tom
Abstract:
Patrick Brontë’s strong religious faith was firmly based on the King James Bible, quotations from which are freely found in his correspondence and fictional works. Doubts about the reliability of this version or the veracity of some of its statements do not seem to have troubled him. Unlike his daughters he seems to have had no difficulty with the Old Testament doctrine that the wicked will be punished in this world or the New Testament doctrine of eternal punishment hereafter, but he did reject predestination to damnation and was no mean bigot in dealing with Catholics or Nonconformists. Nor would he have approved of the facile optimism of some modern Christian thinking which he would have dismissed as unscriptural.

Charlotte Brontë and `The Treasures of the Bible': Roe Head, the `Infernal World' and `Well of Life' 
pp. 272-285(14)   Author:  Alexander, Christine
Abstract:
As in her other writings, Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Roe Head Journal’ illustrates her use of the Bible to articulate her concerns at times of crisis, as well as to express the tension between passion and restraint that underlies her fictional representations of similar crises in the lives of her heroines. Her journal also reflects her theological fears about her attachment to her creative, ‘infernal’ world, while at the same time portraying her artistic life as divinely inspired.

`I Began to See': Biblical Models of Disability in Jane Eyrepp. 286-291(6)    Author:  Joshua, Essaka
Abstract:
The Bible demonstrates a range of attitudes towards disability. Some references are negative (its association with sin and punishment), and some are positive (its association with discipleship and spiritual worth). The allusions to biblical disability in Jane Eyre emphasize the spiritual gains associated with it. Charlotte Brontë centres her discussion of biblical disability on the spiritual role of sight, blindness and madness, and on the physical body’s relationship to the spiritual self. Reading the novel with attention to its use of biblical references to disability provides a more positive understanding of the novel’s account of disability than has hitherto been suggested. This paper argues that if we read Jane Eyre with attention to Charlotte Brontë’s consistently redemptionist agenda in her selection of biblical allusions, Edward Rochester’s disability is not a punishment, but is an indication of his spiritual well-being.

Rending the Veil of Sin: Idolatry and Adultery in Jane Eyre in Light of Ezekiel 16, I and II Corinthians
pp. 292-298(7)   Author:  Nickelsburg, Marilyn.
Abstract:
The Reverend Charles Simeon and the Reverend Patrick Brontë utilize certain biblical texts and phrases (ii Corinthians 6. 14‐18, Matthew 5. 29‐30/Mark 9. 43‐48) to ground their Anglican Evangelical views with regard to forming ‘a proper connexion’ in the selection of a marriage partner. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë alludes to these same passages and incorporates the harlot image from Ezekiel 16 to depict Jane’s idolatrous relationship with Rochester. She cites i Corinthians 6. 18 to justify the severing of Jane’s improper connection.

‘The Coming Man’: Revelations of Male Character in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
pp. 299-305(7)   Author: Pearson, Sara L.
Abstract:
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë alludes to the Second Coming of Christ as depicted in the Bible as a means of characterization for three men in her novel: Mr Brocklehurst, Mr Rochester and St John Rivers. Through these allusions, she depicts Mr Brocklehurst as an Antichrist, Mr Rochester as a false Christ and St John Rivers as the bride of Christ: adaptations of the Bible’s eschatological imagery that would have potentially surprised and even shocked her contemporary audience.

Bricolage, Brontë Style: Atypical Typology in Jane Eyre
pp. 306-311(6) Author:  Jenkins, Keith A.
Abstract:

Biblical types were deeply ingrained in the Victorian mind, and their traditional interpretations often reinforced the subordination of women. Charlotte Brontë creates a new kind of typology that allows her to retain the power of biblical imagery and language, while channelling it in new directions. The Garden of Eden story and biblical images of a heavenly afterlife are among her favourite sources in Jane Eyre. By transferring the locus of blessedness from an otherworldly paradise to the everyday world of work and leisure, of sexual fulfilment and romantic disappointments, Charlotte Brontë rejects the narrow, male-dominated Christianity of her day and offers in its place an alternative vision in which paradise is a present possibility and male and female are truly equal. Neither her inability to articulate this ideal consistently nor her reluctance to embrace all of its implications can finally invalidate her glorious vision.

`A Poem in a Foreign Language'?: Jane Eyre, the King James Bible and the Modern Reader
pp.  312-317(6) Author:  Stoneman, Patsy
Abstract:
It is frequently said that modern readers’ lack of knowledge of the Bible must ‘impoverish’ their response to nineteenth-century novels. In this paper, I argue that modern readers who cannot identify specific biblical allusions nevertheless respond to the memorable rhythms and vivid imagery of the King James Bible, which have passed into everyday usage, treasured, repeated and adapted through time because they shape and heighten recurring human emotions. Charlotte Brontë’s knowledge of the Bible was so thorough as to amount to a ‘mother tongue’, and in this paper, drawing on scholarly analyses of the Bible and of Charlotte Brontë’s prose, I demonstrate that the characteristic style of Jane Eyre, especially in moments of high emotion, echoes biblical forms of sentence structure, vocabulary and imagery, and I argue that specific allusions to the Bible are less important in her work than the powerful emotional force carried by a biblical style.

`Just As If She Were Painted': Interpreting Jane Eyre through Devotional Imagery* 
pp.   318-325(8)   Author: Miller, Emma V.
Abstract:
The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers.

The Professor and the Search for Divine Guidance
pp.   326-333(6)   Author: Rockefeller, Laura Selene
Abstract:
In this paper I plan to illuminate the importance of three presences in The Professor that could be said to embody the Word of God in the protagonist’s, William Crimsworth’s, life. These are his inscrutable friend Mr Hunsden, who has more the air of a biblical prophet than a Yorkshire manufacturer; William’s Conscience — very specifically Conscience with a capital ‘C’ whose voice has strong biblical echoes; and William’s dreams, with clear messages and images that are saturated with biblical imagery. The importance of this scriptural presence in William’s life cannot be overlooked in a novel that examines so closely the dangers of the power that a confessor can have over his congregation. Through William’s observations, Charlotte Brontë strongly advocates a personal connection to and relationship with God as he is revealed to the individual through the Bible. 

Villette: The Biblical/Theological Impulse
pp.   332-328(6)   Author: Wilks, Brian
Abstract:
The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers.

Anne Brontë and her Bible
pp. 339-344(6)  Author: Thormählen, Marianne
Abstract:
The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers. 

The Critique of the Priest in Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey
pp. 345-351(6)  Author: Leaver, Elizabeth
Abstract:The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers.

Fact to Fiction: Anne Brontë Replicates La Trobe's Biblically Inspired Advice in Scenes from Agnes Grey
 pp. 352-358(6)  Author: Leaver, Elizabeth
Abstract:The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers.

There Are Many Mansions in my Father's House: Wuthering Heights as God's Celtic, Supernatural Abode
pp. 359-365(7)  Author: Obed, Leonora Rita V.
Abstract:The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers. 

What Thou Art: Emily Brontë's Visionary Religion
pp.366-372(7)  Author: O'Neill, Michael
Abstract:The aim of this article is to consider Charlotte Brontë’s interest in theology and her fascination with the Oxford Movement and Roman Catholicism. She likely included material on these religious movements in her novels, particularly in Villette, for several reasons: her own curiosity about and attraction to them, her own personal experience of them during her time in Brussels and her desire to broaden the scope of her novels to include topics of current interest to her readers.

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'Hang on - I know this rock!'

Word & Film discusses 'The Indie Spirit Awards’ Most Glaring Snubs'.

In the Best Feature category, some of the more notable oversights include “The Master,” “Smashed,” “The Sessions,” “Wuthering Heights,” and “Compliance.” (Christine Spines)

Fortunately, there are people watching the film, which should be what really matters. BBC News features Ben Wheatley's Sightseers, including a funny anecdote:

Wheatley confides: "I was watching Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights the other day and I recognised the same crag that we shot on. I thought, 'Hang on - I know this rock!'" (Tim Masters)

NewcityFilm reviews it.

The Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) has an article on Jane Eyre and its film history while China Daily USA looks at the history of dubbing in China, with milestones such as the following:

... dubbing allowed Chinese cinema audiences to become familiar with the marital predicament facing Jane Eyre and the famous "Life is like a box of chocolates" line, uttered by a wistful Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks. (Zhang Yuchen)

Fiona McCade discusses comics in the Scotsman:

The comics I loved used to have real stories in them. These were girls-own adventures, full of derring and one heck of a lot of do. There was just as much action and humour as in the boys’ comics and it fired my imagination.
I’d devour the Saturday weekly treat and then, inspired, I’d rush off and write and draw my own versions. OK, it wasn’t quite the Brontës, but it was a whole lot better and more creative than playing on a beeping DS all day.

Speaking of the Brontës and creativity, here's what The Telegraph says about Fifity Shades of Grey:

I hope I’m not spoiling the plot for the few souls yet to read 2012’s publishing phenomenon, Fifty Shades of Grey (Arrow, £7.99) when I tell you that Grey gets the natural filament. And what E L James’s 40 million-plus readers around the world got was, of course, some very old rope. It’s the old story in which a blushing virgin meets a rich, powerful and manipulative older man, pierces his emotional armour and marries him. It’s a depthless retread of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 Jane Eyre meeting a body-wash-scented version of Pauline Réage’s 1954 S & M classic The Story of O. And as every reviewer has, by now, observed, it’s earnest enough, but poorly written and tedious. Readers have been less traumatised by Grey’s glinting shackles than by James’s punishing prose. Lines like: “My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves” left critics spluttering for a safe word. (Helen Brown)

Joanna Campbell Slan, author of the Jane Eyre Chronicles, whose first installment was Death of a Schoolgirl, answers a few questions on her blog:

1. What is your working title of your book (or story)? Death of a Dowager (Book #2 in The Jane Eyre Chronicles) [...]
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I’d love for Keira Knightley to play the part of Jane Eyre. I realize that most people would think Keira is too stunning for the part of the overlooked orphan, but when Ms. Knightley played the lead in Bend It Like Beckham, she downplayed her looks and seemed fragile.
For Mr. Rochester, I’d choose Jeremy Northam. He’s not classically attractive, and when he wants to, he can look rather rough. Also, he’s 6’2” and Edward Rochester was a tall man.
For my two “new” characters, Lucy Brayton and her brother Bruce Douglas, I would choose Renée Zellweger and Owen Wilson.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? All of London is abuzz in the months leading up to the coronation of King George IV. But a letter in Jane’s possession could topple the throne and cause the deaths of two innocent women. Before Jane can decide what to do, the Dowager Lady Ingram drops dead, and Jane must play amateur sleuth to solve a murder—and save an empire! (Read more)

The Atlantic features the Houses of Fiction exhibition. Jimena Novaro continues posting her thoughts on Wuthering Heights and Thoughts and Stuff also continues with the review of Jane Eyre 1983. Poutpourri Tips writes in Portuguese about Jane Eyre. Booking Mama reviews Wish You Were Eyre by Heather Vogel Frederick. Le monde de paikanne posts in French about Wuthering Heights. Hathaways of Haworth features a local Emily Brontë to be seen around Haworth in the Christmas events of the coming days.

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Truly Yours in North Yorkshire and Durham

Alison Neil's one-woman-show Truly Yours, C.B. will be performed in the following days in North Yorkshire and Durham:

Truly Yours, C.B.
With Alison Neil
Directed by David Collison

Determined, brilliant and romantic, Charlotte Brontë tells her story of passion and duty, triumph and tragedy, and above all - love.
Devoted to her strange and unworldly family, Charlotte was also wildly ambitious. Whilst remaining a self-effacing and dutiful daughter, abiding by all the restrictions of early Victorian life, she managed the incredible feat of becoming a hugely famous novelist. The instant success of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette found her mixing with the literary giants of the age.
The joy of literary success was tempered by the scandalous fall of her brother Branwell, and a succession of family disasters. Charlotte's own life, however, had an extraordinary, happy twist at the end...
The Brontë family's story has captivated the imagination for a century and a half. Alison Neil's portrayal of the life of Charlotte Brontë - using many of Charlotte's own words - provides an exceptional theatrical treat.

Nov 29  7.30
Masham Town Hall
Masham, North Yorkshire

Nov 30 7.30
Airton Friends Meeting House
Airton, North Yorkshire

Dec 1  7.30
Greatham Community Centre
Hartlepool (Country Durham)

More information in the Ripon Gazette.

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'So painful and moving a saga that no respectable biographer has failed it'

Robert Gottlieb recommends biographies of classic authors on The Daily Beast's Book Bag.

The Brontës
The six children of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, all of whom predeceased him, two of them writers of genius. Their isolated life on the moors; the painful attempts at teaching and governessing; the disaster of the one boy, Branwell, brilliant and dissolute; the amazing success of Jane Eyre; the relentless loss of life to tuberculosis (although Charlotte died of complications connected to childbirth)—it’s so painful and moving a saga that no respectable biographer has failed it. The classic is the life of Charlotte by her close friend the brilliant novelist Elizabeth Gaskell; the most complete version is the series of individual volumes by the scholar Winifred Gérin. But don’t worry—you really can't go wrong.

Charlotte died of complications connected to pregnancy, not childbirth, though. And we are saddened to see him leaving Anne (we suppose) out of the 'genius' picture.

Robert Gottlieb used to be the editor of The New Yorker and today The New Yorker's Page-Turner discusses bad endings.

Many of the world’s best novels have bad endings. I don’t mean that they end sadly, or on a back-to-work, all-is-forgiven note (e.g. “War and Peace,” “The Red and the Black,” “A Suitable Boy”), but that the ending is actually inartistic—a betrayal of what came before. This is true not just of good novels but also of books on which the reputation of Western fiction rests. [...] Ditto “Wuthering Heights.” After the scalding passion of Catherine and Heathcliff, who cares about the amorous back-and-forths of their uninteresting children? Yet this occupies half of the book. (Joan Acocella)

Clearly many script writers would tend to agree with that.

This columnist from the Williston Herald is quite a Brontëite:

One high school summer, I carried stacks of books home from the library with an ambitious (and irrational) resolve to read all the “classics” and discovered Austen, Orwell and Dickens. From the horrifying twist at the end of “Rebecca” to Cather’s pioneer life, I refined my tastes and discovered that I prefer the Brontës’ moors to Hemingway’s grappa. (Jenna Ebersole)

Not everybody is as fond of the Brontës or the moors. See for instance this callous letter from a reader of The Telegraph and Argus concerning the wind farm plans:

Sir – I’d like to express my support for the decision to allow expansion of the wind turbines above Haworth.
I see the objections by the Brontë Society to be quite bizarre. They appear to want to keep Haworth close to what it was early in the 19th century.
However, the area is already so different. There was no railway at the time Wuthering Heights was set. Should we close that down? And Heathcliff first appeared in the area after having walked from Liverpool – most likely along the canal. Should we ban all but horse-powered craft from any local canals?
The area cannot just exist on the tourist trade.
Geoff Collier, Apsley Terrace, Oakworth

20 Minutos' La Urna (Spain) likens the relation between Spain and Catalonia to Wuthering Heights and its 'matryoshka' structure. Respiring Thoughts, Marmarmarmarina (in Russian) and Espacio Libros (in Spanish) all post about Jane Eyre while Thoughts and Stuff and Pusinko (in Portuguese) write about the 1983 adaptation of the novel. Just One More Page... reviews Agnes Grey. Roger N. Taber shares his poem Time on Haworth Moor.

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Down the Belliard Steps Book Lunch

Republished from the Brussels Brontë Blog. Today, November 28 in Brussels:

Book launch of 'Down the Belliard Steps: Discovering the Brontës in Brussels’ by Helen MacEwan

Wednesday 28 November 2012 at 18.30 at Waterstone’s bookstore
Boulevard Adolphe Max 71, 1000 Brussels

Helen will tell more about the inside story of how our group came to be, the significance of the Brontës' time in Brussels, and she will introduce the people who set the group up and those who have contributed to it since then.
Drop by if you can and get your copy then.

The book has over 40 illustrations in colour. It is now available in Waterstones and Sterling Books in Brussels (price €17.50) and can also be ordered from the Brontë Parsonage bookshop in Haworth (price ₤13.99).

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Great Yorkshire Love Stories

The New York Times reviews Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough by Dr. John J. Ross and mentions the Brontë references:

The resulting collection of 10 medico-literary biographical sketches ranges from the tubercular Brontës, whose every moist cough is familiar to their fans, to figures like Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose medical stories are considerably less familiar. [...]
Emily Brontë’s behavior was strongly suggestive of Asperger syndrome[.] (Abigail Zuger)

While Dave Astor looks at 'Fictional Characters With Disabilities' in The Huffington Post:

Also drawing our sympathy are "Mad-Eye" Moody in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame, Rochester near the end of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and many other main and supporting characters with physical issues.

This is Bristol discusses literary film adaptations and mentions the two latest Brontës:

The real challenge for film-makers tackling such works is to do something different with the source material without betraying it altogether. That can be a tricky business. Cary Fukanaga's  [sic] rejigging of Jane Eyre was a triumph. Joe Wright's bold version of Anna Karenina has its detractors, but also plenty of admirers. Andrea Arnold's earthy Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, failed to find an audience altogether, taking just £150,000 at the UK box office.

The Guardian's Northerner Blog has now found its Great Yorkshire Love Story:

Two months ago, the Guardian Northerner flagged up Barnsley Civic theatre's search for the Great Yorkshire Love story, in the tradition of the Brontes, Winifred Holtby's heroines or the passionate Storm family created on the Whitby coast by Leo Walmsley. [...]
We have a winner; or more appropriately a pair of them, in Brenda Loy and Fred Wilcock whose story was entered by Brenda as a modern parallel to the romance of Anderson's one-legged tin soldier and his love for a ballerina made of paper. The many twists and turns of the toys' story was matched, in the view of judges from the Civic's staff and the production's Peut-être Theatre, by the commitment of 82-year old Brenda and 81-year old Fred, despite six decades apart.
Brenda, of Hoyland Common, says:

We were both born in the small village of Upper Hoyland. As we grew up together, Fred would hold my hand and take me to the Sunshine School, a wooden infant school down the hill. When we became teenagers we would occasionally go to the pictures and say our goodnights in a special doorway

At 17, however, Fred joined the army and Brenda moved away from Yorkshire to live with her sister and brother-in-law who served in the Royal Air Force. Both met new sweethearts and enjoyed happy marriages, Brenda with a local lad called Len and Fred with a young woman he met called Dorothy. Each couple returned to Yorkshire and for years they lived unwittingly fewer than 30 miles apart.
Scroll forward 50 years, and Brenda says:

Sadly, Len died in 1998, so I kept myself busy by arranging a chat club and started working at St Luke's Hospice shop in Chapeltown. Then, one day a couple knocked on the door of the hospice. I asked if I could help them and the man said: 'Yes, you could ask us in for a cup of tea and a biscuit.' I didn't recognise him, but then he said he was Fred.

He and Dorothy and Brenda duly had their cup of tea and then they went their separate ways again. But the following year, Dorothy died and Fred came back to Hoyland, unwell and in search of old friends. Brenda dropped in to help him through his recovery and they carried on meeting when he was better. Ever so gently, it was back to those Sunshine school and teenage doorway days.
Not a story with the darkness of Wuthering Heights, the torment of Villette or the tragedies of South Riding and Three Fevers; but pantomime time is all the better for a happy ending and Brenda and Fred have had one. She says:

Eventually we arranged a weekend in Leeds, where Fred lives, and a weekend in Hoyland. We've been doing that ever since, and are quite content to spend as much valuable time together remembering our childhood and our loved ones. We are enjoying our new lives together. (Martin Wainwright)

Let's travel a bit further north as it's Scotland's first ever Book Week this week and the Stornoway Gazette asks:

Narnia, Wuthering Heights, Neverland, Lilliput, Hogsmeade, Treasure Island, the Wasp Factory? Where will you go for Book Week Scotland?

A couple of columnists discuss Jane Eyre. Sara Clarkson in The Doings Hinsdale:

Then a few years ago in the dark of winter, I re-read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for a book club. Though it was chill and bleak outdoors, Jane Eyre and I were in England. It was the middle of the 19th century, and a plain and penniless British governess began to fall for her dark and intriguing employer, an employer with a secret, the literal and proverbial wife in the attic. Jane Eyre is certainly a literary novel, flawed as it may be, and it is also a prototype for what would become the romance novel.
More than the romance, though, I became interested in 19th century England and started to pick up some historical fiction novels, works in my literary snobbishness I would have ignored before. Today, with the stress of having two teenagers, I enjoy both the escape and the landscape I find in historical fiction. I enjoy the mental vacation and learn something at the same time.

And Darrell Laurant in The News & Advance:

[Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior] saw some of those overwrought romantic tendencies in herself and learned from the book that they could be self-destructive. Meanwhile, the main character in “Jane Eyre” reminded her of her middle-school self, when she was struggling to find and meld into the right clique.

Flavorwire features the Houses of Fiction exhibition. The Telegraph now publishes an obituary of actress Daphne Slater. Maf's Puzzle briefly comments on Jane Eyre 2011 in Portuguese while The Kids Were All Wright gives 3 1/2 - 4 stars to Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy and Pages from My Thoughts reviews Tina Connolly's Ironskin. Jimena Novaro and Biblioteksbella (in Swedish) discuss Wuthering Heights. WorldWideNewsService has a short clip on Haworth on YouTube.

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Houses of Fiction

Julia Callon's Houses of Fiction was an exhibition presented last September (12th September-29th September) at the I·M·A Gallery in Toronto. It contained several Brontë-related photographs:

Houses of Fiction
Images by Julia Callon

Julia Callon is a photo-based artist living and working in Toronto, Ontario. A recent graduate of Ryerson University, Julia holds a BFA specializing in photography. She has been included in multiple group exhibitions and publications and had her first solo exhibition in July 2011. Julia’s work consists of the hybridization of photography and constructed small-scale models that both challenge and explore the idea of the photographic image as a representation of reality.

Whether domestic spaces are depicted as places of confinement or refuge, the ‘private sphere’ is an evident preoccupation for many nineteenth-century female writers and a critical concern of the series Houses of Fiction. Often a reflection of women’s ‘place’ in society, the stories depicted in the series demonstrate the metaphorical and literal significance of space; each diptych is also a visual interpretation of the dichotomous representation of women perceived in five separate works. Borrowing partially from literary criticism, this series attempts to synthesize ideas and images through the process of interpretation and adaptation.

(Via Eyresses)

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Jane Eyre as a water pump

The Chronicle Herald discusses The Flight of Gemma Hardy with Margot Livesey herself.

“I read Jane Eyre for the first time when I was nine years old,” she says. “I picked it up because it had a girl’s name on the cover. To my delight, it was about a girl a little older than me. On that first reading I had lots of ways to understand the novel because the boys school where my father taught was like the one in the novel, and we had moors round our house, and then I had a very severe stepmother who seemed a lot like Jane Eyre’s severe aunt.” [...]
Years later, as an adult living in Boston, Livesey had the opportunity to lead a book club discussion about Jane Eyre. The American readers she encountered led to a new appreciation for the story’s reach.
“The room was full of opinionated readers who had no biographical elements in common with Jane Eyre. I was really interested in this group of people who, 160 years later, on a different continent, identified so passionately with this novel written by a young English woman in a very cold house in Yorkshire.
“And I kept thinking about the enduring appeal of Jane Eyre. What would it be like to ask the same question today that Charlotte Brontë asks, which to my mind is something like, ‘How can a girl, no family that she knows of, and no special talents and no money, make her way in the world? How is that to be accomplished?’”
“It’s still a great question.”
Livesey originally conceived of setting the novel close to 2000, but as she began working on it she became convinced that moving it back, just before the great wave of feminism broke over North American and Europe in the ’60s, would be more rewarding for the reader. (Megan Power)

The Washington Times reviews Alice Munro's Dear Life and, as previous reviews, finds echoes of Jane Eyre.

Indeed, in “Amundsen,” shades of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester linger in the cold sanatorium for children with TB, witnessing the courtship of the brusque and charismatic doctor and the inexperienced and bookish young teacher. (Claire Hopley)

The Los Angeles Review of Books has an article on Everything and More by David Foster Wallace.

For instance, Jan Christoph Meister, in his essay “Tales of Contingency, Contingencies of Telling,” imagines a Story Generator Algorithm, or SGA, capable of passing a literature-specific Turing test. Imagining such a machine, he claims, allows literary theorists to be more precise about what, exactly, a literary character is. To that end, his essay is replete with diagrams of the SGA, each accompanied by vigorous arrows leading from “Ontology” to “Goal-Setting Interface” and on down to “Recruiter,” “Verbalizer” and other carefully labeled boxes. His definition of subjectivity is timid and hamfisted; he writes: “Filtering and constraining the flow of information by a mediating instance necessarily results in a certain normative and cognitive bias, which, to repeat, we generally interpret as a sign of subjectivity,” which makes Jane Eyre sound less like a person and more like a water pump. (Kyle McCarthy)

The National Post makes a similar point on a wholly different matter: David Petraeus's infidelity.

When it comes to the complexities of the human heart, however, literature may be a better guide than science. Tristan and Isolde, Rochester and Jane Eyre, Gatsby and Daisy, Humbert and Lolita — these relationships will not be explained by brain-scans. Neither will that of David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell. (Ira Wells)

The Patriot Post quotes from Robert Barnard's The Case of the Missing Brontë:

As far as academic types go, I recently read a fine description of them in Robert Barnard's "The Case of the Missing Brontë," in which he has a Scotland Yard detective observe: "Of course, you could say I don't as a rule see them at their best; mostly when I've met them it has been in connection with some kind of offence or other -- thieving from bookshops, mostly; or sexual offences of a slightly ludicrous nature. But I have to admit that they have seemed the most sniveling, self-important scraps of humanity you can imagine, and as windy and whiney a bunch as ever demanded special privileges without doing anything to deserve them." (Burt Prelutsky)

The Brontë Weather Project's archive is now finished. Zakurzona półka and Popularna Klasyka both write in Polish about The Professor. A Happy Flower shares her recording of Emily Brontë's Sleep Brings No Joy to Me. Moss Green Ink has watched In Search of the Brontës 2003. Novel Readings and Bernur (in Swedish) both post about Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. Cocktails and Books reviews Jane Laid Bare. Kid Lit Geek posts about Tina Connolly's Ironskin.

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Romanticism in the middle

More recently published scholar books with Brontë-related content:

Legacies of Romanticism
Literature, Culture, Aesthetics
Edited by Carmen Casaliggi, Paul March-Russell
Published 19th June 2012
Routledge
Series: Routledge Studies in Romanticism
ISBN: 978-0-415-89008-3

This book visits the Romantic legacy that was central to the development of literature and culture from the 1830s onward. Although critical accounts have examined aspects of this long history of indebtedness, this is the first study to survey both Nineteenth and Twentieth century culture.
The authors consider the changing notion of Romanticism, looking at the diversity of its writers, the applicability of the term, and the ways in which Romanticism has been reconstituted. The chapters cover relevant historical periods and literary trends, including the Romantic Gothic, the Victorian era, and Modernism as part of a dialectical response to the Romantic legacy. Contributors also examine how Romanticism has been reconstituted within postmodern and postcolonial literature as both a reassessment of the Modernist critique and of the imperial contexts that have throughout this time-frame underpinned the Romantic legacy, bringing into focus the contemporaneity of Romanticism and its political legacy. This collection reveals the diversity and continuing relevance of the genre in new and exciting ways, offering insights into writers such as Browning, Ruskin, Pater, Wilde, Lewis, MacNeice, and Auster.

Includes: 4. Burney’s Wanderers and Brontë’s Silent Revolts: Revolution, Vagrancy and Gender by Muireann O’Cinneide.

Narrative Middles
Navigating the Nineteenth-Century British Novel
Edited by Caroline Levine and Mario Ortiz-Robles
Ohio State University Press
Dec 2011
ISBN 978-0-8142-1173-1

Narrative theorists have lavished attention on beginnings and endings, but they have too often neglected the middle of narratives. In this groundbreaking collection of essays, Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century British Novel, nine literary scholars offer innovative approaches to the study of the underrepresented middle of the vast, bulky nineteenth-century multiplot novel. Combining rigorous formal analysis with established sociohistorical methods, these essays seek to account for the various ways in which the novel gave shape to British culture’s powerful obsession with middles. The capacious middle of the nineteenth-century novel provides ample room for intricately woven plots and the development of complex character systems, but it also becomes a medium for capturing, consecrating, and cultivating the middle class and its middling, middlebrow tastes as well as its mediating global role in empire. Narrative Middles explores these fascinating conjunctions in new readings of novels by Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Anne Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, and William Morris. Contributors: Amanda Claybaugh, Suzanne Daly, Amanpal Garcha, Amy King, Caroline Levine, Mario Ortiz-Robles, Kent Puckett, Hilary Schor, and Alex Woloch.

Includes Everyday life in Anne Brontë by Amanda Claybaugh.

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Branwell's White Plaque

The UK screening of The House I Live In is discussed in this article in The Guardian which highlights the White Plaques initiative:

To mark the UK cinema release of The House I Live In a new scheme is to be launched to highlight the lengthy history and unresolved nature of Britain’s own relationship with drug abuse.
From Wednesday 28th November – the date of the death in 1918 of West End actress, Billie Carleton, regarded as Britain’s first ‘celebrity’ drug fatality – a series of biodegradable ‘white plaques’ will be available for placement to the outside of UK buildings associated with individuals in the public eye whose deaths were linked to drug abuse. The Billie Carleton ‘white plaque’ is intended to be placed on Bernard Street (off Russell Square, London), the actress’s place of birth. (...)
Jarecki summarises The House I Live In: “My film focuses on the misguided US domestic policy towards individuals involved with drugs: the folly of placing this in the hands of law enforcement resulting in socially-corrosive mass incarceration, and a wasted $1 trillion being spent on the ‘War On Drugs’ over the last 40 years.”
The ‘white plaques’ are designed by sustainable advertising agency Green Street Media and will be affixed with the permission of residents and landlords. Over time, they will biodegrade, leaving no trace of their existence.
Below is a list of some of the earliest British fatalities that can be attributed to drug use, along with places that can be associated to them.
Do you live in a street or location associated with a person in the public eye whose life was curtailed through drugs? Do you believe that drug abusers should be helped and treated rather than criminalised? If so, apply for a white plaque to mark the spot and call for change by sending an email to benjamin@deliberate-pr.com / phone 07930408224

Branwell Brontë is listed among possible targets. Though we know that Thornton is now part of Bradford we would still say he was born in Thornton rather than Bradford.

1848
Branwell Brontë (31) – Painter, writer, poet

Cause of death: Addiction to drugs masked tuberculosis infection

Locations associated with him:  Market Street, Bradford (Place of birth)
Haworth, West Yorkshire (Place of death)

The Observer presents My Ideal Bookshelf where "more than 100 writers and other cultural figures were asked to share the literary journeys that helped them realise their ambitions and find success". Among them, Stephenie Meyer:

Of all the heroines I was invested in throughout my childhood, Jane Eyre was the one I most identified with, despite my having a happy and supportive family. I liked heroines who weren't perfectly beautiful. I liked that everyone wasn't swept away and captivated by her. Jane Eyre has this huge stubborn streak, which I have, too. I have my ideals, and I really don't diverge from them – it's probably off-putting to a lot of people. Jane is like that, too; she sticks to things even when she's uncomfortable and unhappy and making other people feel the same way. Of course, she's pushed to deeper extremes than I've ever been forced to go to, but I always felt we would see eye to eye. (Edited by Thessaly La Force and illustrated by Jane Mount)

The Maine Sunday Telegraph explains the very Brontëite story of how the electronic book publishing company Publerati was created:

How a Charlotte Brontë doorstop inspired one man's digital revolt
Caleb Mason, a book lover in Portland, starts publishing ebooks because they increase readers’ access. (...)
For Mason, the light-bulb moment occurred two years ago. He was traveling on a plane with the Charlotte Brontë novel "Jane Eyre" in hand. He had just seen the movie, and was interested in re-reading the novel, so he packed it to travel.
Seated on the plane, Mason struggled to stuff the bound volume in the pocket of the seat in front of him. Meanwhile, a woman next to him was conveniently reading an ebook.
Mason was frustrated. The woman was amused. They shared a laugh over their contrasting experiences.
"It was, 'Oh, my god, I've got to figure out how to do something about this,' " he said. (Bob Keyes)

The New Jersey Star-Ledger recommends Jane Eyre 1944 for family viewing:

Why kids will like it: The story grabs younger children from the beginning, as we see Jane suffering through the kind of awful Dickensian schooldays kids today can't even imagine, and we immediately begin to root for her. Then, as we skip ahead to her as an adult, the romantic angle kicks in for tweens, with Mr. Rochester as the sort of brooding Byronic hero pale Edward Cullen could only dream of. Add in a creepy mansion and a dark secret, and there's no turning back for anyone.

Why adults will like it: The movie is beautifully cast with Peggy Ann Garner (of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn") as young Jane, and Joan Fontaine perfect as her quietly steadfast adult self. Orson Welles is a marvelously theatrical Rochester, and although he's not credited as director, the movie bears the stamp of his Mercury Theatre, with colleagues like John Houseman producing and co-writing (along with Aldous Huxley), Bernard Herrmann contributing the score, and the fabulous Agnes Moorehead as Jane's vicious aunt. (Stephen Witty)

Bad weather and rugby. The perfect combination for a Wuthering Heights reference. In The Telegraph:

That task could hardly have been more emphatically discharged last night: while shielded from the Wuthering Heights weather by the Millennium Stadium roof, they subjected Wales to a 33-10 rout and rendered this gloomy autumn for northern-hemisphere rugby a little darker still. (Oliver Brown)

The Sydney Morning Herald defends that very Australian tradition - schoolies week:

Life itself is not safe but there is nothing like firsthand experience to teach someone how to take care of themselves. After all, where other than schoolies is it acceptable for 15 people to sing and dance to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on a beach at 3 o'clock in the morning? (Michael Kennedy)

Shall We Englisht That? and ... my life post about Jane Eyre; The Daily Touch does the same with Wuthering Heights; No puedo vivir sin libros (in Spanish) posts briefly about Charlotte Brontë; Thoughts and Stuff talks about Jane Eyre 2011; SHS Titan Library and Books As You Know It review Tina Connolly's Ironskin; Writing to Insanity video reviews Wuthering Heights 2011 (she hated Andrea Arnold's vision).

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Juvenilia and the Peak District

New books with Brontë-related content:

'The Child is Father of the Man’: The Importance of Juvenilia in the Development of the Author
Ryan Twomey
Publisher: Hes & De Graaf Publishers
ISBN:9789061945215
Year: 2012

`The Child is Father of the Man` discusses the field of nineteenth-century Juvenilia. Specifically, the development of the child writer into the adult author, arguing for increased critical attention toward the early works of now famous writers.
The introductory chapter reviews the role of juvenilia in the writing progression of famous authors and provides a discussion of current academic scholarship in the field of juvenilia. The manuscript then focuses on the individual literary progressions of the nineteenth-century British writers William Harrison Ainsworth, Emily Brontë, and George Eliot, and the Anglo-Irish writer, Maria Edgeworth. The analysis in each chapter has been contextualised within the historical, regional, gothic and lyric modes, and includes an interdisciplinary study in the fields of history, biography, and languages and linguistics. Each chapter is provided as an individual case study espousing the importance of the juvenilia on the development of the later, more publicised, authorship. The concluding chapter discusses the future of the genre with reference to the discoveries outlined in the manuscript, and juxtaposes these findings with the perceived neglect juvenilia has received from the academic community.

A Peak District AnthologyA Literary Companion to Britain's First National Park
Compiled by Roly Smith
Published: 4th October 2012
Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 9780711228870
50 engravings, paintings, photographs

This anthology brings together some of the finest writing about the Peak District through the ages, illustrated by period art works, engravings, vignettes and photographs. Compiled and introduced by Peak District expert Roly Smith, it revives many forgotten descriptions of what many people believe is the finest, most varied and best-loved landscape in the whole of Britain.
From William Camden to Daniel Defoe, Sir Gawain to Lord Byron, literary visitors have long been astonished by the sublime wonders of the Peak. The coming of railways proved another great impetus for writers and tourists. Ruskin extolled the beauties of the Peak, while novelists Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot used closely-observed Peakland settings for some of their most vivid narratives. Topographical writers including Edward Bradbury, Thomas Tudor and James Croston enthusiastically described the delights of the Derbyshire scenery to the ever-increasing stream of Victorian visitors.
The flowering of guidebook and topographical writing in the twentieth century also added to the Peak's outdoor literature, which still rates as among the finest in the country. Many books were produced covertly encouraging what was known as 'the gentle art of trespass'. They included works by GHB Ward, the 'King' of the Sheffield Clarion Ramblers; Derby's pioneering rock climber, Ernest Baker; and Patrick Monkhouse, deputy editor of the Manchester Guardian. Later writers have continued this tradition of fine outdoor writing and are represented here by Hannah Mitchell, Sally Goldsmith, folk singer Ewan Maccoll, Manchester Evening News editor and broadcaster Brian Redhead, and longstanding Guardian Country Diarist Roger Redfern, among others.

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A Bit Volatile

The Independent interviews the author Victoria Heslip:

Which fictional character most resembles you?
I share a few characteristics with Cathy in 'Wuthering Heights' – a bit volatile and always changing my mind about things.

Manchester Confidential announces the Portico Prize winners and remembers how the Portico Library and Gallery

remains perhaps the oldest subscription library in the UK. Early members included John Edward Taylor, founder of The Manchester Guardian, the scientist John Dalton and William Gaskell, chairman of the library and husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, one of the most famous 19th century novelists. Elizabeth was a frequent user and was accompanied on occasion by her friend Charlotte Brontë. (Neil Sowerby)

Not the only newspaper to associate Manchester with Gaskell and Brontë. Today, in The Telegraph:

It had stopped raining as we bustled out of Manchester’s town hall and we walked along wet pavements back to our hotel. It’s decades since, as a child, I saw bolts of cotton stacked high in the basements of Manchester’s numerous dark warehouses. Those warehouses now house banks and hotels and arts centres and Chinese restaurants. But whenever I come back, the threads of memory tug me back to those early reading days when I was gorging on the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell and wondering how it was that women could do so much in a man’s world. And now that world has changed and is the better for it. (Joan Bakewell)

Jeannette Winterson in The Guardian makes an argument for keeping and protecting the library system. She explains her own teen memories of

The Accrington Public Library ran on the Dewey Decimal System, which meant that books were meticulously catalogued, except for pulp fiction which everybody despised. So romance was just given a pink strip and all romance was simply chucked unalphabetically on to the romance shelves. Sea stories were treated the same way, but with a green strip. Horror had a black strip. Mystery stories shlock-style had a white strip, but the librarian would never file Chandler or Highsmith under mystery – they were literature, just as Moby-Dick was not a sea story and Jane Eyre was not romance.

Today's crosswords in Los Angeles Times contains a Brontë-related question:

Across 17. 19th-century literary trio (Answer: Brontes)

The Daily Beast lists film adaptations of Literary Classics. Such as Wuthering Heights 1939:

 I’m tempted to go with Luis Buñuel’s 1954 version, Abismos de Pasión, and give the edge to the surrealists, who knew a thing or two about irrational, death-obsessed love. But it is the 1939 film that we know. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon look like two gorillas in heat, and the scenes of the Yorkshire moors were filmed in the Conejo Valley of Ventura County, with what appears to be a giant umbrella put over it. But the failures end up resembling genuine strangeness—ugly, spooky and captivating—which is what makes Emily Brontë’s novel so good in the first place. (Jimmy So)

This press release announces that the books by Grace Branningan will be available with a new font specially designed for readers with dyslexia...all with a Brontë quote:

Famous author Charlotte Brontë once said, “Life is a battle; may we all be enabled to fight it well.” With those words, she could very well have been describing the lead characters in author Grace Brannigan’s books that focus on strong women. The books, which feature a line of strong women in the lead role, set a good example for women who enjoy reading about overcoming challenges and being successful despite adversity.

Another Brontë quote, from Jane Eyre, is used in an article about women in Islam published in The Huffington Post:

'It is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they [women] ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.'

Charlotte Brontë expresses through her Victorian new-age feminist protagonist Jane Eyre, solidarity with the quest to raise the value of women in society, reflecting a struggle that has been long pursued in Britain. Since then, the feminist debate developed - Women have been keen to demonstrate their equality, with men as the benchmark. Today, feminism and women's rights have developed into a multitude of different strands in political discourse and literature. (Shohana Khan)

The Times makes a list of the best gigs ever. Among them the 1979 Kate Bush concert at the Hammersmith Odeon:

Best song, the mist-filled Wuthering Heights encore. (David Hickes)

The American Prospect talks about Jean Luc Godard's film 1967 film Week-End (which has been released on Blu-Ray by The Criterion Collection):

The landscape they travel through is a sort of matter-of-fact, unrecognized apocalypse, crammed with wrecked cars and corpses nobody bats an eye at. Once they lose their own wheels—"My Hermès bag!" Corinne howls as she escapes the flaming crash, a line Darc claims she improvised—they lurch into Lewis Carroll territory, encountering everyone from Emily Brontë to a splendidly sashed Saint-Just (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Then they end up as the captives of a crazed, cannibalistic band of hippie revolutionaries. Though the term "Stockholm syndrome" wouldn't be coined until 1973, it's a fair description of Darc's behavior in the meat-gnawing closing shot. (Tom Carson)

The Daily Mail rembembers school skiing trips:

Did you ever go on a skiing trip with your school? Was it an orgy of bad behaviour?
I went in my final year. In that week between Christmas and New Year – when I might more profitably have been engaged in the A-Level study of Wuthering Heights or Maupassant’s Pierre et Jean – I boarded a train at Victoria station with 50 schoolmates and headed for Einsiedeln in Switzerland. (Frank Barrett)

Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post suggests ways to survive a 'fiscal cliff' conversation:

Try to baffle your listeners with literary references. “Ah, the Wuthering Heights of the Fiscal Cliff,” you say. “Did you know that ‘wuther’ means ‘to blow with a dull roaring sound’? Fascinating. Does anyone need another drink?”

Observator Cultural (Romania) reviews the Romanian translation of Ross Raisin's novel Waterline:

Comitatul e descris cu o precizie şi cu o artă uimitoare pentru un debutant, iar atmosfera specifică a zonei convinge încă din primele pagini ale romanului, dar cu o pregnanţă a tonului şi a accentelor care individualizează pe dată discursul lui Raisin şi îl situează la polul diametral opus peisajelor atît de celebre din Jane Eyre, marele roman victorian al lui Charlotte Brontë, care utiliza acelaşi cadru de desfăşurare a acţiunilor ce marcau evoluţia protagonistei. (Rodica Grigore) (Translation)

El Cultural reviews the Spanish release of the complete poetry of Derek Walcott:

Es la invención de mujeres reales, como Jean Rhys: Dichoso el viajero (1981) contiene uno de los poemas más perfectos del siglo XX, y de otros siglos también, ése en el que Walcott sueña unos Sargazos nunca vistos, una niña vengadora de locas en el ático, “la blanca luz erecta,/ su mano derecha esposada a Jane Eyre,/anticipando que el traje de bodas/ será, para ella, todo en papel blanco”. (A. Sáenz de Saitegui) (Translation)

Jungle Welt (Germany) remembers some of the Twilight influences:

Geschichte – Renaissance, englischer Puritanismus, amerikanischer Bürgerkieg – und Literaturgeschichte – Shakespeare, Jane Austen, die Brontës, Robert Frost – spielen in der Tetralogie nicht unerhebliche Nebenrollen. (Peer Schmitt) (Translation)

Die Welt (Germany) reviews the German translation of Reginald Hill's Midnight Fugue:

Der stolze Hadda ist der Junge, der im Schatten des Herrenhauses groß geworden ist; manchmal stakst er gar wie ein krumm gewordener Heathcliff durch die windumtoste Brontë-Kulisse, die zwar das Zweitbeste an dieser Geschichte ist, aber letztlich dann doch nie ganz auf Sturmhöhe. (Wieland Freund) (Translation)

A novice Brontëite looking for Wuthering Heights on The Times Literary Supplement Blog; another Brontëite, a teacher, in Derry Journal; Książki Warte Przeczytania (in Polish) reviews a Polish Wuthering Heights audiobook; Niebiańskie pióro (also in Polish) reviews Shirley; Why Jane? and Novel Ideas post about Jane Eyre; Il Cinema di AlmaRoja (in Italian) posts about Jane Eyre 2011; Helena Aguilar i Mayans uploads to Flickr some Jane Eyre-inspired pictures. Let's finish this newsround recovering a tweet by the artist Ashley Jackson:

as a 16yr old I wrote in diary ,"l wish to do with the brush what the Brontës did with a pen" they are still an inspiration.

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Femininity, Crime, Self-Defence, Narrative & Truth

Two new scholar books with Brontë mentions:

Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and SocietyFrom Dagger-Fans to Suffragettes
Emelyne Godfrey
Palgrave Macmillan
Series: Crime Files
26 Oct 2012
ISBN: 9780230300316

The topic of women and danger has long fascinated historians. This book innovatively situates both well-known and more obscure themes within the cultural context of the development of self-defence for ladies during the period from circa 1850 to 1914. Elizabeth Robins, Mona Caird and Anne Brontë considered the role of physiognomy in spotting rogue suitors, the nature of feminine anger and the dangers inside and outside the home. H.G. Wells's controversial novel, Ann Veronica (1909), is refreshingly re-examined as a testament to the growth of women's sports while the accompanying proliferation of women's martial arts classes was promoted by Edith Garrud, the trainer for the suffragette Bodyguard. Richard Marsh's detective, Judith Lee, a lip-reader and jujitsu practitioner, has been likened to Sherlock Holmes; her encounters with the Edwardian criminal underworld are explored here. Emelyne Godfrey introduces major themes in this area, showcasing a wealth of literary sources, artefacts and archival documents.

Narrative and TruthAn Ethical and Dynamic Paradigm for the Humanities
Barry Emslie
Palgrave Macmillan
15 Oct 2012
ISBN: 9781137275448

Narrative explanations are preferred over non-narrative, axiomatically, in the humanities. They are more truthful in two senses. Firstly they correspond more closely than a-narrative theories to reality. Secondly they enable, at the very least, value-loaded normative inferences. This is particularly the case when aesthetics is added to the mix. Emslie examines this argument over a wide terrain and over materials ranging from high to popular culture and from close analysis to anecdote, including Marxist Humanism, Feminist literary praxis, Freud, German idealism, discourse ethics, realist aesthetics, Brecht, and sports.

Includes: Women and Writing: Women Theorists, Women Novelists, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë

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