The Newly Redecorated Parsonage May Well Surprise Our Visitors

A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

January 2013 will see the first major redecoration scheme in 25 years for Haworth Parsonage, once home to the world’s most famous literary family, the Brontës, and now one of the UK’s top tourist attractions.
Using historical and scientific analysis produced by academics at the University of Lincoln, and referencing contemporary sources including watercolours and letters by the Brontës, the Parsonage will undergo a major interior visual transformation led by historic interior design consultant Allyson McDermott of the McDermott Studio, Forest of Dean. The house will be restored to looking much as it did during the main period of the Brontë family’s occupation in the 1830s and 40s but will also include features introduced by Charlotte as part of her facelift for the house during the early 1850s when she began to spend some of the income she had earned from her novels Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette in making the Parsonage more comfortable.
“This is one of the most exciting projects to take place at the Parsonage in many years and is the culmination of a two year research project. There have been attempts in the past to present the Parsonage as the Brontës’ home, but no serious archaeological work has ever been carried out before. The new rigorous historical research and scientific analysis resulting from this project has informed bespoke wallpapers, new curtains and painstakingly woven rugs. Objects from the Brontë Society collections will be displayed for the first time in this new context and familiar works will be reinterpreted. The rooms of the house are going to be transformed and may well surprise our visitors”. Quote from Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager, Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Quote from new Executive Director, Professor Ann Sumner: “I am delighted to be taking up my new role at this exciting time and see the re-decoration taking shape. We now know so much more about how the Parsonage was presented when the Brontë family lived here and are pleased to be working with Allyson McDermott, benefitting from her wealth of experience restoring historic interiors. The newly refurbished rooms will enormously enhance the visitor experience at the Parsonage Museum and have inspired a wealth of learning events and an exhibition in 2013”.
Quote from Sally McDonald, Chairman, The Brontë Society Council: “When the Trustees of the Brontë Society agreed this landmark re-decoration it set in motion a singular opportunity to learn more about the Brontës and their home. We are delighted that when the Parsonage reopens its door on February 9th we will be sharing more of that wonderful story with our members and our visitors”.
The newly refurbished Parsonage will reopen on Saturday 9th February featuring some exciting new displays.
The project has cost in the region of £60,000. (Jenna Holmes)

Culture24 and The Yorkshire Post echo the press release.

Imelda Marsden writes in the Spenborough Guardian about her next project, a book about the Red House and asks for help:

I am, with a couple of others, writing a book about former residents of Red House before it became a museum, and their visitors.
When published, the book will raise funds for Holly Bank – the former Roe Head school where the Brontë sisters and the Taylor sisters who lived at Red House attended.
I visited the Red House when it first became a museum in the 1970s.
A couple of people have written short items about staying at the house before becoming a museum.
Could others write a line a two about when the museum opened and what they thought of the Red House to add to the book?
Also anyone who was on the Spenborough Council when it was purchased to become a museum for local history in the area.
A donation will be also given to Red House Museum from the sale of the book.
There are to be drawings of the house by the last resident of the house, the late Dorothy Shaw, and Brontë recipes of the Brontë family.
If any readers could e-mail me on david.marsden0350@hotmail.co.uk or send to me in a letter via Red House museum I would be very grateful. 

Jane Birkin is interviewed in The Guardian. She is proud of her daughter Charlotte:

Charlotte [Gainsbourg] was so miraculous and true in Jane Eyre [(1996)]

20 Minutes (France) interviews the writer Blandine Le Callet:

Vous souvenez-vous de vos premiers chocs littéraires (en tant que lectrice) ?
(...)Le second choc littéraire de mon enfance a été Les hauts de Hurlevent, le roman d'Emily Brontë que j'ai lu à l'âge de onze ans. C'était la première fois que je découvrais la noirceur en littérature, les sentiments troubles. Ce livre m'a sortie des lectures enfantines. (Translation)

The Quiet Man's Sean Thornton as Heathcliff? DVDTalk thinks so:

John Wayne stars as Sean Thornton, a towering Pennsylvanian who is returning to Innisfree, the rural Irish town where he was born. He left when he was just a kid, and has since lost the rest of his family. A crisis of conscience has compelled him to return, a personal tragedy that has sent him in search of a quiet life. He is the Byronic hero, a pugilistic Heathcliff, retreating to the windswept hillsides to brood over his dark secret. (Jamie S. Rich)

The New York Times interviews Mary Pride, a home-schooling pioneer:

Mrs. Pride skipped a grade in elementary school, after she was “discovered reading ‘Jane Eyre’ in first grade,” she said, and later graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., at 18. (Mark Oppenheimer)

The Star (Malaysia) has a recurring complain: a young people reading less than the previous generation

Since then, books have always been a good friend of mine that has taken me to the moors that witnessed the complicated love story of Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights and back to the early 19th century where Jane Austen depicted a common reality in England via her signature fiction, Pride and Prejudice. (Sharidan M. Ali)

PushSquare recommends reading in the maintenance period of the PlayStation Network:

There’s never been a better time for you to take the shrink wrap off that copy of Wuthering Heights and lose yourself in the (occasionally uncomfortable) love story of Heathcliff and Catherine. Sony has announced that the PlayStation Network’s pre-arranged maintenance period is set to run until the early hours of Saturday morning in Europe. (Sammy Barker)

VnExpress (Vietnam) reviews George Bataille's La littérature et le mal:

Tác giả đầu tiên được Georges Bataille khảo cứu, vốn không xa lạ với độc giả thế giới và Việt Nam qua cuốn tiểu thuyết "Đồi gió hú" - nữ nhà văn Emily Brontë. Vì tác phẩm này, Emily Brontë từng chịu nguyền rủa vì đã viết về sự trả thù đến tận cùng. "Đồi gió hú" là câu chuyện tình dữ dội nhưng cũng đầy bi kịch giữa Catherine và Heathcliff. Heathcliff vốn là đứa trẻ bị bỏ rơi lạc vào vùng đồng cỏ hoang dã nơi có ngôi nhà mang tên "Đồi gió hú" của gia đình Catherine và được bố cô nhận nuôi. Cả hai cùng trải qua tuổi thơ hoang dã. Không có quy ước nào ràng buộc mối tình thơ trẻ, những giấc mơ tuổi trẻ liều lĩnh của họ. Georges Bataille phân tích, vương quốc tuổi thơ tối cao đó vĩnh viễn thuộc về hai đứa trẻ, đặc biệt là trong tâm hồn Heathcliff. Cho tới khi Catherine đột ngột rời bỏ thế giới đó, chấp nhận sống với đúng chuẩn mực xã hội bấy giờ là cưới chàng quý tộc có học thức, trẻ trung, giàu có Edgar Linton, Heathcliff như phát cuồng trước cảm giác bị phản bội và làm mọi cách để hành hạ, trả thù. Thậm chí, khi Catherine đã chết đi, Heathcliff còn cưới chị của Edgar Linton để đánh đập, dày vò người phụ nữ này, nối dài những cơn trả thù tuyệt vọng của "ông vua" nhìn thấy vương quốc sụp đổ dưới chân mình.
Theo nhà nghiên cứu, ý nghĩa của "Đồi gió hú" trước hết là sự thách thức với thứ đạo đức được thừa nhận chung, mà cơ sở của nó là một thứ "siêu đạo đức". Mục đích tối cao của Heathcliff là đòi lại thế giới đã mất mà với anh đó là vĩnh cửu. Con đường của vương quốc tuổi thơ được tìm lại bằng cái chết của cả hai khi họ vẫn còn yêu nhau thắm thiết mà thời khắc cái chết cũng chính là lúc hồi sinh vĩnh hằng của tình yêu. Georges cho rằng, hành động của Heathcliff giống như cơn say của thần thánh, khi không thể chịu nổi cái thế giới lý trí của sự vị lợi mà nghe theo sự điều khiển của tâm hồn. "Heathcliff là hiện thân cho chân lý sơ đẳng, chân lý của một đứa trẻ nổi loạn chống lại thế giới của cái Thiện, thế giới của người lớn, và bằng sự nổi loạn triệt để đó đã nộp mình cho phe Ác". Còn về phía Catherine, Georges Bataille viết: "Catherine Earnshaw hiển nhiên là một cô gái đức hạnh. Cô hoàn hảo đến mức chết vì không thể nào rứt bỏ được cái kẻ cô yêu là một cậu bé. Nhưng khi biết hắn mang cái Ác trong mình, cô lại còn yêu hắn đến mức phát ra một câu rất quan trọng: 'I am Heathcliff' (Tôi là Heathcliff). Như vậy, cái Ác, xét một cách kỹ lưỡng, không chỉ là giấc mơ của kẻ độc ác, mà còn là giấc mơ của cái Thiện". (Hà An) (Translation)

Ham & High mentions the Bonhams auction next April where a manuscript poem by Charlotte Brontë will be auctioned; The Telegraph & Argus reports that double deckers may return to tour Haworth; The Times lists The Thyme House in Howarth (sic) as one of the 50 best cottages, beach houses and rural retreats; a snowy landscape in Brontë country in Brontë Weather Project; mclelivlanux's Space posts about Bertha Mason and Jean Rhys; House des Wahnsins (in German) and Ler para Divertir (in Portuguese) post about Jane Eyre; An Englishman in Texas proposes a new mash-up Doctor Who and the Jane Eyre (not real but... who knows); Ovo de Fantasma (in Portuguese) reviews Wuthering Heights 2011; betterthanthebook has read Wuthering Heights and watched the 2009 adaptation; The girl always in love posts a poem in Finnish inspired by Wuthering Heights.