Foul-mouthed Chucky dolls

The Pychobitches Brontë sketch is still pretty much mentioned around:

Daily Mail:

Also, there’s Sylvia Plath trying to lift her dark moods by channelling Pam Ayres and the three Brontë sisters bickering about who is the most sexually repressed. (Charlotte, apparently. Or, as Emily put it, ‘she is fizzing like an unpricked sausage’). (Deborah Ross)

The Stage:

The comedy – a sketch show which sees Front play a psychiatrist whose patients are all famous women from history, including Eva Perón and the Brontë sisters – was originally piloted last year, and has now been turned into a full-length series. It shines a spotlight on the women’s psychoses and obsessions and is, in the words of Front herself, “broken comedy with broken women”. (Matthew Hemley)

The Observer:

[A]nd the Brontë sisters transformed into bonnet-wearing, foul-mouthed Chucky dolls. (Barbara Ellen)

The Sunday Times:

The Brontës, shrunk to baby-size in their bonnets, roll on the sofa and fight about who has the biggest book sales and the most harrowing sexual frustration, which is rather gross, and probably accurate. They do all this in Alan Bennett's accent. Charlotte says to Emily: "Sometimes I think, get lathered and f*** off into Keighley on a Friday night. Don't come back until you've lost it to a cowhand.'" (Tanya Gold)

The Oregonian reviews Claire Messud's novel The Woman Upstairs:

"I'm not crazy. Angry, yes; crazy, no," Nora says, and with this claim Messud invokes another famous literary woman upstairs, Bertha Mason, the first mistress of Thornfield Hall, from Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." Messud is an intellectual writer; of course the link is intentional, as is her reference to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," in which the narrator ultimately descends below ground to live in the glare of a thousand light bulbs. (Natalie Serber)

On BBC Radio World Service's The Arts Hour you can listen to Patti Smith's tribute to the Brontës.

Katy Guest in The Independent talks about Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice:

Unlike any other classic literary heroine – the tragic beauty Tess Durbeyfield; the kind-of annoying Emma Bovary; the downtrodden Jane Eyre ("Reader, I married the slightly-singed, good-for-nothing attempted bigamist") – Lizzie has female readers wanting to be her from the start.

Also in The Independent, a review of the film Byzantium:

But Byzantium feels oddly old-fashioned, suggesting that the only two available roles for women are 19th-century ones – Clara's scarlet woman or Eleanor's Jane Eyre-esque pale-and-interesting waif. Still, either option has to be better than mooning over Robert Pattinson. (Jonatham Romney)

The Telegraph & Argus tells about a fundraising walk taking place in Haworth:

Fundraisers will be strolling out for a worthy cause.
The Starlight Hike gives fundraisers the opportunity to stroll around the landscape which inspired the famous literary siblings, the Brontës, while raising cash for the Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice in Oxenhope, which provides palliative care and support for people suffering with incurable illnesses.
The walk sets off from Oxenhope Park at 10pm on Saturday June 22. To register, visit sueryder.org/ starlighthike or call (01535) 640448.

Agora Magazine (Italy) talks about Jane Eyre:

Il racconto è scritto in forma autobiografica, con la protagonista, Jane Eyre appunto, che si rivolge in modo diretto al "lettore"; lo stile presenta aspetti puntualmente descrittivi dell’ambiente e dei personaggi, insieme all’approfondimento dell’evoluzione della protagonista dal punto di vista emotivo, morale e sentimentale. Si parte dall’infanzia, una bambina orfana che viene accolta presso i parenti dopo la morte dei genitori e l’intreccio di vicende interne a una famigli ostile, promesse sul letto di morte, l’adolescenza, amicizie, amori. Si respira la morale vittoriana, ci sono tutti gli ingredienti di una storia d’azione con contraccolpi scenici. (Roberto De Giorgi) (Translation)

Página 12 (Argentina) interviews the poet Juan Gelman:

Después de analizar cómo lo había encarado Victor Hugo en ese larguísimo poema de 5400 versos que se llama El fin de Satán –y que se publicó después de su muerte–, y cómo lo encaró William Blake de un modo completamente distinto, me pregunté cómo era posible que Emily Brontë, a la que no se le conoce ninguna pasión, salvo la preocupación por su hermano borracho y drogadicto, una mujer absolutamente austera que murió a los 30 años en la mesa familiar, conversando, cómo ella podía describir en Cumbres borrascosas, de una manera tan profunda y aguda, el Mal en el amor. Luego mencioné los casos clásicos: (Alexander) Solzhenitsyn sobre el gulag y a Primo Levi sobre el campo de concentración nazi. Siempre me da la impresión de que hay algo no dicho ahí. La dimensión del Mal es de tal naturaleza que hay cosas que no se alcanzan a decir. Lo curioso es que personas que no han sufrido el Mal hayan sido capaces de escribir sobre el Mal con tanta profundidad, como Emily Brontë. Mientras que los que sí lo sufrieron en carne propia, como Primo Levi o como Solzhenitsyn, se encuentran con la imposibilidad de expresarlo cabalmente. (Silvina Friera) (Translation)

Act I reviews Wuthering Heights 1967; Flickr user thecoffeeloversguidetoth has uploaded some pics of North Lees Hall.