Jane Eyre ejaculating on a videogame (and it's not X-rated)

The Appalachian State University News announces that

M.A. student, Fran Thielman, has won the prestigious Victorian Institute's Patrick O. Scott award for the best graduate student paper presented at the 2013 national Victorians Institute conference, which is a conference for both faculty and graduate students in Victorian Studies. Her paper, "Jane Eyre and Public Health: A Closer Look at the Lowood School Epidemic," applies historical and disability studies approaches in order to make the highly original argument that Charlotte Brontë uses this portion of the novel to make the case for establishing public health boards. The paper is a portion of her M.A. thesis, "The Reformer and the Eugenicist: Representations of Disease in Jane Eyre and Bleak House," which she will defend in Spring 2014.

France Inter interviews Isabelle Arsenault who is presenting Jane, Le Renard et Moi at the 41 Festival de la Bande Dessinée d'Angoulême:

Ecrite en noir et blanc, l’histoire se colore lors de ses plongées livresques. L’écartée redoute l’arrivée de « l’immersion anglaise », sorte de classe verte avec du tir à l’arc. Cela commence par l’achat complexant du maillot de bain, et se poursuit par une exclusion de la tente de la bande, et s’achève par des vexations... Mais elle fait deux rencontres qui vont colorier sa vie. Le récit, touchant et juste, est superbement illustré. (Anne Douhaire) (Translation)

Hermione Williams gives some Brontë Society updates in Keighley News:

We shall be celebrating with a year-long programme throughout 2014, and work is under way to ensure this year is a very special one.
Our closed period is slightly longer than in previous years (we open again on February 20), as we are doing extensive work relocating the admissions desk and adding a timeline of the Brontes’ life.
This will hopefully improve and enhance the overall visitor experience by shortening queues in the busier months and giving greater overall context before visitors enter the house.
During the closed period, we are also completing the annual cleaning and conservation work of all Brontë artefacts.
Work has been done on our new exhibition – The Brontës and Animals – opening on February 20. All the displays have been changed, so there will be many new things to see, including a new hand-woven rug in Mr Brontë’s study. It is in a style similar to the one described by Ellen Nussey in 1833.
Due to the extended closed period during February, we are offering an alternative programme. Every weekday between February 3 and 20 at 2pm there will either be a free walk or talk on topics such as The Brontës’ Haworth and the History Of The Parsonage.
During half-term, inspired by The Brontës and Animals, we will be organising animal-themed activities, such as drop-in craft and writing workshops and an animal trail. There will also be free guided walks for the whole family to enjoy.
Please see our website or e-mail susan.newby@bronte.org.uk for further information.
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with us as we show the most recent adaptation of Jane Eyre (2011), in association with Haworth Cinema.
The fourth Women Writers Festival will be held from March 14-16, with talks, workshops and readings from Jackie Kay and Sarah Dunan

Oliver Kamm's The Pedant in The Times discusses the use of the verb to anticipate and quotes from Charlotte Brontë's Shirley:  "Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie?"

The St. Louis Theater Circle nominations includes the Mustard Seed Theatre production of Jane Eyre:

Outstanding Supporting Actress: Donna Weinsting, “Jane Eyre”
Outstanding Actress: Sarah Godefroid-Cannon, “Jane Eyre”
Outstanding Costume Design: JC Krajicek, “Jane Eyre" 

The winners will be known next March 17.

The Jamaica Gleaner explores the wonders of the English language. In particular the evolution of the verb 'ejaculate':

This is why, now that the term has a distinctly sexual connotation, this sentence from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre sounds really funny, “The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled.” If you look at it again though, the original and modern usage are pretty synonymous although in such situations rather than fill the gallery one prefers to remain high, dry and anonymous. (Tony Deyal)

The quote (from Chapter 20) appeared in an article on Mental Floss a few days ago:

1. Ejaculate
Used to mean: To utter suddenly and passionately, to exclaim
The unintended double entendres in this sentence of Jane Eyre could make anyone snicker: "The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled." Still, the old-school and modern definitions are pretty synonymous. (Amanda Green)

Lyn Gardner explores stage heroines in The Guardian:

I've been reading Samantha Ellis's terrific How to be a Heroine. Ellis combines memoir and an exploration of her Iraqi-Jewish heritage through the books that have influenced her as a child and into adulthood. It turns out that Ellis has been trying to be a Cathy (Wuthering Heights), when Jane Eyre might have been a better model.
Reading Ellis's book has made me think about stage heroines. Eyre's determination to be her own woman always reminds me of Nora, in A Doll's House, who suddenly realises that she has as much a duty to herself as she does to her husband and children.

Suresh Menon confesses his bibliophilia on DNA:

Yet, I am no book collector. First editions don’t interest me. Others can bid for the first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and pay a fortune for it (someone actually did so, forking out 114,000 pounds) or Dashiell Hammett’s Maltese Falcon (£50,000 with original dust jacket, £500 without it), but I’d rather curl up with my copy of John Carter’s ABC For Book Collectors, the classic on the subject.

PRWeb presents the book Behind the Curtain by Jean with this intriguing connection:

From abuse to Charlotte Brontë books, “Behind the Curtain” reveals a deep and honest account of searching for support during a time where alcoholism and abuse was a stigmatic topic.

The Guardian talks about the GameCity 2013 prize. The jury is formed by people outside the industry like Samira Ahmed who says:

"What annoyed me is, you start off as a girl exploring a house, and it's brilliant, it's very chilling," says Ahmed. "But then later I'm thinking, why isn't the 14-year-old girl the lead protagonist of this story? Probably for all kinds of boring commercial reasons. No one is making those creative decisions. Look at Buffy, look at The Hunger Games – the interesting thing about the latter is that it's incredibly critical of turning everything into a tournament of death. Katniss has a real investment, she has flashbacks to the horrors of what she has done. Could that work in games? Also I want to see Jane Eyre: the video game." (Keith Stuart)

World Socialist Web Site talks about Joan Fontaine's films and career:

Fontaine won the Academy Award for her performance. In Jane Eyre (1944), a strong adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë classic, featuring Welles as Rochester, Fontaine gave an especially memorable and moving performance as the title heroine. (Hiram Lee)

Flavorwire reviews Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch:

The fact is, as you learn from Mead’s book, Eliot herself was not really one for a quiet life, per se. She was not a Brontë or even a Jane Austen. Well known to other writers and intellectuals in her lifetime (Henry James even called her a “horse-faced bluestocking”), she lived a relatively public life for a 19th-century writer. (Michelle Dean)

The Telegraph analyses the new austerity style (à la Russian):

Why, even the queen doll, Dasha Zhukova, gallerist and girlfriend of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, is keen to distance herself from this anachronistically glitzy guise. In a recent portrait for fashion website Buro 24/7, she chose to pose barefoot in an insouciant jeans and white shirt combo, hair artlessly drawn into a Jane Eyre bun. (Hannah Betts)

The Huffington Post mentions in passing that Charlotte Brontë didn't like Jane Austen's writings; The Little Professor reviews The Maid of Killarney by Patrick Brontë; Teen Ink posts about Jane Eyre; With her Nose Stuck the Book reviews Villette; Liberiamoce (in Italian) video posts about Agnes Grey.