On
WPSU, Maureen Corrigan recommends both Patricia Park's
Re Jane and Deborah Lutz's
The Brontë Cabinet.
Jane Re, the Korean-American heroine of Patricia Park's debut novel called "Re Jane," also takes a few momentous trips by plane, but her usual mode of travel is the number seven train that shuttles between Manhattan and Flushing, Queens. Jane was orphaned as a child and taken in by her uncle, who runs a grocery store in Flushing. Itching to escape a life of bagging lettuce, the grown-up Jane accepts a job as a nanny in upscale Brooklyn, where she falls for the aloof master of the house and even encounters a cultural theory-spouting madwoman, of sorts, in the attic.
By now, dear listener, you've no doubt caught on to the fact that "Re Jane" is a wickedly inventive updating of Jane Eyre. But just as Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece is so much more than a Gothic pot-boiler, "Re Jane" moves beyond mere pastiche to drolly explore issues of class, ethnicity and women's autonomy for an unlikely heroine of the 21st century.
While we're talking Brontës, Deborah Lutz's new nonfiction book, "The Brontë Cabinet," yields up all sorts of fascinating new angles on the famous siblings by closely scrutinizing some of their objects, like Emily's writing desk, Anne's needlework sampler and Charlotte's amethyst bracelet, fashioned out of the intertwined hair of her two sisters. In her preface, Lutz playfully refers to this method of studying objects to recover the past as thing theory, but not all that Lutz surveys is a thing. In fact, one of her most illuminating chapters discusses Emily's dog, a bull mastiff named Keeper.
The Stage reports that we will soon see a new adaptation of
Wuthering Heights at the National Youth Theatre:
Consensual is one of three plays featured in the rep season, which also includes a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights by actor and writer Stephanie Street directed by Emily Lim. (Georgia Snow)
Official London Theatre mentions it as well.
Northern Ballet has also announced its autumn season and according to the
Pontefract and Castleford Express the
Wuthering Heights revival will be seen in Cambridge and Bradford:
The Company will also tour Wuthering Heights, Madame Butterfly with Perpetuum Mobile, Elves & the Shoemaker and The Nutcracker as well as premièring a new children’s ballet Tortoise & the Hare.
The Irish Times discusses bullies in fiction.
Take a fresh look at Jane Eyre. When Jane is tortured by her cousins and subsequently locked in the “red room” for standing up for herself – does anybody seem to care? Even later in the book – is there any outcry? No. Not at all. Jane’s childhood is not considered a protected state. There is no adult intervening, no later admonishment of this bad behaviour. It is as it is. Character-forming, even.
And the bullies? Jane’s cousins and her aunt? We never get a look inside their evil little heads. There’s no sense of why they’re motivated to behave this way. They are wielding power simply because they can. (Sarah Bannan)
And
The Island recalls that
In fiction the language that Heathcliff occasionally used to talk to Catherine in Wuthering Heights was anything but polite. (Carlo Fonseka)
According to
Marie Claire,
If Emily Brontë had written a novel set in wildest 19th century New Zealand - with it's [sic] restless waves and airless forests - perhaps she would have penned The Piano. (Kat Lister)
Rolling Stone reviews Florence and the Machine's new album
How Big How Blue How Beautiful:
"Long and Lost" — maybe her most Charlotte Brontë-via-Kate Bush moment ever — is a magnificent bit of British brooding, backed by ghostly choral vocals. (Will Hermes)
Although is probably Emily who the journalist is thinking about.
WMDT has an article on the first day to session for Delaware State Senators since the passing of former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.
Senator David McBride shared words from Anne Brontë’s Farewell poem in Legislative Hall on Tuesday; “Farewell to thee, but not farewell. To all my nicest thoughts of thee, within my heart, they still shall dwell.” (Jobina Fortson)
CulturoPoing (France) mentions the fact that Thomas Hardy's works haven't made it onto the big screen as much as the works of Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters.
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