Sublime Narrative

The New York Times asks Sarah Waters about her favourite books:

“Jane Eyre,” Charlotte Brontë
A novel with all the power of myth; a sublime narrative, just about perfectly constructed.

Also in the New York Times how to be secular but study or teach in a Divinity School:

The concept of sacredness, however, gripped her, and she sought out ways to consecrate the secular. With a divinity school professor, Stephanie Paulsell, she did an independent study in “Jane Eyre” as a holy book. Mr. Epstein and she studied Judaic texts together in the yeshiva system of chavruta, meaning fellowship. (Samuel G. Freedman)

More NYT. A review of Kate Beaton's Step Aside, Pops:

This collection gathers her recent strips, whose topics include “Wuthering Heights,” Ida B. Wells, early submarine design and the rivalry between Chopin and Liszt (“We are both on the cover of ‘Enormous Ego’ this week”). (Douglas Wolk)

South London Press reviews the National Theatre's production of Jane Eyre:

It is the most fascinating, beautiful and fabulous production that charts Jane’s beginnings as a baby who soon becomes a destitute orphan before facing her life’s not inconsiderable obstacles head on with an obstinacy, feistiness and determination that was way ahead of her time. (...)
This is an inventive, intelligent, poignant and often funny production which, despite a significant pruning, does the original story justice. (Kate Gould)

David Tang in Financial Times sings the jpraises of Yorkshire:

Whenever I went on the moors and dales, I would feel the drama of the winds, and imagine the tortured gypsy figure of Heathcliff sweeping away on horseback.

Terra (Spain) interviews the writer Jennifer Clement:

Las novelas de Jane Austin (sic) o Charlotte Brontë realmente cambiaron las ideas sobre si las mujeres podían ser dueñas de propiedad o no. Las novelas son un gran lugar para ejercer el cambio. Es perfecto que la literatura este dentro de todo el proyecto de Pen. No es una contradicción", terminó señalando. (Translation)

Leggeremania (Italy) interviews Michela Alessandroni, from the flower-ed publishing house which has recently republished the Tre Anime Luminose fra le nebbie nordiche. Le Sorelle Brontë:

A inaugurare questo nuovo progetto è un saggio dedicato alle Sorelle Brontë. Da dove deriva questa scelta? (Domizia Moramarco)
Desiderando rivolgere particolare attenzione allo studio della vita e delle opere delle sorelle Brontë, abbiamo avviato la collana con una meravigliosa riedizione di Giorgina Sonnino, Tre Anime Luminose fra le nebbie nordiche. Le Sorelle Brontë. Pubblicato nel 1903 e fuori commercio da lungo tempo, rappresenta la prima biografia delle sorelle Brontë in lingua italiana: un vero scrigno di informazioni preziose e di emozioni. Un lavoro che con Giorgia Alessandroni è stato portato avanti con dedizione grazie all’amore condiviso per le scrittrici inglesi. Siamo state affiancate dalla creativa Petra Zari, che ha realizzato la copertina. Per l’occasione, flower-ed ha deciso di abbinare alla consueta versione digitale anche il formato cartaceo del libro, offrendo così ai lettori una scelta più ampia.  (Translation)

À Voir Lire reviews the latest Madame Bovary film adaptation:

La Madame Bovary de Sophie Barthes ressemble davantage à Jane Eyre qu’au Don Quichotte de Cervantès.  (Translation)

El Plural interviews Ángeles Caso about her novel Todo ese Fuego:

Pero, ¿por qué Ángeles Caso eligió a estas hermanas para su nueva novela? (A. Godoy)
Son unos personajes asombrosos, yo les tenía una gran admiración como escritoras y siempre me parecía que tuvieron mérito y valor escribiendo en la vida que tenían que todo era tan difícil. y hace tres años visité su casa en Haworth y una vez allí que vi el espacio en el que vivirán y trabajaban pensé quiero escribir una novela sobre estas mujeres. Fue muy atrevido escribir una novela sobre novelistas, debí ser un poco inconsciente en aquel momento, de hecho, no hay novelas sobre las Brontë.
¿Qué recomendarías de las hermanas Brontë a alguien que no la leído nada sobre ellas?
Me gusta mucho ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Cumbres Borrascosas’ me parece una obra maestra y como tal está considerada y luego la poesía de Emily es impresionante pero solo hay una edición parcial en España. (Translation)

Librópatas (Spain) gives you ideas for celebrating the recent Jane Eyre anniversary;  The Lancashire Evening Post covers the Withins Skyline races across Brontë country; Mirabile Dictu reviews Patricia Park's Jane Re; Passion for Movies reviews I Walked with a Zombie 1943; Anne Bronte.org posts about marriage In Jane Eyre & Agnes Grey;

The Australian Brontë Association is on Facebook now. Check its Wall here.

The Crimson Peak daily Brontë references newsround:

Facing a steeper uphill climb is del Toro's Crimson Peak, which has unwisely been marketed by Universal as a straight horror movie. It's not: It's a Gothic romance with a few ghosts in it. The first half hour is straight out of a Brontë novel. At the same time, it's vastly more violent than your average fan of period dramas will be used to. (Rebecca Pahle in Film Journal International)

A Brontë-regényeket idéző, operaszerű sztorinak is kell egy kis idő, mire tényleg beindul. A rövid gyerekkori képek után hamar megismerkedünk a filmbeli jelen (a 19. század vége) többi szereplőjével – a New Yorkban íróként próbálkozó Edith iparmágnás édesapjához (Jim Beaver) érkezik az angol Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), hogy támogatókat találjon az agyagkitermelést megkönnyítő találmányáho.  (Bodnár Zsolt in HVG) (Translation)

Der Regisseur hat selbst die Brontë-Schwestern als Referenz genannt. Plausibler wirkt aber sein Verweis auf Daphne du Mauriers von Hitchcock verfilmten Bestseller "Rebecca". Denn auch hier steht eine Frischverheiratete im Zentrum, die in ihrem neuen Heim auch der Vergangenheit begegnet - und gar nicht ahnt, auf was sie sich eingelassen hat. (Rüdiger Suchsland in Telepolis) (Translation)

Like The Devil’s Backbone, used here as del Toro’s self-reference point, Crimson Peak takes the “haunting” part to heart, with a ghost yarn wrapped up in Victorian-era romance that’d make du Maurier, Brontë, Bava, and Perrault beam with pride from beyond the grave. (Andy Crump in Paste Magazine)

It’s frustrating, because I feel like Crimson Peak has the underlying potential to be the beautiful and horrifying tale of gothic romance that it esteems, if only it had dedicated the time spent chasing ghosts and metaphors to crafting more real, fractured characters. But the momentum it builds and all of the mastery in its design are squandered when the film steps away from the influences of authors like the Brontë sisters and suddenly veers in the direction of movies like Psycho without really dedicating itself to the fear and horror required to succeed. (Hannah Lodge in The Beat)

Part Emily Brontë, part Edgar Allan Poe, "Crimson Peak" seeps into your bones like the mist on an English moor. (Dominic Spencer in The Weather Space)

Crimson Peak, at some level, is about women and their rights—or at least it projects to be. Set in late 19th century America and England, after the lifetimes of Mary Wollstonecraft (author of ‘A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman’) and her daughter Mary Shelley (author of ‘Frankenstein’), the film is centred on the young author, Edith Cushing (played by Mia Wasikowska; Alice from Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’, and Jane Eyre from the 2011 adaptation by Cary Fukunaga) who aspires to emulate Shelley over Jane Austen (can’t blame her there, can you?) The plot, and the gothic environs and sentiments however, are reminiscent of Jane Eyre. (Ishan Marvel in Youth Ki Awaaz)

One of Mia Wasikowska’s breakout roles was in Cary Fukunaga’s haunting revival of Jane Eyre so it’s only fitting that Guillermo del Toro cast her in Crimson Peak, a gothic horror heavily influenced by the Charlotte Brontë classic and Rebecca, which was inspired by the novel. (Justine Browning in Collider)

The next moment she's practically drooling over said Baronet, the handsome but somehow damaged Thomas Sharpe, played oh-so-charmingly by Tom Hiddleston. He's so Byronic he could be Rochester from Jane Eyre, which is kind of funny because Wasikowska actually starred in an adaptation of Jane Eyre in 2011. (JJ Duncan in Zimbio)

He has that beautiful tale, ‘The Full of the House of Usher.’ Essentially, Crimson Peak is a cross between a classic gothic romance, like ‘Jane Eyre’ or something like that, and ‘The House of Usher.’ I tried to capture the dark spirit that gothic romance has. Marketing may contradict me, but Crimson Peak is not a horror film; it’s a mixture of darkness and beauty, melodrama and eerie atmosphere.” (Jack Giroux in FilmSchoolRejects)

Co-scripting with Matthew Robbins (they also collaborated on 1997’s exciting Mimic), Del Toro has crafted a movie that will likely only appeal to modern moviegoers thoroughly unfamiliar with Jane Eyre or Henry James or Bluebeard or Daphne du Maurier or, heck, even The Silence of the Lambs. Mia Wasikowska, who once played Jane Eyre opposite Michael Fassbender’s Rochester, here essays the role of Edith Cushing, an aspiring novelist living in turn-of-the-20th-century Buffalo with her protective father (an excellent Jim Beaver).  (Matt Brunson in Contact Savannah)

In a way, Crimson Peak is also del Toro’s love poem to the grand gothic romances of the 1930s and 1940s—among them Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and the Vincent Price-led Dragonwyck. (Celia San Miguel in Latino)

There are occasional horrifying things in it, but at its heart “Crimson Peak” is actually the purest gothic romance I’ve seen in a long time. While that’s technically considered a subcategory of horror, it’s an entirely different beast – much more “Jane Eyre,” “Rebecca” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein” than “Nightmare on Elm Street” or even “The House on Haunted Hill.” (Jenniffer Wardell in The Davis Clipper)

The storytelling is in the sweeping Jane Eyre/Rebecca model, with a plucky young woman seeking to rescue her tragic love object from his demons, if that young woman were a writer determined to brighten everything up with her clothing choices. (Abbie Bernstein in Assignment X)

The joys of the film come from its amazing atmosphere and visuals and how they build on the tension and drama of the storyline. The colors! The score! The architecture! The blend of gorgeous practical effects with technicolor digital! Those costumes! This would be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. . . except there's so much substance. It's like Jane Eyre meets The Shining. It's Mary Shelley. It's Edgar Allen Poe. And it's 100% Guillermo Del Toro, who is at the top of his visual game here. This is the perfect companion piece to his earlier Pan's Labyrinth. (Citizenbot in Big Shiny Robot)

Descrizione che ricorda molto grandi classici del genere, come Jane Eyre e Rebecca – La prima moglie, dove la trama di una storia d'amore si dipana tra mura inquietanti, dove avvengono fatti inquietanti con altrettanti inquietanti coinquilini. (Elle Italia) (Translation)

Atenção fãs do diretor mexicano Guillermo del Toro, preparem-se para uma decepção. Este tão esperado filme é na verdade uma decepção, uma antiquada homenagem as histórias góticas a la Jane Eyre (só que com alguns poucos momentos de Gore/Sangreira), aos filmes que ele certamente amava da Hammer britânico (a ponto de dar o sobrenome da mocinha de Cushing, obvia referencia ao astro deles Peter Cushing) e certamente também a Roger Corman e sua série de adaptações de Edgar Allan Poe (inclusive com o uso de iluminação verde e escarlate). (Rubens Ewald Filho in DVDMagazine Brazil) (Translation)

Surfant sur tous les classiques de la littérature victorienne (Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein) et de films de fantômes (Rebecca, la Maison du Diable, Hantise), Crimson Peak est un régal pour les yeux. Dommage que l’histoire se contente d’être une déclinaison perverse de Barbe Bleue. (Marianne Font in Weekly) (Translation)

Del Toro is clearly borrowing from stories like Jane Eyre or Rebecca for both visual cues and a way of steering the plot, but having Edith be especially sensitive to the spirit world makes her exceedingly interesting. (Steve Prokopy in Gapers Block)

En su filme hay referencias a las hermanas Brönte (sic), autoras de Cumbres Borrascosas y Jane Eyre y de Mary Schelley (sic), de Frankenstein. (Marta Cervera in El Periódico) (Translation)

Del Toro ha dicho que este proyecto largamente anhelado –lo escribió hace casi diez años, justo después de El laberinto del fauno; en el medio empezó y se cayó su adaptación de En las montañas de la locura, de Lovecraft, empezó y debió abandonar El Hobbit; filmó Titanes del Pacífico; produjo la serie The Strain, y siguió trabajando en sus obsesiones de siempre: Frankenstein, Las brujas, de Roald Dahl– es “menos una película de terror que un romance gótico”, y en ella veremos destellos de sus lecturas favoritas: Shirley Jackson y su The Haunting of Hill House, que fue un par de veces al cine, una vez convertida en una obra maestra de Robert Wise, la otra olvidable; Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brönte (sic), Cumbres borrascosas, de su hermana Emily, La caída de la casa Usher de Poe y también algo de Henry James, aunque no tanto de Otra vuelta de tuerca como muchos esperarán, dice, sino del cuento de fantasmas “El amigo de mi amigo”. (Mariano Kairuz in Página 12) (Translation)

Partendo dalle letterarie, si va da Frankenstein a Cime tempestose, c’è molto Edgar Allan Poe, per non parlare della protagonista, ricalcata come una novella Mary Shelley. (Leotruman in Screenweek) (Translation)

Non poteva essere che Guillermo del Toro a riportare sullo schermo il Gotico Romantico, quel filone della letteratura fantastica che dal diciottesimo secolo in poi ci ha dato capolavori come – per citare solo i più noti - "Il Monaco" , "Carmilla", "Giro di vite", "Frankenstein" ,"Cime tempestose", i romanzi di Anne Radcliffe e i racconti di Edgar Allan Poe e di Nathaniel Hawtorne. (ComingSoon) (Translation)

Guillermo Del Toro, whose “Pan’s Labyrinth” is superior fare largely because it has a political theme (the daughter of a brutal army officer escapes from Falangist Spain in 1944 into a fantasy world), but while Del Toro compares his new picture, “Crimson Peak” to “Jane Eyre,” “Rebecca,” and “Great Expectations,” this is true only to one extent. “Jane Eyre” (one movie version stars Mia Wasikowska) is about a woman who serves as a governess in an imposing house; “Rebecca” takes place in a mansion on the Cornish coast, in every corner of which is a phantom of time lost but not forgotten; “Great Expectations” is a classic work of Victorian literature, a coming-of-age story. “Crimson Peak” is all of this: a coming-of-age of an innocent virgin in the early years of the twentieth century like Jane Eyre and Rebecca who enter into lives previous removed from their experience. (Harvey Karten in Shockya)

The film combines the gloomy aesthetics of “Wuthering Heights,” the apparitions, family secrets and betrayals of “The Woman in Black” with the murderous straight razor chills of “Sweeney Todd.” The remix of period pieces transports us back to an era when hotblooded passion and violence exist in societies where absolute coldblooded decorum rules. (Colin Covert in Star-Tribune)

Part Emily Brontë, part Edgar Allan Poe, "Crimson Peak" seeps into your bones like the mist on an English moor. (Rafer Guzmán in Newsday)

What do the lack of over-the-top scares mean for the status of “Crimson Peak” as a Gothic romance? The standards of the genre, to which works like Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” also belong, are seen in “Crimson.” (Molly Driscoll in Christian Science Monitor)

Top.De interviews Tom Hiddleston about Del Toro's film:

Ein Geschwisterpaar in einem einsamen Haus, das letztendlich zu ihrem Verhängnis wird: "Crimson Peak" erinnert sehr stark an "Der Untergang des Hauses Usher" von Edgar Allan Poe. " Guillermo hat neben Filmen auch Bücher empfohlen. Gleich zu Beginn haben wir etwa über 'Jane Eyre' gesprochen, der Novelle von Brontë, und auch über 'Der Untergang des Hauses Usher'. (Translation)

Hollywood Reporter interviews Jessica Chastain:

“If you think of classic gothic romances, of Shelley and Brontë, he really knows his stuff,” said Chastain. “He’s an encyclopedia of film knowledge and literature.” (Megan Soll)

Jezebel interviews the director:

Fair warning, though: Crimson Peak is more Wuthering Heights than Jane Eyre; more Rebecca, less Victoria Holt. Del Toro clearly means “Romance” in the sweeping 19 Century sense, not the modern publishing category. To be frank, I would have been perfectly happy with a happily ever after, but that’s not his project. Instead, he set out to deliver more Emily Brontë than Charlotte—though with a heroine you can really root for, who stands on her own two feet rather than fainting deliciously all over the place. (...)
In Crimson Peak, del Toro is melding the hardcore Gothic of the late 18th/early 19th century—Ann Radcliffe, Frankenstein, Fuseli—with the Hollywood Gothics of the 1950s—think Orson Welles’ Jane Eyre, the black-and-white Hitchcocks starring fresh-faced brunettes rather than the signature blondes. (...)
This week, I spoke with Guillermo del Toro about the film. My tape recording program ate half the interview—clearly the true horror is humanity’s heedless reliance on technology, or else I’d have gotten his wonderful answer about how he always felt Jane Eyre and Frankenstein were fundamentally related and ultimately realized they were both “autobiographies of the soul. (...)
That’s a very traditionally gothic idea, right? It’s not the ghost, it’s not the monsters, it’s the weird family dynamics that are happening in that crumbling house. Right? (Kelly Faircloth)
Mostly, you’re absolutely right, and even when there’s no family dynamics, the ultimate agents of evil in the Gothic romance are human. You can choose to play the supernatural element as very light and ambiguous, as the Brontës or Dickens in Great Expectations, or in Jane Eyre and so forth. 

IGN also talks with Del Toro:

You’re a big fan of Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction – and hope to do a movie based on it at some point. Crimson Peak does have a haunted mansion in it, in a way. Was there any youthful love for that attraction in mind making this? (Eric Goldman)
Del Toro: Not really, because it’s apple and oranges. Crimson Peak is not a horror movie but it has more to the tone of a fairytale or a gothic romance, sort of a female-centric tale, than Haunted Mansion which is a ride and has to be fun and scary in a Disney way. This has more to do with Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Dragonwyck. The time where Hollywood was producing these lavish melodramas with gothic romance trappings.

And Deadline too:

DEADLINE: Was there a classic haunted house movie that was a touchstone for Crimson Peak? (Mike Fleming Jr)
DEL TORO: In an oblique bleak sense, one of my favorite gothics is Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With A Zombie, which is not necessarily a classical gothic but is very much Jane Eyre in certain aspects of structure. Another is Dragonwyck with Vincent Price, very sumptuous and luxuriant even if it doesn’t use the supernatural element as openly. I’ve always liked director Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre and think Joan Fontaine makes a really good Jane in sort of the severe German expressionistic, very stark black and white aesthetic that made it special. (...)
I was a kid when I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with that universe. I didn’t have the acumen to say the prose is old or the prose is too complex. I just fell in love with Jane’s very lonely soul, much the same way I fell in love with Frankenstein’s creature for the same reason. Those old souls exist in every decade in every century.

New Jersey Online lists Crimson Peak references:

"Jane Eyre." A shadowy mansion, a nervous governess, a brooding nobleman, a locked room – Charlotte Bronte's novel is the deep dark spring from which all Gothic romances flow. (You think "Dark Shadows" was original?) It's been endlessly adapted, with each era contributing its own ill-humored star as Rochester – Colin Clive, William Hurt, even George C. Scott. For classic chills, go for the 1943 version with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine; more modern moods, the 2011 one with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska. (Stephen Whitty)

Entertainment Weekly does the same:

Jane Eyre. One of the most influential Gothic tales. It permeates Rebecca, I Walked with a Zombie and even The Secret Garden in an oblique way. I paraphrase it in several moments of Crimson Peak and did a variation of the famous “rib-cage-to-rib-cage” monologue of Mr Rochester. (Gina McIntyre)