Love Can Turn Vindictive

The future of bluebells in the UK is discussed in The Herald:

Unsurprisingly, the yrust has flagged up the threat to such an “iconic” species, one indeed that is sometimes banned from UK-wide favourite flower polls because it so frequently comes top. Readers may recall that its “silent eloquence” filled Anne Brontë’s “softened heart with bliss”.

The Guardian talks about the upcoming BBC series, The Replacement:

The idea of the first wife, not merely as rival to the second, but almost as sinister alter ego, was powerful long before divorce became commonplace. Think of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, haunted by the ghost of the supposedly perfect first Mrs de Winter, or Charlotte Brontë’s mad Mrs Rochester in the attic, hanging like a terrible warning over Jane Eyre. (Gaby Hinsliff)

Graphite Publications posts about the importance of childhood in film adaptations of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights:

Genre elevates art when it contributes something useful to the narrative. When it only adds aesthetic interest for the viewer, it becomes pastiche and is rendered useless. The Brontës were masters of using genre to enhance their work while offering innovative changes to the English gothic novel. However, film adaptations of their novels, specifically of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, err towards traditional and conservative historical romance and moody gothics on screen. This does a disservice to the source material, and ultimately forfeits the original meanings of the novels in favor of recognizable tropes that an audience might better understand. Specifically, these film adaptations often neglect to include or completely represent the narratives’ motifs of childhood abuse, trauma and alienation. While these themes are less compatible with the desired cinematic understanding of the Brontës’ stories as sweeping gothic romances, they are ultimately integral to experiencing them fully. (Read more)  (Josie Teed)

Publishers Weekly highlights the upcoming novel History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund:

History of Wolves tells of an isolated 14-year-old girl living in northern Minnesota named Linda, who, after she begins babysitting for a neighboring family, “realizes something is amiss,” stated PW’s starred review. The story, with its barren setting, has shades of the gothic; and indeed, Fridlund, 37, studied novels associated with that genre, such as Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, while pursuing a doctorate in literature and creative writing at USC. “I started thinking about the babysitter as a contemporary equivalent of the governess,” Fridlund says. Both, she argues, occupy a “weird, in-between” role in families—“essential and peripheral at the same time. Able to see a lot in a family structure, but also an outsider. It’s a fascinating position, I thought, to tell a story from.” (Daniel Lefferts)

The Yale Herald analyses both Lady Chatterley's Lover and Wuthering Heights:

Wuthering Heights is so different that I hesitate to even call it romantic, though it is. The story of Heathcliff, long-lost step-brother to Catherine and Hindley, returning to wreak vengeance on Catherine’s family in memory of his infatuation with her, is one of darkness and cruelty. It is perhaps all the more frightening for its nuanced portrayal of Heathcliff as one driven not by malice but by love, a love so all-consuming it has become poisonous. The slow destruction of Catherine’s sanity and her family’s integrity is framed by Brontë’s brilliant writing, stark in language, yet powerful in effect. Wuthering Heights is a message, a warning against obsession. Love is a powerful force that can turn vindictive, a fact that our storybook romances seem to forget—but one that Brontë never did.
Perhaps, in our Nicholas Sparks-fueled craze for a “perfect” romance centered on intellectual and not physical compatibility, we forget the sensual; we forget that what we see as an impolite topic for dinner conversation is in fact the purest expression of romance. Perhaps we are too fixated on the positive possibilities of love to recognize its dark side and the Heathcliff that lurks in every unrequited romance. We even glorify such single-minded obsession—just look at the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey or Mrs. Doubtfire. (Sahaj Sankaran)

Being sick with Nuala McCann in The Irish News:

Lying prostrate on my sick bed – can't you tell I'm feeling a bit better – I'm channelling my inner Emily Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Pale, interesting, coughing and, thankfully, unlike my sisters of yore, not that ill, I can feel a sonnet coming on, it's just that I'm not quite up to a decent rhyme yet.

Now some Fifty Shades Darker reviews:

The romance genre has always gravitated towards men with big bucks but the Brontës, Austen and Hardy (whose timeless work James continually, and knowingly, plunders) made sure to mix things up. (Charlotte O'Sullivan in The Evening Standard)

Ce jeu sur des tendances contradictoires réconciliées aurait été le seul véritable intérêt du film. Piste hypocritement délaissée pour une autre, moins avouable, car Cinquante nuances revêt, dès le départ, une prémisse suspecte : si Grey est censé évoquer Heathcliff – le héros des Hauts de Hurlevent –, son pouvoir de séduction est indissociable de son immense richesse ; il n’est peut-être même que cela. (Translation) (Murielle Jaudet in Le Monde) 

BabaMail recommends visiting 'charming' Haworth:

Charming Haworth is known for the Brontë sisters, with the striking Pennine moors, where you can feel like you're in Wuthering Heights. The village is otherwise known for its preserved railway. The cobbled high street features several tea shops, stores and pubs. You can visit the former home of the Brontë sisters at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The village has several traditional festivals and hosts a 1940s weekend.

A local school in Walsall is improving its results according to Walsall Advertiser:

"The improvements in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment and pupils' behaviour and attendance show that the trust's support, and that from other agencies, is beginning to bear fruit."
A lot has changed since the school's previous inspection with a 'large majority' of new staff. There is now four 'small schools' called Austen, Brontë, Shakespeare and Tolkien. (Dan Newbould)

Some Valentine Day's stuff:

When I returned to New York City that summer, I took the first step in subjecting myself to the rigors of real-life, adult romance: I downloaded Tinder. Okay, it’s no Wuthering Heights, but I did intend to meet someone I could actually talk to. (Isabel Jones on InStyle)

When you think of the words ‘love’ and ‘story’ it’s almost always necessary to insert the word ‘tragic’ in there too. In the line-up of great literary loves, there’s as much death as ‘I do’ and it’s the darkest ones that stick in the mind: Emily Brontë’s Cathy, perpetually rain-soaked, shivering her way through Wuthering Heights (the Brontës have a lot to answer for), Gabriel Oak up to his ears in sheep in Far From the Madding Crowd. (Sally Campbell & Martha Greengrass on the Waterstone's Blog)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte - this is one for all those couples out there who want to get dark and romantic.
A single accidentally overheard conversation changes the course of two generations of a pair of families residing on the moors of northern England for the absolute worst.
Catherine and Heathcliff's love is enduring and devastating for the people around them. It even transcends death. (Letea Cavander in The Queensland Times)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
This lovelorn, windswept masterpiece was Brontë’s only novel. How does Catherine love her leading man, Heathcliff? “He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” (Amanda Ducker in The Mercury)

Leía en la novela de Brontë que Jane Eyre soportaba el misterio de Mr. Rochester hasta que llega el momento de ser “por siempre feliz”. Leía de la tragedia del amor de María y su primo Efraín separados por la distancia en la novela de Jorge Isaacs. Tristán e Isolda beben pócimas de pasión por un amor eterno. Y así, mi cabeza y mi corazón se llenaban de las ideas románticas que por 250 años han amasado las relaciones de pareja en nuestras historias reales de amor y desamor. (Translation) (Lucy Garza De Llaguno in El Horizonte)

Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë – 1847 (...)
Un romanzo all’avanguardia che tratta temi e dinamiche sentimentali molto moderne per quell’epoca: un amore che vi appassionerà come pochi. (Translation) (Carlotta Di Falco on Bigodino)

The likes of Romeo and Juliet and Heathcliff and Kathy (sic) in Wuthering Heights may be regarded by many as some of the most romantic stories of all time but in Ireland, we don't have to look to literature and fiction to find some of our greatest love tales. (Patrick Counihan in The Irish Central)

Gizmodo alerts that

For Valentine's Day 2017, Amazon has added free audiobooks of Pride & Prejudice, read by Rosamund Pike, and Jane Eyre, read by Thandie Newton. The audiobooks are read via Audible, but you don't need a subscription - all Echo customers can ask:
- Alexa, read Jane Eyre from Audible. (Holly Brockwell)

Awesomegang interviews the writer Carmen Dominique Taxer:

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Hmm… “Covenant with the Vampire” by Jeanne Kalogridis, “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, and “Scribble Boy” by Philip Ridley.

An alert from Kailua-Kona, HI on West Hawaii Today:

Kona Stories fiction book club meets Tuesday
Kona Stories hosts a fiction book club discussing “The Madwoman Upstairs” by Catherine Lowell on Tuesday.
The group meets at 6:30 p.m. at the bookstore. Book groups are free if books are purchased at Kona Stories, or a $5 donation is requested.

A new edition of the Turkish translation of  Terry Eagleston's Myths of Power. A Marxist Study of the Brontës (Güç Mitleri. Brontë Kardeşlere Marksist Bir Bakış) is reviewed by Sanathaber:

Tarihsel olanın, iktisadi değişimlerin, toplumsal dokudaki dönüşümlerin, kültürdeki farklılaşmaların izlerini edebiyatta, daha geniş olarak düşünüldüğünde sanatta sürmek mümkün müdür, yoksa edebiyat ya da sanat –dilediğinde– böyle kaygılardan azade, özerk bir faaliyet alanı mıdır? (Translation)

L'Echo (Belgium) reviews American Honey by Andrea Arnold:

La preuve avec sa version hallucinée et géniale des "Hauts de Hurlevent" en 2012: l’ambition esthétique d’Arnold dépasse le simple genre pour embrasser tous les univers, à condition qu’ils soient porteurs de sens. (Translation) (Sylvestre Sbille)

La preuve avec sa version hallucinée et géniale des "Hauts de Hurlevent" en 2012: l’ambition esthétique d’Arnold dépasse le simple genre pour embrasser tous les univers, à condition qu’ils soient porteurs de sens. La preuve avec sa version hallucinée et géniale des "Hauts de Hurlevent" en 2012: l’ambition esthétique d’Arnold dépasse le simple genre pour embrasser tous les univers, à condition qu’ils soient porteurs de sens.La preuve avec sa version hallucinée et géniale des "Hauts de Hurlevent" en 2012: l’ambition esthétique d’Arnold dépasse le simple genre pour embrasser tous les univers, à condition qu’ils soient porteurs de sens.WITF TV will air Wuthering Heights 2009 in the two upcoming Sundays and Happy Channel (Romania) has scheduled Jane Eyre 2016 for this weekend. Lady Fancifull reviews Samantha Ellis's Take Courage. The Romantic Quill posts a diatribe against Charlotte Brontë because of her dislike of Jane Austen's novels.