'Break your teeth on it'

To Walk Invisible will finally be broadcast on Sunday in the US and several sites are looking forward to it. PBS has a video showing

From the costumes to the set, go behind the scenes with the cast and creative team of To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters, premiering Sunday, March 26, 2017 at 9/8c on MASTERPIECE on PBS.

KPC News claims that the date was set 'in honor of women’s month'.

In honor of women’s month and women’s achievements in history, local PBS station PBS39 will feature a two-hour drama, “To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters,” depicting the lives of the three Brontë sisters. The piece airs Sunday at 9 p.m.
The drama is based largely on letters written by Charlotte, one of the sisters, during a three-year period. The film will show the girls’ rise from ordinary, unmarried women to successful, secret authors now providing for their household.
The Masterpiece drama is written and directed by Sally Wainwright. It will feature Finn Atkins as Charlotte, the sister who wrote “Jane Eyre,” Chloe Pirrie as Emily, author of the dark, gothic novel, “Wuthering Heights,” and Charlie Murphy as Anne who wrote “Tenant of Wildfell Hall”, a novel based on a true love story.
The three sisters had a devastating childhood, losing their mother and two older sisters at a young age.
Their brother suffered from alcohol and laudanum addictions, despite being considered a genius of his time. Their father did his best to ensure his daughters were given an education, which led to their success later on.
Despite these difficult circumstances, all three attended a boarding school and eventually, went on to create a joint publication of poems, which appeared as a published work in 1846, under the pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton.
The initial project had little success compared to novels “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” which were both published in 1847. The novels sold out, paving the path for a comfortable life from that point on.
The three sisters now serve as role models for young women today to never give up on their dreams, regardless of the social, financial or professional obstacles they may face. (Emeline Rodenas)

WOUB Digital announces it as well and Sequoyah County Times lists it on this week's selection of programmes.

Enquire Cincinnati reviews the production of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre directed by KJ Sanchez.

Like the book, the Playhouse’s “Jane Eyre” is long. It’s nearly two hours and forty-five minutes, which is an eternity in an era when 70-minute, no-intermission shows are becoming the norm.
The set, designed by Kris Stone, has no sumptuous drawing rooms nor velvet drapes. No gloomy Yorkshire landscapes, either. Stone and director Sanchez have taken quite the opposite approach.
The stage is empty except for a few ramps leading to a solitary room overlooking the stage. There are a few wooden boxes that are employed as everything from chairs to tables to percussion instruments called into service to supplement Jane Shaw’s eerie and ominous soundscape.
Rachel Healy’s costumes are one of the few hints of early Victorian life. They’re not lavish or particularly ornate. That’s not the world that was occupied by Jane Eyre, nor by Jane’s creator, author Charlotte Brontë. They were simple and straightforward people. Life should be reward enough. No need for fancy frillery.
What Sanchez has not tinkered with is the enduring story of an opinionated and principled teenager, determined to be independent, no matter how painful the consequences. She is her own girl. And finally, her own woman. It is her journey, heartbreaking, harrowing and eventually triumphal, that makes it all worth it. [...]
Margaret Ivey plays Jane. It’s a rich and complex performance. But we don’t feel that immediately. In fact, the whole production starts a little awkwardly. Perhaps it is just a matter of getting accustomed to the theatrical language that Sanchez employs. But as we settle into the rhythm and quirks of the production – Pilot, Mr. Rochester’s dog, is played by an actor on all fours – it grows easier to be enveloped by the emotional depth of the story.
Freed from demands of pretending to be a 10-year-old at the outset of the play, Ivey is finally able to explore the inner strengths and turmoil of the 18-year-old Jane. Ivey’s performance is wonderfully earnest and consistent. It would be so very easy to sneak touches of irony here and there. After all, Jane has such a narrow and naïve view of the world. “I have spoken my mind,” she says, “and can go anywhere now.” Ivey allows us to believe every word.
When we first meet Michael Sharon’s Mr. Rochester, it is hard to imagine that we might ever feel any affection for him. He is brusque and rude and exceedingly callous. But ever-so-gradually, Sharon gives us glimpses of the character’s humanity. So by the time Mr. Rochester makes his ever-so-poetic and over-the-top pronouncements of love, we are true believers in the man we see in front of us.
The supporting cast is strong, too, especially Damian Baldet as a memorably vile Brocklehurst and Tina Stafford as a contemptible Mrs. Reed. As Adèle, the young ward, Rebecca Miyako Hirota teeters between enthusiastic and over-indulgent. And then there is Rin Allen, as Bertha. For those who don’t know the plot, I’ll avoid spoilers. But Sanchez employs her secondarily as a character whose spiritual connection to Jane has a physical manifestation. It’s one of the show’s many theatrical affectations that sometimes work and sometimes are distractions.
For those willing to show patience, though, and to immerse themselves in the story’s convoluted plot and soaring emotions, there is a genuine and inevitable payoff that is quiet and elegant and rewarding. (David Lyman)

Cincinnati Gazette reviews it too.

The opening performance was amazing with strong performances by cast as a whole.
Margaret Ivey was remarkable, and highly talented in the range of feelings she eloquently expressed as Jane.
Tina Stafford was great as Mrs. Reed shows how dark and cruel people can be to others.
Michael Sharon was close to perfect as an anti hero in the story as Mr. Rochester. He has secrets. He is deceitful, and nonsense but cares. You can’t help yourself in wanting him to find true love. Michael hit the mark and then some.
Damian Baldet both Saint John Rivers and Mr. Brocklehurst was strong, forceful well done. (James Partin)

The Argus gives three stars to the play We Are Brontë at Connaught Studio, Worthing.

This amusing concoction, co-devised and performed by Sarah Corbett and Angus Barr, was a distillation of the world & works of the Brontës from which they sought to provide the writers’ essence, rather than enact scenes or provide rounded characters.
In doing so it provided an amusing, rather than out right hilarious, hour of absurdist humour which was intended to send up the performers rather than the Brontës. It was a surreal mix of mime and slapstick with very clever inventive touches – a scene involving the opening of a door was brilliant comedy as was the repeated use of cling film to covey water.
Barr acted as an interlocutor, often stepping outside the fourth wall, to converse with the audience to explain, involve or occasionally to apologise when a joke failed. Whilst he provided the words it fell to Corbett to demonstrate the art of mime – her face, when not in frozen terror, spoke volumes. She reconstructed the lost world of the silent movies.
A question & answer session midway led to some improvised comedy which ended up with Barr singing the Kate Bush lyrics with Corbett’s accompanying gyrations. The show both amused and bemused but occasionally needed a little pruning. (Barrie Jerram)

Book Riot goes searching for life advice from Victorian novels and finds it in one of our favourite paragraphs from Shirley.

Real life is not a 700-page Victorian novel, but I read too many of them at an impressionable age to know that. It’s unlikely that any distant relatives are going to die and leave me an inheritance, or that I will be hired to work as a governess by a man with a secret past, but for better or worse, I’ve learned many a lesson from Victorian novels. Here are some important things to remember, care of Dickens, Hardy, the Brontës, and co. [...]
LEARN HOW TO ENDURE.
My favourite passage in all of Victorian literature is the stone and scorpion passage from Charlotte Brontë’s underrated novel Shirley. It’s long, but it deserves to be quoted:
“You expected bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don’t shriek because the nerves are martyrized; do not doubt that your mental stomach—if you have such a thing—is strong as an ostrich’s; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test—some, it is said, die under it—you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive.”
Is that not the most hardcore thing you’ve ever read? The Victorians are famous for being repressed, and that single passage shows why better than a million dissertations on the subject. If someone puts a real scorpion into your hand, definitely throw it back before it can sting you, but when life hands you a non-poisonous disappointment, sometimes the best thing you can do is “endure without a sob” and move on to something better. (Kathleen Keenan)

Verily Magazine recommends 'Six Biographies Worth Reading This Women's History Month' including

The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth Gaskell
“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
For their striking talent and tenacity, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) have garnered an almost mythic status over the years. Elizabeth Gaskell honors the legacy of friend and fellow novelist, Charlotte, in The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Gaskell contributes to the storied history of the Brontës, a history marked by tragedies and quiet isolation in the wild moors of England. But Charlotte she pressed on in spite of her struggles. She published the now classic, then radical, Jane Eyre. Written soon after Charlotte’s death, The Life draws on Charlotte’s letters and interviews with those who knew her. Though some find Gaskell’s portrait of Charlotte too polished, even too flattering, it reads as an endearing tribute. Moreover, this vivid biography allows Charlotte’s voice—her intelligence, wit, and candor—to shine through. (Mary Claire Lagrue)

Penguin interviews writer Trisha Ashley, whose latest novel is The Little Tea Shop of Lost and Found, which tells the story of Alice Rose, 'a foundling discovered on the Yorkshire moors above Haworth as a baby'.

What inspires you? I’m often asked where I get my inspiration. And the answer is, I don’t really know. A few ideas will be nebulously floating round in my mind and then, one day, they will suddenly fuse together and I’m off and running with the next book.
With The Little Teashop of Lost and Found, I’d recently read a harrowing account of how Victorian women would leave their babies at a foundling hospital, along with some small token, so that if by some miraculous chance they should ever be in a position to reclaim their child, they could identify it. These women were so poor that sometimes the token could be a button or an acorn. Then the word ‘foundling’ sparked off a recollection of Heathcliffe and the wild moorland around Haworth, home of the Brontë's – and I was off!

The Visitor reviews the book and mentions the Haworth moors connection.

The Cavalier Daily asks writer Christina Baker Kline a similar question.

CD: Much of your work has resilient, strong women at their centers. Who are some strong, resilient women that inspire you — in life and as a writer?
CBK: My mother was an adventurer in many ways, literally and figuratively. I’m also lucky to have three strong sisters. And then there are characters — Jane Eyre, Janie of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Ma of Emma Donoghue’s “Room.” There are strong women everywhere, which recent marches across the world have demonstrated. (Darby Delaney)

Andrew Tierney writes about his book The Doctor's Wife Is Dead: A Peculiar Marriage, a Suspicious Death, and a Murder Trial in Nineteenth-Century Ireland in The Irish Times.

Dr Langley’s degradation of his wife – a reduced diet, the confiscation of her clothes, the expulsion into poor lodgings, and a pauper’s funeral – was a way of defaming her character in a language understood by contemporary society. Sexual profligacy, it was thought, should be the subject of punishment as a warning to others. For the same reason, unmarried mothers were routinely turned away from workhouses – or segregated within them – as a means of preventing the spread of vice.
But there was increasing discomfort at this double standard by the mid-19th century. Novels which explored the position of women in (or out of) marriage, such as Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Charles Dickens’s Dombey & Son, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, all appeared between 1846 and 1850, and helped pave the way for new British divorce legislation in 1857 (though this was not extended to Ireland).

KJZZ had Stanford English Professor Claire Jarvis speak about her book Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex and the Novel Form.

When you think about Victorian literature, you might think of great love stories like Jane Austen’s "Pride and Prejudice" or Emily Brontë’s "Wuthering Heights." You might think of long dresses, bonnets and unrequited love.
But would you think of passionate affairs and erotic love scenes? Not so much. But, a new book argues there’s more brewing behind all of those English prose.
In her new book "Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex and the Novel Form," Stanford English Professor Claire Jarvis argues that Victorian novelists were, in fact, masters of the art of building sexual tension without ever mentioning the word "sex."
I spoke with her recently more about that book and what led to this hidden sexuality in Victorian literature. (Lauren Gilger)

The clip is here.

 JydskeVestkysten (Denmark) reviews Emma Donoghue's novel The Wonder.

Fortalt detaljerigt og beskrivende giver romanen umiddelbart mindelser om klassiskeren "Jane Eyre", men desværre undlader forfatteren ikke selv at lave den reference. (Anja Limkilde) (Translation)

News & Star reports that a house that used to belong to Reverend Carus Wilson is now for sale.

The building was substantially altered and the Georgian front section was added in about 1830 by the Rev William Carus Wilson. The Rev Wilson was a prominent figure in the area and in 1823 had founded the Clergy Daughter’s School at nearby Cowan Bridge, where the novelist Charlotte Brontë was a pupil.
The school and the Rev Wilson were later said to have provided Charlotte with inspiration for the appalling Lowood school and its tyrannical headmaster in her 1847 masterpiece Jane Eyre.

The Yorkshire Post features Gary Verity speaking about the many wonders of Yorkshire.

Among the many draws of the county are our wonderful literary heroes, like the Brontë sisters and James Herriot. They have played their part in boosting visitor numbers, making Yorkshire the top county for holidays with a literary link.

Music for Several Instruments and Music Web International review the CD of John Joubert's Jane Eyre.

I was interested to learn from the aforementioned conversation that Joubert made some big cuts to the score so that what we hear in this performance has about 40 or 45 minutes less music than the original completed score. He felt that the opera as it originally stood was too long and that some minor situations impeded the essential flow of the drama. His scrutiny fell particularly on five orchestral interludes between scenes which, he felt, rather got in the way; that’s my choice of words, I hasten to say. These were excised. Since I have no knowledge of the original score I can only say that on the evidence of what I hear in this performance John Joubert’s judgement seems to have been spot-on; the definitive score seems to me to be a tautly constructed piece with excellent dramatic impetus. I was delighted to find, however, that the rumours I’d heard are true: the music hasn’t been discarded but instead, Joubert confirms, the interludes have been used as the basis for his recently completed Third Symphony. I look forward very much to hearing that.
Although material from Jane Eyre has been recycled into the new symphony it will appear there in an expanded orchestration. In the new piece Joubert has expanded the scoring, writing for a large symphony orchestra including triple woodwind. For the opera, however, the forces are more modest. In addition to strings (here 8/4/4/4/2) single woodwind (each doubling a second instrument) and brass are specified plus piano, organ (only in the church wedding scene, I believe), timpani and a percussion battery requiring two players. If the orchestra appears rather modest and you anticipate an undernourished sound, fear not; that is most certainly not the case. The scoring is consistently colourful, imaginative and atmospheric and the ESO plays extremely well. The orchestra functions as a significant protagonist throughout the work and I found the orchestral contribution held my attention throughout and added significantly to my enjoyment. (John Quinn)

L'inchiesta Sicilia (Italy) has an article on women in literature which mentions both Jane Eyre and Cathy. Nick Holland writes about the Brontës' links to Halifax on AnneBrontë.org. Brussels Brontë Blog has a post on Villette and The Professor in China.