The not at all Romantic deaths of the Brontës

We are somewhat confused by this discussion on TB and the Brontë family on The Conversation.

Bizarrely, the idea that Branwell Brontë had sex with his sister Emily appears to have been more palatable than the idea that he might have given her tuberculosis – or that the infection might have passed to Anne from either sibling. Those documenting the lives of the Brontës since the late 19th century have been curiously reluctant to acknowledge this fact.
Branwell, Emily, and Anne all died from various forms of tuberculosis between September 1848 and May 1849. All three had lived together at Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire with their sister Charlotte (who managed to last until 1855 when she too succumbed to tuberculosis). Branwell and Emily died there, and Anne died on a final trip to Scarborough, where she is buried.
We know today that tuberculosis is contagious, and particularly so between family members living in close quarters. Yet the idea that one Brontë sibling might have infected or been infected by another still seems to be taboo in Brontë biography and adaptation.
Only Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte Brontë (2015) and Beth Torgerson’s Reading The Brontë Body (2005) have suggested the possibility of infection, even briefly. So how and why has contagion largely been written out of the story of Branwell’s, Emily’s and Anne’s deaths? [...]
In 1947 alone, Ernest Raymond, Laura L Hinkley and Phyllis Bentley all told a story which stressed Branwell’s alcoholism, Emily’s grief, and Anne meekly following her two siblings to the grave. These biographers, and many more in the late 1940s and the 1950s, stressed both weather and emotion as causes of death. They created an aura of predestined tragedy around the Brontës which proved difficult to displace in the years which followed.
Films and TV dramas showed the same causes for the Brontës’ deaths. Granada TV’s The Brontës of Haworth (1973) has Branwell’s burial immediately followed by Emily clasping the table as a whistling wind comes in through the parsonage door. She coughs, sickens and dies, and Anne quietly follows.
Andre Téchiné’s Les Sœurs Brontë (1979) portrays an unusually close relationship between Branwell and Emily throughout. So when Branwell dies, Emily is emotionally, not bacterially, infected. She puts on his coat and sobs until her sobs become coughs. She is soon on her deathbed refusing the doctor, while Anne stands timidly in the hallway, meekly taking her own medicine from a spoon.
In 2016, BBC Two’s documentary Being the Brontës described the sisters’ “frail bodies” giving up on them “so young,” again suggesting a kind of fatalism about their deaths. Carl Barnes’s brilliantly funny musical Wasted, however, seems to deliberately reference the sheer absurdity of so much death in one family. Branwell is handed copies of his sisters’ published works and then immediately dies. Emily sings that she is a “Goth before my time” and then dies. Anne laments a miserable life in which she has never been touched by a desiring hand – and then dies. [...]
Sally Wainwright’s To Walk Invisible (2016) also invited us to contemplate the Brontës with Yorkshire accents, and a swearing, drug-addled Branwell. There seems to be space now for a less reverential, Romanticised approach to the siblings. Perhaps it is time to accept that the Brontës didn’t die from melancholy, weather, or death wishes, but because they were infected with bacteria.
A drama or biography which allowed this possibility would open up some fascinating new ways to think about the Brontës and their work. I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of contagion theories and the rabies virus in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley, but there is still more to be said about contagion, disease, and the Brontës.
All three sisters wrote about “consumptive” characters, from Jane Eyre’s Helen Burns to Wuthering Heights’s Frances Hindley to Agnes Grey’s labourer Mark Wood. Widening our understanding of tuberculosis in the lives of these extraordinary women would help us to read their novels afresh. (Jo Waugh)

It is obvious for anyone reading the Brontë story that the quick succession of the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne has to do with TB and contagion among the family members. Biographies may hint at other causes contributing to their deaths but it is fairly obvious that TB was the main cause (even if Branwell's death certificate states phthisis instead of the more usual consumption as TB was commonly referred to). In fact, the subject of the family's latent TB has been discussed at least once if not several times in Brontë Studies by doctors. See for instance Brontë Studies volume 27, part 2, July 2002, which includes the article 'Tuberculosis and the Brontë family' by Doctor W. H. Helm and which begins

It is almost certain that four of the Brontë children died of tuberculosis. . . 

The article goes on to discuss whether the Brontës may have all been infected since Cowan Bridge days. It was later on, when their immune systems were compromised for other reasons, that the disease actually surfaced. So the 'Romantic' death may be used for obvious reasons in creative accounts of their lives (and why not?), but in serious texts it has always been taken for granted that they died of TB, maybe exacerbated by other causes.

La razón (Spain) reviews the Madrid performances of Carme Portaceli's Jane Eyre.

Sin embargo, solo puede uno aplaudir admirado la ágil y concisa versión que ha realizado Ana María Ricart a partir del prolijo argumento original. Jugando a la analepsis y al monólogo interior, con mucho tino para que la claridad expositiva no se resienta, las tribulaciones de esta mujer -tremendamente libre si tenemos en cuenta la época en que fue escrita la obra-, que busca la dignidad y el sentido de su propio destino contraviniendo muchas veces lo que espera de ella la sociedad, discurren en este montaje, bajo la batuta de Portaceli, con encomiable ritmo y firmeza. En aras de no fracturar el inexorable sentido narrativo de la trama, la directora se apoya en la útil y minimalista escenografía de Anna Alcubierre para aportar un verdadero sentido de continuidad en el movimiento de los personajes y en el sobresaliente manejo de las abundantes transiciones, que se reducen a un leve respiro cuando conviene o que se convierten, por el contrario, en auténticas y completas “escenas-puente”. Asimismo, el uso de la eficaz música compuesta por Clara Peya facilita el necesario viaje imaginario que ha de realizar el espectador por el espacio y el tiempo para seguir cómodamente la vida de un personaje genial que, sin embargo, no necesitaba al final de la obra, porque ya nos había quedado muy claro con todo lo visto hasta ahí, soltar al patio de butacas el discurso de marras sobre lo que quieren o no quieren las mujeres. (Raúl Losánez) (Translation)

We had somehow guessed that the review had been written by a man *eye roll*

Metro echoes the rather pointless debate on the This Morning TV programme triggered by Keira Knightley banning her daughter from watching Disney's Cinderella and The Little Mermaid.

This prompted another outcry from Schofield, who remarked: ‘But you’re messing with tradition. You’re fiddling about with that. ‘When are you going to stop? Are you going to think, “actually you know what I’m not sure we like Brontë and the relationship between men and women because that was very much of a time then. I’m not sure that we’re happy with Jane Austen and her relationship with men and women and who was the strongest, who was the weakest, so let’s go back and erase all our literary history.”’ (Adam Starkey)

Daily Mail comments on Knightley's decision too:

Where would it end? Would the KK (Keira and Kristen [Bell]) ban Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice (Keira starred as Elizabeth Bennet in a 2005 film adaptation) or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which both feature women who are, ultimately, redeemed and made happy by wealthy men? (Jan Moir)

Now let's discuss why Ms Moir's parents banned her from reading Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre as she obviously hasn't ever read them!

El Español (Spain) highlights the fact that many still view women writers as secondary to men writers.

Y hay más: “[Cada hombre que] dedicó dos párrafos a especular sobre el cuerpo de una autora o de un autor trans en lo que se supone que era una reseña sobre su obra, cada profesor que usa las letras de Kanye West en una conferencia para demostrar que está en la onda pero cuyos programas de las asignaturas son totalmente blancos, cada hombre que se ha referido a una Brontë, a Emily Dickinson o a James Baldwin como escritores menores: todos ellos están aquí”. (Lorena G. Maldonado) (Translation)

Real Simple recommends '8 Essential Movies for People Who Love Books' such as

6 Devotion (1946)
This Golden Age classic is led by Hollywood legends Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland, and Nancy Coleman. Based on Theodore Reeves’ fictional story, Devotion centers on Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë as they wrestle with both their novels and their love lives. Filled with romance, conflict, and an overall appreciation of books, this film is the perfect blend of classic literature and classic cinema. (Samantha Ladwig)

Reader's Digest has compiled the spookiest ghost story from each state and there's

Indiana: The ghost of Stepp Cemetery
Near Bloomington, the Stepp Cemetery is the home to many hauntings, the creepiest of which involves a Wuthering Heights-style melodrama, in which a woman, who lost her husband to a terrible mining accident becomes obsessed with caring for her daughter. Then 20 years later, the daughter is killed in a terrible automobile accident. The grieving mother is said to haunt the cemetery where both her husband and only daughter are buried. (Lauren Cahn)

This Wall Street Journal columnist is not a fan of leaf blowers:

As a teacher, I frequently hear the drone of leaf blowers from within my classroom. The noise is distracting enough while trying to discuss Brontë or Tolstoy, but outside, where I often eat lunch under the treetops, the nonstop noise seems to broadcast a dire warning: These pristine grounds come at a terrible price. (Adrienne Bernhard)