What a self-described Charlotte Brontë fan does

A contributor to The Outline is quite impressed by the fact that Charlotte Brontë was a believer in phrenology, but we couldn't help but be impressed by the contributor's father.

I recently learned that Charlotte Brontë was very interested in the size and shape of people’s heads. “Learned” is possibly the wrong way of putting it, because it gives the impression that I am any the wiser or more enlightened since noticing that when Charlotte Brontë’s protagonists are making character assessments, they place a lot of value and emphasis on how someone’s head looks.
I realized this because my dad, who is a self-described Charlotte Brontë fan, sent me a five-minute voicenote of him reading from what he considers to be a particularly funny bit from her 1857 book The Professor. It is quite funny: the typically hard-done-by and resentful main character, a schoolteacher, goes off about how much he hates all the terrible children he has to teach. One girl is his real enemy, disrupting his classes by “making noises with her mouth like a horse” and “sustaining a swinish tumult.” I liked that, especially the horse noises, but this is the part that really pulled me up short: “She had precisely the same shape of skull as Pope Alexander the 6th … her head sloped up in the penthouse shape, was contracted about the forehead, and prominent behind”. Sloped up in the penthouse shape.
Something about the weird vigor and emphasis made it seem like it was probably going to be a recurring theme, and sure enough, five minutes on Project Gutenberg revealed that Charlotte Brontë had apparently embraced phrenology with both of her tiny little hands. I had never noticed this before, but it’s all over the place once you start looking. From Villette: “we are alike—there is affinity between us. Do you see it, Mademoiselle, when you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like mine — that your eyes are cut like mine?” Jane Eyre: “For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape… there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.” Try it! See how much time and energy in Jane Eyre is given over to descriptions of foreheads. See Lucy Snowe in Villette, lustily contemplating M. Paul’s “vigorous” and “powerful” head. Mmm.
I truly don’t know what to make of this. All I know about phrenology is that a) it was wholeheartedly endorsed by a number of Victorian thinkers, b) that it formed a useful pseudoscientific justification for some truly barbaric policies and beliefs, and c) that the boundary between a) and b) was often blurred to being indistinguishable. But where does this leave my dad’s best friend, Charlotte Brontë? I don’t know. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that she took her interest in people’s head shapes in a particularly sinister direction. I don’t know how to establish whether she was more interested in shapes of heads than other writers of the period. As they do on so many things, my feelings on the matter of Charlotte Brontë and head sizes lie somewhere between “lol” and “I don’t know.”
I do know this, though: anyone reading who knows anything significant about either Victorian pseudoscience or the life of Charlotte Brontë is very annoyed right now, because all this is so obvious to them, has been covered in so many workshops and seminars, torn apart and examined and understood, and here I am laying it on the table like it’s news to anyone at all. (Rosa Lyster)

We suggest reading the whole article as it tackles the subject of people finding out about (not so obscure) things and going on to Twitter to 'enlighten' their followers (and probably doing it wrong too). But we would go on Twitter right now to comment on the fact that a father sends fragments from Brontë novels to his daughter via voice notes. Isn't that the best?

A contributor to Verde Magazine discusses whether it's right for schools to have their students read modern literature only.

Ernest Hemingway, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens. What do these classic authors have in common? AP Literature students don’t read their genius works. Unfortunately, many English teachers at Palo Alto High School have elected to focus on modern, more progressive authors in lieu of classic luminaries. I fear students aren’t learning about the roots of literature because teachers deprive them of studying undeniably valuable texts when they trade them for contemporary authors. [...]
While I commend teachers for trying to diversify reading lists by adding female authors or writers of color, this shouldn’t be at the expense of the curriculum itself. In fact, there is diversity in classic literature that teachers can use. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” or Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” for instance, are written by women and feature female protagonists, and novels like Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” are written by non-Anglo-Saxon authors.
Understanding classic literature is especially important because many of these works are referenced in more progressive texts. For example, how are students expected to identify Kate Chopin’s Shakespearean references in “The Awakening” if never exposed to “Hamlet”?
In college, students will be expected to know classic authors. Only with prior experience analyzing these texts can students succeed when they are required to write difficult theses about classic novels beyond high school. (Zoe Stanton-Savitz)

Diario Sur (Spain) shares Joanna Russ's experience of teaching Jane Eyre as told in her book How To Suppress Women's Writing, recently translated into Spanish.

Ella misma creía que Charlotte Brontë sólo había escrito 'Jane Eyre'. No había rastro de sus poemas, de 'Shirley' o de 'El profesor' en las librerías que frecuentaba. Cuando cayó en la cuenta de que todo eso había sido silenciado, ocultado, decidió incorporar al menos el primero de los títulos al temario de su asignatura en la Universidad. «El desconcierto de algunos académicos y escritores es honesto; algunas opiniones acerca de la experiencia de las mujeres resultan verdaderamente agresivas, como aquella de un joven profesor que conocí en un cóctel en 1970, quien, al enterarse de que yo enseñaba 'Jane Eyre' en mis clases, exclamó: '¡Qué libro tan malo! Son solo un puñado de fantasías eróticas femeninas', como si las fantasías eróticas femeninas fueran de por sí lo más bajo a lo que podía caer la literatura. Él fue hostil; el agobiado jefe de departamento que reaccionó diciendo 'No sabía que te interesaba la literatura menor de la época victoriana' fue simplemente irreflexivo. Ambos actuaron de mala fe». (Antonio Javier López) (Translation)

A contributor to The Boar thinks that things haven't changed all that much since the Brontë sisters published their works.

If we think back to the 1800s, a time in which female writers were not viewed with the same credibility as male writers, it is understandable why many female authors wrote under male pseudonyms. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë famously wrote under the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Women were thought to be restricted to the domestic sphere, with no perception to offer on the ‘real world’.
In the 21st century, at times we seem to heave a sigh of relief that these gender disparities have been left in the past. However, new findings suggest we may be too quick to reassure ourselves of this progress. [...]
These modern day Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bells are proof of the remaining ghosts of sexism haunting the book industry. A push for equal book marketing will not only be a stepping stone to silencing the echo of outdated claims that female writers have less to offer than male authors but will also provide an opportunity for female writers to get the recognition they rightfully deserve. (Suad Izhac)

Autostraddle reviews the film Wild Nights With Emily.

Wild Nights With Emily‘s narrative structure is a little Brontë-esque — honoring them almost as much as elderly Judge Otis Lord’s commentary on Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, in which he mangles the novels together but remember distinctly that it’s a story about how plain girls deserve love too — with both past and present Emily’s stories being told by Mabel Todd, Emily’s brother’s second wife, the woman who vanity published Emily’s poems after her death and helped shape her image as a recluse. (Heather Hogan)

Peninsula Daily News reports that,

The North Olympic Library System (NOLS) has teamed up with Olympic National Park to offer a sixth season of Poetry Walks.
This year’s program began last Monday and will continue through May 31.
It features inspiring poetry along four park trails.
During Poetry Walks, poems are placed on signs on the Hall of Mosses Trail, the Living Forest Trail, the Madison Creek Falls Trail and the Peabody Creek Trail.
With the exception of the Hall of Mosses Trail, access to these trails is free. [...]
Poets featured along the trails include Emily Brontë, Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein and Gary Snyder.

Keighley News has great news about Haworth Parish Church.

 Haworth Parish Church has received a substantial boost to its campaign to restore its electrical wiring and modernise its lighting system.
The historic building has been given a grant of £2,925 from Allchurches Trust.
Just two years after completing a £600,000 restoration of the church's Victorian roof and spending more than £60,000 on a new central heating system, custodians of the property were stunned to discover the electrical system needed to be replaced. [...]
Haworth Parish Church is well known for its connection to the literary Brontë family. This year it is the 200th anniversary of Rev Patrick Brontë – father to Charlotte, Emily and Anne – being appointed as perpetual curate to Haworth Parish Church. (Miran Rahman)