Charlotte Brontë and her wonderful batshit plots (?)

Keighley News looks forward to Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, How My Light Is Spent, opening on August 10th.

The author collaborated with Illuminos, Lumen and leading artist Jo Pocock to devise an innovative installation exploring Patrick’s memories and imagination as he recovered from a cataract operation aged 70, when he had outlived his wife and twoof his children.
How My Light Is Spent invites visitors to enter the Parsonage cellar for the very first time for an immersive installation that combines elements of theatre, light and sound to create a memorable and moving experience for people of all ages.
Audiences will share Patrick’s experience of darkness, hear the memories he held dear and see the dreams and visions he shared with Charlotte, who had cared for him following the operation. It was at this time that she began to write ‘Jane Eyre’.
The life of Patrick Brontë was intercut with moments of extreme joy – at his marriage to Maria Branwell and at his children’s success – but also with periods of profound sorrow. (David Knights)

Vox reviews Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre in New York.

It’s not until the now-adult Jane (danced by a sparkling Isabella Boylston when I saw the production, and on other nights by Devon Teuscher and Misty Copeland) reaches Thornfield Hall and Mr. Rochester that she learns once again that she is allowed to be angry: We know she can be her true self with Rochester when she starts pointing her elbows during their first pas de deux. Meanwhile, Rochester (Thomas Forster) shows that he’s self-assured enough to be as vulnerable as Jane when she takes on all his weight and he swoons into her arms.
But Rochester has a secret: His first wife, Bertha (Stephanie Williams) is the woman in the attic. She is still alive, which means that Rochester and Jane cannot marry. In Marston’s ballet, Bertha is Jane’s shadow self, the embodiment of all the unruly feelings Jane will not allow herself to truly feel. When Jane writhes in confusion and anxiety after she first meets Rochester, Bertha is silhouetted behind her, echoing her movements — except Bertha is writhing in lust.
It’s not only Bertha who is a reflection of Jane’s inner self: The entire production is built so that every element helps us think about Jane. Jane is constantly menaced by the D-Men who represent her inner turmoil (the D is for “demon” and also “death”). On the vast and cavernous Met stage, Patrick Kinmonth’s minimalist sets keep peeling back as though we are traveling further and further into Jane’s mind. And Philip Feeney’s delicate score is anchored by the music of Fanny Mendelssohn, a composer like her better-known brother Felix, in a constant reminder of all the women like Fanny and Jane and Charlotte Brontë who are talented and accomplished and do the work and who are still ignored and degraded by the world in which they live.
But the great miracle of Jane Eyre is that Jane is able to rise above the world’s neglect, to decide that if no one else will respect her, then she will respect herself. That’s what makes her such a vital character.
And so in Marston’s ballet, there comes a moment when Jane is at her moment of greatest emotional turmoil. She has just received an offer of marriage from the icy St. John Rivers (Duncan Lyle), and she can’t decide what to do about it. In a daze, she sees all the men in her life dancing around her — St. John, Rochester, her cousin John, the wicked school teacher Rev. Brocklehurst — and her childhood self in front of them.
Jane pushes those men away, even Rochester, and she chases after herself. (Constance Grady)

Hollywood Reporter interviews Laura Marks, writer of DC's horror comic, Daphne Byrne.

So where did Daphne Byrne comic from? You talked about your love of character-driven horror… Marks: For a long time I've wanted to do something with the Gilded Age of New York, and that world of Henry James and Edith Wharton. But in TV, that kind of thing is so expensive to pull off well that I've always felt hesitant about pitching something in that world. But the great thing about comics is that nothing costs any more to draw than anything else. It feels like the perfect medium in which to take that chance.
I love period stuff in general. I love Victorian ghost stories, M.R. James, and I love Charlotte Brontë and her wonderful batshit plots. I love reading about the Victorian spiritual movement — of course, that started more in the mid 19th century, but it was going strong for several decades there. So, I think all of these things have been just turning around in my mind for a while now.
Also, setting [the story] in this period would give us a great chance to explore gender roles, because it was a time when — even more so than today in a way — rage is something that a nice young woman was not supposed to express. And you know, as the mother of two young girls, and as someone who is seeing a time now in the world where female rage feels more potent and present than ever before, perhaps, it felt like a really fun thing to explore through a period lens. (Graeme McMillan)

Refinery29 shares the travel diary of 'A 29-year-old senior copywriter [who] goes to Paris with her boyfriend to finalize the purchase of their Parisian apartment.'

10:30 p.m. — After a long queue to check our bag, we are seated at a café by the gate. B is munching on a ham and cheese sandwich ($8.55) and I steal a few mediocre bites. As we wait to board, I crack open Jane Eyre, a classic piece of literature that somehow slipped through the cracks of my high school reading list. It is surprisingly relevant, and I am here for the growth and strength of Ms. Eyre!

Pangea (Italy) features a law student/instagrammer and a poem by Emily Brontë.