Brussels Brontë October Weekend 2019

The Brussels Brontë Group Weekend is full of interesting events:

Venue for talks: Gemeenschapscentrum Op-Weule, rue Saint Lambert 91, 1200 Woluwe Saint Lambert (next to Woluwe Shopping Centre).

Saturday 12 October 2019
10.30 (doors open at 10.00): Talk by Dr Patsy Stoneman: ‘A little romance’? Taking liberties with Brontë biography

We are delighted to welcome back Patsy Stoneman, Vice-President of the Brontë Society, who spoke to our Group in 2012 on feminist readings of Jane Eyre (‘Jane Eyre’ from then till now) and in 2008 on film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
The enduring fascination in the Brontës spawns a huge amount of biography and biographical fiction about the world’s most famous literary family. Dr Patsy Stoneman will take a look at this phenomenon. The name of her talk is a quotation from Patrick Brontë, father of the four siblings; when a friend commiserated with him about the liberties Elizabeth Gaskell had taken in her Life of Charlotte Brontë, his reply was ‘Mrs Gaskell is a novelist, you know, and must be allowed a little romance’.
Patsy Stoneman, Emeritus Reader in English at the University of Hull, is a distinguished Brontë scholar. She has published many critical studies on the Brontës and has taken a particular interest in their cultural ‘afterlife’, for example the stage and film adaptations of their novels. Her publications include Brontë Transformations: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

14.30 (doors open at 14.00): Interview with Nathalie Stalmans, author of Si j’avais des ailes.

Following on from Patsy Stoneman’s talk in the morning, we will take a look at a recent work of biographical fiction. We’ll be talking to the Belgian historical novelist Nathalie Stalmans, whose novel Si j’avais des ailes, about Charlotte Brontë’s time at the Pensionnat Heger in 1842-43, was published earlier this year.
The novel opens in 1856, a year after Charlotte’s death. Elizabeth Gaskell is about to visit the Pensionnat to gather information for her Life of Charlotte Brontë. The visitor is awaited with mixed feelings at the school and Charlotte’s stay is told in flashback by various narrators, some sympathetic to her, some hostile. The Brussels background is vividly depicted and this is an engaging look at Charlotte Brontë by a writer who is a native of ‘Villette’.
Nathalie Stalmans is a historian and history teacher. Her previous novels include Finis Terrae and Le vent du boulet, set in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively, which blend real and imaginary elements to create stories around the inhabitants of a real house in Rue Neuve in Brussels.

Guided walk
Sunday 13 October 2019 at 10.00

This two-hour walk features Brontë places in the Place Royale area.