'I was struck by how modern Charlotte Brontë’s Jane seemed'

The Guardian interviews Sally Cookson about her Jane Eyre adaptation, which is set to go live on the National Theatre YouTube channel tomorrow evening.

What drew you to staging Jane Eyre? It’s a story I’ve loved since I was a child although I didn’t read the novel until I was in my 20s. As a kid I was intrigued by the black-and-white film noir version with Orson Welles as Rochester and music by Bernard Herrmann. When I read the book at drama school, I thought: that film completely misses the point. It might as well have been called Rochester. The book is a clarion call for equal opportunities for women, not a story about a passive female who’ll do anything for her hunky boss.
I was struck by how modern Charlotte Brontë’s Jane seemed – her spirit and strong will, her peculiar and brilliant mind. She lashes out against anything that prevents her from being herself. I just thought: wow, I’d love to be someone like that. It’s such an epic story and has been so often turned into film, TV, theatre and ballet versions. I was intrigued as to why we keep going back to it.
Was it a daunting project, knowing that the book is so loved?Adapting a novel like that is challenging – it’s taken on legendary status. If you’re going to be as bold as to do another version, you have to put all that to one side and trust that you’ve got a right to tell this story and it’s going to be how the people in the room want to tell this story. So I was initially anxious but quickly forgot about it.
When you read the novel again, did it surprise you at all? As a child, I had been drawn to the romance of the film. In my 20s I was attracted to the feminism. As a mature woman, I was struck by the individual human rights and the weight the novel places on them. Jane understands from a very early age that you need to be emotionally, spiritually and intellectually nourished to thrive. She didn’t have any of these things given to her. They are basic human needs we all require to flourish. That’s what I wanted to bring to the fore. [...]
Did you always have Madeleine Worrall in mind for Jane? She was Wendy in a version of Peter Pan I did. I knew she’d be perfect. She is such an intelligent and tenacious actor – and very like Jane Eyre in many ways. She never stops investigating and is not at all frightened of failing or making a fool of herself. A lot of Jane’s text was invented by Madeleine. (Chris Wiegand)

Evening Standard on how to watch it and which other shows to expect after Jane Eyre.

Like those images of animals returning to spaces usually taken by us humans, the Daily Mail looks at 'picturesque villages' now empty of visitors and thus looking 'as they used to be'.

These are the picturesque towns and villages which would usually be teeming with tourists at this time of year.
But these pictures show how the streets of some of Britain's most popular postcard villages are now practically empty, with tourists at home in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.
With the sun shinning and the four-day East Bank Holiday approaching, residents of these lovely locations would usually be preparing for an army of tourists to flock in from far and wide.
But this weekend is likely to be different with the government still advising against all non-essential travel.
Streets, usually clogged with tourists, walkers and sightseers are now empty and eerily silent.
The picturesque village of Haworth, West Yorkshire, is famed for its connection to the nineteenth-century literary family, The Brontës. But Haworth is usually packed with tourists walking its quaint streets, often going to or coming from Haworth Parsonage, where the Bronte sisters wrote many of their novels
That is certainly the case in the picturesque village of Haworth, West Yorkshire, famed for its connection to the nineteenth-century literary family, The Brontës.
The sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, [were born] in nearby Thornton, but wrote most of their novels while living at Haworth Parsonage - which remains a popular tourist attraction. (James Robinson)

The Michigan Journal recommends the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.

Much of this film reads like Wuthering Heights, the large, sprawling countryside punctuated by occasional people on horseback, which reads much like the song that we see at the bonfire, the women all singing “they are flying” in French, which in some ways speaks to how when someone flies away, the smaller those who are watching seem to be. (Benjamin Jones)

Rumbos (Argentina) interviews writer Mariana Enríquez about her latest novel Nuestra parte de noche.

Podríamos decir que tu antihéroe pertenece a dos mundos, pero no la pasa bien en ninguno. Juan está totalmente condenado. Al escribirlo, yo tenía dos referentes literarios muy claros: Frankenstein, que está entre la vida y la muerte, muy solo y abandonado por sus creadores, pero que a la vez es dueño de un poder total y una capacidad de daño enorme. Mi otro referente era Heathcliff, el personaje de Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë: un huérfano robado y absolutamente resentido, un personaje cruel pero muy atractivo para los lectores. (Ximena Pascutti) (Translation)

Tổ Quốc (Vietnam) has an article on the 'tragic fate' of the Brontës. Brontë Babe Blog begins a series of posts about 'People and Places from the Brontë Juvenilia: Glass Town and Angria'.