What a book about inequality, sexuality, class

Many sites remind readers that tonight is the night: Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre will be broadcast on the National Theatre's YouTube Channel at 7pm. From the Evening Standard:

Watch the National Theatre's Jane Eyre live
The National Theatre’s series of live streams started with a bang last week, with more than two million tuning in to watch One Man, Two Guvnors. This Thursday, it’s the turn of Jane Eyre, directed by Sally Cookson – tune in from 7pm to see the acclaimed Charlotte Brontë adaptation. (Harry Fletcher)

Stagedoor gives ten reasons to watch it. For instance,

It puts imagination and inventiveness above faithfulness. Charlotte Brontë’s original definitely doesn’t begin with the words “It’s a girl!” but too often page to stage versions of classic novels get bogged down in an attempt to be faithful. But absolute faithfulness often doesn’t make for exhilarating theatre. Sebastian Faulks has talked how that adapting a novel for the stage is like trying to turn a painting into a sculpture, and of course that is a doomed enterprise if you are too literal. Don’t think of this as the filleted version of the novel but something in its own right that pays its respects to the original but alights magpie like on the aspects that interest its makers. It digs deep into the subtext of the novel and Jane’s subconscious and it strikes gold.

Also recommended by Gov.co.uk, BBC, Craven Herald, Ross-shire Journal, Time Out, The Hunts Post, iNews, The York Press, HITC, Los Angeles Times, Broadway World, The Arts Desk, Whatsonstage, Backstage, China.org.cn, ITV, Georgia Today, Scoop, Theater.nl, Boston Globe, EnnaOra, Gadget, Cranfield and Marston Vale Chronicle, The Edinburgh Reporter, Santa Monica Daily Press, London Unattached and so on.

The New York Times asks bookish questions to Nobel-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time? Inspired by Carl Miller’s rock opera about the lives of the Brontës, I read “Wuthering Heights.” What a book about inequality, sexuality, class. Beautifully atmospheric, too.

The Cut recommends taking up short story collections such as:

Heathcliff Redux: A Novella and Stories by Lily Tuck
In Heathcliff Redux, National Book Award winner Lily Tuck revisits the gothic romance of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to tell the deliciously spare story of a Kentucky wife and mother having an affair with a seemingly dangerous man. Formally inventive, the novella and following short stories are erotic, unforgiving, and pack a punch in very, very few words. —(Brock Colyar)

PopSugar recommends new authors during the shutdowns. Including:

Brontë's Mistress by Finola Austin
A little-known literary scandal gets a new perspective in Finola Austin's Brontë's Mistress. Lydia Robinson, a wealthy woman whose passionate heart is viewed with disdain by her husband, children, and mother-in-law, hires a pair of siblings to teach her children: formal, reserved Anne Brontë, and her free-spirited brother Branwell. Sparks fly between Lydia and the young tutor Branwell, but this kind of fire ends up burning them all. (Aug 4) (Amanda Prahl)

In Le Monde (France) writer Lydie Salvayre claims that lockdown is the dream state for writers. According to her,

C'est la décision radicale d'Emily Brontë, qui prend le parti souverain de vivre retirée dans un village désolé du Yorkshire, loin des divertissements de la ville, loin de ce qui se pense et de ce qui s'écrit dans ces consensus confortables qui rassemblent les hommes, loin des intrigues et manœuvres dans lesquelles ils trempent pour parvenir ; et qui se tient à ce choix parce qu'il constitue à ses yeux le seul moyen pour que son esprit affronte ce devant quoi sans cesse les hommes se détournent : leurs gouffres intérieurs et ce que Bataille appelait « l'abîme du mal ». (Translation)

Mujer Hoy (Spain) recommends 10 classic novels to read during lockdown, such as Wuthering Heights and Wide Sargasso Sea.

'Cumbres borrascosas' (Emily Brontë)
Amores y odios tan tempestuosos como los páramos en los que viven los personajes: el paroxismo de pasiones en 'Cumbres borrascosas' es mayúsculo... y la calidad literaria de la única novela que nos dejó la mediana de las hermanas Brontë, también. [...]
'El ancho mar de los sargazos' (Jean Rhys)
Antes de que existiera la palabra precuela, Jean Rhys escribió una maravillosa, basándose en las pocas líneas que 'Jane Eyre' dedica a la esposa -criolla, loca, malvada, encerrada- del iracundo Rochester: en 'El ancho mar de los Sargazos' traza, con exquisito color y hondura, una biografía imaginativa y verosímil de aquella mujer. (Rosa Gil) (Translation)

Fotogramas (Spain) recommends watching Jane Eyre 2011.

21 Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011)
No te fallará si... Estás falto de amor romántico.
Esta nueva adaptación de la famosa novela de Charlotte Brontë capturó la esencia oscura de su historia, que se debate entre el romance de manual y el cuento de fantasmas gótico. Protagonizada por Mia Wasikowska y Michael Fassbender, es una película perfecta para soñar con esos amores imposibles del cine de época. (Translation)

The Guardian reviews the newly translated into English French novel Ça raconte Sarah by Pauline Delabroy-Allard.

The passion has already become harmful here. The excitement of burning with desire has become exhausting, so they start to tear each other apart. There’s an arbitrariness in the destructiveness that makes it unconvincing. In the great novels of ill-fated passion – Wuthering Heights or Anna Karenina, say – the story is richly embedded in a social world that makes the lovers feel doomed partly by forces outside their control. Here the two women live ordinary middle-class lives, going to the theatre, taking the narrator’s daughter to school. I couldn’t quite believe in the necessity for them to destroy themselves. (Lara Feigel)

Figaro (France) recommends taking up the Cazalet saga novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard during lockdown (we heartily recommend them, too!).

On peut choisir de replonger dans l’imposant Middlemarch de George Eliot, dans l’œuvre des sœurs Brontë, dans celle de Virginia Woolf. Ou encore remonter jusqu’à la bibliographie des merveilleuses Barbara Pym, Anita Brookner et Jane Gardam, pour ne citer qu’elles, qui n’ont cessé de porter un regard d’ethnologue sur les conflits intérieurs de leurs protagonistes. (Alexandre Fillon) (Translation)

France Today features the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.

The film, which was shot in just six weeks on the rocky shores of Brittany and in a studio near Paris, also presented a new set of challenges, Sciamma acknowledges. “For instance, the castle where we filmed hadn’t been used since the period. We didn’t touch anything – the colour of the walls, the floors – we just accessorised it in a very minimalist way, so I did less intervention on the set. It was less theatrical. And I was also obsessed with the light, trying to make each frame like a painting. I wanted to create a Gothic Brontë sisters mood in the landscape by the cliffs, but the weather that week was very sunny,” she concludes with a laugh. (Lanie Goodman)

Anonymous Eagle is doing recaps of old episodes of Dawson's Creek.

In English, Ms. Jacobs teaches Wuthering Heights to Pacey’s class. She asks about a moment in the book between Heathcliff and Catherine, and Nellie gets the straight interpretation of events correct, so Ms. Jacobs points out the underlying meanings. In short, and spoilers for a 150+ year old book, Heathcliff and Catherine never belonged together and their relationship was doomed from the start. She goes into more detail than that, but the important point here is that Pacey thinks this is a direct message from Ms. Jacobs to him and gets increasingly visibly upset about this. He is an idiot. (Brewtown Andy)

L'Unione Monregalese (Italy) recommends Wuthering Heights. Tapinto interviews a local athlete who recommends Wuthering Heights.