Making Jane Eyre more submissive

The Big Bradford Quiz of the Year in The Telegraph and Argus had a Brontë-related question:

1) Thornton arts hub South Square Centre was taken into community ownership back in January 2020. What is the village also famous for?

ANSWER = Thornton is the Birthplace of the Brontë sisters (Emma Clayton)

The San Diego Union-Tribune picks the best theatre in 2020.

Best non-local streamed theater

[...]

Runner-up: National Theatre Live’s “Jane Eyre,” reimagined with a jungle gym set and fire effects by director Sally Cookson, was thrilling and visceral. (Pam Kragen)

The Independent looks forward to the new books to be released in 2021.

CJ Carey’s Widowland (Quercus, June) is an inventive feminist dystopian novel set in a 1950s Nazi-ruled Britain. Rose, who works at the Ministry of Culture, is tasked with rewriting literature to correct the views of the past, including making Jane Eyre more submissive and Dorothea Brooke less intelligent. (Martin Chilton)

A contributor to Little Atoms discusses the work of Irish writer Eimear McBride:

Let me draw another comparison with Virginia Woolf, who writes in a powerful essay on narrative voice in the Brontës’ writing, “the self-centred and self-limited writers have a power denied the more Catholic and broad-minded. Their impressions are close-packed and strongly stamped between their narrow walls. Nothing issues from their words which has not been marked with their own impress.” I’m not for a second suggesting Eimear McBride is self-centred, only that she, like Woolf, understands her own voice – its preoccupations and complexities – and wields it with powerful intent through the characters in her novels. (Jan Carson)

The National (Scotland) sings the praises of England before pointing out what's arguably wrong with it.

The English language: its convoluted history, generous vocabulary and manifold accents. Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Kipling. Charles Dickens, Benjamin Zephaniah, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy and CS Lewis. Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. Agatha Christie. Winnie-the-Pooh, Thomas the Tank Engine and Postman Pat. The Secret Garden, Brambley Hedge, Terry Pratchett. The distinctly English humour of Monty Python, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers and Alan Partridge. (Dr Elliot Bulmer)

Far Out Magazine ranks Kate Bush's albums:

5. The Kick Inside (1978)

When the 19-year-old Kate Bush finally got the chance to release her debut album, The Kick Inside back in 1978, there wasn’t a single consumer who knew what was about to hit them. Starring her breakthrough song ‘Wuthering Heights,’ the album was built around Bush’s illustrious lyrical style.

“I was lucky to be able to express myself as much as I did,” said the star, still gasping for more room to breathe. “I would like to learn enough of the technical side of things to be able to produce my own stuff eventually.” She would achieve this goal, and so much more.

Not as complete as some of her other work, The Kick Inside was the kick in the gut the machismo world of music needed.

When you add on to this that ‘Wuthering Heights’ was the first song to hit number one that had been both written and performed by a female artist, it’s hard to see this record as anything but a victory. (Jack Whatley)