'Be careful what you seed'

In The Guardian, Emma Rice tells how she came to adapt Wuthering Heights for the stage after feeling 'horrified by the cruelty shown to children seeking asylum in Britain'.

My family were keen campers and many a wet weekend in the 1970s was spent shivering in a tent. Sometimes, these visits would be shared with our neighbours and a convoy of bashed up, smoke-filled cars would set off from Nottingham and head for the hills. One such trip was to the Yorkshire Moors where it was decided that we would try to find Top Withens; the house said to have inspired Wuthering Heights. The children in the party didn’t embrace the genuinely challenging walk, but the odyssey was worth it and Wuthering Heights captured all our imagina
tions.

Remote, bleak, and somehow devastating, we were all struck by how small the house seemed. I hadn’t read the book at that point but my mum and her friend Marielaine’s enthusiasm for literature was contagious. They laughed with pleasure as they recalled the book and its spooky themes. I loved to see my parents with their friends. I loved to see them spark and delight as the drudgery of parenthood and work melted away and the joys of life bubbled through. I recall vividly being inside a sleeping bag listening to the laughter of Mum and Dad and their friends outside. That time lives on for me in a fuzzy memory of happy wildness but, as Catherine Earnshaw said: “There is no happiness.” [...] Then came Wuthering Heights and everything changed. There was no avoiding the intoxicating pull of this book and I loved it with a passion. My blood stirred, my mind fizzed and my energy popped. This didn’t feel like work, this felt like jumping off a craggy cliff and flying.

How could I resist a world filled with ghosts, betrayals and passions? I loved its drama and its intrigue but most I loved a story that spanned not only generations but life and death. I didn’t have a literal ghost knocking at my window, but I was haunted by memories that knocked at my soul. In my teenage mind, I was Heathcliff. I was misunderstood, angry and grieving – I wanted people to feel, see and understand my pain. Emily Brontë saw me. She felt death everywhere and understood loss as sharply as I felt my own. [...]

In 2016, I was horrified by scenes from the refugee camps at the Calais refugee camp and enraged by the negotiations about how many unaccompanied children the UK was willing to take while not actually taking any – something triggered in my brain. Wasn’t Heathcliff an unaccompanied child? Wasn’t he found on the Liverpool docks and taken in by Earnshaw? My instincts itching, I pulled out my old copy and started to read. This time, the book fell into a very different soul. No longer intoxicated by impossible passions and unresolved griefs, I saw a story not of romance but of brutality, cruelty and revenge. This was not a gothic romance, this was a tragedy; a tragedy of what might happen if, as individuals as well as a society, we allow cruelty to take hold. “Be careful what you seed,” my pen wrote, and it kept writing, giving new voice to my adult rage.

I cut Nelly Dean, took the form of a Greek tragedy and created a chorus of The Moor. It is The Moor that tells the story of Wuthering Heights in my production. Singing and dancing as one, they warn us that: “A scatter of yellow stars might seem to welcome hope, but the adder slides beneath.” This production is epic, the characters superhuman; Catherine, Heathcliff and Hareton the Gods of Chaos, Revenge and Hope. [...]

As the story unfolds, The Moor incants:

“And what of the rage that is planted?

The hate and jealousy that has slipped into our watery beds?

Oh, they grow alright.

They are coming along nicely, thank you.

In the warm wet earth

And they grow.

Be careful what you seed.” [...]

This production of Wuthering Heights is woven from the talent, passion, truth and experience of all who are contributing to the show. Rich with our humanity, it holds our own stories, our losses, hopes, fears and dreams. Made with love, this is a revenge tragedy for our time and one that warns how our actions today will affect the world for decades to come.

The Guardian also reviews the novel Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down which is deemed

a remarkably empathic book, a bildungsroman in the mode of Jane Eyre or Of Human Bondage. (Declan Fry)

The Irish Times' Diary of an Irish Teacher on the power of music and literature.

The first time I ever heard music in a classroom was at university. The wonderful Eibhear Walshe played ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush before we started the novel. I’ve never forgotten that moment, because I felt it, all of it, the tragedy of Cathy and Heathcliff, encapsulated in that song.

Yes, literature is about the past and it’s about the present. It’s about being human. I’m so grateful that in the modern Irish classroom we get to be as human as we choose to be. And I’m grateful that we get to study old texts that still have so much to say about who we are – who we once were and who we are set to become. (Jennifer Horgan)

The Mary Sue Book Club has recommendations 'For Halloween Lovers (And the Haters)' including

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Described as an “Ethiopian-inspired fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre,” the paranormal fantasy novel follows an exorcist, Andromeda, hired to cleanse spaces of the Evil Eye. Desperate to develope clientele to hire her even without a license, Andromeda begins to work for the demanding, rich Magnus Rochester (who lives in a mansion in the middle of the desert). Despite mounting paranormal activities and deadly secrets, she begins to fall for Magnus. (Alyssa Shotwell)

WA Today lists 'Eight ways to love your local bookshop':

7. Pragma: Lasting Commitment

Pragma is the deep, mature affection of a long and lasting relationship. You’ve known your bookshop a long time. You’ve weathered its refurbishments and the odd unsuitable recommendation, and the staff have forgiven you for the time you asked if they had any books by Jane Eyre. Pragma is a patient, tolerant form of love. You can wait for your order. You don’t mind a long queue. (Amelia Mellor)

An alert for today, October 1 in Leeds: 

What Did Jane Eyre See?

Friday October 1 2021 at 04:30 PM

Chapel FM Arts Centre, Leeds

Geraldine Beattie talks about Jane Eyre's visions/vision: Brontë's Jane had fascinating perspectives to bring to that marriage, Reader!

Finally, BBC Radio 4's In Our Time featured The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and is well worth a listen.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Brontë tried to suppress as a 'mistake'. It examines the life of Helen, who has escaped her abusive husband Arthur Huntingdon with their son to live at Wildfell Hall as a widow under the alias 'Mrs Graham', and it exposes the men in her husband's circle who gave her no choice but to flee. Early critics attacked the novel as coarse, as misrepresenting male behaviour, and as something no woman or girl should ever read; soon after Anne's death, Charlotte suggested the publisher should lose it for good. In recent decades, though, its reputation has climbed and it now sits with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as one of the great novels by the Bronte sisters.

With

Alexandra Lewis

Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia

Marianne Thormählen

Professor Emerita in English Studies, Lund University

And

John Bowen

Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at the University of York

Producer: Simon Tillotson