The moon over Villette

 Honi Soit explores Villette and the moon:

(---) During my studies in the city of bicycles, I read Charlotte Brontë’s lesser-known work, Villette. The Gothic novel centres around a young governess Lucy Snow, and her life in the fictional town of Villette (likely based on Belgium where the author spent time teaching).
For Brontë, the moon shone a light on the tension between feminine moral righteousness and expression, passion and emotional freedom. It was used to explore the social repression that the Brontë sisters were familiar with, whereby women were forced to restrict imagination and feeling. No example is more demonstrative than the fact the sisters could not publish their work under their own names.
In Villette, the moon links to all that is irrational, conjuring up childhood tendencies of expressiveness and reflecting Lucy Snowe’s inner conflict as she chooses logic over the self-fulfilment of her own inner desires. “A moon was in the sky, not a full moon, but a young crescent… she and the stars… my childhood knew them… Oh, my childhood! I had feelings”. Anything less of mind is attributed to ‘female hysteria’, which she is countlessly diagnosed with by her love interest Dr John throughout the novel. (...)  ( Tasia Kuznichenko)

Susannah Clapp in The Observer reviews Wuthering Heights enthusiastically:

Refuge is also at the heart of Emma Rice’s marvellous adaptation of Wuthering Heights. In this whirling production, Heathcliff is found not on the streets of Liverpool but at the docks: more in flight than abandoned. This is a tweak not a betrayal: the abuse – physical and verbal – he suffers at the hands of the so-called civilised is there on the page. (...)

E Brontë would surely have applauded a design that suggests humans perch precariously on the natural world. Vicki Mortimer’s set – flimsy walls and doors, quickly carried on and off – is dwarfed by the big sweep of Simon Baker’s videos, in which glowering cloudscapes are crossed by the wings of large dark birds. Ian Ross’s music brings further swells of intensity: a throaty cello, a double bass, antic bursts on a melodeon; Etta Murfitt’s choreography sends frenzy and anguish scudding across the stage.

It is extraordinary to see these echoes of brutality and rescue travel from the 19th to the 21st century, and to be reminded both within a theatre and on the streets how imagination and empathy can offer hope: amal. It was, after all, a dramatist who gave us the overused but much-needed phrase “the kindness of strangers”.

It seems that the West Lane Methodist Church in Haworth, where the Brontë Society organised many talks and events across the years, will be another victim of speculation, according to the Yorkshire Post:

A church in the village where the world-famous Brontë sisters were born can be converted into housing after plans were approved by Bradford Council.

The application to convert West Lane Methodist Church into five, three-bed homes was submitted by Tim Sharp in August.

It said the proposals would “provide the opportunity to secure the optimum viable use for the now redundant Methodist Church.”

Turning it into housing would prevent the vacant building falling into disrepair, it added. (Chris Young)

So many books, so little time. We could say that, but it's Gulf News where it is published:

My liking for books like Mills and Boons was not much as compared to books by Robin Cook or Alfred Hitchcock. I enjoyed the mystery, the scientific explorations, the scheming sci-fi plots and thrillers. I had a friend who used to love reading and we would exchange books and discuss too. Then there was a reading era where I read books by Sydney Sheldon, Author Hailey, Harold Robbins interspersed with classics like Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) and Agatha Christie. (Anuradha Sharma)

Decider recommends some zombie movies:

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
How do you get a zombie movie out of Jane Eyre? How do you get a 70-minute horror movie out of Jane Eyre, even? Producer Val Lewton, who oversaw nine classic chillers for the studio RKO in the 1940s, knew. The basic tale of a very beset governess is transplanted from the British countryside to a Caribbean island and the plight of the brooding landowner is spiced up with voodoo. Critics have long commended Lewton’s horror pictures, which also include Cat People and The Seventh Victim, for their subtlety —which sometimes convinces average joes that they might be boring. They’re not. But Zombie, directed by Jacques Tourneur, is one that leans heaver on mood and atmosphere than jump scares. (Glenn Kenny)

JustFocus (France) thinks for some reason that Wuthering Heights is a Halloween read:

Emily Brontë publie Les Hauts de Hurlevent pour la première fois en 1847 sous le pseudonyme d’Ellis Bell. Dans son unique roman, elle raconte l’histoire d’un enfant abandonné, Heathcliff, recueilli par une famille. Mais, l’arrivée de cet enfant difficile plonge la maison dans la tourmente. Lorsque Heathcliff grandit, il devient un homme sans scrupule. Tout le roman peint la destruction de deux familles, qui se déchirent génération après génération, au cœur des paysages venteux, sauvages et immuables des landes du Yorkshire.
L’autrice nous livre des personnages aux personnalités complexes, tourmentés et sombres. Leur noirceur ainsi que la violence de certaines scènes et l’omniprésence de la mort choquent le lectorat de l’époque. Mais, Les Hauts de Hurlevent est, aujourd’hui, devenu l’un des plus grands classiques de la littérature du XIXe siècle. (Marion Caudal) (Translation)

NTV (Turkey) highlights Mia Wasikowksa's work in Jane Eyre 2011:

Anı adlı romandan sinemaya uyarlanan "Jane Eyre"de, Jane Eyre rolünü canlandırdan Wasikowska, kendisine köle gibi davranan halası tarafından yoksul kızların gittiği katı disiplinli bir yatılı okula gönderilen karakteri için güzelliğinden taviz verdi. (Translation)

Quotes on being independent (and one by Charlotte) on Pinkvilla. United Press International listed a quote by Charlotte Brontë as the thought of the day. AnneBronte.org has a Halloween-themed post.