Something Brontë-related to look forward to on TV on February 1st as reported by
Newry.
The Brontë sisters are widely considered to be quintessentially 19th century English, regional novelists. This is not, however, the whole picture. Dig a little deeper and there is another chapter to their story, rooted in Rathfriland, Co Down, that is every bit as epic as anything penned by the sisters.
In The Brontës: An Irish Tale, presenter Aoife Hinds (Derry Girls, Normal People, The Last Call) will explore the surprising Irish connections that had a lasting impact on the Brontës, their work and their legacy in locations throughout Ireland and Yorkshire.
Aoife will visit Patrick Brontë's birthplace in Rathfriland, County Down and discover how a rural school teacher ended up studying in Cambridge. She will also explore the romance between Charlotte Brontë and Arthur Bell Nicholls, from County Antrim.
Charlotte and Arthur Bell Nicholls married after a long courtship and ended up honeymooning in Ireland. Aoife will also visit Banagher, County Offaly, where Arthur lived after Charlotte's death, and discover that it is thanks to Arthur much of the iconic Bronte memorabilia survives to this day.
The Brontës: An Irish Tale, part of BBC NI’s Season Of Arts, is on BBC One Northern Ireland, Tuesday 1 February at 10.35pm, and on BBC iPlayer.
The documentary is a Clean Slate Television production for BBC Northern Ireland. (Columba O'Hare)
Yesterday
The Yorkshire Post featured something that was on TV last night:
Our Great Yorkshire Life on Channel 5. It was mainly about the restoration of York Minster, but it also included a segment on
the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway snaking through Brontë Country in Haworth. The show follows the team as they carry out repair work on the five miles of track. (Jonathan Pritchard)
In a sublime essay on Wuthering Heights titled The Enigma of Reading, Hustvedt explores Emily Brontë’s novel to demonstrate the way that reading fiction makes us porous to new experiences and ideas. What we read, she neatly shows via Brontë, becomes a part of us: “A text literally reverberates with the pulse and breath of its reader.” In Wuthering Heights, boundaries are fluid – characters extend beyond themselves, dreams bleed into reality, and narration moves across several levels. As Hustvedt argues: “This wuthering story refuses to carve up the world into accepted categories.” (Gretchen Shirm)
Fans of King’s novels will find much to enjoy in the 10 short stories in her first collection, half of which are previously unpublished. In the opening story, “Creature”, Carol recalls babysitting for a wealthy family in New England when she was 14, “halfway through Jane Eyre for summer reading”. She finds herself fantasising about her charges’ married uncle, Hugh. “You cannot know these blistering feelings — you have not yet met your Rochester,” she writes to a friend. Outsized adolescent emotion is fertile terrain for King: her 1999 debut, The Pleasing Hour, featured an au pair falling for her host father. At first flattering, Hugh’s attention quickly turns predatory — worlds away from the “tender, delicate kiss” Carol had imagined. (Mia Levitin)
The Bookseller announces the publication of Mary Baader Kaley's dystopian thriller
Burrowed in November.
Baader Kaley said: “Burrowed started as a piece of flash fiction about 10 years ago, with a brilliant but quirky heroine with complicated emotions. She became my Jane Eyre. As a mum of a wonderful child born with a brain malformation, this story dug itself into the depths of my soul and I’m filled with gratitude for the amazing people at Angry Robot for the chance to give this story life.”
Creffield added: “I’m a huge lover of dystopian fiction, and Jane Eyre is my all-time favourite classic. Putting those two things together, I mean, I wasn’t going to say no! Mary’s writing is so evocative, and I fell in love with Zuzan almost immediately, just like I did Jane. She’s strong, compassionate and forever underestimating herself. It’s a joy to watch her grow.” (Sian Bayley)
1. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1966)
Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre and is arguably the most accomplished continuation of a classic. It focuses on Mr Rochester’s first wife Bertha Mason, who he famously imprisoned in the attic, and who stands in the way of his happy ending with Jane..
Frustrated by the stereotypical portrayal of Bertha in a novel which otherwise excels in its characterisation, Rhys uses her prequel to critique Victorian representations of women and mental illness. She gives the “madwoman in the attic” a voice and her novel serves as a horrifying reminder of what can happen when those with power mistreat those without. (Hetta Howes)
Enter the ingénue. Even though Mr. Fellowes borrows most blatantly from himself—“The Gilded Age” is a colonial “Downton Abbey,” which was a kind of prequel to the ’30s-era “Gosford Park”—he also shoplifts from the best, including George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë and, more appropriately, Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser. Marian Brook ( Louisa Jacobson ), discovering she’s penniless after the death of her father, travels from Pennsylvania to New York to live with her aunts, the wealthy widowed socialite Agnes Van Rhijn ( Christine Baranski ) and her dowager sister, Ada Brook ( Cynthia Nixon ). En route, her purse is snatched and she has to avail herself of the generosity of Peggy Scott ( Denée Benton ), a would-be writer who’s just finished her education at a Black college and has some issues with her family back in Brooklyn. (John Anderson)
Joe Biden as the madwoman in the attic in John Podhoretz's
New York Post column:
Now I know why they kept him in the basement during 2020, the way Mr. Rochester kept his crazy wife in the attic. The stakes were too high then for Biden to risk his own future by shooting off his own fool mouth, and even Biden understood it.
He needed to stay quiet so the focus would remain on Donald Trump, and circumstances conspired to make it possible for him not to venture out and go off the cuff in self-destructive ways.
Well, Mrs. Rochester is out of the attic, and like her, Biden just set the house on fire.
Brontë Babe Blog reviews
Rock and Roll Brontës Book 3 Wildfell Summer by Tracy Neis.
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