The Hysteria of Cancellation

It's back to the Victorian assessment of women with Olivia Laing in The Guardian:

The book I could never read again

I was wild for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as a child but I went back to it in the pandemic after rereading all of Austen, and I’m sorry, but Jane Eyre is a horrendous little hysteric. Lock her in the red room! I found the heightened emotional temperature unbearable. Give me Austen’s coolness, irony, ambiguity any day.

That a feminist would apply the term 'hysteric' to another (fictional) woman while demanding she be locked up is, quite frankly, a faux pas and a serious disregard of women's history.

Slate (France) focuses on the absurdity of The New York Times campaign which features a writer who imagines a world without J.K. Rowling:

Si elle n'a pas signé sa saga avec son prénom (Joanne), c'est justement parce qu'elle savait que le fait d'être une femme la desservirait auprès de son lectorat masculin. Car si depuis un siècle, le chemin parcouru dans le domaine de l'égalité entre les sexes est remarquable, nous sommes loin d'être arrivées au bout. En faisant ce choix, elle s'est inscrite dans la longue lignée des femmes écrivaines qui ont caché leur identité sexuelle pour être prises au sérieux. Les sœur Brontë. George Eliot. George Sand. Peine perdue: la voilà condamnée à être effacée, elle aussi, grâce à des «progressistes» du XXIe siècle. (Bérengère Viennot) (Translation)

There's a guy in Russia invading another country and attacking civilians but, by all means, yes, let's imagine a world without a woman writer peacefully defending her ideas. 

The Critic publishes a bad review of the Wise Children production of Wuthering Heights:

Rice takes some daring but inspired shortcuts to address the excess of material, such as compacting the narrator, Nellie Dean, into the character of the “Moor” — a mix of Greek chorus, and Baal-like goddess (elementally sung and danced by Nandi Bhebhe). The intertwined family trees of the earthy Earnshaws and over-bred Lintons are dealt with by the cast holding up blackboards to remind us which generation we’re in.

As the plot darkens into its tangle of ill-assorted love, sickness and death, the boards become avatars for tombstones.

We get some wonderful props on Vicki Mortimer’s set — the larks and curlews on the moors are books fluttering on the end of poles whirled by dancers. Hounds unleashed on poor Heathcliff with grim regularity are canine skulls on sticks — and yet the terror and bubbling hatreds towards an incomer feel chillingly real. (...)

Brontë is perfectly at home with challenging gender expectations in Heathcliff’s horror at fathering a weak, effeminate child. But this portrayal is more comedic than painful and Owen’s antics undermine the sadness and sense of alienation — physical comedy lashed onto a work of depth is often better as the sauce, not the main ingredient.

Rice, I am sure, disagrees with me. She wants to present us with the Wuthering Heights not of a teenager in first recognitions of desire and the pull of extreme emotions, but as the reflection of an adult, angry about our heartless response to child refugees, the lost Heathcliffs of our day who inspired her to revisit the tale.

Alas, there is too much going on (not least in the cartwheeling cast) to figure this out or think very much about the parallels from what we see in an accomplished but dizzying blend of drama and romp. We’re left with the windy moors, the gravestones and something missing in the mist, which we might call heart. (Anne McElvoy)

More on Jane McDonald and Haworth in The Telegraph and Argus:

Jane McDonald visits Haworth and Oakworth in episode two of her new Channel 5 show; 'Jane McDonald: My Yorkshire', broadcast this weekend.

During the series, Jane pays a nostalgic tour of the place she calls ‘home’ or, as she says, 'my Yorkshire.' [...]

Meanwhile, also during tomorrow night's episode, the popular singer travels to Brontë Country with a trip to Haworth.

She takes a stroll up the village's steep High Street, observing 'you might need your walking boots' for the trek.

She also stops at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, admitting that Charlotte Brontë's classic novel' Jane Eyre, is one of her favourite books.

John Crace in The Guardian comments on the announcement of a new BBC adaptation of Great Expectations:

Nothing against the book or Colman – I’m sure she will make a wonderful Miss Havisham – but the BBC seem to remake Great Expectations every five to 10 years. So how about trying something new? (...)

 As would William Thackeray’s Pendennis – a story of making it in the big city – and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, one of the most compelling novels of the 19th century. 

This contributor to Outside would do well to watch the programme as she seems to think that Jane Eyre is set in the Lake District.

Lake District, United Kingdom

For expansive views of rolling, emerald hillsides speckled with the occasional sapphire tarn, add Northern England’s Lake District to your bucket list. Full of free-roaming Herdwick sheep, grassy moors, and dozens of opportunities to bed down in a cozy cottage or castle, this park is ripe for long afternoon walks and evenings spent reading Charlotte Brönte [sic], whose seminal novel Jane Eyre is set in this landscape. (Emily Pennington)

Showbiz Junkies has actress Jane Seymour speak about her new series Harry Wild.

"But for me to be doing an action thing and have it be that intelligent – and I think when you watch Harry Wild, if you’ve never read a book, you are now going to be interested in Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and a few others.” (Rebecca Murray)

The Beacon reviews a production of Jen Silverman's The Moors: 

Both forms of writing are integral to the plot in some way and called to mind the Brontë sisters, whose lives and legacies served as inspiration for Silverman’s central sisters Agatha and Hudley.  (...) 

Olivia Sloss’s Agatha is domineering with a pervading sense of elegance and poise that seems lost on her roommates. Sloss plays cruelty tinged cunning lavishly. Hannah Harrison plays the needy and ambitious Hudley, who aspires to a literary fame once again evocative of the Brontës. (Will Mulligan)

AVClub discusses the new album by Tears for Fears, The Tipping Point:

Fortunately, in 2000, the pair reunited, and now, nearly 40 years after their first release, they’ve released their seventh album. The Tipping Point is an impressive collection that should easily win over bonafide Tears For Fears fans, kicking off with the surprisingly bare acoustic strum of “No Small Thing,” which highlights the vocals and melodies that have always been the pair’s strong suit. The haunting title track is a ghostly love story worthy of Wuthering Heights, while the welcome and catchy electronic musings of “Master Plan” (“Believe me when I tell you there’s another way / The sun will rise tomorrow on your world of pain”) and “Break The Man” (No more tearing the bandages off / No more living a lie / No more chewing the scenery / No more rain no more rain”) offer a more optimistic view of the world than TFF fans may be used to. (Gwen Ihnat) 

Weather, literature and The Times:

And there’s Charlotte Brontë. “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day,” Jane Eyre begins, on account of the cold winter wind, the sombre clouds and penetrating rain. At least we know we’re in Yorkshire. (Rose Wild)

The Canberra Times talks about the arrival in Canberra of the Shakespeare to Winehouse: Icons from the National Portrait Gallery exhibition:

There are quirks among the artworks. A circa 1640 portrait of The Capel Family has a silver leaf frame, a rarity in an era of gilded gold. An 1834 portrait of the Bronte sisters, thought long lost, was found folded up in a cupboard. The conservators in 1914 when the gallery purchased the portrait decided to leave the folds intact as it was part of the history of the work. (Megan Doherty)

Finally, on MONEY FM 89.3, on the Saturday Mornings Show the former university professor and author Cicely Havely talks about  A Marble Column, a sequel of Jane Eyre, which was independently published in 2019 and now will get a new release by Edward Everett Root Publishers.