The film bursts with an imagination as unconventional as the author herself

Today marks the 174th anniversary of the death of Branwell Brontë.

The Yorkshire Post features the Brontë Festival of Women's Writing taking place this weekend in Haworth organised by the Brontë Society.

Sassy Holmes is programme officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.The festival, which launched last night and runs through this weekend, was born as a "linchpin" to support community voices, she said.

It features new female artists and those who might embody that same Brontë spirit.

"The Brontës did push boundaries and were quite daring in what they did, challenging traditional narratives," she said.

"They believed in themselves. They had so much passion for artistic practice."

To keep writing, to question ideas around religion and the patriarchy, was a "bold" thing for the Brontës to do in the 1800s, she said.

"The women of the festival are doing that today. That is what the festival embodies."

The festival, now in its 11th year, ties in with a 2022 exhibition at Haworth's Brontë Parsonage Museum – Defying Expectations.

Co-created by historical consultant Dr Eleanor Houghton, it focuses on the remarkable garments and accessories worn by Charlotte Brontë. [...]

This is the first time the festival has been hybrid, with almost all sessions both in person and online through Zoom, email and Youtube.

It brings Haworth to the world, as well as the world to Haworth said Ms Holmes, capturing contemporary voices.

She added: "The festival itself is defying expectations, supporting not just artists and poets but so many different events.

"It just speaks to the way the Brontës were. They pushed boundaries with their work, knowing that female writers weren't accepted at the time. They believed in themselves. They had so much passion for artistic practice. We are taking the ethos of that.” (Ruby Kitchen)

The Yorkshire Evening Post suggests '7 things to do within a short train ride from Leeds' and one of them is

Brontë Parsonage Museum

Just a 25 minute train ride from Leeds train station you’ll find the Brontë Parsonage, where perhaps Yorkshire’s most well known authors stem from.

This is the birthplace of sisters Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, who went on to write some of England’s most influential books like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Windfell Hall.

The parsonage is now a museum visited by more than hundred thousand tourists every year, and is a must see for anyone interested in Yorkshire’s rich history.

It is highly recommended to book a ticket in advance to avoid disappointment on arrival.

How to get there:

A 25 minute train ride from Leeds train station to Keighley, followed by a bus to Haworth gets you straight there. The Museum is at the top of Main Street, right behind the parish church. (Dennis Morton)

Also at the top of Main Street is Haworth Steam Brewing Company recommended by The Telegraph and Argus.

The pub is popular with both locals and visitors to the village, famous for its Brontë connections. Benches outside are usually occupied with people enjoying a drink while watching the world go by.

“We are dog-friendly too, so people stop off when out for a walk.” (Helen Mead)

'The 20 Most-Anticipated Films of the Season' in The Atlantic and Emily is one of them.

Emily (TBA)

Brontë purists, look away. The writer-director Frances O’Connor has, with this reimagining of Emily Brontë’s short life, invented a bodice-ripping, opium-filled coming-of-age saga that captures the author’s spirit, if not her biographical truth. No, Emily (played by Sex Education’s Emma Mackey) probably never, um, serviced a hunky clergyman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) after French lessons, but Wuthering Heights is, after all, a dangerous text of moral complexity. Emily, with its shots of breathtaking vistas and scenes that hint at supernatural forces, matches that book’s haunted air. The film bursts with an imagination as unconventional as the author herself. (Shirley Li)

The Irish Times recommends it too:

Emily

Directed by Frances O’Connor

Word is excellent on this biopic of Emily Brontë starring the charismatic Emma Mackey in the title role and featuring Alexandra Dowling as Charlotte and Amelia Gething as Anne. The respected actor Frances O’Connor makes her directorial debut with a film largely shot in the Brontës’ native Yorkshire. Expect wild and windy moors.

Opens October 14th (Donald Clarke)

A contributor to LitHub discusses it among the highs and lows of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Some things are said in this article about the actual Emily Brontë that are simply not true, though

Emily

When the trailer for Frances O’Connor’s Emily was released back in August, the actress-turned-director gave the Radio Times an interview in which she said this of the film’s subject, 19th-century novelist Emily Brontë: “She’s very assured in who she is, and very real, like 100% authentic real.” Upon the premiere of the film at TIFF, she told Screen’s Jeremy Kay, “Like Emily, she’s (star Emma Mackey) very authentic as a person.” And at the screening I attended a few days after the premiere, in her introduction to the eager audience, O’Connor said of her Brontë passion, “She was so authentically herself, and she was just herself.”

Well alright! What hasn’t already been said about the Brontës in the dozens if not hundreds of adaptations of their work and accounts of their lives? Generally, Charlotte is depicted as uptight, prodigious, and intense; Emily is depicted as passionate, rebellious, and anti-social; and Anne isn’t depicted much at all. That holds firm for O’Connor’s Emily, only its portrait of the second youngest sister has been updated to emphasize the Wuthering Heights author’s… authenticity.

O’Connor’s Emily is simplified and normalized to a degree that makes her recognizable only as a cliche.

Putting aside whatever it means for a mentally ill 19th-century consumptive and fan fiction enthusiast to be “authentic,” Emily does not deserve our ridicule. Does it deserve an audience? Sure. With its tiresome yet in vogue soundtrack of benzo’d out 80s pop covers, its cast of hot, Netflix-looking actors and actual Netflix actors, and all the talk of “finding your voice” and “beautiful scars,” it will fit right in on the platform where it was pre-bought to stream: Amazon Prime. Perhaps Emily does deserve some ridicule. But what it also merits—for it isn’t an entirely worthless inquiry into the life of a famous eccentric—is some honest criticism.

If, like me, you’re still smarting from the bummer of Josephine Decker and Elisabeth Moss’s Shirley Jackson biopic—or really if you’ve seen any film about an author released since Jane Campion’s bar-setting Janet Frame biopic An Angel at My Table in 1990—you’re used to the disappointment of seeing an absolute weirdo you’ve loved your whole life envisioned as a runway model with some facial quirks who didn’t like to go to parties. Why it’s so hard to represent famous intellectuals for who they really were is not a question for Frances O’Connor alone, but it’s particularly dismaying seeing this treatment applied to the likes of Emily Brontë.

For the uninitiated, Brontë once cauterized her own wound with a red-hot poker. She reportedly strangled a dog to death with her bare hands [sic; no, she didn't]. She wrote poetry that verged on the pornographic [sic; did she?], she was a shut-in, likely anorexic [sic], deeply, deeply troubled [sic], but bright, brilliant, with an incendiary voice that took her years to harness. O’Connor’s Emily isn’t dissimilar from this portrait, but she’s simplified and normalized to a degree that makes her recognizable only as a cliche.

And strangely, in this explicitly feminist telling of her life, in which Emily and Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) literally shout “FREEDOM OF THOUGHT!” off a cliff in one scene, Emily’s story is packaged around her broken relationship with the dashing county parson William Weightman (Oliver Jackson Cohen).

When an author’s book is part of the national common core reading list, you can’t really give a watered-down version of their life the “at least it will get young people interested in them!” kudo. Instead, Emily gets thrown atop the Brontë media heap with the generous but passionless commendation: why not. (Ryan Coleman)

The Spectator (Australia) quotes Charlotte Brontë's opinion of Harriet Taylor Mill.

Harriet Taylor Mill (1807-58), now mainly known for her years-long affair with John Stuart Mill, whom she married upon the death of her husband, was a radical feminist whom Charlotte Bronte described, after reading her essay on female enfranchisement, as ‘a woman who longed for power and had never felt affection’ (qtd in Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, p. 272). (Janice Fiamengo)

It's not quite so clear-cut as that and Charlotte's thoughts are actually quite elaborate. Elizabeth Gaskell quoted it in her biography and Charlotte was writing under the impression that it was written by John Stuart Mill rather than Harriet Taylor Mill (Victorian times...).

I think the writer forgets there is such a thing as self-sacrificing love and disinterested devotion. When I first read the paper, I thought it was the work of a powerful-minded, clear-headed woman, who had a hard, jealous heart, muscles of iron, and nerves of bend leather; of a woman who longed for power, and had never felt affection. To many women affection is sweet, and power conquered indifferent - though we all like influence won. I believe J. S. Mill would make a hard, dry, dismal world of it; and yet he speaks admirable sense through a great portion of his article - especially when he says, that if there be a natural unfitness in women for men's employment, there is no need to make laws on the subject; leave all careers open; let them try; those who ought to succeed will succeed, or, at least, will have a fair chance - the incapable will fall back into their right place. He likewise disposes of the 'maternity' question very neatly. In short, J. S. Mill's head is, I dare say, very good, but I feel disposed to scorn his heart. (Charlotte Brontë to Elizabeth Gaskell, September 20th, 1851)

Book Riot discusses how the atrocious overturning of Roe vs Wade may influence book trends. The article starts by looking back:

Women have of course written books throughout history, and the best ones reflected the difficult realities of the time. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë focused on a woman making her way through the world with limited options. (Julia Rittenberg)

About Manchester speaks about finding solace in literary things in these dark times.

To the boy who will settle to his studies, literature is a fire escape in the sky. And with heritage engulfing the city in recent times there’s now a notion of Mancunian literature – a body of fiction and poetry set in our beloved home place. Come to think of it, not a week passes by without The Mill unearthing some lost genius poet, the City of Literature tweeting its lovely selfies, the Gaskell House trying to keep up with the Brontës, and the ghost of Anthony Burgess reminding us in some small way of the reputational dividend in being a dead writer with a few quid in the bank. (Danny Moran)

VilaWeb (in Catalan) features the Catalan translation of Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing.

Les germanes Brontë, que van començar publicant amb pseudònims, en realitat no van escriure els seus llibres, sinó que van ser obra del germà. La novel·la Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë i publicada amb el pseudònim de Currer Bell, seria una obra mestra si l’hagués escrit un home, però en mans d’una dona era escandalosa i desagradable. [...]

El 1850, amb la segona edició, se’n va revelar l’autoria: Ellis Bell era Emily Brontë. I llavors Cims borrascosos va passar a ser una història d’amor l’estranyesa de la qual era un “reflex de la vida estrafeta que voldria dur l’autora, més aviat aïllada i austera”. I Brontë era “un ocellet que batia les ales contra els barrots de la seva gàbia”. I novament, el menyspreu de crítics que consideraven que ho havia escrit de manera involuntària, que l’obra se li havia escapat de les mans. Perquè, és clar, una dona no pot escriure sobre la maldat com un barquer rude de Yorkshire, diu Russ. (Bel Zaballa) (Translation)

100% Vosges (France) asks writer Amélie Nothomb about her sister Juliette, who's also a writer.

Votre sœur Juliette écrit également. Elle vient de sortir un livre sur sa passion pour le cheval, et a déjà signé plusieurs ouvrages, dont des livres pour enfants. Ce don commun pour l’écriture, constitue-t-il une façon de communier ensemble ?

C’est une célébration. Bon, j’adorerais que nous soyons les sœurs Brontë, mais c’est quand même magnifique de voir un si beau lien. Et puis, je dois aussi le dire, c’est grâce à ma sœur que j’écris. Quand nous étions petites, c’est elle qui écrivait, moi pas. Elle était ma grande sœur, aussi tout ce qu’elle faisait était sensationnel. Et c’est grâce au fait qu’elle écrivait que j’ai su qu’écrire c’était bien ! (Jordane Rommevaux) (Translation)

Le devoir (Canada) reviews the book Quand viendra l’aube by Dominique Fortier.

 De son écriture raffinée, l’autrice signe avec Quand viendra l’aube une réflexion émouvante et nuancée sur le deuil, la création et le pouvoir de la nature sur celle-ci. Si elle fait appel aux voix d’Emily Dickinson, de William Faulkner et de Pierre Ronsard, on ne peut s’empêcher de penser aux oeuvres de Virginia Woolf et d’Emily Brontë tant l’écho des vagues, le mugissement du vent et les nuits d’orage à répétition s’y font tour à tour obsédants et enveloppants. (Manon Dumais) (Translation)

De Morgen (Belgium) interviews Tania Van de Vondel from the bookshop Paard van Troje in Ghent.

Welk succes had u niet zien aankomen?

“Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris van Anjet Daanje, ­momenteel helemaal bovenaan in onze top tien. Het is een historische roman die een ode brengt aan het werk van Emily Brontë en meer dan anderhalve eeuw geschiedenis overspant. Niemand had dat zien aankomen. Wij hadden het boek niet eens ingekocht. Het begon met een bestelling, en daarna nog een en nog een, en zo ging de bal aan het rollen. Nu staat Daanje zelfs op de longlist van de Boekenbon Literatuurprijs.” (Marnix Verplancke) (Translation)

News Letter features Florence + The Machine:

Florence Welch, 36, is the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the indie rock group whose superb debut studio album, Lungs (2009), which proffered such seminal tracks as Dog Days, Howl, Kiss with a Fist and Cosmic Love, full of slowly-building-to-rapt-cresecendo riffs and lapidary poetic lyrics, introduced the singer as a whirling dervish of indie-pop, almost a newbie Patti Smith-style performer of soulful, sensitive-yet-fierce energy who pens lyrics with a clear literary sensibility, as in Welch, whose mother is a professor of literature, clearly knows her Brontë from her Bryon [sic]. (Joanne Savage)

Esquire (Spain) has selected several quotes on disappointment and one of them is from chapter XXXVI of Villette:

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.