Something Profound

A lukewarm review of Emily in Tellyvisions:

Emily isn’t critically wounded by its unbalanced look at the sisters (after all, the film is named after only one of them). Still, it’s a curious choice considering the fuzziness of the film’s historical accuracy. O’Connor’s film frames the writing of Wuthering Heights as influenced by a secret relationship between Emily and an assistant pastor to her father, William Weightman, who Oliver Jackson-Cohen imbues with a sturdy but entrancing presence (even if we know by this point that, for women, his characters are always bad news). (...)

There are sequences where everything comes together, a thwarted picnic on the moors, or a deeply affecting parlor game-turned-seance when Emily’s life is imbued with the deep sensory texture O’Connor wants to convey. Jacked-up, heightened sounds surround Emily with an overwhelming audible danger, which transforms into something profound when we hear those tiny but mighty scratches of her pen. But despite its best efforts to unravel and reconstruct the scant details we know about the elusive Brontë, Emily can’t avoid feeling slight itself. (Rory Doherty)

The Telegraph & Argus has a list of 'haunted' pubs in Bradford's district including

The Black Bull in Haworth is said to be haunted by Branwell Brontë. (Emma Clayton)

ScreenRant lists novels that focus on 'established' villains. But... who is the villain in Wide Sargasso Sea, Bertha or Rochester?

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

There have been many great adaptations of the work of Jane Eyre. Of course, one of the most notable characters in the book is the tragic Bertha, who has been imprisoned by Rochester in the attic. In this novel, she becomes Antoinette Cosway, and the novel explores her life before she marries Rochester and is taken away to England.

It’s a rich and textured telling and, like so many villain stories, helps the reader to think differently about the way that fiction works and how it makes certain people into monsters. And, as is so often the case, nothing is quite as simple as it might appear to be at first glance. (Thomas West)

The List has some issues with Wuthering Heights's most popular quote:

Long before the Duke of Hastings said "I burn for you" on Netflix's "Bridgerton," Emily Brontë's Catherine Earnshaw shared a confession perhaps even more heart wrenching. In a particularly memorable scene, Catherine tells her housekeeper, Nelly Dean, that she has feelings for Heathcliff. 

"He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am," Catherine says in "Wuthering Heights." "Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same." This line is by far the most popular from the novel, with some Brontë fans even going so far as to get the latter half ("Whatever our souls are made of...") tattooed on their bodies, per BuzzFeed.

In 2017, Medium noted the many problems associated with this particular quote, arguing that its toxic qualities surpass its romanic ones. Catherine and Heathcliff, according to the site, aren't soulmates. Rather, their connection is one based in obsession, codependence, and violence. Bustle, too, argues that "Wuthering Heights" is far from a love story, suggesting that the many romanticized film adaptations, including one starring the likes of Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, have contributed to the misconception.

So, next time you're thinking about getting a "Wuthering Heights" tattoo, consider the possible implications. (Sara Caskey)

Jane Caro's mother is the subject of this article in The Age:

I remember she wrote a superb essay about Jane Eyre in which she argued that Mr Rochester’s mad wife was a manifestation of repressed female sexuality and the fear Victorians had of the chaos that would ensue if it was ever released. You can see why I gave up competing with her. 

Mugglenet reviews Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (wink, wink):

Bram is truly a gothic creation – at once knowing and innocent – who both sets fire to a bed at night (in a Jane Eyre vignette) and nurses dark enthusiasms (“trying to get Edie dug up feels very Bram” [IBH 860]). (Dr Beatrice Groves)

The Independent (Ireland) interviews the storyteller Felicity Hayes-McCoy:

The books by your bedside?
Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, Juliet Barker’s The Brontës and Margery Allingham’s Police at the Funeral. Which makes me realise that when I’m writing a novel I always seem to gravitate towards biography, non-fiction and classic detective stories I practically know by heart.

Insider reviews Taylor Swift's Midnights (3am edition):

I'm sure many will listen to "Dear Reader" and connect it straight to "Jane Eyre" or, possibly due to recency bias, Netflix's "Bridgerton." It also reminds me a lot of Lorde's "The Path," another Antonoff-produced track. (Courteney Larocca)

We have now a mini Kate Bush section: Rey Roldan in PopWrapped thinks that Matthew Sweet's cover of Wuthering Heights is a 'stunning take on the alternative classic'. A song that The Herald thinks that 

was (still is) sui generis. (Teddy Jamieson)

and, also in The Herald,

it’s a composition that puts whatever you were doing as a teenager to shame. (Adam Miller)

Télérama (France) recommends an audio version of Wuthering Heights this Halloween:

“Les Hauts de Hurlevent”, dans “Le Feuilleton”, sur France Culture
« C’est un vrai paradis de misanthrope » que met en relief Juliette Heymann dans son adaptation du roman Les Hauts de Hurlevent (Wuthering Heights). L’unique ouvrage d’Emily Brontë est publié sous le pseudonyme d’Ellis Bell en 1847 – un an avant sa mort, survenue à l’âge de 30 ans. Le titre reprend un terme local de la région du Yorkshire, en Angleterre, décrivant les vents du nord qui soufflent en rafales sur la lande. Pareils à la passion entêtante et dévastatrice qui emporte les protagonistes de cette adaptation en feuilleton pour France Culture. Cette série en dix épisodes retranscrit avec force des sentiments tourmentés par l’ego jusqu’à la perte de la raison. L’histoire d’un amour éperdu traversé par la vengeance et bientôt la malédiction. Les spectres des fougueux amants, incarnés avec justesse ici par Guillaume Durieux et Leslie Menu, hanteront longtemps les auditeurs. (Laurence Le Saux, Carole Lefrançois, Pierre Langlais, Irène Verlaque) (Translation)

La Lista (México) interviews the writer Margo Lantz:

“Era mal visto que una mujer escribiera. Mujer que sabe latín, como dijera Rosario Castellanos. Las mujeres tuvimos el voto hasta el siglo 20 y en México en la década de los 50, antes no teníamos la ciudadanía, éramos como las atenienses, como esclavas, porque los esclavos y las mujeres no tenían ciudadanía, durante muchísimo tiempo no tuvimos legitimidad para hacer cierto tipo de cosas, porque ni siquiera éramos ciudadanas.
“Tampoco se podía entrar a la escritura, aunque había mujeres maravillosas como las hermanas Brontë o Jane Austen, obviamente Virginia Woolf, que trabajó muchísimo por definir la escritura femenina”, cuenta Glantz. (José Arrieta) (Translation)

The language of flowers in the Victorian age in Il Post (Italy):

I fiori vennero usati come simbolo per comunicare sentimenti e dare un significato più profondo a certe situazioni anche nell’arte e nella letteratura, per esempio nelle opere dei pittori preraffaelliti o in quelle letterarie di Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson e Charlotte Brontë, il cui pubblico molto probabilmente sarebbe stato in grado di interpretarne il significato. (Translation)

Mediapart (France) reviews the recent French edition of Shirley and Villette:

Le troisième et dernier volume des « Œuvres » de la famille Brontë sort deux romans, «Shirley » et « Villette », de l’ombre dans laquelle « Jane Eyre » les a longtemps relégués. Et jette un éclairage mi-figue, mi-raisin sur la condition ouvrière et sur la condition féminine. Avec Shirley (1849), Charlotte Brontë fait basculer l’usage. Elle y féminise un prénom masculin : après elle, il ne sera quasiment plus attribué qu’à des femmes. Petite révolution – petit « trouble » – dans le genre, d’une portée non négligeable, déclenchée mine de rien par Charlotte Brontë, laquelle avait de la suite dans les idées, et de qui tenir : de Jane Eyre, en l’occurrence, à la farouche indépendance. Suivant la parution du roman, rares sont les hommes qu’on prénommera de la sorte. (Marc Porée) (Translation)

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) recommends Romanens segertåg by Ingrid Elam:

Jag älskar att läsa böcker, säger man och menar romaner. Hur blev det så? Hur blev ”bok” och ”roman” snudd på språkligt utbytbara. Om detta skriver litteraturkritikern och DN-medarbetaren Ingrid Elam i ”Romanens segertåg”. Svaren är förstås flera, det handlar om framväxten av ett borgerligt, individualistiskt samhälle, kvinnors läslust, tekniska landvinningar och romantikens känslokult. Bland annat. Spränglärt rör sig Elam mellan Goethes ”Wilhelm Meister”, Brontës ”Jane Eyre” och Nabokovs ”Lolita”. Genast och intensivt vill man återvända till dem alla. Det är kondenserad likväl schvungfull sakprosa, oupphörligt berikande. (Helena Blindlad) (Translation)

Nieves B. Jiménez is happy in El Debate (Spain) because

Créanme, a veces pasan cosas inesperadas y alguien te devuelve la esperanza. Desde recibir libros preciosos como Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, «impactante apasionado y terrible», según William Somerset Maugham y «árida y nudosa como la raíz del brezo», como señalaba Charlotte Brontë. (Translation)

Also in El Debate, an interview with the writer Aixa De La Cruz:

María Serrano: ¿La novela es gótica porque incorpora un elemento paranormal?
A.D.L.C.: Lo gótico tiene más que ver con la urdimbre narrativa del texto. Para empezar, yo estaba viviendo en una casa que era como lo que cualquiera describiría como una mansión gótica, una casa muy grande en el pueblo que antaño había sido señorial pero que estaba en decadencia, en mitad del páramo. Tenía todo el imaginario de lo gótico. Entonces fui consciente de esto y empecé a pensar en la novela gótica, releí a Sherley Jackson y clásicos de cabecera como Cumbres Borrascosas y Jane Eyre, y me di cuenta de que el género gótico era muy importante no sólo para mí, que vengo de una tradición y de estudiar Filología Inglesa, sino que estaba muy vinculado también a la genealogía de la escritura femenina, porque en los siglos XVIII y XIX, cuando las mujeres escribían, eran bichos raros. (Translation)

Telecinco's Outdoor (Spain) mentions that Alejandra Rubio is a Brontëite apparently:

Después de subir una foto de su biblioteca personal, la nieta de María Teresa Campos ha vuelto a dejar claro que pasa mucho tiempo devorando historias de todo tipo. Especialmente, novelas juveniles y también clásicos como 'Cumbres Borrascosas', su libro favorito. (Translation)

Il Giornale (Italy) reviews Oscuri Talenti by J.M. Miro:

L'atmosfera che riempie il romanzo sembra rimandere da una parte la povertà che trasudava in Oliver Twist di Charles Dickens, dall'altra l'eco di quelle che hanno riempito le pagine di romanzi come Jane Eyre e Cime Tempestose, a cui si aggiunge un senso di minaccia costante che tiene avvinto il lettore, che gli fa annidare lo stomaco. (Erika Pomella) (Translation)

TAFF (Austria) recommends autumn readings like Wuthering Heights. A quote by Charlotte Brontë opens an article in Harness Racing Update. The Vicksburg Post recommends Lauren Blackwood's Within These Wicked Walls. Utopia State of Mind reviews the upcoming Reader, I Murdered Him by Betsy Cornwell