The Brontës were not dull

After the premiere of Emily, Vogue explores the real wardrobe of the Brontë sisters:

In the poster for Emily, Frances O’Connor’s ambitious new retelling of the Wuthering Heights author’s life, its star Emma Mackey is pictured wearing a striking blue gown. At first glance, it seems relatively sombre: the pattern not so much floral as lichen-like. Lean in closer, though, and the shapes reveal themselves as something stormier. In her 1883 biography of the middle Brontë sister, A Mary F Robinson wrote of a shopping trip that Emily took to Bradford with her older sister Charlotte and a friend. There she “chose a white stuff patterned with lilac thunder and lightning, to the scarcely concealed horror of her more sober companions. And she looked well in it; a tall, lithe creature, with a grace half-queenly, half-untamed in her sudden, supple movements”. (...)

A costume drama always presents a curious set of demands for their designer, historic accuracy balanced against the visual and narrative needs of the script. In this film, Emily is often kitted out in darker colours than her siblings, setting her apart. Unlike them, her bonnet is not trimmed with flowers. There is something that feels subtly practical about her attire, perhaps even rebellious. How true to life is this? The thunder and lightning dress has its origin story, but what about everything else? For Oscar-winning costume designer Michael O’Connor, who has previously worked on films including Ammonite, The Duchess, and Jane Eyre, it was simple. “My idea was to be authentic, and real to the time,” he tells Vogue. “You want to be working with the correct shapes and types of material… [as well as] the correspondence describing [the Brontës’] clothing.”

To achieve that accuracy, he enlisted the help of Eleanor Houghton, an author, illustrator, and historic dress consultant who specialises in 18th- and 19th-century costume, with a particular focus on Charlotte Brontë. Houghton provided extensive research on remaining items from the Brontë sisters’ wardrobes (many of which are kept at the Parsonage in Haworth where they lived), and the references made to their clothing in letters and other texts. There’s a simple reason why it’s easier to research Charlotte than the other sisters. “A lot of Charlotte’s closet survived… because she lived longer than the rest of them,” Houghton explains. However, this presents several immediate challenges. Although belongings from an earlier time remain, when Emily and Anne were still alive, many of Charlotte’s clothes were bought after she’d achieved both fame and financial success: transforming not just what she could afford, but her understanding of what was desirable. Various garments were also updated over the decades in line with changing styles, making it harder to pinpoint what they would have first looked like. “Things would be remodelled,” Houghton adds. “People would rework dresses to reflect the later fashions… you have to undo what’s gone before so you can get back to the original style.”

In general, Houghton thinks that our current view of the Brontë sisters is too dull. “We see the pillar portrait [by Branwell Brontë] and we imagine these really drab, boring clothes. But my research has proved that really wasn’t the case.” Like many women of their era, the Brontë sisters would have been conscious of what they wore – especially as the daughters of a vicar, with a reputation to maintain in the community. Living in Yorkshire, they were also on the fringes of a booming textile trade. “It was very much on the doorstep of the Industrial Revolution,” Houghton adds. “Prints and fabrics were a common part of everyday life. They were being literally created there in Lancashire, in West Riding. Even in Haworth itself, there were weaving workshops.” (Read more) (Rosalind Jana)

The film has been nominated in several  BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) categories: 

Best Lead Performance :  Emma MacKey for Emily

Best Supporting Performance:  Fionn Whitehead for Emily

Best Ensemble Performance: Emily. Ensemble including Amelia Gething, Emma Mackey, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Fionn Whitehead, Alexandra Dowling, Gemma Jones, Adrian Dunbar.

The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) sponsored by BBC Film: Frances O'Connor for Emily

Winners will be announced at the BIFA award ceremony on Sunday, December 4. 

The Herald reviews Made in the Eighties, The Decade That Shaped Our World:

Indeed, the geopolitical backdrop was so scary that Holly Johnson wrote Two Tribes and Kate Bush stopped writing songs about Bronte heroines and came up with lyrics such as: “We’re all going to die.” (Brian Beacom)

Northern Express talks about Sarah Shoemaker among other late-blossoming writers:

After retiring, Shoemaker turned back to her love of writing, and today is the author of two published books. Mr. Rochester, a retelling of Jane Eyre, was published in 2017, and last month HarperCollins released her second book, Children of the Catastrophe.
The first book came to be because she enjoyed Jane Eyre and wondered about the other characters. Mr. Rochester approaches the classic by Charlotte Brontë through the eyes of the original title character’s employer and later husband. Shoemaker was always intrigued by the character and his mix of traits, described as proud, sardonic, harsh, and moody. She wondered how and why he came to be that way, so she set out to provide the details of his life.
“I thought somebody should write his story,” says Shoemaker. “So I decided I would. I hoped and still hope that readers find him a little more understandable.” (Ross Boissoneau)

The Sunday Times reviews The Wonder 2022:

The film summons a convincingly thick atmosphere of Brontë-esque gothic — you can practically smell the local peat bog — up until the point when the scales of the screenplay tip irretrievably towards an indictment of religious small-mindedness. (Tom Shone)

Pat Benatar in Ultimate Classic Rock & Culture:

 Covers of “You Better Run” (The Young Rascals) and “Wuthering Heights” (Kate Bush) provided new twists unheard on the originals.

Emily Brontë herself is listed among History's most famous recluses in Stars Insider. According to the website, the Haworth moors were "the family's estate". Also, none of the two pictures used are of Emily Brontë. Good work.

 One of the three legendary Brontë sisters, Emily Brontë is known for penning the English literary classic ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Sheltered from a young age, and growing up on an estate in the English countryside, Emily left very little behind for biographers to analyze.

‘Wuthering Heights’ was the only novel published by Brontë, and it seems she spent most of the rest of her days walking the grounds of her family’s estate with her beloved dog, named Keeper, and did not develop much of a social life outside of her family.

El Placer de la Lectura (Spain) lists the most beloved literary characters:

Jane Eyre - Jane es una niña huérfana que se ha educado en un orfanato miserable. Sin embargo, pese a todas las adversidades que la vida ha dispuesto en su camino, su inteligencia y su afán por aprender consiguen apartarla del mundo de su gris infancia, y logra establecerse como institutriz. Mientras trata de cuidar y educar a la joven Adèle, Jane empezará a trabar una estrecha relación con Edward Rochester, el padre de la pupila. Pero el amor de Jane se verá enturbiado al descubrir que la mujer de Rochester, víctima de la locura, vive encerrada en una habitación de la casa. Una de las grandes novelas de todos los tiempos, Jane Eyre supuso en su época todo un fenómeno, además de un escándalo y una revolución. (Translation)

Also on the same website another list of novels that people pretend to have read:

Cumbres Borrascosas. La poderosa y hosca figura de Heathcliff domina Cumbres Borrascosas, novela apasionada y tempestuosa cuya sensibilidad se adelantó a su tiempo. Los brumosos y sombríos páramos de Yorkshire son el singular escenario donde se desarrolla con fuerza arrebatadora esta historia de venganza y odio, de pasiones desatadas y amores d esesperados que van más allá de la muerte y que hacen de ella una de las obras más singulares y atractivas de todos los tiempos. (Translation)

Clarín (Argentina) talks about the works of the writer Minae Mizumura:

Conceptualista de géneros, Mizumura parte en sus libros de un esquema previo para jugar con la forma y el trasvase cultural: si en la espléndida Una novela real (2008) narra un amor prohibido con Cumbres borrascosas y el honkaku shosetsu (la ficción propiamente dicha) como modelos. (Javier Battio) (Translation)

Le Monde's podcast Le Goût de M interviews Augustin Trapenard:

L’animateur âgé de 43 ans évoque son enfance entre l’Auvergne et La Celle-Saint-Cloud, son amour de la nature, sa fascination pour la bourgeoisie, son sentiment pendant longtemps d’être un enfant différent du fait de son homosexualité, sa névrose obsessionnelle pour la lecture, sa passion pour le romantisme noir et Les Hauts de Hurlevent d’Emily Brontë, son initiation au monde de la radio auprès de Laure Adler… (Translation)

The Times of Malta announces the premiere of Emily in Malta. Gardner News quotes a Wuthering Heights-hater. A student and reader of Emily Brontë in Diario de Lanzarote (Spain). Rock my Wedding suggests a Jane Eyre reading. Finally, a new entry on the gardener's blog of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.