After being closed as a museum, Mary Taylor's Red House may now at least get a blue plaque according to
The Telegraph and Argus.
Built in the 1660s, Red House was run as a museum from 1970 due to its association with the Taylor family and Charlotte Brontë.
It was closed down in 2016 due to budget cuts and is currently empty.
The building’s owner Kirklees Council lodged plans a year ago to convert the house into holiday accommodation and a venue for small wedding ceremonies, although the application remains undecided.
Now the Spen Valley Civic Society has applied for listed building consent to honour Mary Taylor, a radical feminist and friend of Charlotte Brontë.
In its application, the Civic Society details how Mary was born at Red House in 1817 into a family of prosperous textile merchants. She was educated at Roe Head School in Mirfield where she met Charlotte Brontë.
Erica Amende, from the Civic Society said they supported The Red House as an important site of historical textile production, home of the Taylor family and connection to Charlotte Brontë-
She said: “We feel Mary’s achievements have not been recognised. We’ve wanted to put up a plaque to Mary Taylor for some time and are pleased that Kirklees Council is supporting us. The plaque will be manufactured locally and we hope to be unveiling it before summer 2023.”
She added: “As a pioneering feminist and champion of women’s rights, Mary challenged the restrictions on middle-class women’s lives. She wrote a novel and many articles for periodicals; she worked in Europe as a teacher; travelled widely; and emigrated to New Zealand and ran a business there. Mary’s lifelong friendship with Charlotte Brontë was crucial to Charlotte’s success.”
The heritage statement adds: “Mary deserves to be honoured because aside from her friendship with Charlotte Brontë, she was a trailblazer and radical feminist. She refused to accept the constraints of 19th-century middle-class females."
She later returned to her hometown, where she lived at Gomersal Lodge on Spen Lane until her death in 1893. Her grave is in St Mary’s churchyard in Gomersal.
The Civic Society add that while Mary Taylor is significant nationally, she is not celebrated locally, and a blue plaque on the gable wall facing the main road will “inform all passers-by about Kirklees’ very own feminist pioneer.”
The plaque itself would be fixed into mortar, with no drilling into any brickwork required. (Jo Winrow)
Yorkshire Live features the 'Yorkshire walk popular with Japanese women makes 'off the beaten track' hotlist', which is approaching Top Withens not from Haworth but from Stanbury.
A Yorkshire walk, popular with female Japanese tourists, has made a hotlist of 'off the beaten track' winter walks.
With just 559 Instagram hashtags – compared to nearly half a million for the Snowden trail in Wales – the Brontë Walk sits at number 10 on the list by Wynsors footwear. Top of the hotlist – or 'coldlist' considering the season and lack of hashtags – was Dovestone Reservoir, not far from Holmfirth, with a paltry 12 tags.
The Brontë walk from Stanbury village, near Howarth [sic], to Top Withens via the Brontë Waterfall isn't massively popular in winter. Perhaps, that's no surprise given how cold and exposed it is but the Japanese love it, so much so there are signs in Japanese as well as English along the walk.
Depending on how busy it is you can park on Back Lane on the edge of Stanbury and the bilingual signs will point to where you need to go. Cross a couple of fields and descend the very steep hill on the left to the Brontë Waterfall.
As you walk down you'll see South Dean Beck. Cross the footbridge across the beck known as the Brontë Bridge and turn left. A short distance to the right you'll see a small stream called Lumb Beck descending through a series of cascades. That's where the Brontë sisters would chill apparently, hence it's called the Brontë Waterfall.
After you've seen the waterfall, retrace your steps back up the steep hill and turn left. Top Withens, a remote farmhouse and possible inspiration for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, should be signposted.
Once you've passed roughly parallel to South Dean Beck through a couple of fields Top Withens should appear on the horizon. It's a mile uphill through paths of generally good quality to the ruin of the famous farmhouse.
Although it may complement the gloomy atmosphere of the fictional Wuthering Heights farmhouse, ascending in the wind and rain should not be attempted unless you are head-to-tea in warm waterproof gear. Once you're up there you'll wonder how anyone could have lived at Top Withens although people did for hundreds of years.
Since it was first translated into Japanese in 1932, Wuthering Heights has held a special place among Japanese women. They have, according to The Japan Times, been fascinated with the book's antihero Catherine Earnshaw and her passion for Healthcliff [sic].
A Japanese film adaptation of the book, written between 1845 and 1846 under Brontë's male pseudonym Ellis Bell, was made in 1988. There is even a Brontë Society of Japan. (Dave Himelfield)
The signs along the route from Haworth are also in Japanese, though.
The picture-perfect village of Grassington with its cobbled market square, artisan shops and eateries was made famous by the film Wuthering Heights in 1992 and has become a film set once again for Dolittle and All Creatures Great and Small. Take your time wandering the streets to see if you can recognise the shops and bakeries that made up the fictional town of Darrowby. (Rachel Rutherford)
48 Hills reviews Emma Rice's
Wuthering Heights describing it as 'slapstick' (???)
I expected a new version to hew closer to the source material. What I didn’t expect was for the infamously dour story to be played for comedy and tragedy at the same time. That’s not just my perception, that’s what they actually do: the play goes for outright slapstick, then immediately goes for heart-rending tragedy—often within the same scene. It’s such a jarring case of tonal whiplash that the audience should be issued neck braces.
The musical is done in a stripped-down, early-20th-century theatre troupe style you may or may not have seen lately. It’s meant to specifically draw attention to the artifice of theatre-making and (supposedly) allows the audience to better immerse themselves with the goings-on of the stage. [...]
Then, the slapstick starts. After the moors themselves come alive to present themselves as our Greek chorus (led by Jordan Laviniere), Mr. Lockwood (Sam Archer) arrives at Wuthering Heights on a stormy night to ask neighbor Heathcliff (Liam Tamne) for shelter from the storm. That may sound simple, so you should know that Rice and her collaborators stage it like a Mr. Bean sequence that just happens to have dialogue. Yet, Heathcliff is in no laughing mood, as the apparent ghost of his long-dead love Cathy (Leah Brotherhead) is summoning him from out of the storm itself.
This goes on for three hours. [...]
Granted, the music itself is very appealing. Like the accompanying action, it radically shifts from one tone to another as if it didn’t know better. However, it’s a lot easier to get away with that with music. The songs range from Loreena McKennitt-style haunting neo-Celtic tunes to full-on hard rock. No matter what stumbles the show makes by having the cast chew as much scenery as possible, the music remains a delight throughout.
What’s more, nearly every technical aspect is a joy to behold. Gags like an animal skull on a scythe to represent a dog don’t work, but the marionettes of young Heathcliff and Cathy certainly do. As so the revolving doors and walls barely measuring a few feet across. And one should at least give credit to the cast for committing to the madness, even though playing everything turned up to “11” gets really tiring really quick. (Charles Lewis III)
Her Campus knows what having Heathcliff as your favourite character says about you.
HEATHCLIFF’S HARSH LOVING
Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff is one of the most talked about characters when it comes to toxic or forbidden love in books. He is charming, handsome, and absolutely crazy for the female protagonist, Catherine. Their chaotic extreme-hate-turns-into-love relationship is very similar to that of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, except Heathcliff’s lifestyle, is a lot harsher than Mr. Darcy’s, which makes his love style a lot harsher, too.
If you have a passion for Heathcliff that tends to lead you to defend his character and actions when others are trash-talking him, you must be someone who likes to keep to yourself, not revealing too much about who you are or what you think. Some may find you cold, but you are happy to take the time to trust someone. You don’t expect anything from anyone, but that doesn’t mean you’re lonely and alone. You fall in love too easily, and you let it consume you. (Angi Kallas)
That left the third son, Prince Henry, duke of Gloucester, our late Queen’s uncle and my favorite royal duke, a simple soldier with the plain humor and understanding of his Hanoverian forebears. His favorite evening entertainment was to make the company, regardless of age or sex, sing the song “My Grandfather’s Clock,” omitting the letter l, and when once asked whether he had ever read Wuthering Heights, the duke replied, “Yes indeed, jolly funny.” (Geoffrey Wheatcroft)
Variety describes Taylor Swift as 'the woman who made wuthering heights her lyrical brand'. According to
Plan B (Mexico), Emily Brontë's poem 'Come, Walk With Me' is one of the 10 best love poems.
Letralia (Spain) features Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea.
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