Brussels Talks

An alert from the Brussels Brontë Group for tomorrow, February 11:

Saturday 11 February 2023
Université Saint-Louis, Rue du Marais 119, Brussels

Registration essential. Free for members. For non-members, there is a charge of €10 for one talk, €15 for two talks. Register with Helen MacEwan (helen.macewan@gmail.com).

10.00 Member presentation. Presentation by Dawn Robey: Interior Design in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Belgian Novels’

Homes and the objects in them are said to speak volumes about their occupants. Based on extracts from the texts of The Professor and Villette, Dawn will assess to what extent Charlotte Bronte used setting to provide insights into character.
Dawn is a keen member of the Brussels Bronte Group and the reading group. Her favourite authors (after the Brontë sisters) are Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. When she’s not reading fiction, she teaches international accounting standards to students at NEOMA Business School in France, and edits a professional accounting journal called the World Accounting Report.

11.30 (approximate start time) Talk by Roel Jacobs in French: ‘Charlotte et Bruxelles, une relation pas simple’ (‘Charlotte and Brussels: not an easy relationship’)

Charlotte Brontë isn’t always kind to Brussels in The Professor and Villette. No doubt her personal disappointments and frustrations during her time in Brussels explain the fact that she didn’t always perceive the political and economic dynamism of the Belgian capital in her period (1840s). Distinguished Brussels historian Roel Jacobs sets the record straight in this talk on Brussels in the Brontës’ time.
A lawyer by profession, Roel Jacobs’ passion has always been delving into Brussels’ past and that passion became his job. For over three decades he has given talks and written numerous books on history, above all the history of Brussels.