Heathcliff-esque hair

The Telegraph and Argus reports that Mary Taylor's Red House will have a Blue Plaque.

Plans for a blue plaque to mark the heritage of Red House in Gomersal, which has links to the Brontes, have been passed.

The Grade II* listed building was run as a museum from the 1970s due to its association with the Taylor family and Charlotte Brontë.

But the museum was closed down in 2016 due to budget cuts and is currently empty. (Jo Winrow)

It's great, of course, but we are also feeling a bit short-changed, to be honest.

According to SheKnows, 'Emily Joins the Cannon of Modern Reimaginings of Misunderstood Women Throughout History'.

And now there’s Emily, in limited release in theaters from February 17. Starring Emma Mackey of Sex Education fame, it is Australian-British actress Frances O’Connor directorial debut—but you can’t tell, with Brontë being rendered in such an impressively loving and nuanced way (her sisters, not so much).

If you’re coming to any of these modern reimaginings of misunderstood women throughout history for classical accuracy, you’re barking up the wrong tree. [...]

Emily is a mostly fictionalized fantasy about an affair Brontë has with the town’s new curate, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Historians won’t be happy but, like Dickinson, it’s an important and valid reconceptualization of a woman who is best known as a cloistered, maladjusted hysteric, now seen as vibrant, sensual, and in possession of a rich inner life. Not to mention the sex. Okay, let’s mention the sex! In the vein of Bridgerton, Emily proves that people in the olden days did indeed have sexual desires— and even acted on them! The taboo yearning between Brontë and William will get viewers hot under the collar — of which there are many to take off. 

O’Connor makes sure to balance this: we see Brontë eschew the arrival of her sister Charlotte’s (Alexandra Dowling) school friend, saying that she doesn’t “like meeting new people” and thus will stay in her room for the duration of the friend’s stay. Brontë suffers from panic attacks at boarding school and has to return home. During a particularly arresting scene early in the movie, the Brontë sisters — Emily, Charlotte and the youngest, Anne (Amelia Gething) —, brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), William, and others undertake a seance-like game one stormy night. Brontë appears to take on the spirit of their dead mother and by the end of the night has everyone screaming and crying as the windows blow open. Did she really summon her mother or was it just another example of Brontë’s wild imagination, which Charlotte tells her to dampen because she’s too old to tell stories?

It’s Charlotte’s obsession with Brontë’s inspiration for her work, specifically Wuthering Heights, her only published novel, that bookends Emily, with the film’s resident wet blanket wondering how Brontë could possibly come up with the passionate scenes depicted therein.

That’s where William comes in, played to perfection by the smoldering Jackson-Cohen, and where any pretense of historical accuracy is dropped by O’Connor. The film mostly centers on their apparent love affair, which is achingly desirous and serves to put to bed (pun intended) notions that Brontë “never sought… intercourse” (meaning social interactions) with people, “nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced [it]” as Charlotte wrote or, at least, that the two were mutually exclusive. (Scarlett Harris)

SDGLN didn't get the 'it's not a biopic' memo.

Emily is a biographical drama that is highly focused on the life of Emily and the events related to her life. Emily Brontë was an English poet [sic]. The story progressed following several events that occurred in her life. (Shone Palmer)

More films as Deadline reviews Sharper.

Right off we meet Tom (Justice Smith), a simple bookstore clerk in NYC who meets a customer (Briana Middleton) he clearly likes as he shows off a first edition copy of Jane Eyre and helps her find the perfect gift for her boss. (Pete Hammond)

IndieWire mentions that moment too:

Caron attempts just that with the film’s first chapter (“TOM”), which introduces us to a mild-mannered book store manager (Smith) whose life is upended by the arrival of a pretty PhD student (Middleton) with a taste for the very books he loves the most (“Jane Eyre,” one of many off-kilter details that don’t quite fit these characters). (Kate Erbland)

And still on screen, Evening Standard recommends other shows to watch by Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright. Two of them are Brontë-related:

Sparkhouse (2002)

Sowerby Bridge, where Wainwright grew up, is just a half an hour drive from Haworth, the home of the Brontë sisters, so it follows that Wainwright would write a drama or two about the famous authors. Sparkhouse was a BBC One modern adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights which had Sarah Smart playing the Heathcliffe figure Carol Bolton and Joe McFadden playing the Cathy figure Andrew Lawton. The Guardian at the time said, “It all seems a little too Gothic, even for 21st-century Yorkshire,” but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

To Walk Invisible (2016)

Another Brontë drama from Wainwright, To Walk Invisible is set in 1845 and focuses on the relationship between the sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It follows their lives as they go about writing their novels, all while coping with their brother Branwell’s alcoholism. The Guardian said: “This, of course, is Wainwright’s specialist subject – the extraordinary things ordinary people face and the courage it takes to surmount them. She takes for granted the sisters’ genius (the books, after all, are there to prove it to us), leaving the focus on the domestic tyranny.” (Elizabeth Gregory)

Meanwhile Woman & Home highlights some of Sarah Lancashire's best roles and one of them is her role as Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights 2009.

Amongst all the other amazing Sarah Lancashire TV shows out there is this classic adaptation of Emily Brontë that sees the Happy Valley star playing Nelly Dean to Tom Hardy’s Heathcliffe and Charlotte Riley’s Catherine. For those who might not have read the original much-loved novel, Nelly is one of the book’s narrators and is the Housekeeper of Wuthering Heights on the moors. It’s here that a young Heathcliffe is brought by Mr Earnshaw to live with him and his children Catherine and Hindley who live near the wealthy Linton family. Over the course of decades, love and rivalry threaten to destroy not only their lives, but the next generation’s too. (Emma Shacklock)

The Oxford University Press blog claims that Charlotte Brontë read A Chapter in a History of a Tyrone Family by Sheridan Le Fanu (published in 1839).

With a reputation for having influenced both Charlotte Brontë and James Joyce, Le Fanu’s writing can be seen to encompass cultures, times, and places. Charlotte Brontë read his “Chapter in a History of a Tyrone Family” (in which an estranged and incarcerated wife lives on the upper floors of a Gothic mansion) in the October 1839 issue of the Dublin University Magazine and may have had it in mind when she gave us her own version of the “spouse in the house” plot in Jane Eyre (1847). (Claire Connolly)

Stuff interviews writer Noelle McCarthy.

What book do you go back to time and time again to re-read?

Dracula by Bram Stoker, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes, The Scarecrow by Ronald Hugh Morrieson. Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, all the MR James stories. I mean, where do you stop? Everything I read until about the age of 21 seems to have a permanent hold on me which only grows stronger as the years go by.

A contributor to The Times is not thrilled to see that long hair on men is back.

Terence claims his pelt is Byronic, Heathcliff-esque, and that “the ladies love it”. They don't. (Hannah Betts)

In La Verdad (Spain), actress Ariadna Gil shows her admiration for Jane Eyre as a character while writer Pilar Adón mentions having read the Brontës from an early age in WMagazín (in Spanish). RTBF (Belgium) features the book Si j’avais des ailes. Bruxelles au temps de Charlotte Brontë by Nathalie Stalmans. One of The Yorkshire Post's 'perfect date ideas along the Yorkshire coast for couples' on Valentine's Day is a visit to Anne Brontë's grave in Scarborough.