'A nose like a shoehorn'

Irish Examiner reviews Martina Devlin's novel about Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte.

The story opens in 1854, when a delirious Nicholls arrives in Ireland with his new (and by now exceedingly famous) bride. Charlotte Brontë’s second novel Jane Eyre has, as Mary Bell puts it, “caused a sensation”, and Arthur, a decent but prickly man, will have to endure being constantly occluded by his charismatic wife during their progress around the island.

Mary Bell, watching from the sidelines and still unmarried, observes the great writer with a mixture of wonder and envy, and is not initially charmed.

“Her face was plain,” she says bluntly, “an overhanging forehead, a nose like a shoehorn.” 

Poor old Charlotte will be dead within the year, and Martina Devlin’s book shoots forward to 1913, and the visit to Mary’s house of English journalists and collectors keen to divest her of the many Brontë heirlooms that have fallen into her possession.

We then drift back and forth between Mary’s serviceable but uninspiring marriage to Arthur, and her brief time with Charlotte, whom she came to dearly love.

Mary’s servant, Hope Porter, is another important character: bustling and decent, reminiscent of Nelly Dean in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, but a terrible

secret has been kept from Hope that is bound, sooner or later, to emerge. 

Mary’s brother Richard is a cad of the first order, though not a particularly colourful one. 

Mary herself is a far more believable character, by turns petty and generous, with views about ordinary Irish people that neatly reflect the Anglo-Irish prejudices of her time.

The Famine lingers over the book’s early sections like a bad smell, and moves centre stage during an eventful (and imagined) journey north to Co Down so Charlotte can meet her extended family. 

Among them Alice Brunty, a certified loon clearly inspired by mad Mrs Rochester and prone to prostrating herself on a mass grave containing unnamed victims of Black 47.

“You’re the image of Branwell,” Charlotte tells one of the Bruntys, and her anguish at the loss of her three siblings is never far from the surface. 

Charlotte herself will die during a doomed pregnancy in 1855, adding a further gothic twist to an already tragic life. 

And thereafter, having been bullied into marrying Arthur by her mother, Mary Bell will have to watch while her husband kneels in worship before a portrait of Charlotte that becomes a kind of shrine.

After a flighty start, Martina Devlin’s prose settles into a sturdy rhythm: we hear from Charlotte, but not too much, and instead are given frumpy reports from the woman doomed to live in her shadow. 

Only in those scenes among the Bruntys do we get echoes of the high Brontë style, but the book has much to say about the literary industry that grew around three remarkable sisters who did not live to witness the full extent of their success. (Paul Whitington)

The Irish Times reviews Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton.

Carol Atherton has been an English-literature teacher for 30 years. Here she considers how novels, plays and poems she has taught have shaped our beliefs, values and interactions as a society, because they make us think about “issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, justice, power and social responsibility”. Her discussions of some 16 literary works are insightful, thought-provoking and wide-ranging. For example, she expands on how Browning’s My Last Duchess concerns power, gender and control to include the ghastly Andrew Tate, and asserts how the plea for social responsibility in An Inspector Calls (1945) still remains unanswered. It would be hard to better her reading of Jane Eyre and its Wide Sargasso Sea companion book. Autobiographical details enrich this paean to dedicated teaching. (Brian Maye)

Wealth of Geeks lists 'The Best Film Adaptations of 19th-Century Novels' including

5. Jane Eyre (2011)

Cary Fukunaga’s Gothic-infused adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre must have been intimidating to make. With dozens of previous adaptations already out there across film, television, and other media, finding a new angle could not have been easy.

And yet, the 2011 version of the classic novel feels fresh and faithful to the source material. The chemistry between Jane (Mia Wasikowska) and Rochester (Michael Fassbender) animates the movie. Check it out next time it pops up on streaming. (Tim Rinaldi)

Far Out Magazine looks back on the songs Sting listed as his 10 favourite songs of all time on BBC Radio Two’s show Tracks Of My Years in 2021.

As he revealed on Tracks Of My Years, one song in particular, ‘Baker Street‘ by Gerry Rafferty, reminds him of this character-building time.

“This was a time I was living in a bedsit in Bayswater,” he recalled. “I used to have the radio on a lot, and there were two hits that year, one, ‘Wuthering Heights’, and the other one was Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’. That saxophone solo in the beginning completely destroyed me. It made me wish that I was in the charts too because these were number one records”. (Katy J Pearson)