Emphasise the Irish element

Martina Devlin's upcoming novel, Charlotte, is starting to create buzz in the Irish press. In The Irish News:

“A novel frees you to imagine, to do the ‘what ifs’ and to fill in the blanks”. These are the words of Tyrone novelist Martina Devlin, whose latest book weaves back and forth through Charlotte Brontë’s life.

Since it was published in 1847, Brontë's groundbreaking novel Jane Eyre has never been out of print and consistently shows up on top 10 lists of favourite novels, alongside her sister Emily’s novel, Wuthering Heights.

It was Devlin’s love of Jane Eyre, coupled with a desire to “emphasise the Irish element” that led her to pen Charlotte: A Novel.

“I don’t think there’s a work of fiction since Jane Eyre that’s made such indominable impressions on readers. It’s still electrifying today,” says the Omagh-born novelist and former journalist. (...)

It was after visiting the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire and later discovering Charlotte’s many connections to Ireland that Devlin delved deeper into researching her life and basing her new novel around her findings. (...)

Devlin knew that the two people closest to Charlotte – her father and her husband – were both from the north of Ireland.

Her father was Patrick Brunty, born near Rathfriland, Co Down to a family of farmers, labourers, road builders and significantly storytellers. He went on to Cambridge University – first as a servant and later as a student – and gentrified his surname to Brontë.

“Obviously it sounded fancier, but also he was a big admirer of Admiral Nelson, who had recently been made Duke of Brontë in recognition of a naval battle,” Devlin tells me.

Her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, was born in Killead, Co Down. Fostered by his uncle at a young age, he was educated in Banagher, Co Offaly and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin.

However, the writer soon discovered the Irish connection went deeper.

Martina said she was surprised to discover that Charlotte and Arthur went to Ireland for a month on their honeymoon in 1854.

“Even more interesting was the fact that one of the people who met the couple when they arrived in Dublin, and who spent time with them at his former home of Cuba Court, was Mary Bell, Arthur’s first cousin.

“Charlotte was extremely happy with Arthur, but died after only nine months of married life. Arthur stayed on in Yorkshire to look after the elderly Patrick, and returned to Ireland after his death – bringing with him most of the parsonage contents.”

Devlin found it fascinating that Mary went on to become Arthur’s second wife, having known her predecessor, and having to share her home with many of her possessions.

“Portraits, first editions of books, furniture, sketch pads, letters and personal items were all stored in the Banagher house where Arthur made his home. For decades, as the Brontë legend grew, attracting the attention of scholars and collectors, a treasure trove lay undisturbed in the Irish Midlands.”

Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls, Charlotte: A Novel is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined by passion and obsession, friendship and loss, loyalty and deception. (...)

Writing the book in reverse chronological order, in her enthralling new novel, she transports readers back and forth through Charlotte Brontë’s life, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her, those who thought they knew her, and those who longed to know her.

“The reason I inverted it was because we know how something happened, but we don’t know why. So, when you’re going back you’re trying to explain decisions.”

She “entered a rabbit hole” of research, including visits to The Hill House in Co Offaly and the Brontë Homeland Interpretative Centre in Rathfriland.  (Jenny Lee)

And the Irish Independent:

 But Devlin was interested in more than simply narrating the last part of Brontë’s eventful life — she was to die, along with the couple’s unborn child, only nine months after she had married, at the age of 38. She also wanted to explore the Brontë family’s ambivalent relationship to Ireland and what it reveals about their life, the work and wider attitudes towards the country.

In the novel’s opening pages, Charlotte is approached by “a hollow-chested girl carrying a baby almost as large as herself”, beseeching her in Irish. Arthur’s cousin Mary, a central character in the novel, translates: “She’s saying they’re hungry. They’re the only two left from a family of eight.” But while Charlotte finds the scene harrowing, Mary reflects that she must “guard against allowing my heart to harden”, given that destitution is everywhere. “The people had become walking skeletons — those who’d survived. Between death and emigration, the country had emptied out.”

Devlin points out that Black ’47, the worst year of the Great Famine, was the year that Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s most famous novel, was published, under the gender-disguising pseudonym Currer Bell. Emily Brontë/Ellis Bell’s Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë/Acton Bell’s Agnes Grey also appeared in 1847. (...)

I ask Devlin what first drew her to writing about Charlotte Brontë. “I suppose it all began with Jane Eyre,” she replies. “I loved Jane Eyre as a kid and as a young woman. I was intrigued by this unassuming governess. She’s not egotistical, and yet she can’t be pushed around. And it’s one of the most famous phrases in literature, those four words, ‘Reader, I married him’: in the last chapter, she tears down a wall between the written word and the reader, and you hear her voice. So I loved the novel. My view about Mr Rochester changed as I aged — as a young woman, I thought he was fantastic and much better than a Jane Austen hero, because he had feet of clay.

“But as I got older, I realised that he was an attempted bigamist, then he wanted to set Jane up as his mistress and that his ward, Adele, was clearly his natural daughter. And then I read Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, which I think is an extraordinary work of the imagination, which fleshes out the first Mrs Rochester and gives us an entirely different view of this so-called madwoman in the attic. But I still always loved Jane Eyre as a piece of literature.” (Alex Clark)

A must-read novels list on Wionews includes:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

This novel tells the story of an orphan governess who falls in love with Mr. Rochester. The novel explores these of social class, gender roles and personal integrity.  (Dikshant Sharma)

More classics to read in Shemazing:

Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere…

As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim Wuthering Heights house. It is a place he will never forget.

There, he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since childhood. How her choice led to  betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present. And how love can transgress authority, convention and even death…

This dark, stormy and romantic tale is told in the past and present, moving between two generations of young lovers, showing the past can haunt the present. Romantically gothic, it is a Brontë classic, and always a good one to be able to reference, as well as an absolute gem of a book. I think there was a recent film adaptation that’s on Netflix, starring Kaya Scodeliario of ‘Skins’ and ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ fame as Cathy. A tale of obsession gone wrong, it’s a fantastic read. (Lulu McKenna)

BestLife has a list with a top ten of the best classic movies of 1939, but once again someone is not checking the basic facts.

10. Wuthering Heights

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon play lovers Heathcliff and Cathy in this adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic gothic novel. Directed by William Wyler, Wuthering Heights won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. (Ferrozan Mast)

No, it didn't. The film was nominated for Best Film but only won an Oscar for best cinematography in black and white. 

The Orange County Register interviews the writer Nicholas Belardes:

Samantha Dunn:A Chicano teenager named Blas Enriquez is one of the central characters in the novel. In the book’s foreword you say, “When you can’t see yourself in the future, then someone/something has erased something about you. This is why we need more brown characters and sci-fi, fantasy, and horror… .” Can you talk about how important representation is to you as a writer, and as a person of color?

N.B.: I’m Chicano, but also dual ethnic: Mexican American father, White mother. Growing up, I read everything from “Huckleberry Finn” to “Dune,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” to “Jane Eyre.” Do brown kids see themselves in those stories? I didn’t. I had my own issues being dual ethnic.

We know the affinity between the writer Mariana Enríquez and the Brontës, therefore is only fitting that this article about her work in La Jornada (México) begins with a Brontë reference:

Pocas escritoras y escritores consideran la narrativa de terror una propuesta literaria. Pese a la consagración de Emily Brontë con Cumbres borrascosas, Mary Shelley con Frankenstein o los reconocidos Edgar Allan Poe y HP Lovecraft, se sigue valorando como género menor. (Javier Aranda Lucas) (Translation)

Isliada (Spain) recommends the Spanish translation of Emily Brontë's Complete Poems publishedsome years ago by Alba Editorial. Business Today (Malaysia) quotes Jane Eyre in an article about "the true value of our children". Cinemagavia (Spain) reviews the film Emily 2022. Jane Eyre's Library shows an Armenian edition of Jane Eyre.