Emily Brontë is this season’s style icon

According to Financial Times, 'Emily Brontë is this season’s style icon' and 'As your wardrobe grapples with the elements, let Wuthering Heights be your guide'.

Winter in Haworth, some time in the 1840s. Emily Brontë steps off the wild and windswept moor where she has spent the day walking, and into the warmth of the family parsonage. She kicks off her pattens, the wooden overshoes that protect her cloth slippers from the elements, but finds the weather has got to them anyway. They are soaked through, and she trails damp footprints behind her. Mud splatters the hem of her dress (I picture it as a thick, heavy silk because the Brontës’ father insisted on this material; he was terrified that, in an era of open-flamed gas lamps and stoves, dresses made of a more flammable fabric would lead to disaster). In addition, Emily wears a winter bonnet and a heavy wool cloak; sufficient to have kept her warm, perhaps, but not entirely weatherproofed. The Brontës certainly knew what it was to be overwhelmed by the elements, in spite of one’s best efforts.

I am imagining this scene not only because it’s the season to reread Wuthering Heights (nor only as a new adaptation is incoming from director Emerald Fennell), but also because, at the outset of my 14th winter in Scotland, I am faced once again with preparing my wardrobe for the months ahead. And, living at the edge of the Yorkshire moors, the Brontës understood better than many how our environment shapes our everyday life.  

Emily borrowed “wuthering” from her local West Yorkshire dialect, an adjective that would be poorly replaced by any word in standard English. The novel opens with Mr Lockwood, a faint-hearted southerner, encountering this term for the first time: the name of Mr Heathcliff’s dwelling, he learns, describes “the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather”. It is a place of “pure, bracing ventilation” that leaves what few trees and hedges survive there “craving alms of the sun”. Accordingly, coats, cloaks and furs recur through the novel, designating not just social class but also whether a character is capable of refinement or instead belongs to wild, unrepentant nature. After all, readers’ first glimpse of Heathcliff, as a mysteriously orphaned child, is as he emerges from Mr Earnshaw’s bundled-up coat. There’s something foreboding about this coat; it protects but it might also contaminate, as if it brings something from the outside in. 

The novel is testament to the richness that comes from paying deep attention to the elements. We may not all be endowed with Brontëan literary genius but we can all heighten our awareness of the environment and draw something from it. (Daisy Lafarge) 

Aussie Theatre interviews Emma Rice ahead of her Wuthering Heights going on stage in Sydney on January 31st.

In bringing Wuthering Heights to an Australian audience, is there a particular impact you hope to leave, and how do you envision it resonating with viewers here?

Emma: Sadly, I believe the story is still urgently relevant. The number of applications from unaccompanied children still in need of asylum in the UK today shocks me. And that’s just the ones we know about –  how many others have vanished into dark corners of Europe and the UK, lost to traffickers and abusers? Sadly, this issue is not isolated to the UK and Europe. This is a frightening matter that almost everyone around the world recognises. I have used this production to suggest that, perhaps, if we choose to seed compassion and kindness, we might have a fighting chance of creating a future filled with hope rather than fear. I think Australian audiences will enjoy the radical freewheeling of this production. It is fun, theatrical and emotionally complex. It challenges and charms and weaves a profound (and deeply punk rock) spell!

When adapting Brontë’s novel, which elements did you feel were crucial to maintain, and where did you feel the freedom to innovate?

Emma: I felt very free to innovate. Brontë is out of copyright and, besides that, anyone who loves the book can still read it. I wasn’t planning to damage anything, so I worked freely and joyfully. Yes, I used much of Brontë’s glittering dialogue. Why not? It was one of the reasons I wanted to make this piece. I didn’t feel Emily Brontë hovering over me. I felt I was working with her and that it was a pure and joyful collaboration! I knew from the beginning that I wanted this production to be epic – and the book’s narrator Nelly Dean is quite domestic. I cut this character, overlayed the form of a Greek tragedy and created a chorus of The Yorkshire Moors.  It is The Moors that tell the story of Wuthering Heights in my production. Singing and dancing as one, they warn us that “A Scatter of yellow stars might seem to welcome hope, but the adder slides beneath”. This production is epic, the characters superhuman. I wanted the characters to feel like gods, and they do! We renamed  Catherine, Heathcliff and Hareton the Gods of Chaos, Revenge and Hope.  If they could, they would blast the roof off the theatre! (Gabi Bergman)

Image recommends '6 titles to curl up with over the winter break' and one of them is a recent Brontë-related release:

In Charlotte (The Lilliput Press, approx €16.95), journalist and author Martina Devlin takes us into the largely unspoken private life of the brilliant Brontë behind Jane Eyre. Charlotte spent much of her life searching for love and found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. They enjoyed a brief but happy honeymoon in Ireland before tragedy struck – Charlotte passed away just nine months into their marriage. The how and why is told through the eyes of Mary Nicholls, who later married Arthur. Devlin gives Charlotte Brontë some well-earned autonomy; more than her iconic story, she lived life beyond the page. The Irish writer beautifully weaves together three lives forever changed, with a fresh look at the iconic author’s short but impactful time on Irish shores. (Jennifer McShane)

Yesterday was the proposed day for the shameful auction of Mary Taylor's Red House but so far nothing has been made public about it.