The Yorkshire Post publishes an article about the current exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
The enduring fascination with the Brontë family and the peerless novels of Charlotte, Emily and Anne has been attracting visitors to Haworth, where the sisters lived and worked, for well over a hundred years and the Parsonage Museum is this year exploring the ways in which this continuing literary legacy has shaped the village and perceptions of it, beginning with a new exhibition entitled From Haworth to Eternity.
The exhibition looks at the different elements that have led to Haworth becoming a global tourist destination and a place of pilgrimage. “Haworth was a hard-working industrial township – it was never considered to be a romantic place until the Brontë novels first appeared in 1847 under the pseudonyms of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell,” says Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. “By 1850 people were starting to work out that the novels had been written by three clergyman’s daughters living in West Yorkshire and people began finding their way to Haworth.” (...)
The exhibition features a number of selected pieces from the Museum’s extensive drama archive including props, stills photographs, manuscripts and letters, to illustrate the impact of the numerous films and television series inspired by the Brontës and their novels. Recent examples include writer-director Sally Wainwright’s 2016 BBC drama To Walk Invisible and filmmaker Frances O’Connor’s 2022 film Emily. “We definitely notice a boost in visitor numbers each time,” says Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. “Particularly after the Emily film, we had a lot of younger people coming. There was some criticism that it wasn’t historically accurate, but it was an artistic response – Frances O’Connor described the film as a reimagining of Emily’s life. I think it is great that each new generation of artists finds inspiration in the Brontës’ lives and work.”
The very first film version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a silent movie shot on location in and around Haworth, appeared in 1920. The shooting script, annotated by the director A V Bramble, is one of the items on display in the exhibition. It was acquired by the museum back in 2014. “As the film itself didn’t survive, the script is a really valuable resource,” says Dinsdale. “We also have film stills and production notes on costumes and locations.” (...)
Dinsdale hopes that visitors to the Parsonage will enjoy taking a closer look at the perceptions of the famous literary family and their home. “The exhibition really delves into why the Brontës continue to be so popular,” she says. “It’s a combination of things – the power and originality of their writing, added to that their tragic life story, all set against the backdrop of this wild countryside. It is a potent mix.” (Yvette Huddleston)
Collider ranks every film by Andrea Arnold. Her take on
Wuthering Heights does not come very well:
5. Wuthering Heights 2011
If you're not familiar with the source material (the famed sole novel by Emily Brontë), Wuthering Heights is a bit of a slog. If you are familiar with the original text, you may get something out of seeing it executed here with the sort of filmmaking style one would typically associate with 21st-century indie cinema. Like, it’s all very handheld camerawork-heavy, shaky, and unstable, which sort of clashes with the look of the film, but might arguably fit with the difficult emotions at the heart of the story. This is, after all, a bleak film about desire, heartbreak, and class, and the characters are often as unstable as the camera capturing their desperate lives.
It's a film/story about romance, but it’s not exactly romantic. Passion is explored here in a way that is distinctive. 2011’s Wuthering Heights is trying to do its own thing, and it feels like an Andrea Arnold film, but that is praise of the faint variety. This take on Wuthering Heights is sporadically interesting, but often just too slow and oddly repetitive for a film that runs for two hours while covering a great deal of time narratively. It’s a bit hard to recommend, even if it’s mildly intriguing in fits and bursts. (Jeremy Urquhart)
A husband and wife writing duo from Presteigne are celebrating the launch of their historical Victorian detective novel, described as Charlotte Brontë meets Agatha Christie.
Sarah Burton and Jem Poster, who have lived in Presteigne for more than 20 years, are launching their intriguing detective book, Eliza Mace, in paperback on February 27. The story is deeply inspired by the eerie Welsh marshes, with protagonist Eliza’s sense of isolation mirroring the remote surroundings where she grew up. It is the first in a planned series, published with Duckworth. (Jack Strange)
Shemazing describes plot twists you can't forget:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
A classic for a reason, I have to imagine Jane Eyre’s twist shocked audiences in the eighteenth century just as much as it shocks modern readers. A twist that inspired an entire spin off novel (read ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys afterwards), it will keep you guessing up to the end.
Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.
But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again? And what are the dark presences lurking around Thornfield Hall? (Lulu McKenna)
Song: “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush (1978)
During the rainy season, indulging in periodic glances out of the window to watch puddles grow ever larger on the uneven pavement outside is a classic activity enhanced by background music — and “Wuthering Heights” is particularly appropriate. As a retelling of Emily Brontë’s only novel, Kate Bush’s shivering vocals and enigmatic lyrics perfectly represent the Gothic novel’s toxic relationships, its perpetually windy, stormy English moors and my mood while studying for midterms. I also admire how the song manages to fit a remarkable amount of content into four minutes and 29 seconds, given that the novel it’s based on is usually around four hundred pages long. (Julie Huang)
Sheila Reuben writes in
The Evening Sun about her life friend Melinda Bittle:
Fact is, Melinda and I have been friends since we were 10-year-olds in Girl Scouts, reading aloud to each other from Wuthering Heights while munching on bags of chocolate covered pretzels.
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