The New Yorker discusses 'The Boom of the Sex-Recession Movie'-
In February, I went to see Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” at my local movie theatre, in Brooklyn. Next to me sat a man and a woman in their twenties. Early in the film, as Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) and Cathy (Margot Robbie) breathlessly spy on a couple of servants engaging in a bout of horse-and-rider-themed roleplay, the man beside me began to squirm. This display of light bondage proved merely an amuse-bouche to the erotic banquet that Fennell had prepared. There are no sex scenes in Emily’s Brontë’s novel—the star-crossed protagonists never so much as kiss—but in Fennell’s adaptation they came and came and came: Heathcliff and Cathy snogging in a little carriage; Heathcliff and Cathy going at it on a dining table; Cathy furiously masturbating on the moors as Heathcliff sneaks up on her to watch. My neighbor reacted to such displays with a series of what Brontë would have called “ejaculations,” gasping and groaning in horrified astonishment. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “He’s a sex addict!” he reported to his date, who had slipped away to the bathroom just as Heathcliff leashed up another poor girl and turned her into his willing slave. When the credits rolled, he sat, stunned, head in hands, tears rolling down his face. “That was so fucking dope,” he said, between sobs. (Alexandra Schwartz)
Spanish newspaper
Público recently published an imaginary interview with Jane Eyre in which 'she' discussed beauty standards.
Opino que la apariencia no debería confundirse con la verdad. Que el aparato externo no es la esencia genuina de las cosas y que los muros blanqueados jamás deberían responder de la condición del sepulcro. Pero esta cuestión no solo ha importado en este siglo. Las mujeres que buscan alcanzar un ideal de belleza están ahí desde tiempos inmemoriales, porque mientras libran esa batalla no tienen tiempo ni fuerzas para luchar por la dignidad del alma, la independencia de la mente y la firmeza del carácter. No me malinterprete: hay mujeres bellísimas que cumplen las otras tres condiciones, pero el equilibrio es difícil porque el tiempo y las fuerzas son finitas. Nosotras debemos elegir qué guerras queremos ganar, y quizás la batalla final sea aceptar que podemos ser feas sin que nada pase.
Pero todo el mundo quiere mirarse en el espejo y verse bien.
El problema es en qué medida "verse bien" depende solamente del espíritu de cada cual. Mi marido sugirió vestirme de raso y encaje, y adornar con rosas mi cabello, igual que hacían todas las esposas de nuestra misma posición, y yo le respondí: si haces eso entonces yo no me reconocería y habría dejado de ser Jane Eyre, tu Janet. Me convertiría en una mona enfundada en una chaqueta de arlequín o en un grajo revestido de plumas de pavo real. Y añadí: yo no digo que sea usted guapo, señor, aunque le ame; precisamente porque le amo tiernamente no lo hago, así que no me adule usted a mí. La belleza es relativa, pero el ideal de belleza de una sociedad no lo es.
(Antía Yáñez Rodríguez) (Translation)
A columnist from
OkDiario (Spain) picks up that last sentence to discuss beauty standards as well together with an AI-generated image of a copy of Jane Eyre (surely there's some metaphor in that?)
the latter half of the 19th century and into the early 20th century [when] there took place in some towns and villages in the Pennines of West Yorkshire what was sometimes referred to as “the annual casting off of the apron strings”. [...]
The Keighley Hen Pecked Club was the creation of Henry Thompson, the landlord of the Royal Oak on Damside.
He was better known as Harry Tap and later owned the White Horse Brewery at Hermit Hole and the inn across the road.
The idea of forming a club may well have been sparked by a popular book of the period – The Hen-Pecked Husband by Harriet Ann Scott – which focused on the domestic struggles within the Victorian household.
Although now largely forgotten, it was said to rival Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in popularity at the time. (Robin Longbottom)
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