Enter Thornfield Hall to uncover the mysteries in store

Apt613 reviews Ottawa Little Theatre’s Jane Eyre.

A stellar cast lets the audience fully absorb the story, and the roles of Young Jane (Meara Gordon), Jane (Lauren Reisig), and Mr. Rochester (Josh Sparks) were especially key in this production. In their period costumes and with their accents, we’re brought into their world, their time, their culture, and their struggles.

The set and staging were beautifully done, while the music and sound design allowed for seamless transitions, beautiful montage moments marking the passing of time, and added texture to the storytelling. There are a few large tragedies that arise in the story that are represented in strong and creative ways to ensure audiences feel the impacts of these moments. [...]

Even if you’re familiar with the story, you’ll appreciate this adaptation and director Lindsay Laviolette’s shepherding of this production.

While times have changed in many respects, the themes of the story are still relevant and resonant today. Grab your tickets and enter Thornfield Hall to uncover the mysteries in store. (Samara Caplan and Laura Gauthier)

More Jane Eyre on stage as Northern Arts Review shares the first images of Storyhouse's take on the novel. The play opens at the Chester cultural venue from Tuesday, 10 November to Saturday, 21 November 2026.

Storyhouse Creative Director Suzie Henderson said today: “Excitement is building with just two weeks to go until this thrilling new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s much-loved masterpiece opens on the Storyhouse stage as one of the undoubted highlights of our autumn season.

“Jane Eyre is a Storyhouse Originals production in partnership with the Mercury Theatre at Colchester and Rose Theatre at Kingston, and it’s been an exhilarating collaboration, creating a very special piece of live theatre which under Lily Dible’s exciting direction is both powerful and utterly compelling.”

Politis discusses A Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke.

When I was at university, I developed a quiet resistance to a particular kind of novel. I found myself increasingly irritated by reading lists populated by women who unravelled. Women in attics. Women in unhappy marriages. Women drifting towards breakdown. Women whose inner worlds became more and more fractured until they could no longer function within the worlds around them.

Somewhere among them was Birgit Vanderbeke's The Mussel Feast. [...]

Many of the books I resisted at university have stayed with me nonetheless. The Yellow Wallpaper. The Bell Jar. Wide Sargasso Sea. Different books, different women, different circumstances. Yet all return in one way or another to the relationship between power and distress. (Emmelia Georgiou)

Author of Call Off the Dark Hallie Shepherd discusses the Gothic genre on Oprah Daily.

Walk into a bookstore today, and you’re likely to see a gothic classic like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House on a display table alongside new gothic novels. On screen, films like Wuthering Heights and Nosferatu remind us of the enduring appeal of gothic romance and horror. And in music, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter blur the line between bliss and ruin, making love songs feel like psychological landscapes to survive.

Why all this darkness lately? I think it’s partly because the genre taps into something emotionally relatable. In a post-pandemic world, so many of us work from home or feel isolated in other ways. We’re tired of being online all the time, and there’s so much uncertainty about what lies ahead. Basically, you don’t have to live in a shadowy castle to feel a little gothic in your head and your heart. Gothic fiction gives voice to our loneliness and dread.

On the flip side, gothic stories offer an escape hatch from the ordinariness of our own world. They transport us to richly imagined places that feel deliciously sinister and dramatic. We don’t just read gothic fiction because we’re afraid of the dark. Sometimes we read it because the dark is more interesting.

Vogue recommends '28 Entertaining Book Adaptations to Watch (or Revisit) Now' and one of them is

Wuthering Heights (2011)

Emerald Fennell’s recent madcap take on Emily Brontë’s operatic tragedy was fun, but if you’re after a more grounded interpretation, consider Andrea Arnold’s blustery, acutely observed vision of Cathy and Heathcliff’s doomed love. It’s the first adaptation to cast Black actors as the Byronic hero—James Howson and Solomon Glave portray his older and younger selves, respectively, opposite Kaya Scodelario and Shannon Beer as Cathy—and captures the rain-soaked, muddy bleakness and beauty of the Yorkshire moors in a way that chimes with the source material. This is a strange, twisty book which, with its layers of narration and disturbing coda, feels almost impossible to translate to the screen—but this adaptation comes close, at least in echoing its wild, unruly spirit. (Radhika Seth, Michelle Ruiz, Chloe Schama, Kristin Auble, Alexandra Hildreth , and Donya Momenian)

Yorkshire Life shares 'A guide to Yorkshire autumn walks for colourful days' and one of them is to Top Withens.

In Brontë footsteps

A walk that’s full of history as one that the Brontë sisters would have been familiar with on the wild moors.

Start at Stanbury bus terminus and walk uphill on Back Lane.

At the first road junction, continue following the road as it changes from a hard surface to a rough track. Just beyond a parking area, the rough track divides. Here, take the right-hand track uphill to the gate and cattle grid at the top of the incline.

Go through the gate and on to open moorland to where the track divides into three – follow the right-hand track and continue uphill all the way until you reach the ruin of

Top Withens farm, thought to have inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

At this point, you can head back down to Stanbury or go a little further for some incredible views. Walk to the rear of the building and take the narrow well-defined path leading steeply uphill and slightly to the right, in a north westerly direction. Follow this narrow path across moorland and keep right when you reach a point where another narrower path bears left. You will shortly see the Delf Hill trig point ahead. At the trig point take in amazing views all around, from Boulsworth Hill and Pendle Hill to the left, across the Yorkshire Dales, and beyond.

Back in Stanbury, head to traditional village local, Wuthering Heights Inn.

The pub also has a campsite with spectacular views.

Top Withens

Distance: Around two miles

Start/finish: Stanbury bus terminus, Hob Hill, at the western end of Stanbury Main Street

Difficulty: Suitable for most reasonably fit occasional walkers

Parking: Limited parking near the bus terminus, but there is an informal parking area 300 yards up Back Lane, where the walk route passes. Parking is also available in Haworth village, around 1.7 miles away

Pub: Wuthering Heights Inn, Stanbury

See the full walk: With longer route options, at visitbradford.com

The Telegraph and many other news outlets report that a Romanov crown jewel is to be auctioned on November 11th and also to be auctioned is

Cartier’s Devonshire black opal tiara and necklace, which is expected to fetch up to £998,000. This item’s last public appearance was at the London premiere of the film Wuthering Heights, when Emerald Fennell, the film’s director, wore it on the red carpet.

The Brontë Society of Japan has a post on their most recent meeting.