Joanne Harris talks about Wuthering Heights

A radio alert for today, October 31. On BBC-Radio 4, the program A Good Read will discuss Wuthering Heights:

Sue MacGregor and guests meet to talk about their favourite books

Tuesday 31 October 2006 16:30 (GMT)
(rpt) Friday 3 November 2006 23:02 (GMT)

Book details :Joanne Harris' choice: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Penguin
Popular Classics

Joanne Harris is the author of Chocolat. Her latest novel is Gentlemen and Players. The program will be available online for a week here.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

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Computers and comics

Did you ever think that modern bestsellers seem to be written by computers? The plots, the characters, the progression of the narrative... the author becomes secondary because its authorship is diluted in a sort of mainstream narrative. Well, the fact is the computer program exists and the name is Newnovelist 2.0, created by Creativity Software. Vnunet.net reviews it

The starting point in Newnovelist 2.0 is an introductory wizard that prompts you for a title and a one-line pitch, and then presents you with 21 different story types in the plot, epic or character-driven categories. Having picked one of these you’re placed in the creative environment where all the action takes place.
On the left of the screen, your chosen story type is broken into twelve sections, and clicking on any of these produces a few hundred words of guidance about what should go into that section of your novel, plus two or three examples drawn mainly from classics such as Jane Eyre and Madame Bovary, but with the occasional frisson of a reference to Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code.

Well, not everything is lost if Jane Eyre is one of the chosen examples.

As we informed previously, DameDarcy is touring presenting her illustrated edition of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Yesterday, she was in New York.

She'll be reading, talking, signing copies of the book, and possibly even casting a few spells. If anything, it will be an unpredictably good time. After all, how often can you meet the founder of a coven the day before Halloween?
For more on the book, check out Slate.com's review. (Or you can read our review :P)

*I'm Dame Darcy's editor on this project, so to say I have a vested interest in its success is, of course, an understatement. However, I'm the editor on lots of projects, and I wouldn't foist something on you if it wasn't spectacular. This book is beautiful
and amazing. Really.

Categories: Weirdo, Comics, Jane Eyre

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Mahogany furniture in Jane Eyre

The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel is a new book written by Elaine Freedgood and published these days for the University of Chicago Press.

While the Victorian novel famously describes, catalogs, and inundates the reader with things, the protocols for reading it have long enjoined readers not to interpret most of what crowds its pages. The Ideas in Things explores apparently inconsequential objects in popular Victorian texts to make contact with their fugitive meanings. Developing an innovative approach to analyzing nineteenth-century fiction, Elaine Freedgood here reconnects the things readers unwittingly ignore to the stories they tell.

Building her case around objects from three well-known Victorian novels—the mahogany furniture in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the calico curtains in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and “Negro head” tobacco in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations—Freedgood argues that these things are connected to histories that the novels barely acknowledge, generating darker meanings outside the novels’ symbolic systems. A valuable contribution to the new field of object studies in the humanities, The Ideas in Things pushes readers’ thinking about things beyond established concepts of commodity and fetish.

Mahogany furniture ? Well, the title of chapter one is even more intriguing:

Souvenirs of Sadism: Mahogany Furniture, Deforestation, and Slavery in Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Scholar, Jane Eyre

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Jane Brontë and a pop-up Heathcliff

New Heathcliff mentions in the press.

The Independent uses Heathcliff as a stereotype in this review of the new film Red Road:

When Arnold finally brings them together, the encounter is intense and graphic, the realest sex you'll see in a British film - even though Arnold slightly dissipates the effect by over-stressing Clyde's Heathcliff aspect, making him a soulful hard man with a penchant for wood-carving and an ear for a fox's bark in the city night. (Jonathan Ramney)

The Guardian seems to answer a question from some days ago, is there a pop-up version of Jane Eyre? It seems that we have a pop-up Heathcliff :P

Sam appears, a pop-up Heathcliff: 'What's all this about, this cosy family outing?' he spits at Ruth, before recovering.

We have so few references to The Professor that we always post whatever we found. This time it's a list of audiobooks that deal with college life:

The Professor By Charlotte Bronte, read by Frederick Davidson (Blackstone Audiobooks)

Campus life was always tricky, even in the Victorian era. In her first work of fiction, Charlotte Bronte chronicles the messy love life of an English professor. This is a must-listen-to for any Bronte fan, as it is loosely based on her own unrequited love for a married teacher in Brussels.

But the best Brontë mention today is this one from the ContraCostaTimes:

As part of their tribute to Jacques Rivette, Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive is showin a double bill of the New Wave director's classics "Wuthering Heights" and "Love on the Ground" tonight. Jane Bronte's 19th century novel has been reset in 1930s Cevennes. 6.30 and 9 p.m., PFA, 2575 Bancroft Way at Bowditch, Berkeley. $8 per film/$12 for both, 510-642-5249, http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/.

Yes, Jane Brontë, the well-known author of Wuthering Heights :P

Categories: Weirdo, In the News, Wuthering Heights,The Professor

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Jane Eyre, the estate agent

The Times publishes an article exploring how estate agents in Derbyshire are expecting the recent BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre to boost local prices:

Brooding sexual chemistry and repressed secrets drove the plot of the BBC’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which ended earlier this month. For some television viewers, though, the real star of the series was the Derbyshire countryside, which served as its melodramatic backdrop. (...)

The latest television version of Jane Eyre certainly showed off the area to dramatic effect: one of the most spectacular locations featured in the four-part series was Haddon Hall, which doubled as Thornfield, the home of Edward Rochester (played by Toby Stephens) which went up in flames. (The pyrotechnic special effects were so convincing that more than 100 local residents called the fire brigade during filming.) Dovedale, which spans the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire and was declared a national nature reserve earlier this month, was used in the first episode, when Rochester, looming out of the mist on a black stallion, met Jane (played by Ruth Wilson) for the first time. The Goyt valley was the setting for the home of St John Rivers, Jane Eyre’s saviour, while Ilam youth hostel served as Lowood school. (...)

Cauldwell believes the “Jane Eyre effect” may change that. “The exposure on television is undoubtedly going to have an impact,” he predicts.
The problem for many buyers, however, is shortage of supply. “Really good houses in the Peak District just don’t come up that often — £1m sales come up less than once a month,” says Cauldwell. “It is not that the houses aren’t there, just that once people are here, they don’t leave. I have houses on my books that have been in the same family for 25 and 42 years. Once I have sold them, they won’t be on the market again for another 20 years or so.”
Added to this are a number of unusual factors that restrict supply. The Peak District National Park Authority is highly restrictive about the building of new homes and is keen to encourage affordable housing for the locals. A number of villages are also stil almost entirely owned by large estates. If you want to live in Tissington, near Ashbourne, for example, you must apply to rent from the FitzHerbert family. Vast swathes of the county still belong to the Duke of Devonshire, whose seat, Chatsworth, served as the backdrop to Rochester’s proposal to Jane Eyre at the end of the third episode. (...)
For Jane Eyre obsessives on a smaller budget, however, there is an alternative. Many of the series’s interior scenes were shot in a disused warehouse on an industrial estate in Chesterfield. The bustling market town, with its famously crooked church spire, may not be the county’s most fashionable choice, but there ar still plenty of good three-bedroom terraced houses to be had in it for less than £100,000.

Picture is courtesy of PennyforyourDreams.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV

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Poems come best roaming the moors

The Brontë Parsonage Blog publishes an article about the recent Brontë Society Weekend Conference, The Brontës and their Background. There's a difference from the programme that we published last month:

Tom Winnifrith was in hospital so unfortunately could not contribute. Instead, a forum took place in his time slot, chaired by Robert Barnard.

The conference is summarized by Marcia Zaaijer like this:

Every speaker impressed me with something to do or to remember. So many details of life in the Brontës’ Haworth, that both Steven Whitbread and Ian Dewhurst were able to present! Ian Dewhurst spoke in the kind of language, that in my Dutch imagination I like to think sounds like the language the Brontës heard around them. (...)

Really, maybe I should go and attend school in South Africa: I love the way Elisabeth Leaver championed Anne and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. With a bit of luck some Afrikaners might understand my Dutch.

In the picture (from left to right) Stephen Whitehead, Brian Wilks, Robert Barnard, Elizabeth Leaver, Ian Emberson during the forum. More pictures on the Brontë Parsonage Blog post.

AustLit News publishes sad news. It's always sad to report the disappearance of a Brontëite. The life and work of Vera Newsom (1912-2006) is remembered with a special mention to her book of poems on Emily Brontë: Emily Brontë Recollects and other poems, published in 1995.

Two poems of this work can be read here:

15th December, 1848

Making Bread from Emily Bronte Re-collects

The floured board, accustomed fingers
kneading dough - how I love
to make the bread, as Tabitha once did.
I made her teach me. I was a mere child then.
It seemed a ritual and still does.
Why then does the mind stray
when making bread? It leaves behind
this fire-lit kitchen and is free to wander.
It always did. Poems come best
roaming the moors or kneading dough. (Read more)

Categories: Brontë_Society, Talks, Scholar,Poetry

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Haworth is a few clicks away

We were browsing around the Haworth village website to see what their Halloween plans were when we have found a whole new batch of material has been uploaded.

First of all, a few wonderful wallpapers have been added. The landscapes are breathtaking and the dragonflies very in keep with the new Mr Rochester. We, for one, have already put the one of the beck on our desktop :)

If that wasn't enough, the archives are now brimming with old pictures. There's not only Haworth but also the surrounding villages such as Oxenhope or Cross Roads. The old pictures of Haworth (which are the most interesting ones to this blog) provide us with a very nice picture on the evolution and modernisation of this unique village.

So start clicking away! :D

Categories: Haworth, Websites

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Politics and asylums

Wuthering Heights, and particularly Heathcliff, seems to cause strange effects on the political journalists. We have no other justification for these kind of mentions:

First, The Guardian on Gordon Brown, UK's Chancellor of the Excheque:

The chancellor wore his usual bush-backwards look, crumpled blue suit, pink-ish
tie and glower, the Heathcliff of Kirkcaldy. More to the point, he came heavily
armed with facts, every one of them fine-tuned to destroy Tory attacks.

Next, The Age on Steve Bracks, Premier of the Australian Victoria state and Peter Batchelor, the Australian Transport Minister.

Yesterday's premier moment marked the meeting of two halves of the EastLink
tunnel (...)

Here for a start was a lost opportunity: how much more jolly would it have been to have had Bracks and Batchelor on either side of the soon-to-be-penetrated rock wall, the pair to meet leaping across the rubble like Heathcliff and Cathy on the moor, or on their knees, little fingers extended as they scraped away the last centimetres like kids excavating sandcastle basements on the beach.

Maybe the secret dream of the journalists is ramble freely across the Brontë country. Now it's easier thanks to the new right to roam legislation:

Walkers are far more able to enjoy Bronte country and the Yorkshire Dales than a year ago thanks to right to roam legislation, according to the Environment Secretary.

Anyway, the most probable thing is that all of us will end up in an asylum if we continue to see Wuthering Heights connections in everything:

ASYLUM (R) It's Wuthering Heights in a loony bin when the repressed young wife of an asylum administrator becomes obsessed with a hunky, brooding inmate. Director David Mackenzie is back on the passion-adultery-murder turf familiar from his dank and gritty Young Adam, although the treatment here becomes so broad and absurdly overheated that the movie sometimes feels like one of those Harlequin novels.

Categories: In the News, Wuthering Heights, Weirdo

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Is there a pop-up version of Jane Eyre?

First of all, a newly-discovered Brontëite joins the ranks. Sue Townsend, author of the Adrian Mole series among others confesses in an interview:

What was your favourite childhood book?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and William And The Outlaws by Richmal Crompton.

It's not a childhood book though. And the Victorians would cringe to hear people consider it so.

Which authors do you admire most?
Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Evelyn Waugh, PG Wodehouse, John Updike, Richard Ford, Kingsley Amis, Charlotte Brontë, Raymond Carver, Thackeray, Mrs Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Timothy Mo, John le Carré, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Paul Bailey, Alan Bennett, Simon Armitage, Shakespeare, GK Chesterton, Orwell, Tom Paine, Oscar Wilde, EM Forster, Samuel Johnson, George Elliot, Flann O'Brien...

In case you got lost in that sea of names, she mentioned not only Charlotte Brontë but also others connected to her and the Brontës, Mrs Gaskell and Thackeray, for instance.

Which books have you been unable to finish?
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

That made us laugh! BrontëBlog is split in two when it comes to this book and since it's me posting I will applaud :P

And now for something she says which is totally unrelated to the Brontës but which we liked a lot:

Bookmark or page-fold?
I would sooner pull my own toenails out than turn the corner of a page.

All of this and her love for pop-up books has made us like Ms Townsend very much :)

Old news, we know, but The Thirteenth Tale is still doing its neverending round of reviews. This time it travels to Ohio.

Critics have invoked Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and the works of Wilkie Collins in describing the style of the dark and disturbing story that unfolds about writer Vida Winter's dysfunctional family. [...]
"Setterfield is not riffing on Hamlet, she is riffing on the Brontes and du Maurier, so the book is very accessible.''

She herself commented on the Brontë influence on her book a few days ago.

And today there's another article on fanfiction and the Brontës are, as usual, used as examples of early fanfic writers.

In the 19th Century, the Bronte sisters wrote fan fiction about the Duke of Wellington.

And not just him actually.

And finally the funny thing of the day. Want to sell a house and don't know how to get round to it? Well, take a leaf of the Lily White owners' book!

The Parochial House in Broadfield, Co Kildare would make the perfect backdrop for a Jane Eyre-type costume drama - just add Jeremy Irons as a smouldering Rochester (and perhaps yours truly as Jane). [...]
And all of this just a few minutes from the M4 motorway and within easy reach of Dublin City. Jeremy Irons is all very well folks, but believe me, this is the original period fantasy.

Hmmm... Jeremy Irons as Mr Rochester? We don't really think so.

Oh, and just a reminder today that it's Aunt Branwell's anniversary. Perhaps one of the most shadowy and overlooked figures in Brontë biographies.

Categories: Brontëites, Weirdo, Books, In_the_News

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Claire Bloom's Jane Eyre in North Yorkshire

Today, October 29, there's a new chance to attend Claire Bloom's readings of Jane Eyre. This time, the place is the Helmsley Arts Centre in Helmsley, Ryendale, North Yorkshire.

Sun 29 Oct 7.30 pm
Clive Conway Celebrity Productions
Claire Bloom reads Jane Eyre

Claire Bloom, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, takes to the stage to perform a dramatic reading of Charlotte Brontë’s timeless classic, Jane Eyre.

This story of love against the odds has captivated readers for generations - so sit back and enjoy as Claire brings the story to life. A treat for any Brontë fan.

All tickets: £14

Categories: Alert, Theatre, Jane_Eyre

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Are you the right kind of reader?

Very book-ish news today. First of all, Joel Rickett from The Guardian looks at the state of things in the world of publishing.

The Oneworld Classics list has been developed in partnership with Elisabetta Minervini and Alessandro Gallenzi, founders of Hesperus Press and Alma Books. It has two strands: a series of mainstream classics such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island; and a "connoisseur" series.

Hesperus Press - along with Juvenilia Press - are to be thanked for their efforts in publishing the lesser-known works of classic authors. Both publishing houses are responsible for making widely available titles such as The Foundling and The Green Dwarf (more Brontë books published by Hesperus Press) or My Angria and the Angrians and several volumes of Tales of the Islanders (more Brontë books published by Juvenilia Press).

Debra Adelaide reviews for The Australian a book we mentioned here months ago: Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life by Michael Dirda.

In Wuthering Heights, the wild and wilful Catherine Earnshaw takes a worthy contemplative book that has been forced on her and throws it into the dog kennel, vowing she "hated a good book". Catherine is a creative soul, which is why she dreams and rebels, why she is writing the diary in which this incident is recorded. She is endowed with spirit and imagination, and she knows that no one should be bullied into reading -- anything at all -- and that reading for self-improvement or edification or punishment is despicable.
She knows reading is meant to enlarge the possibilities of the imagination, not reduce and confine it. She throws the book away because she is the right kind of reader.

Then she goes on to wonder why do we read at all and writes an interesting article overall.

The Times Online reviews another book previously mentioned here as well: The Complete Book of Aunts by Rupert Christiansen.

Here we have Elizabeth Bennet’s sage Aunt Gardiner, there the nagging crones who provoke George Eliot’s Maggie Tulliver to lop off her hair. Jane Eyre’s despicable Mrs Reed meets her match in Dickensian “ good egg” Betsy Trotwood.
Between lurk fairy-tale aunts, impostor aunts, chain-smoking Simpsons variants,
pornographic harridans and she who made “A handbag!” immortal.

Libraries are renewing their programmes. Melbourn library, in Hertfordshire, has launched a new initiative.

He said: "We intend to put out a central display every two or three weeks which will reflect major TV programmes, which we started with Jane Eyre."

As we have been hoping all this time, the new adaptation will attract a new bunch of readers to the book :)

And finally The Hindu takes a look at the relationship sisters have. Of course, the Brontë sisters make a brief appearance in the article.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were raised by their mother's sister, lived in Haworth and wrote all those English classics.

Categories: Books, Juvenilia, Wuthering_Heights, In_the_News

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Wuthering Hike

Yesterday we posted about Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights song and today, October 28, Haworth will be packed with Kate Bush fans. No, it's not BrontëBlog's influence :P, it's The HomeGround Wuthering Hike 2006. HomeGround is a magazine, published since 1982, enterily devoted to Kate Bush.

The HOMEGROUND team will be up at Top Withins, the legendary site of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, from about 13.00 until about 15.00 on Saturday the 28th October 2006. We invite you to meet us up there.

We must stress that this is not a formal event, nothing is arranged, it is not a Convention, and we are not expecting Kate to drop by: Those of you who come can visit Top Withins, meet the rest of us who are mad enough to come on this thing, visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum, and walk the moor that inspired Emily Bronte, all in your own time. If you’ve never been to Haworth, you will never forget it. (...)

WHERE DO YOU MEET US?

Simple. You have to footslog it up to Top Withins on Haworth Moor.

The long hike (about three miles) is signposted from the Bronte Parsonage Museum and goes across the moors via the Bronte Bridge to Top Withins.

The short hike (about a mile) starts at the car parking place shown on the map above and follows the Pennine Way footpath past Lower Heights and Upper Heights to Top Withins.

We look forward to seeing you there. Bring your camera, and your walkman or pod if you have one, and enjoy Kate’s music in its ideal setting.

When we come off the moor we will meet at the Black Bull pub in Main Street Haworth

See you there!

EDIT(01/11/06):
The Brontë Parsonage Blog publishes a post with a picture of the gathering.

EDIT (06/11/06)
More pictures and comments on Collin Kelley's blog.

Categories: Music,Wuthering_Heights, Haworth

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Wuthering Heights covers and a Jane Eyre that never was

It seems that the latest TV adaptation of Jane Eyre generates doubts about what is the right age for Rochester. Some weeks ago we wrote about the age gap between Rochester and Jane Eyre. Now we read in The Times and Star, that Toby Stephens is almost a teenager:

It was Jane Eyre that started it. I have been really enjoying the series on television, except for the fact that the part of Mr Rochester was being played by a boy!

Where was the dark, brooding older man of my young fantasies?

Then it struck me that Mr Rochester has joined the ranks of policemen and doctors and soldiers.

They’re not really any younger than they ever were. It just depends which end of the telescope you are looking through.

If I had been watching the programme at 15, I would probably have thought the television Rochester was dark, brooding and fairly old.

A friend told me once that you know you are getting old when you always fancy the man in charge in a police drama instead of the hot-headed young sidekick.

The Phoenix talks about singer Petra Haden. She toured recently with The Decemberists covering Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights as we posted some time ago.

Petra Haden is making a career out of covering the un-coverable. When she toured as a Decemberist last year, she stopped the show with Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” — a song that hardly anyone, including the stage-shy Bush, has ever done live.

Erm... we know that Ms Bush has made some live renditions of Wuthering Heights. You can listen (and watch) some of them on YouTube, for instance. Including her mythical 1979 Hammersmith Odeon live performance (also published). And, to be complete, we should add that Sarah McLachlan also has a rare live version from a 1987 soundcheck during her Touch tour. It's available on the net, if you check out the usual P2P resources.

The Old Movie Section blog publishes some 1930 articles in movie magazines that comment on a possible Jane Eyre project. In this project, Ann Harding was Jane Eyre. We don't know if this is the same venture that eventually became the 1934's Monogram picture with Victoria Bruce.

2/3/1930 EH Screenographs By Harrison Carroll
A feminine newspaper reporter will be Ann Harding's role in her next picture but one for the Pathe. (...) The flaxen-haired star first is to do a talkie version of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

2/7/1930 Los Angeles Examiner By Louella O. Parsons
It is certainly news that Jane Eyre, favorite novel of our adolescence, is to be made with Ann Harding and her husband, Harry Bannister, in the leads. Charlotte Bronte may have gone well with previous generations, but I am wondering if we can get our young people to sit through a story that, in spite of its popularity, is so ga-ga. Even so, Jane Eyre, John Halifax, Gentleman, and some of those old-timers have been read more than any of our modern novels. People read more years ago.

So Ga-Ga... Ms Parsons was fond of these stupid and gratuitous remarks.

The picture is courtesy of this website.

Finally, 24-Hour museum reminds us that some of Paula Rego's portfolio on Jane Eyre is on exhibition at Rugby Gallery & Museum, as we informed before.

Categories: In_the_News, Jane_Eyre,Movies-DVD-TV, Music,Wuthering_Heights, Art-Exhibitions

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Talks and Talks

A summary of recent Conferences where a Brontë-related talk has been presented:

The Motherlode: A Complete Celebration of Mothering

October 26-29, 2006, Courtyard Marriott Downtown, Toronto, Canada

October 26 Panel: Mothering and Literature

• A Vindication of Single Motherhood in Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", Monika Lee (Brescia University College)

University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. English Department Colloquium Series
October 20, 2006

Student panel, The Joys and Challenges of Literary Research

• Imprisoned Women and the Woman Question: Elizabeth Fry and Emily Brontë, Brynn Bauer.

  This interdisciplinary essay provides original analysis of the role of the woman prisoner in Victorian society, both as a subject of philanthropic concern and as a trope for all spiritually imprisoned women in Victorian society.

Inscription Conference: Faith and Learning
September 28-30, 2006, Abilene Christian University.

Saturday, 30. Panel: Moral Exempla in British Literature

• Do As I Say, Or As I Do? The Same Christian Lesson via Differing Examples: Teaching Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Jill Kriegel, Florida Atlantic University

APETAU (Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities) 3rd International Conference
23-25 August 2006, Region Hotel in the Amman (Day 1) and the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Jordan (Days 2 & 3).

August 24

• Representation of the Other in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with reference to Bertha Mason, Isam Shihada.
  

Beyond the Widening Sphere: transatlantic perspectives on Victorian Women
July 28-29, 2006 The Bedford Centre for the History of Women,
Royal Holloway, University of London

Sunday, 29. Panel: Female identity and the construction of the text

• ‘In her own métier’: The Quarterly review of Jane Eyre, Julie Sheldon, History of Art and Museum Studies, Liverpool School of Art and Design

Dream,Imagination and Reality in Literature, International Literary Conference
České Budějovice,30 th June – 2 nd July 2006
University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic

Saturday 1. Panel: Dream and Reality

• "A Fearful Voyage I Had": Dreams of Reality in Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' and Jean Rhys's 'Wide Sargasso Sea', K.Vránková,University of South Bohemia

XXVII Encontro da APEAA (Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Anglo-Americanos) – XXVII APEAA Meeting
27-28 April, Carcavelos, Portugal

April, 27

• Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre, by Emily and Charlotte Brontë, in the line with Victoria, by Charlotte Dacre, Raquel Sara Simões,Grémio de Instrução Liberal de Campo de Ourique

Tenth Annual Conference of the Illinois Philological Association
April 7-8, 2006, Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois, US

• [In]Sanity and Discontent: a postcolonial inquiry into Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Mr. Christopher Bass, English Honors and French Major, Millikin University. (Abstract here)

2006 SCMS Conference Media and the Americas
March 2-4, 2006, Chicago, US

March 3, Panel: Studies in Adaptation

• Gothic Intimacies and the Americanization of Jane Eyre: Re-Writing the Affect-Nation in I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur 1943) and Dragonwyck (Joseph Mankiewicz 1946), Karen Williams (New York University/ Fordham University)

Acacia Conference 2006: Politicizing texts
February 17th and 18th 2006, Titan Student Union (TSU), California State University, US.

February 18, Panel: British Literature Through Theory

• Demeaning Language, Fluctuation of Power, Game Play, and Erotic Power Differences: Male-Female Relationships in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Shirley, Sana Sayed.

Categories: Talks, Scholar

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Brontë: Ireland in March

A news item concerning the new biopic Brontë. The news on this film are trickling in but they are somewhat confusing, aren't they? After confirming it won't be shot in Hungary, it now seems possible it might start shooting in Ireland in March.

Her [Emily Barclay's] breakout role though, was in the acclaimed Kiwi film In My Father's Den. That movie got her a British agent, who helped her win a part in Bronte, a biopic about the Bronte sisters co-starring Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) and Nathalie Press (My Summer of Love) due to start filming in Ireland in March.

Hopefully everything will go well and there will be no more delays. We are actually looking forward to finally seeing the film. Angela Workman has been working on this project for many years now!

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, In_the_News

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The same old story

The subject of Brontë novels - especially Jane Eyre - being female reads has been repeatedly touched on this blog. And it never seems to die down. One more example:

Plenty of women like Schwarzenegger pics, and there is no shortage of men who enjoy Charlotte Bronte film adaptations. But that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a "guy movie" or a "chick flick."

We are tired of these mentions. Perhaps many men won't give Charlotte Brontë's film adaptations (or whatever) a chance because they will be automatically clear-cut for them, before they have even considered giving them a chance. If more men were willing enough to give the films or the novels - we suggest the novels - a fair try they would be surprised at the lack of "chick-flick-ness" found therein. But there is a shortage of brave men... ;)

The Stone Mountain Park is holding its traditional annual telling of old-fashioned ghost stories. The ever more gorey scenes used in Hollywood are not in tune with the kind of ghost-stories told there.

At that moment, a jabbing pain throws Brigitte into labor. She gives birth to a girl.
That's it? Candles and wax and child birth? Sounds more like Emily Bronte. Where's Wes Craven?
"Antebellum ghost stories aren't blood and guts and people popping out," said Link.

It is out opinion that much of what Emily Brontë wrote can be much more fear-inducing than guts and bloody severed body parts.

And finally a new review of the new BBC adaptation of Wide Sargasso Sea, this time from Ireland.

Wide Sargasso Sea, the much-hyped prequel to the wonderful 4-part dramatisation of Jane Eyre and screened last Sunday evening on BBC1, was a dud. I told you last week I'd tell you what I thought of it and, as a man of my word, there you have it, a dud.
My knowledge of the same Sargasso Sea would not be encyclopaedic but I read somewhere that it takes its name from the thick brown seaweed which floats in massive amounts on its surface and that might explain why Sunday's drama foundered.
The idea was to tell how the young and inexperienced Edward Rochester was conned into marrying a woman on the verge of madness ó but she was very beautiful with a lot of money and smarter men than Rochester haven fallen for that combination.
The action of the drama takes place on Mrs Rochester's sugar plantation somewhere in the Caribbean and all is sweetness and light until words are whispered in Rochester's ear regarding his wife's marital fidelity ó and his love for her goes out the window.
I thought she was a nice poor divil and that he was a sulky, moody so-and-so and it seemed to me that it was his rejection of her on the strength of gossip that pushed her over the edge.
Of course, once the damage was done she became quite a handful and Rochester takes her to England. From there it is but a short step to the North Tower and the rest we know.
And I wouldn't mind but I'm trying to keep my Sunday nights as havens of tranquillity in a troubled week and they deserve better than this.

Categories: In_the_News, Wide_Sargasso_Sea

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Wuthering Woodhouse

Today, October 26, the Woodhouse Players begin the performances of a new production of Wuthering Heights, adapted by Charles Vance, in Leytonstone, London, UK.

The timeless story of a passionate and destructive romance

The grinding influence of nature, so relentless and implacable,... spirits so lost and fallen.

Emily Brontë's only novel tells the tale of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling child rescued from the streets of Liverpool by Catherine's father. Growing up together, Catherine and Heathcliff develop an inseparable bond, spending their days roaming the barren moors that surround Wuthering Heights, careless of the wrath of Catherine's older brother, Hindley, who had always been jealous of his father's affection for Heathcliff.

But when Catherine and Heathcliff's increasingly reckless wanderings take them to neighbouring Thrushcross Grange, home of the Lintons, events are set in motion that will bring tragedy to two families and two generations.

The Woodhouse Players proudly present this powerful drama that brings a dark, gothic feel to this pared-down adaptation of the classic C19th novel.

Please note that some strong language and scenes depicting violence may not be suitable for some younger children.

Where
Welsh Church Hall, 879 Leytonstone High Road, Leytonstone E11, London

When
Thu 26 October 2006, 8pm ;Fri 27 October 2006, 8pm ; Sat 28 October 2006, 3pm ; Sat 28 October 2006, 8pm

Cast

Lockwood Oliver Clement
Ellen Dean Elizabeth Braithwaite
Heathcliff Stephen Balchin
Cathy Linton Mel Gault
Hareton Earnshaw Nick Purves
Joseph Phil Braithwaite
Catherine Earnshaw Carla MacLean
Hindley Earnshaw Jim Killeen
Edgar Linton Andy Grant
Isabella Linton Alicia Jones

Production Team

Director Sacha Walker
Lighting Robert Bettelheim
Sound Sacha Walker
Stage manager Salley Rear
Sound assistance Peter Raggett
Music New Model Army (more information on this post)
Poster design Nicola Holland

Categories: Theatre,Wuthering_Heights

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May you live in interesting times

The Times Online carries a very interesting article on a new venture the National Trust might embark on. Namely:

It proposes to take some punters back to very interesting times indeed. During the winter it wants to rent out the Dorset cottage where Thomas Hardy grew up and later wrote Far from the Madding Crowd. It’s a picture-postcard, thatched-roof sort of place. There should be plenty of takers — even if some Hardy enthusiasts are up in arms about the scheme.
But there’s a condition. Guests will have to cook, wash, eat, entertain themselves and generally exist as the Hardys did in the 1840s. The only concessions will be battery-powered candles, water from a tap rather than a well, and a flushing loo — which, of
course, was not available in ordinary homes until Thomas Crapper and John Shanks, the Rolls and Royce of lavatory construction, came along in the 1860s.

Imagine that could take place in the Parsonage! And who hasn't daydreamed about time-travelling? Tough experience indeed, but such an adventure.

The article goes on to look at the state of things back in the 1840s and the author comes up with this question:

And if the Man Booker Prize had been around in the 1840s, just think of the books that could have been left off the shortlist! Wuthering Heights, Vanity Fair, A Christmas Carol, Around the World in 80 days ...

Granted, there were many novels that are now practically forgotten but it is true that literary awards back then could have been a nightmare for the appointed jury.

On a very different note, The Guardian provides us with the priceless image of the day:

Ms Batmanghelidjh has presence. She makes Carmen Miranda look like Jane Eyre.

The Globe and Mail reviews - surprise, surprise - The Thirteenth Tale. This time Wuthering Heights joins Jane Eyre in the comparison, but this time too, the author sheds some light on the constant Jane Eyre name-dropping:

Nevertheless, it's a quick read: The chapters are short and they often end with on a spooky note to keep you turning the pages. There's also a familiar old-English fustiness that is packed with direct references to Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and other perennials.
Setterfield says her intentions in name-dropping Jane Eyre might be one of the most misunderstood aspects of the book.
"I'm not really hung up on originality, I have to admit. I do love story elements that have got a patina of something that's been used and reused, told and retold. In that sense, I knew I wasn't telling a hugely original story.
The big originality in the book, if there is one, is the way it presents reading and puts the love of books at the centre of the plot and at the centre of the characters' lives.
"I never thought that that was actually going to be something that would make it hugely commercial, because I thought that's not really what people are looking for these days," she said.

So now at least we know what this Jane Eyre thing is all about. Sort of, anyway.

And finally for the story flooding the Brontë press. Remember Emily Brontë the horse? Well, she's doing great.

EMILY BRONTE was a strong fancy for Classic glory over the winter after two sterling efforts as a juvenile and can make a winning seasonal reappearance in the Listed EBF Fleur De Lys Fillies' Stakes at Lingfield tomorrow. (read more)

She was also the star of the latest Region 3 Brontë Newsletter:

I sent a “Get Well” card (with horse motif) to the horse’s owner, His Majesty Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, in Dubai, United Arab Emerites, inquiring about Bronte’s disposition. In time, I received a full color photo [...]
But, I still had no record of her naming nor why named for Emily Brontë. I sent a follow up e-mail to Miss Ciska Groen, Public Relations, Newmarket, but her response was less than satisfactory. She writes, “However, I can only report that there is no specific reason for her name.” Well, that obviously can’t be true but that is where the matter stands. If I learn anything new, I will be sure to pass it on. (Left-hand picture taken from this Newsletter)

We were hoping for His Majesty Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to be a true Brontëite at heart :(

Categories: Victorian_Era, Books, Weirdo, In_the_News, Emily_Brontë,

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Villette, the rock band

First it was Wuthering Heights, the heavy metal band that these days is presenting a new CD 'The Shadow Cabinet'. A year ago we discovered Jane Eyre, a US rock band (post-hardcore in their own definition). Some months ago, we posted about Agnes Grey, another US metal band.

The three sisters had their own band. But now we have noticed the existence of another one associated with Charlotte: Villette. We made the discovery through this blog:

Where other bands have lyrics, Villette have poetry, which is not as pretentious as that sounds. Villette, named after Charlotte Brontë's novel of loneliness, have an extroverted, decadent, sartorial style which seems at odds with their much more introverted, intellectually romantic, musical approach, but it works. This is a band that has "cult status" written all over it, a band destined to have devotees rather than fans. Why are they still unsigned what is wrong with the UK record industry?

Villette is (we don't know if it's still active because it seems that this August they made a Farewell Concert) an indie/folk-rock UK band:

Founded on the Anglian folk circuit in autumn 2003, brothers William and Leigh Robertson were compelled to form the perfect group; a seductive potion of music, poetry and romance conspicuously absent from the British scene. Relocating to London, they found the perfect rhythm section in Gabriel and Monsoon, and Villette were born. In the short time that the group have been together, they have performed alongside acts as diverse as The Libertines and Martha Wainwright, at many of Londons premier underground venues.

You can listen to their songs, and read their lyrics, on Myspace or on their own web.

Categories: Villette, Weirdo, Music

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Minor news

Some Brontë-related mentions to be found in the press today:

We are used to seeing books compared to some trend of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but now the comparison is with not-being the Brontë sisters. This is how the Dallas Morning News reviews I Gave You My Love But You Sold It Online by Dixie Cash, that happens to be a pseudonym for a couple of half-sisters.

They're not the writing Brontë sisters. But then, Heathcliff never saddled up a cutting horse. And Jane Eyre never had her nails done in a West Texas beauty parlor.

Poet Edward Hirsch's reading on The University of North Carolina Greensboro is reviewed in The Carolinian student paper. We suppose Mr. Hirsch explained this anecdote:

I've written an entire book about my favorite poems. It's called How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. I write about many of the poems I care about most deeply. I explain, for example, my first encounter with Emily Bronte's "Spellbound" when I was eight-years-old (I somehow imagined that my grandfather must have written it!)

Finally, we discover an unexpected Brontëite, John Iverdale, the popular BBC Sports presenter:

And what is your favourite book of all time?
Wuthering Heights.

Categories: In_the_News, Books, Poetry, Brontëites

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Emily's Journal

Some months ago we posted about a radio drama that was aired on BBC-Radio 4: Cold in the Earth and Fifteen Wild Decembers. The play was based on a theory by Sarah Fermi: in short that Emily Brontë might have been seeing one Robert Clayton, a Haworth weaver's son before the year 1837, when he died.

Now the theory has become a book published by Pegasus & Elliot MacKenzie Publishers that appears this month:

Emily's Journal by Sarah Fermi

Pages: 258
Imprint: Pegasus
ISBN: 1903490251

Why did Emily Brontë write Wuthering Heights? Was it purely the product of her juvenile imagination? Or did she experience a profound and tragic relationship in her adolescent years which coloured the rest of her life and was the emotional source for both her one novel and her heartfelt poetry?

Written as if in her own words, Emily's Journal explores in minute detail the possibility that Wuthering Heights was not entirely 'invented'; it gives the reader a new and exhilarating glimpse into the social circumstances which kept a young woman from the man she loved. Few biographies of Emily Brontë have reached so far into her mind – interrogating census records, parish registers, and wills – and marrying the evidence with the contents of her works. The result is truly remarkable.

"Sarah Fermi's extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the social history of Haworth in the early nineteenth century means that this compelling book is not just another story about the tragic Brontë family. She really does convince us that something like what she describes could have happened, and gives us an intriguing glimpse of what the Brontë family dynamics might actually have been."
Dr Heather Glen, reader in English, Cambridge University, author of Charlotte Brontë, the Imagination in History, and editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Brontës.

About the author:

Sarah Fermi has been interested in the Brontë family for almost as long as she can remember. Perhaps being one of three sisters may have been the starting point, but her serious interest was prompted by reading a biography of Emily Brontë by Edward Chitham. Inspired by his pertinent (and unanswered) questions about Emily, Sarah has devoted nearly fifteen years to examining the many previously unexplored personal connections of the Brontë sisters.

The controversial theory on which this book is based was taken up by BBC Radio 4, and the play 'Cold in the Earth, and Fifteen Wild Decembers', by Sally Wainwright, was the result. It was broadcast in March, 2006, as the Saturday Afternoon Play.

Background information:

• Fermi, Sarah, Emily Brontë: A Theory, Brontë Studies, Vol 30, March 2005, p. 71
• Interview on Radio 4 with Sarah Fermi and Juliet Baker (March 9, 2006)
• BrontëBlog post on the radio play
• Brontë Parsonage Blog post on the radio play
• Brontë Parsonage Blog post on the book

Categories: Books, Emily_Brontë,Fiction

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The case of the winner Brontëite

Our congratulations to Robert Barnard, winner of the CWA Short Story Award:

The winner of this year’s CWA Short Story Awards was announced at a dinner as part of the Off The Shelf festival in Sheffield on October 18.

Robert Barnard beat the competition to take the £1500 prize for his story Sins of Scarlet in the CWA anthology edited by Martin Edwards, ID: Crimes of Identity, published by Comma Press. The story was commended by the judges as: “The ultimate in locked room murders, set in the Sistine Chapel during an election of a Pope.” (...)

Receiving his award, Robert Barnard said: “This is utterly delightful. I’ve had nominations in the US – and won – but they’ve never had any money attached . . . (Sins of Scarlet) was intended as a full-length novel but I don’t like novels that have only one sex in them and thought it came better as a short story.” He also revealed that the story had been turned down by a leading US short story magazine. “They loved it, but wouldn’t publish it - it was too offensive to too many people . . . which was very sad. It’s a very nice story and I did enjoy writing it.”

Robert Barnard is a former chairman of the Brontë Society, author of several Brontë-related books:

The Case of the Missing Brontë (1983)
The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori (1999)
Emily Brontë (2000) (British Library Writers' Lives)

Categories: In_the_News, Brontëites

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Reactions to BBC's Wide Sargasso Sea (II)

The airing yesterday, October 22, on BBC-One of Wide Sargasso Sea has triggered another dose of comments and reactions (to be added to the ones posted before, when it was first aired in BBC-Four).

Caitlin Moran comments on The Times:

Wide Sargasso Sea (Sunday, BBC Two), the prequel to Jane Eyre, got the bump from BBC Four to BBC One this weekend — primarily because you don’t shoot a drama expensively on location in Jamaica, and then hide it away on Ocado FM.

Wide Sargasso Sea was, broadly speaking, a petticoaty shag-fest — scarcely ten minutes went by without Rochester and his missus having a sweaty, spicey Caribbean bunk-up, before descending into recriminations and sulking. The first Mrs Rochester, Antoinette, was a toothy, doe-eyed, hello-trees, hello-skies ingénue — basically Jane Birkin doing Je t’aime moi non plus, for real. Mr Rochester, meanwhile, was uptight, insecure and compromised by everyone’s desire that he should marry.

The third lead in the drama was Jamaica — making everyone sweat, sending up swarms of flies, putting a whispering, cat-eyed obi-woman at every window. The books rotted, in the tropical dampness, on the shelves. The Rochesters’ marriage rotted, in the heat, in their honeymoon bed.

“Give me peace,” Antoinette had asked, as her condition of marriage, when Rochester proposed. After an hour and a half, he had failed so miserably at this that she threw herself from the battlements of cold Thornfield, and left him free to marry Jane Eyre.

The Scotsman publishes an interview with Rebecca Hall, Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea. What can you ask about her role in the adaptation of Jean Rhys' novel ? Her emotional impact ? How to avoid clichés playing a character that is losing the contact with reality ? No, there's another question far more important:

Hall can be seen on the small screen tonight at 9pm on BBC1, with the lead role in an adaptation of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, in which she had her first nude scene. But she was left completely unfazed by the experience. "I just think there are probably more invasive things, such as reading your teenage diaries in public, that really lay you naked," she says.

Christopher Whalen in Domheid's blog thinks that:

The dialogue is often dubbed over jumpy editing and creates an unsettling effect, augmented by the heavy soundtrack of wildlife and atmospheric music, when, really, the actors were doing a good enough job by themselves. The soundtrack does, however, recreate the over-sensuous feel of the book, the bewildering over-stimulation of love in a strange place.

And of course you can read the BBC webpage especially devoted to opinions on the film.

Here we can find the ratings. The results, as expected, are long way off Jane Eyre's ones:

BBC One's one-off adaptation of the prequel to Jane Eyre, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' managed to pull in a poor 2.4m viewers, or a 10% share, and a long way off of the 6.7m viewers the final part of 'Jane Eyre' pulled in last week.

EDIT (28/10/06)
Jeremy Taylor reviews the production on his blog in an interesting article.

The TV production left out so much of the novel, and distorted so much of what
was left, that it came across as just another oh-so-tasteful period-costume
drama, Merchant-Ivory style, bland and harmless, its sting and its pain blunted.
Whereas Rhys’s book is really a passionate defence of everything creole against
the Rochesters of the world, a book as biting and relevant as it ever was.

Categories: In_the_News, Movies-DVD-TV, Wide_Sargasso_Sea

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Brontë Crater

More than a year ago we posted some information about a crater on the moon named after Charlotte Brontë. In those days we were unaware that as a matter of fact, some years before Paul Daniggelis (*) had published on the Brontë Society Gazette an article about it (No. 22, April 2000, "Those Heavenly Brontë's"). Some days ago Mr. Daniggelis sent us more of this fascinating information:

"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater."

Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre
Chapter 24

Apollo 17 Lunar Landing Site
The Valley of Taurus-Littrow

Brontë

20.2N

30.7E

0

Astronaut-named feature near Apollo 17 site.

Somewhere on these photos is Brontë Crater. And, I'm not sure that NASA can pinpoint it for me. It is a small crater - some 200 meters in diameter. Probably not enough information from the Apollo 17 lunar probe to locate it photographically.

Apollo 17
December 11, 1972
Eugene A. Cernan - Commander
Ronald B. Evans - Command Module Pilot
Harrison H. Schmitt - Lunar Module Pilot

Apollo 17 Lunar Landing Site - labeled "F"
Detail


(*) Editor of the Brontë Newsletter of the Region 3 of the US Brontë Society. You can read the last issue, September 2006, here.

Categories: Weirdo

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Sargasso's alert

As we have being repeating several times, tonight BBC-One will broadcast the new version of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. If you were not able to see it on the previous BBC4 airing, this your chance. Radio Times presented the production like this and The Times does it this way:

WIDE SARGASSO SEA

BBC One, 9pm

Jean Rhys’s lush reworking of Jane Eyre — in which Rochester’s mad wife is re-imagined as a Creole heiress – is drenched from beginning to end in hothouse sensuality. Rochester (Rafe Spall) arrives on the tropical island to make his fortune. “I will make you happy,” he promises his adoring young wife (Rebecca Hall). “I will keep you safe. I will you give you everything you need.”

But the ghosts of the past and the priggishness of the present conspire to transform their love into hatred and insanity. Fans of the book may have their quibbles, but this adaptation is sodden with sweat and bewitched by voodoo, and passionately performed by Spall and Hall.

Edward Rochester - Rafe Spall
Antoinette Cosway - Rebecca Hall
Christophine - Nina Sosanya
Aunt Cora - Victoria Hamilton
Daniel - Fraser Ayres
Amelie - Lorraine Burroughs
Richard Mason - Alex Robertson
Grace Poole - Karen Meagher

Categories: Alert, Wide_Sargasso_Sea, Movies-DVD-TV

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Castration, pilgrimages and comparisons

For those who think Jane eyre is a women-only kind of book - which it definitely is NOT - we bring you one more example of a man who does not think so: Howard Jacobson. Unfortunately, the article is open only to subscribers, so we have nothing but the very promising beginning.

Why I'm not complaining, even if 'Jane Eyre' is the greatest castration story ever told
Reader, she married him. Burned him, blinded him, maimed him, mutilated him, scarred him, marred him, mortified him, married him. Now tell me it's a mystery that Jane Eyre is every woman's favourite novel.
Mine, too. Or at least one of them. Not quite up there with Anna Karenina, but occupying an honourable place in that list of 19th-century novels of female obduracy and principle that includes Mansfield Park and Middlemarch and Little Dorrit. For half my life that was what I believed the novel was - the story of an intelligent, quiet, sometimes plain but always resolute woman's struggle to get the world to notice, accept, and finally love her. I don't know how old I was before I realised that a novel could also be about a man, but I recall the shock. And, in a small corner of my heroine-addicted soul, I am still not entirely convinced that novels should have men in them at all. A sentiment, of course, which many contemporary women readers share.

We must say, though, we will never get the castration thing, but to each their own, I guess.

We have also seen many men making the pilgrimage to haworth and other Brontë-related places. However, it is a woman, Catherine Watson, who writes an article on her visit to Haworth.

I admit it: I'm hooked on visiting house museums, especially ones that belonged to authors I idolize. This penchant for tracing famous writers to their lairs started early -- at birth, if not before.
I blame my mother. She named me after Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of "Wuthering Heights," her favorite book.
It was inevitable that someday I'd go looking for the author. When I did, my mother went along. We traveled to the north of England, to the humble parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire, where Emily Bronte and her writer-sisters Charlotte ("Jane Eyre") and Anne ("The Tenant of Wildfell Hall") spent nearly all of their short lives.
The day we were there was cold and cloudy. Black rooks were cawing above the tilted headstones in the graveyard in front of the house, and rough, dark waves of moorland crowded close in back. All it took was one look out the parsonage windows to understand the Bronte sisters' longing for passion and drama in their lives.
Imagination gave them what life in their small, cramped dwelling could not. And that, in a nutshell, is the appeal of a cultural pilgrimage - the jolt of insight you can get from a place that was important to someone who was important to you.
You'd think that heroic deeds would be all we'd need from our heroes. But cultural pilgrims want more: We want to get close to them -- closer than their writing or painting or music or politics can bring us.
We want to see who they were when they weren't being famous, when they were off duty, when they were being ordinary. Nothing I know does it as well as visiting the places they called home.

I still recall people giving me weird looks and even openly laughing when I said excitedly that I was going to Haworth and seeing an exhibition on Charlotte's wedding. So it's not everyone who will get that last sentence.

My Bronte pilgrimage wasn't very complicated. The Brontes, after all, stayed home. Literary pilgrimages get a lot more demanding when you're worshipping a hero who traveled. The more rootless the hero, the more difficult the quest.

Well, they studied and worked elsewhere too. Anne Brontë is buried in Scarborough. Charlotte and Emily spent months in Brussels. There's plenty of travelling to be done if you really want to follow in their footsteps.

Still in Haworth, however, we read on a blog about a book on William Grimshaw. A Haworth incumbent years before Patrick Brontë settled there but which left a very deep mark and became a well-known figure in the Church. A teapot of his stayed on at the Parsonage after his death and it is said to have been a favourite of Aunt Branwell's. It can still be seen at the Parsonage today.

I've been reading about a man called William Grimshaw! He was the Vicar of Haworth, West Yorkshire sometime during the 1730's. Haworth is famous for the Bronte Sisters - their dad was the Vicar about 70 years after Grimshaw. Anyway, Grimshaw was a nutter. His church grew from 12 to 1200 in about 5 years. Impressive eh? Orginially from Lancashire, he moved to Yorkshire in his early 30's. Prior to his move, his wife sadly died leaving him with two small children. This is when i happened. In his brokeness and despair he met Jesus in a new and profound way. The Wesleys, Whitefield and that crew described him as a man on fire. I love this story. It's not a story about church growth per se. He didn't buy new carpets, he didn't follow a 15 point plan to revival... just a northern man, broken and desperate to see God do something.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is still being well publicised. We doubt many books get as many reviews as this one does!

The Emporia Gazette says:

Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman’s story. And what a story it is, replete with madness; incest; a pair of twins who speak a private language; a devastating fire; a ghost that opens doors and closes books; a baby abandoned on a doorstep in the rain; a page torn from a turn-of-the-century edition of “Jane Eyre”; a cake-baking gentle giant; skeletons; topiaries; blind housekeepers; and suicide. [...]
Setterfield’s work invokes both “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca,” but the mystery is very much her own. Contending with ghosts and with a scary bunch of living people, Setterfield’s sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling — and is not ready for heartache and romance. And like Jane, she’s a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That’s where the comparisons end.

And The Calgary Sun:

Critics have invoked Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and the works of Wilkie Collins in describing the style of the dark and disturbing story that unfolds about writer Vida Winter's dysfunctional family. [...]
With its ghosts and its secrets -- and its devastating fire -- The Thirteenth Tale has overtones of Jane Eyre and Rebecca; Margaret echoes the second Mrs. de Winter in her innocence and slow journey toward knowledge.

And finally, we will use this report of a Janeites' (or Janites as they are called in this article) convention to congratulate Mags from AustenBlog (which inspired BrontëBlog) on her upcoming Jane Austen handbook!

Stoner, who keeps multiple copies of Austen's books so she can loan them out to friends, puts it simpler: "I can't relate to Jane Eyre. But I can relate to the very talkative Miss Bates (of 'Emma'), who rambles on and on. We all know someone like that." [...]
Charlotte Brontë, author of "Jane Eyre," criticized Austen for being boring. It is Austen's grasp of the mundane, Ray says, that allows readers to so freely relate to her today.

Let's not forget, however, that Anne Brontë's prose and style have been compared to Jane Austen's in the past.

Categories: Books, Haworth, Jane_Eyre

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Again Mrs. Rochester in Jamaica

The performances of Pollly Teale's After Mrs. Rochester in Kingston, Jamaica conclude today, October 21, and The Jamaica Gleaner gives another review of the production:

Brian Heap has created a great open set that gets strewn with the detritus and mess of Rhys' life as the play proceeds. Rhys had a passion for clothes and we see this borne out as she undergoes changes from schoolgirl to chorus girl to kept woman to writer. The men in the play are also carefully and cleverly permutated by having the same actor play dual or even triple roles. Rhys' doting father, Rees Williams, a doctor, played by Rooney Chambers, becomes the boyfriend in her first passionate affair (with Lancelot Smith), while the Rochester character of Jane Eyre, played by Karl Williams, also plays Ford Madox Ford. Ford was Rhys' mentor at the beginning of her career as a professional writer. He involved her in a bizarre ménage à trois with himself and his wife, Stella Bowen, at a time when she was vulnerable since her husband, the journalist, Jean Lenglet, was serving time for fraud. Rhys was desperate for a man to solve her life. The play shows us several lovers and two husbands. Rhys in fact had three husbands, for after divorcing Lenglet, she married her agent Leslie Tilden-Smith, and then Tilden-Smith's cousin, Max Hamer, who also spent time in jail before dying of a heart attack. The elisions and compression work well in After Mrs. Rochester. We are well acquainted with Rhys' dependencies and passions by the time she is matured and do not need to see the details of her life further depicted. (Read more)

Categories: In_the_News, Theatre, Wide_Sargasso_Sea

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Emails and horoscopes

A couple of news published lately on the Brontë Parsonage Blog are related to Professor Maddalena De Leo, active member of the Sezione Italiana of the Brontë Society.

Un'@mica dal passato
a teenager novel in Italian (for Italian schools)
by Maddalena De Leo

2006 Esselibri, Simone per la Scuola, Collana Labirinti, 208 pages, euro 7,50,
ISBN 88 244 7640 6

Margot is a clever but solitary teenager. She loves Victorian literature and often surfs the net looking for information on her beloved authors, the Brontës. One evening she receives a surprise email from …. Charlotte herself!

Margot replies, learning about her Victorian friend when she was the same age, reading what she was writing at the time and starting a wonderful journey through the Brontë world to know her literary idols better.

The text contains some of Charlotte Brontë’s earliest juvenilia, translated into Italian for the first time by Maddalena De Leo. At the end of each of the twenty-two chapters is a review/comprehension section for use in the classroom.

The other post is in relation with a proposed horoscope for Emily Brontë:

In June this year I made a wonderful discovery while surfing the net. I found an unusual web site written by a Dutch astrologist. In it she set forth a lengthy and detailed horoscope in Dutch for none other than Emily Brontë. (...)

The author's name is Ms Iren Nooren, Dutch by birth but presently living in Curaçao. Only a few historical figures interested her enough to merit a personal horoscope.

She chose Thérèse of Lisieux and Emily Brontë. As she explored Emily's personality Nooren quickly discovered that she had an exhaustive amount of character traits. Based on a very detailed astrological reading Nooren's discussion focuses especially on Emily's personality and the most meaningful parts of her novel. Her poems are never mentioned. (Read more)

If you are interested in this kind of stuff - we are afraid we cannot hide that we are not - you can find horoscopes and maps of the heavens, whatever that means, for the Brontës here.

Categories: Books, Translations, Juvenilia, Charlotte_Brontë, Emily_Brontë, Weirdo

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