Once upon a time in 19th-century Yorkshire, three sisters lived on the moors, wrote some of British literature’s most famous novels, and birthed a literary industry. Yes, we’re talking about Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” and the world of Brontë fans and fanatics, second only to the world of Austen fans and fanatics.Also in The Boston Globe, a future Brontëite?
Now comes “The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects” to exponentially raise the Brontëan stakes. Who knew that the Brontës had pheasants named Rainbow, Diamond, Snowflake, and Jasper? That Emily once fit the drafts of eight poems onto a single scrap of paper three-by-two-and-a-quarter inches? That on her honeymoon in Ireland, Charlotte stopped in Killarney, “a thriving tourist spot for Victorian ‘fernists’ ” to pick entries for a fern album? Who even knew that a fern album was a thing, let alone that a “fern craze” swept mid-19th-century Britain? (Read more) (Rebecca Steinitz)
Marissa Rodriguez, a multilingual tutor in English High’s Zone room, dedicated herself to [Wanderson] Pinales, who now counts “Jane Eyre’’ among his favorite books and plays trumpet in the school band. (Bob Hohler)Good news for the Oxenhope Parish Church as reported in Keighley News:
An historic Oxenhope church is to receive a £37,500 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant.La Nueva España (Spain) reports the publishing of La Guerrera del Valle, a novel by Beatriz Alonso:
The money for St Mary the Virgin Church, in Hebden Bridge Road, will support a project to undertake much needed restoration to the church tower walls.
The scheme is costing £120,000 and the announcement of the latest funding will allow custodians of the Grade II listed property to complete the work. (...)
The church’s history includes a link to the world famous Brontë family.
In 1845, the Rev Patrick Brontë, father of the famous novelist sisters Charlotte, Anne and Emily, and their brother Branwell, appointed the then curate, the Rev Joseph Brett Grant, to take charge of the newly formed ecclesiastical district.
That district is now known as Oxenhope village parish.
A Beatriz Alonso, que se describe como "soñadora incurable", le gusta escribir y disfrutar de un buen libro, sobre todo al anochecer, desde su infancia. Sus autores de cabecera son las hermanas Brontë, Jane Austen, Dickens, Henry James o Emile Zola. (J.A. Vega) (Translation)Heroes are my Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips is presented in La Opinión de Murcia (Spain):
En la historia de su nuevo libro, Los héroes son mi debilidad (Vergara), además de romance hay un toque de misterio, gótico, que recuerda a Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë e incluso Georgette Heyer. (Virginia Guzmán)JK's TheatreScene reminds of the Broadway opening of Jane Eyre. The Musical, fifteen years ago.
Este libro es un tributo a las novelas góticas, tiene referencias a Jane Eyre, a Rebeca, de Daphne du Maurier. Me encantaban ese tipo de novelas cuando era joven. Y ha sido muy divertido coger los elementos de estas historias, con sus casas y héroes misteriosos, que pueden ser villanos, y traerlo todo a los tiempos modernos, desarrollar más los personajes e incluso hacerlos más sexys. (Translation)
Religious aspects in Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë's novels
Troitsky, Nóra
Séllei, Nóra
University of Debrecen, Hungary
This thesis analyses the role of religion in the Brontë novels, deals with the question of salvation and focuses on the Christian-based values, moral judgements and ethical questions as present in the texts: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Agnes Grey, Villette, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The aim of this thesis is to show that the sisters being themselves Christians dealt with religious questions consciously. The sisters created various characters and Chapter One analyses religious characters through the mirror of religion. Chapter Two deals with the question of salvation and afterlife, and Chapter Three focuses on Jane’s spiritual Bildungsroman.
Social Performance and Reticence: Mental Negotiations in Austen, Brontë, and Eliot
Meredith L. Spencer
2015
First Advisor, Dr. Katherine Saunders Nash
VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University
This thesis examines how three nineteenth-century British novels purvey and critique contemporary standards regarding social performance and reticence and the strains such standards place on those whose dispositions disincline them to conform to the regulations for decorum articulated in conduct books of the time. Utilizing the psychological lens of introversion and extroversion alongside the cognitive narrative theories of Alan Palmer and Lisa Zunshine, this thesis investigates the construction of individual character identities through the reading of interactions among multiple fictional minds in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860).
Nineteenth Century Women Writers and the Challenge of Gender Roles: Feminist Heroines in the Novels of the Brontë Sisters
Tinna Sif Sindradóttir
Advisor: Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir
2015
University of Iceland
This essay explores the challenges that women writers faced in the nineteenth century, as well as women in general. Therefore, the concept of gender roles is examined, along with the restrictions that women faced. In addition, the notion of separate spheres that were dominant in this period is briefly outlined to exemplify the male-dominated society that these women lived in. However, the main issue focused on is how women writers were able to speak out against this patriarchal society and the traditional gender roles that women were subjected to. Indeed, by becoming professional writers, they challenged the notion of the domestic sphere and the idea that women were mainly supposed to be wives and mothers. As a result, women writers had the ability to empower other women and influence the course of history.
In particular, the Brontë sisters will be discussed to illustrate women writers that challenged the patriarchal society of the nineteenth century. Through their novels and their heroines, the sisters addressed issues that their society faced and they did this in their own unique ways. Special emphasis is placed on Charlotte Brontë and Anne Brontë, as well as their novels. Charlotte and Anne concerned themselves predominantly with problems such as gender roles and equality between the sexes. However, they were also concerned with the education of women and issues concerning the domestic sphere.
The novels discussed are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. In addition, the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is briefly outlined. The novels in question can be considered as feminist novels. Indeed, the key aspect discussed in Jane Eyre is the empowerment of women through the heroine, Jane Eyre, as well as her demand for equality. Moreover, the battle for women’s rights and independence is explored in the The Tenant of Wildfell Hall through the novel’s heroine, Helen Huntingdon. Finally, it can be argued that Emily challenged gender roles through the way that she wrote, as well as through the heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, in Wuthering Heights.
The idea of combining Jane’s story with more modern elements — tied together by the enduringly grim concept of orphanhood — inspired Park to retell the classic from the perspective of a contemporary half-Korean, half-American young woman in New York City. And thus her breezy, engaging debut novel, “Re Jane.” (...)But it's not all Jane Eyre lovers writing for the NYT. Maria Casale on NYT's Motherlode:
Taking on a modern retelling of a classic has its disadvantages: namely, that you’re inviting comparisons with the original. But “Re Jane” is smart enough not to get too bogged down in allusions to “Jane Eyre”; there are no one-to-one equivalents of, say, Grace Poole (Brontë’s keeper of the crazy lady in the attic) or Miss Ingram (the snooty romantic rival). Jane Re may start her journey with ties to Jane Eyre, but she makes her own way in the world, and the result is a truly fresh, modern take on the coming-of-age novel. (Jennifer Keishin Armstrong)
On the other hand, my sixth-grade teacher refused to let me read a book that wasn’t on the reading list until I’d finished all the books he had on there. I blame him for my early distaste for Jane Austen (long since overcome). Still, to this day I cannot understand what people see in “Jane Eyre.” Once Maria dies, it’s all over, as far as I’m concerned.Maria?
The last exam I ever took was my English Lit A Level in 1981. I was 18 years of age. After an entire childhood of hard slog preparing for that moment, I handed in my final paper and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Goodbye Jane Eyre. Goodbye Antony and Cleopatra. (Frances Burscough)Wuthering Heights 2011 is available on Amazon Prime and PC World reviews it:
Unlike most costume movies, this one is not frilly and pretty; it takes place in a chilly, muddy countryside, where dirty boots creak on floorboards in a leaky, drafty house. Arnold uses a narrow aspect ratio, as if to compress the images even more. But her most brilliant achievement is to turn the alluring, monstrous, outcast Heathcliff into a black man, played as a boy by Solomon Glave and as a grownup by James Howson; it gives the other characters’ discrimination against him a new, painful wrinkle. Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario play the young and grownup Catherine, smitten with Heathcliff. It’s a stripped down version of this story, not necessarily romantic, but with a full, beating heart. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)Wall Street Journal reviews The Meuersalt Investigation by Kamel Daoud:
Literary criticism has changed, and readers have grown accustomed to finding a critique of a classic text within a corresponding text. Jean Rhys’s novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966) was among the first to peep behind the scenes: Who was the woman in the attic in “Jane Eyre”? Pia Pera’s “Lo’s Diary” (1999), a retelling of Lolita from the heroine’s point of view, is a later example of this flip-side fiction. “The Meursault Investigation” has an inescapable topical resonance, given the role played by political Islam in Algeria in recent times. (James Campbell)The Times reports a terrible story about an Australian brain tumour patient who is fighting for her right to decide her own destiny:
Ms Seales said: "I am petrified by what may happen to me in the lead-up to my death. My greatest fear is that my husband will have a mad wife to deal with, like Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre." (Bernard Lagan)This is a really cryptic reference about a free art event in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex:
The line-up also includes Olivia Louvel, French-born, British composer, producer and performer, who crafts electronic songs with laptop and voice. Collectress, described by Foxy Digitalis as a cross between the Elysian Quartet and possessed Brontë sisters teasing an unsuspecting dinner party. (Rye & Battle Observer)A local classical concert in Austinmer, Australia. As seen in Illawarra Mercury:
Soprano Kate Wilmot will also present a performance with pianist Kate Johnson at the Austinmer Uniting Church on Sunday, June 14, at 2pm.The Huffington Post interviews Amy Allen from an internet adversiting company:
The concert titled "From Words to Music" will bring to life the literary works of writers Shakespeare, Murger, Brontë and Dickinson helping them to find embodiment in the hands of composers such as Britten, Verdi, Puccini, Taylor and Holby. (Louise Turk)
What are your thoughts on Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In book and movement? (Laura Dunn)Bookreporter reviews Uprooted by Naomi Novik:
It's not a book I have personally read, but I know of it and it's a movement that I wholeheartedly believe in. I went to an all-girls school where we were shown that nothing is impossible if you work hard and try, and to never give up. We were taught to be strong and celebrated strong women - our houses on campus were all named after influential women like Emmeline Pankhurst and Charlotte Brontë.
Far from trying to seduce Agnieszka, the Dragon is distant, irritable and impatient with her --- all signs, as any romance-minded reader knows (think Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre), that he is madly attracted.
Aux côtés de ces best-sellers, les classiques font toujours recette. Histoires extraordinaires d’Edgar Allan Poe pointe ainsi à la première place à Lyon. À noter également, dans le top 10 des ventes des villes les plus lectrices, la présence de Crimes et Châtiments de Dostoïevski, Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent d’Emily Brontë, Les Fleurs du mal de Baudelaire et de L’Odysée d’Homère. (Clément Solym) (Translation)Liprópatas (Spain) lists problems a booklover has to dealt with:
Comprar una nueva edición de tu libro favorito porque la edición es preciosa (pregúntesele a los fans de Jane Austen o las Brontë si no lo han hecho…) y repartir las diferentes ediciones por tu estantería para que nadie se de realmente cuenta… (Raquel C. Pico) (Translation)GraphoMania (Italy) lists several love/hate relationships in books:
Cime tempestose, di Emily Brontë. Nessun lieto fine. Il lettore ci spera, fino all’ultimo, ma l’odio che devasta il cuore di Heathcliff, ragazzo di origini sconosciute, adottato da Mr Earnshaw, è superiore all’amore che nutre per la figlia di lui, Catherine. Allo stesso modo, anche nel cuore di lei l’amore per Heathcliff è superato da altre passioni. Non dimenticherete mai la brughiera. (Mariantonietta Barbara) (Translation)La Voz de Michoacán (México) devotes an article to Anne Brontë:
Anne Brönte (sic), novelista y poeta, la más pequeña de las hermanas es quizás la más desconocida. Ensombrecida por la prolífica carrera y arrolladora personalidad de Charlotte y el éxito de Emily con la inolvidable Cumbres Borrascosas, la obra y personalidad de Anne, tan diferente de sus hermanas, tendieron a pasar más injustamente desapercibidas.An alert for today, May 30, in Bologna (Italy):
Su salud delicada y su asma crónica provocaron que no acudiera a la misma escuela que sus hermanas sino que, con la ayuda de su tía, y gracias a la biblioteca de su padre, aprendiera en casa todos conocimientos necesarios que le permitirían en el futuro ganarse la vida como institutriz. (...) (Translation)
Un tè con Elizabeth Gaskell: Un pomeriggio i compagnia di libri, conversazione, di storie narratee da narrareUnapologetically American is not a Jane Eyre fan.
Sabato 30 maggio 2015 ore 17.00
Libreria delle Donne
Via San Felice, 16/a - Bologna
The Spring issue of Ploughshares includes a Jane Eyre-inspired poem:Acclaimed publisher and editor Neil Astley, founder of Bloodaxe Books, guest-edits this special transatlantic all-poetry issue, featuring poets from North Americ
a, Great Britain, and Ireland. The issue contains a stirring diversity of work, with writers who have roots everywhere from Guyana to Pakistan to Zambia, and also features poetry in Welsh, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic. Much of the work is from accomplished British and Irish poets who are still little-known in the States. As Astley writes in his introduction, the issue aims to break down "the illogical divide between readerships on either side of the Atlantic," and spark a conversation that will enliven and invigorate both poetic traditions.
Would Jane Eyre Come to the Information Desk?
Jackie Kay
From: Ploughshares
Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 2015, p. 111
Would Jane Eyre Come to the Information Desk?
The speaker voice at Heathrow airport said.
I stood and waited for her to appear, Jane Eyre.
And when she came near, she was shouting:
My name is Bertha, my name is not Jane Eyre.
I come from Kingston, Jamaica. Look here. (...)
Meanwhile a host of Brontë fans took the opportunity to visit the Parsonage Museum in Haworth after-hours as part of the annual national festival. [...]
Literature fans were able to experience the Brontë Parsonage as the famous siblings did, when the building was lit by candlelight.
The Brontë Society’s museum opened for separate events on two evenings as this year’s contribution to Museums at Night.
On the first night visitors were treated to a glass of wine as they arrived, then they viewed some of the museum’s treasures by candlelight.
Collections manager Ann Dinsdale invited visitors into the library, where she talked about some of the interesting items and artefacts belonging to the Brontë family.
On the following night visitors were able to have a chat with Charlotte Brontë’s friend Ellen Nussey, played by a costumed actress, while looking around the museum.
Among the visitors were the Routh family, Francesca, James, Angela and Michael, from Pudsey, who had travelled to Haworth specifically for the event.
James said: “It’s the first time I’ve visited for many years, but it’s been a fantastic evening.
“Seeing the museum like this is a unique and atmospheric experience, and the live interpretation brought it all the more to life.”
Rebecca Yorke, marketing and communications officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, was delighted with the response to the evening openings.
She said: “It felt very special being in the museum as darkness fell and the candlelight definitely added to the atmosphere.
“Our visitors agreed it was a very intimate event and we look forward to offering more opportunities to experience the museum after hours.”(David Knights)
The Telegraph lists literary hashtags, including one for Jane Eyre:Could the hashtag be interrupting lines of prose in new publications? Only time will tell. Until then, we've re-imagined famous lines from the literary canon as tweets, complete, of course, with appropriate hashtags. (Charlotte Runcie and Alice Vincent)
Scotland's The National lists Wuthering Heights 2009 among the things to watch on TV this week.
Wuthering Heights, ITV Encore, 9pmThis adaptation is also mentioned on Hollywood.com's list of 'The Fourteen Sexiest Ghosts Ever'.
Surely every period novel has been made into several costume dramas and Hollywood films, and we all know what the essential ingredients are: bonnets, blushes and gentlemen. Wuthering Heights contains none of those, being a harsh and brutal story. It’s set in the eighteenth century, and so it’s officially a “period drama” but that’s where the similarities end; there is no mistaking this for soppy Jane Austen nonsense.
Emily Bronte’s novel contains violence, rape and domestic abuse, and no-one is pretty or polite. In fact, those who may display genteel behaviours are soon shown to be weak and ridiculous, because you need harshness in your blood to survive on the moors.
This 2009 TV dramatisation stars Tom Hardy as the vengeful Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as impetuous Cathy, and the two lovers bring havoc, misery and death to all and sundry unfortunate enough to be around them. Andrew Lincoln plays Edgar, Cathy’s soft husband, who has no idea what he is getting involved in when he asks her to marry him.
I say that it’s the greatest novel ever written and this version is a good attempt at capturing it on camera. (Julie McDowall)
We'll Wuther Your Heights Any Day... Whatever That MeansNewsOK mentions the 2011 adaptation:
Charlotte Riley stunned as Catherine in the 2009 version of Wuthering Heights. Although Catherine haunts her former lover, Heathcliff, in his dreams, all we could really pay attention to is just how gorgeous Riley is in the modern Emily Brontë adaption. (Cori Rosen)
Although I didn't initially fall in love with it, Arnold's 2011 version of “Wuthering Heights” has haunted me in the past few years, so I'm eager to see what she has in mind for her partially Oklahoma-made film. (Brandy McDonnell)And this is how The Fresno Bee describes the latest film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd:
The formula: Begin a slow walk through “Wuthering Heights.” Takes some hasty steps through “The Great Gatsby.” Finish your trek with a bit of “Sense and Sensibility.”The London Evening Standard features singer Florence Welch:
A couple of times she breaks into song — once to demonstrate Etta James’ ‘Something’s Got a Hold on Me’, her voice swooping sweetly, which she belted out to hook her manager Mairead Nash in the ladies loo at a gig. Another time, we sing Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ — ‘So coh — oh-oh-ld, let me into your window...’ together. Yes, she did get to see the singer to whom she is often compared and describes the performance as ‘very out there. Very performance art and amazing.’ (Ginny Dougary)Bustle reveals who 10 literary characters would become if they were superheroes. Apparently, Jane Eyre would be Kitty Pryde.
Jane Eyre is so subtly strong. Her strength isn’t like the brashness of a Jo March, but it’s definitely there. She manages to tough it out through an abusive childhood home, an equally miserable orphanage , and finally through the heartbreak with Mr. Rochester. In each situation, she breaks through the circumstance and emerges in a better and better situation… all without breaking much of anything actually. So, who’s a better comparison than Kitty Pryde who can phase through walls and barriers? Also, you can’t tell me that the brutish powers of Kitty’s romantic interest Colossus isn’t a kind of perfect match for Mr. Rochester’s brazen manner. (Crystal Paul)Fashion label Suno finds its inspiration in literature, according to San Francisco Gate.
Their culturally literate collections (spring 2015 was inspired by artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois; fall by Bertha Mason, the imprisoned first wife of Mr. Rochester in “Jane Eyre”) are less interested in insta-trends and more focused on creating seasonless, occasionless options for its fans, including first lady Michelle Obama. (Tony Bravo)The walk of the week suggested by the Craven Herald and Pioneer has Brontë connections:
Good views, gritstone outcrops, Brontë moorland, patchwork fields, wooded valleys and a hidden waterfall feature on this energetic circular walk.The Telegraph shows some classic novels being tweeted with hashtags. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page shows experts from the Quilters' Guild exaining a quilt made by the Brontë sisters.
This week's walk starts at the Wycoller Country Park Haworth Road car park at Height Laithe, which is approached from Laneshaw Bridge, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire border not far from the historic market town of Colne. [...]
The ruined Wycoller Hall is believed to have been the inspiration for Ferndean Manor, in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre.
Wycoller is on the Brontë Way, which stretches from Lancashire into Yorkshire. (Lindsey Moore)
ARTICLES
Letter from the Editor by Belinda Hakes
Letter from the Chairman by Alexandra Leslie, Chairman, The Brontë Society Council
Brontë Society Summer Festival incorporating the Brontë Society AGM. Friday 5 June - Monday 8 June 2015
The Parsonage welcomes home one of the most significant literary artefacts of the 19th century
Bicentenary Conference
An interview with artist Amanda White by Nick Holland, freelance copy editor and author
The Brontë Society presents new exhibition to mark the Battle of Waterloo
My missing link: a visit to Patrick Brontë's homeland in Co. Down, Northern Ireland - tracing the Brontë family roots! by Marina Saegerman, 15 August 2014
John Martin: A Brontë Inspiration? by Margaret Mills, Adult Education Lecutrer in History, Art History and English Literature
Laudanum by Christine Went
Membership News: A new welcome to Linda Ling, our new Membership Officer; New online facilities; Website; Dates for your diary
Dyddgu Pritchard Owens. Died 12 August 2014 aged 84 by Margaret McCarthy and Beth Cunningham
Why I love The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Hannah Hobson, student at Wyke Sixth Form College, Hull
It was a similar story in Katie Mitchell’s 2006 innovative stage adaptation, Waves, which lost the definitive article and introduced the author as an on-stage character. There was much to love in Waves, but having “Virginia” narrating maudlin passages from her diaries as well as from the source novel presented the two as interchangeable. Once again, Woolf was brought back to life only to focus on her death.Patricia Park speaks about her novel Re Jane on Radio Alice. PopCrush selects the best songs of the year so far and one of them is Can't Deny My Love by Brandon Flowers which apparently
This is a rare and curious phenomenon. While novels re-animating dead authors are a staple of modern publishing (this year alone, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot and Dorothy Parker have had the treatment), placing the author within adaptations of their fiction is unusual. You don’t see Charles Dickens wandering through television versions of Bleak House. (Holly Williams)
listens like a recitation of Jane Eyre over the latest voice-modulation software: It’s a classic love story told across a modern synth-pop landscape, and with a beat tailor-made by drummer Darren Beckett, you’d be hard-pressed to lose your page. "You can run to the hillside / And you can close your eyes / But you're not gonna, not gonna deny / No you're not gonna, not gonna deny my love," Flowers pleads as intensity mounts. Who are we to disagree? (Matthew Donnelly)The Cornish Guardian features Cloudbusting, a Kate Bush tribute band.
Mandy added: "I've always been a fan, ever since I saw Wuthering Heights on television. I used to be in my bedroom with a hairbrush singing along to The Man With The Child In His Eyes. I still can't believe I've got the opportunity to do this." (Lee Trewhela)Derry Now tells the story of Prehen House:
Wuthering Heights’ fans will feel at home in Prehen House, one of the North West’s most historic buildings, with stories both steeped in romantic tragedy set in windswept hilltop locations.The Telegraph and Argus alerts us to today's activities at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Strong parallels have been drawn between the legend of Prehen House and Emily Brontë’s classic English novel having similar core themes, the destructive effect of jealousy and vengefulness.
Brontës for Beginners gives a short introduction to the literary sisters and three of their classic novels – Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
The 2pm talk will take place within Haworth's Parsonage Museum if wet or in the adjoining churchyard if fine.
And at 1.30pm, 2.30pm and 3.30pm, there will be storytelling with Christine McMahon.
All activities are free with admission to the museum. (Alistair Shand)
Or so they say the people of Simon & Schuster about their new Jane Eyre paperback:Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
ISBN: 9781471142505
Format: Paperback (April 2015)
Publisher:Simon & Schuster Ltd
Jane Eyre is a young governess who takes up a position at Thornfield Hall. Before long, she and her employer, Edward Rochester, fall in love. But everything is not as it seems when strange events occur: a mysterious fire, a random attack and eerie noises sound from the top-floor of the country manor. Charlotte Bronte's extraordinary novel is a coming-of-age story about one of the most enduring female characters of all time.
In August 1849, Charlotte Brontë wrote a letter to her publisher, W. S. Williams, in response to a review of her wildly successful novel, “Jane Eyre.” Like her sisters, Emily and Anne — both of whom, along with their alcoholic brother, Branwell, Charlotte had just lost to tuberculosis over the course of one terrible year — the eldest Brontë sister published her work under a gender-ambiguous pseudonym. The runaway success of “Jane Eyre” — published the same year as Emily’s and Anne’s novels “Wuthering Heights” and “Agnes Grey” — had sparked a broad debate about the identities of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Were they one individual writing under several names — a rumor that was, at one point, deliberately circulated by Emily and Anne’s publisher in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of their sister’s best seller? Most of all, speculation raged about the Bells’ gender. One smitten woman wrote Brontë’s publisher wishing to know if Currer Bell was a man — if so, she confessed, she must surely be in love with him.The Albany Democrat-Herald reports that
“Much of the article is clever,” Brontë writes of an essay on “Jane Eyre” in the North British Review, “and yet there are remarks which — for me — rob it of importance. . . . He says, ‘if “Jane Eyre” be the production of a woman — she must be a woman unsexed.’ ” This conditional objection to the novel’s bewitching narrative power — if a woman wrote this, then either she, the book or both must be somehow unnatural — stands as an invaluable example of Victorian-era mansplaining. But in their presupposition that male writing and female writing occupy two separate and circumscribable domains, Brontë’s indignant critics also betray an essentialist logic that’s arguably still present today (if reversed) in the rationale for gender-specific prizes like the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
I don’t mean to sound flippant about either women writers or gynocentric literary prizes — I am one of the former, and would have a hard time saying no to one of the latter, especially if cash and Baileys were involved. But if I were to be lucky enough to receive such an honor (and doesn’t the power of prizes persist in part because of the appeal of such acceptance-speech fantasies?), a tiny part of me would want to take the podium and say something like Charlotte Brontë’s reply to her critics in that righteous yet humble letter: “To you I am neither Man nor Woman — I come before you as an Author only — it is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me — the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.”
We are still many moors away from the egalitarian future of literary judgment that Brontë imagined 166 years ago, where authors might make their debut behind a gender-neutral curtain and be evaluated on their writing alone. Maybe for a century or more to come, we’ll continue to need cultural spaces in which “women’s writing” is protected and encouraged to flourish as something separate from “men’s.” But that same small part of me fears that the gated-off arena can too easily become a prison. There’s something ironic, and a little depressing, in the fact that the digital archive of a major American university now displays the poems of the boldly gender-ambiguous, literary-drag-wearing Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell under the festively decorated but irredeemably patronizing heading “A Celebration of Women Writers.”
A committee organized to review the use of a dystopian novel in a West Albany High School English class has recommended the book stay in the classroom.Onto more interesting students now, as My San Antonio features the district's seniors who are going to be Gates Millennium Scholars. One of them is
Jason Hay, the director of curriculum for secondary schools and the representative of the committee, forwarded his recommendation about Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" to the Democrat-Herald on Tuesday.
The novel depicts a grim future controlled by a misogynistic religious sect that sets aside select women as "handmaids;" breeders for the powerful men who control the society.
Katrina Montgomery, whose son is a senior in the AP English class using the novel, said her son reviewed the notes on the book and said he felt it would be too disturbing to read. Montgomery researched the title and spoke with friends who are educators and librarians and said she agreed. She filed her complaint earlier this month. [...]
Montgomery said she wouldn't restrict the book from general use but doesn't feel it should be assigned reading. She acknowledged that teacher Blain Willard had provided "Jane Eyre" as an alternative but said she didn't feel Willard weighted the two books fairly when presenting them as a choice.
Nine students chose "Jane Eyre" and 71 chose "The Handmaid's Tale." (Jennifer Moody)
Jessica Redmon, 18, from Sam Houston High School [...], who’s set on UT-Austin and wants to become a poet or screenwriter, said she found a safe haven in literature as a kid.A bad boys fangirl in the Democrat and Chronicle:
“My mother’s drug addiction affected me. I had to live with my grandmother in Galveston as a kid,” she said. “My grandmother raised me, gave me strength…and every week she would go to Goodwill, buy any books that looked interesting.
“I was reading Jane Eyre, ‘The Secret Garden,’ not knowing these were classics. That reading turned into short stories, poetry, (the Japanese comic book genre) manga, and eventually my writing.” (Jeremy T Gerlach)
I have a confession. I'm in love with an amazingly hot guy who isn't my husband. Actually, a bunch of hot guys. Their names are Heathcliff. And Rhett. And even Dracula (for my bad-boy moods).Finally, the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page invites people in the area to today's half-term activities:
Of course, they're not real men. They're better, because they live forever and unchanged in some of my favorite books ever. (Pam Sherman)
Join our drop-in art workshop between 11am and 3.30pm tomorrow (Wednesday) and create a Brontë Bird with artist Julia Ogden. We've also got a short 'Brontës for Beginners' talk at 2pm.Absolutely Gothic posts about Wuthering Heights.
Solihull Society of Arts Drama presentsWuthering Heights
Adapted by Lucy Gough
At The Edge, Alderbrook School
From Wednesday 27th May, 7:30pm
Until Saturday 30th May, 9:30pm
“They may bury me twelve foot deep and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I dare you now, Heathcliff, will you come?”
Growing up together on the Yorkshire Moors, Catherine Earnshaw and the gypsy Heathcliff are inseparable after he is adopted into her family. But when Catherine agrees to marry the refined Edgar Linton, Heathcliff sets his mind to revenge.
The passionate but doomed relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff – and its destructive impact on those surrounding them – is one of the most famous and enduring love stories in the English language. In Lucy Gough’s ‘darkly gripping’ adaptation for the stage, the spirit of Emily Brontë’s haunting novel is brought to exhilarating life.
Directed by Charlie Smith.
Produced by Chris Cooper
Technical Director: Marc Peatey
Stage Manager: Georgie Yarham-Baker
Catherine Earnshaw: Aimee Ferguson
Cathy Linton: Alice Davies
Heathcliff: Matt Barnard/Simon King
Hindley Earnshaw: Chris Cooper
Hareton Earnshaw: Liam Thorley
Isabella Linton: Kim Bradshaw
Linton Heathcliff: Harvey Grant
Edgar Earnshaw: Elliot Sayers
Nelly: Angela Ingram
Ignore the critics because what do they know? [On Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Shutter Island] I thought he really captured the spirit of it. The book is my least realistic book. It’s a book about books – the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley, the great neo-Gothicist Patrick McGrath – and 1950s B-movies. And Scorsese got that. He went all the way down the gonzo path on that movie. I knew immediately when I saw it: ‘This is going to p--- a lot of people off.’ I thought the New York Times film critic was going to have a heart attack on the page, he was so ballistic about it. But if you know why you do something, then I think you can feel okay with people’s reactions. (Anita Singh)Bustle wonders what Cary Fukunaga leaving the new film adaptation of Stephen King's It means for the project and calls
Sin Nombre and the adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, two movies that burn with intensity. (Kaitlin Reilly)Télérama (France) has an article on French critic (etc.) Roland Barthes:
Le réalisateur André Téchiné l'embrigade dans son film sur les sœurs Brontë (où, un rien coincé, il incarne un écrivain, William Thackeray) (Gilles Macassar) (Translation)The Guardian's Children's Books section reviews The DUFF by Kody Keplinger, a book which
was especially clever in showing the inspiration of Wuthering Heights. A book I admit, with shame, I haven't read. (LNicole)The City Paper (Colombia) looks at the valley of Une's landscape.
Yet by the look of things, the valley of Une, is hardly prosperous. Times are hard and have been so for decades. One could refer to this patchwork of cracked cottages and slanting chimneys as Colombia’s equivalent of a Victorian landscape; and one immortalized by writers Thomas Hardy, Antony Trollope and the Brontë sisters. (Richard Emblin)Radio Times announces that today's You've Been Framed (ITV) will include 'a feline performance of Wuthering Heights'.
Mabel’s Book Club 2015:
May 26, 7 p.m. in the Reading Room at Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts (205 Main St., Menomonie). Focus is books from the era of Mabel Tainter, discussion facilitated by Dr. Maura Dunst of UW-Stout’s English and Philosophy Dept.
This month’s book: Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte. For info, email dunstm@uwstout.edu; visit www.mabeltainter.org, call 715-235-0001, ext. 105, or check out Mabel’s Book club on Facebook.
Sherlock actress Louise Brearley, whose auburn hair glowed orange on a giant screen behind her, read with shaky grief a letter from Charlotte Brontë about her recently dead sister (Gaby Wood)Similarly, you can watch the actress read the same letter on BBC Newsnight about a month ago.
While I personally would make Atwood's book mandatory for our class, it was presented to us with an alternative: "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Brontë. Comparably tame in its descriptions, yet still a valuable piece of literature, this should have warded off any concerns. (Sydney Roberts)Los Angeles Times looks into 'traditional gender roles':
In the 19th century, fastidiousness was not only considered normal for men, it was expected.A Life Among Pages reviews...erm Jurassic Jane Eyre; Allergic to the Sun is reading Jane Eyre.
"Victorian fiction is abundant with examples of fastidious bachelors," the Victorian expert Maeve Adams told me, citing Roger Hamley of "Wives and Daughters," Edward Rochester of "Jane Eyre" and Sherlock Holmes. (Amanda Marcotte)
May half-term activities at the Museum
Fun for all the family
Come and join us during the half-term holiday and enhance your visit by participating in one of our activities.
Tuesday 26, Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 May: 2pm Talk:
Brontës for Beginners: a short introduction to the Brontë sisters and three of their great novels, 'Wuthering Heights', 'Jane Eyre' and 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'. The talks will take place in the churchyard (or inside the Museum if the weather is a bit wet and wuthering.)
Wednesday 27 May 11am - 3.30pm: Art workshop
Create a Brontë bird with artist Julia Ogden. A drop-in art workshop based on the birds that inhabit Haworth and the moors, using mono-printing with textured materials. A great opportunity to explore colour and texture and create a beautiful piece of art to take home with you.
Thursday 28 May 1.30pm, 2.30pm and 3.30pm:
Storytelling with Christine McMahonListen to Christine's tales of folk and fairies. Who knows, you might be inspired to go and write your own - just like the Brontës did!
All activities are free with admission to the Museum.
I have lost count of the number of times I have read this book. The last time was aloud to my (then) teenage daughters. The first time I read it I was quite young and I was captivated by the fact that Jane was inwardly vehement, passionate and rebellious, yet outwardly small and plain. I identified with that contradiction strongly. I love the grand guignol of Thornfield and the mad Bertha Rochester. I love that Rochester must be tamed and Jane made independent before Bronte allows them to marry. It is time I read it again. As a girl, Jane Eyre gave me hope.
I had earlier started off as an Akewi on Radio Nigeria at 16, published Teen Agers Must Repent at 17 and published Aye Ode Oni (Yoruba poetry) at 18. It is gratifying that literary giant Chinua Achebe gave me permission to be the first playwright to adapt his all time best Things Fall Apart into TV and stage play in 1965. The play was taken round the country in early 1966. This rare opportunity encouraged me to adapt Cyprian Ekwensi’s Iska, James Ngugi’s Weep Not Child and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the stage.According to Los Angeles Times:
In the 19th century, fastidiousness was not only considered normal for men, it was expected. “Victorian fiction is abundant with examples of fastidious bachelors,” the Victorian expert Maeve Adams told me, citing Roger Hamley of “Wives and Daughters,” Edward Rochester of “Jane Eyre” and Sherlock Holmes. “By counter-example, those who fail at being (or remaining) fastidious, in appearance or morals, are justly punished in very satisfying ways with death, dereliction or the greatest tragedy of all, permanent bachelorhood.” (Amanda Marcotte)The Ellsworth American reviews the DVD edition of Fifty Shades of Grey:
“Shades” is basically a retelling of a Brontë gothic. The brooding, Byronic Mr. Rochester is channeled by the emotionally imprisoned Christian. The determined, romantic Jane Eyre character is embodied by the plucky Anastasia. She’ll learn what’s locked inside him and they shall know true love. (Stephen Fay)The Oregonian publishes the obituary of Stefan Minde and remembers that,
In 1982, he conducted Portland Opera's world premiere staging of Bernard Herrmann's "Wuthering Heights." (Mark Mandel)TawdraK interviews the author Ruth Cardello:
Q:A mysterious benefactor offers to gift you the first edition of any book you choose. Which will be taking the place of honor on your shelf?Maria G. Francke in Sydsvenskan (Sweden) is excited by the news of the upcoming BBC Brontë biopic. Cine, Libros y Jane Austen (in Spanish) reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
A:Jane Eyre. It’s one of my old favorites.
Christa AckroydMore information in Keighley News.
Brontë Heritage Tour
Sunday 24 May, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Meeting Point – National Media Museum
There is so much more to the story of the Brontë sisters than simply being the literary daughters of a clergyman. Like their father, they were social pioneers, recording the difficult times they lived in and writing under masculine pseudonyms because the subjects they wished to embrace would never be, in Charlotte’s words, considered positively feminine. If their books continue to fascinate generations, then the story of these three incredible women is surely as exciting and passionate as anything which flowed from their pens. Tragic yet invigorating, their lives and passions continue to inspire today and their spirits live on through the subjects they wrote about; fairness, equality of class, race, gender – each as relevant now as it was then.
Join Brontë enthusiast Christa Ackroyd on our classic vintage bus for this unique tour, taking in the most important Brontë heritage sites in the district, to discover the untold story of the country’s most famous literary family:
Learn about their visionary father, sent to the West Riding by William Wilberforce and the Clapham set, to help the poor amidst the Luddite uprisings.
Travel to Thornton village where Patrick Brontë preached and where his famous daughters were born.
Taking in breathtaking views of the moors now immortalised in Wuthering Heights and stop for lunch in Luddenden at the Lord Nelson Inn, one of Branwell’s favourite drinking spots.
Spend the afternoon at the Parsonage in Haworth, where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote their classic novels. Enjoy a personalised tour of the museum, including an exclusive private visit to the museum library to view close up some of the treasures of the collection.
The amazing story behind attic that inspired Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë based Thornfield Hall on Norton Conyers - and the recent history of the house deserves a novel of its own. (...)
Norton Conyers is no ordinary home. Charlotte Brontë visited the country house in 1839, when she was a governess to a family called the Sidgwicks. She was so taken by the property that it is believed she described it in great detail as Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre.
Charlotte heard about the legend of a mad woman hidden in the attic, from the house’s history. And it is believed that this inspired her to create the insane Mrs Rochester character in her classic novel.
Wood panelling on the first floor conceals a hidden door, which leads up to the attic space above. Snaking through a warren of corridors lies the “Mad Woman’s room”. It sits almost empty and forgotten. In fact, the original staircase was only uncovered in 2004, having been panelled in during the 1880s. The similarities between the actual secret staircase and the fictional one in Jane Eyre are striking. (...)
Norton Conyers will be open to view work in progress from July 19-26 from 2pm-5pm (bookings only; nortonconyers.org.uk). (Stuart Penney)
"There are also many great exhibitions at museums including Cartwright Hall, Cliffe Castle, the Industrial Museum, National Media Museum and Bronte Parsonage Museum," a Bradford spokesman said. (Mark Stanford)The Wall Street Jounal asks Sheila Hancock about her five favourite books. Nor surprisingly she chooses a Brontë:
The Tenant of Wildfell HallBy Anne Brontë (1848)The Japan News interviews the diplomat Koichiro Matsuura:
3. Anyone who thinks that Anne is the meek, less talented Brontë sibling cannot have read this novel about a mysterious woman who arrives at a gloomy mansion and who has, in defiance of the laws and customs of the time, left her husband. She will live with her son and, she hopes, make her own living as an artist. Of that brutal husband the woman, Helen Graham, writes in her diary: “It is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband—I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession but it is true, I hate him—I hate him!” After Anne’s death, her sister Charlotte would publish a rebuke in which she declared that Anne’s choice of subject matter, involving marital and child abuse and of the degradation of alcoholism, was “an entire mistake.” But Anne’s had been a searingly accurate depiction of these things. Her rage against the treatment of the women of her time has established her as an early feminist writer. The wonderfully vitriolic attack on her male critics in the preface to the second edition alone justifies that label.
To improve my English ability, my father allowed me to take after-school English lessons from a Japanese tutor who had worked as an interpreter at a U.S. military base. When I was a student at Hibiya High School and then the University of Tokyo, I read a number of paperback novels in English, such as Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” and reading developed my vocabulary. I struggled with speaking and aural comprehension in English, so I attended an English conversation school when I was at university. (Interview by Minako Sasako)The Australian talks about Orson Welles and echoes one of those 'urban film' legends which is repeated too often:
Welles in an unforgettable presence in the old Joan Fontaine Jane Eyre and there is the suggestion that he took over the direction in that startling first apparition of the charismatic and irresistible Rochester. (Peter Craven)We don't deny Welles's influence on the overall style of the film but we think that Robert Stevenson was something more than a puppet director.
A period drama that doesn't have the female lead as some damsel in distress. In fact, Jane Eyre is more concerned for her own soul than any man *high five*. If you want to see a heroine with a little more gusto than the Austen girls (we love them, but they do just stand around and wait to be proposed to a LOT), this one is for you. (Emmy Griffiths)My Bookish Ways interviews the horror writer John Langan:
What do you like to see in a good story, and what authors or novels have influenced you the most in your work, and your life?Another writer, Julie Reece, is interviewed on Glitter:
(...)Some of the books that have been important to me would be Jane Eyre, My Antonia, Dark Gods, Ironweed, To the Lighthouse, and Sophie’s Choice. These are the writers and books I’m aware of, anyway.
GLITTER: How did you come up with the plot for The Artisans?Putting Life into words posts about a visit to the Parsonage and Haworth; mirabile dictu is rereading the Brontës; Columbiantony uploads to flickr pictures of East Riddlesden Hall.
JULIE: I grew up reading the classics. Nerd alert? Fine. Books like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker’s Dracula were some of my favorites, as well Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. For a long time now, I’ve wanted to write a contemporary story with that same sort of vibe—thrilling, sexy, and mysterious. Also, I secretly want to be a Brontë sister, but that’s an issue for my therapist.
The Bradford Literature Festival has several Brontë events today, May 23:Susan Newby
Brontës for Beginners
Saturday 23 May, 10:30 am – 11:00 am
The Midland Hotel, Princes BallroomPrice
The Brontës are the world’s most famous literary family and authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. Even though Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë’s novels are now more than 150 years old, their power still moves readers today.
This whistle-stop guide by Susan Newby, education officer at Brontë Parsonage Museum, offers a useful introduction to the life and work of this exceptional family.
Juliet Barker, John Bowen, Rebecca Fraser and Bonnie Greer, with Boyd Tonkin
Race and Gender in the Novels of the Brontës
Saturday 23 May, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
The Midland Hotel, Princes BallroomPrice
Women feel as men feel
So says Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a novel which, given its honesty about female desire and views on independence, is viewed as a feminist manifesto. The Bronte’s views on race were equally free from the prevailing notions of their times and there is much critical debate about the origins of Heathcliff, the ‘dark-skinned gipsy’ found on the streets of Liverpool, in Wuthering Heights.
Join Bronte experts Juliet Barker, John Bowen, Rebecca Fraser and Bonnie Greer with Boyd Tonkin, for a critical exploration of the ground breaking views on race and gender within the novels of the Brontë sisters, not only in the context of the age in which they lived, but also in highlighting the relevance of their work today.
Afternoon Tea with Ann Dinsdale, hosted by Mary Dawson
Brontë Relics
Saturday 23 May, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
The Midland Hotel, French Ballroom
The Brontës are the world’s most famous literary family. Their Haworth home has become a destination for pilgrimage and the family’s letters, manuscripts and personal possessions – many of which have now returned to the Brontë Parsonage Museum – are revered and sought after as relics.
Join Ann Dinsdale from the Brontë Parsonage Museum for a delicious traditional afternoon tea at the historic Midland Hotel, as she discusses key objects and tells the fascinating story of the development of the Brontë Society’s collection.
is a fusion of the medical sciences and love stories—and for a reason. Blame it on my parents. Both professionals in medicine, they also highly valued my interest in the creative arts. So while I naturally excelled in math and science, I also became a hopeless romantic. The idea of the epic romance in literature and history always left a huge impression on me: the stories of Cupid and Psyche, Daphne and Apollo, Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Catherine, Elizabeth and Darcy, Daisy and Gatsby. Epic love. Romance. And then, the study of medicine was always around. So it is no wonder my jewelry started to take on this form.The New York Times says the following about Mia Wasikowska:
My tagline “Romance Never Dies” fuses the idea of love and the lifeline.
Ms. Wasikowska, having already been Jane Eyre and Alice in Wonderland, is now something of a specialist in literary heroines and does a lot of acting here just with her eyes. “I think she could be in silent films,” Ms. Barthes said. (Charles McGrath)The blunder of the day comes supposedly from a Brontëite, The National interviews writer Shahd Thani:
What’s your favourite book? Wuthering Heights. In an age when Jane Austen was writing very demure things, Emily Brontë came out with something so wild that people wondered how a woman could be writing it. (Mitya Underwood)Actually, Emily Brontë hadn't even been born when Jane Austen died in 1817 (she would be born the following year). And Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, so 30 years after Jane Austen's death.
Writing Dresses on Rooby Lane. Via Glasgow STV:Single mum Rooby Lane, 48, and a team of "mature seamstresses" have been sewing away over tea and biscuits to create items that encourage us to "wear our personality".
Wuthering Heights, Party Dress, Prom Dress
These gorgeously geeky Dresses are specially designed for special occasions.. so that you don't have to arrive at your special event, basically looking similar to everyone else!
SPOLIER ALERT.. Don't read this dress if you don't know the ending!!
Beautiful geeky Prom Dresses, if you are looking for something a little bit Unique!
All of my dresses are limited Edition, and once they are gone they are gone! You will need to leave at least 28 days until your dress will be dispatched.
They have an outside zip down the back, and lined on top half.
This one is a gorgeous Wuthering Heights literature Special Occasion Dress.
And a scarf:Wuthering Heights Infinity Scarf
Gorgeously Unique Wuthering Heights Infinity Scarves.
Printed with a portion of the scene where Katy Is knocking on Heathcliff's window.
Perfect as a romantic gift ;)
These scarves measure 57' x 9' Made in a lovely soft jersey.
A video art installation celebrating a link between the industrial grandeur of Salts Mill with the literary magic of Haworth's Parsonage is being filmed in Saltaire.The same newspaper also has an article on the BBC Brontë biopic project.
Acclaimed contemporary artist Diane Howse, the Countess of Harewood, is re-making the connection between these two great places with The Silent Wild, an art work she is creating this week in the Mill's huge roof space.
The resulting work uses a detailed floor plan of the Parsonage dining room, has been produced with choreographer Carolyn Choa and dancer Daniel Hay-Gordon.
It will be shown at the Parsonage and at Salts Mill later this year, telling the unexpected connection between two of Yorkshire’s iconic buildings.
Sir James Roberts, the second owner of Salts and an entirely self made man, was born to a family of weavers in Oakworth near Haworth.
He attended the Sunday school of Reverend Patrick Bronte, and claimed to have met Charlotte Brontë in Haworth.
When the chance came up to purchase the Parsonage, Lady Roberts suggested that her husband do just that.
On August 4, 1928, Sir James and his wife presented the Parsonage to the Brontë Society, securing it for posterity. (Chris Tate)
Re Jane is breezy and accessible, at its best when portraying Jane’s haplessness and frustration. “I traveled nearly seven thousand miles across the globe to escape societal censure only to end up in the second-largest Korean community in the Western World,” she says wryly of her childhood move to the U.S.Describing the National Gallery's artist in residence, George Shaw, the Evening Standard says that,
The Jane Eyre connection here is substantial (a key character even shares the pen name under which Brontë published her masterpiece), though not slavish, which makes sense given that Park’s interest in feminism goes beyond the Women’s Studies professor who plays an important role in the book. (...)
None of the conflicts here are resolved in particularly shocking ways, but Park’s portrait of Korean-American life feels authentic and is ultimately endearing. Charlotte Brontë would be proud. (Tom Deignan)
Shaw is an infectiously passionate reader, a cinephile and music fan. His conversation teems with references to mavericks and geniuses of British and Irish culture, from Emily Brontë to Tony Hancock, Morrissey and Francis Bacon. (Ben Luke)The Perth Courier features writer Cheryl Cooper:
Towards the end of high school, she encountered the inevitable question: what do you want to be after graduation?Much like this columnist from Jezebel's Groupthink.
“Well, I knew I wanted to be a writer,” she said simply.
She studied English and Education at Queen’s University in Kingston. She read the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and “my desire to write fiction was so strong.” (Desmond Devoy)
Here’s the way the story goes: a rugged childhood in rural Virginia; a mother who told the child she didn’t write as well as the Brontës did at that age; a bachelor’s degree in philosophy; a peripatetic early adulthood that included a phase of homelessness, a stint as a bricklayer, secretarial work in New York, editorship of a zine, a couple of impetuous marriages, an expatriation to Europe; a correspondence, struck up over their mutual concern for the plight of migratory birds, with Jonathan Franzen, whose report on the mass poaching of songbirds in Cyprus she’d seen in The New Yorker; Franzen’s curiosity about whether she wrote fiction; her creative flowering after her mother’s death that freed her in middle age (she’s 51) to write the way she writes, Brontës be damned. (Christian Lorentzen)According to Alibi's review of the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd,
In the realm of 19th-century romantic literature, the works of Thomas Hardy have a bit more meat on the bone than your average English melodrama of love and marriage. In the more typical novels (let’s say, for the sake of argument, those of Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters), there’s an awful lot of sitting around, drinking tea and discussing of “whomever shall I marry?” It’s not that the characters in Hardy’s novels never broach the subject of marriage—but they rarely drink tea. And they’re just as likely to hurt each other, betray each other, kill each other and break one another’s hearts as they are to fall madly in love. (Devin D. O’Leary)You know, Wuthering Heights--that peaceful, quiet novel where everyone just sits around drinking tea oh so civilly.
Fidèle à la trame d’Hardy, le cinéaste danois trouve un bel équilibre entre romantisme de l’histoire et une forme de naturalisme, notamment dans cette façon de filmer la nature, les animaux, les insectes… Un peu à la façon d’Andrea Arnold dans sa très forte adaptation des "Hauts de Hurlevent" d’Emily Brontë en 2012. (H. H.) (Translation)On the other hand, Knack Focus, another Belgian site reviewing the film, doesn't see similarities, but differences.
In plaats van de woeste, modderige levendigheid van Andrea Arnolds Wuthering Heights (2011) krijgen we mooie plaatjes van bucolische taferelen. Maar verkijk je daar niet op. Gepolijst is hier niet synoniem met glad maar met verfijnd. (Niels Ruëll) (Translation)Times Higher Education looks at Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae 25 years after it was first published and wonders,
Who else would have argued that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Christabel (1797) offers readers a vision of the “lesbian vampire” before enacting one of the “greatest transsexual self-transformations in literature”? Or that in Wuthering Heights (1847), a regular fixture of secondary English curricula, Emily Brontë regards “the body as the basis of gender” as “an affront to imagination and emotion”, and so attempts to “treat her sexual identity as an abstraction dwelling apart in another dimension of space and time”? (Nathan Smith)Bustle lists '7 Incredible Storytellers in Literature' such as
Nelly Dean from Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëBustle has also selected '8 Love Letters Written By Famous Women' including one from Charlotte Brontë to Constantin Heger.
Nelly tells such a captivating story of Heathcliff and Catherine that readers get so wrapped up in it they sometimes even forget she existed in the book in the first place. Isn’t that the mark of an excellent storyteller: to put the story ahead of your own character? Mr. Lockwood is renting a space from aged Heathcliff, when Heathcliff starts to act totally bizarre about a ghost named Catherine. Lockwood is so confused, he finds the housekeeper Nelly and requests that she tell the entire tale about the family at Wuthering Heights, which she does. Never forget. (Caitlin White)
Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia translated into Polish:SekretVia Wiadomości24 .
Charlotte Brontë
Translated by: Paulina Braiter
Publisher: Mg
ISBN: 978-83-7779-213-1 Paperback
ISBN: 978-83-7779-214-8 Ebook
Wyimaginowana, fantastyczna kraina Angrii, wymyślona w dzieciństwie przez rodzeństwo Brontë, to miejsce akcji opowiadań, stworzonych przez nastoletnią wówczas Charlotte. Choć niewątpliwie młodzieńcze, opowiadania te ukazują już przebłyski jej talentu, a także elementy i wątki, które później miała rozwinąć w pełni w swoich słynnych powieściach.
W Verdopolis młoda markiza musi poradzić sobie ze wstrząsającym sekretem, który zagraża jej szczęściu i małżeństwu. W wiejskiej rezydencji młoda mężatka nie może zrozumieć, dlaczego mąż nie pozwala jej się kontaktować ze światem. Tajemnice, knowania, arystokracja, miłość, piękne młode panny, dumni młodzieńcy – wszystko to łączy się i splata w opowiadaniach, tworzących ten zbiór.
A Cumbrian writer will be walking 130 miles next month to promote her groundbreaking new play about Branwell Brontë.Interesting because Branwell was a great walker himself.
Caroline Lamb, originally from Sedbergh and a previous student of Settlebeck, Sedbergh, and Queen Elizabeth School, Kirkby Lonsdale, is now the artistic director and resident writer of theatre company Dangerous to Know.
The company will be bringing Caroline’s self-penned play The Dissolution of Percy to unique spaces in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire this November.
The production has the backing of the Brontë Society, and will take place just before the start of the bicentenary celebrations in 2016.
To promote and fundraise for the production, Caroline will walk the equivalent of five marathons from June 20-27, including stops at Broughton-in-Furness, Kendal and Cowan Bridge.
At these venues she will deliver performed readings of work by the famous literary family, as well as pieces donated by friends, colleagues and audience members.
Caroline, now living in Manchester, said: “I decided to write a play with Branwell as the main character because when I started researching the family he just jumped out at me – why did he have no credits to his name when his sisters did so well?
“I wanted to take the opportunity to represent the Brontë family as "real" people - a real family who fight and joke and struggle together.”
For full details of Caroline’s performances go to http://dangeroustoknow.org/latest-news-updates/. (Katie Dickinson)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Innocent, wide-eyed governess turns up in crotchety (but kinda sexy) man's house to look after his young ward. Can they? Will they? And what on earth is in that locked attic?
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Headstrong Cathy, brooding Heathcliff, violent weather, Yorkshire moors and a love affair you just know isn't going to end well. If you like your romance with a large helping of tragedy, this is for you. Tissues at the ready...
Jane Eyre – betraktad som en feministisk klassiker men ganska obekväm läsning ur ett postkolonialt perspektiv. (Karin Lundin) (Translation)Bustle is 'all about' the BBC's Brontë biopic project and lists '7 fun facts about the Brontë sisters that hopefully come up in the two-hour television drama'. There is a Wuthering Heights Livetweet going on at the @covenbookclub (#WHeightsLT).
