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19/01/20266:30 PM - 8:00 PMHyperemesis Gravidarum is medical terminology for the excessive vomiting of early pregnancy. There is a commonly held belief that Charlotte Nicholls (née Brontë) suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum; however, is this merely a myth, a story, a false idea or is it true, a reality, and an accurate description of her tragic, final illness and untimely death?Charlotte’s official death certificate of 1855 showed that the disease Phthisis, also known as consumption or tuberculosis, was the cause of her death. Yet modern Brontë commentators claim that Charlotte died from excessive vomiting of pregnancy / hyperemesis gravidarum.Charlotte wrote in Jane Eyre (1847),“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.”And so, on 19 January, 2026, the very same day a hundred and seventy-one years ago in 1855, when Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey explaining that,“… indigestion and continual faint sickness have been my portion …”Join us via Zoom from the Brontë Birthplace, Thornton to hear esteemed retired Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist Dr Michael O’Dowd present evidence both for and against the concept that Charlotte was affected by hyperemesis gravidarum.
An online alert from the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton:
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Michael O’Dowd: Birthing the Brontës – Online Talk
Tuesday 14th October, 6:30pm
In May 1815, Maria Branwell Brontë arrived in Thornton with her husband Patrick and their two daughters. Over the next few years, she gave birth to four more children—Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne—within the walls of what is now the Brontë Birthplace.
In this illuminating online talk, Dr Michael O’Dowd, retired Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and distinguished medical historian, explores the birthing practices of early 19th-century England. What did childbirth look like for women like Maria Brontë? What positions were used? Was pain relief available? Who attended the birth?
Dr O’Dowd also examines the final illness of Charlotte Brontë, asking whether she may have died from hyperemesis gravidarum—a severe pregnancy-related condition—or another cause entirely.
With decades of experience and a deep passion for medical history, Dr O’Dowd brings a unique perspective to the Brontë story. His publications include Charlotte Brontë: A Medical Casebook (2025), Charlotte Brontë: An Irish Odyssey (2021), and The History of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
by Jo WaughPalgrave MacmillanISBN: 978-3-031-65139-7August 2024This book argues for the significance of contagious disease in critical and biographical assessment of Charlotte Brontë’s work. Waugh argues that contagion, infection, and quarantining strategies are central themes in Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), and Villette (1853). This book establishes the ways in which Charlotte Brontë was closely engaged with the political and social contexts in which she wrote, extending this to the representation and metaphorical import of illness in Brontë’s novels. Waugh also posits that although miasmatic theories are often assumed to have been entirely in the ascendant in the late 1840s, the relationship between miasma and contagion was a complex one and contagion in fact remained a crucial way for Charlotte Brontë to represent disease itself, as well as to explore the relationships between the individual and social, political, and cultural contexts. Contagion and its metaphors are central to Charlotte Brontë’s construction of subjectivity and of the responsibilities of the individual and the group.
This introductory chapter sets out the argument that Charlotte Brontë was a writer aware of, interested in, and often anxious about, contagion. It establishes the claims that will run through the rest of the book: that the transmission of the diseases Brontë describes in her novels is a significant, and under-explored, aspect of those representations; that contagion as a concept in the 1840s and 1850s was a broad concept which encompassed many kinds of infection; that attending to Brontë’s depictions of contagion and infection offers potential more fully to understand her analysis and diagnosis of many other aspects of human interaction and society. The chapter offers context for contagion and its implications both metaphorical and literal in the period, and outlines Brontë’s particular sense of what health and its preservation entailed in the context of the epidemic and contagious diseases prevalent in her lifetime.
Chapter 2 traces the representation of contagion in accounts of the Brontës’ deaths in biographies from Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë through the twentieth century and up to the more recent past. Brontë’s biography has a long and vexed relationship to Brontë’s scholarship, particularly in the case of 1970s’ and 1980s’ enthusiasm for retrodiagnosing Charlotte Brontë with hyperemesis gravidarum. That diagnosis, made by Sir Philip Rhodes in 1972, was reiterated in several biographies and proved influential, with some critics inferring the neuroticism then associated with that diagnosis in Brontë’s novels. Less controversially but equally importantly, this chapter argues, the ways in which biographers have at times downplayed and times emphasized the potentially contagious aspects of the deaths of Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë reveal much about the extent to which they have been willing to consider those writers as inhabiting a contagious world or even being vectors of contagion themselves.
Throughout her adult life, Charlotte Brontë described an anxiety bordering on obsession with consumption, or tuberculosis as the disease is now named. In Jane Eyre, however, she created Helen Burns, perhaps Victorian literature’s most famous consumptive. Helen is forbearing, ethereal, too good for this world: she expires painlessly and gently, and is often taken to be the archetype of the long-suffering yet patient sufferer of the disease. This chapter argues, however, that far from absorbing and replicating the tropes of literary consumption which Susan Sontag, Clark Lawlor and others have identified, the sentimentality and ethereality with which the narrative of Jane Eyre surrounds Helen Burns and her death make the case that even the most exceptional individuals are vulnerable to this insidious threat.This chapter interrogates the trope of “romantic consumption,” traces Brontë’s anxiety about the disease in her correspondence from her teens on, and gives an overview of all the Brontës’ representation of consumption in their novels. It th
en argues that the sentimentality surrounding Helen Burns’ death is knowingly, and strategically, constructed, and that Brontë drew on the potential of consumption to individualize sufferers in the literary text primarily to make the emphatic case that the disease was a universal and undiscriminating threat.
This chapter argues that the typhus epidemic described in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) shows Brontë engaging with, and offering answers to, questions about contagion, community, leadership, heroism, and martyrdom which were also in contention during the typhus epidemics in England and Scotland in the spring and summer of 1847. These epidemics generated significant coverage in local and regional newspapers, ranging from articles blaming the Irish poor for spreading contagion to reflective pieces on the responsibility of the better-off in society toward the poor, or on the dangers of assuming immunity from contagion. This chapter traces those arguments and highlights typhus’s uses in the literary text - including Charles Kingsley’s Yeast (1848) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853)—to suggest the interconnectedness of communities. The chapter then turns to Jane Eyre to argue that in this novel, Brontë dramatizes the ethical and moral implications of contagion, ultimately affirming the benefits of connectivity and community over individual heroics, or the contagionist impulse to quarantinism.
The eponymous heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) briefly worries that she has contracted the rabies virus after she is bitten by a dog. This chapter argues that the rabies episode in this novel represents a short but violent microcosm of the text’s broader interest in the ways in which incipient threats of various kinds might be controlled, mollified out of existence, quelled or quashed. In the pages which describe Shirley’s bite, self-cauterization, and recovery, boundaries of all kinds—cutaneous, emotional, and sexual—are challenged and ultimately fortified. Shirley is, this chapter argues, persistently engaged in exploring the ways in which dangerous influences may or should be repressed, and the ways in which dangers ferment. By focusing in detail on the rabies virus as it was understood in the 1840s, the chapter shows how associated concepts of fermentation and rebellion resonate throughout the novel. It concludes by pointing to the limitations of, and contradictions in, the text’s surface alignment between rabid dogs and insurrectionists.
In her final novel, Villette (1853), Charlotte Brontë created a heroine who seems to be profoundly affected by air, weather, and atmosphere. Lucy Snowe’s encounters with contagion, by contrast, are rare. Lucy’s often “dreary fellowship,” described as exclusive to the unhealthy, with “the winds and their changes” (300) pervades the text. As several critics have noted, Brontë’s own belief that mind and body were affected by weather was legitimated by contemporary assumptions about the connections between atmosphere and health, and especially female health. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) also presented Brontë as irredeemably sensitive to the weather, in ways which this chapter argues have come to form our understanding of the writer, her health, and her own sense of the connections between weather and health. In the 1850s, to be sensitive to the weather was not always considered a positive characteristic: such sensitivity was often presented either as an affectation, or as the result of an invalid’s self-imposed excessive protection from the elements. This chapter argues that in Villette Brontë offers an active critique of the qualities of the weather sensitivity and weather wisdom which Gaskell had attributed to her, and explores the tensions inherent in either quarantining oneself from, or exposing oneself to, the weather.
Charlotte Brontë’s novels were written, published, and read, in a period in which contagious diseases were visibly present, politically contentious, and symbolically resonant whenever they appeared in the literary text. The questions contagion invites—what is our responsibility to the poor; how should contagion be managed; what does health mean, or look like, in the face of contagion; what are the risks and benefits of connection and interaction?—pervade her novels. Yet Brontë herself has often been presented in biography and some scholarship as somehow detached from contagion and all its metaphorical possibilities and political implications: accounts of her own health and death, for example, historically emphasized their connection to the weather, or her exceptional difficulties in pregnancy. Such accounts play a part in constructing a vision of Brontë as a unique, or at least exceptional, individual to whom the logic of contagion does not apply and who also did not understand the potential or implications of contagion, even though her representations of contagion and contagious diseases strongly suggest otherwise. Paradoxically, perhaps, this version of Brontë has circulated in contagious ways, and so too has her work—specifically and especially Jane Eyre. This chapter concludes the book by tracing some of those contagious and viral transmissions of ideas about the writer and her novels in popular culture and merchandising.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The novel tracks Heathcliff, as he takes revenge on those who prevented him from seeing his true love, Cathy Earnshaw.
"Wuthering Heights" by Emily BrontëWe studied this for the Leaving Cert, and I loved it so much it made me realize I wanted to study English in college. I still have my copy from that time, covered in underlines and highlighter, and I remember one night staying up really late to read it and the Kate Bush song coming on the radio, and being completely lost in the story. I now realize of course that it is a totally toxic affair, but what an amazing story.
Wuthering HeightsRalph Fiennes' acting career began in 1987 when he joined the National Theatre. A few years later, Fiennes made his television debut in the show Prime Suspect, and in 1992, he appeared on the big screen in Wuthering Heights, based on the novel by Emily Brontë, playing the role of Heathcliff.The action of the movie takes place in the dark moors of North Yorkshire. Many years ago, a local landowner, Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, took in a dying gypsy boy, named him Heathcliff, and raised him as his own son. After the owner's death, the relatives turned the foundling into a slave. Heathcliff's only support came from the late Earnshaw's daughter, Catherine. (Zoe Wallace)
En la casa Banda Propia Editoras también tendrán importantes novedades. En su colección Perdita publicarán la correspondencia de Charlotte Brontë con sus editores, William Smith Williams y George Smit (sic). “Es una selección de cartas en torno a Jane Eyre, ese clásico de la literatura inglesa que Charlotte publica a mediados del siglo XIX bajo seudónimo masculino”, apuntan. Traducido por Ángelo Narváez. (Pablo Retamal N.) (Translation)
Simone Athayde, writerJane Eyre — Livro de Charlotte Brontë, publicado em 1847. A autora nasceu em uma família de talentosas escritoras. A irmã mais conhecida, Emile (sic) Brontë, escreveu um de meus livros prediletos, O morro dos Ventos Uivantes. Por isso e pela boa fama da obra de Charlotte, sinto que começarei o ano bem. Segundo a sinopse disponível no site da editora Record, a autora “representou, por meio da protagonista, a ideia de emancipação feminina. Ao longo do romance, são tecidas diversas críticas à condição de inferioridade atribuída às mulheres naquela época. A autora é, por isso, considerada transgressora das regras vigentes em sua sociedade, vista hoje como uma mulher à frente de seu tempo”. Sobre essa obra, disse Virginia Woolf: “No fim estamos totalmente encharcados pela genialidade, a veemência, a indignação de Charlotte Brontë”. (Translation)
Un romanzo che, nelle sue varie declinazioni e stratificazioni, riecheggia mondi lontani, anche classici e rinascimentali: da Semiramide a Didone, Elena, Ipazia e Cassandra, da Artemisia Gentileschi sino a Jane Austen e le sorelle Brontë e Simone Weil, per cirarne solo alcune. Temi delicatissimi, che affrontiamo con pudore, con la scrittrice. (Francesco Greco) (Translation)
Gazeta (Poland) discusses hyperemesis gravidarum and mentions that Charlotte Brontë probably died from that disease. Qué! (Spain) discusses literary pseudonyms and a mention of the Brontës is mandatory. یک پزشک (in Persian) lists Jane Eyre 2011 as a film "similar" to Little Women 2019.
“By the way, how are you managing with the 100-copy collection?”“Huh? What do you mean, the 100-copy collection?”“The books in the safe. Don’t neglect your library duties. It’d be a disaster if anything leaked to the outside.”I set off for the library at a run. There were books in that safe? I had no idea. I figured, at best, it would be a stash of treatises by the leaders on literary theory, or else records of secret directives for KWU eyes only. It turned out that the 100-copy collection was where the union stored translated copies of foreign novels and reference books that writers could access.With the speed of a bank robber, I yanked out my key, turned the lock and opened the safe. Inside, tightly packed together, were nearly 70 translated copies of foreign novels. Seeing them, I crumpled to the floor in shock.The first title to jump out at me was Seichō Matsumoto’s Points and Lines, a Japanese psychological thriller published in 1970. With growing excitement, I fumbled through the stack. There was Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, O Henry’s The Last Leaf, Alexandre Dumas fils’ The Lady of the Camellias, Takiji Kobayashi’s Crab Cannery Ship, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind; and, most exciting of all for me, Seiichi Morimura’s Proof of the Man, a Japanese detective novel that tells the story of a manhunt from Tokyo to New York. [...]Some zainichi returnees like myself had brought books from Japan, which we passed around secretly. One of these was Proof of the Man. Upon finding a Korean-language copy in the 100-copy collection, I was struck by the quality of the translation. I later learned that it had been done by a zainichi acquaintance of mine who worked as a translator.“Those sneaky bastards. If we ordinary citizens were to read this we’d be put away for political crimes, but they get to enjoy it all in secret,” my zainichi friend grumbled when I showed him.
“Too Much” follows Jessica (Stalter), a New York workaholic in her mid-30s who is reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever and slowly isolating everyone she knows. When every block in New York tells a story of her own bad behavior, the only solution is to take a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Brontë sister. But when she meets Felix (Sharpe) — who is less Hugh Grant in “Notting Hill” and more Hugh Grant’s drunken roommate — she finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even as it creates more problems than it solves. Now they have to ask themselves: Do Americans and Brits actually speak the same language? The series is an ex-pat rom-com for the disillusioned who wonder if true love is still possible, but sincerely hope that it is. (Joe Otterson and Selome Hailu)
Until the approach of Christmas, my thoughts had turned more often to another pregnant woman I know only from the pages of beloved books. Charlotte Brontë fell pregnant around Christmas 1854, at the advanced maternal age of 38. Hers had been a tragic life in so many respects: blighted by loss and loneliness, financially and emotionally precarious, enduring the sordid dramas of her brother’s alcoholism, the thwarting of many of her own plans and desires, constant ill health and (frankly) bad weather.Haworth Parsonage, in the romantically named but rather bleak West Riding of Yorkshire, turned out to be a literary hothouse where, from childhood, Charlotte and Emily and Anne Brontë sharpened one another’s creative talents, and eventually birthed novels that would take far-off London by storm and be cherished by generations of thwarted young women. Their heroines differ by temperament, moral sensibility, and fate, but all are marked by the social isolation that threw the Brontë women constantly back on their own (pooled) inner resources.Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, Agnes Grey and Helen Graham, Catherine Earnshaw, and even Shirley Keeldar and Caroline Helstone — some wealthy and some poor, many (but not all) orphans, some (but not all) finally reaching the “safe” harbour of a happy marriage and family — are all strangely set apart from those around them. Their sufferings, or their passion, or their poverty, make them different, and those who do attain happy endings must snatch them from the jaws of tragedy.All this makes me wonder what Charlotte might have written later — after her marriage and the birth of her baby, after joining, in a way, the stream of “regular” humanity who procreate and bicker and grow old and pudgy and fret about their kids’ education and participate in local gossip. Would she have become more of a George Eliot, with both a keener and a kinder eye for the intricacies of a life lived within social bounds? Or would she have doubled down on her romantic, friendless heroines and their yearnings for love and adventure?Emily and Anne Brontë had died within months of each other, in December 1848 and May 1849 respectively, succumbing to the tuberculosis that killed their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, as children. After their deaths, Charlotte gave happy endings to her two most sociable heroines, Shirley and Caroline from Shirley (published in 1849). It’s thought that the two characters were based on Emily and Anne respectively, and that though Charlotte intended for Caroline to die of tuberculosis, after watching Anne — her last sibling — undergo the same fate, she could not subject her fictional counterpart to it as well. Caroline recovers and marries her love.Charlotte, having refused a number of marriage proposals — including a first offer from the man she did end up marrying — went to the altar with her father’s Irish curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, in June 1854, five years after Anne’s death. I wonder again and again how she felt taking this step, alone among all her siblings, with none of them in attendance; a vote for life after so much death, a definitive break with that sequestered, doomed, charmed family circle. Her life split cleanly in two halves, a future opening to her not, perhaps, of wide vistas and intrepid doings (as dreamed of by her Jane Eyre), but of the ordinary ups and downs of raising a family of her own with a man she (by all accounts) respected and loved.It was not to be. A few months of domestic happiness, the beginnings of a pregnancy — but by Easter 1855, Charlotte too had been laid to rest in the family vault in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels at Haworth. Her death certificate records the cause of her death as phthisis – which is to say, consumption, otherwise known as tuberculosis. She had joined her sisters after all. But accounts of her final weeks suggest that she probably died from hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), severe morning sickness, followed, perhaps, by refeeding syndrome (when someone rapidly begins to eat again following a period of undernutrition).In other words, Charlotte became severely dehydrated and malnourished, too nauseated to eat. (“A wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks”, reported one witness, perhaps her maid Martha.) Then, presumably in her second trimester, she began to beg for food and eat eagerly — but it was too late. Without proper treatment, she and her unborn child died on 31 March 1855. (Natasha Moore)
Top Withens, West YorkshireSaid to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens is nestled on the Pennine Way to the east of Withins Height. The hills of Brontë Country are a delight to explore at any time, but in winter, the dramatic landscape sparks the imagination, bringing to life the worlds of Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw. Round off your ramble with a restorative cup of tea in the nearby village of Haworth.Stay at Holme Valley Camping and Caravan Park (Holly Reaney)
HaworthHaworth is one of the most famous places in West Yorkshire due to being the home of the Brontë sisters.The Yorkshireman adds: “It also has beautiful cobbled streets, rolling moors and a vintage charm that pulls in tons of visitors every single year.“There are plenty of places to eat and enjoy a pint after you’ve finished exploring this historic Yorkshire village, making for a truly wholesome day out.” (Molly Court)
Wuthering Heights (Penguin English Library) by Emily BrontëSet on the wild, heather-tufted moors of West Yorkshire, Emily Brontë's tale of the obsessive passion between Cathy and Heathcliff is the literary equivalent of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. A masterpiece of Gothic fiction. (Ann Scanlon)
8. Crimson Peak (2015)Mismarketed as an outright horror movie, Crimson Peak is more of a loving del Toro homage to the lush, color-saturated European Gothic romantic thrillers of the 1960s; the kind helmed by the likes of Mario Bava and many of his Italian contemporaries, with a touch of Rebecca or Jane Eyre for good measure. All the movie is missing is Barbara Steele, but instead del Toro has Jessica Chastain as Lucille, the depraved sister of Thomas (Tom Hiddleston), whose incestuous relationship is the awful secret at the heart of Allerdale Hall—their brooding, crumbling ancestral family home where ghosts reside.Chastain is fantastic, as is Hiddleston, but the woman that Thomas weds and brings to Allerdale with tragic results is played by Mia Wasikowska, who is fine in the role but not quite up to the pyrotechnics of her costars. What Crimson Peak lacks in genuine terror or suspense (the plot fairly telegraphs itself), it makes up for in the performances by Chastain and Hiddleston, the incredible lighting and production design, and the slowly rotting House of Usher-like edifice of Allerdale. Bava would be proud. (Don Kaye)
Es capaz de analizar con ellos un partido de Novak Djokovic con la misma agudeza que un disco de Nick Cave o un libro de Emily Brontë, y cada uno se va agradecido y queriendo más, con ganas de leer un libro nuevo, escuchar música que no conocen o, simplemente, volver a lo que les gusta. (Gonzalo Fiore Viani) (Translation)
Con una estrategia diferente, la escritora japonesa Minae Mizumura (Tokio, 1951) toma como premisa Cumbres borrascosas, la celebrada novela de Emily Brontë, y escribe Una novela real –fue publicada en su momento por Adriana Hidalgo– , la historia del multimillonario Taro Azuma, que de un momento a otro se desvanece de la faz de la tierra. En un juego de narradores que se parece a las cajas chinas, Mizumura rastrea lo que sucedió con ese personaje. La historia de su vida se vuelve signo de la transformación de Japón luego de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Al mismo tiempo, la escritura despliega una serie de recursos narrativos que vuelven la novela una obra maestra. No solo logra encarnar el amor de los protagonistas de la novela de Brontë en los jóvenes Taro y Yoko, sino que además encarna en el Japón de posguerra todos los elementos del gótico de la novela inglesa, con un escenario brumoso en el que el pasado se vuelve un habitante activo en la vida de los personajes. (Verónica Boix) (Translation)
It’s not only money – or the lack of it – that divides the North and South of England; it’s a state of mind. Call it snobbery if you like. And it’s not unique to politicians.As we speak, Britain is hosting what I would argue is one of the most culturally significant exhibitions in the world. It brings together artefacts from the formative years of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë that have not been seen in public for more than 80 years.If it were at the British Museum it would be the sensation of the age. There would be queues outside, the likes of which haven’t been seen since they put Tutankhamun’s trinkets on show 50 years ago. Young people would come away awed and inspired. But it isn’t in the capital. It’s at Leeds University. And outside the pages of The Yorkshire Post I’ve seen scarcely a mention of it.I think we all know why. Exhibitions in London are chic; those in the North are provincial. And in the arts as in politics, provincial means second best.You will look in vain for logic. The British Library is co-curating the Brontë exhibition. So its provenance is unquestioned. But it’s off the radar of London commentators whose frame of reference is roughly the length of the Metropolitan Line.This dismissive attitude to what should be a national event is not unusual. On the contrary, it pollutes the entire landscape of education, politics and the arts. Regional differences that should be celebrated are subsumed in a cultural blender of one-size-fits-all policies that are never really the right size for anyone. If the Brontë sisters were at school today they’d be made to study design technology and citizenship and told to find jobs in a call centre. So much for inspiring creative youngsters. (David Behrens)
‘I went to Yorkshire too. That’s where my people come from, with Tabitha Aykroyd, the Brontës’ housekeeper, being a forebear of mine. I love it here. Particularly the pubs. Whenever I can I go to a country pub and have steak and kidney pie or a shepherd’s pie with a nice half pint.’ (Nicole Lampert)
The Daily Mail republished some of the Royalty Now Studios recreations of historical characters, including Charlotte Brontë.
“Yeah, there was that one where the bride was obsessed with the Brontës, and she wanted me to lay treasure-trail clues over several separate and distant locations across Yorkshire, one of which ‘had’ to be a canal barge,” Caz remembers, sighing. “And the ‘prize’ at the end was the groom, who would ‘surprise’ the bride, even though it was totally the bride’s idea. I’d never met any of the other hens before, and one of them was the bride’s rather elderly mother, who walked very slowly, which made for a difficult treasure hunt. Particularly the bit where everyone had to scramble over a dry-stone wall.”
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?I don’t have any memory of being taught how to read. For as long as I’ve been conscious of myself as a person, I have loved reading. As a child, I read everything I could lay my hands on. I read old literature texts owned my aunts and uncles from both sides of the family. I also read encyclopaedias, receipts and shopping lists, newspapers, and then I read children’s story books and novels. Some of the books I read: The Trials of Brother Jero by Wole Soyinka, Lamb‘s Tales From Shakespeare, Zambia Shall Be Free by Kenneth Kaunda, Camara Laye’s The African Child, The Marriage of Anansewa by Efua Sutherland, She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, almost all the books in the Lantern series and an awful lot of Mills and Boon before my teen years. My favourite book from my childhood is Without a Silver Spoon by Eddie Irroh.
Fun though such excesses are, the most lethal reviews tend to be more delicate. The best bad reviews are not hatchet jobs but scalpel jobs, observes the British writer and critic Adam Mars-Jones, “because if it’s not precise, it’s not going to work.” The Victorians brandished scalpels too. One of the finest was wielded by George Eliot on Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”. “I wish,” Eliot wrote, that “the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.”
Jane Eyre: up to $125,000 (£100,875)As first-edition copies of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel are hard to come by, they’re likely to sell for a small fortune. For example, one copy, with a Calcutta Review advertisement included, is currently selling for $125,000 (£100,875). Other good-quality first-edition copies of the book can fetch anything from $15,000 to $65,000 (£12,105-£52,475).
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the way the books we read shape us and, even in fantastical settings, give us windows into possibilities for understanding and working through our own challenges. I think that’s one of the most meaningful things a story can do, especially for those who feel they’ve been put in unbearable circumstances. As chaplain Vanessa Zoltan writes in her memoir Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice, “A willingness to survive is about believing in the possibility of a better future. Survival is about hope.” (CJ Connor)
A l’occasion de la parution du livre “Brontëana” (Editions Steinkis) la galerie Art-Maniak (Paris) met à l’honneur la dessinatrice Paulina Spucches. Du 7 au 16 septembre 2023, une exposition-vente de planches originales réunira une sélection d’œuvres.Vernissage : jeudi 7 septembre de 18h à 21hDédicace : samedi 9 septembre (Translation)
Charlotte Brontë, la famosa escritora de Jabe (sic) Eyre probablemente falleció a causa de la hiperémesis gravídica. El certificado de defunción de Charlotte Brontë establece como causa de la muerte la tuberculosis, pero según los expertos no hay ninguna evidencia que respalde este diagnóstico. (Translation)
En su filmografía, Serebrénnikov no había explorado hasta ahora el siglo XIX. Lo ha hecho por primera vez en La mujer de Tchaikovski, que bascula entre la película de época, el biopic y la tragedia romántica al modo como la concebía Emily Brontë. (Carlos Espinosa Domínguez) (Translation)
A travers ses portraits de femmes et d’enfants, son travail d’huile sur bois est particulier, on pourrait penser aux héroïnes de romans du 19ème tels que « Les Hauts de Hurlevent » ou « Jane Eyre »….. ces femmes décrites dans ces romans par des vies faites de silence, des icônes souvent déçues par des amours impossibles, aux postures alanguies ...Les silhouettes de Swan ressemblent un peu à ces femmes, à la fois heureuses et mélancoliques. (Christine Couderc) (Translation)
'Cumbres Borrascosas', de Emily Brontë - Es muy común encontrar a personas que llevan este libro en el bolso y lo sacan para beber su café negro. Tras sacar la foto para Instagram, guardan el volumen de nuevo y se marchan sin tocar el café, que "está muy fuerte". (...)'Jane Eyre', de Charlotte BrontëJane Eyre pasó por mil y una desgracias para luego tener que aguantar que digamos que hemos leído su historia sin ser verdad. (Translation)
Some experts believe that the death of the writer Charlotte Brontë in 1855 was most likely due to hyperemesis [gravidarum] and not to tuberculosis, as stated on her death certificate.
The author called the genre “fantastically delicious” and excitedly described the book as a mix between the film “Peaky Blinders” and the famous book by Jane Eyre, “Pride and Prejudice.” (Afouda Bamidele)
When we erect a stately home, we plant trees in whose shade we will never sit. Its literary endurance represents this. Rightful inheritance, and the preservation of the estate, dominates novels like Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. At the conclusion to Pride and Prejudice, one might be inclined to ask which is more significant to Elizabeth Bennet: her love for Mr Darcy — or for Pemberley. (Lara Brown)
2 - Wuthering Heights - Kate BushCon permiso de Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), que sin duda se ha convertido en la canción más conocida de Kate Bush tanto en el momento de su lanzamiento como prácticamente cuatro décadas después tras formar parte de la banda sonora de Stranger Things, uno de los temas más conocidos de la cantautora estadounidense tiene que ver con una novela: Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë.Lo cierto es que en el momento de componer Wuthering Heights Kate Bush no se había leído la obra de la autora, pero logró captar entre sus estrofas el sentido general del libro, además de hacer constantes referencias a sus protagonistas: "Heathcliff, soy yo, soy Cathy, he llegado a casa, estoy helada, déjame entrar por la ventana". (María Caridad Sánchez) (Translation)
'Wuthering heights', de Kate Bush
Inspirada en la novel·la 'Cims borrascosos', d'Emily Brönte (sic)
En temps de punk, la britànica Kate Bush va fer un debut contracultural el 1978 portant la veu al límit dels aguts per explicar la història de la Cathy i el Heathcliff. Des d’aleshores, l’amor gòtic d’Emily Brönte sona així d'espectral. (Xavier Cervantes) (Translation)
Aquest curs hem celebrat la preciosa traducció que ha fet Antoni Clapés d’aquesta joia que és L’home de les tres lletres de Pascal Quignard (Quid Pro Quo) i també hem gaudit amb l’espaterrant versió de Cims borrascosos d’Emily Brontë que ens ha regalat el gran Ferran Ràfols Gesa (Viena). (Bernat Dedéu) (Translation)
Il capolavoro di Emily Brontë in formato tascabile. Definito dalla critica dell’epica “brutale e rozzo”, Cime Tempestose racconta la vendetta portata avanti dal disumano Heathcliff. Tomasi di Lampedusa lo descrisse come “un romanzo come non ne sono mai stati scritti prima, come non saranno mai più scritti dopo”. Il merito va all’odio, al sadismo e alle passioni represse magistralmente intrecciati dall’autrice. (Translation)
Desta vez, há, sim, uma breve abertura com jovens numa cabana – quem diria que o demônio seria fã de Emily Brontë? –, mas toda a ação se passa, pela primeira vez, num prédio bem no meio da cidade. (Ieda Marcondes in Estado de Minas) (Translation)
The opening scene in which Jessica becomes a Deadite also features a nod to the curious powers of a Deadite in The Evil Dead. As Teresa reads Wuthering Heights, Deadite Jessica is sitting on her bed facing the other direction yet is able to read the words aloud on the page. (Jordan Williams in ScreenRant)
Portrait intimiste où des pans de la vie d’Emily Brontë se mêlent à son œuvre, le premier long métrage de Frances O’Connor dépeint l’autrice en jeune femme recluse. Emily (Emma Mackey) réside dans le presbytère de son pasteur de père. Personnalité farouche et sagace, celle qu’on surnomme la Bizarre est filmée en gros plans par la cinéaste. Mais c’est sur son travail de romancière, limité à une œuvre magistrale, « les Hauts de Hurlevent », que la réalisatrice s’appuie pour déployer un univers gothique et reprendre les codes du film d’horreur. Jouant sur les passerelles entre son existence et son œuvre, elle décrit son frère Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), un être d’ordinaire jovial, assombri sous les effets de l’alcool et des drogues qui inspire le personnage de Heathcliff, antihéros tortueux et colérique de son roman.Dans cette famille heureuse en apparence, Emily dissimule la souffrance liée à la perte de sa mère et de ses sœurs aînées. S’ajoutent des éléments fantastiques. Un masque redonne vie à l’âme de la mère. La nature apparaît sauvage et déchaînée, telle cette pluie inondant les collines du Yorkshire ou le vent entrant avec fracas dans la maison paisible des Brontë. Ces bourrasques dont le sifflement est amplifié par une symphonie originale d’Abel Korzeniowski symbolisent une sorte d’émanation à la fois inquiétante et propice à la création. « Emily » devient ainsi une œuvre musicale. Les images prennent un tour pictural avec la multiplication de plans fixes aux allures de tableau clair-obscur de Vermeer. Hélas, une histoire d’amour fictive avec un vicaire, William Weightman, dont la mort aurait poussé Emily à écrire son roman, outrepasse les aspects historiques pourtant très fins du récit. Du grandiose, le film sombre dans la guimauve. (Aurélia de Spirt) (Translation)
Ainsi, Emily s'éloigne de la vraie vie de la cadette des Brontë. Ainsi, il semblerait que la romancière n'ait jamais vécu de romance torride avec un jeune pasteur, ou du moins ce n'est pas attesté (les soupçons porterait plutôt sur sa soeur, Anne Brontë). Mais cela vient expliquer comment une jeune femme qui n'aurait, semble-t-il, pas vécu de romance ait pu imaginer l'histoire passionnelle d'Heathcliff et Catherine, les protagonistes de son roman. Les férus d'exactitude seront peut-être déstabilisés, mais la poésie métaphorique qui émane de la mise en scène offre un regard neuf et presque magique sur son romance et sa mystérieuse autrice.Dans le rôle-titre, Emma Mackey (Sex Education, Eiffel) est magnétique. L'actrice de 27 ans est de tous les plans et peut exprimer l'étendu de son talent. Les amateurs de littérature anglaise y trouveront leur compte, les autres pourront se laisser happer par la performance d'actrice, plonger dans la mystique des landes anglaises, et comprendre davantage l'une des plus grandes oeuvres du XIXe siècle. Mais si vous cherchez un biopic formel qui retrace avec exactitude la vie de la cadette des Brontë, Emily n'est peut-être pas fait pour vous. (Manon Bricard) (Translation)
It’s a tale as old as time – the ‘bad boy’ with a dark past, less-than-pleasant demeanour, and a leather jacket falls for the hard-working, considerate girl and turns over a new leaf (or not). Somewhere in between are instances of long nights spent crying into tissues or even angry outbursts. Morally grey roles have long captured the attention of literature aficionados – take Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights for instance – slowly making their way into cinema and television. (Eshita Srinivas)
The designs have appropriately literary names familiar to Austen and Brontë fans: a brocade ballgown is named Linton “after the fancy family in Wuthering Heights,” a puffy shouldered, A-line taffeta dress is known as the “Bovary” after Flaubert’s flouncing heroine. (Ellie Pithers)
Before IV fluids became routinely available in the 1900s, hyperemesis killed pregnant women often enough that medical literature listed excessive vomiting as a reason to induce abortion because of the danger it posed to the mother’s life. Some experts believe that the death of the author Charlotte Brontë in 1855 was most likely caused by hyperemesis, not tuberculosis, as was listed on her death certificate.Today, deaths from hyperemesis are rare, but they do occur, as do serious complications. (Alice Callahan)
3. ‘Wuthering Heights’“Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush is a hauntingly beautiful and iconic song that captures the intensity and passion of Emily Brontë’s classic novel of the same name. Bush’s ethereal vocals, accompanied by a driving beat and atmospheric instrumentation, perfectly convey the sense of longing and desperation that permeates the story. The lyrics are a reflection of the novel’s protagonist, Catherine Earnshaw, as she struggles to come to terms with her own desires and the societal expectations placed upon her. The song’s chorus, with its soaring vocals and hypnotic melody, has become one of the most recognizable and beloved in music history. “Wuthering Heights” is a timeless classic that continues to inspire and captivate audiences with its unique blend of literary inspiration, poetic lyrics, and unforgettable musical performance. (Simon Robinson)
The Brontës
Born in Thornton, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, the 19th-century literary family, are also associated with the village of Haworth, with both places now popular tourist spots.
The sisters are well known as poets and novelists, with their classics including Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre still as popular today.
Their brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë, was an English painter and writer who died aged 31 in 1848. (Mark Stanford)
“A wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks,” records the contemporary biographer of Charlotte Brontë, author of the 1847 novel Jane Eyre. (SP Allison and Lobo, 2020; Weiss, 1991).
Though Brontë’s death certificate indicated she had phthisis (tuberculosis) and several of her siblings had died of TB, there was no indication she herself had the disease. Instead, though not all sources agree (Maynard, 1983), many believe that Brontë, newly and happily married, was indeed pregnant and was suffering from the pernicious vomiting of pregnancy, i.e., hyperemesis gravidarum. Ultimately Brontë died from her illness, just weeks shy of her 39th birthday. She had been married only nine months. (...)
Further, increased circulating levels of GDF15 are seen in women whose nausea and vomiting continue during the second trimester: GDF15 has been implicated in the development of the pernicious vomiting of pregnancy, i.e., hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) (Petry et al., 2018), the disease from which Charlotte Brontë is thought to have suffered and died. (Sylvia R. Karasu M.D.)
You’ll soon discover that a lot in Haworth is ‘Old’ and full of history, as this is where the Brontë family once lived and wrote the books that would place this moorland village on the map.
If you have time, take a look around the Brontë parsonage - their old home - or the atmospheric church and graveyard where some are buried, and the Black Bull pub, which Branwell would drink in. (Chris Pickles)
Set to premiere on GMA Network this evening after "Saksi" is his highly anticipated teleserye comeback titled, "The World Between Us" (TWBS). (...)
Inspired by the literary cult classic, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Brontë, a stellar cast joins Richards in what he declares would likely become his "best teleserye in the last five years." (Tessa Mauricio-Arriola)
Later as I grew up, I got introduced to the pleasures of Wodehouse, Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, the plays of Shakespeare, and the story telling of Tagore and Rider Haggard. The racy novels of Alistair Maclean, Frederick Forsyth, James Hadley Chase and the like would, in later years, be complemented by the likes of Dostoevsky, Leon Uris and even what may be considered in today’s times as the “slow-moving” Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë or Arthur Conan Doyle. (Ashok Warrier)
Author Karen Perkins will be signing copies of her book – Parliament of Rooks: Haunting Brontë Country – in Haworth next Saturday (July 10).
She will be at Wave of Nostalgia, in Main Street, from 2pm.
“This is a book full of suspense and chills set in historical Haworth and on the Brontë moors and it features Emily herself – just the kind of novel we love in my bookshop!” said Diane Park, owner of Wave of Nostalgia. (Alistair Shand)
Long before the Wild Atlantic Way found sway, the resort community started its tourism journey 200 years ago, in 1820, when a ferry from Limerick to Kilrush put Kilkee on a visitors’ map and holiday horizon, drawing appreciative visitors for bathing and beauty from all over Ireland and Britain, including Charlotte Bronte, who chose to honeymoon here. (Tommy Barker)
Kate Kellaway: There are questions of domination in many of your paintings. The question about who is mastering – or mistressing – whom feels particularly key in Snare (1987) and some of the Jane Eyre pieces. How far do you see relationships as a power struggle?
P.R.::It’s part of it. Some people can feel more dominant than others, but a maid can have power over her mistress. The meekest person can manipulate.
Your favourite literary character?
It’s a toss-up between Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain, if you like your literary lads idealistic, thirsty, self-centred and daft, and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, who gets all the best lines like the devil he is. He’s no romantic hero, but God, is he fun.
As for books written by women, Ní Dhuibhne remembers only Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson and the Brontës (who, as Mary Rose Callaghan observes wryly, ‘had been obliged to pretend they were men’). It was at UCD that it dawned on Máiríde Woods that ‘being a woman might be a disadvantage – brilliance seeming male-slanted’. (Paula McGrath)
Anne loves to read whenever she can get the chance, and one of her favorite books is Jane Eyre. She read the gothic novel in the orphanage and frequently quotes the governess's wise thoughts.Jane Eyre goes to work at a mansion owned by Edward Rochester, a mysterious and wealthy man. Jane falls in love with him, but everything changes when she discovers that he has a dark secret. (Oliver moure)
William Butterfield’s Grade 1-listed All Saints in Margaret Street is a Gothic masterpiece. The architecture critic Ian Nairn said it can only be understood in terms of overwhelming passion: “Here is the force of Wuthering Heights translated into dusky red and black bricks, put down in a mundane Marylebone street to rivet you, pluck you into the courtyard with its harsh welcoming wings and quivering steeple”. (Victor Keegan)
BuzzFeed as a historical figures quiz that includes (but not includes) Charlotte Brontë. La Opinión de Murcia (Spain) reminds us that the Brontës used a pseudonym.
Based on Emily Brontë's classic novel of twisted emotions and tragedy on the Yorkshire moors in England, Herrmann's opera has a predictably dark and brooding quality. That's evident in the glowering orchestral prelude, with icy strings and thorny woodwind figurations painting a gloomy counterpoint to the wood-paneled interiors of Neil Patel's set, representing the ancestral home of the work's title.Vocally the opera is strongly cast, led by American soprano Sara Jakubiak, who sings the passionate role of Catherine with untiring vibrancy and emotional commitment.Her Heathcliff, baritone Lee Poulis, easily matches Jakubiak in intensity. Swarthy and Poldarkian in profile, he looks every inch the dangerous romantic lead, and his virility of tone is often thrilling.But what kind of "hero" is Heathcliff, and why exactly does Catherine find him so fatally attractive? Director Eric Simonson plays their relationship fairly straight, as a tale of high Victorian passion.Yet there are clear hints in the opera's libretto and in Herrmann's music of something nastier — Heathcliff the gaslighter, wrecker of two women's lives and perpetrator of a toxic masculinity, which is far from conventionally "romantic."Little of that comes through in Simonson's more mainstream conception, which nonetheless has its fair share of impactful moments.Many of these come in Act 3, where Catherine's husband, Edgar, gets a Puccini-like aria lacking only in the Italian composer's killer instinct for a clinching melody. Tenor Eric Margiore sings it splendidly.As his sister Isabella, mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala is marvelously impassioned — another victim of Heathcliff's wild emotional inconstancy, and arguably the only major character in the opera who is fully sympathetic.Conductor Michael Christie draws a sharply atmospheric account of Herrmann's score from an on-form orchestra, and overall it's hard to find a weakness in the production musically.Dramatically, though, "Wuthering Heights" has its imperfections. There's endless talk of love, but precious little evidence of it in the onstage action, where hot clinches are largely left to the imagination. Herrmann also overplays the grim finale, where Catherine dies and Heathcliff emotes obsessively over the relationship he wishes could have been.Even the excellence of Jakubiak and Poulis can't save their overwrought and protracted encounter, which eventually becomes wearisome.That is not to criticize Minnesota Opera's decision to show "Wuthering Heights" again. It's a historic production showing the company at or near its best, and is one of the best sung shows of recent seasons. (Terry Blain)
Este inspirador espectáculo cuenta con un elenco sobresaliente, tanto en la forma que habitan sus personajes como en el poderío vocal. Natasha Barnes (foto) está brillante como Charlotte, la pragmática hermana mayor, dividida entre vacilaciones y ser reconocida por su trabajo. Siobhan Athwal (Emily) deslumbra en su criatura escéptica, frágil y obsesiva con la muerte. Mientras Molly Lynch (Anne) logra reflejar la angustia casi humorística de la menor. (Jorge Luis Montiel) (Translation)
Disturbed by my normally dynamic sister-in-law’s affliction, I began researching hyperemesis gravidarum. I found it was still on the list of non-fatal female diseases that we hadn’t yet bothered finding a cure for. (You may recall that the Duchess of Cambridge suffered from a severe case of it during her three pregnancies – her trips to hospital were much documented at the time.) It’s not like this is a new disease. In fact, there’s an increasingly popular theory to suggest that hyperemesis gravidarum is what killed one of my favourite novelists, Charlotte Brontë. According to Brontë’s close friend, fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte became pregnant shortly after her wedding in 1855 but was “attacked by a sensation of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness”. She died shortly thereafter. At the time, Brontë’s death was ascribed to then-common tuberculosis but a growing number of biographers, including Claire Harman, suggest she died from dehydration and malnourishment due to vomiting caused by severe morning sickness.Glossing over pregnancy problems, then, is not native to the Instagram age.
Part of the joy of Suppose a Sentence lies simply in encountering, or re-encountering, the gems Dillon has selected. [...] And here’s Charlotte Brontë in Villette, describing with brilliantly strange grammar the effects of laudanum: “The drug wrought.” (Anthony Domestico)
En esta obra de 40 ensayos que integra la colección Lectores de la editorial Ampersand, Margo Glantz se declara fragmentaria –su texto puede leerse de manera lineal o por capítulos– y pone en primer plano su mirada feminista, desarmando estereotipos y apoyándose en lo lúdico para hablar, entre otras cosas, de la infelicidad que le produce leer novelas francesas sobre amores no correspondidos, de la novela epistolar y la usurpación que hace el escritor de la voz de la protagonista, de la cuestión de la moralidad e inmoralidad en las novelas de correspondencia, de la incisiva mirada de Jane Austen y su sátira de la moda romántica que propagó la novela gótica a fines de los siglos XVIII y principios del XIX, la cual propiciaba una visión conformista e irreal del mundo; de la maldición de Emily Brontë, de la hipocresía del cortejo y el fetichismo de las frases consagradas en una comedia de Tirso de Molina, del acceso de las mujeres a la escritura y del mito de la mujer mártir por el que Frida Kalho pasa a la historia menos por su pintura que por su vida de sufrimientos. (Translation)
Readers of Jane Eyre will find similarities between the two stories, but where Jane remains the heroine of her story, Rebecca’s narrator is constantly overshadowed by the seeming shining perfection of Rebecca, the wife of Mr de Winter who tragically drowned in an accident. (Anna Short)
Al livello di atmosfere non si possono non riconoscere gli elementi gotici con gli standard del genere già visti in letteratura. Da Jane Eyre al Il castello di Otranto, con il grande maniero dall’aspetto torvo, il mistero celato da una porta chiusa, la potenza dei segreti e delle ossessioni. (Francesca Imperi) (Translation)
Wuthering Heights’ – Kate BushBorn on the same day as the author of Wuthering Heights’ Emily Brontë, albeit over 100 years apart, Bush had an affinity with the written word that would permeate all her songs. But none more so than this record breaker (making Bush the first female to write and record a chart-topping single), which saw Bush take Bronte’s characters into the modern world.The song was written in 1977 when “There was a full moon, the curtains were open and it came quite easily,” Bush told her fan club in 1979. Bush lifted lines straight from Brontë’s work as she used Earnshaw’s plea “Let me in! I’m so cold” among other quotations from the novel. It’s clear that Bush truly connected with the song, and in fact, the novel too. She told Record Mirror in 1978, “Great subject matter for a song. I loved writing it. It was a real challenge to precis the whole mood of a book into such a short piece of prose.”Bush continued, “Also when I was a child I was always called Cathy not Kate and I just found myself able to relate to her as a character. It’s so important to put yourself in the role of the person in a song. There’s no half measures. When I sing that song I am Cathy. (Her face collapses back into smiles.) Gosh, I sound so intense. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is so important to me. It had to be the single. To me, it was the only one.” (Jack Whatley)
When she wrote To Walk Invisible, her 2016 drama about the lives of the Brontës, “I had Branwell telling someone to f--- off. And somebody got really up in arms that Branwell had said that 'because it's not in any of the novels'. Duh! They wouldn't have been published if it had been. (Anita Singh)In The Guardian, Siri Hustvedt does a round of bookish confessions.
The book I wish I’d written. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights because its narrative form is complex and ingenious, and its story is ruthless and powerful.Book Riot discusses 'Race, Disability, Ugliness, and Other Villain Tropes We Can Lose'.
Villains have dark skin.Smithsonian asks the ultimate fandom question:
I’m happy to say that the trope of villains having black or brown skin is one that isn’t so prevalent in contemporary literature, but unfortunately it’s one we see a lot in the classics. Many of which we read first in school. I’m thinking about the “savages” in Robinson Crusoe and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Arguably Othello is a classic in which the hero is dark skinned. I say arguably because (spoiler alert) Othello ultimately becomes the villain his critics wanted him to be. (Enobong Essien)
Sure, buying one of Jimi Hendrix’s guitars or collecting a lock of Charlotte Brontë’s hair might seem like the ultimate act of fandom. But would you sink your teeth into a piece of cheese made from their armpit bacteria? A new exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum asks just that, taking celebrity culture to the next level—literally. As part of an exhibit called Food: Bigger Than the Plate, the museum is showing off five types of cheese made from microbes collected from British celebrities. (Jason Daley)Belfast Telegraph tells about Jean Rhys and her unlikely jazz contribution.
In January 1979, my late mother Teresa and my father went for lunch with Rhys and the Mellys at their Hampstead home. Nearly 30 years later, my mother, by this point in a care home in north London and approaching death, talked at length during one visit about her memories of meeting Rhys.In the Financial Times, Simon Schama wonders why aspiring writers are asked to be concise instead of 'wordy'.
She recalled Rhys had a tiny, whispery voice - which would break out into an abrupt, rich laugh - and said the author was pleased to hear that mum's favourite of her novels was After Leaving Mr Mackenzie and not Wide Sargasso Sea.
Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys's feminist prequel to Jane Eyre, had restored her to public attention after decades of obscurity - winning the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967 - and it remains popular.
It has been adapted for radio by the BBC, inspired a West End play by Polly Teale and has been made into a movie starring Karina Lombard as Antoinette Cosway (known as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre) - the original mad woman in the attic and Mr Rochester's first wife. Wide Sargasso Sea also inspired an eponymous song by Stevie Nicks.
Linda Grant said she once "scandalised an audience at the British Library by claiming it was a greater novel than Charlotte Brontë's". (Martin Chilton)
In my English classes at school, something odd was happening, or, rather, not happening. Along with Shakespeare and Balzac’s Human Comedy, my father’s cynosure was, unsurprisingly, Dickens. Sunday after tea in the childhood years was Dickens time: readings out loud, either as a family or — more usually — with Dad taking all the parts. Not just the expected items, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, but the tougher reads: Our Mutual Friend, the opening of which scared the daylights out of me even more than Magwitch; Barnaby Rudge and, of course, those Two Cities. But at school, there was no Dickens at all. There was Shakespeare galore; there was Edgar Allan Poe, George Eliot and TS Eliot; Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Gerard Manley Hopkins, for Christ’s sake, but no Smike, no Estella, no Jellabys, no Bumbles.
She started picturing her future with Olivier aged 11, after being bewitched by his Heathcliff to his second wife, Vivien Leigh’s Cathy, in 1939 film Wuthering Heights. ‘When he cried “Cathy, Cathy!” something happened in my tummy that went “bonk”. It changed from girlhood to womanhood,’ she says. (Jane Fryer)It looks like Robert Pattinson will be the next on-screen Batman and MovieViral gives him some tips on how to play him.
Batman = The intense, earnest, Monastic focus of a Superman/ Captain America, cloaked in the playboy persona of peak era Tony Stark glib billionaire Playboy. Fused to: 007 + Gatbsy + Sherlock Holmes + Dracula + Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, via Rochester in Jane Eyre + Teddy Roosevelt + ANYTHING YOU WANT TO MAKE IT TO MAKE IT YOUR OWN (James Murphy)Phoenix New Times lists the 'Best Restaurants in Gilbert's Heritage District' including
The NovelistWhy wacky?
335 North Gilbert Road, #103, Gilbert
The Novelist is a restaurant and speakeasy-style bar inside O.H.S.O., reached by following the signs. It’s adjacent to the patio bar and tucked behind a two-story wall of blue-lit kegs. Inside the dark space, spot the mural dedicated to Harry Potter books, and surrounding decor heavily featuring female writers like Mary Shelley and those wacky Brontë sisters. So, yes, there is good food here, but you’ll definitely want to try a Novelist cocktail, or maybe a local beer or glass of wine. This is the perfect setting for it. (Lauren Cusimano)
The death of Charlotte Brontë from hyperemesis gravidarum and refeeding syndrome: A new perspective
Simon P. Allison, Dileep N. Lobo
Clinical Nutrition
Available online 10 February 2019
Many theories have been advanced concerning the cause of Charlotte Brontë's death, none of which fully explain all the symptoms she experienced in the course of her final illness. Her death certificate records the cause of death as phthisis (tuberculosis), but there is no evidence, other than circumstantial, to support this diagnosis. A diagnosis of Addison's disease, caused by tuberculosis of the adrenals, has been proposed, but this is unlikely, since it does not fit well with two and a half months of severe anorexia, nausea and vomiting, followed by remission of these symptoms and eventual death. We agree, as suggested by some authors, that the most likely diagnosis was hyperemesis gravidarum, but suggest that this was complicated by the refeeding syndrome consequent on recovery of her appetite after resolution of hyperemesis gravidarum and that this was the cause of her death. These two diagnoses are compatible with the remission in her symptoms of anorexia, nausea and vomiting in the third week of March 1855, followed by further decline and death.
Votary, vixen and vulgarian: German governesses and English domesticity in novels by Charlotte Yonge, Charlotte Brontë and Mary Braddon
Susan N. Bayley
Journal
Cultural and Social History
Published online: 04 Feb 2019
Among the most amusing vignettes in Victorian novels are German governesses created by Charlotte Yonge, Charlotte Brontë and Mary Braddon. Fräulein Ohnglaube is a votary who believes in ghosts. Fräulein Müller is a vixen with a secret ambition, and Fräulein Braun is a vulgarian who scoffs two breakfasts of beef and beer. All are depicted as potential threats to the values and norms of the English ‘cult’ of domesticity.This paper argues that these authors wished to preserve and celebrate "pure" English domesticity . Their negative representations of German governesses reveal how thoroughly English and anti-cosmopolitan were their conceptualisations of domestic life.
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