Wasikowska says she was sold on this new version of the story from her first meeting with rising director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre). "It became clear very quickly that we both had very similar ideas for the project, and about who Jane was and how she should be portrayed," Wasikowska explains in her mixed Australian-American accent.Sky News has another video interview with Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska.
"I'm not a huge fan of melodramatic period dramas where it's all about the costumes. What's really cool is how Cary was able to keep it quite grounded and almost realistic, but also retain the gothic elements, because it's a really dark story. It's definitely not Jane Austen."
Classic stories are constantly being rediscovered by and reinvented for new generations, so what does Wasikowska see in Jane Eyre that modern audiences could relate to?
"I think at its core it's a very modern story. If you take away the costumes and the period elements, it's about a young girl, who is very much like any other 18-year-old in that she's trying to find a connection and love in a very isolated environment. I think that alone is so identifiable."
The book's most famous line -- 'Reader, I married him' -- has also long marked Brontë's book out as an early feminist text. Does Mia consider herself a feminist? "Yes, I am, and I don't know why it's such a loaded term. Feminism is just equality, so I am a feminist, and I think most guys nowadays are too." (...)
Does she sport an Irish accent in the movie? "I do," she laughs. "I don't know what people are going to think, but doing the Irish accent was very liberating compared to doing the English accent, which can be so repressive."
When Jane becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, and unwillingly falls for the grumpy air of Mr Rochester she doesn’t imagine that he’ll have a big, dark secret hiding in the attic. Just make sure to take a jumper, all the moor shots and blue lighting doth a cold experience make. (Anneke Hak)Leonard Maltin about Jane Eyre 2011 in the Huffington Post:
Writer Moira Buffini and director Cary Fukunaga bring a fresh eye to Charlotte Brontë's classic novel. Even better, Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are perfectly cast as the much-abused Jane and the tortured Mr. Rochester. Judi Dench brings a welcome touch of humor to the proceedings as a dithery housekeeper in this handsome but admirably restrained period piece.Coming Soon is not so happy:
The umpteenth take on Brontë's novel takes a unique gothic approach, but the results are grim at times and dull at others, making it hard to appreciate the generally solid performances by Fukunaga's impressive cast. (Edward Douglas)FemaleFirst is giving away a limited edition Jane Eyre writing set. Screen Daily announces that the film will be screened at the FDA's Scottish Screenings (September 4-6) in Edinburgh and at the upcoming Sitges Film Festival, in the Official Fantàstic Panorama section. Buzz is giving away tickets for an open air screening in Cardiff (of a film called Jayne Ayre...). A pre-release screening took place in Brontë Parsonage yesterday. The Telegraph & Argus has a video with Cary Fukunaga presenting the film:
And Mr Fukunaga said he was pleased to be back at Haworth having visited in late 2009 to try to get a sense of Charlotte Brontë before filming began.The Penguin Blog also talks about the screening.
He said it enabled him to realise the “space” of the world Charlotte Brontë and her famous siblings, Emily and Anne, inhabited when the book was published in 1847.
SCARBOROUGH’S Royal Hotel has gone into administration, along with three other hotels, putting 159 jobs at risk.The Manchester Evening News announces that the historical Salutation Pub has been saved and remembers that
The famous hotel, built in the 1830s and stayed in by Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson, along with the town’s 70-bedroom Clifton Hotel, appointed administrators MCR.
The 118-bedroom Royal Hotel, which employs 77 people, is known for its famous staircase and atrium of the Regency style after the site used to be The Long Room, a social venue frequented by the upper classes in the 1700s. It was extended in 1863 over six or seven houses, one of which was where Ann (sic) Brontë died. (Julie Hayes)
The building also bears a blue plaque marking the site nearby where Charlotte Brontë began to write novel Jane Eyre on a visit to Manchester in 1846. (Amy Glendinning)The Telegraph reviews the TV series Page Eight:
[T]he dialogue, in its moral detailing, is not really all that far behind what you hear from the adapter of your average Austen-Brontë, who, for sayability and turn of phrase, is not all that far behind the inventor of Johnny Worricker.The Yorkshire Post still discusses Anne Hathaway's Yorkshire accent in One Day and remembers how
Juliette Binoche squawked “Eescleef! Eescleef!” in the 1992 version of Wuthering Heights, in which she was a very Gallic Cathy Earnshaw. They’re all at it. (Tony Earnshaw)Precisely, the Sydney Morning Herald reviews the film:
It also ranges far from the norms of that genre in that the male lead, though devastatingly handsome, is a bit of a wanker. That makes it more like a 19th-century English novel - Mr Darcy, Mr Rochester, Mr Heathcliff etc - although David Nicholls, who wrote the best-selling novel, was inspired more by Thomas Hardy. (Paul Byrnes)The problems of this politically correct world are exemplified in this article in The Herald on the use of the word holocaust:
Likewise, when Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Charlotte Brontë and Rudyard Kipling used the term in poetry, they weren't being xenophobic, they were being descriptive.The Globe and Mail interviews Nicholson Baker, author of House of Holes: A Book of Raunch, more interesting for the reviewer than Jane Eyre:
This began with Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow, a novel about a young man who spends a summer having sex and reading Victorian novels, which in turn made me buy Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, a Victorian novel in which a young woman never has sex but reads many books.Well, foreplay is also nice, isn't it?
I was on page 425 waiting for something, anything, physical to happen – Jane Eyre is all foreplay – when Nicholson Baker’s new book, House of Holes: A Book of Raunch, which is nothing but sex, arrived in the bookstore. I abandoned Jane and swallowed Holes in a day. (Ian Brown)
SLR: Which modern or contemporary writers have most influenced you? How?El País (Uruguay) reviews Cleopatra's Nose by Judith Thurman:
JN: My favorite writers are Flannery O’Connor, Harper Lee, Hemingway, the Brontës, Jane Austen, and Louise Rennison.
La primera de esas mujeres perdidas es su propia madre. A ella le dedica el corazón del prólogo, al que hace valer como pieza literaria. Luego vendrán Ana Frank, Leni Riefenstahl, Jackie Kennedy, Charlotte Brönte (sic), Yasmina Reza. Todas y cada una huyendo, para bien o para mal, de la vida que podrían haber tenido para vivir la que jamás habrían podido. (Daniel Mella) (Translation)El Mundo (Spain) talks about the Venice film festival official selection:
La inglesa Andrea Arnold, tras su muy independiente y voraz 'Fish tank' regresa con una adaptación de... 'Cumbres borrascosas', el desgarrado clásico de Emily Brönte (sic) que tanto gustaba a Buñuel. Bien mirado, hasta da un poco de miedo. (Luis Martínez) (Translation)El Diario Vasco (Spain) interviews the pediatrician Carlos González about his last conference:
El próximo jueves participará en los Cursos de Verano e intervendrá en el Palacio de Miramar de San Sebastián en el Aula de Cultura de DV, donde hablará sobre el niño en la literatura inglesa del siglo XIX, cuando escritores como Dickens o las hermanas Brontë abordaban la infancia desde los sentimientos y desde una verdad tan cierta como olvidada de que los adultos fuimos niños una vez.- (...)Il Recensore (Italy) interviews Kate Morton:
¿En qué tipo de libros se ha fijado?- En unos cuantos de Dickens, las hermanas Brontë, Jane Austen o George Elliot. (Javier Guillenea) (Translation)
“Ho sempre amato scrivere” ha dichiarato in una recente intervista Kate Morton venuta in Italia per presentare il suo ultimo libro e ha incontrato in una libreria romana i suoi tanti fan. Questa passione per la letteratura traspare in ogni pagina di Una lontana follia che riecheggia le passioni che covano sotto la cenere dei romanzi delle sorelle Bronte o le atmosfere claustrofobiche di Wilkie Collins. (Alessandra Stoppini) (Translation)Movieplayer (Italy) reviews Ruggine di Daniele Gaglianone, seen at the Venice Film Festival and with a Brontë reference:
Il film è ricco di riferimenti alla letteratura inglese. Il personaggio di Valeria Solarino legge Cime tempestose e un certo punto c'è un monologo di Filippo Timi che sembra mutuato da Shakespeare. Perché questa scelta?Le Figaro (France) talks about writers who also are translators.
Daniele Gaglianone: La scelta di far leggere a Valeria Cime tempestose è del tutto casuale. Abbiamo girato la scena dello scrutinio in una vera biblioteca e mi serviva un libro da darle, allora ho guardato cosa c'era. Ero indeciso tra Cime tempestose e Tolstoji, ma alla fine ho optato per il primo, ma avrebbe potuto essere anche un altro libro. (Valentina D'Amico) (Translation)
Les «translations» de René de Ceccatty se comptent par dizaines, à partir de l'italien (sa «vraie deuxième langue maternelle») et du japonais. Pour l'auteur de L'Or et la Poussière (prix Valery Larbaud) et du récent Noir Souci: «J'ai toujours traduit: j'ai toujours en quelque sorte “doublé” mon travail d'écrivain avec celui de traducteur. Même dans mon enfance, puisque, à dix ans, lorsque je commençais à écrire mes premiers textes, j'avais, parallèlement, entrepris de traduire Jane Eyre ! (Thierry Clermont) (Translation)L'Express (France) reviews Joseph O'Connor's Ghost Light:
Et pourtant leur liaison fut brûlante, tumultueuse comme une tempête sur les hauts de Hurlevent, et suffisamment clandestine pour être romanesque. (André Clavel) (Translation)And Russian reviews of Jane Eyre 2011 are all around the local newspapers and websites:
"Jane Eyre" -- Mia Wasikowska is Charlotte Brontë's title character opposite Michael Fassbender's Edward Rochester in this sumptuous adaptation. Judi Dench brings warmth to Mrs. Fairfax, while Sally Hawkins, Simon McBurney and Jaime Bell bring a cold, austere touch to Mrs. Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst and St. John Rivers, respectively. Handsomely filmed by director Cary Fukunaga, those behind the forthcoming "Wuthering Heights" should consider the gauntlet thrown. (Joanne Thornborough)The Daily Mail discusses how romance between two people that are too different never works and blah blah blah. The usual tabloid stuff. The author of the article tries to make a point with Jane Eyre but she cannot be more wrong:
Would Jane Eyre have been quite so romantic if she’d muttered ‘that Edward Rochester’s a grumpy so-and-so’, and stuck with the man who was really right for her, the kindly Christian missionary? (Flic Everett)Any person that has read the novel knows clearly why St John was not right for her... furthermore, St John can be described as many things, but... kind?
We have several publications that also misrepresent the Brontës as Mills & Boon-like romance literature. Everything comes from an article by Susan Quilliam in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health (J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2011;37:179-181: “He seized her in his manly arms and bent his lips to hers…”. The surprising impact that romantic novels have on our work (Read it here).It seems that Daisy Goodwin takes it personally and replies in The Times:
If class action suits had been around at the time of the Brontës, I am sure that the sisters would have been sued for misleading vulnerable young women into believing that love does indeed conquer all, that spirit will talk to spirit across time and space, and that, as with Cathy and Heathcliff, true love was eternal. Charlotte Brontë should be held to account for writing “Reader, I married him”, when really a responsible novelist would have said, “Reader, I thought long and hard about the importance of working at a relationship when things get tough and I have decided to marry Mr Rochester even though he has lost a hand and is practically blind. At least I know he won’t stray.”According to The Spectator, reading Jane Eyre while you are in France is not a good idea (we wonder if this remains 'true' if you are French and want to read it):
While I don’t in any way wish to detract from English literature, there does seem something rather perverse about reading Middlemarch in Spain, Bleak House in India, or Jane Eyre in France. It’s rather like scoffing a greasy full English breakfast in a sunny piazza in Florence: delicious and enjoyable, yet also horribly inappropriate. (Emily Rhodes)The edges of Shakespeare's biography are discussed in the Guardian's Northener's Blog which, nevertheless, slips in a Brontë mention:
Prof Francis O'Gorman, from the University of Leeds, is fascinated by the idea of the real and imagined on the edges of writers' biographies. He says: (...)Forbes publishes a top ten of books for the fashion set:
"The possible secret wife of the poet Andrew Marvell, and the possible lovers of the novelist Emily Brontë—a writer about whom we know almost nothing definite—are others. These are intriguing, compelling, puzzles." (Martin Hickes)
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties Of Desire, Judith Thurman – Thurman is one of my all-time favorite writers. Her reporting skills are exceptional, as is her sense of story, timing, cadence and style.Rutgers Today tries to deconstruct chick-lit:
Here Thurman writes about the outlaws, vagabonds, artists and visionaries with whom any self-respecting person should be familiar: Diane Arbus, Coco Chanel, Cleopatra, Anne Frank, Leni Riefenstahl, Charlotte Brontë, Vanessa Beecroft, Elsa Schiaparelli and Madame de Pompadour. She quotes Richard Avedon on Jean Cocteau and makes Jackie Onassis and Marie Antoinette compelling again, despite the ubiquity of them both. (Hannah Elliott)
“Abolitionist literature has tropes that we can now look at and see chick lit reflected in,” Grodstein says. “Same with the Brontë sisters, and Jane Austen. But these are also books that critics and readers would agree have great literary merit, and I don’t think their modern incarnations would have the same credibility.” (Fredda Sacharow)This high school student celebrates the Harry Potter saga, but goes a bit too far in our opinon. In phillyBurbs:
We should remain faithful to the series that has meant so much to our lives, just as many generations before were faithful to Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters. (Michelle Corr)Felix Taylor in The Independent will also miss the saga:
Rowling’s writing isn’t as brilliant as some more illustrious authors, but if you’re looking for brilliant writing, go away and read a Brontë novel.And We Got This Covered:
I have read each book at least twice, and Prisoner of Azkaban (far and away the finest Potter book) many more times than that, they are comfortable relaxants to get away from more heavy going works that an English student like myself is required to study. Trust me there is no better antidote to Jane Eyre than a Harry Potter novel. (Will Chadwick)Take it easy people, the Brontës are not the problem here.
The Prague Summer Program is a monthlong series of workshops for poets, fiction writers and photographers hosted by Western Michigan University and Charles University, offering aspiring American writers and a few talented students from Charles University the opportunity to spend a month in Prague studying with a group of world-class literary figures, including this year 2010 National Book Award-winner Jaimy Gordon, poet Pamela Uschuk, Stuart Dybek, Pavel Šrut and Ivan Klíma, among many others. (...)Westerly News announces an upcoming screening of Jane Eyre 2011 (July 29th) in British Columbia, Canada; Emily Brontë is listed as a not very prolific writer (!) in Twin Cities Daily Planet; the Brussels Brontë Blog reports a Brontë day of activities in New York with Eric Ruijssenaars (including some information about Villette 1970); czytając, słuchając, oglądając (in Polish) reviews the recent Polish translation of Shirley; Team Rochester vs Team Heathcliff is Kay Woodward's contribution on the Wuthering Hearts blog tour on The Squeee, another post and a review are also available in I Want To Read That; Écran de Projections reviews Jane Eyre 1997 (in French) and Bookeater/Booklover does the same with Jane Eyre 2006 (in Portuguese); Lit Lovers & Corset Laces comments and ranks several Jane Eyre adaptations (number one: Jane Eyre 2011); Armchair Archives reviews Wuthering Heights; The red red robin goes blog blog blogging along posts about Villette.
Each year, the program has a distinct theme, and this summer is no different. Taking a cue from a line in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Katrovas has decided to focus on "Writers' and Writing's Relations to Music." (...)
It is the fact of literature's aural dimension that links it to music; all other comparisons between the arts are merely synesthetic," he adds. "Who reads Wuthering Heights and doesn't hear Beethoven? (Stephan Delbos)
Variety features The Four-Faced Liar, a new film presented at the SlamDance Film Festival with several Wuthering Heights references:Like many other pics about twentysomethings in New York, "Four-Faced Liar" offers characters who somehow manage to maneuver through life and love without any visible means of support. In this case, the leads are (or at least appear to be) graduate students, providing ample excuse for Molly and Bridget to carefully study and endlessly discuss "Wuthering Heights." Molly sees herself as a lot like Catherine, torn between her desires for a comfortably reliable Edgar and an excitingly sexy Heathcliff. Unfortunately for Greg, he's simply not the Heathcliff type. (Joe Leydon)Not surprisingly Joyce Carol Oates chooses Charlotte Brontë as her perfect dinner partner in the Financial Times:
Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?The Guardian talks about the upcoming Burns Supper Night and compares Robert Burns's cult following with some others:
Charlotte Brontë. Or – though she wouldn’t speak to me – Emily Dickinson. (Anna Metcalfe)
As an after-death cult, Burns's was almost instant, and like all successful cults it had objects and places that followers could visit and feel attached to. Apart from the cottage itself, a marvel of humility, there was the River Doon of Ye Banks and Braes and the Brig o' Doon and the kirkyard where Tam o' Shanter had come unstuck. Long before Shakespeare's birthplace was saved for the nation in 1847, after the showman PT Barnum had announced his intention to ship it to America, Burns worshippers had a geographical focus. Wordsworth readers had to wait 50 years after the writer's death until Dove Cottage was open to the public; Keats had been dead a century before his house in Hampstead became a museum; the last Brontë sister died in 1855, but only in 1928 did the Haworth parsonage fall into the hands of the Brontë Society. (Ian Jack)Entertainment Weekly Shelf Life tells another story of people meeting Wuthering Heights through Twilight:
Because Meyer loves Wuthering Heights, she made it Bella’s favorite book. My daughter, Llama, tried reading Emily Brontë’s novel when she was 13 or so, but couldn’t get into it. (Judging from Charlotte Brontë’s preface to her sister’s novel, Charlotte Brontë couldn’t even get into it.) For Christmas, I bought Llama one of the cool new editions of Wuthering Heights specifically marketed to the Twilight generation. I went for the cool, sort of Edward Gorey-ish cover, not the one with just the hokey red rose. Long story sped up: She loves it and has already decoded all Stephenie Meyer’s allusions and literary debts to Bronte. Wuthering Heights, in all its weird, gothic glory, has always been my favorite of the “great books,” and seeing Llama insist on carrying a copy around is something I can’t thank Meyer enough for. In reading, as in addiction, there are gateway drugs, and Meyer’s Edward Cullen has introduced my daughter to Heathcliffe (sic). (Jeff Giles)This review of Emma (2009) happens to mention Jane Eyre:
Like so many of the series inspired by the manic content providers of the 19th century (Dickens, George Eliot, the Brontes), they are both examples of the triumph of craft over vision. As history and as literature, they get as much wrong as they get right (and far worse things than daffodils out of season or Milton mangling). But they work because they're an increasingly rare thing on broadcast TV: well-acted dramas. (Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post)And the Cleveland Plain Dealer talks about previous Emmas:
"Emma," 1996 This TV version was ill-served by being broadcast in the same year that the Miramax movie was released. Had the producers let a bit of time go by, viewers might have had higher appreciation for this darker, funnier and more modern-feeling version. Kate Beckinsale makes a fine, sharp Emma, and Mark Strong [Knightley] channels Mr. Rochester from "Jane Eyre" in his brooding, almost angry performance. (Joanna Connors)3:AM Magazine interviews author Sophie Parkin:
3:AM: Love is such a complex integral part of life, as your book shows, shouldn’t it be on the National school curriculum? If so what would the exam be like?El Espectador (Colombia) talks about Judith Thurman:
AG: In a way, it is already. They make you read Charlotte Brontë and Shakespeare. The problem is that then they mostly test you by asking you stupid questions about the use of metaphor or rhyme schemes. They should ask why Hamlet’s such a bastard to Ophelia or why Jane Eyre gets off on the guy’s chilliness. Or maybe school’s changed and they do ask you that now. (Anouchka Grose)
Pero después de despachar los aciertos de color de la Casa Blanca o lograr entender lo que de Valentino se queda en su amado rojo, Judith Thurman puede hablar con la misma propiedad de grandes escritores: Gustave Flaubert, André Malraux, las hermanas Brönte (sic) o Collette. Su pluma es también la encargada de la exigente sección literaria de The New Yorker. (Angélica Gallón Salazar) (Google translation).The reference comes from the Spanish translation of Judith Thurman's Cleopatra's Nose.
Las hermanas Brontë: Charlotte, Anne y Emily y Brontë, nacidas a principios del siglo XIX en Gran Bretaña, escondieron su identidad bajo los seudónimos masculinos de Currer, Ellis y Acton Bell. Dejaron novelas tan populares como Agnes Grey o Cumbres borrascosas. (C.H.) (Google translation)Onirik posts a bad review of Christine Paris Bruyère's Edward F. Rochester.
On se raccroche à l’espoir de lire un récit de l’esprit tourmenté de l’homme durant la période où Jane réside chez les Rivers avec en point d’orgue les évènements tragiques qui se passent à Thornfield. Malheureusement, ce passage est expédié en quelques pages qui nous révèlent encore à quel point l’homme est malheureux sans la femme qu’il aime. (GaëlleB)déWeekkrant talks about the Muziektheater-totaal's performances of Jane Eyr. The Musical (next February 5-7). More information on previous posts. Dutch readers are reminded that Brontës.nl is giving away two tickets for the February 5 performance. Another Dutch Brontë-related play going on is the Theater Artemis/Antigone production of Wuthering Heights. Toneel.blog reviews it:
The Sri Lanka Guardian tours Northern England, including Yorkshire. Wuthering Heights is discussed in The Lesser of Two Equals. A book which is being read by a young Brazilian reader as published in A Notícia. Terra Noticias (Spain) reviews 44 escritores de la literatura universal. Finally a TV programme from the Ukranian TV channel ATB-Odessa (in Russian) devoted to Charlotte Brontë: О странностях любви (20 min approx) presented by Елена Каракина. It can be watched here.Door de eenvoud, het meeslepende spel en het ruwe decor is Woeste Hoogten een juweeltje en erg mooi om naar te kijken en te luisteren. Een aanrader! (Karianne Henkel) (Google translation)
Marlow reminded me so much of Lockwood, the narrator of “Wuthering Heights” that I kept waiting for his judgments to be revealed as gloriously unreliable. Unfortunately, Kostova doesn’t seem aware that her narrator’s smugness is an irritant, and a reader is supposed to root for him as he violates his professional ethics at various turns and lusts after the women in Robert life. “[Y]ou could get a stone to talk,” one character gushes. (Yvonne Zipp)Keith Staskiewicz talks about audiobook narrators in Entertainment Weekly:
Jeremy Irons, for example, could read a bound collection of Chinese takeout menus and I would find it engrossing. Sylvester Stallone narrating Jane Eyre, or Fran Drescher narrating anything, not so much. And it’s probably a plus that Stephen Hawking didn’t do his own Brief History of Time.The Paste Magazine interviews the composer and violinist Owen Pallett, leader of the band formely called Final Fantasy:
Paste: Remixing works for some people.Letras Libres (México) reviews the Spanish translation of Judith Thurman's Cleopatra's Nose:
Pallett: Yeah, I mean, it’s tricky. More often that not… Like, Kate Bush tried to do this, right? When she released her greatest hits, she re-recorded the vocals on the songs from The Kick Inside, because she was like, “I can sing them better now, I was only 19, it was my first record, give me a break!” You know what I mean? And people are just like, “Oh, yeah!” But it’s so much crazier when she sounds like… (Does a very accurate early Kate Bush impression) And that’s her “Wuthering Heights” thing—her original version where she sounds like an alien is so much better than this more mature performance that she does later. So, I don’t know, but I think it’s a worthy investment. I’ll give it a shot and see what comes up. But I mean, I can’t guarantee that I’m going to do that yet. (Alexandria Symonds)
Por eso los artículos pueden leerse como un conjunto más allá de piezas temporales deudoras de la actualidad, y por eso al final se acaba entendiendo la relación existente entre Ana Frank, André Malraux, Cristóbal Balenciaga, las hermanas Brontë, Yasmina Reza y María Antonieta. (Sònia Hernández) (Google translation)La Tercera (Chile) devotes a whole article to the Brontës in relation with the Twilight saga and the new Spanish editions which we presented a few days ago:
Si los lectores de los libracos de Stephanie Meyer, tan ampulosos y ficticios, recurrieran a una de las fuentes de su autora, se encontrarán con una novela implacablemente apasionada y oscura, con personajes de una brutalidad e histeria tan realistas que tendrían miedo de verdad, no de vampiros fantásticos sino del poder del deseo y la destrucción humanos. Emily Brontë, su célebre autora, vivió en un ambiente parecido, aunque opuesto al de su novela Cumbres borrascosas: aburrido y opresivo, vacío y angustiante, sin una historia de amor como la de sus terribles héroes, Catherine y Heathcliff, y murió casi desconocida a los 30 años de tuberculosis, en la casa de su padre, en el gélido y yermo campo de Yorkshire. Recién había enterrado a su hermano Branwell, tan joven como ella, artista frustrado que se aniquiló con alcohol y opio en las calles del lejano Londres. Un año después caería la más chica, Anne. Sólo Charlotte vivió un poco más y pudo imaginar la fama eterna que tendrían estas tristes hermanas. (Marcela Fuentalba) (Read more) (Google translation)El Correo Gallego (Spain) reviews the novel Amerika by Lorenzo Luengo:
‘Amerika’ ha sorprendido a todo el mundo. El autor contagia un sentimiento muy semejante al de las Brontë: el desasosieg. (Xurxo Fernández)(Google translation)
Quanto se ne sapeva di psicologia, commistione tra generi e femminismo nel 1847? Se si considera Jane Eyre, brillante e celebre opera di Charlotte Brontë pubblicata proprio in questa data, si potrebbe quasi rispondere: “molto anche se non tutto”. Dietro un romanzo apparentemente in pieno stile vittoriano si nasconde, come spesso in quel secolo, una trama che racconta molto di quello che le parole che la compongono non possono o forse ancora non sanno dire. (Read more) (Google translation)The Schwäbische Post (Germany) reviews a recent German edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights:
Durch die Aufnahme des Findelkindes Heathcliff in die Familie Earnshaw und den Tod des Vaters Earnshaw kommt die Geschichte ins Rollen. Sohn Hindley übernimmt den Posten des Familienoberhauptes und schikaniert Heathcliff. Ganz im Gegensatz dazu handelt die jüngere Tochter Cathy, die ihren Stiefbruder als Seelenverwandten ansieht.Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People and C.V. - Aprendendo a Aprender (in Portuguese) post about Jane Eyre and Chez Maribel (in French) loves Jane Eyre 2006, Kevin and Amy's World (negative) and Bippity Boppity Book, Page Turners, review (with very different conclusions) Wuthering Heights, Weavings reviews briefly but very enthusiastically Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë, Crazy Books & Reviews does the same with Brian James's The Heights. Finally, drivenholmes has uploaded to YouTube a visual interpretation of Emily Brontë's poem Spellbound.
Nach einiger Zeit ändert sich Tyrann Hindley, da seine junge Frau stirbt und ihren gemeinsamen Sohn Hareton zurücklässt. Hindley kümmert sich um nichts und niemanden mehr, trinkt und spielt nur noch.
Die 16-jährige Cathy nimmt den Heiratsantrag des jungen Edgar – dem Erben der reichen Familie Linton – an, um ihre Familie zu retten. Als Heathcliff das erfährt, verlässt er das Haus ohne ein Wort. Cathy trauert sehr, sie hat Liebeskummer. Trotzdem heiratet sie Edgar.
Jahre später kommt ein gut aussehender und reicher junger Mann aufs Anwesen der Lintons und schleicht sich in die Ehe Cathys und Edgars ein. Cathy erkennt in dem Mann ihren Heathcliff und sie verliebt sich wieder in ihn. Heathcliff versucht, sie für sich zu gewinnen, doch Cathy ist schwanger und gibt ihre Ehe nicht auf.
Heathcliffs Rache beginnt: Gegen den Willen Edgars heiratet er dessen Schwester Isabella und misshandelt sie. Das Verhältnis zwischen Edgar und Heathcliff wird immer schlechter, Cathy zerbricht an deren Streit und stirbt bei der Geburt ihrer Tochter Cathrine. Isabella flüchtet nach London, wo ihr Sohn Linton zur Welt kommt.
Heathcliff kehrt zu Hindley und dessen Sohn Hareton zurück, um auch an dieser Familie Rache zu üben: Er hetzt Hareton gegen seinen eigenen Vater auf, bis Hindley stirbt. Heathcliff zieht den Jungen in bäuerlichen Verhältnissen groß und verwehrt ihm aus Rache auch jede Art von Bildung. Trotzdem verhält sich Heathcliff höflich gegenüber dem Jungen, der seinen Pflegevater liebt. Als Isabella stirbt, nimmt Heathcliff auch seinen chronisch kranken Sohn Linton auf, um ihn mit Edgars Tocher Cathrine zusammenzubringen. Als Edgar stirbt, erzwingt Heathcliff die Ehe zwischen den beiden Kindern. Laut Testament ist Linton Edgars Erbe. Da Linton früh stirbt, gehen sämtliche Besitztümer an Heathcliff.
Ihm gehört nun das Anwesen der Lintons, das er aus Geiz an einen jungen Fremden vermietet. Nach einer Nacht auf dem Lintonanwesen hat er eine Vision: Cathys Geist fleht an seinem Fenster um Einlass. Heathcliff erleidet einen Schock, seine Kräfte schwinden mehr und mehr. Cathrine und Hareton verlieben sich indes ineinander. Heathcliff stirbt völlig kraftlos, aber vollkommen glücklich, am offenen Fenster. (Google translation) (Sara Pilbauer)
In a piece about the Brontë sisters and their various biographers, Thurman describes Charlotte as "a changeling princess" and Emily as "more like a Masai than like a Victorian maiden." (Meghan Daum in L.A. Times)On the blogosphere, today: The Brontë Parsonage Blog posts about the Hull Family Home in Lancaster, New York, a 1810 Georgian building with strong architectural similarities to the Haworth Parsonage. And The Little Children has a discussion on Rochester's temperament.
The Italian Section of the Brontë Society has a meeting today, December 1:EMILY BRONTË NELLA ROSA DEI VENTIMore information on the Brontë Parsonage Blog. And about the book Scaffale Inglese (The English Self), here.
Venti poeti inglesi dell'otto e novecento analizzati da Silvio Raffo nel suo nuovo libro SCAFFALE INGLESE. - Edizioni Ulivo (Ch) -
Tra di loro anche Emily Brontë con la poesia Love and Friendship
Presentazione sabato 1 dicembre 2007 presso la sede del British Council
di Milano, in via Manzoni 38, alle ore 16.30
Author Event with Judith Thurman,Categories: Alert, Emily Brontë, Poetry, Talks
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Hilldale Shopping Center - University Book Store
Lovers of culture and fine writing won't want to miss essayist Judith Thurman reading from her latest collection of essays, "Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire," at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, at University Book Store, Hilldale Shopping Center. The essays in this collection appeared in the New Yorker between 1987 and 2006 and feature well-known cultural icons Diane Arbus, Coco Chanel, Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Avedon, Charlotte Bronte and, of course, Cleopatra. (Heather Lee Schroeder in The Capital Times)
Mrs Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts
2904 College Avenue, Berkeley, California 94705.
Monday, November 26, 12:00 noon Judith Thurman reads from Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27.50), an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman’s celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and “women’s work”—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence.Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra’s Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.
Categories: Alert, Talks
The Independent provides reasons to visit Leeds and surroundings:» EXPRESS: What kind of research do you do when you're reviewing a biography?
» THURMAN: Well, I read everything I can find about the subject. I will read other biographies. In the case of the Brontes, for example — there's a huge amount of literature on the Brontes, but I read about five major biographies on the Brontes. I knew the fiction, but I reread a lot of it.
You're not going to have the kind of authority of somebody who's spent 20 years studying the subject, but you have to get enough authority to be able circumscribe the subject with enough reading, so that you can compare the book you're talking about to other works.
This academic blog contains several essays on Jane Eyre taken from different sources. Darque Reviews interviews Marta Acosta, author of Happy Hour at Casa Dracula:15 Countryside
Among the finest landscapes in Britain lie close to the city's doorstep. The Yorkshire Dales National Park is just a short drive to the north, where those seeking a fix of rolling Pennine hills, sheep and dry stone walls can luxuriate in bucolic splendour. Elsewhere, the countryside immortalised in Wuthering Heights, complete with the Brontës' home at Haworth, provides a more literary experience. (Jonathan Brown and James Macintyre)
What genre do you enjoy reading when time allows? Do you have any favorite authors?Another unexpected Brontëite is Diana Rigg. In this article in Easy Living magazine (October 2007) she describes Jane Eyre like this:
(...)My favorite writers are all dead: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Henry James, Evelyn Waugh, Mark Twain, and P.G. Wodehouse.
Jane Eyre was the book that led me to discover literature. As a novel, it has universal appeal across the generations - my daughter loved it as much as I did when I introduced it to her via a talking book. It particularly appeals to adolescent girls. It's the relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester: oh my God, it's so romantic! He's deeply attractive, such Byronic appeal. I read it when I was very young -12 or 13. I was a bookish child; books were my launch pad to a world elsewhere. Every Saturday, my dad and I used to go to Leeds Library and I was allowed to take three books out, and the afternoon was glorious with all the promise that lay between the covers of those three books.Thanks to Diana Rigg, ... where we have found this information.
My new TV show, The X-Word, will feature hopefuls from creative writing programmes, alongside home-taught scribblers, and put them in front of a top literary agent, a shark-nosed publisher, a bookseller with attitude and a PR guru, and make them tell us why they should be on the nation's bookshelves. Of course they will have to be able to write, but they should be good-looking, funny, talkative, personable, the right shape for an Armani suit, and a bit of a psychopath.Fortunately, not everything is lost. Brenda MacDonald writes in The Boston Herald a very nice story with Wuthering Heights in its core:
Dickens might have made it. Emily Brontë would have had her Round 1 rejection slip sent by second-class post to The Parsonage in Haworth.
I spotted the girl in a bookstore. She looked about 15 years old, bursting into the small store with two girls her age. The three girls bubbled with enthusiasm, gasping over books the way other girls their age might sway at boys. I watched them with curiosity.If you want to know what the problem is and the rest of the story, just click here.
The girls stayed in a pack, browsing local author picks, store recommended choices, book group selections. Soon they separated. The girl wandered my way, stood next to me, seeming oblivious to me as we both perused the books in front of us.
She pulled a book off the shelf - Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.”
“Oooh,” she said, calling to her friends. “I want this.”
The other girls gathered around here as she counted her money. She had $11. The paperback book cost $7. A bargain, I thought.
But she had a problem.
Jane Eyre at a warehouse (large cloth store) easily rejected Mr Rochester's proffered trousseau of amethyst silk and pink satin - these would have been lengths of textiles requiring dressmaking. Would she have been more tempted by his pasha act if the gowns had been assembled already in all their seraglio glamour?We don't really think so. As Jane says in the aforementioned fragment:
With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his choice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk. (Chapter XXIV)The New York Times reviews Cleopatra's Nose by Judith Thurman, which contains an essay on Charlotte Brontë, as we explained previously. The Daily Mail reviews the recent edition of the Letters of Ted Hughes selected and edited by Christopher Reid (Faber, £30). The reviewer describes the poet very colourfully:
Larkin used to say Plath belonged to the Hammer House Of Horror school of poetry. I think I'd come to think of Hughes as a combination of Herman Munster and Heathcliff. So I was completely unprepared for the quality of the letters which is most noticeable — namely their tenderness. (A N Wilson)BookNut comments, not very positively, on Villette. Gullible's Travels visits Haworth and the moors, although she seems a little bit confused about where the Brontë Falls are. Costumes and Stuff posts some pictures of the designs by the blog owner, Heather Leigh Brown, of the 2004 production of Jane Eyre in the Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
How frequently do you read books or see movies? What are your favorite books and movies?We don't leave India yet as The Times of India publishes a digression about ghosts/hauntings and makes the following statement:
Reading to me is a passion; something I do constantly, books are my escape and my love. Reading feeds me and is essential for my sense of self. Movies are my life and inspiration and my way to bond with my friends. My favorite books are Unbearable Lightness of Being, Perfume, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, The Fountain Head, Atlas Shrugged, Sister of my Heart….
Stories of hauntings seem to follow the same patterns and, whether fictions derive from them or they derive from fictions in a chicken-and-egg succession or even in a ghostly, ever-more-twisted spiral, they belong together in the misty realm of folk memory. As literature, the Woman in White and part of Wuthering Heights and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and H G Wells, seem to make points about life, memory, feeling, our relationship to the past and the cycle of moral cause and effect. (Farrukh Dhondy)The Further Adventures of DeLuzy has finished Emma Tennant's Thornfield Hall and has a very definite opinion on its qualities:
Reader, I finished it. As dreadful as it was at the start and in its mid-zone, it became perfectly, unspeakably awful by the finish.Proven Wrong is the name of an article from the 20th issue of Scribbulus, posted at The Leaky Cauldron. It looks again into the similarities between Heathcliff and Snape in the Harry Potter series.
In addition to the wildly inconsistent characterizations within sections, the tendency to tell rather than unfold the narrative, and the previously mentioned purple prose style, there's a conclusion which evokes arch references to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Now, this would not be a problem in and of itself, and in the hands of a more competent writer, it might even have been rather clever. (...)
But really, when Mrs. Fairfax suddenly morphs into a parody of Dame Judith Anderson doing Mrs. Danvers, it's all a bit too much. I'm as fond of Du Maurier's tale as the next person, not to mention the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title -- but there's just no organic character or plot development in Tennant's novel. It borders on camp, and I don't think camp is what she was aiming for. Intertextuality, undoubtedly, but not camp.
I wanted a nice distracting book that would be nothing like Deathly Hallows – something to take my mind off it completely while I recovered emotionally. I decided to pick up Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I’d never read the book or watched the film, but I had a vague idea that it was about a brooding man and his long-dead love.Do read the whole article if you're a fan of Harry Potter or if you simply like to read about this unexpected literary connection.
I quickly realized I hadn’t escaped Deathly Hallows at all; I had stumbled upon a literary precedent of the flawed lover/hero that is Severus Snape. Heathcliffe is, if anything, even more despicable than Snape, but they do share that ironic combination of sadism and undying love. Bronte had more “page time” to show this strange contrast in Heathcliffe. The readers are aware of his love for Catherine early on in the 336-page novel. Jo used only 31 pages of her 4,136-page epic to reveal the obsessive love Snape had for Lily. [...]
I’m glad Jo created such a complex character, and I hope Severus Snape joins Heathcliffe in the halls of historical literary characters that elicit conflicting emotions in readers for centuries to come. (RavenPuff)
The yard's Halfway To Heaven would not be running in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Fillies Maiden had she not been so unlucky on her bow on Monday. It looks as though compensation awaits, though Charlotte Bronte will be greatly feared if the betting suggests stable confidence. (Irish Preview)Of course, we are talking of horses here - an old BrontëBlog favourite.
Cleopatra's Nose. 39 Varieties of Desire is a collection of essays for The New Yorker by Judith Thurman. Among them, there's one about Charlotte Brontë:Cleopatra's NoseWe suppose that the article on Charlotte Brontë is this one:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date: 10/2007
ISBN: 0-374-12651-8
Cleopatra’s Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman’s celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and “women’s work”—from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence.
Here we find explorations of voracity: hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra’s Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.
Abstract A CRITIC AT LARGE about Charlotte Bronte(who published 3 novels under the pseudonym Currer Bell)& her biographers. Because Bronte had achieved notoriety in equal measure with glory, Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronte's first biographer & friend, set out to vindicate Bronte. The next century of biographers take a less defensive, & restricted view of Bronte. Writer tells about Brontes life at Haworth in Yorkshire with her ailing, tyrannical father, Rev. Patrick Bronte & her 5 sisters & brother. At age 14 Bronte had catalogued 22 volumes of poetry & prose. Bronte & her sister Emily left Haworth briefly to attend boarding school in Belgium. There Bronte met Constantin Heger the teacher with whom she fell in love. Her version of the experience is the subject of "Villette," one of the best studies of claustrophobia & depression in literature. Various critics point to Bronte's "morbid passion," "rancor," & "aggressive stoicism." If rancor compromised Bronte the artist, it didn't compromise Bronte the woman. At age 38 she married Arthur Nicholls, her father's curate. She died 9 months later. The question for readers to ponder is what Bronte would've made of ordinary happiness. For Bronte maintained as she had in "Villette" that some beings were born to suffer, and that it was nobler to "submit faithfully" to such a fate than to pine for a sweeter one.Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë
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