What inspired Wuthering Heights? In this short documentary, narrated by former Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, and directed by Tim Brearley, we take a journey across the Yorkshire Moors to Haworth to find that the romantic myth of Emily as ‘The Mystic of the Moors’ hides a more complex and fascinating truth.With the help of Emily Brontë’s biographers, Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies, her connection to the land and the intellectual life of her time is examined and presents a picture of a woman very different from our convention picture of her from the various films of her classic novel. (Norman Lebrecht)
Directed and Produced by Tim BrearleyProduced by Samphire Productios for Channel 5 (28 Dec 2003)Presented by Chris Smith, MPMusic by Sarah ClassWith Clare Barrett as Emily Brontë, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. LockwoodWith Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies.
Reeta Chakrabarti is wonderfully eloquent when talking to Eastern Eye about her debut novel, Finding Belle, which she says has been “inspired” by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, rather than a retelling of the classic published in 1847. (...)Reeta said she has always been a bookworm and read Jane Eyre at the age of eight. Five novels she would take to a desert island would include Jane Eyre, (...)She said Jane Eyre “is the book I have read most”. When she was growing up, she was “consumed by the romance between Jane and Rochester”.“But then as I got older, I started to think Rochester is q
uite a bastard because he locks up his wife in a cellar. She’s ill, very ill, but instead of finding a treatment, he locks her up. Then he leads Jane a merry dance. The themes within Jane Eyre are of secrecy, a marriage where the wife becomes very mentally ill and is hidden away. She’s a shameful secret, and our attitudes to mental illness these days are entirely different. So that’s where my novel comes from. Schizophrenia is a particular form of psychosis whereby somebody, who may lead their lives fairly normally, can have delusions so they hear voices or imagine scenarios that are not real. This is the condition that I decided to give my fictional character, based on the classical reference to Bertha from Jane Eyre.” (Amit Roy)
Jane Eyre 2011Mia Wasikowska stars as Jane Eyre, a resilient young woman who, after enduring a traumatic childhood, receives an education and eventually accepts a job as a governess at the home of Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). As Eyre and Rochester begin to fall in love, Eyre learns there's more to her new love interest than she ever expected, forcing her to flee and find comfort in the company of another, St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell).Jane Eyre is a classic romance that has been adapted into several films, but the most recent adaptation is easily one of the finest. The 2011 version received immense praise and earned dozens of awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Wasikowska gives Brontë's famous heroine immense justice, delivering a highly underrated performance alongside an equally exceptional cast. (Andrea Ciriaco)
A couple of TMWHDE news: Otago Daily Times (Dunedin) and The Inverness Courier (Cromarty).
The Giornale di Puglia (Italy) illustrates an article about Emily Brontë with a very unlikely A.I. Emily.
Jane Eyre is a pioneering work in the genre of the Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Charlotte Brontë introduces us to the resilient and independent Jane Eyre, an orphaned girl who endures a harsh childhood to become a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets the enigmatic Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a deep and tumultuous romance. The novel explores themes of morality, religion, and social class, and is celebrated for its strong, complex heroine who asserts her sense of self in a restrictive society. (Girish Shukla)
4. Wuthering Heights by by Emily Brontë
Wutherig Heights is the first and only book of author Emily Brontë, it is a captivating tale of intense love and obsession set against the dramatic backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.
Emily Brontë's novel offers a unique blend of passion, mystery, and complex characters, making it a timeless classic that explores the darker sides of human nature and relationships. Its powerful storytelling and atmospheric setting will keep you intrigued from start to finish. (Shivangi Prajapati)
Wuthering Heights 1939Emily Brontë's sad, haunting 1847 tale of Heathcliff, his love for Catherine, and his inability to find true happiness, is brought to life on the big screen by Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
Hang on a minute. We did produce Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Eliot, Wordsworth, the Brontës: all capable of shaping a decent sentence or two. “Nineteenth century British literature is superb,” [Agnès] Poirier concedes, “but British music, painting and sculpture of that period look parochial.” (Kevin Maher, Laura Freeman, Johanna Thomas-Corr, Carol Midgley, Clive Davis, Will Hodgkinson, Debra Craine)
At this concert they featured songs from Molly Drake, mother of singer-songwriter and musician Nick Drake along with songs based on the words from the writings of the Brontë sisters.Todmorden, like Haworth, the home of the Brontës, is in Yorkshire’s Pennines. Somehow, the Unthanks’ style of almost minimalist music, with its intensity, piercing harmonies and sometimes off-kilter time changes seems at one with the local landscapes.
Although very little of it remains, the beautiful hamlet of Wycoller still has much to offer lovers of the English picturesque. Largely abandoned in the 19th century, when it was due to be flooded to make way for a reservoir, it now consists mostly of atmospheric ruins, including 16th-century Wycoller Hall which is thought to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Cath Pound)
Cuando tenía ocho años fue cautivada por un clásico: Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Aún conserva el ejemplar que tiene escrita la fecha y el nombre de quien se lo regaló. Lo recuerda así: "Una niña huérfana que vivía con una tía malvada, la mandan a un internado tremendo, luego trabaja como institutriz, pero nunca se victimizaba, al contrario. Una chica que se reinventaba todo el tiempo y nunca se daba por vencida. Este libro aparece en La Casita azul". Así, su propia obra homenajea a aquellas primeras lecturas. (Débora Campos) (Translation)
Come with me as I have a day out at the Bradford Literature Festival 2024 for their Brontë Day in the Midland Hotel. Spend the day with me getting my Brontë-themed stall ready and get a taste of the talks by distinguished authors and scholars on Anne Brontë and her other Brontë family members.
By the time she earned her second Golden Globe nod, for The Missing in 2015, she was thinking seriously about a story she had long wanted to tell.Frances, who has a degree in English Literature, had become enthralled by Emily Brontë’s gothic Wuthering Heights, which she read while being shuttled to and from her Catholic high school in WA when she was 15. When Mansfield Park went on hiatus because the director became ill Frances visited Yorkshire, where the Brontë sisters had lived.Over the years she began slowly drafting a screenplay. There was “such a long list of people” who gave her encouragement, support and constructive feedback on her first draft. Gerald [Lepkowski[, of course, was her number-one champion. Soon she invited more people to offer feedback.“There’s something affirming about that. If you take a step into something you want to do creatively, a lot of people will back you … That’s the thing I love about the industry – it’s a community. If you say: ‘Hey, I want to do this’, people really get behind you and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, let me read your script’. Rob Connolly [director of The Dry] was one of the first people who went, ‘Oh, my daughters would love to see this film. Let me help you’.”Frances enjoyed the challenge. She sees herself as an actor, not a star, and perhaps now, more a storyteller. She’s never liked the harsh glare of the celebrity spotlight. “For me, it’s always been a struggle,” she says. “I’m at peace with it now and I like how it is at the moment. There were times where I’d get a lot of exposure and I’ve never really been comfortable with it. I love being on a set. I love being on stage, but I find that side of the industry – because I’m an introvert – challenging.“That’s why it’s nice to balance it with stuff behind the camera too. Some people are really good at it, and I just feel I don’t have that skill set.” Even though she and Gerald haven’t often acted opposite each other, she directed him in Emily. “It was really fun and he was such a support to me while I was making the film as well. We were shooting in the depths of Yorkshire, so we were kind of isolated anyway.”Filming took place during the pandemic. “We’d been cooped up and suddenly we were out on these wild Yorkshire Dales. I look back at that time of making Emily as very magical.”The film opened at the Toronto Film Festival. For someone who’s never relished publicity, how did Frances cope with the prospect of critical responses to something so personal? “ (...)“You’d never make anything if you were worried about how it’s being perceived. All you have to do is try to make the best work that you can in that moment,” Frances continues. “After that it’s about turning up and doing the work so you can get better at it. You’ve got to be prepared to be in the dust and struggle with what you’re trying to create. It can be messy sometimes. Since I’m older I’ve become better at that, but I’ve still got a way to go.” (Genevieve Gannon)
Whether you love sad love stories, interesting characters, or captivating settings, these books will take you into worlds that remind you of Emily Brontë's beautiful masterpiece, Wuthering Heights.
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.Charlotte Brontë, Emily's sister, penned this equally iconic novel. Jane Eyre follows the journey of an orphaned girl who becomes a governess and falls in love with her enigmatic employer, Mr. Rochester. Like Wuthering Heights, it explores themes of love, social class, and the supernatural.
The fun and flamboyant community dance event "The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever" returns to Dunedin’s Octagon this month, filling the space with a sea of red-clad "Kates".Based around a flash mob re-creating Kate Bush’s 1978 iconic song and dance, the light-hearted event will be held from 11am next Saturday, July 20. (Brenda Harwood)
A collaboration mainly with Eurythmics' Dave Stewart, In Your Dreams is one of Nicks' most adventurous-sounding albums. The title track is hot-rodding power-pop; "Wide Sargasso Sea" hews toward psychedelic rock; and "Soldier's Angel," which features Lindsey Buckingham's inimitable guitar and vocals, is sparse and haunting. But Nicks' lyrics on In Your Dreams also include some of her most introspective insights. (Allison Rapp)
The second weekend of the festival, Friday to Sunday, July 21 to 23, will be devoted to celebrating Charlotte Brontë and her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls of Banagher. The programme includes three films, a tapestry and stitchcraft exhibition, three talks, two poetry readings and two heritage walks. Speakers and readers include Maebh O'Regan, Eileen Casey, Frances Browner, Joanne Wilcock, Michael O'Dowd, Kieran Keenaghan and James Scully. All events will be held in or start from The Crank House on lower Main Street. The events are free but donations will be most welcome. For full details go to the That Beats Banagher festival website in the highlights under culture and heritage.
Every July, fans all across the globe get together in various cities to dance and celebrate what's called The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.On Saturday, hundreds of dancers in red flowing frocks gathered at Sydney's inner city park to mimic the performer's unique choreography from her 1978 music video for Wuthering Heights.In the haunting video, Kate dances and sings in a red dress, with the track inspired by characters in Emile (sic) Brontë's classic 1847 novel of the same name.The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever celebrates the famous song worldwide in various places and coincides with Bush's birthday. (Ciara O'Loughlin)
NPORadio5 (Netherlands), Newcastle Herald and Stuff do the same for the Amsterdam, Newcastle and Dunedin events.
What does writing mean to you?Writing is one of the greatest inventions of humanity as it allows us to be able to record our experiences, knowledge, and creativity for posterity. Writing is the reason I could read about events that took place 2000 years ago in pre-Islamic Arabia through its poetry or enjoy a story created by Emily Brontë in mid-19th century England. It is what allows us to expand our minds beyond the scope of our immediate place, time, and reality.
Working with a sample of about 350 12- and 13-year-olds who were average or poor readers, the researchers had teachers read aloud “two whole challenging novels at a faster pace than usual.” (...)I’ve observed this phenomenon myself in other contexts, and I’ve heard about it from educators. I’ve seen teachers read aloud from engaging novels—even, on one occasion, the rather challenging Jane Eyre—and watched students of various ages become mesmerized. (Natalie Wexler)
Fat women in books are monstrous, comical and repulsive (Miss Trunchbull in Matilda); thin ones are saintly, beautiful and heroic (Miss Honey in the same book). This was even more true in the books I loved as a pre-teen, from Sweet Valley High to Jane Eyre. Fatness, like ugliness, has long been shorthand for authors, especially those writing for young people, to communicate: “This girl is bad.” But I learnt that message in other ways, too.
[Bernard] HerrmannSuite from Wuthering Heights; Echoes for Strings★★★★☆Keri Fuge (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Singapore Symphony Orchestra, cond Mario Venzago, Joshua TanChandosSynonymous with Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote some of the greatest and most audacious film scores in the history of Hollywood, Bernard Herrmann had many other strings to his bow. Among them was his opera, Wuthering Heights, inspired by a love for the novels of the Brontë sisters that began when he scored the 1943 screen adaptation of Jane Eyre. The challenge for the listener is in drawing a dividing line between Herrmann’s works for cinema and those he wrote with his other hats on, and Hans Sorensen’s suite of excerpts, and the performances of it here, makes that at once straightforward and complicated. The first scene of Act I, with writing for orchestra and soloists that is alternately astringent and blowsy, is a case in point. The orchestration is astonishingly rich and nuanced, but it is, yes, also inescapably cinematic. The same goes for Echoes for Strings, beautiful and persuasive though the piece is. No matter, this accomplished recording is a deeply rewarding listen. (Dan Cairns)
Gabi Bergman: Do you have a favourite song or moment from this show?B.R.: Not at the moment, because there are so many that I’m really learning and learning to love. Miley I’m enjoying singing… As Streisand I sing Sondheim’s “Being Alive”, which I’ve never sung before. Kate Bush is another I’m just really enjoying – I sing “Wuthering Heights”, of course, but also “Running Up That Hill”… and it’s been fun learning those ones.
More than merely siblings, the Brontës are a literary sisterhood. “We are three sisters,” Charlotte famously said when their anonymity could no longer be hidden from her publisher. [...]But in the latest addition to the on-screen Brontë sisterhood, Emily (2022)—written and directed by Frances O’Connor—the three sisters are shown writing together only once. Emily (Emma Mackey) is placed center; Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) and Anne (Amelia Gething) flank her, out of focus.This is only a nod to the famous imagery, for the film is uninterested in the elements of collaboration that make the Brontë story so compelling. Lush and poetic, Emily interprets the formation of the middle sister’s imagination, adding an affair with curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Pre-empting criticism of historical inaccuracy, O’Connor rejects the label of “biopic.”Nevertheless, Emily is marketed around the concept of “authenticity,” perfectly in keeping with the genre’s gestures towards emotional truth over fact. O’Connor may dislike the label, but the film’s weakness is the biopic’s perennial flaw: the oversimplification of events and characters to serve a central protagonist’s personal development. Other family members become satellites that revolve around Planet Emily. By doing so, the film reproduces tired conceptions of the nature of genius and defines women’s relationships as antagonism rather than kinship. [...]The other Brontës’ works are erased. Emily publishes alone, without her pseudonym, toasted by family and friends. There is no mention of the poetry book, no Agnes Grey, no Jane Eyre yet. Anne is mostly ignored, and a false hierarchy of influence is established when Emily’s dying encouragement (and disclosure of her romantic experience) inspires Charlotte to write her own masterpiece. Emily is sealed in splendid artistic isolation.These choices are disappointing because the Brontës were an intriguing creative community. Emily restructures their lives into a lazy template of familial “black sheep” and individualized triumph. [...]Yet Anne’s outdated image as the dull, passive sister makes her an unsuitable protagonist for a glossy narrative like Emily, and to question the stereotyping would disrupt its infatuation with the genius misfit.O’Connor’s pairing of Branwell and Emily, though, is not unique; in fact, it’s consistently repeated across Brontë adaptations. To Walk Invisible’s Emily (Chloe Pirrie) is the only sister who comforts Branwell (Adam Nagaitis) as he spirals into alcoholism. Despite Charlotte and Branwell’s documented early partnership, something about Emily’s persona aligns her more easily with Branwell in popular imagining. Emily goes so far as to imply an inability to separate the two siblings’ identities, with O’Connor rather bizarrely citing the impact of their mother’s early death in 1821. This transposes Heathcliff and Cathy’s intense early relationship in Wuthering Heights, and Cathy’s declaration of “I am Heathcliff” into Emily’s own experience, thus resurrecting reductive autobiographical readings of her novel.By contrast, To Walk Invisible presents the three sisters as a team, demonstrating Emily’s reserve and Charlotte’s controlling tendencies without resorting to caricature. (Iona Glen)
They were pretty easy and common to score. Over the years, I’ve scored at least one from every op shop in central and North Dunedin. I frequently paid $2 for the likes of Thomas DeQuincey’s Confessions Of An English Opium Eater or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Grant McDougall)
Spread across a huge table in Sotheby’s auction house in London are stacks of immaculately preserved 19th- century first editions and manuscripts, a slew of letters in Jane Austen’s rigorously disciplined script and a small collection of Charlotte Brontë’s hand-sewn books, barely 3in high and filled with writing so teeny it had to be written with a single hair dipped in ink and can only be deciphered under a microscope. (...)No wonder Ovenden’s hands are shaking and, alongside, Bronte expert Professor Kathryn Sutherland of St Anne’s College, Oxford, is fizzing
with excitement.Because today is the first chance for generations for anyone to get a proper look at it. And it’s all here. (...)Meanwhile, the first editions — some annotated by their authors — include everything from Jane Austen’s Emma, Persuasion and Pride And Prejudice to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.But what has really got Ovenden’s heart racing is a set of manuscripts of the Brontë siblings.The collection includes seven of Charlotte Brontë’s famous ‘little books’ or magazines written at the kitchen table in the Brontë parsonage — alone worth an estimated £5 million — a manuscript collection of poems by sister Anne and a small autographed diary note by Emily and Anne.The real treasure, however, is a small, slim, red-bound exercise book of Emily Brontë’s poems, annotated by her sister Charlotte and valued at between £800,000 and £1.2 million.‘This is the Holy Grail,’ says Professor Sutherland. ‘There is another in the British Library and that’s it. This one was for many years considered lost or destroyed. Almost nothing of Emily survived. We can’t believe it’s here.’Such is the library’s significance that, when it suddenly popped up, largely intact, for sale by Sotheby’s earlier this year, it was hailed as the ‘Tutankhamun’s Tomb of literature’. (...)But what has really got Ovenden’s heart racing is a set of manuscripts of the Brontë siblings.The collection includes seven of Charlotte Brontë’s famous ‘little books’ or magazines written at the kitchen table in the Brontë parsonage — alone worth an estimated £5 million — a manuscript collection of poems by sister Anne and a small autographed diary note by Emily and Anne.The real treasure, however, is a small, slim, red-bound exercise book of Emily Brontë’s poems, annotated by her sister Charlotte and valued at between £800,000 and £1.2 million.‘This is the Holy Grail,’ says Professor Sutherland. ‘There is another in the British Library and that’s it. This one was for many years considered lost or destroyed. Almost nothing of Emily survived. We can’t believe it’s here.’Such is the library’s significance that, when it suddenly popped up, largely intact, for sale by Sotheby’s earlier this year, it was hailed as the ‘Tutankhamun’s Tomb of literature’. (Jane Fryer)
Women’s charities have spoken about what a terrifying period lockdown has been for those in abusive relationships. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall tells the story of Helen Graham, who’s fled to Yorkshire with her son from a violent, drunken, dissipated husband. (Patricia Nicol)
The Yorkshire moors came to Dunedin at noon on Saturday as a flash mob assembled in the Octagon for The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever.About 50 aspiring Cathys clad in red dresses attended the event, which had participants perform the dance routine from the music video to Kate Bush’s 1978 No1 hit Wuthering Heights.The song is based on Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of the same name about the turbulent relationship between the volatile Heathcliff and his childhood friend Catherine. (Andrrew Marshall)
This is Reno also talks about its local event.
Roth aveva cercato una donna giovane e bella che si prendesse cura di lui (come Jane Eyre accudì Rochester)….e invece trovò Taylor: sensibile conoscitore della letteratura, grande capacità di ascolto che lo rese il confidente perfetto e speciale. (Lura Goria) (Translation)
AnneBrontë.org has a brief post about a trip to Scarborough.
The World Premiere ofThe Telegraph lists the TV highlights of the week:
The Art of Sisters: Tales & Letters by the Brontës
Adapted and Directed by Miriam Canfield
February 21st and 22nd, 7:30pm
$25 General Admission
American Irish Historical Center
991 5th Avenue
Having been exposed to the hardships of life from a young age, the Brontë sisters' fertile minds and soulful natures were apt to express their understanding of the human experience by creating extraordinarily, original stories. The Art of Sisters: Tales and Letters by the Brontës, delves into these sisters lives and reveals Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë's personal struggles as they faithfully persevered.
Featuring the talents of: Miriam Canfield, Alida Rose Delaney, Katrina Michaels, Rae Nelson, Stuart Rudin, and Marshall Taylor Thurman.
Musical Arrangement and Original Composition by Nathan Ben-Yehuda
Costume Design by Liz Altmann + Mekenna Hartwig
Produced by KALIDASCOPES Media & MirCan Productions
Graphics by Kim Hoeckle
Photography by Shannon Finnell
The Secret World of Emily BrontëChannel 4, December 29th, 6.05pmThe Times 2018 literary quiz has some Brontë questions:
Lily Cole came under fire for her appointment as creative partner to the Brontë Society for 2018, the bicentenary year of Emily Brontë’s birth. In this documentary, the Cambridge graduate and former model cannily uses Brontë’s life to show how the sexist expectations that fuelled such criticism were precisely what the writer herself tried to subvert. Cole travels a well-worn path to Brontë Country in Yorkshire, investigating Emily’s upbringing and the inspiration behind her 1847 masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Cole treks across Emily’s beloved moors, takes her own sister round the parsonage where the Brontës lived, and even interviews rock legend Patti Smith, who recently penned an introduction to Emily’s classic novel.
While the radical nature of Emily’s gender-busting achievement remains clear, Cole can’t rescue the facts of her life from their relative obscurity. Far more revealing, however, is Cole’s pet project – a short film that re-imagines the history of Heathcliff, the book’s foundling hero, from a modern perspective. It’s Cole’s work on this film that not only casts the brooding character in a whole new light, but also illuminates Emily’s own concerns afresh.
Jane Eyre (2011) ★★★★★
BBC One, January 2nd, 1.45pm
Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation respects Charlotte Brontë’s novel without following it blindly. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (as imposing as ever), put plenty of other Jane Eyre/Mr Rochester duets to shame; their performances are elevated by Moira Buffini’s excellent script. Fukunaga’s film is shot with masterly restraint and shorn of sentimentality. It would be hard to ask for more from Brontë on screen.
This year it was the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth. Which Brontë sister wrote which novel?Cathy Earnshaw meets Gabriel Oak in Otago Daily News (New Zealand) :
36 Jane Eyre
37 Villette
38 Wuthering Heights
39 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
40 And which one of the three was married?
The University Book Shop short story series brings you three stories in which local writers relocate famous fictional characters to Dunedin, and send them on twisted adventures. Today, Maria Ioannou follows Cathy on her search for a halfway decent Tinder date, as she spends time far from the madding crowd with Gabriel Oak.The Vindicator mentions a recent local concert:
Canfield Village Middle School’s seventh- and eighth-grade choirs, under the direction of Tom Scurich, performed their annual winter choir concert on Dec. 4.Jim McKewon's Likely Stories goes into his 2019 readings on KWBU:
The students performed to an auditorium packed with family and friends at Canfield High School. (...)
The seventh-grade choir opened the show with “Autumn Vesper,” by Emily Brontë and Audrey Snyder. (Abby Slanker)
To continue my study of the Brontës and Jane Austen, I finally got a copy of The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. I have a couple of pamphlets, but this is my fist time with their complete works.La Voz de Galicia (Spain) talks about a recent translation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women:
En Mujercitas, Alcott recogía la herencia de una época que ya había sido testigo de la Declaración de Sentimientos de Seneca Falls (1848, germen del sufragio femenino) y de personajes anteriores como Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) o algunas protagonistas de las novelas de Jane Austen. (Javier Armesto) (Translation)Télérama (France) describes the TV series The Miniaturist:
La série en tire quelque chose de proche du conte de fées, baigné dans une pénombre quasi fantastique qui rappelle l’œuvre d’Angela Carter (La Compagnie des loups), Rebecca de Daphne du Maurier ou Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. (Pierre Langlais) (Translation)L'Echo (Belgium) reviews a Paula Rego exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris:
Mais elle pourrait tout aussi bien être la fille naturelle de Goya et de Charlotte Brontë, du sarcasme ironique pour le premier au féminisme radical pour la seconde, reprenant son destin aux hommes comme Jane Eyre, son héroïne. (Xavier Flament) (Translation)Your Tango quotes 'sweet love quotes' (ahem) from Wuthering Heights; Jane Eyre's Library (in Spanish) posts about Penguin Australian edition of Jane Eyre. A couple of Brontë derivatives in the best reads 2018 list of Serena's Favorite Reads. Finally, a great post by What Rachel Wrote where she walks from Cowan Bridge to Tunstall Church, following the steps of the Brontës.
2018 offers us both the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in the UK, and the 200th anniversary of Emily Bronte's birth, so it feels poignant to begin the year on the topic of prejudice.BBC News adds some details of Lily Cole's involvement in Emily Brontë 200:
Emily Brontë, whose extraordinary novel Wuthering Heights has stirred the world for over 150 years, published her work under an androgynous pseudonym: Ellis Bell.
Writing in 1850, Charlotte Brontë explained why she and her sisters Emily and Anne all used pseudonyms: "We did not like to declare ourselves women, because we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice."
When I was asked by the Brontë Parsonage Museum to work on a piece to commemorate Emily Bronte's birth, I immediately thought of Emily's pseudonym, and what that gesture represented.
Why could a woman not publish under her own name? What was life like for women living in the UK in the 19th Century? What circumstances would also give rise to a child being found abandoned in a city in the 18th Century, as Heathcliff was?
Now I find myself wondering, fleetingly, if I should present the short film I am working on for the Brontë Parsonage Museum under a pseudonym myself, so that it will be judged on its own merits, rather than on my name, my gender, my image or my teenage decisions.
I would not be so presumptuous as to guess Emily's reaction to my appointment as a creative partner at the museum, were she alive today. Yet I respect her intellect and integrity enough to believe that she would not judge any piece of work on name alone.
In the meantime I am excited to see how much Emily still means to so many people, and I welcome 2018 to celebrate her.
In her role, Cole is making a short film for the museum about Wuthering Heights anti-hero Heathcliff. It will also address gender politics and women's rights in the year that marks 100 years since women got the vote. (Ian Youngs)The Guardian covers more or less the same topics adding:
Lily Cole responds to Brontë Society row as member who quit is branded a snob. (...) Holland’s response to Cole’s appointment has been widely criticised, with several writers calling it snobbery online. (Sian Cain)Daily Express ends its article quoting Charlotte Brontë:
She also had some words that may ring true for Holland and those members of the Brontë Society so opposed to Cole’s appointment as champion of Emily’s work.BBC News, The Bookseller, Il Corriere della Sera, The Telegraph, NME, Contactmusic, Evening Standard, Birmingham Mail, (many of them via Associated Press) also cover these late events. And The Cut, laughs not with us (Brontë enthusiasts) but at us (and we deserve it):
“We had noticed,” she wrote, “how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.” (Dominic Utton)
The Brontë Society is a group dedicated to running a museum about the Brontë sisters and “promoting the Brontës’ literary legacy within contemporary society.” Part of this mission seems to delightfully — but not all that surprisingly — entail being a group of messy bitches. Now, their latest bout of drama involves a supermodel, a disgruntled former member, an angry blog post, and invocations of Rita Ora’s name. (...)Susannah Butter in the Evening Standard writes a fitting coda for this affair:
Per the Bookseller, infighting has rocked the Brontë society for the past few years, which means their reality show is long overdue. (Gabriella Paiella)
Why can’t a supermodel be interested in books? The outrage over Lily Cole’s appointment as Emily Brontë’s champion for her 200th anniversary is academic priggishness in the face of a move that could engage people with literature.
The idea that only certain types can appreciate books is elitist and goes against what the Brontës believed. They worked to spread education, without discrimination. Incidentally, Cole has a first from Cambridge.
I was at the Brontë Parsonage over Christmas and saw Brontë-themed beer (Emily is an amber ale with a biscuit flavour) and tattoos. The Brontës didn’t down pints or adorn themselves with ink — but these are allowed, so let’s stop being stuck up about a supermodel.
The first Brontë manuscript identified in New Zealand has been restored to its place in literary history thanks to university researchers.
The fragment of Branwell Brontë’s work was misfiled as a letter in the Heritage Collections of the Dunedin Public Library. (...)
Dr Thomas McLean, of the University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics, and Dr Grace Moore, of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, researched Branwell’s life and work so they could properly explain the significance of the manuscript. Their findings have just appeared in the Oxford University Press journal Notes and Queries.
They discovered the Dunedin fragment provides the ending for a story written by Branwell in 1837.
The pair pieced together Branwell’s microscopic handwriting, sometimes word-by-word, sometimes letter-by-letter, and were able to place the fragment at the end of a scene in an inn,
identified as part IV (i) of Angria and the Angrians.
Dr McLean visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, near Keighley, in August last year and examined Branwell’s writing journal from which the page was taken.
He said: “I could see exactly where our page fit. The fragment provides the finishing touches to the story.”
They believe the piece may have become separated from the rest of the story because it is written on a slightly different sized piece of paper to the rest, as though it was an afterthought; it also bears a date eight weeks later than the chapter it concludes. The rest of the story, which has already been published, survives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. It is one of a collection of stories about the imaginary land of Angria that Branwell and Charlotte wrote about in their youth.
The fragment is part of the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts held in the Heritage Collections of the library, with records showing it was purchased in 1928. (Nina Swift)
This is a very curious and intriguing project. The Telegraph & Argus reports:The Brontë sisters are alive and well and working in a Keighley hair salon.School Library Journal reviews the comic book adaptation Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna & Ramon K. Pérez:
That’s the premise of a new play due to receive its world premiere in the training salon at Keighley College on January 23.
Jane Hair: The Brontës Restyled features modern-day versions of Charlotte, Emily and Anne and portrays their rise to global fame.
The play, which is funded by the Arts Council and the Brontë Society, was created by Oakworth-born writer-producer Kirsty Smith and actor-director Kat Rose Martin.
Working together in a local hairdressers, the young women and their brother Branwell each have their own personal creative project – Emily is a slam poet, Anne writes a blog and Charlotte is working on TV and film scripts.
Kirsty Smith has previously worked as a television producer for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, and for this project has partnered with Bierley actor and director Kat Rose Martin.
Kat had a busy 2017 touring with renowned theatre company Northern Broadsides as well as playing Britain’s first-ever female boxer as part of Hull City of Culture.
The pair promised that in the interactive performance audiences would meet the sisters in their salon and have the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with the actors.
Kat said: “Hair salons are the perfect setting to get all the best gossip so if you’ve ever wanted to find out who these women were, pop along and make an appointment with Jane Hair.”
Victoria Aird, head of department at Keighley College, said her staff were delighted to be involved with the project, adding: “We think our hairdressing salon will be the perfect setting for a play celebrating artistic excellence from Keighley.”
The play, which will be performed at 7.30pm at the college next to Keighley railway station, aims to both entertain and introduce new people to the work of the three famous sisters.
The production forms part of the 200th anniversaries of the writers’ births, which this year focuses on Emily Brontë, writer of Wuthering Heights.
Kirsty said she wanted to bring the Brontë story to life for people who had never read any of their books.
She added: “We want to show that you don’t need an A-level in English Literature to appreciate the incredible achievements of these three local women who became world famous.”
Jane Hair will also be performed at Bradford College’s hair salon January 26, at 2pm and 7.30pm, with a view to touring later in the year. (David Knights)
This brilliant homage to the classic will enamor fans of the original and intrigue newcomers. A strong choice for graphic novel collections. (Shelley M. Diaz)Egypt Today is thrilled with Emily Brontë's poetry:
One of the most emotional poems in the volume is “Remembrance”. It talks about different ways of departure and love.San Francisco Gate recommends A Secret Sisterhood by Midorikawa and Sweeney:
Also, Brontë’s style is highly figurative and emotional, she coined different magical images through her words, and she depended on catchy sounds to attract the reader.
In separate narratives, Midorikawa and Sweeney provide a thought-provoking meditation on literary friendship, as well as engagingly intimate glimpses of four of the world’s finest writers in a pursuit that, for women of their times, skirted the edges of decency.We are quite lost with this statement in The Telegraph (India):
So, when the Brontë sisters each assumed a Christian, male nom de plume, the reasons were pretty clear. As Charlotte put it, "we did not like to declare ourselves women, because - without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' - we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice..." The sisters, however, exercised agency in their own way. Their names, Currer, Acton and Ellis, were actually surnames of three women of the previous generation from the world of literature. (Shreyashi Ganguly)The Globe and Mail talks about film director Paul Thomas Anderson:
In interviews, Anderson tends to squirm around in his chair, edgy, wide eyes darting anxiously, groaning dismissively under his breath whenever he's lavished with any kind of praise. He's much more comfortable discussing books – stories by Daphne du Maurier, Anya Seton, Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Brontë (at least by way of Robert Stevenson's 1943 film adaptation of Jane Eyre) fed into Phantom Thread's stuffy, sensuous milieu – and movies. Especially other people's movies. (John Semley)Il Piccolo (Italy) interviews the writer and journalist Mario Baudino:
E i "cambi di genere", scrittrici che si fingono scrittori e viceversa? (Roberto Carnero)Foggia Città Aperta (Italy) has an alert for next Sunday, January 7:
«Ce ne sono molti nell’Ottocento, soprattutto britannico, quando vigeva nei confronti delle donne un generale pregiudizio negativo. Le sorelle Brontë lo aggirarono cambiando sesso, presentandosi e firmandosi cioè come i fratelli Bell. (Translation)
Libri che parlano di libri: c’è niente di più dannatamente – e, per chi ne è persuaso, meravigliosamente – libresco? No. Anzi sì: uno scrittore che parla di libri traendo ispirazione da un libro che ha scritto. A teatro, magari. È il caso di Musica Civica, la rassegna diretta dal Maestro Gianna Fratta che, anche quest’anno, riparte dal consueto mix di suoni e parole. Ed è il caso di Paolo Di Paolo, primo ospite d’apertura di questa nona edizione, per la prima volta in programma sul palcoscenico del Teatro U. Giordano di Foggia. (...) Da Twain a Salinger, da Bassani a Mann, da Balzac a Foster Wallace, passando per titoli come “Jane Eyre” e“Il barone rampante”, “Sostiene Pereira” e “Il lamento di Portnoy”: di ognuno qualcosa, un’angolazione, uno spunto, un’idea: la scintilla, insomma, scattata a suo tempo nel lettore Paolo Di Paolo e raccontata come se non fosse “soltanto” un libro. Piuttosto, un vero e proprio incontro quasi – o senza quasi – in carne e ossa. (Translation)Página 12 (Argentina) interviews professor Ernesto Camilli:
Y me jodió el alma un padre Olivieri que nos mandó a un amigo y a mí al cura Laburu que decía (pone voz tonante de Pedro López Lagar haciendo de Heathcliff, en Cumbres borrascosas): “¡Hijo cierra, cierra, cierra! ¡Piensa en tu futuro casamiento! ¡Cierra que Cristo ya va a iluminarte!”. (Translation)The mentioned version is a 1941 radio adaptation.
3. Hit the (Wuthering) heightsStill locally, Keighley News reports that Haworth school children were visited by the team behind the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
Everyone loves a birthday, and a 200th birthday is a very big birthday indeed. Step forward, then, the spirit of Emily Brontë - the second youngest of the Brontë siblings, and arguably the author of their finest literary offering in 1847's Wuthering Heights (devotees of Charlotte's Jane Eyre - feel free to leave an appalled comment below). Emily breathed her first on July 30 1818 - and will be the focus of bi-centennial celebrations throughout 2018 (see bronte.org.uk/bronte-200). One of the centrepoints will be the Parsonage Museum (bronte.org.uk; £8.50), the Bronte family home in Haworth, West Yorkshire, where Britain's most famous literary sisters lived and wrote. (Chris Leadbeater)
Haworth school children gained an insight into what goes into producing a film when they were visited by actors and the director of a new film in the making.
Year five children from Haworth Primary met Elisaveta Abrahall, director of the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, together with members of the cast.
Actors accompanying Elisaveta on the visit included Paul Eryk Atlas (playing the role of Heathcliff), Sha'ori Morris (Cathy), Richard Dee Roberts (Edgar Linton), Henry Douthwaite and Claire Cooper King (Mr and Mrs Earnshaw), Helen Fullerton (Ellen Dean), David Macey (Joseph) and Alex De Luca (Dr Kenneth).
This version of Wuthering Heights is due for international release in July next year, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë.
Filming for the final scenes for the movie has been taking place on the moors surrounding Haworth.
Haworth Primary head teacher Helen Thompson said: "It was a truly inspirational visit. The children asked a wealth of questions both about the characters in the film and about what it takes to make a film.
"Our children will be using the visit as a stimulus for their own writing about Heathcliff, which follows on from the work that the class did with the Brontë Parsonage earlier this term.
"We're incredibly grateful to the team for taking time out of their busy schedules to come and work with us."
During their time in Haworth the cast and crew of the new film were guests of the parsonage museum, where they conducted a photo shoot with their production's official unit photographer Keith Johnson to celebrate the end of filming.
The last frames of the film were shot in the snow at Top Withins on November 26.
All principle cast members were at the parsonage for the photo-shoot and to write a line for Clare Twomey's art project, Wuthering Heights – A Manuscript, which is creating a handwritten copy of Emily Brontë's famous novel.
Sha'ori Morris said: "It's been such a privilege to take part in what is the most iconic story of passion against the brutally beautiful backdrop of the moors.
"Seeing and working with it in the snow on our final day here was a unique and breath taking experience."
Elisaveta has promised a Haworth premiere of the film in August 2018 in conjunction with the 200-year celebratory events.
She said: "The film has been five years in the making in total with two years of filming. So to film the last day in Haworth seemed very apt.
"We've been overwhelmed by the support of the local community, and the kindness of the Brontë Parsonage and Bronte Society.
"We hope to do Emily's story justice with the most authentic version of it to date, and hope that a Haworth Premiere will go some way towards saying 'thank you' to the community and everyone who has so kindly given us their support."
Ponden Hall outside Stanbury, inspiration for Thrushcross Grange, also featured in the last day's film shoot.
Leading cast member Paul Atlas said: "I've spent two years walking in Heathcliff’s boots, and what a trek it has been!
"Filming on the moors here felt right. The warmth shown by the Brontë Society and the community in Haworth has been like an open hearth against the winter cold."
A while back, we posted about a paper on a fragment of Branwell's writing which had been found in New Zealand. There's an article about it on the University of Otago website.The first Brontë manuscript identified in New Zealand has been restored to its place in literary history thanks to a University of Otago researcher.This columnist from Meanjin Quarterly (Australia) writes about reading Jane Eyre for the first time.
The fragment of Branwell Brontë’s work was hiding in plain sight, misfiled as a letter, in the Heritage Collections of the Dunedin Public Library.
Coincidentally, the announcement of the previously unknown manuscript in Branwell’s hand occurred in the same year of the bicentenary of the writer’s birth. Branwell Brontë was born on 26 June 1817, and conferences and a special exhibition devoted to his life and work have been held in the United Kingdom this year. [...]
Dr Thomas McLean, of the University of Otago Department of English and Linguistics, and Dr Grace Moore, of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, researched Branwell’s life and work so they could properly explain the significance of the manuscript.
Their findings have just appeared in the Oxford University Press journal Notes & Queries.
They discovered the Dunedin fragment provides the ending for a story written by Branwell in 1837.
The pair pieced together Branwell’s microscopic handwriting, sometimes word-by-word, sometimes letter-by-letter,
and were able to place the fragment at the end of a scene in an inn, identified as part IV (i) of Angria and the Angrians.
Dr McLean visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, UK, in August this year and examined Branwell’s writing journal from which the page was taken.
"I could see exactly where our page fit. The fragment provides the finishing touches to the story,’’ he says.
They believe the piece may have become separated from the rest of the story because it is written on a slightly different sized piece of paper to the rest, as though it was an afterthought; it also bears a date eight weeks later than the chapter it concludes.
The rest of the story, which has already been published, survives at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire.
It is one of a collection of stories about the imaginary land of Angria that Branwell and Charlotte wrote about in their youth.
"Branwell would write one story, and then Charlotte would write the next. It was a kind of practice ground for the siblings, and it surely helped Charlotte refine the storytelling skills that would come together so remarkably in Jane Eyre.
"When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, its readers were astonished that a first novel could be so good. But the truth is, Charlotte and her siblings had been writing for each other for almost two decades before Jane Eyre appeared.
"The Dunedin fragment is, quite literally, a page from that remarkable history,’’ Dr McLean says.
The fragment is part of the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection of rare books and manuscripts held in the Heritage Collections of the library, with records showing it was purchased in 1928.
The collection is the work of businessman and publisher Alfred H. Reed, who died in 1975, and includes work by Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Gaskell and Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
Dr McLean says the collection also includes a clipped signature of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Branwell’s father, though its provenance is uncertain. The father’s signature took pride of place in one of Reed’s ornately decorated autograph albums, while the son’s manuscript languished in a folder, incorrectly catalogued as a letter.
The manuscript was displayed earlier this year in a University of Otago library exhibition, “Keeping it in the Family,” which examined famous British literary families.
It will remain at the Dunedin Public Library, though future publications of the story will need to include the Dunedin page.
"It’s incomplete without it. Any scholar working on Brontë juvenilia or on Branwell’s writings will want to know about it.’’
The fragment is also an "encouragement for more research’’, Dr McLean says. "There are other missing pages in the Brontë archives. So who knows what else is out there?’’
There’s a gap between my last couple of years in school and my time in university, a period during which my reading habits dropped down to the bare minimum: assigned texts. But one name on the list of recommended texts in my creative writing class caught my attention. Jane Eyre. Classics have never been my cup of tea, yet the premise of this Bronte novel intrigued me. Whether it was the feminist undertones, the independence of Jane, or the complicated romance, it was hard to tell. My tutor, a lovely woman who wore huge hoop earrings, helped me find a copy in the university library and said, ‘This is one of my favourites.’The Barry Gem features local author Vivien Freeman, whose
Jane Eyre brought about one of turning points in my young adult start. For a long time, I was prone to being easily flustered and aggressive. Maybe my Zoloft wasn’t working anymore, but anything stirred up a storm in my stomach. I’d finished class and was sitting on a mossy rock outside one of the art buildings when I saw an ex-friend I had fallen out with. My heart thundered in my chest, my palms were slippery with sweat as I contemplated whether to throw out an obnoxious insult or run. But I thought of Jane, of her resolve and strength, and I met his eyes. Our time throwing sand at each other on the beach, sharing clothes and food, making our Economics teacher laugh was gone. The flicker of recognition between us passed was swift. I turned back to my work and finished my coffee, edging his face out of my memory, off the cliff.
I don’t wish ill on him. If he broke a leg I might laugh. I haven’t seen him since that day. I don’t have any more memories to cast away. (Sofia Casanova)
inspiration for her novel [Rose Alleyn] stems from her deep appreciation of such authors as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Daphne du Maurier.The Guardian reviews a performance of Harry Christophers and his choir The Sixteen.
And there were new carols, too – a setting of Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Eve by Kim Porter, who is one of the altos in the Sixteen (actually 18 singers for each date of this tour), and the specially commissioned On Christmas Morn, by Marco Galvani, with its bell-like suspensions contrasting nicely with moments of introspection, using a text by Anne Brontë. (Andrew Clements)While The Stage reviews the play The Wolves of Willoughby Chase at Jack Studio Theatre, London and finds
echoes of Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett (Julia Rank)Vogue suggests giving a Jane Eyre t-shirt to your 'Newly Engaged Friend' because
As she embarks on her own marriage plot, remind her of some more well known ones. (Chloe Malle)Perhaps Jane Eyre is the one marriage plot she doesn't want to be reminded of right now, though.
Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. La única novela escrita por una de las afamadas hermanas Brontë, Emily, es una de la obras más aclamadas de la literatura romántica inglesa, donde las pasiones y los odios, a partes iguales, centran la trama protagonizada por el inolvidable Heathcliff. La obra ha sido llevada al cine en varias ocasiones. (Bea Guillén Torres) (Translation)Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are among the books you should read before you're 30 according to VNews (Italy). Captive Dreams Window has a post on Wuthering Heights.
In this stripped back and stunning adaptation, Sally Cookson has turned the greyness inside out and focussed on the incredible strength of spirit of this young woman whose character is diametrically opposed to the stereotypical woman of her time, and indeed could give lessons in plain speaking now.Edinburgh Evening News also gives it 4 stars.
From birth to Jane’s confined physical life, Nadia Clifford utterly embraces her character at every stage. With conviction, she portrays Jane as honest, sensitive and passionate on her journey to live independently at a time when the odds were particularly against her, seeing herself as nothing short of an equal to a man. ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’
Her bemusement at being asked to shed old boots and don fineries for her wedding to Tim Delap’s unkempt and ramshackle Rochester is especially stark.
Among the cast who take on several roles, Paul Mundell stands out with his beautifully enunciated Irish accent as Mr Brocklehurst, before bounding and wagging as Pilot the dog to the audience’s delight.
The poor demented Bertha Mason is represented by Melanie Marshall with haunting music that includes rich, tingly versions of Does that make me Crazy? and Mad about the Boy.
Michael Vale’s set, like a giant wooden playground with metal ladders, extracts necessarily highly physical performances from the ensemble cast who provide Jane’s inner thoughts and strike some dramatic tableaux.
Live music is played under a ceiling of Beaubourg style lights and pulleys that hold strings of surprises.
The whole performance is enclosed within three walls of giant white curtains that act as sponges for the lighting from Aideen Malone that evokes miserable rain streaks, the horrors of the red room where Jane is punished, and the blue of when ‘It is a bright sunny day. The rain is over and gone’.
Dominic Bilkey’s bone-shaking thunder and insistent rhythms of a steam train, that were signalling change in Brontë’s time, add to the atmosphere of this epic piece.
Sally Cookson’s radical version of Jane Eyre was originally presented in two parts at Bristol Old Vic. It then transferred to the National Theatre where it was re-imagined as a single performance which explains its three hour duration.
The call ‘It’s a girl!’ that opens and closes this audacious adaptation is a joyous battle cry. (Irene Brown)
In the title role, Nadia Clifford is a force of nature. Energetic, inquisitive and instantly engaging, she hops from vignette to vignette as Jane’s life unfolds in a collage of stylised movement and a clear, crisply delivered script. Scenes are further lifted by the gifted vocals of Melanie Marshall who sings the role of Bertha Mason. It is a stunning performance with some unexpectedly poignant renditions of familiar tunes, never more so than her electric delivery of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, during which you could hear a pin drop. Also on fine form is Lynda Rooke who slips effortlessly between Jane’s cold, bitter aunt, Mrs Reed, and the lovable, kindly house-keeper Mrs Fairfax. Two entirely disparate characters. As Rochester, Tim Delap’s ‘trite, commonplace sinner’ is an earnest man, peculiar, distracted and distant. Elsewhere, members of the company flit from role to role, creating, on the whole, beautiful little cameos. With the band on stage throughout (padding for Michael Vale’s stark modern design) the production soars until shortly into Act Two at which point the impetus is lost. An accessible, if slightly over-indulgent production then, but one that is well worth seeing, if you can afford the time. (Liam Rudden)The Reviews Hub also gives it 4 stars, summing it up as 'Confident and Compelling'.
Featuring a strong company of actors, each individual is well cast in their respective roles, delivering solid, confident performances. Nadia Clifford is a feisty, bolshy Jane unlike any you will have ever seen on the silver screen. Her Jane is no wilting wallflower, but instead a full-blooded, fiery, determined young woman, and Clifford’s passionate delivery of Jane’s lines (some of the longer speeches are lifted vertabim from the book) is stirring and heartfelt. Her Jane is also stoutly northern, although her accent wanders west of the Pennines if truth be told.The F Word reviews the play No Place for a Woman:
However. while it’s impressive that the company are able to morph into different parts, scenes such as the human stage coach lack some finesse and polish (perhaps due to a total lack of props). Moreover, while the part of Pilot is a tricky problem for a production team to solve, and though Paul Mundell is very convincing, it brings a little too much comedy to certain scenes, for example, the emotional finale.
The lighting design is simple but effective, enabling bright colour, such as the red room, to reflect boldly off the white voile that lines the three stage walls. However, more dimming of the lights between scenes would improve the fluidity of the drama – some of the staged deaths are rushed and lack dramatic pause; the actors standing up and walking off stage all of a sudden with the lights still up while other actors continue to look on.
The set is minimalist (typical of a National Theatre production) and generally functions well in enhancing the underlying themes of Jane Eyre. There are some clever sequences involving windows that serve as nice theatrical metaphors for Jane’s fluctuating imprisonment and liberation, and the positioning of different characters on the varying ladders and different levels of the stage set is heavy with symbolism but effective. Although it seems a lost opportunity that Bertha Mason appears more times at the lowest point on stage, often under Jane’s level, as opposed to above her (up in the attic).
The live musicians are fantastic and the singing, in particular the soulful, versatile voice of Melanie Marshall is mesmerising. However, overall musically, this production is saturated with too many different genres to the point where it doesn’t know what it’s trying to be and lacks cohesion. Though it’s impressive that hits like Mad About the Boy and Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy have infiltrated the realm of the Brontës, it does seem rather forced. There are also musical episodes that seem to borrow from bands like The Lumineers, jazz and blues and there are even reminiscences of Colin Matthew’s World War One inspired No Man’s Land. Whilst, some of these influences seem appropriate, the overall musical impression is disjointed.
Overall, however, this is a confident and compelling production and re-interpretation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Moreover, it is a memorable and genuinely different version than that which audiences will have seen on TV and in cinemas. (S.E. Webster)
Mental health is not discussed explicitly, though it is a strong theme of the play. Annie’s symptoms are not taken quite as seriously by the people around her as they would be now. They are also simply misunderstood. Her behaviour and placement towards the end of the play are reminiscent of the ‘mad’ Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, who is locked away to try and contain violent and challenging behaviour which does not fit with the passive feminine ideal of the time. (Samuel Sims)And more theatre as The Times reviews Winter Hill at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, in which
[Playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker] flings about numerous cultural allusions, from the Brontës to Macbeth, from Aristophanes’s Lysistrata to the Easter Island statues. (Sam Marlowe)And a last note on stage matters as Otago Daily Times describes Rebecca Vaughan's one-woman-show, Jane Eyre. An Autobiography, recently seen at Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival as 'spellbinding'.
SIGNATURE: This certainly isn’t the first time you’ve taken a cue from classic literature, or art of the past. Among other works, last year you edited an anthology inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s infamous line, “Reader, I married him,” from Jane Eyre. Do you find yourself naturally gravitating towards the classics when working on your own writing?America Magazine doesn't like the Jane Eyre similarities and references in the latest screen adaptation of Anne of Green Gables.
TRACY CHEVALIER: It’s not deliberate. In both instances – Shakespeare and Jane Eyre – I was asked, and a commission is quite different from a natural inclination. Having said that, I do look to the past a lot for inspiration, and that is where most of the classics – whether books or paintings or tapestries or poets – lie. (Meghan McCullough)
It is the dark and unsettling tale of a poor orphan. Abused as a young child and then traumatized in an institution, the plain and wounded girl finally finds a place that feels like home. But as soon as she lets down her guard, the people she believed could offer her the love she longs for break her trust. Our heroine takes flight and wanders into the night with nowhere to lay her head.Lady Macbeth is back on BrontëBlog thanks to a review from Belper News:
Ah, the story of Jane Eyre, you might say. I know that bleak tale of woe and moor-wandering!
But you would be mistaken. It is “Anne With an E,” the new retelling of L. M. Montgomery’s whimsical Canadian classic, Anne of Green Gables. [...]
The new series is full of Jane Eyre references (even the episode titles are drawn from Jane). The filming reminds one of Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 version of “Jane Eyre,” with its beautiful candlelit scenes, in which each frame could be a painting by Georges de la Tour. The new series makes Anne’s early years like those of young Jane, abused by the family she lived with. It turns Anne’s orphanage into Jane Eyre’s Lowood, and even the kind Reverend Allan of Montgomery’s book is warped into a grim Mr. Brocklehurst, who sternly lectures Anne about lying. The result certainly is not Montgomery’s Anne but a clumsy mix of painfully melodramatic additions that feel awkward next to the handful of excellent scenes that bring life to the original tale. (Haley Stewart)
Later, the screen relaxes soaking up moorland landscapes with an enthusiasm reminiscent of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights. (Natalie Stendall)This is not the first time we read about Céline Dion's song It's All Coming Back to Me Now and its connection to Wuthering Heights. The Awl is not thrilled about it:
[Songwriter Jim Steinman] also says on his website that he wrote the song, “under the influence of Wuthering Heights.” This checks out — the song is melodramatic and tortured as hell. Consider the first verse:
There were nights when the wind was so cold / That my body froze in bed if I just listened to it / Right outside the window / There were days when the sun was so cruel / That all the tears turned to dust / And I just knew my eyes were drying up forever. The song goes on to paint the picture of a narrator who “banished every memory you and I had ever made,” likely due to the fact that the relationship was a very abusive one. A later verse explains:
There were those empty threats and hollow lies / And whenever you tried to hurt me / I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper. That’s not great. While this does bring up the specter of physical abuse, with all the context around the song, it seems more clear this is a kind of obsessive, emotional abuse. Steinman explains:
It’s like Heathcliffe (sic) digging up Kathy’s [sic] corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight. You can’t get more extreme, operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. (Scott Rogers)
Jane Eyre:An Autobiography
Dunedin Writers Festival - Fortune Theatre Studio
Friday 12 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Saturday 13 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Sunday 14 May, 1.00–2.30pm
Auckland Writers Festival
Tuesday 16 & Wednesday 17 at 2pm; Friday 19 at 10.30am; and Saturday 20 at 10.30am & 2.30pm.
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
50 Mayoral Drive, Auckland CBD
Sydney Writers Fesival
22-28 May, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Those who flocked to Dalloway (at DWRF 2015) will want to flock again to see Rebecca Vaughan in another one-woman show by Dyad Productions. Told through Jane Eyre’s eyes, Charlotte Brontë’s celebrated autobiographical novel shocked the Victorians with its gothic subversion of fairytale romance. Distilled for the stage by writer/director Elton Townend Jones and performed by Rebecca Vaughan (who plays Jane and several other characters), it’s been described by The Huffington Post as “Perfection... Vaughan is simply sublime.”
Unless explicitly said
