The director of the new Wuthering Heights film, starring Margot Robbie, will be a guest at this year’s Brontë Women’s Writing Festival.Taking place in Haworth, the festival will celebrate novelists and the North, with a focus on Bradford, in its year as UK City of Culture, as the home of the Brontës. (...)Other guests include best-selling author Tracy Chevalier, who wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Australian author and TV presenter Holly Ringland, reflecting on how their writing has been shaped by the Brontës’ legacy.This year’s festival theme is 'Writers From and Based in the North,' with a focus on stories shaped by northern landscapes and the influences of the Brontë sisters, and showcasing new work from northern publishers.Rebecca Yorke, Director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum, says: “This year at the museum, we’ve fully embraced our role in Bradford’s growing creative story, and this continues through the festival. Packed with guests and events that inspire and ignite the imagination, we’re especially excited about the four writers we’ve worked with in collaboration with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and the Writers Project of Ghana. (Emma Clayton)
Wild Uplands has seen parts of the moors around Haworth transformed with unique art installations thanks to Bradford 2025.The installations, by four different artists, will be in place until late September.On August 27, children are invited to take part in a forest school fairy den workshop on the moors.Join Within the Wood Forest school leaders to make willow dens for mythical creatures and fairies, inspired by Monira Al Qadiri's mythical installations.The installation has been inspired by the Cottingley Fairies hoax.
LitHub is excited about the US release by Pegasus Books of a hardback edition of Graham Watson's The Invention of Charlotte Brontë.
Sue Ryding, one half of the award-winning LipService comedy duo, returns to the stage with her solo show, Funny Stuff, coming to Pocklington Arts Centre on Thursday 2 October.In 2022, Sue’s long-time creative partner, Maggie Fox, sadly passed away, leaving behind not just a legacy of laughter but a shipping container bursting with theatrical "stuff".In this humorous and creative response to grief, Sue unpacks this collection, literally and emotionally, as she struggles to part with a treasure-trove of belongings including a life-sized stuffed sheep, some ruby slippers, and even Charlotte Bronte’s knickers! (Susan McGill)
Wuthering Heights is mad enough without adding bondageEmerald Fennell’s gratuitous pornification will make her film adaptation of the strangest novel in the English language even more bizarre. (...)Certainly a lot of this is to do with the atmosphere. The Yorkshire Moors, which Brontë knew very well, is described as an untameable, unlovely place with no beginning and no end. It makes it seem as if the characters exist in some sort of deathloop – each generation burdened by the sins of the one before them.They also act strangely, often irrationally, or outside moral convention, perhaps because their lives are so isolated and they don’t really know how to behave. This is seen most explicitly in the case of Heathcliff (whose ethnicity has been questioned by academics for decades). As wild and austere as the countryside he stalks, Heathcliff hangs Isabella’s little dog, Fanny – an act which is a precursor to how abusive he will be to the wife to whom he bears no affection. He also digs up the grave of his true love, Catherine, in what seems like the ultimate act of obsession. (...)It is also easy to believe that Emily Brontë was not really of this world, holed up in the parsonage on the edge of consumption-riddled Haworth, with too many books and too vivid an imagination. There is a train of thought that she was a high Tory, intolerant of the industrial unrest of the earlier part of the 19th century, but I can’t see anything to support that view, other than the fact that the Brontës were essentially charitably minded Conservatives.I don’t want to be one of those purists who condemns Fennell for trying to be different. Obsessively faithful adaptations of famous literary works are all well and good (think of John Mortimer’s 1981 adaptation of Brideshead Revisited), but radical hot takes (such as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) can bring a fresh understanding of the novel and even win the source material new fans.And in any case, I don’t believe there is a truly impressive adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon has a certain sombreness which is appealing, but it is too truncated and Alfred Newman’s score makes me want to rip my ears off. Andrea Arnold’s naturalistic 2011 film (the last big cinematic adaptation) has its fans, although that does not include Arnold herself, who has expressly stated that she was unhappy with the result.
It's difficult and inadvisable to judge based on second-hand opinions in a preview and probably selecting the juiciest statements. So we won't do it, we won't enter into this controversy avant la lettre. But we reiterate what we said in previous posts: each creator can do whatever they want with the story, it's nothing more than that—a story. We might like it more, less, or not at all. And we'll say so. But we think it's wonderful that the novel remains sufficiently alive to be capable of generating new or extreme visions. As for what Emerald Fennell has done, judging by what we've read, her vision might be more Ken Russell than Luis Buñuel. More Bruce LaBruce than Andrea Arnold. Is that bad? Not really. Will we like it? Well... let's talk about that in six months.
Emily Brontë’s classic novel has witnessed at least 14 film and TV adaptations till date, but Saltburn director Emerald Fennell’s tailoring promises to be different. For starters, it will feature Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi — both promising and gorgeous Australian actors — as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. And second, it’s been generating quite a bit of buzz for its potential to offer a fresh, and potentially "shocking," take on the well-known story. (Sanjana Ray)
But the best headlines are the ones from Italians: " La versione ad alto tasso erotico con Margot Robbie turba il pubblico delle proiezioni test" (Movieplayer); "Cime Tempestose secondo Fennell: erotismo e scandalo infiammano Dallas" (Sbircia La Notizia); "Cime tempestose di Emerald Fennell fa discutere per l’approccio esplicito e provocatorio al classico di Emily Brontë" (Unita.tv)
The Banagher Brontë group have arranged three days (16th -18th) of Celebrating the Brontë connection with Banagher – register with www.banagerbrontegroup.com. The final day on Monday 18th Offaly History are ‘Balloonamania Belles and the Brontes’ morning (from 11am to 2pm) including a musical recital by the Banagher Brontë Ensemble, launch of ‘Let me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar’ by Ann Dinsdale and Sharon Wright; followed by a talk on early female balloonists by Sharon Wright and a screening of Dr Maebh O’Regan’s film on Charlotte Brontë’s marriage settlement. Offaly Heritage Centre has an open afternoon the same Monday and Thursday 21st for those who want to explore the library and research facilities. (Amanda Pedlow)
En la cima del cerro más alto de la Pampa Húmeda, allí donde los pastos tiemblan ante el ruido de una motosierra y las sombras de viejos contratos de obra pública aún se arrastran entre las grietas del suelo, se alzaba una mansión en ruinas. Nadie sabía bien si se llamaba Cumbres Borrascosas, Residencia Olivos o Casa Rosada, pero todos sabían quiénes vivían dentro: Karina Earnshaw y Mauricio Heathcliff.Ella, la hermana menor del Libertario, guardaba en el pecho la frialdad de los jinetes del Apocalipsis y, en la cartera, la lapicera con la que firmaba los destinos ajenos. Él, patriarca de un linaje desgastado llamado PRO, todavía creía que podía mandar con un solo gesto de cejas.Ambos se amaban desde lejos. Desde el despecho, desde la falta de opciones, desde la humillación negociada. Como Catherine y Heathcliff, no podían estar juntos, pero tampoco separados. Y así, entre portazos y planillas de Excel, se fundó esta nueva alianza política que nadie pidió, pero que todos esperaban. Como un divorcio anunciado que decide, por miedo a la soledad, celebrar segundas nupcias. (...)Como en Cumbres Borrascosas, nadie entiende bien por qué están juntos. Él la odia, pero no puede dejar de mirarla. Ella lo necesita, pero lo desprecia. En cada gesto de cariño hay una amenaza velada. En cada renuncia, una puñalada por la espalda. Son esos matrimonios políticos que no duran, pero tampoco se disuelven, porque su mayor temor no es fracasar, sino quedar solos. (Iván Nolazco in Tribuna de Periodistas) (Translation)
L’œil vert aux aguets, qui scrute intensément tout ce qui s’oppose à lui. La posture dynamique, comme un athlète prêt à bondir. Le charme sauvage d’un Heathcliff de retour aux Hauts de Hurlevent pour tourmenter Cathy, l’héroïne de ces Wuthering Heights rêvés par Emily Brontë en 1847. (Valérie Duponchelle) (Translation)
India Today lists the most popular Gothic Novels, including Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. The Sun talks about UK pubs with their own campsites, like the Wuthering Heights Inn in Stanbury. The Stratford Herald shows pictures of the recent Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever event.
Eggers sets his fiction in a “near future” when computers analyze massive amounts of information about how people read ebooks, with software finding patterns that precisely reveal what these readers find satisfying or unpleasant. Take the literary classic Jane Eyre. According to the algorithms Eggers conjures up, many people stop reading it “around p. 177.” Given what’s happening at that part of the story, one of Eggers’s typical techie characters concludes readers find the character Grace Poole “scary and depressing” and wish Charlotte Brontë devoted more pages to the “romance with Mr. Rochester.” The techie laments Brontë didn’t live long enough to “learn from the data” and “fix” her flawed story.Fortunately for the authors living in Eggers’s imaginary world, they can outperform Brontë even if they lack her talent. For starters, they can use software to help them craft pleasurable plots and characters. [...]Eggers is, in fact, horrified by the prospect of computationally coached crowd-pleasers replacing the likes of Brontë and Beckett. (Evan Selinger)
A public sick of sophistry was at first glad of Brown’s dull, chewy speeches, his saltiness refreshing after the saccharine Tony. But then, inevitably, we tired of it. Voters yearned for a bit of razzmatazz. Towards the end, there was a cringe-making phase where the dour old Heathcliff had been advised to smile more; a steward masquerading as a star. He tried but it wasn’t him. (Clare Foges)
Regna il male invece a Bly, in Giro di Vite; e nonostante diverse vicissitudini la portino di qua e di là, è impossibile pensare a Jane Eyre senza pensare ai segreti racchiusi in Thornfield Hall. E c’è lei, Shirley Jackson, che ci insegna che tutte le case sono case infestate. (Anna Maniscalco) (Translation)
bell hooks: When I read Wuthering Heights as a working class girl struggling to find herself, an outsider, I felt that Heathcliff was me, you know? He was symbolic to me of a kind of black race: he was outcast, he was not allowed into the center of things. I transposed my own drama of living in the apartheid south onto this world of Wuthering Heights and felt myself in harmony with those characters.Maya Angelou: Absolutely.Melvin McLeod: It strikes me you are suggesting that reading is a more powerful way to develop empathy with people of different races or classes or times than even our normal day to day relationships.bell hooks: Well, this is so because reading requires that you have to use your imagination. When I'm reading Wuthering Heights I have to imagine what Heathcliff looks like, I have to imagine what Katherine (sic) is like. I have to imagine and so my mind has to be working.
Her (Ireland) recommends the upcoming The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis:A hugely charismatic country house in Yorkshire has come to the market, one with a great literary claim to fame: it was the inspiration for Emily Brontë's seminal novel Wuthering Heights.There’s a fundamental flaw with the teaching of English literature: tell somebody to read something, and it can’t help but be a chore. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let English GCSE and A-level students choose whatever they liked — from a reasonably decent list, of course — and take it from there?All this is by way of introduction to my guilty little secret: a lifelong antipathy to Wuthering Heights. It might be a classic that redefined the concept of literature and all that jazz, but frankly I loathed every page. There wasn’t a character in it I wouldn’t gladly have strapped to a rocket and fired into the Sun, and as for the excruciating rendering of local dialect… words fail me, just as standardised spelling failed Emily Brontë.In case anyone’s wondering if I feel better for getting all that off my chest, the answer is ‘yes, yes I do’. And part of the reason why is because my spirits have been cheered by the house on this page — a house which inspired the book that so tormented me as a 17-year-old A-level student. Sure, every brick bears an imprint of guilt for the horrors it helped spawn via the Brontë Pen of Doom, but that’s not to say I can’t appreciate why it might have inspired a budding writer. (Toby Peel)
It's Christmas 1846 and Haworth is in the grip of a freezing winter. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rather losing interest in detecting until they hear of a shocking discovery: the bones of a child have been found interred within the walls of a local house, Top Withens Hall, home to the scandalous and brutish Bradshaw family.The Sunday Times remembers the Heathcliffgate:
When the sisters set off to find out more, they are confronted with an increasingly complex and sinister case, which leads them into the dark world of orphanages, and onto the trail of other lost, and likely murdered children. After another local boy goes missing, Charlotte, Emily and Anne vow to find him before it's too late. (Keeley Ryan)
Gordon Brown once compared himself to the scowling, brooding (not to mention chippy and annoying) Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights.
At times, she defends her selection of readings with an evaluative language that critics (wrongly or rightly) generally shun, for example when introducing her discussion of “Emily Brontë’s astonishing Wuthering Heights” and Heathcliff, “this most engrossing of all novelistic protagonists ever.” Given that form is an abstraction from specifics, the move from the abstract to the specific can create challenges. (Rachael Scarborough King)
Another English teacher from Shandong shared with Bitter Winter how the provincial Education Bureau criticized her for uttering words like “God” and “prayer” during a class on Jane Eyer (sic), the famous novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. Anything religion-related should not enter classrooms, she was warned. (Han Sheng)The South China Morning Post reviews Lark by Anthony McGowan:
The plot, such as it is, concerns a trip onto the moors near where the brothers live in Yorkshire: real Wuthering Heights territory. McGowan’s sparse prose ideally suits the landscapes he describes. (John Millen)
You’re one of those “I don’t want to look sexy in an obvious hoisted-up way — that would scare me — but I definitely want to be sexy” types. That’s why you like boots. They are sexy like Emma Peel — and Heathcliff. (Boots are also sexy on men, let’s not forget. And how. Not suggesting you long for your bloke to come home in riding boots and jodhpurs, but men in boots, phwoar. If you have not seen the film of Jane Eyre starring Michael Fassbender as Rochester, may I recommend you do so at once. Many lovely shots of him in buckskin breeches and boots. Really worth a look.)The Herald interviews the writer Douglas Stuart:
Guilty pleasure?The Independent (Ireland) interviews the poet Rita Ann Higgins who remembers how when she was in
No book is a guilty pleasure! But I have read As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann about six or seven times. I’m always swept away by the historical detail of this gay romance. Set in the 17th century, at the time of the English civil war, it’s the tale of two soldiers who fall in and then out of love with each other. The protagonist, ‘Jacob,’ is an violent, unstable brute, but somehow the author makes us care for him anyway. This book does for me what Wuthering Heights might do for others – anyway, it certainly rips my bodice.
"You lay in bed, you weren't supposed to be doing too much movement. I started to read. Wuthering Heights and Animal Farm. Those two books were just amazing. That kick-started it - I thought, 'you can open a book and get locked into it and see these pictures'." (Emily Hourican)
The Cross Keys Hotel in Knutsford is the jump-off point for a memorable 3.5-mile walk around Tatton Mere. From the pub you can head north along King St to first check out Gaskell Memorial Tower, which commemorates Elizabeth Gaskell, biographer of Charlotte Brontë, who modelled one of her best-known novels, Cranford, on the town. (Carmella de Lucia)Pop Times discusses the new TV series Nurse Ratched:
The desire to give malicious female characters like Nurse Ratched origin stories is not new. The trend has often reflected a desire for feminist reappraisals of characters not previously viewed within the full context of a sexist society—whether stemming from their creators’ genuine curiosity or movie studios smelling opportunity. In the realm of literature, Jean Rhys imagined the backstory for the mad wife from Jane Eyre in her 1966 novel Wild Sargasso Sea.
To walk invisible (2016), được thực hiện bởi đạo diễn Sally Wainwright dựa theo tiểu sử về chị em nhà Bronte. Bộ phim đã tái hiện chân thực sự cuộc sống và văn hóa của mảnh đất Yorkshire thế kỷ 19. Đây là nơi Emily, Charlotte và Anne Brontë đã viết những cuốn tiểu thuyết sâu sắc, để lại dấu ấn trên văn đàn, trong đó nổi tiếng nhất là tiểu thuyết. (Thủy Thủy) (Translation)Amica (Italy) talks about the actress and director, Asia Argento:
Nessun gioco di parole. È proprio così. Asia Argento il 20 settembre compie i suoi primi tempestosi (proprio nel senso di Emily Brontë) 45 anni anni. (Antonella Catena) (Translation)Jornal Opção (Brazil) reviews the novel The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis:
O romance é recheado de citações literárias, referências a obras clássicas da literatura mundial e a escritores consagrados — como as britânicas Emily Brontë e Jane Austen, entre outros —, assim como a seus personagens, e contém trechos de romances famosos. (Mariza Santana) (Translation)Granma (Cuba) talks about popular and populist
Entre los componentes de la visión renovadora del mundo se cuentan la toma de partido en favor de una subjetividad contradictoria y compleja léase, por ejemplo, Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë[.] (Graziela Pogolotti) (Translation)
A good night and a smile quote from Anne Brontë in Parade and Bigodino (Italy), respectively. Filmstarts (Germany) mentions Wuthering Heights in an article about the film After We Collided.
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel of the same name, the heroine marries a wealthy older man and goes to live with him in Manderley, his estate. She soon realizes all is not as it seems. The book is worth reading — especially if you find the Brontës’ language too stiff; it’s like Jane Eyre on crack — but the heroine is a timid mooncalf. (...)L'Avenir (Belgium) talks about the 2009 film Bright Star by Jane Campion:
Del Toro’s heroines have a bit more gumption and kick more ass than the average Gothic heroine, whether they’re in a Radcliffe or a Brontë narrative. (Lauren Sarner)
«Mes films sont des réactions à l’obsession de la société pour la normalité, sa propension à exclure les déviants», racontait, en 2010, au Monde Jane Campion, passionnée de littérature anglo-saxonne romantique, avec une prédilection pour Emily Brontë et Emily Dickinson, ou encore Virginia Woolf. (Translation)The Criticwire classic of the week is I Walked with a Zombie 1944:
Director Jacques Tourneur brings out the buried complexities of the film's "Jane Eyre"-inspired script, courtesy of Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, to life through noir shadows and suggestive camera movements, capturing an ugly haunting colonial history without putting too fine a point on it. (Vikram Murthi)The Christian Science Monitor reviews Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans:
The shelves are already crowded with literary orphans, cramming in everyone from Harry Potter and Mowgli, to Huck Finn and Anne Shirley, Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre. But even among literature’s lovable urchins, Noel Bostock is a bit of an odd duck. He was raised by a suffragette, not wolves. He’s not cute or plucky and he doesn’t sing a note. He has jug ears; a bad leg, thanks to polio; and an outsize vocabulary, thanks to his godmother Mattie. (Yvonne Zip)Verve Magazine interviews the writer Kiran Manral:
What are your go-to books?(...) But I would think the book that will always stay with me is Jane Eyre, because it was the first time for me that the heroine was not pretty, not a princess and did not end up with a Prince Charming.”The Austin Chronicle has an article about a local restaurant with a literary twist:
Which literary/fictional romance made you want write love stories?“So many, so many. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind and Bridget Jones. And all the M&Bs that fuelled my adolescent, burgeoning fascination with the opposite sex.” (Zaral Shah andNatasha Sahjwani)
For example, Weinbrot's favorite characters serve as inspiration for the different recipes. Scheherazade, the storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights), influenced the use of Middle Eastern spices in the namesake knish. Dulcinea del Toboso, the true love of Cervantes' Don Quixote, suggested a mix of spicy (chipotle) and sweet (brown sugar, maple syrup). An upcoming chocolate knish will be named after Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Fittingly, it will be dark, brooding, and very alluring. (Serena Yeh)The Irish Times traces the figure of the writer Joseph O'Connor:
To some degree, Star of the Sea can be read as a sustained meditation on the authority of writing itself. One of the leading characters, the American journalist G Grantley Dixon, is an aspiring novelist whose various writings are cleverly stitched into this complex narrative. The inclusion of his newspaper report on the famine in Ireland for the New York Tribune is a clever expositional device deployed by O’Connor. The reliability of his account, however, is undermined by the character, Merridith, who dismisses Dixon as a ‘coffee-house [radical]’ . Further into the book the reader comes upon a fragment of Dixon’s unpublished novel. This extract, combined with Dixon’s spectacularly misguided appraisal of the recently published Wuthering Heights, might lead the reader to incline more towards his proficiency as a journalist than as a novelist. (PJ Matthews)One of the Hillary Clinton's emails released recently contains a Brontë reference, do you remember the Heathcliffgate? In the London Evening Star:
In April 2010, he [Sidney Blumenthal ] told his Democrat friend: “Clegg is a Tony stand-in love object, Cameron a pretender. Alas, poor Gordon, Heathcliff, unloved, unlovable, suffering.”Keighley News reports the arrival of the two watercolours that were bought at a recent Sotheby's auction:
Two of Charlotte Brontë’s watercolours have been delivered to the Brontë Parsonage Museum ready for display next year.Sitepoint discusses the Google change of logo:
The Brontë Society, which runs the Haworth museum, bought the paintings in July during an auction at Sotheby’s.
Experts have attributed both pictures to Charlotte, the writer of classic novel Jane Eyre and the eldest of the tragic Brontë sisters.
The parsonage this week tweeted a picture of the watercolours on a desk at the museum, and said they will be handed to conservation staff so they can be prepared for display in 2016.
One watercolour is a study of a white carnation, and the other depicts a convolvulus, a crocus and an aster. (...)
“We look forward to putting them on display in the Parsonage as part of Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary celebrations next year.”
The Brontë Society has also announced a major conference in Manchester as part of its celebrations for Charlotte’s 200th birthday.
The event, at the Midland Hotel from August 19 to 21, will focus on the issue that most concerned Charlotte herself – the position of women in the mid-19th century.
Speakers, who include famous feminist Professor Germaine Greer, will address the subject from many different angles,
Other speakers include Prof Sally Shuttleworth, an expert on the medical and mental problems of women in the early Victorian era; Claire Harman, noted author of the new biography Charlotte Brontë, A Life; and Prof Christine Alexander, who is currently working on the first new scholarly edition of Jane Eyre in more than 40 years. (David Knights)
To me, the update to a sans-serif typeface seems to make more sense. Their former serif font — particularly that ‘reading-spectacles g’ — always had an older, bookish feel of romance novels and Brontë sisters. The new geometric sans-serif is much more of a happy engineer’s construction. (Alex Walker)Check out this Art in Yorkshire video on Diane Howse's The Silent Wild exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage.
Condensing the lives of four siblings over almost four decades into two an half hours is not easy. When that family is the Brontës, the task would seem impossible.Howard Jacobson writes in The Independent about the Carmen Callil-Philip Roth Man Booker's Prize controversy:
However, Polly Teale not only manages it, but offers a much more complex portrayal of the sisters and their brother Branwell. Here Charlotte is a talented writer, but she’s also domineering, relentlessly ambitious and at times, plain selfish. Directed by Nancy Meckler, the action cuts between the family at home and their fictional creations. At times it’s a little laboured, but the play is saved from cliche by some stand-out performances.
Kristin Atherton shines as the often unlikable Charlotte, Elizabeth Crarer plays Emily with a perfect mad glint in her eye. Flora Nicholson successfully brings the usually two-dimensional Anne to life, while Mark Edel-Hunt often steals the scene as Branwell, the brother intent on self-destruction.
Too often the Brontë legacy is treated with kid gloves and while Teale may employ a little artistic licence, the result is great drama. (Sarah Freeman)
It has already been well argued that the charge of going "on and on" would knock out most writers from Rabelais to Proust, and that as many women writers are as interested in themselves as women as male writers are interested in themselves in men. Reader, when it comes to novelists sitting on your face, nothing beats the experience of having all three Brontë sisters lowering themselves on you simultaneously.We read in El País (Spain) about the new project of the writer Elif Batuman:
Mientras mantiene sus colaboraciones con The New Yorker prepara su segundo libro: "Una reflexión sobre el amor y el matrimonio, una novela gótica sobre Charlotte Brontë, que antes me parecía solo una escritora para chicas y se ha convertido en mi nueva obsesión". (Elsa Fernández-Santos) (Translation)It seems that the Heathcliffgate will be after Gordon Brown even now that he is considered to be president of the IMF:
We can't have someone in charge who doesn't accept how important it is to bear down on excess debt, Cameron trilled brightly when putting the boot in. We're yet to discover how well Dave does on that score. It could be less well than the glowering Heathcliff of the heather. (Michael White in The Guardian)
It takes some remembering, but in the days when people read newspapers, the Iron Chancellor was similarly feted. He was both saviour of the economy and Heathcliff lookalike. GB was number one on the Observer's "Lust List" for a "Bohemian Rhapsody"-busting 14 weeks (eventually ceding to Piers Morgan). The likes of Carmen Callil wrote "long think pieces in GQ magazine" imagining the Great Man sitting on their face. Yet within a decade he would be forlorn and forgotten. (Gideon Donald in New Statesman)The performance of Beyoncé's new single 1+1 in American Idol is described by Crunk like this:
The song sounds a lot like, “What if Alicia Keys could sing a Prince inspired song without sounding like Heathcliff hooked up to an oxygen machine?”We have said before that considering the Brontës a precedent of chick-lit was not only wrong but misleading. This article in the Sabotage Times is a correct measure of how dangerous comments like that are:
Chick-flick. The very word alone is enough to send an apathetic shudder down the backs of most red-blooded males. Bridget Jones’ shopping list – groan, The Bronte sisters’ Parisian hen night – pffffft, Carrie Bradshaw’s endless, seeping, BULLSHIT inner-monologue? Zeus, Vishnu, Diana, if any of you are up there, kill me now. (Adam Clery)An article about the Paganisan province in Philippines in The Philippine Enquire contains a curious Brontë reference:
The resort has two viewpoints that are, as the media colleagues pointed out, nice spots for writing. So I felt like Heathcliff on the cliff brooding over the Yorkshire moors. Or, to make it more Hollywoodish, we felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic”—“on top of the world.” (Amadís Ma. Guerrero)The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle talks about Paula Haffen, webmaster of Living Gluten Free Rochester who is reading Jane Eyre; and former Olympic champion swimmer Mark Tewksbury will read it soon according to The Globe and Mail; St Albert Gazette (Canada) mentions Jane Eyre 2011.
There is not a whit of humor in Jane Eyre. I defy anyone to point out anything funny anywhere in the novel. One could legitimately view it as a humorless, orthodox Christian screed. (Brassawe)We cannot but be a bit perplexed. Shall we take up the challenge? Let's begin with Jane's answer to Mr Brocklehurst:
Mr. Brocklehurst: And what is hell? Can you tell me that?Espido Freire, author of Querida Jane, Querida Charlotte, slips a Brontë reference in her column in ADN (Spain):
Jane Eyre: A pit full of fire.
Mr. Brocklehurst: And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?
Jane Eyre: No sir.
Mr. Brocklehurst: What must you do to avoid it?
Jane Eyre: I must keep in good health and not die.
Es lo que tiene la falta de experiencia en trepar entre huecos de escaleras mientras se habla por el móvil. Emily Brontë, tuberculosa y todo, lo hubiera logrado. (Translation)EFE (Spain) lists some of the favourite writers of the author Carmen Posadas:
Entre sus autoras favoritas figuran, las inglesas Emily Brontë, Jane Austen y Virginia Woolf, pero no deja de destacar a la española Santa Teresa, a quien calificó como su "favorita de todos los tiempos", no solo por su obra religiosa sin también como "precursora del psicoanálisis". (Translation)The new film by Pablo Berger, an artsy new version of Snow White, is described in El Correo (Spain):
Su versión será «muy libre, oscura y sombría, más cerca de 'Rebeca' y 'Cumbres borrascosas' que de los dibujos animados». (Oskar L. Belategui) (Translation)Once again, Meg Cabot's Brontëiteness is mentioned. In an interview on Paperblog (Italy):
Sul tuo sito ufficiale hai postato un lungo elenco dei tuoi autori preferiti classici e contemporanei. Mi puoi dire qual è il più rappresentativo per te?The South Korean film Hanyo (The Housemaid) is reviewed by Mauxa (Italy):
Amo i libri di ogni tipo: per bambini, chick-lit, di memorie, fumetti, romanticismo, horror, fantascienza e romanzi fantasy. Non c’è effettivamente un genere che non abbia letto e amato... Persino i "classici", come Jane Eyre di Charlotte Brontë e Orgoglio e Pregiudizio di Jane Austen. (Alessandraz) (Translation)
Euny, infatti, Jane Eyre d'oriente, vive con timorata compiacenza l'amore del suo signore-padrone. Rigida e svuotata, si abbandona alla passione in maniera compiacente, remissiva. (Giulio Trivelli) (Translation)Cyberpresse (Canada) talks about the French translation of Claire Holden Rothman's The Heart Specialist:
En 1869, à St. Andrew's East, village au nord-ouest de Montréal rebaptisé Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, l'une de nos plus brillantes scientifiques voyait le jour. Maude Abbott a affronté mille obstacles pour percer le masculin univers de la médecine, après une enfance digne d'un roman gothique, où planait le spectre des soeurs Brontë. (Sylvie St-Jacques) (Translation)A new blog about the Brontës (in Portuguese) has now joined the blogosphere: Leituras Brontëanas, which today has a post on Jane Eyre 1944. Her Telden writes in Turkish about the 2006 adaptation while Worthwhile Books and Passionista post about the actual novel. The Loud Librarian reviews briefly Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. Mujeres en la historia has a post on Charlotte Brontë in Spanish. Flickr user Hannah Harding has created a series of drawings inspired by Wuthering Heights.
In the summer of 1839, Charlotte Brontë, then working as a governess in Skipton, Yorkshire, wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey about her holiday plans. At the age of 23, she said, she'd never been to the coast, never seen a beach, never clapped eyes on rolling waves. The prospect of doing so, on a proposed trip to Bridlington, was intensely exciting: "The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind. I shall be discontented at nothing." Did she feel a big anticlimax on finally clapping eyes on the briny? Not at all. According to Ms Nussey, she "was quite overpowered, she could not speak until she had shed some tears ... her eyes were red and swollen, she was still trembling ... for the remainder of the day she was very quiet, subdued and exhausted."Check this previous post for more precise information about the aforementioned quote.
Gordon Brown claimed to identify with Heathcliff, Emily Brontë's complex Byronic brooder, but frankly appeared more short-tempered than saturnine. (Judith Woods)The Wall Street Journal reviews The Wave Watcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney:
Allusions to Robert Burns and Emily Brontë share space with the film maker Jacques Tati and the movie "When Harry Met Sally" (the scene where Harry tells a friend about his failing marriage as both men compulsively do "the wave" at a baseball game). (Jennifer Ouellette)The Daily O'Collegian challenges one recurrent romantic fantasy:
Our culture insists on telling women to believe one whopping fallacy: a man can change with the love of a good woman.Unthinkable? gives a Brontë example in an article about Kindle:
Novels such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, movies as diverse as Rebel without a Cause and The Breakfast Club and reality shows such as Dad Camp and Tool Academy sell this falsehood. (Karen Sisk)
All I can say is that somewhere at Amazon there is a graph showing how many of everything they can se ll if the price of the Kindle gets reduced to $99, and then watch these numbers explode. Even a cheapskate like me will buy a Kindle at that price just to read Jane Eyre and the like.(US Chick)Regrettably Bessie A. Winn-Afeku (in The Huffington Post) will not have a good memory of Jane Eyre (Kindle reading or not):
I spent so much time writing thesis papers about Jane Eyre I never wanted to write for fun.Marie Claire talks about the London boutique Apartment C which apparently has curious new initiatives:
The venue also provides guests with the option of listening to romantic readings, given by a wandering handsome waiter, ranging from classics such as Wuthering Heights to the wonderfully trashy Love machine by Jacqueline Suzanne.We think that Colin Sokolowski doesn't qualify to enter our Brontëite ranks:
What was your first favorite book?A retired teacher and Brontëite in Fort Mill Times, Touring Old Blighty visits Brontë country, No Charge Bookbunch posts about Romancing Miss Brontë, Reading at the Moonlight reviews Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolworths (in Spanish), jill_rg asks for help in the interpretation of a scene of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Breakfast at Lucie's and La vie page à page... review Agnes Grey in French, Eygam who cried Wolf reviews Wuthering Heights in Czech and Les Brontë à Paris posts about Patrick Brontë's Cottage Poems in French.
Either Lord of the Flies or Of Mice and Men. I seem to recall they were among the first books I actually didn’t fake book reports on for my ninth-grade English class (unlike Wuthering Heights). (Jodi Chromey in Minnesota Reads)
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëAnother Brontë novel and another top ten: Wuthering Heights is chosen by Tonic as one of ten literary 'one-hit wonders':
Jane Eyre was responsible for a misguided belief in the power of romance that complicated my teenage years. The idea that you could lean out of your window and whisper your lover's name, and that he might actually hear you, appealed to me too much.
Emily Brontë: Using the male nom de plume, Ellis Bell, Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1947. Following her death in '48, her sister, Jane Eyre author Charlotte, re-published the novel under Emily's proper name. (Jenna Gabrial Gallagher)Apart from the fact that the novel is wrongly dated a whole century later, it must also be said that Charlotte Brontë never republished any of her sisters' works under their real names: in both her introduction to Wuthering Heights and her Biographical Notice she refers to them as Ellis and Acton Bell.
For accommodation there is a large selection of guest houses including the summer home where English writer and author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte once lived. (Diarmaid Williams)We don't know which 'summer house' they are referring to, probably one associated with Arthur Bell Nicholls and/or his family - but 'lived' would seem too strong a word when all she would have done was stay for a few days at most. And if, as we fear, they actually mean the bed & breakfast Charlotte's Way, known as Hill House when Arthur Bell Nicholls lived there, well then Charlotte Brontë didn't ever set foot there, as Arthur only moved there after she died.
And finally this week, Norris and Mary go to Bronte Country in the motorhome with Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights singing them off the Street. Once they’re cosied up in their cottage on the moors . . . (Glenda Young)Too bad they seem to be late for the Brontë Society Spring Walk which took place on April 18th. The Brontë Parsonage Blog has a post about it.
What is one book you haven’t read but want to read before you die?And now for something really quite funny involving Heathcliff, Gordon Brown, a Gordon Brown lookalike, Kate Bush and Wuthering Heights. As the Daily Mail puts it:
I actually have a list of every book that I’ve read since I was about ten years old so I can verify what I’ve already read, scary as that may seem. I’m still trying to get into Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which seems like a book that I might find fascinating if I could only begin. Well, that and maybe anything by Anthony Trollope, only because I keep being told that I’ll eventually like him if I keep trying. (Jodi Chromey)
For anyone interested here's the link to the YouTube clip in question. Oh, that it was actually Gordon Brown! Then the Heathcliffgate would make so much sense.Is it Wuthering Gordon?
Isn’t there something oddly familiar about the dark, handsome Heathcliff style figure, pictured here duetting with Kate Bush on an old episode of Terry Wogan’s BBC chatshow?
The YouTube clip from the Eighties has been watched more than 375,000 times, as the rumour spread yesterday that it was a young Gordon Brown.
It isn’t. He can’t sing. (Andrew Pierce) (Picture source)
Careful not to repeat himself, Fukunaga, who is half Swedish and half Japanese, made sure to follow Sin Nombre up with a very different project: an umpteenth adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender and Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska.(...)Continuing with this new Jane Eyre film, the Philippine Daily Enquirer interviews (?) Mia Wasikowska who says the same usual stuff about Cary Fukunaga's choice as director. The journalist has some problems identifying the correct Brontë sister, though:I did wonder about that. I think there’s a part of you, especially during your first film, that wonders if you’re going to be someone who just writes his own projects. And I wish I wrote that fast, but considering the amount of movies I want to make in the finite time I have to make films, I wont be able to write all my films.
- Sin Nombre was a very personal project from beginning to end. By following that with an adaptation of Jane Eyre, are you abandoning the idea of always being a writer-director?
I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing, it really is. (Julian Sancton)
Mia Wasikowska (pronounced “Vah-she-kov-ska”) made a splash as the virtually unknown girl who got the plum title role in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Yet, here she is, creating more headlines—by bagging the part of the eponymous heroine in the new film version of “Jane Eyre.”The Perthshire Advertiser publishes an article about the current performances of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre at Perth Theatre:
“We begin shooting ‘Jane Eyre’ in March,” announced Mia, who arrived for this interview in a stunning short hairdo. (...)
Speaking in a quiet tone, the girl who first gained attention as the suicidal teenager in HBO’s “In Treatment” elaborates on the umpteenth big-screen version of Emily Bronte’s (sic!!!!!) classic Gothic tale. Cary Fukunaga, who directed “Sin Nombre,” last year’s acclaimed indie film about the harsh realities faced by would-be US illegal immigrants, helms the movie with Michael Fassbender as the tortured Rochester.
Wonderful choice
“It’s faithful to the book, but I think Cary is a wonderful choice as the director,” Mia shared. “He’s not an obvious choice, so he’s going to bring some exciting energy to the movie. I can’t wait to discover for myself what he’s going to do with it!” (Ruben V. Nepales)
THERE is no need to be familiar with Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre, assures Perth Theatre director Ian Grieve, whose ambitious production opens tonight.Elaine Showalter reviews for The Guardian Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds by Lyndall Gordon:
Ian promises “a spectacle”, devised and performed by creative and talented people in their spheres of acting, music and movement.
He remains tight-lipped on the details of how Bronte’s “wonderfully exciting Gothic novel” is to be injected with a “sense of fun and spectacle” but to whet the appetite he promises a stilted performer (not in the delivery of lines!) and action high in the rafters 40-feet above the stage.
“I wanted to do something with universal appeal which would involve telling a story in a unique way,” says Perth Theatre’s creative director Ian, himself a newcomer to the Jane Eyre novel.
“I did Wuthering Heights about 15 years ago, so I knew some Brontes, but I’d never got round to Jane Eyre.
“I wanted to do something with universal appeal, telling a story in a unique way, and I found Polly Teale’s stage adaptation of Jane Eyre.
“I loved it and felt it gave us the chance to do something we had not done at Perth Theatre before.”
Combining words, movement and music, Ian describes the production as “epic and quite operatic in scale”, adding “I wanted something with stunning appeal for teenagers and a good show for those who’ve never been to a theatre before.” (...)
Jane’s alter-ego Bertha is a constant presence in the play: “She is plain Jane on the outside but the audience also sees what is going on inside. It’s the most ambitious show we have done.”
He describes the run-up opening night as “challenging, exhausting but also exciting.”
“The set does special things. We’ve taken risks but we’ve also created something incredibly exciting.”
The multi-talented team includes a number of new faces to Perth Theatre as well as local talent of the highest calibre.
Perth’s Tom McGovern returns as Rochester; music is by Iain Johnstone of the award-winning Wee Stories Theatre Company. Also back are Jon Beales, one of the main forces behind PFT’s 2009 smash hit Whisky Galore – A Musical!; and acclaimed set designer Ken Harrison.
Newcomers to Perth include movement director Lisi Perry, based in Liverpool, who brings two movement specialists to Jane Eyre – Kath Duggan as Jane and Vanessa Cook as the alter ego Bertha.
And Perthshire teenager Beth Duncan is having an amazing introduction to the world of professional theatre, taking the part of Adele, the child to whom Jane is governess.
Ian concludes: “Hopefully, what we have created will enthral Perth theatre-goers in the execution as much as it has thrilled us in the preparation, capturing, for stage and for a modern audience, the intensity and passion of Bronte’s work.” (Alison Anderson)
The great Dickinson family drama reached its height in 1882, only a few years before Emily's death. By the mid-1850s she had become a virtual recluse at the Homestead. There she maintained her intimate friendship with Sue, who lived next door at the Evergreens, the home Edward Dickinson had built for his son's family. For many years, Emily crossed the little path between the houses, reading her poems to Sue, and giving her hundreds to keep. Sue, in return, gave her books by British women writers – Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot.La Nación (Argentina) reviews both the aforementioned book and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn:
Ajustados a la realidad o no, lo más interesante es que ambos libros reflejan una obsesión contemporánea por rellenar las lagunas en lo que se sabe sobre la vida de las escritoras y el deseo sexual que tan decorosamente escondían en el siglo XVIII y XIX.Jane Smiley reviews Claire Harman's Jane's Fame in The Globe and Mail and reminds us of how
Las hermanas Brontë y Jane Austen ya han recibido este tratamiento en Gran Bretaña, y para ellas los críticos señalaron algo que quizá pueda aplicarse ahora: nuestra necesidad de que hayan sido feministas, rebeldes o heroínas modernas, a la vez más y menos complicadas de lo que probablemente fueron. (Juana Libedinsky) (Google translation)
Lord Alfred Tennyson loved her [Jane Austen] and Charlotte Brontë did not.By the way, The Globe and Mail also interviews her. The interviewer has decided to change the name of the Brontë expert Lucasta Miller:
What do you think had sparked the current interest in the history of reputation such as we see in Jocasta Miller's (sic) The Brontë Myth and Francine Prose's recent book on Anne Frank's afterlife?Bookreporter reviews The Infinities by John Banville:
Adam “fears premature burial” and considers death “the age-old inquisition.” His daughter Petra, the “loony sister” of young Adam, manages the care of their father at Arden House, a magnificently described estate rivaling Wuthering Heights. (L. Dean Murphy)El Diario de La Rioja (Spain) goes a bit too far considering Lone Scherfig's film An Education a sort of bastard Jane Eyre adaptation:
Hornby no oculta que la inspiración le llegó leyendo a Charlotte Brönte, y se refiere constantemente al personaje de Peter Saarsgard nominándolo como Sr. Rochester, por si nos cupiesen dudas de que 'An education' se trata en realidad de un amago de adaptación bastarda de Jane Eyre en la que se cruzan pasajes autobiográficos de la periodista Lynn Barber. (Josu Eguren) (Google translation)The German Der Tagesspiegel also mentions the Jane Eyre references in the film:
In „An Education“ träumt Jenny davon, Englisch zu studieren, in Oxford. Und nimmt in der Schule gerade „Jane Eyre“ durch, die Liebe der Gouvernante Jane zum rätselhaften Mr. Rochester. (Christina Tilmann) (Google translation)And the Polish artPapier goes further entitling its review Być Jak Jane Eyre? (How to be Jane Eyre):
Już w prologu filmu widzimy fragment lekcji języka angielskiego, podczas której Jenny i jej koleżanki, pod kierunkiem panny Stubbs (Olivia Williams), interpretują powieść Charlotte Brontë „Dziwne losy Jane Eyre”. Słynna romantyczna opowieść o skromnej guwernantce, która zakochuje się ze wzajemnością w mrocznym lordzie Rochesterze, niemal od początku prezentuje się jako istotny kontekst historii Jenny. I nie chodzi tutaj tylko o analogie fabularne (zamożny, fascynujący, ale skrywający ciemne tajemnice mężczyzna, pragnący związać się z młodą, niedoświadczoną, ale inteligentną, dobrą i wnoszącą do jego życia powiew świeżości kobietą). „Dziwne losy Jane Eyre” powinny w zasadzie stanowić ostrzeżenie dla Jenny, która – będąc bystrą interpretatorką – nie zauważa, iż w snutej przez Brontë historii związku młodej kobiety i dojrzałego mężczyzny sporo jest niepewności i mroku. Przede wszystkim jednak „Dziwne losy Jane Eyre” stanowią kontrapunkt, kontekst negatywny dla historii Jenny. Spod romantycznej opowieści w filmie Scherfig wyziera bowiem prawdziwe życie, wraz ze swymi brudnymi, małymi sprawkami, skrzętnie zamiatanymi pod dywan. I to właśnie w tej szarej, często przykrej rzeczywistości, a nie w świecie romantycznych wizji, Jenny będzie musiała odnaleźć swoją ścieżkę. (Magdalena Kempna) (Google translation)The Independent has an article about Gloria de Piero, former political editor of GMTV, now Labour candidate and the one behind the whole Heathcliffgate.
To add to the mix she is also reported to have been "fancied" by Tony Blair, and to be the candidate of choice of Gordon Brown who she once compared to the brooding Heathcliff, to the Prime Minister's amusement. (Jonathan Brown)Patrick Modiano confesses to Le Monde his love for Wuthering Heights:
Il aurait aimé, lui, être l'auteur d'un seul livre : un grand roman d'amour plutôt, à la campagne de préférence. Ecrire l'un de ceux qu'il a aimé lire et se débarrasser, une fois pour toutes, du souci d'écrire. "Un seul livre... ç'aurait été mon rêve. Par exemple Le Guépard... J'ai toujours été fasciné... Il est mort... Après c'était fini... Je pensais qu'il y avait une sorte de sérénité... Qu'on n'avait plus envie... Qu'on était libéré..." Le Guépard, Les Hauts de Hurlevent aussi. "Un seul livre, ça prend une résonance... Moi, c'est pas pareil..." (Marie Desplechin) (Google translation)Daughters reading Jane Eyre in the South Washington County Bulletin and a librarian Brontëite in Southeast Missourian, the Boston Globe announces some ComCast On Demand Movies, including Jane Eyre 1996:
An intelligent version of the Charlotte Bronte classic starring Charlotte Gainsbourg as the enduring heroine and William Hurt as the tormented gentleman for whom she falls. Lacks the boldness and passion that made the novel a landmark of the Romantic era. (PG; runs through March 11)A young actress uses a Jane Eyre monologue for her auditions in the Sidmouth Herald, another Brontëite in the Democrat & Chronicle, Writ Lit Drip briefly dissects Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, Libri et Libertas discusses Wide Sargasso Sea, Thirsty Imagination includes Rochester in its theory of brooding, Little Augury illustrate some pictures of a Christian Dior fashion show with Wuthering Heights quotes and TRCB reviews Jane Eyre.
Jane Austen was the queen of Monster Lit in 2009. While 2010 proves to move onto some other lady writers like Alcott, and rumors abound of Brontës and Eliot, Jane Austen is Monster Lit’s favorite whipping girl. [...]We are afraid that Wuthering Bites and Jane Slayre are more than just rumours at this point.
Out of the Jane Austen monster novels, Jane Bites Back is perhaps the most original of them all. [...]In addition to Jane Austen as vampire, we also have Austen’s maker, Lord Byron (who is credited with founding the monster) and the Brontë family. (Selena Chambers)
Most of these people actually were getting violated, in some unfortunate ways, by the social and physical climate of their times. Charlotte Bronte wrote Robert Southey a letter about her desire to be a writer, and was basically told that nervous illness was a girl’s only role in the literary world. (Elizabeth Bachner)Another book (or series) connected to the Brontës is of course Twilight. The Snapper discusses the film adaptations and says,
But Edward isn’t a good boyfriend. Telling someone, “You’re my only reason to stay alive, if that’s what I am,” as Edward does in “New Moon”, isn’t love; it’s dysfunctional. And outside of the time spent with Edward, Bella doesn’t do anything except go to school and read “romantic” novels like “Wuthering Heights.” Speaking of which, the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff is probably the most dysfunctional in all of literature, but I digress. (Lyndsey Sturkey)Speaking of Wuthering Heights, the Daily Mail has an article on Heathcliff... - er - no, we meant Gordon Brown. Again.
Will [political editor of GMTV, Gloria De Piero] charm the pants off them? Anyone with the brass neck to tell Brown he was like Emily Bronte's fictional weirdo Heathcliff is surely in with a chance. (Peter McKay)Yes, she was the one to begin this never-ending Heathcliffgate.
While it is well known that the Brontë sisters both wrote under pen names in the 17th century to hide their identities, protect their reputations, and increase their chances of being published, it is surprising to many that our generation’s own beloved J.K. Rowling did the very same. Rowling used the initials “J.K.” instead of Joanne, her full first name. Although it is unclear whether this was her own doing or the creation of her publisher, Bloomsbury, it is evident that the reasoning behind it is no different than that of the Brontë sisters: a fear that men would not purchase her book knowing that it was written by a woman. (Vaidehi Joshi)We find it hilarious that a sentence that contains a mistake by a difference of two centuries (!) starts with 'while it is well known that...'. Because it's not, actually.
Arnold’s next movie project is Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.And The Times interviews Mia Wasikowska, who is in the middle of the Alice in Wonderland promotion, and says about her next project Jane Eyre:
She said: “It’s a story that’s very close to my heart. It’s close to a lot of people’s hearts, which makes it a huge responsibility.
“It dropped out of the sky before Christmas for me. I never thought I would ever take on an adaptation of a book.
“Think about Heathcliff: he’s an outsider, a gypsy. It’s a big class story. All my films have been about class and Wuthering Heights is more of the same.”
And she will shortly start shooting Jane Eyre, with Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester.The Independent (Ireland) interviews Leslie Kenton, author of Love Affair, who describes the disturbing relationship between her and her father, the noteworthy jazz musician Stan Kenton:
“She’s another incredible female character,” she acknowledges, “but I’m really excited because of Cary Fukunaga, the director. He’s not British, and his previous film, Sin Nombre, was about illegal immigration into America. I think it’s a brilliant choice, because he’s not following any preconceived notions, so it’s going to be really exciting to see what he does with it. I like period dramas that aren’t afraid to be messy, where there’s mud on skirts.” (Christopher Goodwin)
And yet, despite the almost identical landscape of this story, the resonance is less Humbert Humbert and Lolita than Cathy and Heathcliffe of Wuthering Heights. It is a story of two people impacted together against their peers, their relatives, their circumstances. Against the world. (Anne Harris)Kirkus Reviews publishes an account of Adèle, Grace, and Céline. The Other Woman of Jane Eyre:
Adele Varens was an inquisitive, intuitive child while growing up at Thornfield Manor, the home of her guardian, Edward Rochester. She discovered a crazy woman in the attic early in her stay, and could also sense the connection between her governess, Jane, and the man she would eventually knowas her father, Rochester himself. Adele’s natural gift of insight comes in handy when she becomes one of the first women to attend university in London and during the war in Crimea where she works alongside Florence Nightingale. When she marries Sir Garnet Gresham and settles at Drayton Abbey, Adele eschews a life of leisure. Instead, she works hard to restore an herb garden to glory, raises her children, makes friends and keeps up with current scientific knowledge and theory. When Adele inherits the letters that passed between her mother, Celine, and Grace, the servant who took care of the mad woman in the attic at Rochester’s estate, she learns much more, good and bad, about her family and the people she loves. Jane Eyre has become an iconic novel, sparking many sequels, revisions, screen and stage versions. Moïse writes hers with a delicate 19th-century sensibility that serves her characters well. They thrive under the author’s care, much like the herb gardens under Adele’s green thumb. Even as she tackles tough subjects of the times, like the clash between the religious view of how life began and the newfangled theories of evolution, the writing is entertaining and deft. Readers will easily follow Moïse’s smooth transitions between the epistolary form and Adele’s first-person narrative, even with a multitude of characters from past and present to account for.The Day (Connecticut) talks about Ruben Toledo's cover for Wuthering Heights, the Tampa Bay Online announces the new season of the American Stage Theatre Company including
Authentic, exciting and well-researched.
Charles Ludlam's Gothic spoof "The Mystery of Irma Vep" (Sept. 17-Oct. 10) lampoons classic whodunits and horror films. Referencing Alfred Hitchcock's film noir "Rebecca," "Wuthering Heights," mummies and vampires, "Irma Vep" (an anagram for vampire) is campy fun that has achieved cult status. (Kathy L. Greenberg)Another Brontë horse, Heathcliff, in the Cheltenham Festival reported in News of the World, the other 'professional' Heathcliff around, i.e. Gordon Brown, features in the Daily Mail (quoting again the Heathcliffgate) and The Independent (Ireland):
Hilariously, when Brown discovered that some idiot had lost a computer disk containing 20 million British people's personal banking details, he leaped across his desk to grab the lapels of his deputy chief of staff and snarled: "They're out to get me." Forget Heathcliff; cue the James Bond theme music. (Carol Hunt)Associated Content publishes an article with the title What Does the Color Red Symbolize in Jane Eyre? by Morgan Drake Eckstein, a Portuguese blog, Janela de Guilhotina, a French one, Lectures d'un dévoreuse de livres... and Bookmarked discuss Jane Eyre (the latter in the Dame Darcy illustrated edition). Finally, an interesting guide to Jane Eyre adaptations has been posted on HubPages (including a first reaction from the Literature Network Forum defending Jane Eyre 1997).
Unless explicitly said
