Tormented Hope by Brian Dillon is an upcoming book which contains a study of Charlotte Brontë from a hypochondriac point of view:Tormented HopeThe author himself presents the book in The Guardian and highlights Charlotte Brontë's own approach to hypochondria:
Nine Hypochondriac Lives
Brian Dillon
Penguin Ireland
Hardback : 03 Sep 2009
Format : Hardback
ISBN: 9781844881345
Pages : 288
Tormented Hope is a book about mind and body, fear and hope, illness and imagination. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill. And in an intimate investigation of those nine lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body, by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Brian Dillon, whose brilliant debut In the Dark Room established him as an uncommonly intelligent and fluent explorer of the realm where ideas and emotions overlap, looks at nine prominent hypochondriacs - James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol - and what their lives tell us about the way the mind works with, and against, the body. His findings are stimulating and surprising, and the stories he tells are often moving, sometimes hilarious, and always gripping.
Victorian hypochondria seems to have been intimately connected to the need for creative reclusion, nowhere more so than in the lives and writings of certain notable female hypochondriacs. Charlotte Brontë, for example, claimed to have suffered her first hypochondriacal fit while teaching at Roe Head at 19. The illness, she wrote, "made life a continual waking nightmare". Brontë put her crisis down to the drudgery of teaching, which left her little time to write; she felt, she said, "the heavy gloom of many long hours". Readers of Jane Eyre may recall that on the night before they are meant to be married, Rochester dismisses Jane's fear as a "hypochondria" born of excitement and fatigue. But the fullest expression of Brontë's own malady comes in Villette, when the novel's narrator, Lucy Snowe, her privacy invaded and her covert desires exposed, succumbs to "that strangest spectre, Hypochondria".Categories: Books, Charlotte Brontë
Brontë seems to have meant by the word a debilitating perplex of panic and despair: something close to a "breakdown" in the modern sense.
The Knaresborough Post reports that Holy Trinity Church at Little Ouseburn - the church Anne attended while working for the Robinson family - will be open for viewing as part of the Heritage Open Days. As part of this year's Heritage Open Days, two churches in Knaresbrough and Ouseburn will be open for viewing in this area. [...]To read more about the Anne Brontë connection, click here.
Heritage Open Days are held every September in towns and cities throughout England and celebrate architecture and culture by allowing visitors free access to interesting properties. The weekend started in 1994 and is now England's biggest and most popular vountary cultural event. Last year it attracted around a million visitors. [...]
Holy Trinity Church in Little Ouseburn is also open at the weekend on both Saturday, September 12 and Sunday, September 13 from 10am till 4pm as part of the Heritage Weekend.
The Grade I building is set in a conservation area overlooking parkland and has historic links with St Bega, Fountains Abbey, the Civil War, Anne Bronte, the Newby Ferry Disaster and the Canadian Airforce.
Mentioned in the Doomsday book, much of the history of the building since Norman times can be read in the structure itself.
A DVD will be playing by Jim Lang of English Heritage plus visitors can enjoy displays of documents and photos gathered through the years.
Attendants will be on hand to answer any queries.
Coffee and cakes will be available on Saturday along with preserves and cards to buy.
The Grade II listed Thompson Family Mausoleum and Undercroft will also be open. (Picture source)
By the mid-19th century, women such as Charlotte Brontë could also self-diagnose a disease that in its symptoms was perhaps close to what we would today call depression. [...]And from The Irish Times:
Charlotte Bronte: Author
Brontë claimed to have suffered a fit of hypochondria while teaching at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, aged 19. She fell into "a most dreadful doom", which she believed had little to do with the sickly and doomed family milieu in which she lived. Rather, Brontë meant by "hypochondria" a dismal combination of sorrow, worry and resignation that arose, so she thought, from the fact that she now had no time to write or to think. Later, in 'Jane Eyre', she had Rochester accuse Jane of hypochondria when she expressed her fears about their planned wedding. In real life Brontë outlived her five siblings.
It explores, through the stories of James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol, the relationship between mind and body, and the terror of being ill. [...]The 'lifetime of Charlotte Brontë' actually took place in the 19th century.
It became quite fashionable in the 18th century during the lifetime of Charlotte Brontë when it was known as the “English malady”. “It becomes a marker of sensitivity,” says Dillon. “That is long gone. It has a psychological and moralised meaning today which we disapprove of.” (Conor Pope)
One of the Bronte sisters, Emily Bronte, wrote but one book, Wuthering Heights, but it became a literary classic and had its name bestowed on broodmares in New Zealand, the dam of the great galloper Battle Heights and ancestress of many other fine gallopers, and England, a remote relation of Moti.Always a - erm - fascinating subject, those Brontës.
The English Wuthering Heights was from Anne Bronte, a Fair Trial mare out of Charlotte Bronte, the names of Emily sisters and the seventh and eighth dams of Moti.
Charlotte Bronte was a half-sister to Florence Dombey, dam of Felcrag (GB), grandam of Dickens (Aust) (won the VRC C.B. Fisher Plate, Linlithgow Stakes, STC Rawson Stakes; second Victoria Derby and third AJC Derby) and third dam of Dickens (IRE) (a leading English stayer who won the Goodwood Cup and Yorkshire Cup). (Brian Russell)
A LIVESEY DISCUSSIONCategories: Alert, Anne Brontë, Books, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights
Acclaimed writer Margot Livesey leads a discussion about one of her 19th-century predecessors, Charlotte Bronte, and her classic novel "Jane Eyre," tonight at 7 at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville.
The Twilight Saga: There’s really not much reason for me to go on at length about this third (of four) installments in the review-proof Twilight series, given that the diehard fans of the franchise are second only to Harry Potter’s in terms of brand loyalty. The movie is based on the Stephenie Meyer best seller which in turn was ostensibly-inspired by Emily Brontë’s gothic novel “Wuthering Heights.” (Kam Williams)The connection is also explored on the blog Demon Vampire Horror.
After my O-level exams, I had no plans for the rest of the summer. At first, I slept for days and when I finally emerged out of my room; my first stop was at the British Council Library to issue a bunch of books. (...) And while on one end were stacks of intellectual literature, on the other end of the backseat lay a stack of rented videos of Bollywood and Hollywood. Balance is healthy, a little bit of Jaaneman for every few pages of Jane Eyre! (Padash)The Memphis Flyer reviews Brian Dillon's The Hypochondriacs:
What do James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould, and Andy Warhol have to share? Not much. Except they all led tormented lives, lives tormented enough to make them literally sick. Or so they believed. And so writes Brian Dillon, brilliantly, in The Hypochondriacs (Faber and Faber). (Leonard Gill)More things: A Brontë cow (literally) in Keighley News, a students reading Wuthering Heights in The Lowell Sun, Cuir de Russie reviews the Classical Comics adaptation of Jane Eyre (in French), Public Republic publishes combines pictures and quotes by Emily Brontë. A thousand books with quotes reviews and quotes from Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë.
Halfway up a lung-busting hill, The Fleece Inn combines Bronte magic with Yorkshire pudding and winter ales. The Fleece, a no-nonsense three-storey stone pub, is halfway up, or halfway down, the lung-bursting steep hill which is Haworth's main street. Your approach depends on your point of pilgrimage.If you would rather stay home, Tormented Hope: Nine hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon is one of Elle's February recommendations:
Most tourists are here for the Brontës. The Parsonage, now a fascinating museum, is where Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their ill-starred brother, Branwell, lived. That is at the very top of the hill, behind the church. There are those other visitors, however, who are fans of the 1970 film The Railway Children. They head for Haworth railway station, which is at the bottom of the village.
The cream-on-green sign and the handsome etched windows of The Fleece announce a world famous local brewery, Timothy Taylor's, of nearby Keighley. Enter and you find yourself in a comfortable old-fashioned wainscoted interior. The bar has a flag floor, so hikers can safely clatter in. Around the bar are several cosy and carpeted nooks and crannies. There are the expected photos of old Haworth and the Brontës, but down in the dining room, you'll find portraits of the stars of The Railway Children as well. (Arthur Taylor)
Magnificent maladiesCharles Darwin and Charlotte Brontë are two of the “nine tormented lives” in Brian Dillon’s The Hypochondriacs (Faber & Faber) who undergo the award-winning memoirist’s fascinating analysis of their bizarre and baffling afflictions—both real and imagined—that helped shape their legendary contributions to science, literature, music, art, and healing. (Lisa Shea)Metro Halifax (Canada) suggests some music too: Basia Bulat’s new album Heart of My Own, which
builds from an academic interest in the written craft of Emily Dickenson [sic] and the Brönte [sic] sisters, but also reaches to the soaring vistas of the Yukon for inspiration.And Edmunds Inside Line jokes about the many sequels in the Fast and Furious movie saga.
“History is full of people who are critics as well as creators. I’m probably not very good at either, but am I trying to learn and get better,” said Bulat. “I love poetry and pop songs that have the ability to say so many things in such a short space. (It amazes me when) a writer can use a few lines to open up worlds.”
Written during a leave of absence from her Master’s thesis in English, Heart of My Own reflects a love of literature that began when Bulat’s mother gave her eight-year-old daughter a copy of Jane Eyre. Her favourite Emily Dickenson [sic] poems echo the rhythm of a church choir — a kind of written cadence also reflected in classic Motown, which draws on gospel singing. (Rob MacMahaon)
Some day all movies will be Fast and Furious movies. We expect the seventh film will be The Fast and the Furious: Wuthering Heights. (Lee Pray)A blog, Bosom Buddy (in Catalan) gives 7/10 to Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre. And Flickr user SierraRosePhotography has uploaded a picture with Fritz Eichenberg's illustrated edition of Jane Eyre.
The play Maude-Lynne Sells Out! by Morgan Norwich & Johnnie Walker (now at the Toronto Fringe Festival) is reviewed again in some Canadian news outlets. The (Emily) Brontë connections are clearer after looking at the promotional picture (check the book she is reading) or watching the video.There's a lot that's likeable in this silly little tale of a self-obsessed Emily Brontë junkie with a weird name (played by Morgan Nowych, who co-authored the script with director Johnnie Walker) and her keyboard-playing sidekick (played by Peter Cavell). (John Coulbourne in the Toronto Sun)
Deep in her “beloved withering depths” (read: basement), Brontë enthusiast Maude-Lynne prepares to auction off her treasures to the highest bidder. (Naomi Skwarna in Now Magazine)
Sure, the songs are just ok and Maude-Lynne’s Wuthering Heights-inspired speech and mannerisms grate slightly after a while. But this show has some real heart to it, and it manages something I’ve rarely seen: it actually has a likeable goth-kid protagonist.(...)The Herald reviews Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope:
It’s a fun and clever show, and enjoyable even if you’ve never read Wuthering Heights. (Brian in Panic Manual)
Hypochondria played a positive role in the lives of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë.Western Mail asks several Welsh authors about their favourite novels. Caryl Lewis says:
One of the most fascinating aspects of Dillon’s history, which looks at James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë and Charles Darwin among others, is the notion that hypochondria helped certain gifted individuals to make time for their work or art.(...)
Charlotte Brontë’s great illness of 1851, when she complained of violent headaches, sickness and chest pains, came after the deaths of her sisters and while she struggled to find the time to finish her novel, Villette.
As with Boswell, Dillon views Brontë’s mysterious ailments, which disappeared quickly enough, as a way of controlling time. (Lesley McDowell)
Choosing your favourite book is a bit like choosing between your favourite cakes – nigh on impossible and totally dependent on your mood! Sometimes, only a lounge on the sofa with a Kipling’s French Fancy and a Brontë or an Austen will do.The Vine includes the Brontë sisters on its top ten superheroe moments (you know, the Power Dolls ad). One has to admit that the criticism has a point:
6. The Brontë sistersMacgasm is seduced by the iPad (what a surprise) but concedes that reading on paper is still faster:
Sometimes, superheroes are made from unexpected places. Everyday people. You know, people like the Brontë sisters. Now, I should point out that I despise the Brontë sisters and everything they've done; sure, they're trailblazers. Sure, they set benchmarks for women to write and be viewed as artistic equals. And sure, Heathcliff is kind of a Baldwin. But they're directly responsible for Cliff Richard's stage musical Heathcliff. And that shit is unforgivable. (PaulVerhoeven (sic))
During the first part of a Nielsen Norman study, they found that the iPad read 6.2 percent slower than a traditionally printed book. (...) What’s it mean? If you’re planning on cramming for an exam or barreling through your favourite Emily Brontë novel, you’re probably going to need a paper version of the text you’re reading—you’ll save a lot of time. (Joshua Schnell)Some people complain about almost everything. Apparently one of the bugs of the Kobo ebook reader was the following. As read on Digital Home:
The biggest irritant we heard from lots of users was “I don’t care about *&@^#$# Jane Eyre! Get it out of my Library!” Totally understandable: some people feel it clutters up the Library or makes it harder to find purchased books. (Others love having a reader that is full of books as soon as you plug it in. That’s the way it goes…)Some people definitely need a life.
The movie is based on the Stephenie Meyer best seller which in turn was ostensibly-inspired by Emily Brontë's gothic novel "Wuthering Heights."(Kam Williams in News Blaze)Libby Sternberg, author of Sloane Hall, talks about authors and blogging in the Seattle Writing Careers Examiner, Joan Larsen recommends Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael in WowOWow. Rafların Arasından (in Turkish) and Ink. post about Jane Eyre. Moon Space liked with some reservations Wuthering Heights. The same book is reviewed in German by Bücherhühner and a fragment translated into French by Les Brontë à Paris. The Lone Reader gives 4 out 4 stars to Agnes Grey. Finally Silencing the Bell posts about Wide Sargasso Sea.
What do you know about the Brontë brothers? The truth is there was only one, Branwell... whose colourful life is to be explored on TV in 2010. He was eclipsed by the brilliance of his sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who originally wrote poems under male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, to disguise their gender.The Times vindicates Jane Campion's film The Piano (1993) as a classic. The Wuthering Heights influences on the film are also recalled:
Of course, Charlotte (Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights) and Anne (Agnes Grey) became the most famous family in English literature.
But do look out for the TV programme which will build on Sex Drugs & Literature: The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë the exhibition, which runs until December 2010 at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
The museum, in Haworth, is the perfect starting point for a tour of "Brontë country", the area of rural Pennine Yorkshire which has to be experienced to fully appreciate the influence of the wild country on the sisters' atmospheric writing.
As an early reviewer wrote of Currer Bell (Charlotte)'s early novel Shirley: "To estimate this work aright, the reader must have all the scenic accompaniment before him; he must not fancy himself in a London mansion, but in an old north-country manor house, situated in the dreary, dreamy moorland, far from the haunts of civilized men."
Turn right out of the front door of the parsonage and the Brontë Way path takes you to the beautiful Brontë Falls and Top Withens, the secret meeting place of Cathy and Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights and Emily's and her fiancé Arthur Bell Nicholls.
So romantic – and so much healthier than skidding down the main street of Howarth, which was effectively an open sewer which caused thousands of deaths from typhus!
Today, the cobbled main street is a picturesque mix of modern and the historic, and still contains the apothecary's shop where Branwell would buy his opium and the pub from which he would stagger home with help from his father's servants.
The modern visitor will get all the help they need to explore the rural area from a new 28-page guide booklet called Brontës in Pennine Yorkshire, which has been produced by Pennine Yorkshire. The easy-to-follow guide leads to much more than the must-see Howarth sights of the church, Black Bull and Old Apothecary.
The wild rural areas including Brontë Falls and Charlotte's Seat and the atmospheric ruined farmhouse at Top Withens (believed to be the site of Wuthering Heights) as well as the magical Ponden Kirk (no church, just a large block of gritstone where Cathy and Heathcliff met) are magnets for walkers, picnickers and photographers. The full 40-mile Brontë Walk is far more challenging and not to be undertaken lightly.
If a shower comes along, you can be assured a warming welcome in any of the Howarth tea-rooms like The Stirrup, which offer filling snacks and lunches.
And if the shower settles in for a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than take a round trip on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
A family ticket for the full length of the track will cost £22 and for £11 more, the family can hop on and off as often as they like at any of the six stations for one day.
The guide shows that Rural Yorkshire has much to offer the less mobile, too.
The drive from Howarth (about nine miles north west of Bradford) to Gomersal (about six miles south east of Bradford) takes about 40 minutes and takes you to the area where much of Charlotte Brontë's novel Shirley was set.
This is the area where the anti- machine Luddites – named after Anstey's Ned Lud – roamed. The Red House Museum is beautifully presented and gives another good insight into the social history of the 1830s.
Nearby Oakwell Hall is wonderfully atmospheric, as befits a stately home which saw action in the Civil War. Look out for ghosts!
Although the new booklet guides you to a score of Brontë-linked sites, and the signs and interactive displays there answer most questions, they still leave scope for you to exercise your brain about remaining mysteries.
The one which I enjoy speculating about most is the famous painting of the Brontë sisters.
As soon as I saw it, I realised that a fourth figure had been painted out. Some experts suggest that Branwell, whose work it was, removed himself from the scene with his stellar sisters.
I still wonder whether it was he, or they, who exorcised the black sheep of an otherwise genius family. (Jim Matthews)
“I feel a kinship between the kind of romance Emily Brontë portrayed in Wuthering Heights and this film,” Campion said, explaining what had inspired her. “Hers is not the notion of romance that we’ve come to use; it’s very harsh and extreme, a gothic exploration of the romantic impulse.” The parallels between Catherine in Wuthering Heights, trapped between Edgar, her cold, sexless husband, and Heathcliff, her dangerous love, are obvious. Campion believes sexuality is “the animal inside you. You can’t resist it. If you don’t embrace disturbance, it will shut down your life”. (Christopher Goodwin)In The Guardian, Louise Carpenter recommends Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope:
Recently Brian Dillon published to great acclaim Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, in which he provides elegant, empathic biographies of the world's greatest hypochondriacs: Boswell, Brontë, Florence Nightingale, Proust, Warhol and more. The book, accompanied by an incisive introduction on the condition, is not only a mini-masterpiece, but for the so-called "hypochondriac" or "health anxious" like me a source of great comfort and reassurance.Ted McCagg uploads to The Nervous Breakdown a funny cartoon where the Brontës are transformed into con (wo)men with a weakness for the Three-card Monte trick. Another drawing, a solo of Charlotte this time, can be found on Small Expectations, courtesy of hmstrjam, who is also very fond of Charlotte Brontë's poems. Abyss-Mystery reviews in Czech Wuthering Heights.
Warhol and Gould would have roundly resisted applying the stigma “hypochondriac” to their own terrors; it would have seemed to them a humiliating admission that they were making a fuss about nothing. By contrast, Dillon has clearly chosen his earliest two case studies, James Boswell and Charlotte Brontë, because they were unabashed in using the term to describe themselves: Boswell wrote a series of periodical essays under the name “The Hypochondriack”, while Brontë’s autobiographical novel Villette offers an in-depth study of its heroine’s “hypochondria”.Mr Rochester finds himself on Flavorwire's Top Ten of Literary Cheaters.
These earlier subjects were willing to call themselves hypochondriacs not just because they were more self-knowing than Gould or Warhol (which they were), but because the term had not yet acquired its modern meaning. For them, it signified a state of mind and body less localized, and perhaps more interesting, than a specific health delusion. Boswell’s early diaries – Dillon surprisingly concentrates far more on these than on the “Hypochondriack” essays – and Villette instead describe, in vivid experiential detail, what we today might call depression and anxiety wrought to the pitch of a nervous breakdown.
3. Edward Rochester of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847)Impossible to know what Mr Rochester would make of his portrayal in Wide Sargasso Sea, but in response to the accusations of 'neglect' he would like to point out that,
Oh, Rochester. Just because you neglect your mentally unstable wife Bertha and keep her locked in the attic, that does not mean you are a single man. In fact, after reading Wide Sargasso Sea, we kind of think that you’re a dick. (Caitlin Brody)
... though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. (Jane Eyre, chapter XXVII)Associated Content reviews the 1983 film House of the Long Shadows:
Kenneth Magee is a young writer who makes a bet with his publisher Sam Allyson that, within 24 hours, he will be able to write a novel as good as Wuthering Heights. To get him in the mood, his publisher arranges for Magee to spend this 24 hours in a deserted manor house in Wales. (Genevieve Heely)The Canberra Times publishes an extract from a longer interview with Chinese ambassador Fu Ying.
B: What did you most like about your time in Britain?Today seems to be the 'love Jane Eyre' day out there on the blogosphere. Singing praises: December's Grace, Homebody Heroine, My Life Out in the Real World and Un hacedor en el desierto (in Spanish). Besides all that, Les Gens doesn't think Jane Eyre can be adapted for the screen again. Finally, Delitachan has uploaded to YouTube a short clip filmed at the Brontë Bridge on the moors.
F: Personally I really enjoy visiting the home museums of the great writers, such as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters. I make an effort wherever I go to try to find out what is around. For a few hours, I will sneak out and visit the place.
Dillon's subject, though, isn't simple physical deterioration but rather the tricks the mind plays on the body - or hypochondria. In his accounts of nine individual sufferers (including James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, and Marcel Proust), Dillon shows how often work is connected to the disorder. For Boswell, fear of inactivity and sloth became a mania ("Resolve: be busy and recover mind.") For Brontë, Darwin and Nightingale, being permanently half-ill enabled them to withdraw from society and devote themselves to their projects. Proust cultivated his invalidism like some exotic plant, and "worked, ate, socialised and sometimes slept" in his bed. (Jerome Boyd Maunsell)The film An Education by Lone Scherfig is also reviewed in The Guardian:
It is also a pity that in order to build her up as a rebellious outsider, Jenny's two closest chums are presented as giggly admirers and the other girls in her class as dull, unimaginative frumps incapable of responding to King Lear and Jane Eyre with a sensitivity and intelligence comparable to Jenny's. (Philip French)Susan Daly is not really very happy with Rochester knighted as literary hero number one. She writes in The Independent (Ireland):
I take it quite personally that Mr Darcy (first name Fitzwilliam, but best not to dwell on that) has not topped a new list of the most romantic literary heroes as voted by Mills and Boon readers. That spot went to Mr Rochester, keeping wives in attics since 1847.The point here is that Jane Eyre is hardly the stuff of fairytale romance. It's much more.
I understand that taking umbrage over which 19th century figment of the imagination fills his fictional breeches better is a bit like debating whether Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran was the finer band of the '80s. They were both a bit ridiculous, if we're honest.
Nonetheless, the first literary hero you take under the covers with you, reading by torch when your mother yells up the stairs to turn out the light, is special. Edward Rochester was not a man you would want to be alone with in a darkened room.
In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, he was dismissive of his daughter, uncharitable towards his wife and menacing towards Jane. Reader, I despised him.
At one point, when Jane refuses to become his mistress (because that's what she would be, what with the first Mrs R still wearing a hole in the floor upstairs) he threatens that he may not be able to control his passion. "His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild licence," wrote the breathless Bronte. An implicit threat of rape -- hardly the stuff of fairytale romance, is it?
Mr Darcy was not without his faults but the whole attraction was that he repented and changed his ways through the love of a good woman. The words leopard and spots had yet to become linked in my very limited lexicon of love. Rochester, I seem to remember, needed to be blinded and crippled before he came to his senses. (...)
On the other hand, Wuthering Heights has somehow seen Heathcliff and Cathy's doomed passion recast as epic romance in screen versions. It helps with the bosom-heaving that he has been portrayed by the very beautiful Laurence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes. I have a suspicion that although we're all meant to be feminists now, the adolescent attraction to unsuitable bad boys lingers. Heathcliff -- so singularly demonic that he doesn't even have a last name -- is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Yet there is not one girl-child of the 1980s who has not looked wistfully out her bedroom window, practising her best Kate Bush wail: "Heathcliff, It's me, It's Cathy, I've come home ... "
If only Cathy had been just a couple of years younger, might she and Heathcliff have escaped from the gloomy Yorkshire moors and settled down to a life of domestic bliss in a town house in Kensington? (Dani Garavelli)According to the Trinidad & Tobago Express the collective book Trinidad Noir edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason contains a story with Wide Sargasso Sea echoes:
Meanwhile, Vahni Capildeo, Trinidadian now living in Oxford, England where she studied Old Icelandic, submitted a terse story that intertexts with Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. (Sheila Rampersad)The Malta Independent has a weird Brontë references describing a clip of a 'real' exorcism:
In the clip, the woman was barking, swearing and crawling on all fours (her face was obscured) much like Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre. (Pamela Pace Hansen)The Bristol Herald Courier has also another weird reference. From a review of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey:
Although phrenology eventually did become somewhat of a real science when brain studying got involved, and although some still saw phrenology for what it was (a scam), many prominent people went head-over-heels for personal “skull readings.” Author Walt Whitman was said to have carried his reading with him for years. George Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens added phrenology to their stories.(Terri Schlichenmeyer)A couple of authors and Brontëites: Stephanie Morrill is interviewed on aTeenzFaith.com:
Who were your favorite authors or books as a teen?And Isabelle Merlin on sassisam:
My favorite book as a teenager was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, although saying that makes me sound like I’m much more of an “intellectual” than I really am.
Do you have a favourite writer or a novel?The Independent devotes an article to Hebden Bridge's extraordinary rate of suicides and the documentary Shed Your Tears and Walk Away. Sylvia Plath is buried in Hebden Bridge and Requin Art and Design devotes a post to her poetry including her poem Wuthering Heights. Something this foggy day posts her husband's (Ted Hughes) poem on Emily Brontë.
It’s not easy to pick just one but two novels I loved as a teenager and still re-read with lots of pleasure are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stewart. In fact I love all Mary Stewart’s books, she’s probably been the biggest influence on my writing.
“Wuthering Frights”On Flickr, a picture of Top Withens uploaded by Tidalist and Ade McO-Campbell uploads some new Jane Eyre illustrations.
When Heathcliff goes out at night to commune with the spirit of his lost love, he discovers Cathy’s ghost isn’t the only specter haunting the moors. In this spine-tingling update of the classic love story, Emily Bronte’s Byronic hero takes on a legion of ghouls and zombies in his own uniquely bad-tempered style, and strives to keep the moonlit meadows safe for his own other-worldly romantic interludes.
(...) Schrijver Jeroen Olyslaegers bewerkte Brontës klassieker op vraag van regisseur Floor Huygen. Beiden hebben duidelijk elk hun visie op het verhaal en die tweespalt laat zich nog voelen op scène. Focust het eerste deel voornamelijk op Huygens fascinatie voor de tegenstelling tussen cultuur en natuur met een weids sfeerpalet aan geluid en beeld, dan wordt daarna overgegaan op het psychologisch huiskamerdrama dat Olyslaegers er bijna Ibsen-gewijs van maakt. Olyslaegers focust vooral op het eerste deel van het boek, de uitwaaierende verhaallijnen (vooral het tweede deel van het boek) laat hij slim genoeg in enkele lijnen samenvatten door de meid Nelly. An Hackselmans vertolkt deze subtiel, tegelijk grappig relativerend, maar ook als een soort visionaire heks. Olyslaegers ingedikte versie alsook de acteerprestaties maken van Brontës verhaal een brok dynamiek. De wilde liefdesdansgevechten tussen Theus en Smit en de dronken steeds zieliger wordende broersfiguur (Fabian Jansen) voorop. Enkel de matte vertolking van Roos van Vlaenderen als Cathy's schoonzus Isa , ontgoochelt. Dat strekt zich ook uit naar het slot van de voorstelling: de rek raakt eruit, het feitelijke drama (niet Catherines dood wel haar noodlottige niet-keuze) is allang gepasseerd. Dan rest enkel nog de obligate tearjerkerscène met een muziekje, maar daarvoor hebben we Vitaya al.(Read more) (Liv Laveyne) (Google translation)de Volkskrant:
(...) De slanke blonde Joris Smit als ongeciviliseerde Heathcliff gaat slinks om met zijn verholen woeste inborst. Niemand is sympathiek in deze regie van Floor Huygen. Dat maakt de voorstelling zwaarmoedig maar ook vreemd fascinerend. Zoals het boek. (Annette Embrechts) (Read more) (Google translation)Deadline.nl:
Dat is jammer. De zes spelers gebruiken soms vage, bijna clichématige zinnen als ‘Hij is meer mezelf dan ik ben.’ Deze zweverige uitspraken onderscheiden zich niet van zinnen die gebruikt worden door een dozijn waardeloze amateurschappen. Door het totaalplaatje wat simpeler te houden, zou de impact van het stuk veel groter kunnen zijn. Niet bepaald een moet-je-heen dus, maar de gezelschappen zijn ook niet ten dode opgeschreven. (Ykwinno Hensen) (Read more) (Google translation)Brabants Dagblad:
(...)Tekstschrijver Jeroen Olyslaegers speelde het klaar zonder de roman van Brontë onderuit te halen. Hij bracht het aantal rollen terug tot zes en vatte het hele tweede deel van het boek samen in enkele regels van de dienstmeid Nelly. Een slot dat alles in het verhaal mooi op zijn plaats laat vallen. De doordachte regie van Floor Huygen maakte er ook echt een indrukwekkende belevenis van, waarin de hoofdlijnen van de roman goed tot hun recht komen. (...) (Mieske van Eck) (Read more) (Google translation)Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights
The Brontës are back in fashion – with a bit of help from Bella Swan. New films of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre will shoot next spring, and a script about the teenage fantasies of the four Brontë siblings is in the works.We first heard about the untitled Brontë project (to be shoot in 2011) here. And of course this all supposedly being made in order to cater to Twilight fans no producer will have thought of a Brontë story that is not connected to the Twilight saga. At least the untitled project does seems to explore a bit of a new direction, though the 'teenage Brontës' isn't a coincidence, as Mike Downey says.
The film-makers are piggybacking off the success of the Twilight saga, which has sparked a renewed enthusiasm among financiers for gothic romance; the Brontës in particular. Wuthering Heights is one of Twilight heroine Bella Swan's favourite books, frequently referenced in the third episode Eclipse, whose storyline is inspired by Emily Brontë's only novel.
The producers of the latest Brontë projects are targeting the Twilight audience with younger casts than previous versions and scripts that emphasise the sensational gothic elements alongside a contemporary psychological realism.
Wuthering Heights, directed by Peter Webber, will star 22-year-old Ed Westwick, a British actor best known from the American teen TV series Gossip Girl, as an unusually youthful Heathcliff. Gemma Arterton, 23, will play Cathy.
Jane Eyre, meanwhile, will be directed by Cary Fukunaga who, in the pursuit of authenticity on his last film Sin Nombre, got arrested for riding illegally on the roof of a cargo train. Jane Eyre stars the 20-year-old Mia Wasikowska, soon to be seen in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, opposite Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester (who was at one point lined up for Heathcliff in the other film).
Dominic Murphy, the British director who made his debut this year's with the harrowing White Lightnin', is writing an untitled project about the imaginative worlds invented by the Brontës as adolescents, isolated in their Haworth parsonage.
"There is a whole younger audience out there that is ripe to enjoy these darker versions of what is generally served up, and the response from funders has been very upbeat, especially in the light of the recent success of Twilight," says Murphy's producer Mike Downey.
"The Twilight factor is extremely helpful to Wuthering Heights," agrees producer Robert Bernstein. "It's clearly in the zeitgeist. Why is anybody's guess, but people are absolutely obsessed with this doomed, romantic love that can only be achieved beyond death, or in the case of Twilight, by becoming a vampire."
In Eclipse, Bella quotes Cathy on Heathcliff to describe her feelings for her vampire lover Edward: "If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger." It is this forbidden, obsessive romance between Heathcliff and Cathy that Webber's film will focus on.
Sales of Wuthering Heights shot up in France when it was marketed alongside Eclipse in bookshops. In the UK, Harper Collins republished it with a cover imitating the Twilight design, including an endorsement from "Bella & Edward". Head of sales Kate Manning says the gimmick has given teenage girls "a renewed interest in Brontë".
Jane Eyre doesn't enjoy the same direct Twilight connection, but Moira Buffini's script brings out the book's gothic thrills. "This isn't going to be Zeffirelli lite," says producer Paul Trijbits, referring to the insipid 1996 version of Charlotte Brontë's novel. "It's fear in a gothic environment set against the backdrop of a love story. Is there something in the attic, or isn't there? It's a bit like The Others."
Wuthering Heights will shoot next May in Scotland and Ireland – leaving the Yorkshire moors to take advantage of finance. Jane Eyre is scheduled for March, either in Yorkshire or Scotland. Murphy's untitled Brontë project is intended to shoot in 2011. (Adam Dawtrey)
What do you have planned next?Funny she should say that 'they've all been on recently'.
Plans? Plans? Ha! Hopefully some theatre, quality dramas and so on. As long as I’m working. I’d love to do a period drama. A Brontë would be good, but they’ve all been on recently.
Did I just see a copy of Pride and Prejudice atop the pile of Twilight paraphernalia? Sadly, I did. And it was no ordinary copy either. Twilight has earned the rights to reprint literary classics to appeal to the vampire-loving preteen population. My soul wept.Christmas ideas are creeping into news outlets. The Times, for instance, compiles a list of good biographies. Tormented Hope: Nine hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon is one of them.
It was not only Pride and Prejudice that got hurt, either. Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights were also snatched up into the whirlpool of destruction Stephenie Meyer is leaking unto the world. Dark covers reminiscent of the Twilight books equipped with creepy flowers now bind these three literary masterpieces.
Each work has a catchy slogan on it as well - "The love that started it all" for Pride and Prejudice, "The original forbidden love" for Romeo and Juliet and "Love never dies" for Wuthering Heights. The Wuthering Heights cover caused me to cringe the most, though: In the top corner, a bubble informed potential readers that it is "Bella and Edwards's favorite book."
I wish I could say the madness stopped there, but alas the marketing world decided to further stab me in the heart. In the back of the copy of Wuthering Heights there is a quiz to help readers find out if the love between them and their partner is as "tumultuous" - I was shocked by their "big word" choice - as the love between Catherine and Heathcliff. Really now, really?
I'm sure that somewhere Ms. Bronte is rolling over in her grave, though I would prefer she come back as a poltergeist who haunts Meyer for the rest of her life and keeps her from ever writing down another word beyond the occasional grocery list. (Ava Jacobstein)
Tormented Hope Nine Hypochondriac Lives by Brian DillonHypochondriacs, Dillon reminds us, are always other people, and in these elegant portraits he tells the stories of nine bodies imprisoned by delusional illness. A fine stylist (James Boswell saw himself as “a kind of Holland: a fragile land, temporarily reclaimed”), Dillon also has an empathic bedside manner, and never strays from the aches and pains of the body in question, be it that of Charles Darwin, Charlotte Brontë, Andy Warhol or Glenn Gould. His diagnosis of hypochondria both as the illness and the cure is beautifully argued (Penguin Ireland £18.99). (Frances Wilson)Also on the list is Martin Stannard's biography of Muriel Spark, who has been mentioned here before.
Very “Heathcliff on the moors". . . (Bonny Osterhage)But if you are looking for a very special Christmas present and very special recipient and have a large fortune you might consider bidding at one of the forthcoming Brontë auctions (at Christie's and at Sotheby's) and presenting your 'prize' to the Brontë Society, as The Telegraph and Argus reminds us today.
After lives spent hiring and firing and tending to clients’ emergencies, you’d think they’d be as tortured as Heathcliff. (Jack Neely)On the blogosphere Wuthering Heights is the subject matter on Päikesejänku ja sada raamatut (partly in English) and Le Cabinet de Curiosités de Mademoiselle M. (in French), which focuses on the most recent adaptation of the novel. A Book A Week reviews Justine Picardie's Daphne. And Stephanie's Written Word joins Laura's Reviews All About the Brontës Challenge.
“Romancing Miss Brontë,” by Juliet Gael (Ballantine, $25): I never had much time for Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 blockbuster “Jane Eyre,” although my late mother loved it dearly. Too romantic for my taste, I guess. But I just got a bang out of a new novel based on the life of Brontë and I’ll bet my mother would have as well.We are afraid that the scenes featuring a drunken Branwell Brontë were sadly quite real. Perhaps the reviewer might do weel to take a leaf out of another columnist's book and read Jane Eyre again. Adam Wolstenholme writes in the Spenborough Guardian:
It concerns the goings on of the Brontë family, various suitors and others who come to call at Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontës live.
It’s sometimes overdone, especially the hopeless drunken brother, Bramwell [sic] Brontë. But there’s sweetness, too, in the person of Charlotte’s admirer, the curate Charles Nicholls. (Dave Wood)
While I've avoided the World Cup, I've been engaged in a more sedate, but no less patriotic activity - discovering Charlotte Brontë.We must admit to never having known any Brontëite go on a pilgrimage to that spot in the River Calder so if it's actually true it must be an integrist-like cell within our ranks.
Reading the Brontës was always one of those things that seemed worth doing, but infinitely postponable, like upgrading the vacuum cleaner.
Now, nearing the end of Jane Eyre, I wish I'd discovered it earlier.
It's riveting stuff, full of passion, poetry and wisdom. And for me, the hot-blooded Rochester with his secret mad wife hidden in the attic is a far more intriguing hero than the brooding rich boys of Jane Austen's novels.
But I've always found the obsession with the Brontës as individuals bizarre. People come from all over the world to see the buildings where they lived and taught, and congregate with the devotion of pilgrims upon a spot in the River Calder where Patrick Brontë saved a boy from drowning.
This interest in the lives of artists rather than their work is curious, and I wonder why devotees of the Brontës are particularly prone to it. Maybe, after I've moved from Charlotte's novels to Emily's to Ann's [sic], and then got through the poetry, I'll find myself toddling up the cobbled streets of Haworth to visit the pub where Branwell drank, and walk the same moors that inspired Cathy and Heathcliffe [sic].
I doubt it, though. The work of any great writer is usually more fascinating than their lives. We do them a disservice when we forget that.
From Charlotte Brontë's nervous anguish and Charles Darwin's nameless, over-treated crises to Andy Warhol's Aids-related dreads and Glenn Gould's blend of "self-medication and self-neglect", the imaginary wounds of Dillon's subjects seem inseparable from the great works they undertook. (Boyd Tonkin)All of the above is also relevant when it comes to this statement in a review of Claire Harman's Jane's Fame in The North Coast Journal.
Even her [Jane Austen's] centennial was modestly marked, in contrast to the popular acclaim accorded to the more florid novels of the Brontë sisters (Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre). (William Kowinski)It must be true about the grass always being greener on the other side, because we would have thought exactly the opposite to be true.
A wisp of caution lies in my niece's observation. Maybe we shouldn't breeze by the notion of some older women seeking solace in the arms of a virtual lover who has traits of Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester merging into one. (Judy Howard Ellis)FoxNews finds yet another thing to compare to Wuthering Heights:
The Volturi look like characters out of “Wuthering Heights”; they are cool in their capes and cloaks and poetic pallor. The Volturi dispense justice, in their vampire-y way, but they are not merciful. In “Eclipse,” they settle an issue in a way that will jar the audience, although the violence, like most of the violence in the film, is either offscreen or so sped up that one can’t follow the gore. As Edward explains to Bella in one of the novels, the Volturi might seem like villains to a mere mortal, but in the vampire world, “They are the foundation of our peace and civilization.” (James P. Pinkerton)Right. The foundation of peace and civilization in Wuthering Heights being...?
"Jane Eyre" ---- Fullerton Civic Light Opera presents this musical based on Charlotte Brontë's redemptive 19th-century love story about a lonely governess and her mysterious employer; 8 p.m. Nov. 5 and 6; 2 p.m. Nov. 6-7; $40-$65. (Pam Kragen)Les Brontë à Paris posts in French about Arthur Bell Nicholls. Maritas bibliotek writes in Swedish about Agnes Grey. And finally, Laura's Reviews All About the Brontës Challenge comes to an end but she wonders whether people are willing to do another round next year (we would certainly vote in favour of it!).
This volume charts the lives of nine hypochondriacs, including Charlotte Brontë, Marcel Proust and Charles Darwin. Tom Hicks in Metro praised its unusual theme, the “lesser-known links between hypochondria and creativity”. Kevin Jackson in The Sunday Times thought Dillon makes a fairly convincing case that the hypochondriacs “used the condition of fragile health as a means of living their lives in productive ways”. (Megan Walsh)The winner will be announced next November 4.
Amogh Agrawal, a first-year bachelor of science student at the University of Alberta, estimated his basketful would cost $700, including many--he pulled out the novel Jane Eyre-- he would gladly skim online. (Elise Stolte)Steph & Tony Investigate! posts a second article about Jane Eyre. The edition discussed is the one illustrated by Dame Darcy.
For Charlotte Brontë, attacks of what she called hypochondria, but we might characterize as depressive breakdowns, helped abbreviate the teaching career she loathed -- in large part because it left her so little time to indulge her imagination or write -- and two stints studying in Brussels.Exeter Express & Echo sums up another much-mentioned book: The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini.
Once back home, Brontë channeled her distress into her writing. Dillon sheds new light on two of her lesser novels, "The Professor" and "Villette," by examining them in relation to their author's health issues. (Heller McAlpin)
When the romance ended, Rhys returned to England and in 1927 her first short story collection was published. A string of critically-acclaimed novels followed during the 1930s. But she did not publish another again until Wide Sargasso Sea. It took her nine years to compile her "prequel" to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, which tells the early life of Mr Rochester's mad wife, Bertha, in the West Indies.And Surrey Mirror reports the forthcoming performance of a Kate Bush tribute band, Hounds of Love:
With the blessing and personal involvement of her former tour manager and Kate herself, Hounds of Love is the first time that a live interpretation of her music has been toured in the UK. [...]Another county, Yorkshire, and its number of visitors are the subject of a proud-to-be-from-Yorkshire article in The Telegraph and Argus. Culture 24 lets visitors know that the Brontë Parsonage Museum is now refurbished and reopened.
"Without attempting to emulate the voice of Kate Bush, Josie finds the expression to communicate Kate's songs with impressive, passionate sympathy. They get fantastic reviews wherever they play."
Expect hits such as Wuthering Heights, Babooshka, The Big Sky, Wow and Running Up The Hill.
Get a taste of them on Youtube – www.youtube.com/user/HoundsofLoveBand.
Hounds of Love – the music of Kate Bush, presented by Acoustic Sussex, Chequer Mead Arts Centre, East Grinstead, Thursday, February 11, 8pm, £12 (£10), 01342 302000.
5 Experience the charming villages of the Yorkshire Dales by rail and on footA rejuvenating trip to Yorkshire requires long walks to full appreciate the rural surroundings and historic market towns. Brontë fans will also be in their element as you can explore the world of Wuthering Heights at Haworth and during a Brontë-themed walk across Yorkshire's wild moors.The picturesque railways include the Heritage Keighley and Worth Valley Railway and Settle Carlisle Line, and you're in for a treat if you walk the Penine Bridleway, a scenic trail with dramatic views. (Roshina Jowaheer)
Some are long, oblique and incantatory – Dillon pleads for our “patience” when parsing a sentence by Thomas De Quincey, “like waiting for a photograph to develop” – while others are modest, “economic sentences”, like these three words from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Villette: “The drug wrought.” (Louis Klee)
More importantly, physical books carry with them memories of their scenes of reading. When I used to volunteer at a lab over the summer in high school, I would read Jane Eyre while sitting by a window waiting for my dad to pick me up, so that, even now, I still associate the scene of Rochester reading Jane’s fortune with a certain sense of adolescence and August sunlight. (Ramya Yandava)
It didn’t occur to me that my sisters would leave school long before I did, until it actually happened. School hadn’t suited either of them. Grey was blisteringly smart but never found anything in the curriculum particularly to her liking. If a class called for her to read and analyze Jane Eyre, she might instead decide Dante’s Inferno was more interesting and write her essay on that. If an art class called for her to sketch a realistic self-portrait, she might instead draw a sunken-eyed monster with blood on its hands. Some teachers loved this; most did not, and before she dropped out, Grey only ever managed mediocre grades. If this bothered her, she never showed it, drifting through classes with the sureness of a person who had been told her future by a clairvoyant and had liked what she’d heard.
Priscilla [Presley] also said Elvis loved a film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, although she did not specify which one. The most prominent movie adaptation of the novel released during Elvis’ lifetime was the 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier. (Matthew Trzcinski)
Thursday, April 19, 2007 (...)BBC News talks about the Yorkshire band Hope&Social. It turns out that the band have their headquarters in the crypt of a Leeds church:
Afterward, to the performance at Bard of "Jane Eyre" by the Acting Company. Big auditorium of the Fisher Center almost filled. Too big a space for this sort of production. I found myself impatient of theater, stage, strained voices. The actress who played Jane had a rasping, antagonizing voice. The gist behind the production was that Jane/Bertha Rochester were two halves of the same psyche. This also felt strained.
They're very much a unique outfit that like to do things a bit differently. Their latest album, entitled April, was recorded at The Crypt (mentioned in some of the Brontë books) and utilised the help of some of their fans. (Kate Prothero)Well, not exactly directly mentioned but it is true that Christ Church in Liversedge was endowed by the Rvd Hammond Roberson, who was the original of Mr Helstone in Shirley (who also endowed a church - though in Lancashire - in Charlotte Brontë's novel) and an old friend of Patrick Brontë's.
And now you can have a go at actually driving a steam train on the KWVR line, which meanders for five miles up the steep gradient from Keighley via Ingrow, Damems, Oakworth, the Brontë sisters’ home village of Haworth and on to Oxenhope.The Irish Times reviews the paperback edition of Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope:
Patiently, stylishly, Dillon unpicks the psychosomatic knots in which some of the biggest names in western cultural history have entangled themselves, not just willingly but, in some cases, with apparent enjoyment. Here, in various stages of fevers, vapours and dishevelment, are James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol and Glenn Gould.
The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reviews the American edition, The Hypondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives, with its priceless cover:Charlotte Brontë found in her illnesses, real and imagined, an escape from familial and social duties and the perfect conditions for writing. The German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber believed his body was being colonized and transformed at the hands of God and doctors alike. Andy Warhol was terrified by disease and by the idea of disease. Glenn Gould claimed a friendly pat on his shoulder had destroyed his ability to play piano. And we all know someone who has trawled the Internet, seeking the source of fantastical symptoms.Financial Times talks about learning English in Britain. We wonder what exactly is a Jane Eyre accent?
But the UK has one big advantage. There is, he says, a pecking order of accents, with South African at the bottom and British at the top: “Parents overseas want their children to speak with a Home Counties accent, a BBC accent, a Jane Eyre accent. They want to hear that sound coming out of their sons’ and daughters’ lips.” (Matthew Engel)Patrick Stewart, one of the patrons of Screen Yorkshire in The Yorkshire Post, lists the wonders of filming in Yorkshire:
Just think about the dramas we've seen on our screens that filmed here – Lost in Austen, Red Riding, Unforgiven, Wuthering Heights, Married Single Other, Five Days – along with films such as This is England, The Damned United and Brideshead Revisited. We've had Baftas and Bollywood.We suppose Patrick Stewart is talking about Wuthering Heights 2009. Nevertheless another Wuthering Heights, the 1992 version, also filmed in Yorkshire is mentioned in the Guardian:
Kosminsky's Wuthering Heights best conveys the twisted obsessions with power, property and revenge: too many others confuse Romantic with "romance". (Marianne M Gilchrist)Saturday's Twilight zone:
In the past couple of years, several of my single girlfriends have fallen for the same man. I can understand why. He's chiselled and magnetic in a Heathcliff-meets-Mr. Rochester sort of way – one of those brooding types who, despite his actual age, behaves like a perennially wounded teenage boy. But it distresses me, not only because he's an inappropriate match, but because he is also someone they will never, ever get to meet.
That's because he's fictional.
Yep, my girlfriends are crushing on Edward Cullen, the vampire heartthrob from the Twilight movie series. (Leah McLaren in The Globe and Mail)
El nombre de Edward se le ocurrió a la autora de la historia Stephenie Meyer debido a que solía ser un nombre muy romántico en las novelas de Jane Austen o Charlotte Brontë e Isabella por su hija. (El Heraldo de Honduras) (Google translation)
Meyer räumt ein, vor allem von den Ikonen der britischen Autorinnen des 19. Jahrhunderts inspiriert worden zu sein - von Jane Austen und den Brontë-Schwestern. (Thomas Frankenfeld in Hamburger Abendblatt) (Google translation)
Es würde auch niemand die Funktionalität eines Striptease bestreiten (der nicht zwangsläufig zum sexuellen Vollzug führt), bloß weil die Praxis des kunstvollen Entkleidens als tänzerische Leistung interpretiert werden kann. – Ein wenig mehr Fantasie, bitte! – Die Tatsache, dass »Twilight«-Autorin Stephenie Meyer Mitglied der mormonischen Kirche Jesu Christi der Heiligen der Letzten Tage ist (in erster Linie ist sie eine schlechte Schriftstellerin, die zu viel Jane Austen, Emily Brontë und Shakespeare gelesen hat), findet ihre Entsprechung in der einseitigen Interpretation von »Twilight« als Enthaltsamkeitsfabel gegen eine aufgeklärte Sexualpädagogik. (Wibke Wetzer on Spex) (Google translation)Oberösterreichische Nachrichten interviews the actor Karl M. Sibelius who recommends Sophie Rois's Jane Eyre audiobook:
Da ich viel im Auto unterwegs bin, greife ich auch gerne auf Hörbücher zurück. Ich liebe die Stimme von Sophie Rois, ihre Interpretation von „Jane Eyre“ von Charlotte Bronte kann ich allen weiterempfehlen. (Google translation) :L'Humanité (France) reviews Michèle Gazier's La Fille:
Avec une sobriété et une finesse de trait remarquables, elle dépeint un être obstinément soumis à la tyrannie d’une mère qui fut elle-même trompée, bafouée et tôt la mit en garde contre les turpitudes des hommes, notamment celles liées au sexe. Guindée, austère, confite en religion, la jeune fille vivait par procuration dans les livres de Charlotte Brontë qu’elle dévorait en cachette. (Jean-Claude Lebrun) (Google translation)Zack Rearick, writing in the Port City Poets section of the Wilmington Star News, probably finds himself very radical and bold for saying things like this:
[Robert] Herrick is also buried in Poet’s Corner, but so is Anne Brontë, so that may not mean as much as I made it out to. Yeah, I said it.Regardless of whether Mr Rearick has read anything by Anne Brontë, the problem is that his credibility is scarce taking into account that neither Herrick nor Brontë are buried there. Anne Brontë is -as it's well known - buried in Scarborough and Robert Herrick's tomb is located in Devon. If you want to be witty, you also have to be reliable. Yeah, we said it.
What is the best novel you've ever read? > Not possible to name one. There are some I've read over and over, and love more and moreover the years, though - Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, The Woman in White. Yes, I am a recovering Victorianist.Author Interviews Examiner posts about writer Susan Tekulve:
I read just about everything in the house—mystery novels, newspapers, The Guinness World Book of Records, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. I cut my teeth, so to speak, on the Romantic writers. (Michael Aloisi)El Norte de Castilla or El Periódico de Aragón (Spain) review the Spanish translation of Cold Comfort Farm:
En distancias más cortas, las citas se reparten entre las heroínas de Jane Austen, con su mundo contenido y reglado en oposición frontal al de la granja de la novela de Gibbons, y a 'Cumbres borrascosas', auténtico 'leitmotiv' de la narración, que merece incluso un personaje -Mybug, mi pesadilla- dedicado en exclusiva a estudiar y desbaratar la obra de Emily Brontë, desde la autoría hasta las circunstancias de escritura. (ENdC Google translation)Wirtualna Polska (Poland) reviews Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife:
Oprócz postaci, ładnie nam Goolrick buduje i opisy. W zestawieniu ze sporą dawką romantyzmu i niewiele mniejszą dawką grozy dają one połączenie dosyć ciekawe, które istotnie podobać się może. Oczywiście pod warunkiem, że nie mamy względem literatury zbyt wielkich wymagań, a rozrywka jest jedynym powodem, dla którego po książkę w ogóle decydujemy się sięgnąć. Brakuje tu również tej wielkiej pasji i namiętności, którą w Wichrowych Wzgórzach dawało się wyczuć – niby o pożądaniu czytamy tu wiele, ale treść to zbyt sucha i uboga, aby mogła zostać uznana za przekonywającą i rzeczywiście absorbującą. Nie wiem też, na ile uprawnione jest dzisiaj tworzenie tego typu literatury – biorąc do ręki książkę Goolricka ma się bowiem wrażenie, że znów wróciliśmy do wieku dziewiętnastego, że żadnych rewolucji w literaturze nie było, a czas na Emily Brontë faktycznie się zatrzymał. (Joanna Pachla) (Google translation)The Observer (Canada) recommends reading the Brontës among others during the summer, Brontë bookcrossing in Russia, Associated Content has an article titled Governesses, Corsets and Child Thieves, Powell's Books Blog recommends reading Villette (and Agnes Grey or Juliet Barker's The Brontës). 101 Books in 1001 Days reviews (4 1/2 of 5 stars) Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre and Mog's Blog posts about Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow. Chroniques du Cinéphile Stakhanoviste reviews Wuthering Heights 1939 in French, I Have Things to Do does the same with the original novel (in Portuguese).
