ITV may well redeem themselves with their imminent Wuthering Heights adaptation, but I'll be sticking with Tess and the upcoming Little Dorrit on BBC.We think it's unfair to compare Lost in Austen with those other three series, as it is completely different to them - it's a light sort of entertainment for those who enjoy period dramas but - as far as we can see - it doesn't seem to take itself very seriously, which is good.
• "Dragonwyck" (1946). This is the prestige picture in this collection [Fox Horror Classics, Vol. 2], an adaptation of Anya Seton's bestseller, which marked the directing debut of Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who went on to win Oscars for "A Letter to Three Wives" and "All About Eve"). Gene Tierney stars as a young woman hired to be a companion to the child of a distant relative (Vincent Price), then she falls in love with and eventually marries him, despite his brooding dark secrets. Sound familiar? Not quite up there with "Rebecca" and "Jane Eyre" but nonetheless a worthwhile gothic yarn. Bolstered by great support from Jessica Tandy and Walter Huston. (Chris Hicks)On the blogosphere: Marie's Blog has a couple of interesting posts on the Brontës in general but Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in particular: Script Act Theory, Anne Bronte Again (With an Emily Bronte Insert) and The Paratext in Anne Bronte's 'The Tenant'. Shangols posts about Jane Eyre 1944 in French.
The Telegraph & Argus publishes an article about the 300th anniversary of William Grimshaw's birth (Picture Source)Celebrations are being held in Haworth, the shrine to the Brontes, which have no connection to the great literary family.The City Journal (Vol. 18, no. 3 Summer 2008) - in an article about the wonders of the glorious Black and White - mentions Wuthering Heights 1939:
Almost 100 years before Patrick Bronte turned up with his family in the bleak Pennine village, it had been home to another preacher who had stamped his fame across the north.
He was the fiery cleric William Grimshaw, a friend of the great non-conformist brothers John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitfield.
His birth 300 years ago is being marked tomorrow at 11am by a free lecture at Hall Green Chapel, in Bridgehouse Lane, Haworth, by biographer Faith Cook.
Grimshaw was in charge of Haworth Church from 1742 until his death at 54, and he was one of the main figures in the 18th century evangelical revival. Patrick Bronte arrived from Thornton, Bradford, in 1820.
It was said Grimshaw’s preaching could “make a nation tremble” and he had Haworth folk on edge, especially the lads in the Black Bull in Main Street – later popular with Branwell Bronte.
He would walk into pubs in the village to demand that the tipplers attend church, but many jumped out of the windows when they saw him coming. Mrs Cook said: “His reputation as the flogging preacher is greatly exaggerated. But he was very fiery and once set about some thugs who assaulted local people trying to get to church.
“He was just the job for the wild and uncouth folk of Haworth at the time. They mocked him at first but loved him in the end.”
Starting with a congregation of only 12 when he arrived in the village, the church was later filled with hundreds inside and out.
People would travel miles to hear him preach and at times scaffolding had to be put up in the graveyard to accommodate the thousands.
“He was so admired that Wesley appointed him to be the leader of the Methodist movement after him, but sadly he died before Wesley,” she said.
For her book, William Grimshaw of Haworth, she re-discovered manuscripts written by Grimshaw, which had been mislaid for years.
“It was a treasure trove of new information which had hardly been explored apart from by a few academics. It was great – literally an open field for me,” she said.
Mick Lockwood, Minister at Hall Green Baptist Chapel, said the aim was to show that Haworth was not just famous for the Brontes but for Grimshaw.
“He was mega-famous at the time – hundreds walked miles to hear him preach. What he did was terrific,” he said. (Clive White)
Who needed color when the haunting landscapes of Wuthering Heights materialized on screen, as if photographed in Emily Brontë’s nineteenth century? (Stefan Kanfer)Curiously, The New York Post talks about several Fox films included in the Fox Horror Classics Volume 2 DVD. Joseph Leo Mankiewicz's debut film Dragonwyck is compared to Jane Eyre:
"Dragonwyck" does feature genre icon Vincent Price in a juicy role as a sinister Dutch patroon in the 18th century Hudson Valley who turns to an impoverished distant relative (Gene Tierney, never more gorgeous) after his wife's mysterious death in this lavishly produced variation on "Jane Eyre." (Lou Lumenick)In our opinion variation it is... as Star Trek could be defined as a variation on Iliad.
Atlas is often compassionate and deeply aware of its location in space and time — the opening chapter’s detailed and angry depiction of a Santhal feast and the lascivious reaction of their non-tribal guests is compelling. In tone, it blends Wuthering Heights with The God of Small Things: two children growing wild and falling in love in a landscape that is as vast and untamed as their home is stultified by the barriers of caste, gender and the bitterness of unfulfilled ambition. Crucially, however, it lacks the uninhibited surrender to its characters that sustained both Brontë’s and Roy’s melodramas. (Parvati Sharma)Los Angeles Times reviews HBO vampire mystery series True Blood:
Paquin strains every acting muscle in her body to make Sookie a Real Girl, but bubbly Southern waif savant -- "that's jest nasty talk" -- does not come naturally to her (or possibly anyone). Her infatuation with Bill is likewise inexplicable -- Moyer is going for a sadder, wiser Heathcliff vibe but winds up just plain mopey, not at all attractive in a vampire. (Mary McNamara)Wiser Heathcliff? Where did we read something like that before?
After 15 years as a nurse and eight years in the season pass office at Winter Park Resort, Joanne Sundell deep within yet another chapter in her life. This chapter features her as an author, sharing her passion for Colorado history. It features her honoring strong women of the past in her writing, women like those found in her favorite romance, Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” (Cindy Palmer)Rough Draft reviews Justine Picardie's Daphne:
Having finished Justine Picardie's fine and thought-provoking novel, I went back to the photograph of Daphne du Maurier with Vanishing Cornwall at her elbow. We want to follow her gaze, to see whatever it is that she sees as she looks away from the camera. We can only imagine. Whatever it was, it has vanished.Doddyland posts about Jane Eyre in French and decaminoalalibertad talks about Wuthering Heights in Spanish.
But now I'm thinking, why should Hollywood glamour disqualify an actor from playing a nicotine-and-ink-stained literary icon? (Imagine how much better at the box office Capote and Infamous would have done if Truman Capote had been played by George Clooney or Brad Pitt instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman or Toby Jones.) So why shouldn't Tori [Spelling] star in a biopic of, say, Charlotte Brontë or Joyce Carol Oates or Eudora Welty? After all, she's got literary cred now. (Gary Susman)Brisbane Times devotes an article to the ongoing performances of Polly Teale's Brontë in Brisbane, Australia:
Women have long faced a dilemma of numbers in the creative industries.The Village Voice interviews songstress Basia Bulat, a new Brontëite:
They usually outnumber men in the worlds of film and theatre despite meaty roles for female thespians being few and far between.
However, three Brisbane women are ready to challenge that stereotype.
Actors and friends Hannah Levien, Kathryn Marquet and Rebecca Roberts met while completing their degrees at the University of Southern Queensland and, frustrated with the status quo, decided to band together and create their own theatre company.
The product, Three Sisters Productions, aims to empower young female performers by demonstrating the stage can be theirs for the taking. (...)
Three Sisters describe as "instrumental" the influence of Sue Rider, the award-winning director, writer and actor behind the company's production of Polly Teale's Bronte.
Set in 1845, Bronte delves into the lives of Anne, Charlotte and Emily by exploring the chaotic world of madness, illness and death in which these remarkable literary sisters penned their extraordinary tales.
"It was a huge coup for us to get our hands on Bronte and use it to launch Three Sisters Productions into the Australian independent theatre scene," says Levien.
"Sue has been so supportive and guided us to rise to the challenge of the female characters.
"The Brontes are such iconic and heroic female role models."
Levien says the company are pegging their debut as a literary detective story, where the power of the imagination haunts and inspires its creators and triumphs against all odds.
"Emotions and circumstances I think we can all relate to at times," she adds.
Bronte will play at Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts from September 10 to 27. (Katherine Feeney)
The name of a book she's read at least twice:Fangoria reviews the recent release of Joseph L. Mankiewicz film debut Dragonwyck (1946) included on the Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 DVD and insists on the Jane Eyre references, much to our dismay:
Oh, gosh. There's a lot of them. One book that I've read at least twice . . . Oh God, I've read so many books a million times. I've read a lot of biographies lately, but the book I've read the most has probably been Jane Eyre.” (Rob Trucks)
DRAGONWYCK is weak tea horror-wise, as it’s actually “only” an atmospheric, JANE EYRE-like 19th-century tale of a simple farm girl (Gene Tierney) attracted to her cousin (Price), the handsome but mysterious and tyrannical master of a Hudson River estate. (Tom Weaver)Con Houlihan remembers his post-war university years in an article on The Herald (Ireland). We found this very funny anecdote:
I remember especially a spelling mistake in an essay on Wuthering Heights. "Heathcliff and his friends used to spend the nights gambolling in the big hall."The recent Movie Map issued by the Peak District and Derbyshire is mentioned in The Birmingham Mail.
Douglas A. Martin’s Branwell is a novel that bleeds the line between novel and historical fact. It’s written in a style that traces the tragic story of Branwell Brontë and composites it through the lives of those involved, from golden child and hope of the family to drunken dissolute, all while the politics of family allegiance drift and Branwell falls further into oblivion. This hallucinatory narrative shifts back and forth, switches tense, shows us one reading only to challenge it later, and ultimately unfolds a tale embroidered of speculation, suspicion, and earnest confession, where one is never certain of the absolute truths. (Read more)Simply Bookish briefly talks about Jane Eyre.
“Jane Eyre,” Charlotte BrontëAlso in the New York Times how to be secular but study or teach in a Divinity School:
A novel with all the power of myth; a sublime narrative, just about perfectly constructed.
The concept of sacredness, however, gripped her, and she sought out ways to consecrate the secular. With a divinity school professor, Stephanie Paulsell, she did an independent study in “Jane Eyre” as a holy book. Mr. Epstein and she studied Judaic texts together in the yeshiva system of chavruta, meaning fellowship. (Samuel G. Freedman)More NYT. A review of Kate Beaton's Step Aside, Pops:
This collection gathers her recent strips, whose topics include “Wuthering Heights,” Ida B. Wells, early submarine design and the rivalry between Chopin and Liszt (“We are both on the cover of ‘Enormous Ego’ this week”). (Douglas Wolk)South London Press reviews the National Theatre's production of Jane Eyre:
It is the most fascinating, beautiful and fabulous production that charts Jane’s beginnings as a baby who soon becomes a destitute orphan before facing her life’s not inconsiderable obstacles head on with an obstinacy, feistiness and determination that was way ahead of her time. (...)David Tang in Financial Times sings the jpraises of Yorkshire:
This is an inventive, intelligent, poignant and often funny production which, despite a significant pruning, does the original story justice. (Kate Gould)
Whenever I went on the moors and dales, I would feel the drama of the winds, and imagine the tortured gypsy figure of Heathcliff sweeping away on horseback.Terra (Spain) interviews the writer Jennifer Clement:
Las novelas de Jane Austin (sic) o Charlotte Brontë realmente cambiaron las ideas sobre si las mujeres podían ser dueñas de propiedad o no. Las novelas son un gran lugar para ejercer el cambio. Es perfecto que la literatura este dentro de todo el proyecto de Pen. No es una contradicción", terminó señalando. (Translation)Leggeremania (Italy) interviews Michela Alessandroni, from the flower-ed publishing house which has recently republished the Tre Anime Luminose fra le nebbie nordiche. Le Sorelle Brontë:
A inaugurare questo nuovo progetto è un saggio dedicato alle Sorelle Brontë. Da dove deriva questa scelta? (Domizia Moramarco)À Voir Lire reviews the latest Madame Bovary film adaptation:
Desiderando rivolgere particolare attenzione allo studio della vita e delle opere delle sorelle Brontë, abbiamo avviato la collana con una meravigliosa riedizione di Giorgina Sonnino, Tre Anime Luminose fra le nebbie nordiche. Le Sorelle Brontë. Pubblicato nel 1903 e fuori commercio da lungo tempo, rappresenta la prima biografia delle sorelle Brontë in lingua italiana: un vero scrigno di informazioni preziose e di emozioni. Un lavoro che con Giorgia Alessandroni è stato portato avanti con dedizione grazie all’amore condiviso per le scrittrici inglesi. Siamo state affiancate dalla creativa Petra Zari, che ha realizzato la copertina. Per l’occasione, flower-ed ha deciso di abbinare alla consueta versione digitale anche il formato cartaceo del libro, offrendo così ai lettori una scelta più ampia. (Translation)
La Madame Bovary de Sophie Barthes ressemble davantage à Jane Eyre qu’au Don Quichotte de Cervantès. (Translation)El Plural interviews Ángeles Caso about her novel Todo ese Fuego:
Pero, ¿por qué Ángeles Caso eligió a estas hermanas para su nueva novela? (A. Godoy)Librópatas (Spain) gives you ideas for celebrating the recent Jane Eyre anniversary; The Lancashire Evening Post covers the Withins Skyline races across Brontë country; Mirabile Dictu reviews Patricia Park's Jane Re; Passion for Movies reviews I Walked with a Zombie 1943; Anne Bronte.org posts about marriage In Jane Eyre & Agnes Grey;
Son unos personajes asombrosos, yo les tenía una gran admiración como escritoras y siempre me parecía que tuvieron mérito y valor escribiendo en la vida que tenían que todo era tan difícil. y hace tres años visité su casa en Haworth y una vez allí que vi el espacio en el que vivirán y trabajaban pensé quiero escribir una novela sobre estas mujeres. Fue muy atrevido escribir una novela sobre novelistas, debí ser un poco inconsciente en aquel momento, de hecho, no hay novelas sobre las Brontë.
¿Qué recomendarías de las hermanas Brontë a alguien que no la leído nada sobre ellas?
Me gusta mucho ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Cumbres Borrascosas’ me parece una obra maestra y como tal está considerada y luego la poesía de Emily es impresionante pero solo hay una edición parcial en España. (Translation)
The Crimson Peak daily Brontë references newsround:Facing a steeper uphill climb is del Toro's Crimson Peak, which has unwisely been marketed by Universal as a straight horror movie. It's not: It's a Gothic romance with a few ghosts in it. The first half hour is straight out of a Brontë novel. At the same time, it's vastly more violent than your average fan of period dramas will be used to. (Rebecca Pahle in Film Journal International)
A Brontë-regényeket idéző, operaszerű sztorinak is kell egy kis idő, mire tényleg beindul. A rövid gyerekkori képek után hamar megismerkedünk a filmbeli jelen (a 19. század vége) többi szereplőjével – a New Yorkban íróként próbálkozó Edith iparmágnás édesapjához (Jim Beaver) érkezik az angol Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), hogy támogatókat találjon az agyagkitermelést megkönnyítő találmányáho. (Bodnár Zsolt in HVG) (Translation)
Der Regisseur hat selbst die Brontë-Schwestern als Referenz genannt. Plausibler wirkt aber sein Verweis auf Daphne du Mauriers von Hitchcock verfilmten Bestseller "Rebecca". Denn auch hier steht eine Frischverheiratete im Zentrum, die in ihrem neuen Heim auch der Vergangenheit begegnet - und gar nicht ahnt, auf was sie sich eingelassen hat. (Rüdiger Suchsland in Telepolis) (Translation)
Like The Devil’s Backbone, used here as del Toro’s self-reference point, Crimson Peak takes the “haunting” part to heart, with a ghost yarn wrapped up in Victorian-era romance that’d make du Maurier, Brontë, Bava, and Perrault beam with pride from beyond the grave. (Andy Crump in Paste Magazine)
It’s frustrating, because I feel like Crimson Peak has the underlying potential to be the beautiful and horrifying tale of gothic romance that it esteems, if only it had dedicated the time spent chasing ghosts and metaphors to crafting more real, fractured characters. But the momentum it builds and all of the mastery in its design are squandered when the film steps away from the influences of authors like the Brontë sisters and suddenly veers in the direction of movies like Psycho without really dedicating itself to the fear and horror required to succeed. (Hannah Lodge in The Beat)
Part Emily Brontë, part Edgar Allan Poe, "Crimson Peak" seeps into your bones like the mist on an English moor. (Dominic Spencer in The Weather Space)
Crimson Peak, at some level, is about women and their rights—or at least it projects to be. Set in late 19th century America and England, after the lifetimes of Mary Wollstonecraft (author of ‘A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman’) and her daughter Mary Shelley (author of ‘Frankenstein’), the film is centred on the young author, Edith Cushing (played by Mia Wasikowska; Alice from Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’, and Jane Eyre from the 2011 adaptation by Cary Fukunaga) who aspires to emulate Shelley over Jane Austen (can’t blame her there, can you?) The plot, and the gothic environs and sentiments however, are reminiscent of Jane Eyre. (Ishan Marvel in Youth Ki Awaaz)
One of Mia Wasikowska’s breakout roles was in Cary Fukunaga’s haunting revival of Jane Eyre so it’s only fitting that Guillermo del Toro cast her in Crimson Peak, a gothic horror heavily influenced by the Charlotte Brontë classic and Rebecca, which was inspired by the novel. (Justine Browning in Collider)
The next moment she's practically drooling over said Baronet, the handsome but somehow damaged Thomas Sharpe, played oh-so-charmingly by Tom Hiddleston. He's so Byronic he could be Rochester from Jane Eyre, which is kind of funny because Wasikowska actually starred in an adaptation of Jane Eyre in 2011. (JJ Duncan in Zimbio)
He has that beautiful tale, ‘The Full of the House of Usher.’ Essentially, Crimson Peak is a cross between a classic gothic romance, like ‘Jane Eyre’ or something like that, and ‘The House of Usher.’ I tried to capture the dark spirit that gothic romance has. Marketing may contradict me, but Crimson Peak is not a horror film; it’s a mixture of darkness and beauty, melodrama and eerie atmosphere.” (Jack Giroux in FilmSchoolRejects)
Co-scripting with Matthew Robbins (they also collaborated on 1997’s exciting Mimic), Del Toro has crafted a movie that will likely only appeal to modern moviegoers thoroughly unfamiliar with Jane Eyre or Henry James or Bluebeard or Daphne du Maurier or, heck, even The Silence of the Lambs. Mia Wasikowska, who once played Jane Eyre opposite Michael Fassbender’s Rochester, here essays the role of Edith Cushing, an aspiring novelist living in turn-of-the-20th-century Buffalo with her protective father (an excellent Jim Beaver). (Matt Brunson in Contact Savannah)
In a way, Crimson Peak is also del Toro’s love poem to the grand gothic romances of the 1930s and 1940s—among them Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and the Vincent Price-led Dragonwyck. (Celia San Miguel in Latino)
There are occasional horrifying things in it, but at its heart “Crimson Peak” is actually the purest gothic romance I’ve seen in a long time. While that’s technically considered a subcategory of horror, it’s an entirely different beast – much more “Jane Eyre,” “Rebecca” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein” than “Nightmare on Elm Street” or even “The House on Haunted Hill.” (Jenniffer Wardell in The Davis Clipper)
The storytelling is in the sweeping Jane Eyre/Rebecca model, with a plucky young woman seeking to rescue her tragic love object from his demons, if that young woman were a writer determined to brighten everything up with her clothing choices. (Abbie Bernstein in Assignment X)
The joys of the film come from its amazing atmosphere and visuals and how they build on the tension and drama of the storyline. The colors! The score! The architecture! The blend of gorgeous practical effects with technicolor digital! Those costumes! This would be the ultimate triumph of style over substance. . . except there's so much substance. It's like Jane Eyre meets The Shining. It's Mary Shelley. It's Edgar Allen Poe. And it's 100% Guillermo Del Toro, who is at the top of his visual game here. This is the perfect companion piece to his earlier Pan's Labyrinth. (Citizenbot in Big Shiny Robot)
Descrizione che ricorda molto grandi classici del genere, come Jane Eyre e Rebecca – La prima moglie, dove la trama di una storia d'amore si dipana tra mura inquietanti, dove avvengono fatti inquietanti con altrettanti inquietanti coinquilini. (Elle Italia) (Translation)
Atenção fãs do diretor mexicano Guillermo del Toro, preparem-se para uma decepção. Este tão esperado filme é na verdade uma decepção, uma antiquada homenagem as histórias góticas a la Jane Eyre (só que com alguns poucos momentos de Gore/Sangreira), aos filmes que ele certamente amava da Hammer britânico (a ponto de dar o sobrenome da mocinha de Cushing, obvia referencia ao astro deles Peter Cushing) e certamente também a Roger Corman e sua série de adaptações de Edgar Allan Poe (inclusive com o uso de iluminação verde e escarlate). (Rubens Ewald Filho in DVDMagazine Brazil) (Translation)
Surfant sur tous les classiques de la littérature victorienne (Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein) et de films de fantômes (Rebecca, la Maison du Diable, Hantise), Crimson Peak est un régal pour les yeux. Dommage que l’histoire se contente d’être une déclinaison perverse de Barbe Bleue. (Marianne Font in Weekly) (Translation)
Del Toro is clearly borrowing from stories like Jane Eyre or Rebecca for both visual cues and a way of steering the plot, but having Edith be especially sensitive to the spirit world makes her exceedingly interesting. (Steve Prokopy in Gapers Block)
En su filme hay referencias a las hermanas Brönte (sic), autoras de Cumbres Borrascosas y Jane Eyre y de Mary Schelley (sic), de Frankenstein. (Marta Cervera in El Periódico) (Translation)
Del Toro ha dicho que este proyecto largamente anhelado –lo escribió hace casi diez años, justo después de El laberinto del fauno; en el medio empezó y se cayó su adaptación de En las montañas de la locura, de Lovecraft, empezó y debió abandonar El Hobbit; filmó Titanes del Pacífico; produjo la serie The Strain, y siguió trabajando en sus obsesiones de siempre: Frankenstein, Las brujas, de Roald Dahl– es “menos una película de terror que un romance gótico”, y en ella veremos destellos de sus lecturas favoritas: Shirley Jackson y su The Haunting of Hill House, que fue un par de veces al cine, una vez convertida en una obra maestra de Robert Wise, la otra olvidable; Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brönte (sic), Cumbres borrascosas, de su hermana Emily, La caída de la casa Usher de Poe y también algo de Henry James, aunque no tanto de Otra vuelta de tuerca como muchos esperarán, dice, sino del cuento de fantasmas “El amigo de mi amigo”. (Mariano Kairuz in Página 12) (Translation)
Partendo dalle letterarie, si va da Frankenstein a Cime tempestose, c’è molto Edgar Allan Poe, per non parlare della protagonista, ricalcata come una novella Mary Shelley. (Leotruman in Screenweek) (Translation)
Non poteva essere che Guillermo del Toro a riportare sullo schermo il Gotico Romantico, quel filone della letteratura fantastica che dal diciottesimo secolo in poi ci ha dato capolavori come – per citare solo i più noti - "Il Monaco" , "Carmilla", "Giro di vite", "Frankenstein" ,"Cime tempestose", i romanzi di Anne Radcliffe e i racconti di Edgar Allan Poe e di Nathaniel Hawtorne. (ComingSoon) (Translation)
Guillermo Del Toro, whose “Pan’s Labyrinth” is superior fare largely because it has a political theme (the daughter of a brutal army officer escapes from Falangist Spain in 1944 into a fantasy world), but while Del Toro compares his new picture, “Crimson Peak” to “Jane Eyre,” “Rebecca,” and “Great Expectations,” this is true only to one extent. “Jane Eyre” (one movie version stars Mia Wasikowska) is about a woman who serves as a governess in an imposing house; “Rebecca” takes place in a mansion on the Cornish coast, in every corner of which is a phantom of time lost but not forgotten; “Great Expectations” is a classic work of Victorian literature, a coming-of-age story. “Crimson Peak” is all of this: a coming-of-age of an innocent virgin in the early years of the twentieth century like Jane Eyre and Rebecca who enter into lives previous removed from their experience. (Harvey Karten in Shockya)
The film combines the gloomy aesthetics of “Wuthering Heights,” the apparitions, family secrets and betrayals of “The Woman in Black” with the murderous straight razor chills of “Sweeney Todd.” The remix of period pieces transports us back to an era when hotblooded passion and violence exist in societies where absolute coldblooded decorum rules. (Colin Covert in Star-Tribune)
Part Emily Brontë, part Edgar Allan Poe, "Crimson Peak" seeps into your bones like the mist on an English moor. (Rafer Guzmán in Newsday)
What do the lack of over-the-top scares mean for the status of “Crimson Peak” as a Gothic romance? The standards of the genre, to which works like Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” also belong, are seen in “Crimson.” (Molly Driscoll in Christian Science Monitor)Top.De interviews Tom Hiddleston about Del Toro's film:
Ein Geschwisterpaar in einem einsamen Haus, das letztendlich zu ihrem Verhängnis wird: "Crimson Peak" erinnert sehr stark an "Der Untergang des Hauses Usher" von Edgar Allan Poe. " Guillermo hat neben Filmen auch Bücher empfohlen. Gleich zu Beginn haben wir etwa über 'Jane Eyre' gesprochen, der Novelle von Brontë, und auch über 'Der Untergang des Hauses Usher'. (Translation)Hollywood Reporter interviews Jessica Chastain:
“If you think of classic gothic romances, of Shelley and Brontë, he really knows his stuff,” said Chastain. “He’s an encyclopedia of film knowledge and literature.” (Megan Soll)Jezebel interviews the director:
Fair warning, though: Crimson Peak is more Wuthering Heights than Jane Eyre; more Rebecca, less Victoria Holt. Del Toro clearly means “Romance” in the sweeping 19 Century sense, not the modern publishing category. To be frank, I would have been perfectly happy with a happily ever after, but that’s not his project. Instead, he set out to deliver more Emily Brontë than Charlotte—though with a heroine you can really root for, who stands on her own two feet rather than fainting deliciously all over the place. (...)IGN also talks with Del Toro:
In Crimson Peak, del Toro is melding the hardcore Gothic of the late 18th/early 19th century—Ann Radcliffe, Frankenstein, Fuseli—with the Hollywood Gothics of the 1950s—think Orson Welles’ Jane Eyre, the black-and-white Hitchcocks starring fresh-faced brunettes rather than the signature blondes. (...)
This week, I spoke with Guillermo del Toro about the film. My tape recording program ate half the interview—clearly the true horror is humanity’s heedless reliance on technology, or else I’d have gotten his wonderful answer about how he always felt Jane Eyre and Frankenstein were fundamentally related and ultimately realized they were both “autobiographies of the soul. (...)
That’s a very traditionally gothic idea, right? It’s not the ghost, it’s not the monsters, it’s the weird family dynamics that are happening in that crumbling house. Right? (Kelly Faircloth)
Mostly, you’re absolutely right, and even when there’s no family dynamics, the ultimate agents of evil in the Gothic romance are human. You can choose to play the supernatural element as very light and ambiguous, as the Brontës or Dickens in Great Expectations, or in Jane Eyre and so forth.
You’re a big fan of Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction – and hope to do a movie based on it at some point. Crimson Peak does have a haunted mansion in it, in a way. Was there any youthful love for that attraction in mind making this? (Eric Goldman)And Deadline too:
Del Toro: Not really, because it’s apple and oranges. Crimson Peak is not a horror movie but it has more to the tone of a fairytale or a gothic romance, sort of a female-centric tale, than Haunted Mansion which is a ride and has to be fun and scary in a Disney way. This has more to do with Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Dragonwyck. The time where Hollywood was producing these lavish melodramas with gothic romance trappings.
DEADLINE: Was there a classic haunted house movie that was a touchstone for Crimson Peak? (Mike Fleming Jr)New Jersey Online lists Crimson Peak references:
DEL TORO: In an oblique bleak sense, one of my favorite gothics is Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With A Zombie, which is not necessarily a classical gothic but is very much Jane Eyre in certain aspects of structure. Another is Dragonwyck with Vincent Price, very sumptuous and luxuriant even if it doesn’t use the supernatural element as openly. I’ve always liked director Robert Stevenson’s Jane Eyre and think Joan Fontaine makes a really good Jane in sort of the severe German expressionistic, very stark black and white aesthetic that made it special. (...)
I was a kid when I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with that universe. I didn’t have the acumen to say the prose is old or the prose is too complex. I just fell in love with Jane’s very lonely soul, much the same way I fell in love with Frankenstein’s creature for the same reason. Those old souls exist in every decade in every century.
"Jane Eyre." A shadowy mansion, a nervous governess, a brooding nobleman, a locked room – Charlotte Bronte's novel is the deep dark spring from which all Gothic romances flow. (You think "Dark Shadows" was original?) It's been endlessly adapted, with each era contributing its own ill-humored star as Rochester – Colin Clive, William Hurt, even George C. Scott. For classic chills, go for the 1943 version with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine; more modern moods, the 2011 one with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska. (Stephen Whitty)Entertainment Weekly does the same:
Jane Eyre. One of the most influential Gothic tales. It permeates Rebecca, I Walked with a Zombie and even The Secret Garden in an oblique way. I paraphrase it in several moments of Crimson Peak and did a variation of the famous “rib-cage-to-rib-cage” monologue of Mr Rochester. (Gina McIntyre)
The Crimson Peak references concerning the Brontës continue. And so without further ado:It’s all too colorful, fervid swirls of red and blue, which badly offset the wintry mood of Jane Eyre-esque solitude the script seems to be aiming for. (Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair)
Guillermo del Toro’s Gothic romance, out this Friday, doesn’t just wear its influences on its sleeve. (A “foreword” from the director handed out at the press screening cites Dragonwyck, as well as classic-era Hollywood adaptations of Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and Great Expectations, and there are whiffs of an entire English major’s worth of literary classics throughout, from Wuthering Heights to “The Fall of the House of Usher.”) It splices them all together and serves them up to the viewer in a smooth, Vitamixed blend. And while Crimson Peak may not add up to more than the sum of its parts, it’s hard to go wrong with parts as tried and true as these, particularly when they’re assembled with del Toro’s signature panache. (Alison Herman on Flavorwire)
Eventually del Toro surrenders to contemporary horror tastes, tossing aside nostalgic restraint in favor of a hefty meat cleaver, with spurts and gurgles galore. Crimson Peak ends with a torrent of high-toned violence, as if the Brontë sisters had a threesome with Eli Roth. The horror, as Lucille hisses, is for love. (Steve Persall in The Tampa Bay Times)
Mia Wasikowska ("Jane Eyre") has her moments as the feisty Edith, who overcomes Victorian notions of propriety first to write a novel and then to fight for her life. But this "Wuthering Heights" is spiked with so many gruesome decomposing corpses and gratuitous jump-scares that the film soon squanders its atmospheric riches. (Karen D'Souza in Contra Costa Times)
Tom Hiddleston's character, Thomas Sharpe, feels like he could be cut from the same cloth as Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a character who has experienced poverty, and managed to find his way into the upperclass. He is a man who is difficult to interpret: A sadistic, scheming villain or a romantic hero? (Aaron Sagers on Blastr)
While the Brontë sisters were dying of fever in their dismal swamp, “Crimson Peak” might have been the über-Gothic yarn that flickered through their overheated brains – if they’d also had sexual congress with Satan and consumed a bunch of ‘shrooms. It’s part Mary Shelley and part Arthur Conan Doyle (both authors are specifically mentioned), but it’s also “Jane Eyre” and H.P. Lovecraft and Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” and Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” and a little 19th-century American realism by way of Edith Wharton or William Dean Howells.Not a hypothesis but a fact.
Indeed, the film’s title refers to a crumbling ancestral manse more dreadful than the Thornfield Hall of “Jane Eyre,” and perhaps even more toxic than Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë daughters nurtured their literary genius and then died. (One gruesome hypothesis is that Haworth’s water supply was contaminated by the rotting human remains in the adjacent cemetery.) (Andrew O'Hehir on Salon)
You ran an article about the importance and impact of dramaturgy. The next page had an article about modern adaptations of books including the acclaimed production of Jane Eyre. Ironically, you failed to mention that Sally Cookson, the director, was very ably aided and abetted in bringing this wonderful production from page to stage by a dramaturg, namely the talented Mike Akers.
Many adaptations of books for theatre are only possible because of the skills of a good dramaturg and you missed a real oppor-tunity, particularly in light of the previous article, to give Akers his due.
Jenny Etches
Vice chair, board of trustees, Travelling Light Theatre
Among the (UK) TV recommendations for tonight in The Guardian isA Very British Romance With Lucy WorsleyAlso in The Guardian, Geoffrey Rush writes about fellow actor - well, actress - Magda Szubanski and her book Reckoning.
9pm, BBC4
The ever-enthusiastic historian continues her romantic history of the nation with a peek into the Victorian era. While floral arrangements, love songs and Valentine’s cards might sound like the stuff of 20th-century consumerism, she explores their roots, as well as delving into the tradition of courtly love that underpinned romance in the period. Reaching for novels such as Jane Eyre as well as donning her usual period garb, Worsley makes the olden days feel that little bit less olden. (Hannah J Davies)
I’ve got lost in Joyce’s Dublin, Woolf’s Bloomsbury, the Brontë Sisters’ Yorkshire moors. Now I’m enthralled with Magda Szubanski’s Croydon, Australia’s own collective sub-conscious suburb, the architecture of which she deftly anoints as Bauhaus’s “bastard child”.A columnist on Black Mountain News discusses writing:
But once again I was faced with the challenge of writing a full-length novel based on a flimsy idea. And then I had a brainstorm — I would write a trilogy of Great American Novellas, and I was two-thirds of the way there. Okay, so I only had the titles.Starts at 60 Book Club (Australia) reviews the novel Salt Creek by Fiona Treloar:
But then with two down and one to go I was stuck, and it was about 10 years before the third leg of the trilogy came to me. One day, as I was driving to the store with Emily Brontë on my mind, it hit me: “Withering Heights.” (sic)
But by this time I realized I was probably too old to write even one-third of a trilogy of novellas, let alone all three-thirds, and then get it published, which is an agonizing process. But having had a father who’d learned the meaning of “frugal” during the Great Depression, I couldn’t let these three fine titles go to waste, just as I couldn’t let the crusts of my bread go to waste in 1946. Hence this column. (Robert Rufa)
Salt Creek is a property along the Coorong in South Australia, being developed by the Finch family in the 1850s. The family have fallen on hard times, through a series of unwise business decisions and are struggling to make a success of dairy farming. The story is narrated by Hester, one of the daughters. She has been well educated, able to discuss Darwin’s theories and the novels of the Brontës. She now finds herself a farm labourer, isolated from polite society. Her father will no longer accept help from his in-laws. The mother of the family has become withdrawn after this change and the deaths of two young children. (Vivienne Beddoe)According to Freedom Newspaper,
No city in America reminds one of England as much as the Old Town Alexandria in Virginia. The houses and streets are reminders of the British/European in America. The women still look like the English women in the Brontë sisters’ novels. The air in Virginia and just about everything else make one feel they are walking in the streets of Leeds or Portsmouth. (Fatou Jaw Manneh)The New Yorker publishes an obituary for Lindsley Cameron Miyoshi. who seems to have had a fascinating life by the sound of it.
While in graduate school, she struck up a friendship with Masao Miyoshi, a professor emeritus of literature at the University of California at San Diego. They visited back and forth, and he proposed to her. She hated California, but loved that Masao wanted to take care of her. She hadn’t had a lot of that. She’d been studying Japanese for years, and what better way to learn than by having a Japanese husband? Sounding like a character out of Jane Austen or one of the Brontës, she announced to her friends one night at dinner, “Ladies, I may marry him.” They married, in 2006. (Mary Norris)The Huffington Post features singer-songwriter Catherine Howe who
beat Kate Bush by two years in being the first singer-songwriter release to feature a track ('Lucy Snowe') prompted by a Brontë novel, a feat Catherine brushes aside with characteristic modesty: "Kate Bush stands quite alone and I can't see any logic behind a comparison". Nevertheless, in a recent reappraisal of her work, The Guardian called Catherine a "Kate Bush before her time". (Charles Donovan)Marina Saegerman writes about Arthur Bell Nicholls's Ireland on the Brussels Brontë Blog. The Corporate Slacker reviews Wuthering Heights.
In the build-up to this Test match, Michael Vaughan said that England go out to bat in every first innings with the aim of reaching 400. Just for the record - because it may not be obvious - I must state that whenever I lift the lid of my laptop I intend to write the next Wuthering Heights. That does not happen, either.(...)And the Mail on Sunday ends an article about the English willage West Tanfield like this:
Selectors responded to England's last defeat by dropping Stephen Harmison and Matthew Hoggard. This time the bowlers have kept them in the game and today may well represent one final chance for certain batsmen. The sleepers, as Emily Bronte put it, would have suffered some unquiet slumbers last night. (Richard Hobson)
As Emily Bronte wrote: 'I wondered how anyone could ever imagine anything but unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' (Roy Hattersley)Actually, and for the sake of completeness, the novel ends:
I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.Philippa Gregory selects Dragonwyck by Anya Seton for a list of summer books on CNN. This is how she describes it:
"A gothic novel set in 1844 America. At times it's utterly ridiculous, but it is truly haunting. Think an American Jane Eyre at high speed. A great book to gulp down in a day."Einsiders reviews the A&E Romance Collection DVD box set which includes Jane Eyre 2006:
"Jane Eyre" rivals "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" as the most often filmed book. Is there a British actress who has not played the title role. Read the book instead. This version clocks in at 108 minutes. Needless to say, much of the book falls to the wayside. (Rusty White)On the blogosphere we found today a brief comment about Jane Eyre on Sarit's Little Craze.
Author I'd like to meetWhere Traveler reviews the Seattle production of the Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre musical:
I'd like to sit down at a pub with John Green and Nick Hornby for a nice long chat about writing, depression, humor, books and British football. If I had a time machine, I'd head to the 19th century and ask Charlotte Brontë all about writing "Jane Eyre."
The show is a drama, yes, but it's punctuated by humor, in particular Simon Pringle's performance as Robert and April Poland's Blanche Ingram. While the running time is 2 hours, 30 minutes (with an intermission), it didn't feel too long. (...)The Telegraph & Argus salutes the new summer Brontë Country tour open-topped vintage bus:
If you're in town and want to see some local Seattle talent, a Taproot production is a good option. Ticket prices are resonable, and you'll experience a well-produced, intimate show. (Stacy Booth)
The Bronte Country Bus Tour is aimed at attracting tourists and highlighting to local people places of interest on their doorstep. The tour-hour tour covers Keighley, Haworth and surrounding villages, and passengers can hop on and off along the way. (...)The Huffington Post talks about reading YA literature:
Sarah Howsen, the Council's senior tourism development officer, added: "People go to Haworth but there are places they may not normally think of visiting, such as the Police Museum. We want to show how much there is in Keighley and surrounding areas. For £4 you can use the bus to get to specific places, or just enjoy the sightseeing tour as a whole.
I recently read a YA book published by Rao and Albertine titled Carly Keene, Literary Detective: Braving the Brontës, by Katherine Rue, about a girl who time travels back to 1846 when Charlotte Brontë was trying to write Jane Eyre. It is marvelous historical fiction and there was not a moment I felt embarrassed to be reading it--to the contrary! This book is "good" YA lit, and a page-turner for anyone who loves Jane Eyre or just a darn good mystery. (Lori Day)MarieClaire celebrates #ThrowbackThursday with Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:
Is this the most iconic music video ever? It’s 1978 and a 19-year-old Kate Bush writhes around in a dark studio in a bohemian white dress, her wild eccentric mane and expressive eyes capturing the soul of Emily Brontë’s infamous gothic protagonist Cathy in Wuthering Heights. (Hayley Camis)HitFix interviews Guillermo Del Toro who is shooting Crimson Peak:
"You know 'Rebecca,' 'Jane Eyre,' I mean they're all cousins. 'Rebecca' is 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' is 'Dragonwyck' is 'Jane Eyre.' You can mix and match gothic romance, and you're always going to find the innocent heroine going to a crumbling mansion where a dark, brooding, mysterious guy turns or not turns out to be the holder of a secret, blah, blah, blah," de Toro says.Boston Magazine publishes an excerpt from Life After Charlotte by Sukey Forbes:
He continues, "When I tackle things like 'Pac Rim' or Mecha or when I tackle a vampire movie, I'm very, very aware of the tenets of the genre. And then it's up to me to both hit them and try to do them in a way that is not the normal way. But it is related to all that gothic romance du Maurier, Bronte, all those... That lineage that extends pretty, pretty deep, all the way to at the end of the 1700s. You know? So, it's a pretty deep lineage. Ann Radcliffe, 'The Castle of Otranto,' you can keep going really well into... 'Uncle Silas,' by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. That's my favorite gothic romance." (Daniel Fienberg)
My gothic nightmare of derangement was coming true—only it wasn’t happening to me. It was Michael who was headed down the Charlotte Brontë path, and there wasn’t room for both of us. Rather than turning me into the mad wife in the attic from Jane Eyre, grief was turning Michael into the brooding Rochester.Redding's Hamlethub interviews the author Dulcie Schwartz
What book have you read in school that you did not fully appreciate until later?
I'm afraid I still don't fully appreciate the Brontës or Melville, which I had to read, so I'm not sure. I think I enjoyed Henry James more once he was no longer required. (Sally Allen)
Carlos Siguion-Reyna's Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (I Will Wait For You in Heaven, 1991), the quintessential Filipino film adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights starring Richard Gomez and Dawn Zulueta as lovers doomed by both man and fate's cruelty, represented what could probably be the last hurrah for mature romantic tearjerkers, paving the way for stories of teenagers and their first romances.Bernardinai (Lithuania) lists not well-known books by well-known authors:
Charlotte Brontë „Vijetė“. Deja, „Džeinės Eir“ užgožtas romanas, nors daugelio – taip pat ir Virginios Woolf – laikomas geriausia rašytojos knyga. Pavadinime – ne moters vardas, o mažas miestelis, į kurį atvyksta nei šeimos, nei draugų neturinti Lucy Snowe dirbti mergaičių internate. Tai autobiografiškiausias XIX a. pirmos pusės romanistės kūrinys. (Translation)in2life (Greece) makes a list of books you should read:
Ανεμοδαρμένα Ύψη, Emily Brontë: Ο απόλυτος (και πιο πολυδιασκευασμένος) έρωτας δεν είναι ρομαντικός, ούτε τρυφερός, ούτε αγνός. Είναι άγριος, εγωιστικός και καταστροφικός. Κάποιος έπρεπε να το πει επιτέλους αυτό. Το είπε, εξαιρετικά, η Έμιλυ Μπροντέ. (Ηρώς Κουνάδη) (Translation)The Times has an article on the architecture of the old British rectories with a reference to the Brontë Parsonage; Getting Oriented: A Novel about Japan reviews Minae Mizumura's A Real Novel; There and Their reviews the webseries The Autobiography of Jane Eyre; Bookriot compiles ten pieces of Jane Eyre 'swag' to be found mainly on etsy shops.
So is this is going to be Phoebe’s first time in Yorkshire?East Anglian Daily Times wonders 'Why have women still not got equality?':
“No”, she laughs again, “I remember coming on a school trip in my teens, and I know that we all went to the Brontë Parsonage, and it was a cold, wet, miserable grey day, and I could imagine that family all those years ago, and how they must have felt living there, day after day. I had a lovely warm cosy house in Palmer’s Green, with mum and dad and my three brothers to go back to. They didn’t”.
There’s a lot that can provoke Eleanor Rehahn’s sense of fairness. The pastel-rich, “girly”, Lego Friends range does. Even bricks and mortar. “There’s a whole estate in Stowmarket where all the roads are named after writers and artists and musicians. There’s not a single woman! Not even a Brontë!” she says. (Steve Russell)The Daily News unveils one of the projects of the local writer Diane Denton:
Denton works for the town of Pembroke, which leaves weekends to do most of her writing. She is currently working on a collection of novellas about English writers, Anne Brontë, Christina Rossetti and Mary Webb. (Virginia Kropf)Winnipeg Free Times reviews recent graphic novels, including Kate Beaton's Step Aside, Pops!:
Some of the strips have appeared on her successful webcomic Hark! A Vagrant; they continue her offbeat retelling of classic stories, from Wuthering Heights to Julius Caesar. (Candida Rifkind)The Huffington Post reviews the novel Twain's End by Lynn Cullen:
Twain's End is as intriguing a book as you have ever read because it is a love story for the ages. Just as Catherine and Heathcliff were tragically drawn to each other so are Isabel and Sam. Theirs is a tale of passion, sacrificial love and heartbreak. The fact it is all based on truth makes it even more impactful. (Jackie K. Cooper)New Straits Times talks about Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak:
His “Crimson Peak“, which rolls out around the world this month, borrows strongly from Del Toro’s love of Edgar Allen Poe stories, especially “The Fall of the House of Usher“, and the 1939 film version of “Wuthering Heights“, with their complex reflections on human psychology. (AFP)Screen Rant interviews the Mexican director:
SR: What movies were you inspired by when you were making it? (Ben Moore)Derbyshire and Jane Eyre in The Sunday Times; Oliver Kamm's The Pedant column in The Times talks about the use of 'different to' and 'different from' and quotes from Charlotte Brontë's letters.
GDT: Actually, an old movie with Vincent Price called ‘Dragonwyck,’ there’s a quote from it in ‘Crimson Peak.’ ‘The Innocents’ by Jack Clayton. ‘Great Expectations’ by David Lean. ‘Rebecca,’ for sure. ‘Jane Eyre,’ the Robert Stevenson version with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. You know, some of the classic – ‘The Spiral Staircase’ with Dorothy McGuire.
It’s not so much things that go bump in the night in the normal haunted house [...] this isn’t a horror movie but a Gothic romance. It is sort of a hybrid of many impulses that were boiling in that era – sexual tension, romantic tension – and the fight between the rational and supernatural. So I would say Uncle Silas [by Sheridan Le Fanu] would be closer to it. It would also be closer to Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, the Dragonwyck. All these stories that seem to be of another time. But I wanted to give it a couple of scares and a couple of violent moments and sexual moments that are of now, so it’s not an artefact or a curiosity. (Daniel Krupa)Memphis Flyer reviews the recent adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd.
As always, animal husbandry and farming are there to give something elemental: Udders are milked, fields shine, tadpoles are glimpsed in pools, but there is a remove — you know none of these details will touch the main plot or heroine. Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights did this, but better. The brutality of everyday animal murder on a farm, which looked real but was fake, sold both the violent passions of the narrative and the alien nature of the past through the outsider protagonist's eyes. (Ben Siler)The Mary Sue recaps the second episode of the animated TV series The Legend of Korra and apparently,
We end the episode with Mako sitting on the top of the arena (he and Bolin live in the attic), staring across the water at the island like a quasi-cool brooding wannabe Brontë hero jackass with spiked hair. (Rebecca Pahle)Chicago Reader discusses Kate Bolick's book Spinster.
"But what if," she wonders, "it wasn't this way? What if a girl grew up like a boy, with marriage an abstract, someday thought, a thing to think about when she became an adult, a thing she could do, or not do, depending? What would that look and feel like?"According to this columnist from the News Examiner,
I was reading this on the train on the way to the office, and I looked up, and said, to the Bolick in my head, "Lady, I've been thinking about this since I discovered feminism when I was 12. This is why Charlotte Brontë's heroines were always so pissed off and why Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One's Own and Wendy Wasserstein wrote, well, just about everything she wrote. What took you so long?"
It is true, however, that, for Brontë and Woolf and Wasserstein (and many, many, many others), the very personal marriage question was tied to larger political goals, like the right to education, contraception, a job with a decent income, and all the other rights (white, heterosexual) men take for granted. Bolick, like many white, middle-class women who came of age after the 1970s (including myself), takes them for granted, too. So Spinster is less about the basic necessity of marriage and more about the search for personal fulfillment and about how that's possible for a single, childless woman. (Aimee Levitt)
Our sensitive, modern mindset is a brand new thing, people. As a species, we're still disgustingly new at the whole inclusion thing. Barring maybe the last century (maybe), by and large, most writers and intellectuals throughout time were total a-holes in at least some respects. Does that mean we should ignore anyone whose close-minded barbarism seeped into their work? Fyodor Dostoevsky was a raving anti-Semite. Ernest Hemingway was an Olympic-level misogynist. Zora Neale Hurston just could not stop writing really upsetting and visceral accounts of rape. Charlotte Brontë inflicted her awful prose on the world. Should we discount the genius (or supposed genius) of these authors, too, because their views or their topic choices aren't compatible with our "sophisticated" opinions or personal history? (Justin Andress)Stereogum on Ryn Weaver's new video for OctaHate:
As much as I love the Brontë sisters, the mansions of their Victorian-era moors aren’t a place that anyone would ever dream of escaping to. They’re haunted and glum, and if you’re a woman, totally oppressive. Whether or not it takes place in England, Ryn Weaver’s new video for her massive 2014 summer single “OctaHate” features the singer wreaking havoc on the likeness of one of these massive, seemingly abandoned homes. (Gabriela Tully Claymore)The Independent recalls that,
Literary figures to have had their lives “rewritten”, counterfactually, or fictionally, are many, from Jane Austen to the Brontës, and the more recent, colourful accounts include those of Ernest Hemingway (from the point of view of his long-suffering ex-wives) and Virginia Woolf; these lives contain a combination of glamour and tragedy that makes them eternally fascinating to us. (Arifa Akbar)La Opinión (Spain) interviews writer Susan Elizabeth Philips.
-Está en España para presentar su nuevo libro, Los héroes son mi debilidad (Vergara), pero esta vez en la historia además de romance hay un toque de misterio gótico, que recuerda a Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë e incluso Georgette Heyer.-Este libro es un tributo a las novelas góticas, tiene referencias a Jane Eyre, a Rebeca, de Daphne du Maurier. Me encantaban ese tipo de novelas cuando era joven. Y ha sido muy divertido coger los elementos de estas historias, con sus casas y héroes misteriosos, que pueden ser villanos, y traerlo todo a los tiempos modernos, desarrollar más los personajes e incluso hacerlos más sexys. (Virginia Guzmán) (Translation)Patricia Park's Re Jane is one of the summer reads recommended by The Boston Globe. El litoral (Argentina) discusses unreliable narrators with special interest in Wuthering Heights. Excite's Viaggi (Italy) features an exhibition on Balthus which will take place in Rome in October and which will include some drawing froms his Wuthering Heights series.
The team behind a documentary revealing the real locations which inspired the Bronteë sisters has offered walking tours to people who are willing to be filmed for the production.Den of Geek picks the 'Top 10 Must-See Scary Movies of 2015'. One of which is Guillermo Del Toro's much awaited
The documentary is being made by Oxenhope resident Oliver Chapman and will present the outcome of research carried out by Ian Howard and Josh Chapman, who is Oliver’s brother.
Mr Howard, who is also from Oxenhope, said that a local theatre group and a school had come forward to take part in the Haworth tour and ultimately be featured in the documentary itself.
“The tour will be filmed as part of the documentary we’re making, so everyone should be prepared for the footage to be used on television,” he said.
He said that he did not require very many more people for the tour, though he added that a small number of additional individuals who were willing to participate could still be accommodate.
He said the recent snow had not discouraged him from visiting the remote locations on the moors being filmed as part of the documentary.
“No one else goes up there when the weather is like this, so it’s nice to have that solitude,” he said.
Crimson Peak (October 16, 2015)Style has an article on magazine editor Isabella Blow and recalls that,
Easily my own most anticipated horror film of 2015, Crimson Peak offers the prospect of a genre master attempting to summon some of the decadent dread of a bygone era. With a premise that could be pulling just as much from the writings of either Brontë sister as it could be from pulp magazines, Crimson Peak stands poised to be Guillermo del Toro’s ode to the gothic literature that birthed modern horror. In short, I’m hoping for more Dragonwyck or even Jane Eyre than simply Pacific Rim.
Set in the rural English county of Cumbria, Crimson Peak follows a young British novelist named Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who has come to live with her enigmatic new husband Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) in his crumbling estate. There she will discover Sir Thomas’ macabre past, his mysterious sister Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain), and with any luck, the stuff of eternal nightmares. (David Crow)
Issie had no grandeur about her whatsoever. You’d walk into her country house—Hilles House, in Gloucestershire—and she’d say, ‘Welcome to Wuthering Heights on a withering budget.’ (Mary Fellowes)Finally, an alert for Thursday, as seen in the Solihull Observer.
A drama group is calling on actors to dust down their bonnets and bodices and join their production of Wuthering Heights.The Stories of O. references Wuthering Heights in a curious post.
SSA Drama are set to put on a stage version of Emily Brontë's classic novel and are asking budding thespians to join them on their adventure to Thrushcross Grange.
Auditions will be held on Monday, January 26 and Thursday, January 29 at The Edge Theatre, in Alderbrook School from 7.30pm. (Sarah Judkins)
THE $15m budget movie Wuthering Heights could be shot in Ireland in late October after advanced discussions to bring the film to Ireland were held at the Cannes film festival last week.Keighley News republishes the news about the cyprus pine tree souvenirs initia
Michael Fassbender, who starred in the I'm Sorry Guinness advert, the semi-animated epic 300 and who plays the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands in Hunger, will play the role of Heathcliff in the romantic fiction.
If some of the film is shot in Ireland, the film will be co-produced by British film producers, Ecosse Films, and the Irish production company, Octagon Films. The rest of the film would be shot in Britain. Octagon and Ecosse recently co-produced Becoming Jane, a romance about Jane Austen. (Louise MacBride).
tive of the Brontë Society. In the picture (source): Brontë Parsonage Museum director Alan Bentley (check the following post for news about Mr. Bentley) with the remains of the felled tree.On a larger scale, Carr has produced majestic drawings of a range of subjects: a rhinoceros, crows and Mimi the family dog together with a powerful nude and the enigmatically beautiful five-panel study of Whitby headstones. Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire has a brooding, Bronte-esque atmosphere and is where Dracula is reputed to have first tasted English blood. The tombstones emerge as five richly textured compositions in which one may read the poetry of sky, clouds, mountains, rivers, trees and rocks at will.musicOMH reviews the BAC's performances of Goat Island's dance piece: The Lastmaker (more information on this previous post):
The performers charge from one side of the space to the other, springing and leaping in a manner reminiscent of children at play – sudden brief bursts of energy. One of the five takes a microphone and launches into Lenny Bruce’s familiar drawl, this is interwoven with recitals of Emilys Dickinson and Bronte. (Natasha Tripney)The Observer talks with Siri Hustvedt and traces her Brontëite beginnings:
When did she know that she wanted to write? 'It happened at 13, in Reykjavik. My father was studying the sagas. There were English books in the public library: David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. I read compulsively that summer.' (Rachel Cooke)Kyle Post writes a letter to his newborn daughter in The New York Post which includes this passing comment:
Wear sunscreen. I can get sunstroke from a reading lamp, and your mom is so pale she looks like the illustration of a ghost in a Bronte novel.FilmJournal reviews William Nicholson's film Firelight (a forgotten gem in the opinion of this half of Brontë
Blog):The most fun to be derived from Firelight, a rather tortured bodice-ripper, comes from discerning its all-too obvious inspirations. There's the mousy governess and mysterious lord out of Jane Eyre and Dragonwyck (with that disturbed wife thrown in for good measure); the ominously spectral house and grounds from The Turn of the Screw; the monstrously bratty kid from our old friend, The Bad Seed, and the noble teacher who strives mightily to instruct her impossible student out of The Miracle Worker. (David Noh)On the blogosphere today: South in the Winter is reading Jane Eyre and posts about the figure of the madwoman on the attic, Pelargonium oasen posts the left hand side picture (source) of a Jane Eyre-named variety of rose (Stanley P. Stringer, 1968). As far as we know, there is another variety of Jane Eyre roses, click here to see them.
Unless explicitly said
