Mary is on cloud nine as she and Norris have won the competition. They’ve won a holiday in Bronte-country next month. Oh, joy! Norris wants to know who’s going to watch the Kabin when they’re on holiday. Perhaps Rita can watch the place? It’s clear that Norris doesn’t want anything to do with this holiday. Mary tells Rita and Emily how Norris doesn’t want to go to Bronte-Country, and Rita white-lies for Norris to back him up. (...)The mash-up literature is discussed on NPR and the first perpetrator, Seth Grahame-Smith says:
- Mary lustily calling Norris “Heathcliff.” (Yoork on Coronation Street Blog)
Grahame-Smith's first book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was a publishing sensation. It, too, mixed the undead with the Victorian era. Grahame-Smith says the success spawned a bit of a "mash-up moment in literature," where the supernatural meets the classics, but there's probably not a or Wuthering Heights Reloaded in his future.The Times talks about Susanna White's first feature film project, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, and of course her Jane Eyre is remembered:
[M]ore recently, the reimagining of another GCSE staple, Jane Eyre. (Jeff Dawson)Feministing interviews the author Marisa Meltzer:
Chloe Angyal: Who is your favorite fictional heroine, and who are your heroines in real life?Child memories, with a Wuthering Heights reference, in The Quad-City Times, Bright White Light posts some stills of Abismos de Pasión 1951, Mundo de Papel reviews Wuthering Heights (in Portuguese), UK-USA: Our Experiences has visited Haworth and elizabethdunn uploads to the brontealong flickr pool pictures of a Jane Eyre-inspired necktie.
MM: The first fictional one that comes to mind is Jane Eyre, not because I necessarily relate to her - I actually think she and I are quite different - but I was always obsessed with that book when I was a kid. I read it dozens of times. There was something about her that really got under my skin. I don't know if it was her dealings with Mrs. Rochester in the attic. But I think sometimes the characters that strike you the most and that stay in your memory are maybe not the ones you most identify with on a personal level.
The Telegraph & Argust presents the new Yorkshire marketing campaign: Welcome to Yorkshire.Tourism in Bradford and the rest of Yorkshire is being given a £30 million boost over the next three years.Bookreporter reviews Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife and slips the following arguable boutade:
The cash comes from regional development agency Yorkshire Forward to promote leisure, travel, sports and business tourism throughout the county before and after the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Yorkshire tourism generates £6.3 billion every year and employs more than 250,000 people.
“But we want more,” was the message to more than 1,000 invited guests at the launch of a national and international marketing campaign by Welcome to Yorkshire, which used to be the Yorkshire Tourist Board.
Along with the change of brand there are two new slogans that will be at the heart of advertising and promotional campaigns: You Can Do More in Yorkshire and A Long Weekend in Yorkshire Is Not Long Enough.
A Welcome to Yorkshire TV ad is being launched during Coronation Street tonight while a promotional DVD showing tourist attractions including Salts Mill, the National Media Museum, Cartwright Hall and the Bronte Museum at Haworth will be shown all over the world.
Newspapers, magazines and all of London’s mainline railway stations are being blitzed with the Welcome to Yorkshire message.
“Yorkshire is 1,000 different days out,” said Gary Verity, Welcome to Yorkshire’s chief executive.
Tom Riordan, chief executive of Yorkshire Forward said more needed to be done to urge agencies such as the Civil Aviation Authority, media watchdog Ofcom and the National Lottery to help.
“The CAA needs to help regional airports with more slots. Ofcom needs to recognise that the regional media is really important to Yorkshire. We were all disappointed with the National Lottery’s Park in the Heart decision in Bradford.”(Jim Greenhalf)
Erotic, brutal and very, very dark, A RELIABLE WIFE is the kind of Gothic novel that the Brontë sisters would have written had there been no Victorian sanctions against writing frankly about sex. There are madwomen, and men, aplenty here, all driven to violence and despair thanks to desires thwarted or warped beyond recognition. (Norah Piehl)Molly Ringle describes her latest novel, The Ghost Downstairs, like this in West Seattle Blog:
“It’s like a modern, supernatural Jane Eyre.” That’s what West Seattle author Molly Ringle says about her paperback novel going on sale today, “The Ghost Downstairs,” also described as “a paranormal romance novel depicting an unusual workplace relationship in a house whose spirits refuse to rest.” Ringle’s inspiration: A haunted sorority house where she spent time during college in Oregon, though the novel is set in Seattle.Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth is mentioned in The Guardian's review of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman:
This increasing regard for the leftover bits of a life began in the academy, the consequence of critical theories that pulled attention away from a single reading of a subject's life and on to other versions (the author wasn't so much dead as protean and plural). Over the last 10 years, this multiple way of seeing has migrated into works aimed at a wider audience. In 2001, Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth proved that general readers as well as scholars were interested in the process by which three reclusive parson's daughters were turned into a cultural industry, complete with Haworth tea cosies and fudge. These days, any biography worth its salt will include a final chapter - very often the best thing in the book - that looks at the fate of its subject as it negotiates its own choppy cultural wake. (Kathryn Hughes)Another Austen-related product is Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Los Angeles Times reviews it and we read:
For his part, Grahame-Smith has no plans to build a classic-books-remix career. "I don't know if I want to be the guy who writes 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' and then 'Sense and Sensibility and Vampires,' or 'Wuthering Heights Reloaded,' " he says. (Carolyn Kellogg)The Independent (Ireland) reviews Nick Laird's Glover's Mistake and lists several other novelists and poets, including Emily Brontë:
Tyrone-born Nick Laird is a novelist and poet and there aren't too many of those. Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, GK Chesterton, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, John Updike -- the list is not endless. And in terms of public appeal, usually it's the poetry that takes second place. Only Hardy is equally admired in both disciplines, and he's a special case, having abandoned fiction in late middle age before publishing any verse. (John Boland)Another book review with a Brontë reference is Howard Jacobson's Act of Love reviewed in the St Peterburg Times:
Jacobson's Marius is a showboating Heathcliff wanna-be, a Hamlet manque, an unemployed ex-graduate student. (Diana Roberts)The Berner Zeitung (Switzerland) reviews Cathy Marston's dance piece Sturmhöhe, recently premiered in Bern. According to the reviewer it was quite a triumph (Picture source. Cre
dits: Keystone)Cathy Marston liebt die Literatur. Vor einem Jahr, in ihrer ersten Spielzeit als Ballettchefin in Bern, zeigte sie «Gespenster», das sich auf Henrik Ibsens gleichnamiges Theaterstück bezog. Jetzt, in «Sturmhöhe», beruft sich Marston auf Emily Brontës «Wuthering Heights», den romantischen englischen Schauerroman von 1847.Clarín, Terra Argentina or TV Latina have articles about Jane Eyre 2006 which is going to be broadcast (see our sidebar) on Europa, Europa TV:
Doch diesmal geht die Choreografin völlig anders mit der literarischen Vorlage um. In «Gespenster» zeichnete Marston die Handlung konkret nach, handfest, theatralisch, mitunter auch recht altmodisch. «Sturmhöhe» dagegen wirkt viel abstrakter, bis hin zum Bühnenbild von Jann Messerli. Dieses zeigt weder die vom Sturm zerfetzte Heidelandschaft von Yorkshire noch die Höfe der Gutsbesitzer aus dem Roman, sondern einen kühlen Raum, bestückt nur mit zwei verschiebbaren schwarzen Balken und einer Kiste. Darüber spannt sich ein Geflecht aus weissen Schnüren, das sich bisweilen auf die Bühne senkt. Ein Raum im Nirgendwo, aber offen für Gefühls- und Seelenstürme.
Symbiotisches Paar
Von den vielen Personen aus Emily Brontës verschachteltem Roman bringt Cathy Marston nur die fünf wichtigsten aus der ersten Hälfte des Buches auf die Bühne: Die Gutsbesitzertochter Catherine (Jenny Tattersall), den ihr symbiotisch verbundenen Findling Heathcliff (Gary Marshall), dazu Cathys Bruder Hindley (Erick Guillard), ihren späteren Ehemann Edgar (Chien-Ming Chang) und dessen Schwester Isabella (Hui-Chen Tsai). Sie sind zunächst nicht leicht identifizierbar, weil sich ihre Gefühle zuweilen von ihnen abspalten und auf die übrigen sieben Tanzenden übergehen. So kann sich die Liebe zwischen Heathcliff und Catherine in einem andern Paar spiegeln, oder ein Pas de Deux geht gleich dreifach synchron über die Bühne.
Die Handlung kriegt man nur bruchstückhaft mit. Das frustriert etwas. Bis man dann doch hineingezogen wird ins Gefühlschaos von «Wuthering Heights»: Wie Heathcliff sich schauerlich rächt dafür, dass Catherine aus Vernunftsgründen einen andern heiratet. Wie er Isabella verführt und quält, wie er Hindley die Demütigungen zurückzahlt, die er einst von ihm erfahren hat. Catherine versucht derweil, mit ihrem edlen Edgar zurecht zu kommen, bis sie dann doch wieder Heathcliff verfällt – und stirbt.
All diese Greuel aus dem Roman zeichnet die Choreografin, anders als in «Gespenster», also nicht naturalistisch nach. Sondern setzt sie in eher kühlen modernen Tanz um. Die Frauen eilen auf nackten Füssen über die Bühne, als seien sie Töchter der Luft oder des Sturms.
Bodenverhafteter, aber doch agil bis tollkühn werfen sich die Männer in die Szene. Oder man findet sich zu Paaren und spannungsvollen Dreiergruppen zusammen. Diese zeichnen sich bei Cathy Marston durch transparent verflochtene Bewegungen aus, die sich ohne aufdringliche Posen gleichmässig auf Tänzerinnen und Tänzer verteilen. Die Mitwirkenden des Ballett:Bern, die wohl bei der Entwicklung des Stücks mitgefiebert haben, machen das wunderbar.
Musikalischer Wurf
Und die Musik? Sie ist ein Wurf. Dave Maric, der schon für «Gespenster/Ghosts» (entstanden 2005) den Kompositionsauftrag bekam, lässt in «Sturmhöhe» die Naturgeräusche und gegensätzlichen Stimmungen aus «Wuthering Heights» konkreter aufklingen als das Bühnenbild. Man hört den Regen rauschen, den Sturm brausen, die Türen wackeln. Und das mit Hilfe eines einzigen Instruments: dem Kontrabass. Dessen separat aufgenommene und später gesampelte Klänge (laut Programmheft ein «solo akustisches Bassorchester») bilden die Begleitung, während Mich Gerber links vorn auf der Bühne auch noch live mitspielt. Grossartig. Komponist Maric koordiniert derweil im Hintergrund.
Bei der Uraufführung am Samstagabend klafften Lücken im Zuschauersaal. Der Applaus aber war stürmisch. Zu Recht. (Marlies Strech) (Google translation)
Cuál sería la idea de algo prestigioso en la televisión? Un clásico de la literatura inglesa adaptado por la BBC. Escrita por Charlotte Brönte en 1847, Jane Eyre llega mañana [April, 5] a la pantalla por el canal Europa Europa, desde las 22, con los primeros dos episodios de la miniserie; el domingo 15 se emitirán los otros dos. (Google translation)The Polish magazine Kino contains an article by Alicja Helman about film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.
Most tourist attractions in Keighley and Haworth have held their own despite a difficult year’s business.The Spoof!'s contributor ChrisAshby13 isn't probably one of last year's visitors:
Popular visitor destinations contacted by the Keighley News have reported receiving similar numbers of tourists last year as they did in 2007, defying the economic slump.
Andrew McCarthy, museum director at Haworth’s Brontë Parsonage, said 72,000 people visited it in 2008 compared with 75,000 people the previous year.
He said: “We were quite pleased because in May of last year we were actually 20 per cent down on the previous year.
“We managed to make up a lot of ground.
“For the first time we had an exhibition focusing on Emily Brontë. That ran through the summer and generated a lot of interest.
“We re-open on February 1 with a completely refurbished exhibition area — the first time that’s happened for 30 years.”(Miran Rahman)
A radical new perspective on Emily Bronte's seminal and sole creative work was offered by critics at the London Review of Books' annual assembly last night. Various academics, based at Oxford University, argued that the novel was "unerringly boring, pretentious and overworked," "ridiculously long" and "boring, goddamit, boring."The composer Frédéric Chaslin is interviewed in Levante (Spain) and talks about the origins of his Wuthering Heights operatic project (with libretto by PH Fisher):
"Nothing happens in almost four-hundred pages," Professor Seamen expostulated. "The whole thing's just shite. There's no other way to describe it. Pure, unadulterated shite."
Booker Prize winning author, Ian McEwan, agreed wholeheartedly. "Okay, there's a death somewhere in the middle, but she skirts over it in about a paragraph. Where's the emotion? She's fine with spending five-thousand words describing a fucking house, for Christ's sake, but a death - there's nothing, anywhere. What the hell is wrong with this bitch?"
Bronte is known to have lived a traumatic existence, her less successful brother drinking himself to death before she herself died prematurely; Seamen, who is currently penning a radical new autobiography of the novelist, suggests that, "maybe her brother was on to something," and, "thank god she only had time for one."
The conference ground to an awkward halt.
Desde entonces el tiempo no ha pasado en balde este pianista y compositor además de director. "Lo más importante ha sido la gran evolución que se ha producido en mi lenguaje compositivo". El cambio ha venido sobre todo motivado por la meditación sobre el contacto del artista con el público: "Al cabo de veinte años de escribir música para un público muy reducido de especialistas en lo que llamamos la música contemporánea, un buen día me levanté por la mañana con la consciencia de que aquella no era la música que yo quería escribir, ni la que quería escuchar, ni por supuesto la que quería escuchar el público". El resultado más prominente de ese viraje ha sido la ópera Cumbres borrascosas, compuesta entre 2007 y 2008, y grabada en disco en el Palau de les Arts el pasado septiembre. "Es una música romántica, con influencias pop". (A.B.M.) (Google translation)The publication of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith suggests new titles to the Toronto Star:
An author named Seth Grahame-Smith publishes a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Excellent news. Maybe I can finally get someone to take a look at my manuscripts for The Sun Also Rises on Your Festering Innards, The Wuthering Heights of Bloodsucking and Great Expectations of Great Decapitations. Oh, and Werewolves ate Jane Eyre. You have no idea how I've suffered for my unrecognized art. (Malene Arpe)The New York Times talks about a sort of Algonquin Round Table reenactment with the presence of, among others, Jamaica Kincaid who:
Ms. Kincaid, who grew up idolizing Charlotte Brontë, told the students: “The writers I read were all dead. I didn’t know people seriously kept writing in the 20th century.” (Amanda M. Fairbanks)A very curious confusion (a short-circuit of plainness quotes) occurs in this chronicle of a trip to China in The Star (Malaysia):
It was only during the tour that we really come to know her as a person and what she had in store for us. It was then, too, that I realised the truth of what Garth Dalmain (in Jane Eyre) said: “Plainness is not ugliness ... when (she) rose to speak, (her) face changed ... the beauty of (her) soul shone through ...” (Norma Alias)The quote comes Florence L. Barclay's The Rosary (1909).
"She resembles a tragically rebellious heroine flung into the present like a shivering ghost of a Bronte sister, far too worldly-wise for such a young slip of a girl." (Paul Lester)Also in the The Observer we notice in this review of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon the report on the appearances of W.M. Thackeray in film. Both of them are in Brontë biopics:
On top of several versions of Vanity Fair, Thackeray has had three cinematic outings, two minor, one major. The first occurs in the 1946 Brontë sisters biopic Devotion, as Thackeray (Sidney Greenstreet) escorts Charlotte Brontë (Olivia de Havilland) around literary London. Approaching a chop house, they pass a spade-bearded gentleman, and the following immortal exchange ensues: "Morning, Dickens" - "Morning, Thackeray." The second is to be found in André Téchiné's Les Soeurs Brontë (1979) where Charlotte (Marie-France Pisier) on her triumphant visit to London is escorted by Thackeray, who is played - in his only movie appearance so far that I know of - by the great semiotician Roland Barthes. As someone remarked at the time, this was rather like Michael Winner persuading FR Leavis to play Flaubert in a biopic of the Goncourt brothers. (Philip French)Oti Rodríguez Marchante reviews Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano in ABC (Spain) and mentions the Brontës:
Y cuando el granjero tosco y áspero que interpreta Harvey Keitel llega a un peculiar pacto con la mujer a cambio de rescatar el piano y dejar que lo toque, el nervio de la trama adquiere tonalidades y ecos que recuerdan a la obra de H D Lawrence «El amante de Lady Chatterley», en una hermosa confusión con ese aroma melancólico de las Brönte (sic). (Google translation)L'Express (France) devotes an article to Stephenie Meyer's saga:
Certes, Bella est une gamine cultivée, incollable sur Macbeth, inconditionnelle de Jane Austen et des soeurs Brontë, reconnaissant immédiatement le Clair de lune de Debussy (Edward épaté), ne s'intéressant ni aux fringues ni aux soirées entre filles. (Delphine Peras) (Google translation)Word Wise is reading Jane Eyre and selects several of his favourite words, For the Love of Paper posts some pictures of a recent production of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre in Auckland, New Zealand
A miniature photograph of the father of the three most famous author sisters in English literature – Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte – should return to the place he made his home.We know two things for sure: 1) that any help will be appreciated and 2) that the portrait would look gorgeous anywhere in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Andrew McCarthy, director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, would like to see the framed picture of the Rev Patrick Bronte back in the Parsonage, now a world-famous museum to the family.
The oval-shaped sepia image is being sold by auctioneers Ewbank Clarke Gammon Wellers on June 24, and they expect it to fetch up to £600.
The lot also includes the original Sotheby’s sale catalogue, now dog-eared, which includes details of the miniature when it was first sold in 1898. Global interest could push up the price of the picture and catalogue, which was found at a Midlands antique fair hidden in an old box of papers.
Mr McCarthy said: “Later this week we will be sitting down to see how we should approach the sale – this is where the photograph belongs.
“It’s a lovely item which would enhance the museum, and we would like to acquire it, and support from the public would be appreciated.
“It is not a new image – copies are known to exist – but it is a new item on the market, and we will be reviewing our financial position.”
He stressed that with the exposure it would get in the media, the price could be inflated beyond the estimate.
The museum was the world custodian of Bronte material, he said, but in reality as a small organisation it was not possible to acquire everything without generous support, from the Bronte Society and the public.
The Brontes’ father was an enlighted and forward-thinking man who believed in equality of education.
The photograph was once proudly displayed alongside other Bronte mementoes in the Museum of Bronte Relics housed in the Temperance tea rooms in Haworth.
It was eventually auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1898 when the museum closed and sold everything off.
The Bronte Society was set up in 1893 and opened its first museum in the upper floor of the Yorkshire Penny Bank, now Haworth Tourist Information Centre.
The society acquired the Parsonage in 1928, thanks to the generosity of Sir James Roberts, a Haworth man and member of the society.
Patrick Bronte died in 1861, aged 84, outliving his wife and all his children.
Anyone interested in supporting any bid by the Bronte Society should contact the museum on (01535) 642323. (Clive White) (our bold)
But in the spring of 2008, Grahame-Smith received a phone call from his editor, Jason Rekulak. Already keen on the idea of a literary remix, Rekulak had been compiling lists with pop-cultural trends on one side and classic works of literature on the other. Wuthering Heights and Werewolves was considered and rejected. As was War and Peace and Pirates.Incidentally, Flickr user Paxton Holley has created and written a synopsis for quite a different version of Jane Eyre. It is hilarious.
“Jason called me up excitedly, which he almost never does, and said: ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’. I started to laugh and instantly knew how fun it would be to write these ultra-violent, ultra-gratuitous scenes of gore and mayhem in the style of Jane Austen. (Oliver Good)
3. Wuthering Heights: This two-part dramatisation of the novel that topped a 2007 British poll of greatest love stories widens the scope of the original to include the key characters’ heirs. Cape Wrath’s Tom Hardy stars as Heathcliffe [sic].Talking about screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights: Movieline interviews - on video - Ed Westwick and asks him about his forthcoming role as Heathcliff. He says again that it is his mother's favourite book but goes a bit further and also talks about reading it for school and Yorkshire accents.
TV One, 8.30pm Sunday
Love is complicated: just ask the Brontës. Emily discovers passion with her father's curate in DENISE GIARDINA's Emily's Ghost: A Novel of the Brontë Sisters (Norton, July 27). (Barbara Hoffert)A senior-year student at The Huntsville Times:
Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" made my list simply because a friend suggested I would enjoy it.And there's of course room as well for the sexist, ignorant kind of reading choices, as seen on Wicked Local Norwood:
Girls wanting more than Trixie Belden and Cherry Ames moved quickly to the deeper and more sophisticated romances of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters. (Charlotte Canelli)We can almost hear how that sentence would have gone on: '... before moving on to romance queens Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steel'. *sigh*
2. In the Kitchen, by Monica Ali. The turbulent life in the kitchen of London’s Imperial Hotel, overseen by a culinary version of Heathcliff. A great, long overdue idea for a novel that may just have perfect timing. Nothing says cocooning like cooking, and every restaurant kitchen is chock full of combustible personality types. Mix well and stir. (June) (Scott Eyman)Culinary version of Heathcliff? It honestly defies our imagination.
She will focus her lecture on three women — Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte and Florence Nightingale. Carlson has done research on original source documents, including letters, at the British Museum and British Library in London.Back on the other side of the Atlantic, The Scotsman reviews Tamasha's Wuthering Heights briefly:
There was plenty of material for her to study. In those pre-telephone and pre-Internet days, letters were the primary form of communication. “Back then, in London, the letters would come four or five times a day,” Carlson said.Shelley, Bronte and Nightingale all show clear signs of suicidal depression, she said. [...]
Bronte was author of the beloved classic “Jane Eyre,” as well as other novels. “She wrote the novel ‘Villette’ while almost paralyzed by depression,” Carlson said, noting that this is reflected in the book’s “nitty-gritty” approach to life and downbeat ending. [...]
Despite their suicidal depression, Shelley, Bronte and Nightingale all died from natural causes. Shelley died at 53 from a brain tumor, and Bronte at 38 from complications of pregnancy. Nightingale died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 90. (Nikki Patrick)
If you want evidence that it's not only political and economic power that can move sharply from west to east, though, then you could do much worse than race to the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, where Tamasha Theatre Company and Oldham Coliseum are presenting their no-holds-barred Bollywood musical version of Wuthering Heights, set not on a blasted heath in Yorkshire, but in the sun-parched deserts of Rajasthan. (Joyce McMillan)And so does The Herald, which gives three stars to this production:
Emily Bronte's windswept melodrama concerning the doomed romance between swarthy urchin Heathcliff and independent woman Cathy was a high-end Mills and Boon of its day. Similarly, there are few artforms more unashamedly populist than Bollywood. Which makes both parties ripe for reinvention in Anglo-Asian company Tamasha's latest foray into big-stage spectacle, here in co-production with Oldham Coliseum and the Lyric, Hammersmith.As usual, we beg to differ with the 'high-end Mills and Boon of its day'. We are afraid that the writer hasn't even looked at any review of the time. That is, unless Mills and Boon books these days are being described as 'rude', 'disagreeable', 'coarse', 'rugged', 'shocking', 'crude' or, indeed, 'original' and 'powerful'.
Cathy becomes headstrong merchant's daughter Shakuntala, who falls for street kid turned self-made man Krishan, who, following Cathy's death, wanders away his pain for years, outcast in the desert. But Kristine Landon-Smith's production of Deepak Verma's text, with music and lyrics by Felix Cross and Sheema Mukherjee, is an anodyne affair, with little heat and dust on offer.
The vivid colour co-ordination of neatly-pressed emerald shirts and scarlet saris may flow splendidly between a handsome cast, but there's little life beyond. Only Youkti Patel and Pushpinder Chani's bright-eyed duets in any way charm. Musically, things really fall down. Despite a welter of top-notch musicians, the recorded score sounds like a karaoke backing track with English folk-air whimsy. The cast's resultant miming may be appropriate to the heightened world of film, but here resembles a 1980s edition of Top of the Pops. Bronte and Bollywood should have been a fiery match. This is pure saccharine, all sugar and very little spice. (Neil Cooper)
Mrs Gaskell lived at Plymouth Grove for 15 years, and entertained Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte and John Ruskin there.And either they know something no one else knows or they are wrong, as Emily Brontë never even met Elizabeth Gaskell. She was dead by the time her sister Charlotte Brontë was introduced to Elizabeth Gaskell and became friends with her and stayed in the house.
Q: Is any classic immediately improved by the presence of zombies?USA Today has an article on Joe Queenan's Closing Time. A memoir. As before, his father is mentioned:
A: I think you have to be careful not to overdo it. "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" works because "Pride and Prejudice" is one of those books that's so ingrained in our consciousness. Everybody has read it or is familiar with its existence. But I don't know that we need "Wuthering Heights Reloaded" or "War and Peace and More War." (Connie Ogle)
His dad was a ninth-grade dropout who had "a touch of the poet" and read Dickens, Fitzgerald and the Brontës (Bob Minzesheimer)The Deagol Brothers reveal the following project to Bostonist:
We're working on several other screenplays; one's sort of a Peter Greenaway inspired take on the lives of the Bronte sisters. . . (Leor Galil)EDIT: We read on FilmFreak more about this project:
What is next for each of you?A couple of blogs: Die neuen Glaswegians reviews Tamasha's Wuthering Heights in German. And Paulas bokblog posts in Swedish about Agnes Grey.
Eric: We are currently writing a screenplay loosely based on the lives of the Bronte sisters, an action script titled “Thermal Shock” about a homicidal actor, and a sci-fi septology that spans eons. (...)
Deagol brothers: The current screenplay we’re working on is less based on the Brontes and more inspired by them. MAKE-OUT with VIOLENCE is from a distinctly male perspective so we all felt the need to work on something more girl-oriented. It’ll be like a Peter Greenaway movie crossed with The Godfather but instead of guns and the mafia it’ll be about women and the creative process. It’s sort of hard to describe in its current form. We’ve got some other things we’re working on but until we secure any type of funding they’re just dreams. (oxfordfilmfreak)
Havelka also uses a video sequence to turn a romantic duet by Hoffmann and his second love, Antonia, into a witty take on Wuthering Heights. (Frank Kuznik)CNN interviews Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:
CNN: And then came the imitatorsFunny he should mention Emily Brontë and werewolves because we have a) Wuthering Bites coming out at the end of the summer and about vampires (with a very Twilight-y cover) and b) Jane Slayre coming out in a couple of weeks and featuring many creatures, including werewolves.
Grahame-Smith: There have been so many attempts at mash-ups in the past year.
People don't seem to understand that the mash-up isn't arbitrary. We're not putting folded pieces of paper into two hats and then pulling out Emily Bronte with one hand and werewolves with the other. It has to work on both a superficial, fun level, and it has to work on a thematic level and for the characters.
In PPZ, the book is about repression and the role of women in Jane Austen's regency era, so I'm taking those same themes and giving them scope. The repression of women becomes "women aren't the best zombie slayers; men are." Or, the class system that's in the original book is portrayed through, "your training isn't as good as my training in the deadly arts." (Breeanna Hare)
Alex is tall, dark, and broodingly handsome, but with a 500-watt smile (eye-candy alert to Jane Eyre fans and Goth girls!). (Naomi Wise)Because, you know, that's how Charlotte Brontë described Mr Rochester, with special emphasis on the '500-watt smile'. Read the novel again if you don't remember that bit!
"My wife [the writer Lucasta Miller] works a lot on the Bronte sisters," Bostridge says, "and Emily Bronte is always being presented as this sort of naïve, possessed genius, in a parallel way to Schubert being presented as, you know, simple little Franzi. But they're both very sophisticated, deeply intellectually interested artists." (David Weininger)The Buckingham Advertiser announces the upcoming Northern Ballet Theatre revival of Schönberg & Nixon's Wuthering Heights:
AS part of its 40th anniversary programme, Northern Ballet Theatre returns to Milton Keynes Theatre 5 – 9 May with Wuthering Heights, a creative collaboration between composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and NBT Artistic Director David Nixon, inspired by Emily Bronte's remarkable novel of 1847.The Time Magazine talks with Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies about the origins of the project:
The ballet was created in 2002 when Claude-Michel Schönberg, known throughout the musical theatre world for his West End hits Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Martin Guerre, made contact with David Nixon within weeks of his arrival at NBT. A productive meeting of minds left David "in no doubt that a ballet based on Emily Brontë's passionate love story, would be a perfect vehicle for Northern Ballet Theatre" and he set about planning his first complete new work for NBT.
Known throughout the world as one of the greatest love stories, the ballet focuses on the powerful bond that grows between Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff; their lives inexorably linked for eternity in a darkly haunting tale, as bleak and beautiful as the Yorkshire moors that surround them.
Designer Ali Allen, who created her first ballet designs for NBT's Madame Butterfly, captures the windswept majesty of Yorkshire's moorland; a perfect contrast for David Nixon's striking costume designs of the period. Lighting designer David Grill completes the creative team, cleverly conveying a landscape fashioned by the relentless forces of nature.
During rehearsals for the original production in 2002, Claude-Michel Schönberg and then NBT Principal Artist, Charlotte Talbot, met and later married. Charlotte, who created the role of Cathy, will return to NBT to take Company rehearsals of the production. A love story within a love story.
Tell me where the idea to add zombies to Pride and Prejudice came from. Was there a Eureka moment?Pajiba, Kiss the Librarian (in Spanish) and Infamous Lucifer post about Jane Eyre. Books We Love (Or Not) publishes an academic essay about Jane Eyre and its Deviations from the Modern Romance Novel. Books of Jeanne talks about Wuthering Heights. A Goddess of Divine Inspiration finds inspiration (sorry for that) in Jane Eyre in this picture uploaded to flickr. Finally Eric Ruijssenaars publishes new historical postcards of the Rue d'Isabelle on the Brussels Brontë Blog .
Actually the credit for this belongs to my editor, Jason Rekulak. He had had this sort of long-gestating idea of doing some kind of mashup, he called it. He didn't know what it was, he just knew there was something to it. He had these lists, and on one side he had a column of War and Peace and Crime and Punishment and Wuthering Heights and whatever public domain classic literature you can think of. And on the other side he would have these phenomena like werewolves and pirates and zombies and vampires. He called me one day, out of the blue, very excitedly, and he said, all I have is this title, and I can't stop thinking about this title. And he said: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. For whatever reason, it just struck me as the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard. (Lev Grossman)
Japan seem to be besotted with the three Brontë sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It’s a fascination that goes beyond reading and imagining. A disproportionately high number of Japanese women visit the Brontë's home village of Haworth in the north of England each year, a pilgrimage that has recently been turned into the subject of a novel by Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mick Jackson, “Yuki Chan in Bronte Country.”The Sunday Express publishes a short story by Louise Doughty imagining what Patrick Brontë would write to Charlotte, telling her not to marry. Read it in A Letter From My Father:
Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre” may have bewitched generations of Japanese readers, but Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” (rendered as “Arashigaoka” in Japanese) arguably stands as the most influential novel in Japan written by a non-Japanese woman. It inspired a 1988 Japanese film adaptation, which replaces the wild Yorkshire moors with a rocky Japanese volcano, but has also had a profound influence on some of the country’s most important 20th-century women writers, such as Yuko Tsushima and Taeko Kono.
Lucy North, translator of Kono’s collection of stories, “Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories,” says Kono was fascinated by Emily and the other Brontë sisters. The pent-up longing, anger and violence in their writing is reflected in the sexually transgressive desires of Kono’s female protagonists. The Japanese author even wrote a screenplay of “Wuthering Heights,” which has been used in several theater productions, and she made the Haworth pilgrimage in 1985 with fellow writer Taeko Tomioka. A year later, the two published a travelogue, “Arashigaoka Futari-tabi” (“Wuthering Heights, Travelled Together”), based on their experiences. (Read more) (Damian Flanagan)
The letter was waiting for me when I returned from London. It was in the parlour, propped up on the bow-legged table that stands against the wall. My father knows I go there first when I return from one of my trips.In the same newspaper there is a comment on the recent Brontë Society crisis and the role of Judi Dench in the Society:
The envelope had nothing on it but my name, Charlotte, in my father’s neat and sloping hand.
My father was probably in his study, and I had been away a month. I knew if he was greeting me with a letter, he must have something to say that he would find difficult or hurtful – most likely, both. t had been a tiring journey home: the overnight train from London to Leeds, then a long wait for the smaller train to Keighley, and a delay in the carrier cart that met the train, each stage of my journey a little less grand than the last. Four other passengers dismounted with me and awaited the cart up the hill to Haworth – they all knew me as the Parson’s daughter. I sat at the front of the cart, my shawl wrapped tightly round my shoulders. (Read more)
Dame Judi Dench will be president in name only of the crisis-plagued Brontë Society and has apologised in advance to its members for leading from the rear.The Sydney Morning Herald reviews the film Me Before You:
The 81-year-old actress, who played the character M in eight Bond blockbusters, is unlikely to be directly involved in society activities for years because of film and stage commitments, it has been revealed. (Mark Branagan)
It should be clear from this account that the film isn't to be taken as a realistic study of disability. The powerful yet wounded aristocrat is a stock figure of romance, going back to Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre (and reappearing, for that matter, in Fifty Shades of Grey, where the hero's sadistic compulsions are supposed to stem from damage of another kind). What this offers the genre is a way of managing the power dynamic between the couple: Will has the upper hand economically and socially, but on the physical level Lou remains in control. (Jake Wilson)
"Charlotte Brontë," by Claire Harman, is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time.The Hindu reviews Elegible by Curtis Sittenfeld:
After all, we all have our own ideas about these characters we love and retellings, it would seem, are fleshed out versions of the what-ifs we ask ourselves once a good book ends. What if Elizabeth had to fight zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith); what if Jane Eyre had a particularly murderous past (Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye); and in the case of Eligible, what if the Bennet family lived and loved in modern-day Cincinnati? (Swati Daftouar)Dawn (Pakistan) reviews The Rose Within by Sana Pirzada:
What saves the novel from becoming pastiche or parody are the undoubtedly sincere intentions of its writer, who pays homage to the Gothic tradition by honouring those elements of it that have persisted over the course of numerous decades. Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, the Brontë sisters, and even Jane Austen (whose delightful Northanger Abbey is a parody of Radcliffe’s work) were all influenced by this historic tradition that, as I noted earlier, continues to thrill and delight to the present day. (Nady Chishty-Mujahid)Sierra Vista Herald adds zombies everywhere:
Just think of how many romantic dramas could be improved by adding zombies. How about “Wuthering Heights”? In the weird scene in which the tortured and heartbroken Heathcliff breaks into the house where his beloved Cathy lies in a casket. (Chris Zimmerman)Onirik (France) reviews Reader, I Married Him, edited by Tracy Chevalier:
Les nouvelles sont de qualité variable, chaque auteur a choisi en effet des thématiques bien différentes. Dans Le mariage de ma mère, par exemple, de Tessa Hadley, une jeune femme se souvient du mariage non conventionnel de sa mère, dans les années 1970 et de sa fascination pour les peintres préraphaélites. Surprenant et décalé !La Repubblica (Italy) lists some titles included in the 2016 Maturità essays:
Dans la nouvelle rédigée par Tracy Chevalier, Dorset gap, qui s’apparente à une réécriture moderne, beaucoup d’humour et de clins d’oeils pour le lecteur amoureux de l’oeuvre originelle. Certaines nouvelles proposent des points de vue d’autres personnages, comme dans Grace Poole, son témoignage d’Helen Dunmore, ou dans Lecteur, elle m’a épousé, de Sally Vickers, l’intéressant point de vue de Rochester.
C’est un véritable plaisir de découvrir ces petites histoires sur une oeuvre qu’on a tant aimée, cela plaira sans aucun doute à tous les amateurs de Jane Eyre. Un bémol, cependant, pas de traduction française de prévue, information confirmée par Tracy Chevalier elle-même, qui a évoqué une traduction prévue en italien. Avis aux amateurs ! (Claire) (Translation)
Molly Cavalaglio, ad esempio, parte dall'interpretazioni dei sogni di Freud collegandolo con Italo Svevo e la sua Coscienza di Zeno, la Belle Epoque, Emily Brontë e García Márquez. (Giovanni Cedrone) (Translation)Zezee with Books posts about Jane Eyre; Carpe Diem Emmie reviews the Northern Ballet performances of Jane Eyre; Nici's Buchecke (in German) posts about a recent German Jane Eyre audiobook.
No stranger to paranormal fiction, Erwin (To Hell with Love; Naughty or Nice) raises the bar for the next generation of "monster classics." Jane is orphaned and raised by vampires, sent off to a boarding school (that breeds zombies for domestic help), and loses her love to a lunatic werewolf. It’s a ghastly new spin on the familiar, page-turning classic Jane Eyre. Poignant and charming, Jane could give Buffy a run for her money. Unlike Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel but disjointed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (the zombies were an awkward insertion), Erwin seems to be channeling Brontë, and the monsters are a seamless addition to the text. The story takes an unexpected turn toward the end, and this keeps readers entranced.Jeannette Winterson, who is reported to be writing a BBC drama on the lives of the Brontë sisters, is interviewed in The Times. She talks about her first novel, Oranges are not the Only Fruit:
Verdict: Similar to Sharon Shinn’s Jenna Starborn, Erwin’s gripping revision of a well-loved classic is enthusiastically recommended for all. (Jennifer Anderson)
Her favourite book was Jane Eyre, except for the ending, so she fixed that. When she read it to me, she turned the pages and continued in the same Brontë narrative style, so that I believed for a long time that Jane had married St John Rivers and gone to be a missionary.The Edinburgh Guide reviews the Northern Ballet Theatre's Wuthering Heights production:
Northern Ballet Theatre's reputation has grown immeasurably since David Nixon took over as Artistic Director in 2001. Since then he has created and choreographed nine full-length ballets for the company and in December last year won an OBE for services to dance.The Calgary Herald remembers when Jude Law appeared as Rochester in a Saturday Night Live sketch in 2004:
The current programme, Wuthering Heights, is a tour de force. Working in collaboration with the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg (the celebrated composer of Les Miserables music, this is his first ballet score) they have created a work that incorporates all the turbulence and passion of this classic love story.
Right from the very beginning of the show's two acts, sombre music sets the tone of Heathcliff's anguish as he dances frenetically on the heath, recalling his youth when he and Cathy were once united in joy.
There are two dancers for Heathcliff and two for Cathy to portray their youth and subsequent maturity.
In this performance, Kenneth Tindall played the 'older' Heathcliffe, whilst Ashley Dixon was the 'younger'. Julie Charlet was the 'older' Cathy with Michela Paolacci as the 'younger' version.
The dancers, coupled with Nixon's fabulous choregraphy and Schonberg's music, were fantastic. In perfect synchronisation, they are throughly engaging throughout in the turbulent emotions involved in the journey of this doomed love affair which concludes on a beautiful note, with the young Heathcliff and Cathy united on the moor, capturing snow flakes.
The settings were simple, yet effective. The costumes were of the period and flowed elegantly. The dancing and acting of the troupe was excellent.
Choreographically and musically this is a great interpretation of Emily Bronte's story. (Barbara Bryan)
[A]nd appearing as a randy Mr. Rochester in a parody of Jane Eyre opposite Rachel Dratch. (Alex Strachan)Sometimes, some critics miss absolutely the point. A new Spanish translation of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm is reviewed by El Confidencial (Spain) and the reviewer is convinced of the following:
Si es usted devoto lector de Cumbres borrascosas -o cualquier otro relato paramero y meteorológico-, Lejos del mundanal ruido o la obra de David Herbert Lawrence, mejor no siga leyendo. Porque, en esta divertida novela, Stella Gibbons emprende la cervantina tarea de aniquilar a la novelística romántica y bucólica, por medio de una ácida parodia y, ni la familia Brönte (sic), ni Thomas Hardy, ni el autor de Hijos y amantes -éste por motivos diferentes, su supuesta misoginia-, entre muchos otros, salen bien parados. (Nuño Vallés) (Google translation)We are devoted readers of Wuthering Heights and frankly we love Cold Comfort Farm. By the way it's not so difficult to check where the umlaut lies in Brontë.
"Codeseda non é Yorkshire (nin falta que lle fai), nin as irmás Porto Mato son as irmás Brönte (sic again). Andrea, Lara, Marcela: hoxe quero desexarvos de todo corazón sorte na vida e na arte, e expresarvos o meu apoio, porque para todos nós, vós formades parte do máis valioso que temos: o futuro da cultura galega", engadiu o conselleiro de Cultura e Turismo[, Roberto Varela]. (Google translation)EDIT: (15/03/2010) El Correo Gallego also talks about these Galician Brontë sisters.
«L'hypocondrie a été au XIXe siècle en Angleterre un symbole d'hypersensibilité», explique M. Dillon en entrevue de Londres. «Emily Brontë y faisait souvent référence. D'un point de vue plus contemporain, l'hypocondrie est une exacerbation de la conscience de soi. Il y a un parallèle évident avec les écrivains, qui doivent écouter leur propre créativité intérieure, être centrés sur eux-mêmes pour faire avancer leur oeuvre.» (Mathieu Perreault) (Google translation)Millefeuille reviews Joanna Newsom's latest album Have one on Me:
Le dernier, plus sombre, laisse sonner un souffle intime autour des morceaux, jusqu'au magnifique dernier, Does Not Suffice, dans une atmosphère qui nous évoque les Hauts de Hurlevents d'Emily Brönte (sic 3), inspiration qui fut celle de Kate Bush sur Wuthering heights. (Vincent B.) (Google translation)The Mexican writer Margo Glantz chooses the Brontës as one of her inspirations in Mundo52. Loula, Il était une fois... joins Lego's Brontë Sisters Challenge (in French), Mad Bibliophile reviews The Professor and Our Mutual Read Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (a novel that according to Página 12 (Argentina) was
La primera novela en la que una mujer se emancipa del yugo marital es la de Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, publicada en 1848. (Alicia Plante) (Google translation)Artsy Psycho-babble briefly posts about Jane Eyre 2006. Canarias al Día (Spain) or Gazzetta del Sud (Italy) report the reading of texts by Emily Brontë in the recent celebrations of the International Women's Day.
The Spenborough Guardian has an article about a housing project in Roberttown, Kirklees, which can be a threat to several Brontë places:ROBERTTOWN residents have vowed to fight the council's proposals to build 2,300 new houses in the village - and have demanded it is designated as a conservation area.The Washington Post reviews Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and quotes Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn:
They are angry at the plans which, if approved, would double the size of the historic village - which was a major part of the route of the Luddite march of 1812.
Bicentenary celebrations are planned in three years' time and the villagers are anxious to preserve what they call an "incredibly important historic site" which also has major Bronte connections.
Barbara Lumb, of Hightown, told Tuesday's Roberttown Residents' Committee meeting that option two of the Local Development Framework (LDF) would destroy Roberttown and neighbouring Hartshead's historical importance.
She said: "This area comprises four areas of ancient woodland, an Anglican settlement, the ruins of Hartshead Hall which was the medieval manor house of the Flemming family and it houses the school where Charlotte Bronte was a pupil and then a teacher.
"It also contains the meeting ground and the first part of the route the Luddites took when they attacked Cartwright's Mill in 1812, it features the Star Inn where the wounded Luddites were taken and the whole site borders an incredibly important historic site in Kirklees Hall where Robin's Hood grave is.
"This area houses some of Spen's most important history and is a place of pilgrimage for those interested in Luddite history and the Brontes.
"It should be designated a conservation area as a locally and national valued landscape and this should be achieved now and not in a later LDF assessment when it may be too late."
Mrs Lumb and commitee chairman Colin Smith, said they were planning to join forces with Keep Gomersal Green to form a bigger action group.
She added: "It is important that we all stick together and fight this. We are all working towards the same goal."
Keep Gomersal Green member Richard Sykes said they had organised a public meeting on Tuesday to discuss how to move forward.
He said: "One of the issues we brought up at our first meeting at Gomersal Public Hall was that this LDF consultation wasn't very well publicised.
"There were no consultation sessions held in Gomersal at all and by the time we found out about it there were only a few days left to express our opinions.
"Kirklees did extend the consultation period for another fortnight to give more people a chance to have their say and set up the session at the public hall, but it wasn't advertised on the council website like all the others had been and they only held it between 1pm and 4pm so a lot of people were working and couldn't go.
"We are still going round door to door with the letters of objection and there are still lots of people who don't know anything about the plans for housing in the Spen Valley over the next few years. Whatever we do, we need to act fast."
So far, 500 letters of objection have been signed by folk living in and around Gomersal.
The public meeting for Keep Gomersal Green will be held at Gomersal Cricket Club at 7.30pm. (Olivia Midgley)
Now, a musical interlude. First Paul Morrissey, according to Beyond Chron:Sure, Charlotte Bronte has also received some of this dubious adulation -- check out Sharon Shinn's 'Jenna Starborn,' a.k.a. 'Jane Eyre' on a remote, futuristic planet -- but Bronte's works, and those of other beloved authors, haven't been morphed and mutated to half the extent that Austen's have. (Monica Hesse)
Reading fans’ posts on any of the numerous websites devoted to him, one finds speculation about the artist’s past lives. Some believe that Morrissey has been a famous person in previous incarnations. Some fans believe he was Oscar Wilde, others have proposed that he was one of the Bronte sisters. (Wallie Mason)Faithful readers of BrontëBlog will remember this old post where Morrissey was compared to Emily Brontë.
Each song is carefully formed and worthy, heralding Bat For Lashes as the new standard-bearer for mystical, romantic art-rock. Crack open a Bronte novel and plug in the headphones. (George Lang)Including the following in the musical category is probably quite adventurous. But here it is: South Yorkshire The Star publishes an article about the drag "star" Tia-Anna:
Tia-Anna performs at the Climax Night at Sheffield University tonight. He's also on YouTube singing Wuthering Heights in the style of Kate Bush. (...)We don't know if we can apply Oscar Wilde's saying "If there is anything in the world more annoying than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you” to this Washington Post article about High School Proms:
But Tia-Anna, presently unemployed and living at Park Hill, said: "It's a really professionally shot video but it is a bit weird. I'm not particularly good at Kate Bush songs and I'm trying to distance myself from it."
Imagine if parents invested their $2.7 billion per year in arts education, or in school libraries, or even in over-the-top graduation parties. At least graduation has symbolic resonance. Prom is graduation's vapid sibling. The Bramwell (sic)Bronte. The Billy Baldwin. (John Green)So sad that even when they are talking (badly) about you, they spell your name wrong. Poor Branwell.
However, [Matt] Dittrich added that the presence of sun, while serving as an end to the depression of winter, can actually be a cause for a different type of depression when it is combined with doing homework. “I noticed that people who were reading Wuthering Heights outside in the sun hated it, but the people who waited until nighttime when it was dark and spooky out loved it,” he said. (Sara Levy)The author Daniel Wallace tells the following story to GoTriad. It's not much, we know...but a Brontë reference as told by the author of Big Fish has to be mentioned
Inside, I was completely devastated, but I was very kind to her and told her what a great thing it was. But that night, I took all my writing gear, my computer, all of the pages that I had ever written, and put them out on a curb because I knew it was time for another career, that there's no way there would be two novelists in one family. We're not the Brontës.The Boulder County's Weekly has a very funny (at least when you read it, not so much when you think about it) article by Dale Bridges which talks about working for a corporate bookstore:
At first, I thought stocking shelves would be an interesting exercise. I would get the opportunity to see firsthand what types of booksAnd finally, on the blogosphere today: Luetut 2006-2009 talks about Villette (in Finnish), VioletReads reviews Jane Eyre, Or False Glitter seems to be another victim of Wuthering Heights romantic (not capital R) syndrome. After reading it, she knows it was not that kind of romance. A brief article about the novel can be read on Suite101.
people were reading and adjust my writing accordingly. I imagined customers crowded in the Classics section fighting over Faulkner and Joyce. I imagined myself saying, “Settle down, folks. There are enough copies of Wuthering Heights for everyone.” But that’s not quite how it went.
No one ever purchased books from the Classics section. The Classics section might just as well have been the Herpes section.
On the other hand, it was like rush-hour traffic in the Self-Help section. People were climbing over each other for titles like, Unlock the Secrets of You and Get Rich and Smell Better in 10 Easy Steps. I wittily renamed it the Self-Hell section.
Most contemporary Christians, though, consider Claudia a hero, and female artists especially have been intrigued by her legend. Charlotte Bronte, best known for her novel "Jane Eyre," penned "Pilate's Wife's Dream," a poem that imagines Claudia as an overwrought seer who envisions a "dreadful doom for Pilate." (Daniel Burke)The poem can be read here.
"Works of art are sometimes unjustly forgotten, but no work of art is unjustly remembered." Auden's line may once have been a handy rule of thumb, but he reckoned without the AQA, the board responsible for 42 per cent of English literature A levels. There can be only two excuses for requiring anyone to study the drab, whining, incompetent poetry of Anne Bronte: utter lack of critical discrimination or overactive feminist historicism. It is not enough that poetry be interesting in some anthropological sense, or merely express strong emotions. Unless we are deliberately choosing bad poems to foster discrimination, every poem we teach must be superb. It's not as if there's a shortage.(...)Needless to say, we don't agree with the statement that Anne Brontë's poetry was incompetent. We probably suffer from lack of critical discrimination but we have something better, the ability to capture a fleeting glimpse of the poet's soul. Something which transpires in many of the poems of Anne and in some of Charlotte's.
It is no good whingeing from the sidelines, and I imagine that the AQA headquarters is secured from rash assault. The awful proliferation of exams and league tables may at last be in reverse, and it may not be too late to put the Brontes back in the grave where, as poets, all bar Emily belong.
The £30m being invested in promoting tourism across the county over the next three years by the organisation and Yorkshire Forward is a bold counter-recession strategy, intended to bolster confidence in all aspects of tourism, especially what’s known as ‘front-line hospitality’. (...)The Haworth parking problems are also mentioned in this article in Keighley News:
The promotional campaign’s two slogans – You Can Do More In Yorkshire, and A Long Weekend In Yorkshire Is Not Enough – should drive the message home on television commercials throughout the country.
But over and above the advertising campaigns on radio, television, in cinemas, at mainline London railway stations (more than 150 trains travel between Yorkshire destinations and the capital daily), in newspapers, magazines and on the internet, there are other opportunities for companies. (...)
Bradford people involved in what’s called “front-line hospitality” will be glad to know that the attractive and punchy promotional dvd going round the world features Cartwright Hall, the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth, Salts Mill and the National Media Museum. (Jim Greenhalf)
Robin Jackson told the Bronte Country Partnership his association would again approach Bradford Council about the parking situation in Haworth.And another local piece of news published in The Telegraph & Argus:
He said coach tour companies were still keen on bringing groups of tourists to the village but warned a lack of suitable parking for such vehicles remained a big problem. “If we want this to be dealt with we need to do something. It’s a serious issue,” he said. (Miran Rahman)
Flat caps were the uniform of the day when Threshfield’s Netherside Hall School hosted a Victorian Day for primary schools.Michael Nevadomski reviews with enthusiasm the performances of Polly Teale's After Mrs Rochester at the Middlebury College in in Middlebury Campus: (Picture source. Credits: Jes
Staff and more than 150 pupils from Giggleswick, Kirkby Malham, Beamsley, Hellifield and Settle dressed in appropriate garb for the period and were entertained by people posing as a host of characters, from the Bronte Sisters to Sherlock Holmes.
sica Appelson)In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention before my review that I can't stand either postcolonial studies or Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre." It was with genuine skepticism that I walked through the doors of Wright Theatre and watched Vanessa Mildenberg's production of "After Mrs Rochester," a play by Polly Teale based on the life and letters of Jean Rhys - who just happened to embody both of those things.Another published review is this one in The Hindu about the recent performances of Wuthering Heights in Bangalore, India:
Premiering in 2003 to critical acclaim at the Lyric in London, "After Mrs Rochester" was first produced under the auspices of the Shared Experience Theater Company, a troupe well known for its literary-themed productions that delve specifically into great authors or their works. The subject of "Rochester" is Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, known to the world as Jean Rhys. When the play's action opens, she is on the brink of writing her most famous novel, "Wide Sargasso Sea," and we quickly discover, as the plot unfolds, that she is remembering her own rather unhappy life.
Rhys is divided into three characters that appear onstage simultaneously. Lilli Stein '11 played the older, self-isolated form of the author, whose memories and flashbacks constitute the main action of the play. She commented and narrated, delivering a cynical, alcohol-hazed perspective that rose from her numerous disappointments in love and art and life. Stein's delivery was nonetheless incredibly sympathetic and impressed the audience with moments of startling vulnerability and tenderness (as when she remembered her first love affair or the review of her first book), while maintaining a toughness that she spat out to her younger self.
Lucy Faust '09 portrayed a developing, younger Jean Rhys, moving from memory to memory, from childhood to education to abuse and heartbreak, to motherhood and art and beyond. One moment, we were absolutely convinced she was the rebellious child of a third-generation English Creole family; scenes later, we found her broken, pouring out her heart in pages. Yet Faust's characterization managed to avoid melodrama or cliché; rather, her Ella was vulnerable and heroic without fragility or moralization. This balanced and precise performance portrayed not only a woman at every stage of her life, but an "everywoman" that we somehow felt we knew in our own lives.
If the female characters were dynamic, the male ones were (intentionally) flat. Schuyler Beeman '10 and Sasha Hirsch '10.5 played a rotating round of husbands, lovers and other male figures, and although each role was certainly distinct, the effect of two actors rotating through so many characters rendered the male figures as faceless as they were cruel. Unnerving, discomforting and (to some extent) horrifying, the two complemented one another and gave us a portrait of masculine society at its worst: promiscuous, abusive, self-absorbed, blasé and, ultimately, disappointing.
By its very nature as a postcolonial play, "Rochester" demands English and Creole accents; overall, these were quite good - enough to provide substantial verisimilitude - but occasionally an American -ing or a weak Britishism slipped in and shattered the illusion. These slips, however, were saved by the play's overwhelming sense of self-awareness: how could we forget that we were watching a play when the stage floor and the main bed were covered in prints of the author's handwriting, or when characters were divided into different actors?
Lest that sound too critical of resident scenic and lighting designer Hallie Zieselman's set design, I should note my sheer awe at the beauty of the stage and scenery, which transitioned seamlessly from scene to scene and setting to setting. I should also mention that my jaw dropped to the ground when I saw a river (literally) flow across the stage and a substantial rain come pouring down on the windows in several scenes. Wow.
And at the end of it all, Stephanie Spencer '09 broke my heart. As Bertha, "the madwoman in the attic" and the third division of Rhys, she manifested Ella's inner voice - the embodiment of a primeval womanhood that Rhys seldom expressed and so often bound and gagged throughout the play. At once a symbol and an insight into Ella, Spencer milked pathos from every scene with a powerful physical language that underscored her "nonpresence" to the exterior characters onstage - screaming unheard, whimpering unseen. But to call her character a merely hysterical representation of Ella and Rhys would be misleading; Spencer gave "the madwoman in the attic" such an underlying tenderness, such an evident desire to be loved, that her screams and smiles and whimpers pierced us to the core. Her "Sorry … sorry … sorry … " during the love scenes with Ford devastated me as little else has.
Every aspect of this production should be applauded: a beautiful set, fantastic direction, an amazing script.
And perhaps the finest acting I've seen on stage at Middlebury.
While there have been celebrated celluloid avatars of Emily Bronte’s gothic classic “Wuthering Heights”, it is quite difficult to imagine a play based on the novel. There was the Laurence Olivier-Merle Oberon starrer in 1939 and a m ore recent version in 1992 where Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche played the doomed lovers.The Economist reviews Frances Wilson's The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth:
Orange Sky Productions staged a Charles Vance adaptation of the play. The stage was divided into two with the left side representing Wuthering Heights and the right standing in for Thrushcross Grange. There was no attempt to take the play outside to the desolate moors where Kathy and Heathcliff played out their love story.
Cutting out the atmosphere, leaves you with a play where the story is faithfully followed but where the soul is decidedly weak. The production was competent and moved at a spanking pace. Of the cast, Karthik Iyer was impressive as the crotchety domestic help Joseph, while Parthasarathy Devarajan made for a fairly-tortured Heathcliff. Aparna Warrier held her own as the loquacious housekeeper Nelly Dean. While the book is rather confusing for its flashbacks within flashbacks, the play kept the narrative fairly linear. All in all it was a pleasant evening’s entertainment from the company that seems to have a weakness for atmosphere-heavy works — Orange Sky did an earlier production of Agatha Christie’s famous thriller “And then There were None.” (M.A.C.)
The intensity of the Wordsworths’ sibling connection has been noted before, but Ms Wilson places it suggestively within the context of its time. Brother-sister love is a common Romantic preoccupation. It comes up, for example, in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s work and in the love that binds Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”.BBC News interviews Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:
So how did it come about that you mashed these two genres?And The Guardian also insists on it:
I owe the title to my editor at Quirk Books. He'd been wanting to do some kind of literary remix or mash-up, and he had lists of possible books.
On one side he had Wuthering Heights and Sense and Sensibility and so forth, and on the other side he had things like pirates and robots and vampires.
And one day he called me excitedly and said all I have is a title: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
It clicked with me as something that I needed to start immediately. (Tim Masters)
Grahame-Smith said he expected other publishers would also be looking for similarly weird concoctions. "It's inevitable that other companies are going to see that this book has been received with so much enthusiasm. I'm sure that as we speak someone is poring through Wuthering Heights looking for opportunities to add whatever mayhem they can to it," he told the BBC yesterday. But he wasn't sure he was the man to continue what he called "a mini-trend of literary mash-ups". "I don't know that I want to follow this book up with Sense and Sensibility and vampires, because I could easily box myself in as being the mash-up guy," he said. (Alison Flood)On the blogosphere: F.R.I.E.N.D.S., Leitura Nossa de Cada Dia... (in Portuguese) and Wilson's world talks about Jane Eyre. Bells Books and La bibliothèque malounienne (in French) post about Wuthering Heights. Finally, Books I Done Read reviews Villette.
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