As we boarded the train to Leeds, to check out Haworth, where the Brontë sisters wrote their classics and are buried, we realised we had just scratched the surface of Scotland. There is so much more to see on a future visit. (Ahmad Faruqui)Coincidentally, Christopher Fowler explores the North of England:
‘Can I ask – have you ever had a proper job?’I explained that I’d been a journalist and had run a film company before becoming a writer, and she cut me off. ‘No, a proper job.’‘Like what?’ I asked.‘You know,’ she replied. ‘Lifting.’True, I hadn’t done any lifting except at the gym, but I knew a bit about books. I knew that Thomas De Quincey, John Braine, Charlotte Brontë and Alan Bennett were all from the North, as were Margaret Drabble, Beryl Bainbridge and Jeanette Winterson. Bainbridge’s novels, like ‘Young Adolf’, based on the myth that Hitler once worked at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, brought hilarity to death and darkness. [...] Forget about the Brontës; I’ve always admired David Nobbs, John Braine, Winifred Holtby, Alan Sillitoe, Stan Barstow and Keith Waterhouse, who mixed dark and light together almost without thinking.The Telegraph and Argus tells about a new project at Keighley railway station.
Passengers can now learn more about a town’s rail history as they wait for a train.Interpretive posters outlining the impact of railways on Keighley have been installed in the waiting rooms on platforms one and two of the town’s station.Behind the project is the Keighley Station Partnership (KSP), a group dedicated to improving information provided at the site. [...]Keighley BID officer, Phil Walker, said: “Keighley Station is a ‘destination gateway’ to Brontë Country and there has long been a need to provide information on what the town has to offer to visitors arriving from Leeds, Bradford and Skipton, as they walk up the long ramps to the forecourt.“We hope these imaginative posters, and others yet to come, will do that and Keighley BID has been happy to provide eight new poster cases to fulfill this need.” (Alistair Shand)We have several reviews of the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Society.
When Juliet arrives from London, she is regarded with awe simply because she is the author of a book about Anne Brontë. When the book lovers discover she is planning an article about them, their attitude changes. They’re harbouring some painful secrets which they don’t want to share.As in Ealing comedies, the community is far stronger than any individual. The mildly eccentric members of the literary society remain remarkably loyal to one another. The war, meanwhile, is presented as an inconvenience. The members of the Potato Peel society are so busy discussing Brontë and Charles Lamb’s Shakespeare stories that they manage to keep the outside world at bay. (Geoffrey Macnab for The Independent)
It's 1941, the Channel Island of Guernsey is under German Occupation and a group of friends are caught out after curfew. In desperation, they tell the patrol that they're returning from a meeting of their reading club, figuring the Germans will fail to find anything subversive in the act of reading Emily Brontë and Charles Lamb. (Sandra Hall for The Sydney Morning Herald)
THE PLOT: Post-war London. Juliet (Lily James) is an avid reader and an even more passionate writer. Her latest book on Anne Brontë wasn’t exactly a bestseller. Still, her publisher Sidney (Matthew Goode) has confidence in her cheerful approach to life. Juliet is contacted by Guernsey resident Dawsey (Michael Huisman) about tracking down a Shakespeare book. He relates a brief story about his book club, The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society and how it gave them hope during the German occupation. Intrigued, Juliet heads to the small island in the English Channel to find out more. There, she meets the other members of the Society including the bitter Amelia (Penelope Wilton), who objects to Juliet writing about their wartime experiences. However, this is a story that needs to be told… (Gareth O’Connor for Movies.ie)
Shaffer and Barrows’ short, breezy novel wasn’t aiming for Brontë to begin with, but it’s received soapier treatment still in the slick hands of co-writers Don Roos (some way from “The Opposite of Sex”), Thomas Bezucha (“The Family Stone”) and Kevin Hood (“Becoming Jane”). (Guy Lodge for Variety)Actor Ben Hardy tells Digital Spy about BBC One's new Woman in White miniseries.
"What really struck me about The Woman in White is just how ahead of its time it was – especially the actual themes of the piece."They're more relevant now than they were when we filmed it, actually – this idea of these two women living freely within the strict structure of Victorian society and a heinous patriarch coming and spoiling everything."It feels very current and the pacing as well... I read the book in a couple of days and it was 600 pages, which I couldn't do with Charlotte Brontë!"This is more modern in terms of pace, and hopefully a modern audience will respond to it." (Morgan Jeffery)Critictoo (France) highlights 6 roles played by Toby Stephens, including his Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre 2006.
Jane Eyre (2006)
Avant de devenir le capitaine Flint (voir plus bas), on peut dire que le rôle le plus emblématique de la carrière de Toby Stephens sur le petit écran était sans aucun doute celui de M. Rochester dans cette adaptation de Jane Eyre avec Ruth Wilson en tête d’affiche.Célébrée comme étant l’une des meilleures adaptations, l’acteur incarne ce mythique personnage de la littérature, l’exemple type du héros byronien, aussi passionné qu’imparfait. (Carole) (Translation)
4. JANE, THE FOX, AND ME BY FANNY BRITT“ Hélène has been inexplicably ostracized by the girls who were once her friends…Fortunately, Hélène has one consolation, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Hélène identifies strongly with Jane’s tribulations, and when she is lost in the pages of this wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Hélène is humiliated on a class trip in front of her entire grade, she needs more than a fictional character to allow her to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship. Leaving the outcasts’ tent one night, Hélène encounters a fox, a beautiful creature with whom she shares a moment of connection…Before long Hélène realizes that the less time she spends worrying about what the other girls say is wrong with her, the more able she is to believe that there is nothing wrong at all.” (Chelsea Hensley)According to Electric Lit,
The Best Book Is the One You Can’t Remember Partly or wholly forgotten books can be much more valuable than the ones that are fresh in our minds [...]Books have a strange relationship with memory. I have sometimes been convinced that a certain book contains a lengthy, rapturous, intricately-detailed description of a place, or a clear yet careful elucidation of a complex idea, only to go back and find a scant couple of sentences. On the other hand, there are entire chunks of books that my memory elides (did anyone else forget the whole second half of Wuthering Heights?). (C.D. Rose)El País (Spain) features writer Gerald Murnane.
¿Posmodernismo? “En absoluto. Se escandalizaría si le dijera cuántas obras consideradas maestras no he leído y cuántas otras de las que nunca ha oído hablar me influyeron”, dice. “Tras Emerald Blue, en 1995, decidí dejar la ficción y me dediqué a trabajar para mi exclusivo placer sobre mundos imaginados. Tenía la ambición de traspasar el paisaje de la novela y entrar en otra dimensión ficticia, como hicieron las hermanas Brontë y Proust”. (José Luis de Juan) (Translation)Tes discusses school assemblies:
I give a lot of assemblies now and I’m always aware of the privilege of having the (almost) undivided attention of several hundred busy people. I, therefore, try my best to be interesting. Over the past few months, I’ve talked about the Sudan expedition of 1885 and the battle of Trafalgar; I’ve quoted poetry from Henry Newbolt, Charlotte Brontë and TS Eliot; I’ve drawn lessons from the films Strictly Ballroom and War Games; I’ve told the story of the (almost) elimination of polio; and I’ve even proved that there are infinitely many primes (although I think I lost a fair section of the audience in that one). (James Handscombe)Burgh Vivant posts about Britsburgh Literary Society's recent Evening with Jane Eyre. The Echo posts about Wuthering Heights.
The Wall Street Journal publishes a book excerpt from the forthcoming book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: “ I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….And where is the Brontë connection here? Well, apparently among the books by Juliet Ashton there is a (not very succesful) biography of Anne Brontë:
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
In the meantime, I am very happy Stephens & Stark is making money on Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. It relieves my conscience over the debacle of my Anne Brontë biography.The Independent publishes an obituary of the Ulster poet Robert Greacen (1920-2008). Quoting from his poem "Sunday in County Monaghan" (Carnival at the River, 1990) we find this nice Brontë mention:
A stroll across the townland.
Brontë pages skimmed under the elm,
Tea in Belleek china, ginger snaps, . . .
The twilit fields with cousin Jane,
A collie bark from Kelly's yard.
One of the participants on the live discussion with Michael Dirda, book world columnist from The Washington Post finds Brontë references in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken:
In fact, at your suggestion, my wife and I are reading Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and really liking it. It has a very Bronte-esque quality.Business World reviews Stephenie Meyer's trilogy (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) and, as usual, highlights the Wuthering Heights references:
Leave it to a literature degree-holder to borrow sentiments from Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, and a member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints to create something moral without belaboring the hell vs. heaven point, retaining "old-fashioned" notions about love and marriage while making the novels sexy and contemporary (there are no pre-marital sex, even though the editors asked, but there are enough make-out scenes to fluster readers). In this setting, much more is left to choice than chance: whether you’re a vampire, werewolf or human, even thrust in a situation beyond your control, what you decide to do with the choices you’re given could be your undoing or salvation. (Johanna D. Poblete)Harriet Devine's Blog reviews Justine Picardie's Daphne:
(...) But nonetheless I found this book pretty rivetting. I am a sucker for anything to do with academics and research, and I liked the fact that Justine Picardie had based most of the Daphne/Symington plot on actual fact and that the letters she quotes between them are real letters. Nicely done. I must say, though, that these two peoples' lives become almost unbearably painful -- I could hardly bring myself to read about poor Symington, who really is in a dreadful state. All jolly good stuff, and well worth a read.Categories: Books, Brontëites, References
I found an interesting article describing a couple's visit to The Pensionnat Heger from the 1880's. What struck me was the kindness of the Heger family towards the endless visitors seeking the scenes of what was for them, a painful episode.Feminism in India has an article about Wuthering Heights seen as a "Tale Of Repressed Boyhood And Trauma":
Wuthering Heights, the sole novel written by Emily Brontë, is a promising tale with a pervasive psychological impact upon the reader. The haunted mansion, picturesque but desolate moors, long winding roads and the hailing thunderstorms and blissful sunshine, all make it an enriching and heart-rending read as it depicts the peaks and extremities of human longing and love. It also tells a parallel, hidden story of repressed and unseen trauma of boyhood, and the brutal suppression of emotional instincts that becomes instrumental across the rite of passage to manhood. (...) (Bhaskar Choudhoury)The Bookseller announces how
Penguin Random House is launching a new collection of audiobooks from the Penguin Classics list this September, featuring acting stars of "Noughts + Crosses", "Sex Education" and "His Dark Materials" as narrators.Financial Times reviews the exhibition Scene Through Wood in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford:
The new compilation comprises classics such as The Voyage Out read by Masali Baduza, break-out star of the BBC's "Nought and Crosses"; Wuthering Heights read by Aimee-Lou Wood of "Sex Education"; and To The Lighthouse read by Ruth Wilson of "His Dark Materials". The collection is intended to "recognise the significance, diversity and skill of women in the arts, both for their visionary thinking and their impressive work". (Katherine Cowdrey)
Charlotte Brontë set the stage for the pastoral of Jane Eyre by introducing her heroine absorbed in Berwick’s (sic) engravings of birds. A few years after Berwick (sic), reclusive dreamer Edward Calvert declared his own vocation through the metaphor of a farmer cutting furrows in the soil, representing the engraver incising intricate lines. His sensuous, elongated “The Ploughman” (1827) is set in English woodland, opening on a glimpse of Mediterranean artifice — the Three Graces, ethereally evoked within and through the tough, intractable texture of wood. (Jackie Wullschläger)The Daily Mail mentions how
Our 15-year-old daughter spent part of our holiday reading Jane Eyre, a set text for her GCSE next summer. But once back home she received an email announcing the novel had been struck out by the examination board because of the amount of school time lost in lockdown. (Stephen Robinson)The Boar and literary characters during the summer:
Often, we get so caught up in the stories that we’re reading, we don’t stop to imagine what the characters would be like in a completely different setting. For example, it’s amusing to stop and think of the perpetually tortured Victor Frankenstein at Christmas, wearing one of those crinkled paper hats you find in crackers. Or to think of the gloomy, rolling moors of Wuthering Heights becoming the sight of a vast Easter egg hunt, dotted with technicolour plastic eggs – just imagine Heathcliff wearing fluffy bunny ears. (Alice Standen)Whitehot Magazine reviews the installation, Christina Petterson: In the Pines at Locust Projects in Miami:
The Installation references mid-19th century Gothic Revival, it’s focus on morbid romance, indominable nature, spiritualism, and death; and all the ‘sadness-and-longing’, of ‘Gothic Novels’ like Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights', about a mis-matched couple who spend their lives acting out irreconcilable passions across the barren moors of 19th-century England; or Edgar Allen Poe’s dark tales of obsession, terror and death. (David Rohn)WCBE recommends the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Society:
The Guernsey Literary Society and Potato Peel Pie Society will make you long for a permanent return of the old-fashioned, tear-jerking, gorgeously photographed war-drama romance. Together with the similar Summerland in recent Netflix release, Guernsey displays the Brits’ gift for crafting melodrama and morality in the spirit of the rambling novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and a host of 19th century writers without peer.Reader's Digest has a list of the punniest book titles:
To facilitate joyful tears, director Mike Newell, who made his name with Four Weddings and a Funeral, casts the incomparable Lily James as writer Juliet Ashton in post-war London; her success at crafting romantic tales and biographies (Ann [sic] Brontë, no less) brings her to Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands occupied in WWII by Nazis because, although a self-governing dependency of the British crown, it is closer to Europe than England. (John Desando)
The Eyre Affair by Jasper FfordeBookriot talks about Alice Hoffman's novels:
The New York Times bestseller The Eyre Affair, written by British novelist Jasper Fforde, follows the story of Thursday Next, a literary detective who tries to figure out who kidnapped literary characters from stories, set in a parallel 1980s England where everyone is obsessed with literature. Someone has—literally—taken Jane Eyre from Charlotte Brontë’s novel of the same name and it’s up to Thursday to figure out who kidnapped Eyre and how to restore balance to the literary world. (Madeleine Wahl)
For those who know Alice Hoffman, it is a well-known fact that one of Hoffman’s very favorite books is Wuthering Heights. There is so much left unknown, the ambiguity at the end, is how Hoffman has commented on Emily Brontë’s enduring novel. After reading the first few pages of Here on Earth, I thought I was reading Wuthering Heights set in the modern day of a small town in Massachusetts. Hoffman’s tale of obsessive love begins when March Murray returns to her Massachusetts hometown with her teenage daughter to pay her last respects to her housekeeper (who had served as March’s mother when March’s mother had passed in her infancy). Upon her arrival, March encounters the fixation of her youth: a scoundrel named Hollis (the modern day Heathcliff); March becomes temporarily and very dangerously seduced by Hollis’s obsessive and brutal love. (Nancy Snyder)The Telegraph visits Scarborough and only gets a passing comment on Anne Brontë:
We took a surf lesson on North Bay beach courtesy of Dexter’s Surf Shop (dexterssurfschool.co.uk), in the shadow of the town’s ruined castle and Anne Brontë’s grave up on the headland. (Rhonda Carrier)Literary Hub interviews the writer Darcey Steinke:
Book Marks: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?Il Corriere Della Sera (Italy) interviews Alessio Vlad, composer of Jane Eyre 1996:
DS: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I remember readings all these ok classics and then this book entered me like a shard of falling glass. Jesus what a novel! It has a truly crazy energy and is as different from say Jane Austin (sic) as cake is to electricity.
Valerio Cappelli: Zeffirelli?PVRA (Serbia) talks about the Serbian translation of Reader, I Married Him, edited by Tracy Chevalier:
«Mi affidò un film quando avevo poca esperienza, dapprima un documentario sulla Toscana poi I sei personaggi in cerca d’autore. Era un uomo generoso, mi buttò nella mischia. Per la colonna sonora di Jane Eyre, Weinstein, il produttore dello scandalo, non mi voleva, scosse il capo alle prime simulazioni musicali che Franco gli mandava. Alla quarta volta gli rimandò la prima che avevo composto, non se ne accorse e disse: questa va bene». (Translation)
Ambicija i mašta Šarlot Brontë očaravaju nas već dva veka, pa su tako i neke od najboljih autorki današnjice u njenim legendarnim rečenicama pronašle inspiraciju da ispišu nove romanse i ljubavne priče. Dame biraju, priče neponovljive Trejsi Ševalije, inspirisane su delima sestara Brontë! Tako će neobično venčanje doneti neočekivan obrt nevesti i njenoj kćerki, porodično putovanje podstaći će odluke koje menjaju život, a novopečena majka srešće staru ljubav u pričama koje slave snagu romana Šarlot Brontë. (Translation)24 Horas (México) recommends Jane, Le Renard et Moi by Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt:
Jane, el zorro y yoWelt (Germany) discusses the German translation of the writings of Mary McLane:
Hélène es una muchacha de doce años que inexplicablemente ha sido dejada de lado por sus antiguas amigas, que ahora se divierten humillándola en público. El día a día de la protagonista es un infierno y su autoestima se resiente hasta el punto de que llega a asumir como ciertos los insultos recibidos. Su único consuelo es la lectura de Jane Eyre, la novela de Charlotte Brontë, con cuya desgraciada protagonista se siente identificada. (Translation)
Über Charlotte Brontës autobiografisches Meisterwerk „Jane Eyre“ etwa heißt es, das Buch sei gescheitert. Auch im Fall der Malerin und damaligen Kult-Tagebuchautorin Marie Bashkirtseff werden gravierende Mängel gesucht und gefunden. In ihrer selbstbezüglichen Originalgenie-Obsession ist für MacLane offenbar allein schon der Gedanke unerträglich, dass es ein weibliches Ich gegeben haben könnte, das vor ihr Literaturgeschichte geschrieben hat. (Marianna Lieder) (Translation)The Telegraph & Argus once again reminds us of how much an issue is car parking in Haworth; Debate (México) recommends Jane Eyre; Bookreporter reviews Finola Austin's Brontë's Mistress. Coffee, Books & Cake posts about Jane Eyre and Blogology Blogs reviews Wuthering Heights 2011.
Amid all this, witchcraft seems simply another ideology, potentially the basis for a reinterpretation of the human and natural world. Updike makes good sport throughout of pseudofeminist cant. But he is also a master of omniscient sympathy, and gradually the witches’ conviction that they “could move the material world with sympathetic magic” achieves the completeness of a plausible worldview, one that seeps into the broader ethos of Eastwick. “Insofar as they were witches, they were phantoms in the communal mind,” Updike writes. They earn respect for “a certain distinction, an inner boiling such as had in other cloistral towns produced Emily Dickinson’s verses and Emily Brontë’s inspired novel.”The Sunday Times talks about the US release of Mary Ann Shaffer’s novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:
When soldiers intercept a group of friends heading home from an illegal pig roast, the heroine, Elizabeth, invents the Guernsey Literary Society, claiming that it meets only to read books by the Brontës and to pore over recipes, including one for potato peel pie. (John Harlow)We are afraid that that is not quite what really happens in the book. Some other book club readers of Valerie Martin's Trespass discuss the novel in The Mercury News. One of them is particularly perceptive with the Wuthering Heights connection:
"At first, Chloe's last work in progress, the illustrated 'Wuthering Heights' seemed out of place in this novel. However, "Wuthering Heights" is a story about pairs and a study in contrasts. The two houses in Bronte's masterpiece are quite different. The calm, systematic Grange (Chloe) counterpoints perfectly with the wild Wuthering Heights (Salome)." — Evy Cambridge, SoquelThe novel is summarised in this other article in the Marin Independent Journal and the Contra Costa Times:
"Trespass" is layered with stories from her array of contrasting characters. Chloe's son Toby, who gives up hispromising education for love; Salome, who fled Croatia as a child, settling with her father and brother in Louisiana; Salome's mother, believed to be dead but actually living in Italy with her horrific memories; Chloe's husband, Brendan, who for years has been writing a book on dead kings; and Chloe, an artist, painstakingly etching illustrations for "Wuthering Heights," tormented by the poacher on her property and the poacher of her son's love. (Lynn Carey)
'Trespass," by Valerie Martin, turned out to contain a lot to talk about. There was the story of a mom who disliked her son's girlfriend, a Croatian immigrant. There was a poacher on the property, another immigrant. There was the story within the story of a woman's horrific escape from Croatia and her torture by the Serbs. There were dead kings during the time of the Crusades. There was even an appearance by Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights." (Lynn Carey)The Spanish newspaper El Mundo in its Travel section carries an article about Yorkshire with plenty of mentions of the Brontës and Haworth. Not a surprise as the author is Espido Freire who some years ago wrote Querida Jane, querida Charlotte. The Czech press talks about next year's adaptation of Jane Eyre (Jana Eyrová) at the Divadlo ABC theatre.
When I heard this, I shuddered. Emily Bronte wrote, “And give me liberty! Yes, as my swift days near their goal; ’Tis all that I implore; In life and death a chainless soul, With courage to endure.” When people leave the restrictions of reality and the human body, we wish the soul to be free and independent. (Moon So-Young)Mirage News interviews Stephanie Watson, clinician-researcher and innovator:
Who’s your favourite female fictitious character and why?It has to be Jane Eyre, for the enormous impact that book had on my 12-year-old self. She was a person with strong convictions who didn’t accept the way things were and (within the constraints of the time) she found her own path to happiness.Den of Geek! reviews the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society:
Set primarily in 1946, The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society follows James’ Juliet Ashton, a fairly successful writer, especially as a woman in her time period. Nevertheless, she is creatively and intellectually stymied: During the Blitzkrieg she lost her parents, and after her attempts at serious literature with a biography on Anne Brontë prove non-lucrative, she’s succeeded with sardonic essays... written under a man’s nom de plume. (David Crow)News18 (India) on the death of VS Naipaul:
I was introduced to Naipaul as part of a literature course. At that point of time, my idea of literature and literary classics was Dickens, Austen, and Brontë. At the most, I could stretch my knowledge of literature outside the classical norm to RK Narayan and Amar Chitra Katha. (Rujita Das)The Spanish edition of the New York Times talks about Rodrigo Fresán, and in particular his novel La parte inventada:
Aunque los dos libros que se exploran con más énfasis en la novela sean Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, y Suave es la noche, de Francis Scott Fitzgerald, algunos capítulos parecen seguir el modelo de La contravida, de Philip Roth. (Jorge Carrión) (Translation)The reading of Wuthering Heights in El Punt-Avui (in Catalan) is finished.:
Aleshores Heatchcliff va subornar l’enterramorts perquè, quan ell morís, desfés el taüt de Catherine i el seu, de manera que els dos cadàvers s’abracessin per l’eternitat. Aquesta és la història d’amor i mort que narra Cims borrascosos, però, al final de la novel·la, se n’esbossa una de feliç entre Catherine i Hareton. Passejant tranquil, Lockwood troba les tres làpides (les d’Edgar, Cathy, Heatchcliff) sobre el pendent de l’erm. I, escoltant la remor suau del vent que agita l’herba, es pregunta com hi pot haver algú que pensi que els qui dormen en aquella plàcida terra tinguin un son inquiet. Qui ho pot saber? (Imma Merino) (Translation)A new chance to see the recent Montenegrin adaptation of Wuthering Heights in Tivat, Montenegro:
Purgatorije 2018 Festival
Orkanski Visovi
Scena Atrijum Buća
13.avg. 21:00h
CHARLES STURRIDGE (DIRECTOR)The American Spectator discusses whether 1939 deserves to be considered the greatest year in the history of American filmmaking. A much-mentioned film relevant to this blog is borne in mind as well:
Brideshead made Sturridge's name - and gained him a wife, as he married Phoebe Nicholls (Cordelia Flyte) in 1985. Despite working on several notable television dramas - including Longitude and Shackleton - none has captured the public's imagination as Brideshead did. Perhaps Brontë, his new feature film due for release next year, will do the trick. (Alice Jones)
And what woman didn't long to fall under the dark yet dreamy allure of Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights? (Lisa Fabrizio)And the Guardian Book Blog looks at 'the oddest adaptations' in light of the forthcoming Bollywood-style Wuthering Heights by Tamasha.
While it is slightly startling to hear that Wuthering Heights is to receive a Bollywood treatment in a theatre production by Tamasha, it is a genuine eye-popper to hear from artistic director Kristine Landon-Smith that it's going to have a "moody, Chekhovian feel".Indeed, Wuthering Heights tends to lend itself to all sorts of formats and approaches, which says much in favour of its creator, Emily Brontë.
Landon-Smith says that "there are points where the emotions get so high that they have to sing instead of speak", which seems true to the pitch of Brontë's drama. And though it's quite hard to imagine where the big dance numbers are going to drop in it's a great deal more appealing a prospect than seeing Cliff as Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights has, of course, withstood transposition into any number of different forms before - including ballet, film and theatre. I suppose Kate Bush got a few people reading Brontë, but God knows what the effect of hearing Genesis's concept album, Wind and Wuthering, was.
Indeed, a Bollywood Brontë would be far from the strangest reinterpretation of a book we've ever seen. I can remember watching a production of Hamlet - which I admit to quite liking - in which the gravedigger scene kicked off with a dance to Russ Abbott's Atmosphere. Recently a consortium of Broadway bigwigs clubbed together to purchase the musical rights to Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, which might seem stranger if Sondheim hadn't already tackled the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and a whole company of Assassins. Adaptation's interpretation of Susan Orlean's Orchid Thief is my nomination for the oddest film version; and, until I looked on YouTube, it was a source of enduring regret that I'd never seen the musical version of Moby Dick, a maritime romp set in a swimming pool at a girls' boarding school. I think of that one as the ne plus ultra - but perhaps there are even odder reincarnations out there? (Lindesay Irvine)
A new website detailing the filming locations of some of the greatest movies ever made has highlighted Matlock and the Dales' importance in cinematic history.Speaking of places, The Times suggests a stay in Haworth:
Hit films like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Duchess, Dead Man's Shoes and Jane Eyre have all been filmed on location in the area during the past 50 years.
Famouslocations.com has 3.9 million locations [sic] for film scenes in its archive and reveals that the Red House Stables in Darley Dale played a key role in the filming of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Jane Eyre, released in 1995, was also shot there as was The Princess Bride, Women in Love and Far from the Madding Crowd.
The Red House Stables Working Carriage Museum has one of the finest collections of original horse drawn vehicles and equipment in Britain.
Moorland views extend from Hollies Cottage at Stanbury, near Haworth, North Yorkshire, and a path leads to Top Withers, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The detached property sleeps three and costs £272 for a week from October 18 and 25 with Yorkshire Cottages. 01228 406701 (Tony Dawe)But there are also a couple of mentions in book articles. Muskogee Phoenix reviews - with recipes - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:
Through their correspondence, members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society relate their experiences during the war, including Elizabeth’s eventual disappearance, and the books the Germans encouraged them to read, from Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” to Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” in an effort to prove to residents that the German Occupation was a Model Occupation. (Melony Carey)And the School Library Journal takes a look at 'the subversive power of the genre and its appeal to today’s teens'. When discussing Kathe Koja’s The Blue Mirror the writer says,
Koja similarly explores first love in her chilling tale of obsessive power, sexuality, and abuse. Maggie, an artistic 16-year old loner, seeks refuge from her alcoholic mother by hanging out in a local café. There she meets Cole, a charismatic homeless teen who provides her with the love and affection she so desperately needs, but their relationship soon turns as Cole becomes increasingly cruel and manipulative. Koja’s experimental poetic prose creates a moody, evocative world of power and seduction. In her portrait of Cole, Koja creates a Byronic hero in the tradition of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff. (Philip Charles Crawford)And hardly a week goes by without the ever-present list of best books. The Canberra Times reports that the Angus & Robertson Top 100 list has revealed this year's winners:
Traditional literature still has its fans, with classics such as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (No3), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (No6) and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (No28) constituting 13 per cent of the list. (Claire Low)
It would have seemed astonishing to the Brontë sisters, in their quiet and secluded lives, that long after their deaths they should inspire such love and devotion from legions of admirers.The good health of the Brontë Society (and a panegyric of his current honorary treasurer) is the subject of another article in the newspaper:
Yet it is a cause for rejoicing that not only do they continue to do so, but that their appeal is growing. More visitors than ever flock to Haworth to explore their heritage and the countryside that inspired them, and membership of the Brontë Society is increasing.
That should be celebrated as it marks its 125th anniversary. Its history has not always been harmonious, but happily that belongs to the past and it can look forward with optimism.
The magic of Emily, Charlotte and Anne endures. Their spirit makes their books timeless and draws visitors to the parsonage where they lived. The crowds will continue to grow, because these daughters of Haworth touched the hearts of the world.
The internecine conflict between its traditionalists and modernists has for years played out like the plot from a Victorian novel. But the latest figures to emerge from the parsonage at Haworth suggest that the steadying influence of a clergyman who is Patrick Brontë’s spiritual successor might finally be calming the waters.Ellen Girardeau Kempler creates some 'literary self-help classics' titles for The Spectacle:
As it celebrates its 125th anniversary, the Brontë Society – one of the oldest such groups in the world – has reported that not only is income from visitors to the parsonage it administers up by more than a fifth, but more of them are joining as members.
It is welcome news for an organisation whose last fallout, over its decision to use the actress and model Lily Cole as a figurehead for its celebrations of Emily Brontë’s bicentenary this summer, created national headlines. (...)
Worldwide membership of the Society had increased by nearly six per cent as of last Christmas, and the number has continued to rise this year.
The treasurer has a unique and direct connection to the family. As rector of Haworth Parish Church, the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith was fulfilling the role Patrick Brontë, father to Emily, Charlotte and Anne, had held for four decades.
He was conscious of the weight on his shoulders.
“One of my great heroes is Patrick Brontë,” he said. “When you look at what he did for the Haworth area, his campaigning was in the mould of Wilberforce.
“He was a remarkable and very much a modern man in some ways. He brought education in because he saw it as the way out of poverty. And when there was raw sewage in the streets, he fought long and hard to get proper sanitation.
“Isn’t it ironic that his legacy in the village is a tourist economy based on his family.”
The rector, who two years ago moved in semi-retirement to the neighbouring moorland parish of Eldwick, was brought in to the Brontë Society after previous bouts of acrimony. (...)
Its trustees say its recent success is due in part to an expanded events programme and use of social media – a method of communication that would have reduced Wuthering Heights to 280 characters – to help spread the word.
The chair of trustees, the former Look North presenter, John Thirlwell, said: “Over the last three years, trustees have worked with the museum’s senior management to bring the organisation up to date – reviewing policies, procedures and our constitution to ensure they reflect those of a modern, multi-faceted charity.” (David Behrens)
Madwoman in the Attic: How to Stay Sane When Surrounded by Lunatics by Jane EyreLos Angeles Review of Books reviews Camp Austen. My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan by Ted Scheinman:
Scheinman discovers a whole new level of superfandom far apart from the teenaged girls who swooned over a brooding, wet-shirted Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in the famous BBC adaptation. There are Austen action figures and bumper stickers, fatuous feuds with the Brontë camp (“Mr. Rochester attracts Jane Eyre by scowling; Darcy wins Lizzy’s love by treating the servants kindly.”), and outraged ladies compelled to defend Austen’s honor when she is portrayed in a poster with one sleeve slipping scantily down. (Leah Angstman)South Western Times reviews the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:
Literary lovers rejoice, for here is a film set to tug at heartstrings just like the much-loved pages of a classic Brontë book.The Times-Picayune has a point:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a poignant period drama brimming with all the bells and whistles a bookworm could ask for in its emotionally mesmerising style of storytelling. (Ashwini Saseedaran)
I wouldn't exactly call the Bible an easy read. Neither, for that matter, are the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Dostoyevsky, Milton, Descartes or the Brontës. That doesn't mean we shouldn't read them. (Tim Morris)Onirik (in French) highlights the Collector's edition of Wuthering Heights recently published by Éditions de l'Archipel:
Hindley, Catherine et Heathcliff grandissent ensemble. Ce dernier a été adopté par le père, Mr Earnshaw. A la mort de celui-ci, Hindley, jaloux, maltraite et humilie constamment celui qu’il n’a jamais reconnu comme son frère. Le seul réconfort d’Heathcliff est l’affection sans bornes qui’il voue à Catherine...Dagans Nyheter (Sweden) interviews participants in a local poetry contest:
On aurait aussi pu commencer ce résumé en précisant que l’histoire commence alors qu’un jeune homme trouve refuge aux Hauts de Hurlevent, où Heathcliff lui loue une chambre. La nuit, au comble de la terreur, il voit apparaître le fantôme de Catherine... Une vieille servante lui raconte alors le passé tragique des anciens habitants de la maison...
Ce troublant récit enchâssé, à l’image des contes que la bonne de la maison des Brontë, Tabby, racontait aux enfants, par des nuits de pleine lune, au son du vent fuyant dans les landes désolées, est un authentique chef d’oeuvre. Tant par sa forme, audacieuse, que par sa langue étrangement poétique, que par son sujet, profondément anxiogène.
Des histoires de passion qui mènent aux portes de la folie, si ce n’est de la mort, des amours troublantes entre cousins -et entre frère et soeur adoptifs-, un personnage rustre que l’on n’arrive pas à prendre en pitié malgré ses blessures d’enfance... Il y a tant à décortiquer sur ce roman qui en a choqué plus d’un à sa publication.
Mais il est surtout à l’image de son auteur, sauvage, libre et sans concession. (Claire) (Translation)
Mamma tog tidigt med mig till biblioteket och jag blev förälskad. Jag läste en bok om dagen. Jag slukade allt, från Jane Eyre till Zlatan, som mamma och jag läste och diskuterade. (Alexandra Pascalidou) (Translation)Jane Eyre 1983 and Jane Eyre 2006 will be available on the Amazon Prime Video catalogue in May, according to Newsweek. USA Today publishes an excerpt of Alexa Donne's Brightly Burning new novel. Victorian Musings reviews Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by DM Denton. Escuta Esso (in Portuguese) begins a Wuthering Heights reading.
This subversive ChickLit title raises some intriguing questions about marriage, friendship, commitment and the modern gal's perpetual quest for independence. Domestic novels are often overlooked due to their sole focus on cloying topics like relationships, shopping and girlfriends. The cutesy pink covers don't help, either. Yet there's no shame in producing great ChickLit. Daria Salamon has written a funny, dark, quirky take on one woman's epic struggle with the harsh realities of adult life: angry boyfriends, dull colleagues and meddling girlfriends. Jane Austen penned some stellar domestic fiction. So did the Brontë sisters, Margaret Drabble, Alice Munro, Anne Beattie and Lorrie Moore. Novels used to be considered the television of their times, and only serious non-fiction was suitable brain fodder. What utter nonsense. (Patricia Robertson)The San Francisco Chronicle publishes yet another review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:
Though the novel's style doesn't break any ground, its familiarity is more an homage than a retreading of old themes. Many of the characters cite Austen and the Brontës. With its sharp-witted heroine and her lineup of potential suitors, "Guernsey's" plot is obviously influenced by those authors' books. Likewise, the structure pays tribute to the earliest novels: epistolary romances, written by women and ignored by some as trivialities. (Margot Kaminski)Los Angeles Times, which published a positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne a few days ago includes the novel in its pick of the summer:
Daphne: A Novel by Justine PicardieCoincidentally enough, the Guardian's Digested Classic for today is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier which in John Crace's adaptation finishes with this sentence:
The lives of Daphne du Maurier and the Brontës intertwine in a story of literary obsession and deception.
"Oh darling," I said. "I always knew you were only a pretend wife-murderer. And look! Isn't that Manderley on fire? Silly Mrs Danvers. I told her not to read Jane Eyre."The press is completely unwilling to let go of the Heathcliffgate. Today the Scotsman, in an article presumable about David Cameron giving his MPs a reading list, the following turns up not so surprisingly:
To enjoy the imminent demise of Gordon Brown, there's always Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which, rather like Labour, lends itself to dozens of different interpretations. Is the governess of the story unbalanced (ie psychologically flawed) and do the ghosts only exist in her imagination? Given that our PM is now comparing himself to Heathcliff, why not reacquaint yourself with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights?And finally Associated Content has an article entitled 'Integrity and Societal Conditioning in Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and the Invisible Man' by Alexis Williams.
As we informed, last week artist Lesley Martin worked with Brontë Parsonage visitors to create a giant artwork on the Parsonage front lawn, made of natural materials. Keighley News reports the results (Picture source):Environmental artist Lesley Martin created the piece - based around the number 80 - entirely from flowers, ferns and leaves. (...)The cast for the upcoming Birmingham Repertory Theatre production of Wuthering Heigh
Brontë Parsonage arts officer Jenna Holmes said Monday's anniversary celebrations had been appreciated by all.
She said: "With the free entry offer, we had a lot of people come who perhaps haven't been for a long time, which is really nice.
"In it's 80th year the museum is doing really well, we have some really exciting projects - for example the Emily Brontë portrait from the National Portrait Gallery and we have the Gondal manuscripts too. It is just going from strength to strength."
The natural artwork was just one of a string of events planned for the Parsonage this month.
On August 22, chainsaw artist Dominic Clare will create a sculpture from a felled tree that Emily Brontë is said to have planted. (Lisa Campbell)
ts (with a new adaptation by April de Angelis) has been announced and brings surprises:Susannah York played Jane Eyre in Delbert Mann's 1970 TV movie.Heathcliff: Antony Byrne Lockwood: Simon Coates Edgar/Linton: Toby Dantzic Hindley/Hareton: Edmund Kingsley Cathy: Amanda Ryan Joseph/Old Mr Linton: David Whitworth Frances: Victoria Yeates Nellie Dean: Susannah York
Wycoller village, thought by some to be the inspiration for Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre, is also a place of delights, with its crafts centre, willow sculptures and – best of all - no cars (the lane down to the village is accessible only on foot). And set above all this, amid the brooding moors which inspired the Brontë sisters, just off the road which runs up to Haworth where they were brought up, sits the Atom panopticon. Designed by Peter Meacock, Katarina Novometska and architects WCW the mighty bronze-coated egg is both viewpoint and shelter, offering views through its oval, panoptical apertures across the moors and to east Lancashire's most distinct piece of topography: Pendle Hill, where the witches roamed. Inside atom sits a large stainless steel sphere – representing the last remaining molecule in this particular atom. (Ian Herbert)The Independent (Ireland) interviews actress and singer Susannah de Wrixon:
Favourite book?Now for some Brontë mentions in several reviews: What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn is reviewed again in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Wuthering Heights for the passion, or anything by Roger McGough for the humour.
But her real trouble is that she is a romantic. Her parents, happily nestled in their cozy Queens apartment, see in her their embodiment of the American dream: She will marry a successful Russian immigrant businessman, move to a good neighborhood in Manhattan, dress well, entertain, acquire. They grew up under communism, where such ways of measuring success were off limits to them. But Anna has been poisoned by a diet of "Wuthering Heights," old Woody Allen movies and those same French films Lev adores. Since childhood, she has always craved something beyond her reach. (Elizabeth Gold)Bookreporter reviews The Night Villa by Carol Goodman:
Goodman’s novels always radiate with the tradition of Gothic literature made famous by authors like Charlotte Bronte and Daphne du Maurier, and THE NIGHT VILLA continues this tradition in admirable style. (Ray Palen)And Newsday's review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows happens to mention the Brontës again:
The novel's heroine is Juliet Ashton, author of a largely unread biography of Anne Brontë, who achieves a modicum of fame for her humorous newspaper columns depicting life in London during the war. As the book opens, Juliet is on a book tour to promote the collected columns, and she is casting about for a new book idea. (...)The Buffalo News reviews Sarah Gavron's film Brick Lane (more information on previous posts):
Among Juliet's new friends are Amelia Maugery, the local noblewoman, whose private library is virtually the only source for books on Guernsey; Isola Pribby, an ungainly young woman whose interests tend toward the occult and, thanks to the Literary Society, the Brontë sisters. (Erica Marcus)
Indian actor Satish Kaushik is simply marvelous as Chanu, a portly, relentlessly cheerful fellow, who is proud of his volumes of Bronte, Thackeray and Proust, and of his certificates from the university. He’s a clownish figure, setting off each day in his overcoat to look for work or to drive his taxi, bewildered at his daughters’ lack of respect for tradition, a lost soul who more than any of them does not feel at home in London. (Jean Westmoore)The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2008 is full with comedy shows with Wuthering Heights mentions. Some days ago we posted about Watson and Oliver's sketch comedy. Now Chortle talks about some others:
Perhaps surprisingly, this is not the only Fringe act to feature a silly dance routine performed to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights, as Patrick Monahan also does it. But, as their bumper sticker might read, The Grandees do it better… and not just to Wuthering Heights.raffyx posts sixty Jane Eyre 2006 icons. The Bigger Pictures reviews Wuthering Heights 1992. El Espejo Gótico translates to Spanish yet another poem by Emily Brontë, A Death-scene.
Yesterday was Yorkshire Day (check previous post). The Halifax Evening Courier covers some local related events... including this one:There was also a quiz to test people's knowledge of their region and staff dressed as the Bronte sisters.Picture: Kate Bancroft (left) and Tracey Wilson, dressed as Charlotte and Emily Bronte, hand out Yorkshire Mixtures at Harvey’s. Source.
Tony Murray, sales development manager, said: "We are a Yorkshire store born and bred and this is our way of giving something back to the community.
"It's fun for staff and great entertainment for our customers."
In Ms. Picardie's "Daphne," a novel based on real events, Ms. du Maurier is 50 years old and beginning a long period of turmoil in her domestic life. She has just learned that her husband is having an affair (as her husband did); divorce in that era and class was out of the question. Trying to write her way out of despair, she embarked on a biography of Branwell Bronte, brother of Jane and Emily, who was a gifted writer but died at the age of 31 after years of alcoholism.The Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) announces the performances of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre in the upcoming Otago Festival of the Arts (October):
A second narrative strand in "Daphne" is that of a modern-day graduate student who wants to write part of her Ph.D. thesis on Ms. du Maurier. When she approaches her tutor with the idea, he dismisses it summarily. " 'Rebecca,' he says, "is simply a shallow, melodramatic rehash of 'Jane Eyre,' and therefore less deserving of celebration than of accusations of plagiarism. (Cynthia Crossen)
The New Zealand premiere of Jane Eyre will also open at the Fortune Theatre during the festival. (Nigel Benson)Premiere it is not, since last month a production of the piece opened in Wellington, New Zealand.
Yes, the premise is contrived: The authors don't even bother to suggest how Juliet's discarded book turned up in Guernsey, and the neat way its literary society fits into her Times assignment is highly convenient. Most readers won't mind because her request for more information unleashes a flood of correspondence from a delightful gallery of eccentrics: valet John Booker, whose discovery of Seneca "kept me from the direful life of a drunk"; Isola Pribby, who immerses herself in the Brontës when she isn't whipping up elixirs "to restore manly ardor"; fisherman Eben Ramsey, who loves Shakespeare; farmer Clovis Fossey, who dotes on the poetry of Wilfred Owen but detests Yeats ("What does he know about verse?"). (Wendy Smith)The Scotsman interviews Emma Tennant, author of a couple of Brontë sequels: Heathcliff's Tale and The French Dancer's Bastard aka Adèle: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story. Unfortunately she doesn't mention them.
Favorite Book? Hmmmm… I read a lot. I guess my all time favorite is Jane Eyre, but the last Harry Potter book is not too far behind on my list.Categories: Books, Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, References, Sequels, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
So we’re immediately entangled here not only with Charles Lamb, but with the lively and often snarky opinions proffered by her Guernsey correspondents on writers as varied as the Bronte sisters, Thomas Carlyle, Wilfred Owen, William Wordsworth, and Jane Austen, among others. (Julia Braun Kessler)Paul Thompson, webmaster of the excellent web The Reader's Guide to Wuthering Heights, has emailed us announcing a new section of his indispensable faq. Would you like to know how or when did Heathcliff embrace Catherine's body? Check it out here (Hint: He didn't.)
Where did you find your inspiration ?Finally Varan's Meanderings posts some pictures of Haworth's graveyard.
Inspiration is everywhere. I have been fortunate to live in some beautiful places where the landscape just takes on a life of its own. (...) I guess my songs always end up being about longing for the something or someone missing, always about something missing, an empty pit in your gut ; I did write a few tunes inspired by Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” last year.
But The Victorian and the Romantic also takes you into the (somewhat imagined) life and mind of Mrs. Gaskell herself — a braided narrative alternating between Stevens life as she muddles through love, heartbreak, and academia, and Gaskell’s life in the mid-1800s. As it turns out, the two have a lot in common: while Stevens’ doctoral thesis on Elizabeth Gaskell seems to be under constant critique, Gaskell’s biography of her recently deceased friend Charlotte Brontë has become the stuff of national scandal and potential lawsuits. “I have three people I want to libel,” Stevens quotes Gaskell as having written to her publisher, in the opening of The Victorian and the Romantic. (Stevens, in contrast, is careful to note she has no people she wants to libel.) (E. Ce Miller)Bustle recommends Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall:
Though it's set in the modern day, the main character in this hair-raising book bears a lot of similarities to Heathcliff, and I mean that in the darkest way possible. Mike's life was brutal and lonely before he fell in love with Verity Metcalf. And even though Verity is set to marry another man, Mike is certain that this is all part of a roleplaying scenario they used to play. So he watches Verity, waiting for her to send him the secret sign that she's ready for him to rescue her. (Melissa Ragsdale)The Washington Post reviews The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher:
The epistolary structure of her previous novel is gone — this is a straight narrative delivered with acrid wit — but Fitger is still here at its center, just as irritated and harried as ever. Against his will, he’s been named chair of the ungovernable English department, “a funhouse of dysfunctional characters.” (One is obsessed with miniature donkeys; another imitates Emily Brontë; a third wears a 15-pound necklace made of roofing nails.) They are all Olympians in the sport of passive aggression. (Ron Charles)The future of public toilets in Brontë country, and the one in Penistone Hill in particular, in Keighley News.
The tag could also be applied to classics such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, reworkings of Shakespeare by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Edward St Aubyn in the Hogarth series, and a spate of parodies: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Android Karenina. (Mikaella Clements)Trouw (Netherlands) recommends the BBC podcast, Beyond Belief:
Waarom zou de schrijfster, zelf dochter van een dominee, de vertegenwoordigers van de kerk zo negatief neerzetten? Wat zegt dat over haar eigen geloof? En hoe zit dat met die andere beroemde schrijfster Charlotte Brontë, die in ‘Jane Eyre’ ook al zo’n hardvochtige dominee beschrijft? De personages uit de boeken kan ik uittekenen, maar over deze vraag had ik nog nooit nagedacht.(...)A Cup of Joe and great reader comments:
Schrijfster Charlotte Brontë gebruikte de nare dominee om van Jane een onafhankelijke vrouw te kunnen maken, die haar eigen morele keuzes maakt, zelfs als de kerk, die nare dominee dus, ertegen is. (Sandra Kooke) (Translation)
“I was dating a guy who found out that my favorite book is Jane Eyre. One night out of the blue, he said he wanted to discuss something with me, and promptly whipped out a copy of Jane Eyre. He had been furiously reading the whole thing just so we could talk about it together because he knew I loved it. Reader, I married him.” — ShannonThe grandest buildings in literature on Literary Hub:
Thornfield Hall is described a “fine old hall, rather neglected of late years” by the housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax in Brontë’s novel. Its exterior is handsome enough—three stories high, with battlements around the top that give it a picturesque look—but the interior reflects the desolate outlook of its master, particularly the long, cold gallery on the second floor, which offers up “cheerless ideas of space and solitude.” In contrast, Brontë softens Mrs. Fairfax’s sitting room to reflect her warm personality—it’s a snug, small chamber with a cheerful fire and a cat at the housekeeper’s feet.Die Presse (Germany) reviews the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society:
Brontë is said to have visited two manor houses in the 1830s and 1840s, both of which claim to be the inspiration behind Thornfield Hall: North Lees Hall in the Peak District, which has the requisite battlements and whose first owner, a lunatic named Agnes, was apparently kept locked in a padded room, and Norton Conyers, in North Yorkshire, which has a hidden door up to the attic and its own requisite madwoman (there seem to have been plenty to go around, unfortunately). Luckily for Jane, true love rises out of the blackened ruins of Thornfield Hall, a dramatic end to the Gothic tale. (Fiona Davis)
Die Inszenierung frönt nicht nur, aber vor allem rustikalem Kitsch – auch in Kontrast zum ausgebombten London. Die belesenen Insulaner wissen sogar Juliets Ladenhüterdebüt, eine Biografie von Anne Brontë, zu schätzen! Hier lässt sich's leben und lieben. „Deine Juliet“ will zurück zum Ursprung – und obwohl sie diesen nur in Guernsey findet, scheint doch ganz Großbritannien mitgemeint. (Andrey Arnold) (Translation)More Wuthering Heights in El Punt-Avui (in Catalan). The Brontë love interests discussed on the Brontë Babe Blog. In Bed with the Brontës on Girl with her Head in a Book. Finally on the Brontë Parsonage Facebook Wall:
Most pointless exotic location: Heathcliff by Cliff RichardThe Gay reviews Northern Ballet's Jane Eyre, giving it 3 stars out of 5.
Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff is rugged and brooding, a lost soul filled with darkness. Cliff Richard is . . . none of those things. That didn’t stop him taking to the stage as Brontë’s hero in Heathcliff, his 1996 musical adaptation of Wuthering Heights. “Does a fluffy bunny have despair gnawing at its soul?” asked The Times critic Richard Morrison. Leaving aside the show’s bizarre casting, the singer also made the strange decision to send Heathcliff on a peculiar gap year to India, China and Africa. This did, however, allow for some exotic choreography that can hardly have been envisioned by Brontë in the original book. (James Marriott)
Cathy Marston’s choreography nestles neatly between traditional and contemporary ballet, and is set to a score which moves between being playfully uplifting and darkly dramatic. The Northern Ballet Sinfonia was on point with their performance, having swelled their numbers from the previous tour of this production. The set is deliberately sparse, primarily comprising of screens and curtains which are used to focus the attention on particular areas of the stage and its simplicity compliments to complexity of the narrative and provides for a workable dance space; whilst the costumes give a flavour of the bleakness of the Yorkshire Moors which are occasionally peppered with bold colourThe Rumpus interviews Ted Scheinman, author of Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan and asks him about the Austen vs Brontës (pointless) debates.
Dreda Blow charms as the titular character, whilst Javier Torres gives a brooding and charismatic performance as Rochester; and Victoria Mason breathes life and insanity into the role of Rochester’s wife. In a company which danced with technical precision across the board, Mlindi Kulashe and Kevin Poeung both stood out from the ensemble and their consistency of performance and development from ballet to ballet continue to impress.
Given the rich story and the numerous events depicted in the book, there is a lot for Marston to fit into the ballet’s two hour run time, and whilst the key plot points are hit; the narrative is not always as clear as it could be. Those familiar with Bronte’s work will find much to enjoy within this production, whilst others may find the programme notes useful in keeping track.
That aside, Jane Eyre is a ballet which contains a flowing visual style, rich characterisations and a faithful adaptation of a timeless story which manages to maintain a feeling of freshness and originality in a frequently told tale. (Paul Szabo)
Rumpus: You allude to the schism between people who love Jane Austen and people who love the Brontës—dare I ask, what is that schism about?The Hollywood Reporter reviews the film adaptation of
Scheinman: I think it’s natural for fans to become clannish, and it certainly helps stir up solidarity among the in-group—nothing so useful as an external enemy. But I’m also not convinced that one ever has to choose. To oversimplify, it’s a little like the Beatles/Stones flame wars among American teens in the early 1960s. The Beatles were controlled and contained, arranging R&B styles within a sort of hallowed pop chamber. The Stones were dirty (they didn’t even wear ties!) and their music darker—the Dionysians to the mop-top Apollonians from Liverpool. That division of order vs. passion and classicism vs. Romanticism is a powerful organizing principle, and it obtains in the Austen/Brontë schsim. My impression is that a lot of the Janeites prefer the precision of Austen, and are able to find plenty of passion in those novels; it’s just passion of a different sort.
But this is a larger question that pertains to all sorts of fandom. Loving one thing often means disdaining its supposed antithesis, but once you get past that sort of blind dualism, you also start to enjoy things more. So I’m sympathetic to literary tribalism, but I also think fandom should be about enjoyment, not triumphalism. (Amy Shearn)
Cut to London, a year after the war, where Juliet and her publisher Sidney (Matthew Goode) are attending a reading of her book, a collection of lightly humorous stories by which she’s faintly embarrassed; a commercial sop after her first, a critical biography of Anne Brontë, flopped. [...]According to Deadline,
Newell and his editor Paul Tothill (Atonement) flit back and forth between the wartime occupation and 1946, in which the book club, originally spirited into being to placate the Germans, is still going strong. In addition to Dawsey and Eben, the members include Eben's grandson, Eli (Kit Connor), who was sent to the mainland days before the Germans arrived; Isola (The IT Crowd's Katherine Parkinson), a flame-haired pre-hippie fond of reciting from Jane Eyre and making her own gin; and the older Amelia (a very fine Wilton), whose ambivalent attitude towards Juliet is shaded by her grief over the death of a pregnant daughter, as well as the disappearance of Brown Findlay's Elizabeth, the daughter's best friend. Elizabeth left behind a child, and the girl's parentage — and the circumstances of her mother's departure from Guernsey — is the secret that Juliet cannot pierce. [...]
The group's syllabus seems heavy on the Brontes, but the windswept romance at this story's heart is less than intemperate. (Harry Windsor)
Benedict Cumberbatch is the first performer to sign up for the New York debut of London’s Letters Live, a stage show that pairs celebrities with actual “literary correspondence” from the likes of Mohandas Gandhi, David Bowie, Tom Hanks, Abraham Lincoln, Patti Smith and Janis Joplin. [...]The Sydney Morning Herald interviews writer and screenwriter Michelle Law.
In addition to the missives from Bowie, Gandhi, Joplin, Hanks and Smith, letters read include ones written by Maya Angelou, Elvis Presley, Kurt Vonnegut, Charlotte Brontë, Katherine Hepburn, Richard Burton, James Baldwin and Che Guevara. (Greg Evans)
The book you’ve read the most? The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, or Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. (Jaime Wells)Smart Bitches, Trashy Books recommends audiobooks read by actors, including
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: The amazing Thandie Newton narrates this one. Sarah says her narration is also very scrumptious. I’m obsessed with Newton in her role as Maeve in Westworld. (Amanda)The Debrief discusses Toffee Dating, a soon-to-be-launched app that's been 'designed to help people who went to private school find love'.
I mean, using what school you attended to divide eligible and ineligible mates is LITERALLY promoting social division, but okay.International Socialism tells a wonderful anecdote about a suffragette in Haworth in 1913:
Essentially Jane Eyre for the digital age, the app gives us 19th Century vibes, you know when you weren’t allowed to marry outside of your class? It’s also a wonderful opportunity for the prejudice state school kids experience to spill out into the dating world. Impacting their career and earning potential just isn’t enough, they should also be stopped from meeting anyone outside their class. It's only right. (Georgia Aspinall)
In 1913 [Selina] Cooper was campaigning in the Keighley by-election. She started speaking in Haworth, birthplace of the Brontë sisters, but was pelted with rotten tomatoes and eggs. “I’m stopping here whatever you throw,” she declared, “so go and fetch all the things you want to throw because I’m going to speak to you. And this blooming village would never have been known if it wasn’t for three women—the Brontës”. (Judy Cox)Coffee n' Notes reviews the Manga Classics' adaptation of Jane Eyre.
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