What would the Brontë sisters sew? They stitched samplers long before Charlotte grew up to write “Jane Eyre,” before Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights” and before Anne wrote “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” [...]Well, we are not the Brontë Parsonage Museum but we can confirm that the samplers do indeed belong to their collection. And while it is true that pictures of the actual samplers are hard to come by, there is a website selling stitch kits to make replicas at home.
Charlotte completed her sampler at age 13 in April 1829. Emily was done with hers at age 11 on March 1, 1829. Anne finished hers at age 10 on Jan. 23, 1830. They stitched their samplers at their home, Haworth Parsonage in Yorkshire, after the girls had returned from school where their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, had died from privation and illness suffered at the boarding school.
It is easy to imagine the sisters sitting together, hoops and needles in hand, making row after row of cross-stitches to fashion each word. Perhaps the sewing was an occasion to sit together and talk about life in the village or to remember their sisters. Or perhaps the sewing was drudgery, an onerous task to be got through until they could go out to the moors where they let their imaginations run wild.
As might be expected of the daughters of Patrick Brontë, a clergyman, the Brontë sisters’ samplers consist of lengthy passages from the Bible, from Proverbs and Psalms.
Photographs of the Brontës’ samplers are included in “Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries” by Marcus Huish, first published in 1900 in London. Huish describes the samplers: “They show a strange lack of ornament, and a monotony of colour (they are worked in black silk on rough canvas) which deprive them of all attractiveness in themselves.” Judging from the photographs, it’s easy to see how Huish might arrive at that conclusion, but the samplers, to my eye, have an almost architectural beauty of composition.
Huish says in his book that the owner of the samplers at that time was Clement Shorter, a journalist who collected manuscripts, books and materials related to his favorite authors, including the Brontë sisters.
Each sampler differs somewhat from the others. The top verse in Charlotte’s sampler reads: “A house divided against itself can’t stand.” But horizontal bars of stitching separate the seven verses in the sampler. Did she intend that as a bit of drollery? It can be argued that “Jane Eyre” has the “house divided” idea as one of its themes. Rochester was certainly a “house divided against itself,” given the fact that he had a madwoman, his wife, living in the attic, while falling in love and persuading Jane, the governess, who didn’t know about the wife, to marry him.
A line in Emily’s sampler says: “Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.” Was this line from a verse from Proverbs a foreshadowing of her character Heathcliff, whose callous behavior transgressed social and moral codes, in “Wuthering Heights”?
Anne’s sampler, also with verses from Proverbs, bears this line: “She is more precious than rubies and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” It was Anne who created the character Helen, the wife of Arthur, the unfaithful, drunken husband who did not value his wife. Helen fled from him in “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
The three samplers are stitched with the same zigzag border, similar to a Greek key pattern.
I searched a long time on the Internet for images of the samplers so I could direct readers to them, but I was not successful. The only images I found are in Huish’s book.
I came across references stating that the samplers are housed at Haworth Parsonage, now a museum, but at websites pertaining to Haworth I did not find information to confirm that the samplers are, indeed, housed at the museum. I e-mailed a query but have not yet received a reply. (Ardeana Hamlin)
So these narratives influence our lives but also at the same time, we influence the themes of romance novels and romantic movies?Business World explore romance books:
Yes. Consider that there is a social class element in romance. We can see that in Jane Eyre, even in Beauty and the Beast. (Jenny Hall)
My daughter Tanya Cruz Duldulao chose Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Emily Brontë. The novel centers on the doomed love between Heathcliff, a tormented orphan, and Catherine Earnshaw, his benefactor’s vain and willful daughter. Their childhood romance turns into a passionate love when they meet again in their adult life. But class differences keep them apart and Catherine’s deathbed scene is a telling depiction of why love hurts. (Elfren Sicangco Cruz)And My High School Journalism similarly mentions Wuthering Heights:
By middle school, though, we wanted to be adults. We played at relationships like we played house as pre-schoolers, though here, the stakes were much higher than giving Mom a headache from all the rattling pans. We were sure that we felt passions akin to those of the great romantic heroes; we didn’t yet know Heathcliff, but we certainly had stronger feelings for our crush of the week than he did for Catherine. For those of you who still don’t know Heathcliff (and I suggest you get to know him; Wuthering Heights is an amazing book), consider Jack and Rose. (Julia Shumway)The Jack and Rose parallel we find quite arguable, though.
The family moved to Kenmore, N.Y., and by age 12, Lynn was putting herself into the world of Emily Brontë's "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" at the public library. "I'd stop there on my way from school. I thought it was a really nice place to spend time," she said. (Bonnie Bishell)The Cavalier Daily writes about college education:
Still, part of the beauty of college is the social experience. While parties and drunken stupors are not unique to college, some experiences are. Gaining culture through Shakespearean plays or putting on Sunday’s best for Saturday gamedays prepares us for future Jeopardy game nights and cocktail parties. Is knowing who Jane Eyre is and how to dress for a dinner event worth the price of admission? (Hung Vu)The Brontë Sisters posts about the Brontës' Valentines. Jessica Guthrie and Sylvia-Louise post about Wuthering Heights and Ni de niña jugué a las comiditas (in Spanish) includes the novel on a top ten love stories. The Reading Room, Uncreated Conscience and So many books, so little time (in Spanish) include Jane Eyre on a similar top ten while White Noise briefly posts about the novel on audiobook format. Finally, Floor to Ceiling Books writes about Louise Rennison's Withering Tights.
This might well be one of the loveliest things we have come across since BrontëBlog was born.
Cross-stitch seems to have made a favourite of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, and apart from the kits sold at the Museum shop, there are others: a wintery Parsonage, (the same wintery Parsonage yet again, but a more close-up view, but, pst! the first one is cheaper), and a lush Parsonage (you need to scroll down to the last image). You can also have a Charlotte Brontë kit or even a replica kit of the samplers the girls made as children under the scrutinising eye of Aunt Branwell (scroll down until your halfway down. Picture here). The samplers can also be found here, with a picture for each one (the samplers by Maria and Elizabeth don't seem to be on sale anywhere).Wilful Design: The Sampler in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Chloe Flower
Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 21, Issue 3, 1 September 2016, Pages 301–321,
This article recovers the cultural significance of the sampler in nineteenth-century Britain. I argue that this mainstay of female education models a circular shape of development in which the young girl painfully revises earlier experience; the subject is conceived of as perpetually reworking herself without obvious linear progression. Though this article is situated against canonical works of Victorian fiction, it focuses primarily on actual samplers to argue that these pieces of childhood embroidery should be recognized as a form of life-writing. After establishing the conventions of the sampler, I turn to an apparently anomalous example that exemplifies the temporal and affective patterns ingrained by the pedagogical exercise of sampler sewing. My central artefact is an autobiographical sampler from the needle of a 17-year-old Sussex girl named Elizabeth Parker. Currently housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, this textile from 1830 recounts Parker’s childhood experiences in service, and the horrors of physical abuse and sexual assault that led her to contemplate suicide, all compressed into 46 lines of cross-stitch. I argue that the sampler as a pedagogical tool resists the Bildungsroman’s model of the self as formed through temporal progression towards self-contained adult agency. Instead, the sampler materially and thematically enforces the recursive temporal dynamics of conversion.
Charlotte Brontë's Oeuvre as Fantasy Fiction
Hoeveler, Diane Long, Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, no. 130, 2016, p. 15+
Charlotte Brontë began writing seriously when she was fourteen years old, creating a large prose cycle known as the Angrian and Glass Town sagas by the age of twenty-four. That fiction, interspersed with poetry and drama, features imitations of the major genres of the era: historical romance, silver fork novels, gothic, melodrama, and journalistic political and social commentaries. But at the core of these early works, as well as her later, mature novels, is a type of fantasy writing: for all of these works attempt to accomplish the cultural and personal work that lies at the heart of fantasy. As Laplanche and Pontalis note, fantasy writing most frequently emerges out of an author's meditation on her own personal narrative of psychic and emotional survival (18-27). As such, fantasy writing, like juvenilia, tends to comment on its own moment of production, and it does not present the sort of historical specificity associated with realistic novels. But it is the tension between the personal and the historical that is so intriguing and powerful in the works of Charlotte Brontë: and it is that tension, as well as the techniques and characteristics of fantasy writing, that this essay will explore.
Brontë's Domestic Uncanny
Levenson, Karen Chase, Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, no. 130, 2016, p. 124+
Elizabeth Gaskell begins her biography of Charlotte Brontë with a description of Haworth, the town where the family moved the day before Charlotte's fourth birthday, on April 21, 1820. Gaskell insists that we cannot understand the Brontëan sensibility without comprehending the peculiarities of this north Yorkshire region, steeped as it was in a culture fixed and unyielding in spirit, and yet dynamic and adaptable to the rough demands of industrial development and expansion. Every region clutches and extrudes habits as it hurtles through time, but Yorkshire people apparently hold tighter and release more violently than others do. According to Gaskell, "For a right understanding of the life of my dear friend, Charlotte Brontë, it appears to me more necessary in her case than in most others, that the reader should be made acquainted with the peculiar forms of population and society amidst which her earliest years were passed, and from which both her own and her sisters' first impressions of human life must have been received" (60). Here--where rebellion and fixity were partners, where provinciality marched with vision--is where the Bronte children lived and died, and wrote the works that even now bring shivers to the spine, tempest to the soul, and yearning to the heart. But although Haworth was home to Charlotte Brontë, home in her works bore as much relation to Haworth as Wonderland or the Looking Glass world bear to Oxford in Carroll's Alice books. Not that Brontë fictionalizes Haworth; but for her (as for many others) hominess transcends the home from whence it was engendered and represents states of mind and associated spaces that continue to be as relevant today as they were two hundred years ago.
A couple of scholar books with Brontë content:Dress Culture in Late Victorian Women's Fiction Literacy, Textiles, and Activism
Christine Bayles Kortsch, Eastern University, USA
* Imprint: Ashgate
* Illustrations: Includes 18 b&w illustrations
* Published: November 2009
* Format: 234 x 156 mm
* Extent: 212 pages
* Binding: Hardback
* ISBN: 978-0-7546-6510-6
In her immensely readable and richly documented book, Christine Bayles Kortsch asks us to shift our understanding of late Victorian literary culture by examining its inextricable relationship with the material culture of dress and sewing. Even as the Education Acts of 1870, 1880, and 1891 extended the privilege of print literacy to greater numbers of the populace, stitching samplers continued to be a way of acculturating girls in both print literacy and what Kortsch terms "dress culture." Kortsch explores nineteenth-century women's education, sewing and needlework, mainstream fashion, alternative dress movements, working-class labor in the textile industry, and forms of social activism, showing how dual literacy in dress and print cultures linked women writers with their readers.
Focusing on Victorian novels written between 1870 and 1900, Kortsch examines fiction by writers such as Olive Schreiner, Ella Hepworth Dixon, Margaret Oliphant, Sarah Grand, and Gertrude Dix, with attention to influential predecessors like Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. Periodicals, with their juxtaposition of journalism, fiction, and articles on dress and sewing are particularly fertile sites for exploring the close linkages between print and dress cultures. Informed by her examinations of costume collections in British and American museums, Kortsch's book broadens our view of New Woman fiction and its relationship both to dress culture and to contemporary women's fiction.
The Gothic, Postcolonialism and OthernessThe Brontë chapter has a title not to be forgotten: Heathcliff as Terrorist (Chapter 3). If you want to know Tabish Khair's approach is useful to read these previous posts.
Ghosts from Elsewhere
Tabish Khair
Palgrave Macmillan
04 Nov 2009
9780230234062
208 pages
Starting with a re-examination of the role of the colonial/racial Other in mainstream Gothic (colonial) fiction, this book goes on to engage with the problem of narrating the 'subaltern' in the post-colonial context. It engages with the problems of representing 'difference' in lucid conceptual terms, with much attention to primary texts, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of colonial discourses as well as postcolonialist attempts to 'write back.' While providing rich readings of Conrad, Kipling, Melville, Emily Brontë, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys and others, it offers new perspectives on Otherness, difference and identity, re-examines the role of emotions in literature, and suggests productive ways of engaging with contemporary global and postcolonial issues.
For its 74th edition Griffith Review launched an emerging voices competition for new fiction and nonfiction. From hundreds of entries, this is one of the four finalists.(...)Things are bad enough with the human rights crusaders without them picturing Emily Brontë travelling with a bunch of horses, tethered in a stall with her nose in a bag of chaff.In fact, Emily’s container has been beautifully adapted for the purpose. Inside, it is said to resemble her bedroom at the parsonage – dimly lit, with a comfortable bed and embroidered samplers on the wall. This same container will carry her into quarantine and serve as her accommodation while she is in Sydney. Astrid describes it as Emily’s home away from home, although some of Meg’s writers’ festival colleagues, those less enthusiastic, continue to refer to it as her storage unit. (...)
The Chase Celebrity Special turned awkward during the latest edition of the quiz show as Anthony Quinlan accidentally insulted the Queen.Host Bradley Walsh was back on our screens on New Year's Day to present a throwback episode of the ITV series, which first aired in 2020. (...)Bradley asked: "Which monarch was described by Charlotte Brontë as a little, stout, vivacious lady?After a short pause, Anthony replied: "Queen Elizabeth II."Bradley informed the actor what the correct answer is Queen Victoria. (Dan Laurie)
Emily Brontë, Margaret Mitchell, JD Salinger, Ralph Ellison, Harper Lee, Anna Sewell: all wrote a single, game-changing, long-form masterpiece. To that list can be added novelists equally or better known for other art-forms – the poets Sylvia Plath and Boris Pasternak; the playwright Oscar Wilde; the short story writers Alice Munro and Edgar Allan Poe, although Brontë was also an accomplished poet and Salinger a revolutionary short story writer. (...)Yet spare a thought for the writers who crave the recognition, and possibly the money, yet fail to find it. Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, perhaps the 19th century’s most extraordinary English novel, partly because her poetry had failed to find an audience (Poems, by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, featuring the verse of all three sisters and published at their own expense in 1842, sold only two copies).Alas, so did Wuthering Heights, which met with pitiful reviews, prompting Brontë’s biographer Winifred Gerin to argue that such catastrophic disappointment prevented Brontë from writing anything again (she died two years later, from tuberculosis, at the age of 30). Yet a letter to Emily from the publisher Thomas Newby in 1848 references a second novel Emily was apparently working on before she died.One can scarcely imagine how Emily might have followed Wuthering Heights, whose imaginative power remains startling; either way it’s believed Charlotte destroyed the manuscript, along with the fantasy prose sequence, Gondal, that Emily for years produced with her sister Anne, in order to protect her reputation. (Claire Allfree)
Jane Eyre (2011)While this Gothic classic doesn’t bear an obvious comparison to The Power of the Dog, Mia Wasikowska’s performance as the titular character allows viewers to sympathize with Jane’s absolute aloneness as she arrives to work at Thornfield, intermittently inhabited by the Byronic Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Jane, ever the outsider, challenges Rochester’s egotism and bitterness while dealing with her own suspicions about the secretive household. Jane’s inner rebelliousness frequently clashes with her Calvinist education and her exposure to Rochester’s shallow class contemporaries, yet she refuses to compromise her dignity throughout. Unlike Rose in The Power of the Dog, she is more than a match for the terrors of the house, even when she must reconcile her love for Rochester with the secrets he has been hiding. Cary Fukunaga’s camera frequently puts Jane at the mercy of natural elements, at odds with both the English wilderness and a wholly indifferent society. (Rebecca Bihn-Wallace)
Y acabo, como muchas otras veces, con los versos de una mujer que se merece otro enorme reconocimiento: Emily Brontë, autora como ustedes saben de la inmensa novela Cumbres borrascosas. Aquí van esos versos: «¿No parece esta tarde, en su ocaso, / dar paso a un día más hermoso?». Que tengan ustedes, a pesar de la que está cayendo, un feliz año nuevo. De todo corazón se lo deseo. De todo corazón. (Alfons Cervera) (Translation)
Rochester and JaneHaha - we love it!
(portrayed by Toby Stephens & Ruth Wilson)
Intellectually equal,
Morally not,
Does that even matter
When Rochester is hot?
In a rapidly changing intellectual environment, two developments have affected the work of the historical biographer over the past two decades. First, digitisation has made it possible to read vast swaths of printed matter online, including obscure sermons and newspaper articles, and even some manuscripts, without leaving the study. Second, with privacy under erasure, biographers are empowered to go where their predecessors feared to tread with regard to the body and its functions. Both developments are evident in the making of This Dark Night, a book that demonstrates what can be achieved when a scholar-critic of Lutz’s stature applies her empathic imagination to the hidden life and writing practices of her elusive subject.Lutz has a particular interest in the materials that writers used in the Victorian age, the subject of a previous study. In the preface to her new book, she writes; “Keeping slips of paper and a pencil nub nearby, Brontë mastered a peripatetic kind of creativity, interwoven with household work, daydreaming, and exploring her native landscape.” Out on the moors by day and under the stars by night, she scribbled poems on scraps of paper and later transcribed them in drafts written in ink. Lutz argues that “the page worked for her as a sort of frame or foundation on which to build the poem. Similar to those samplers she made as a girl, the letters, words, and lines accumulated like cross-stich across and down the sheet.” Signs of digging her quill pen into the paper while writing remain legible, we are told.As Emily and her sisters prepared their poetry and fiction for publication, they acquired notebooks with thin leather covers the colour of oxblood. When opened, they would easily lie flat. Lutz’s close readings of the texts convince us of the power of a poetic vision inspired by nature and the elements. Her treatment of Emily’s writing materials reminds us that creation is work. (Dr Michael Wheeler)
Forget hot girl summer — for readers, it's decidedly a classics girl summer. According to data from Google Trends, interest in books you might not have read or even thought about since high school English class is way up. This includes some of the standard books you'd find on Rory Gilmore's reading list, like "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë and "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, but some titles surging in popularity are unusual picks for the book girlies. (Amanda Manen)
Andrés Muedano: What are you working on next?Tara Menon: I am working on both a second academic book and a second novel. My academic book is an exploration of anger and the novel. I have noticed that readers often label books “angry”—they might say, for instance, “Jane Eyre is a furious book” or “Naipaul’s novels seethe with rage,” but it’s never been clear exactly how they make those determinations. In my book, I ask: what does it mean for anger to be embedded in a novel, rather than simply expressed by one of its characters? What are the formal characteristics of anger in fiction?
But Morton doesn’t believe in bogging herself down in research, not since starring in a British TV production of “Jane Eyre” when she was 19 and carried around a heavily highlighted copy of the Charlotte Brontë book, despairing whenever the adaptation deviated from the novel. From that point on, she stuck to the script and her own imagination. (...)Morton first came to New York as a teen to do press for “Emma,” returned a year later to promote “Jane Eyre” and then couldn’t bring herself to leave, “sofa-surfing” at friends’ apartments so she could immerse herself in the city.“New York stole my heart,” Morton says. It’s where she first got into literature, devouring Charles Bukowski, roaming the aisles at the St. Mark’s Bookshop, checking out movies from Kim’s Video and gobbling hash browns and eggs over easy at the Waverly Diner. (Glenn Whipp)
Sometimes the right project is simply too good to turn down. Wuthering Heights was a fantastic job – I loved every minute of it, and Margot and Jacob and everyone on that production were lovely. I’m lucky that I still get offered work that interests me. The moment it stops being enjoyable, I’ll stop doing it. (Claire Bowman)
" spawned a worldwide annual tradition of red-dress flash mobs, with two taking place in France this year: at the Bon-Repos abbey on July 25 and in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris on July 26, 2026.Sa reconnaissance viendra bien plus tard. Au cours du XXe siècle, Les Hauts de Hurlevent s'impose progressivement comme un classique de la littérature mondiale grâce à ses nombreuses adaptations au cinéma, à la télévision et au théâtre. Kate Bush participera, elle aussi, à cette redécouverte. Car, contrairement au roman dont elle est inspirée, sa chanson connaît un triomphe immédiat. Sortie en pleine période où s'affrontent le punk et le disco, à rebours des tendances dominantes, elle s'impose en tête des classements britanniques et détrône même le groupe ABBA. Du jamais vu pour un premier titre et une artiste inconnue.Lorsque Kate Bush découvre ce récit gothique, ce n'est pas en ouvrant le roman d'Emily Brontë, mais en regardant une adaptation télévisée diffusée par la BBC. Elle n'a alors que 16 ans. Fascinée par l'atmosphère sombre du récit et la puissance tragique de ses personnages, elle finit par lire le livre et se sent particulièrement proche de son héroïne, Catherine, surnommée Cathy, dont elle partage le prénom. Elle décide alors de transposer l'histoire dans le langage de la pop.À l'âge de 18 ans, elle compose Wuthering Heights en une seule soirée, au piano. Sa chanson s'inspire d'une scène emblématique du roman : celle où le fantôme de Cathy apparaît à la fenêtre de Heathcliff et tente de le convaincre de la laisser entrer. Kate Bush prête alors sa voix à l'héroïne disparue : « Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home, I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window... » ("Heathcliff, c'est moi, Cathy. Je suis revenue. J'ai si froid. Laisse-moi entrer par ta fenêtre..."). En quatre minutes de musique, la chanteuse parvient ainsi à condenser toute la passion, la mélancolie et le mystère qui font encore aujourd'hui la force du roman d'Emily Brontë. (...)Si Wuthering Heights est devenue une chanson culte, c'est autant grâce à la voix singulière de Kate Bush qu'à l'univers visuel qu'elle a construit autour du morceau. Son timbre aigu, presque irréel, se mêle à des sonorités éthérées pour donner vie à un personnage fantomatique directement inspiré de Cathy Earnshaw. Mais c'est surtout le clip qui va marquer durablement les esprits.Conçue avec le chorégraphe Lindsay Kemp, célèbre pour avoir notamment formé David Bowie à l'art du mime, la chorégraphie contribue à l'atmosphère hypnotique du morceau. Dans une première version du clip, Kate Bush apparaît sous les traits du fantôme de Cathy, vêtue d'une longue robe blanche vaporeuse. Filmée au ralenti, évoluant parmi des effets visuels qui accentuent l'étrangeté de la scène, elle semble flotter entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts.Une seconde vidéo est ensuite réalisée pour le marché américain. Le décor change, mais pas la chorégraphie. Cette fois, la chanteuse danse au milieu de la campagne anglaise dans une robe rouge flamboyante qui deviendra sa tenue emblématique. Plus épurée et plus facilement identifiable, cette version va peu à peu s'imposer dans l'imaginaire collectif et devenir l'une des images les plus célèbres de la culture pop britannique.C'est d'ailleurs ce clip qui est à l'origine de The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever. Chaque année, à l'occasion de l'anniversaire de Kate Bush - et d’Emily Brontë, née un 30 juillet, elle-aussi - des milliers de fans à travers le monde enfilent la fameuse robe rouge et reproduisent les gestes envoûtants de la chanteuse. De Londres à Melbourne, en passant par Paris, cette chorégraphie née à la fin des années 1970 continue ainsi de rassembler. L'archive ci-dessous nous entraîne dans l'événement organisé en Bretagne en 2024. (Florence Dartois) (Translation)
Final Jeopardy today was in the category “AUTHORS“The clue: “She sometimes signed letters “Charles Thunder”The answer: “Who is Charlotte Brontë?” (Lizzy Buczak in Parade)
The album was recorded across Iceland, New York, and Berlin, and draws inspiration from poetry, literature and visual art. de Oliveira weaves in mythology with references to Milton's Paradise Lost and the poetry of John Keats, Emily Brontë and Anne Sexton. (Kayla Sandiford)
En esto se gastan los jóvenes lucenses su Bono Cultural: «El "GTA VI" y "Cumbres Borrascosas" son los grandes éxitos de este 2026» (...) Cuentan que esta ayuda cultural es más usada por las chicas que por los chicos, aunque esto no significa que estos últimos no acudan a comprar obras literarias al establecimiento. «Ellas vienen, principalmente, en busca de novelas románticas. Cumbres borrascosas vendió muchos ejemplares por el estreno de la adaptación en cines». (Andrés Quintán) (Translation)
An AI includes Jane Eyre in a list of great stories never getting old on Bookclub. The Brussels Brontë Blog recounts a guided day trip through lesser-known Brontë sites in Lancashire and West Yorkshire — Cowan Bridge, Leck, Tunstall Church, Kirkby Lonsdale, and Wycoller — checking off several long-sought locations tied to the sisters' lives and Charlotte's Jane Eyre.
Today, December 19, appears on DVD (Region 1, US and Canada) a new edition of the The Brontë sisters documentary, part of the Biography series edited by by A&E Video.PRODUCT DETAIL:The Brontë Sisters DVDIf you think that "bored country sisters" is, being diplomatic, not very appropriate, wait to read how A&E describes the same documentary that will be aired again next week. If you want to know our opinion, read this post, because this is not the first time it happens. Just pathetic.
1 DVD(s) / 50 Minutes
How could a trio of bored country sisters create some of the most dramatic and timeless literature of the 19th century? Who were they and how did such genius arise in the isolation of the English countryside?
This illuminating DVD tells the fascinating story of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Bronte: three sisters from a tragic family who, between them, wrote some of literature's most enduring classics. Trace their growth from the easily-dismissed early poetry - written under the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell - to the triumphs of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Discover the unlikely environment that allowed their precocious talents to flourish. Anguish as the sisters' lives prove as tragic and tempestuous as those of the ill-fated characters in their novels.
After two years she got a place in the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, where she was told by one of the teachers that she wouldn’t get any big roles until her early thirties. Was she right? “Yes. I didn’t make any money, or really have a career as such, until I hit 30, because I looked and sounded a bit more weighty, I suppose. I never got to flounce around in a corset being the lovely little Jane Eyre.” (Louise Cohen)Lovely? Well, we don't know if this is the adjective that Jane would chose for herself.
In The Cincinnati Enquirer we have found an article about the Brontë Bistro in the Joseph-Beth'sNo crisis, just great drama
Was made controller of BBC Fiction in October. She is responsible for drama and comedy commissioning, programme acquisitions and BBC films. From 2000 to 2006, she was controller of drama commissioning on BBCs 1, 2, 3 and 4. Commissions during that time included Shakespeare, Rome, Jane Eyre, Life on Mars, Bleak House, Hotel Babylon, Robin Hood, Doctor Who, Bodies, Torchwood, Blackpool, Casanova and Spooks. She joined the BBC in 1985 as a secretary.
Bookstore in Cincinnati. They also have another Brontë Bistro in their Charlotte bookstore (where else?). But what we have found funny is this dish on the menu:The Brontë CheeseburguerAnd on Tempusfugit you can follow the evolution of the Brontë samplers that we reported previously.
Jane Eyre couldn’t handle this one!
Fresh ground beef served on a toasted kaiser roll with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and a side of roasted red potatoes.
Having never visited Haworth myself, I was impressed with the attempt to recreate Haworth of the Brontės' time for the reader. The exterior photos of the present-day Parsonage and Village from so many varying distances and angles gave me a sense of the layout and scale that text descriptions have never provided me before.The other review is from Sangdil (1952). This Indian movie that more or less adapts Jane Eyre (it is available on the NetFlix service, for instance). It was originally published in the Brontë Yahoo List. His author, Jon Knapp, has kindly give us permission to reproduce it here.
Ann Dinsdale provided details of the Parsonage and its vicinity (including the additions, removals and restorations over the years) that served as a further reference. I've read before about the harrowing conditions in Haworth during the Brontės' time, nevertheless the images of the vast graveyard, its compactly-laid markers, and its exact proximity to the Parsonage still surprised me.
I was also impressed with the generous amount of information and imagery contained in this 160 page book. Ann Dinsdale gave a satisfying account of their lives, works, and as mentioned above, a sense of what their daily environment was like.
Simon Warner's photographs of the Parsonage, the Village, the countryside, and locations that inspired the sisters were quietly and beautifully evocative of their literary works. The detail evident in the full-page photographs especially drew me in. Among the many artifacts pictured I especially liked that each family member's handwriting was represented, when possible, through images of manuscripts, essays, letters and journals. (In the case of Patrick's wife Maria and their two eldest daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, their samplers were included instead.)
I am now inspired to re-read Juliet Barker's exhaustive biography, now that I have so many visual references to enhance it. (Polly Sipes)
This version of Charlotte's masterpiece is both a loose interpretation as to setting, structure, and story; as well as a faithful conformation of spirit, purpose, and charm.Check these clips on YouTube. Picture Source: ThisBeciel.
A black and white musical set in the early twentieth century India, 'Sangdil' is a lengthy and full attempt to render the story of Jane Eyre into a translation which could resonate with the ethos and mores of its intended audience. What results is a movie in which I delighted in witnessing both its liberal (and culturally necessary) diversions from CB's story and structure, and its intermittent and heart-felt faithfulness to varying details (sometimes small, sometimes substantial) of the original Bronte work. Perhaps that is the most wonderful and entertaining element for any Brontë aficionado's viewing of this, perhaps now obscure, production! I became more and more interested, surprised, and delighted with each new unfolding of the plot saying to myself:
Oh, I recognize that! That's new But where are we going here?..Oh now I see! There was a wonderful balance of the familiar with the exotic; with which any JE fan will soon enter into a game of try to connect the dots.
Film and sound quality will immediately impress the viewer as more of a 1930's cinema quality. It reminded me of watching the very first Hollywood King Kong or Tarzan or Phantom of the Opera movie. The language spoken is Hindi (I think) with English subtitles. And of course anyone not familiar with Indian Bollywood style movie-making will have to prepare themselves for wonderful songs and dances to brake out at any moment ;^) Are you ready to watch Jane or Rochester strike a pose and belt out a song? (50 years before Jane Eyre: The Musical).(...)
Some fun notes on a few specifics:
The Jane and Edward characters start the movie as childhood sweethearts! !! With the appropriate corresponding class differences and evil quasi-inlaws. (Could this have been an intentional homage to WH?). One must prepare one's self for the first song: a dream of Jane's with the two children riding through the sky together on a white horse! (Again, suited more for WH's Catherine and Heathcliff.) They then are separated for many years only to reenter each others lives not recognizing each other (yes, a horse is involved at this reunion and Jane has a neat and brief little flashback to her childhood dream horse).
Although there is an undeniable Brocklehurst villain, sensitivities necessitate a quick subsequent diversion in plot by placing the young orphan Jane into the stable and honorable vocation as a novitiate/nun/ priestess at some ashram or temple-like institution. At first I didn't grasp the point of this; later I saw how it particularly served to reveal Jane's ultimate and unwavering journey of integrity (within the particular limits of cultural time and setting).
Edward is very fun to watch as a reckless rake who is very constrained by the limits of a doubly G-rated (General Audience rating here in the States) venue.
Blanche is as mercenary as required; and Edward's gypsy (in this case, astrologe) was a most memorable scene, very cute.
The Berth actress did a more than admirable job of creeping me out! (not since Lon Cheney's Phantom)
Almost all the acting was high quality and convincing (within the melodramatic style of that time).
Dozens of classic elements of JE are portrayed in unique, surprising, and pleasing ways. (...)
This is no 1934 Jane Eyre, with Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce, at which you wish to throw popcorn due to its painful absurdity. Sangdil is a Jane Eyre which you may find strange and different; but you will want to warmly embrace its efforts, no matter how apparently unfamiliar or Bronte-irreverent even through a second viewing.
BrontëBlog friend and collaborator Sarah Barrett was recently at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth visiting the newly-opened No Coward Soul exhibition. She has been so kind as to email us a few beautiful, snowy pictures and her impressions on the exhibition.Emily Brontë exhibition 2008Here's a BIG thanks to Sarah for sharing this and bringing this wonderful, rare exhibtion closer to all of us.
Displayed in Charlotte’s room in the museum:
In the middle was a glass case that had items of Emily’s clothing, including a white short-sleeved chemise worn underneath the dress; a lovely purple plain woven silk dress that hangs from the dummy it's on like Emily herself, she was said to be lanky and this dress shows it! It’s long-sleeved, straight with a neckline like in Branwell’s portrait of her, quite wide with black lace for a small collar. Dress c.1835-40. The white chemise is shown in Robert Barnard’s book Emily Brontë.
There is also a straw bonnet with a red ribbon. It sticks out all round the face like horses blinkers so it would be hard for people to see the persons face
The display cases were split into subjects such as Childhood, A love of Animals, Poetry, and Death. In each case there were items to do with Emily, the childhood had some toys such as a small toy iron, a child’s plate, her Christening Mug, a small child’s bodice, dark coloured and silk possibly, Charlotte's History of the Year 1829 and a copy of Edinburgh’s Blackwood Magazine which they read as children.
The animal section had the paintings/drawings of the pet dogs, Keeper, Flossy and Grasper; there were many of her drawings of animals too.
In another display cabinet there was the following items:
Woman’s head with Tiara drawing
Mullioned window sketch
St Simeon sketch
Poem book reviews from newspaper cut outs, copy of Poems book
Autograph of the Bell sisters
Geometric figures done by Emily and a book on Geometry
Emily’s writing desk and all its contents
Study of a Fir Tree sketch
And in another: 2 diary papers written by Emily from 1834 and 1837, about the size of a credit card in real life. Also, two samplers by Emily on the wall; a Book of Common Prayer from Charlotte to Emily in 1842.
There was a pretty workbox from Aunt Branwell to Emily, Emily’s account book - dark leather with a gold clasp - very sweet and personal to see.
A cash box/tin box that is seen on the table in one of the diary papers; a poetry manuscript in its own case, from the Bonnell Collection.
And, sad to see were the Administration papers of Emily’s estate upon her death.
Via the Spanish blog Horas Buenas we have come across yet another Brontë-related cross-stitch kit. This one comes from Little House Needleworks and is called The Bookshelf. As can be seen in the picture it features other classic writers/poets and a few key literary works.* The Bookshelf *As you will remember, this is not the first time cross-stitch designs have been featured on BrontëBlog. Among others, we've had the Brontë samplers and the Parsonage.
Reading is one leisure activity I wish I had more time for. The Bookshelf pays tribute to female authors of the 19th and 20th centuries and was made with the book lover in mind. The design was stitched on 28 count Café Mocha linen from Zweigart with DMC floss. The frame is from Eastside Mouldings.
Unbelievable though it may seem, the line between children’s and adult literature is easily dissolved, proven through the discovery of a connection in the most unlikely of places. It’s time to brush off the Bronte sisters’ anthology, because Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre may have been reincarnated as none other than the children’s classic Matilda, by Roald Dahl. Don’t believe me? Keep reading.The Washington Post reviews Girl in a Blue Dress. A Novel Inspired by the Life & Marriage of Charles Dickens by Gaynor Arnold:
Doubters need look no further into Bronte's celebrated novel than to Jane’s stint at Lowood School. The unchallenged dominance of the tyrannical clergyman Mr. Brocklehurst melts seamlessly into terror-inducing Trunchbull of Crunchem Hall Elementary. Both stories present these formidable adversaries as the source of evil in an otherwise sacred institution, terrorizing their students for no discernible reason. Our small, unassuming heroines are personally wronged by these monsters in ways that reveal surprising insight into the maturation of fear. The ‘adult version’ presents a punishment of public humiliation and the accusation of untruth, while in Dahl’s world children are sent to The Chokey – a broom closet of isolation filled only with darkness and protruding nails. Though the young are terrorized by things they can (or cannot) see and physically feel, adults dread the sight and feeling of others, rather than themselves.
If you believe at age five – as most five-year-olds do – that where there’s good, there’s evil, you’re likely to think the same at age 65. Which brings us to our opposition, in the form of two angelic teachers: Miss Temple and Miss Honey. Gently nurturing and protecting the young protagonists, these women are the embodiment of the caring mother that neither girl possesses. More importantly, they serve as the primary representation of what is highly valued by authors Dahl and Bronte: family. Recurrent almost ad nauseum in Jane Eyre is the belief that familial ties, or relationships to those who are alike (and therefore meant to be together) create an almost magical bond, enabling not only health and happiness, but the ability to subconsciously communicate across long distances. This mystical power takes on a more modern form in Matilda’s telekinetic powers, supposedly caused by diverted excess energy in her enormous brain. The cause lies with her neglectful parents, obtuse to the point of completely missing their daughter’s extraordinary prodigy. Her bond with Miss Honey becomes increasingly familial as Matilda involves herself in the personal problems of her caring teacher, finally resulting in their becoming a legal family when Matilda abandons her own.
In constantly encountering parallels between the two novels, what becomes increasingly apparent is the resemblance between Matilda and Jane themselves. Readers will find them both to be quiet misfits who desire little more than to love and be loved in return. They share a relationship to the literary genre as well: Matilda in her use of books as an escape from the tortures of the real world (ironically, Jane Eyre is mentioned), and Jane, in addition to reading herself, in her need to live a life that is ‘readable’. Throughout the course of the novel, she directly addresses readers, explaining to them that she has omitted or altered portions of her own life in order to increase the narrative appeal. Again, the same values are manifested in ways molded only by an increase in age – not a change in values.
Arnold's novel seems poised to enact a much-deserved act of feminist revenge, something like Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea," which exposed the brutishness of Rochester in "Jane Eyre." But Arnold is ultimately too charitable and too attendant to the historical record for anything like that. "Girl in a Blue Dress" is, among many things, the story of one woman's remarkable resistance to bitterness and the blessings that eventually flow from that spirit. (Ron Charles)Another Brontë reference comes from The Boston Phoenix. A review of the exhibition Butterfly Flight & Other Stories by Anne Siems in Walker Contemporary (Boston):
She mixes in early American stenciled wall decorations and designs that young girls embroidered into samplers. She sets it all atop dreamy soft-focus landscapes rendered with a golden brown patina that makes the paintings look antique. The combination transforms these influences from just a pastiche into something that feels fresh and sweeps you up like ravishing moments from a Brontë sisters novel. (Greg Cook)The Fuquay-Varina Independent talks about Joyce Hope's book Joy Comes in the Morning:
Lauren MJ Connelly, published freelance writer and blogger at www.puremama.com, says the book “is destined to become an instant classic. This beautiful novel has the potential for being developed into other forms of media a la the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder or the Brontë sisters.”Fairweather Lewis posts about Fritz Eichenberg's 1943 illustrations for Wuthering Heights and Addicted to Film mentions several Jane Eyre adaptations.
“Bloody hell, Gordon, you’re freaking me out.” Is that what wives normally say first thing in the morning to their husbands? I don’t know what to expect any more. Gordon Brown, my Heathcliff of a husband, is so volatile at the moment (who am I trying to kid? It’s been like that ever since we started dating, or “stepping out” as Gordon liked to put it). So this morning I did what I’ve learnt to do every day, half-open one eye to gauge his mood. I flipped out. His face was one inch in front of mine waiting for me to wake up. It was such a shock I jumped and nearly smacked him in the face with my head. Once he had my full attention he started rabbiting on: “Sarah, I’ve done it. I’ve bloody gone and done it.”The Telegraph & Argus announces that the Red House Museum in Gomersal (Mary Taylor's house) is in the middle of a spring cleaning... in autumn: (Picture source)
Due to the busy programme of events at Red House, Gomersal, each room undergoes specialist cleaning every one to two years.The Summit Daily News reviews the performances of Charles Vance's The Mystery of Irma Vep at the Backstage Theatre in Breckenridge, Colorado.
The beautiful Georgian coffee pot, held here by museum officer Helga Hughes, is one of 200 artefacts currently undergoing preventative conservation cleaning in the kitchen at the Oxford Road museum, which was once the home of textile merchant and manufacturer Joshua Taylor.
“Every artefact needs treating differently,” said Helga. “This is a really careful process.”
Hogs hair and pony hair brushes, specially selected for their softness, are among the staff’s special cleaning kit. Separate brushes are used for different materials.
The white gloves Helga is wearing are worn to prevent tarnish caused by acids in the skin. Helga said it is a preventative process to stop dust damaging the objects. (Sally Clifford)
Shelly Bordas directs the production which follows the story of a hunchback stableman named Nicodemus (Willard) and housemaid Jane (Wee) who interact with Lord Edgar (Wee) and Lady Enid (Willard), characters that are a cross between “Wuthering Heights” and “Psycho.” (Leslie Brefelt)And... BlogCritics Magazine reviews Wuthering Heights. The first part is published here. The Yorkshire Post has an article about a couple of crime incidents in Haworth. Novel Readings posts about Pedagogy, Evaluation, and What We Look for in 'the' Novel, an interesting post with some Jane Eyre appearances. Encore une histoire du fil... posts some pictures of newly made Brontë samplers. On Meloukhia we can read two (not very enthusiastic) reviews of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. Le télèphone pleure is, in contrast, publishes a ravishing review of Wuthering Heights (in Spanish)
Reichek is a grandmother who does embroidery, but, whatever associations that image has for you, forget them. A conceptual artist with a degree from Yale and a punkish shock of platinum hair, she is a leading figure in the field of mixed-media art. (Judith Thurman)An exhibition of some of her works is now on at the Klagsbrun gallery (click here to see some images). But what is relevant to us is the description of one of her works:
Reichek’s samplers include embroidered reproductions of a Web page, Seurat’s portrait of his mother sewing, an Attic frieze, quotations in needlework from Freud and Colette, Charlotte Brontë’s favorite collar patterns with a paragraph from “Shirley,” and an extract from Darwin’s journals. (Judith Thurman)It does sound interesting.
In the five-part work Sampler (The Brontes), 1997, Reichek quotes from Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1848): "She was sitting in the alcove--her task of work on her knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, her eyes following and regulating their movements, her brain worked restlessly. She did sew, she plied her needle, continuously, ceaselessly, but her brain worked faster than her fingers." (Bill Arning, 1999)The Herald mulls over the eternal question of 'a rose by any other name'.
Names are important in fiction, too. If Heathcliff had been called Hugebottom and if Wuthering Heights had been Bide-a-wee, the effect wouldn't have been the same. (Ron Ferguson)If Heathcliff had been named Hugebottom, then Cathy's words would have been even more unforgettable, although for all the wrong reasons: 'Nelly, I am Hugebottom'.
Airing Sundays, December 30, 2007 + January 6, 2008 on PBSThe site has a much information on the series as well as some background information as well.
(Check local listings; dates and times may vary)
So what led you to take up the subject of debt?EDIT (2 October 2008) (from ohnotheydidnt):
Long ago, I was a graduate student in Victorian literature. When you think of the 19th-century novel, you think romance — you think Heathcliff, Cathy, Madame Bovary, etc. But the underpinning structure of those novels is money, and Madame Bovary could have cheerfully gone on committing adultery for a long time if she hadn’t overspent. (Deborah Solomon)
“I became a Victorian. That was my field of study at univer-sity - and that's the age par excellence in which plots are driven by money and people are embroiled in an outbreak of capitalism. Wuthering Heights is driven by money: Heathcliff earns a fortune and then comes back to extract the house from its previous owner. Madame Bovary would have been quite all right had she kept within her budget. It's not the adultery - it's the debt that sank her.”Today we have just another sample of that (perverse) journalist custom of defending one cause by attacking just another that happens to be on the journalist's mind for some reason. Christina Patterson vehemently defends in The Independent that Shandy Hall (Laurence Sterne's house) in Yorkshire should be preserved but thinks necessary to add:
Apart from the world of Brontë shortbread and sub-Austen samplers, there are a number of buildings in this country that operate not as sacred temples to writers elevated to the top table of heritage Britain – deified, commodified and occasionally revivified by Andrew Davies – but as living, and often leaking, tributes to some of this country's greatest minds, and their work.The Daily Star (Bangladesh) has reread Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and thinks that
The settings and landscapes of Aymenem can easily be compared to Bronte's Wuthering Heights and give it character. It is very much visible in the book that the kind of landscape the writer grew up in is still very much living in her --- the way she loves a tree or a river or the color of the earth. It is a different kind of love. (Shusmita Amin Chowdhury)Categories: References, Wuthering Heights
Brontë RelicsEDIT: And another one at the Swindon Festival of Literature:
An Illustrated Lecture with Professor Deborah Lutz
Thursday, May 15
Time: 8:00 PM
*** Offsite: Morbid Anatomy Museum (New Space) , 424 A 3rd Avenue (Corner of 7th Street and 3rd Avenue)
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Portable desk boxes, samplers, albums of pressed ferns, printed books with diaries written on their flyleaves, mended stockings and locks of hair that belonged to the Brontës carry traces of their lives: nicked with incident, smoothed by handling, frayed with wearing. These things bring to life the daily, domestic round of the Brontë sisters. The Brontës themselves believed in the ability of material objects to be charged with an almost-enchanted meaning, to be imbued by their possessors.
Emily, Anne and Charlotte surrounded the characters in their novels with such articles: the wardrobe with paintings of the twelve apostles on its front that gleams out of a dark corner at Jane Eyre as she sits in the anteroom of a madwoman’s prison. The oak sleeping cabinet that belonged to the now-dead Catherine Earnshaw holds her old books and the names she carved into the wood: those who sleep there dream of her. Love letters in a sealed bottle are buried by Lucy Snowe under a pear tree; Agnes Grey watches her desk be catapulted out the window by the brats she teaches. The ordinary—and extraordinary—pasts of these women emerge out of the remnants of their physical selves.
Deborah Lutz is finishing a book on Brontë relics: The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (forthcoming, Norton, 2015). She also has a book due out soon on a related topic—Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Previous books include The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-Century Seduction Narrative (Ohio State UP, 2006) and Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism (Norton, 2011).
Keith Hooper
Wroughton Library, Ellendune Centre SN4 9LT
7pm • 15 May
Keith Hooper – on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane eyre: an Autobiography.An illustrated lecture which explores ‘the path of the poor orphan child’ from the Red Room to Thornfield Hall.
Dr Keith Hooper, who holds a doctorate in nineteenth century Literature, uses a line from Bessie’s song to the ten-year-old Jane, as a starting point to reflect upon aspects of this highly popular work.
ABC, Australia's national public broadcaster, has also acquired Mammoth Screen's new four-part adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights for ITV. The drama, which stars RocknRolla actor Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, is yet to get a confirmed TX date in the UK.Four parts? The version we know is just 142 minutes long.
Wuthering Heights and The 39 Steps will form part of ITV Global Entertainment's drama slate. (Will Hurrell in Broadcastnow)
The Bronte shrine - shivers and gloom liveThe writer Sarah Shun-Lien is interviewed in the San Diego Reader:
26 March 1955
Norman Shrapnel
"Bronte Products - Cabinet Makers, Undertakers," a weathered signboard announces, and one sees what it means. None of the British literary shrines is stronger or more faithful in atmosphere. Haworth, for all its lively beckonings to the tourists who are now being drawn to it by Charlotte's centenary, cannot help conveying a sense of isolation and mortality.
A scowl of dark stone, hewn as it seems out of a recalcitrant hilltop, the place preserves a rigour that the Bronte postcards, the Bronte Guest House, the Bronte Cinema Company, the Bronte buses and tours, the Bronte fisheries, house furnishers, and cafe, and the Bronte Lodge of Buffaloes are quite unable to soften. And they would be wrong if they wanted to. For no true pilgrim would come here - however gay his plastic mac, however uneerie the Yorkshire pudding he can eat in the lurching main street without expecting to shiver a little.
Shiver he does. The humanisers may try their best but the ghosts win, hands down. The living seem upstarts. To all appearance it might still be, as it was then, a manufacturing village in the Honour of Pontefract, with 4,668 inhabitants. Now there is this other industry, bringing some 50,000 visitors in a good year. The Bronte Society runs its affairs with taste and restraint, and yet it is impossible to visit Haworth Parsonage, now a museum, without feeling that one is intruding upon a passionately private life.
The air is domestic, unbearably mournful, yet reproachfully vital. Samplers worked by little dead Brontes, those other sisters, are on the walls. Here is a Bronte book of music, published in 1894, with fugues built on the notes of the sisters' initials. But such light relief is a mere holding back of the pervasive sadness.
Emotion is the last thing you expect to feel in a literary shrine; here, even to the most stalwart non-reader of Charlotte Bronte, it is in every nook and corner. From Charlotte's window upstairs the outlook is much as she knew it. And there by the window, as if watching and listening for Branwell's tipsy return, stands Charlotte's lavender silk dress surmounted by an alert bonnet. This centenary summer will bring visitors from many countries. The silent watcher by the window in Charlotte's room will no doubt forgive the mass intrusion. Her legend and Haworth's are now one.
Back in Haworth the Baptist Church ladies are showing signs of a reaction against this atmosphere of female doom. They are producing a Yorkshire dialect sketch entitled "Anastasia Joins t'Domino Club". (Norman Shrapnel)
What book has been most life-changing for you?What's on Stage reviews a Prima Artists entertainment showcase to clients in the cruise industry (verbatim) and finds the most improbable Brontë connection of the month:
“Jane Eyre completely killed me when I read it in eighth grade — it’s one of my favorite middle-school memories. I was totally gripped by the story, and I felt such a connection to Jane and was swept up by the figure of Mr. Rochester. And I think, in part because they had a picture of Charlotte Brontë on the cover, that it was the first time I began to think about the writer, the person out of whose imagination the story arose. I’ve read the book at many different points in my life — it’s interesting because Jane Eyre is also a teacher, and the book describes her both as a child and as a young woman. I never thought of the connection between Jane Eyre and Ms. Hempel Chronicles, but it’s funny to think that they cover somewhat similar territory. (Sonia Eliot)
The second Elvis impersonator of the day was another hunk of burning love by the name of Mario Kombu. This particular version of the king of rock and roll was of the sultry, brooding variety, more a Heathcliff of the Elvis world really. (Mark Ritchie)Another highly improbably Brontë landscape is Spanish Bay (in Pebble Beach, California). But not according to the Monterey County Herald:
First, let me say unequivocally that no one can argue with the view off the patio that looks onto bonny, undulating greens and out to sea. Scanning that windswept horizon, you fully expect to see Heathcliff roaming about, tearing his hair and calling for Cathy. (Mike Hale and Melissa Snyder)Austinist reviews the latest album by The Decemberists: Hazards of Love:
Leaning heavily on imagery from Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, almost every Greek tragedy ever written and of course, Andrew Lloyd Weber, The Hazards of Love does live up to the story-telling heights Meloy aimed for. In terms of the music, we find it a bit stunted. (Paige Maguire)EDIT: The Indie Credential gives more clues about the "Wuthering Heights imagery":
In fact, the characters in this tale remind me a bit of Heathcliff and Kathy (sic) in Wuthering Heights - another haunting tale - but one in which the lovers got what they deserved because of their own inability to handle their emotions and act like decent human beings.It doesn't come as a surprise as The Decemberists covered Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights in the past.
Confessions of an addict: A power higher than any couch potato has mandated the switch to digital TV. The time has come to give in.Here are a few blogs: Gone to Falmouth writes about Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea and Hidden Attraction posts justs about Jane Eyre. The Absurd Heroine doesn't want Villette to end. And Inbetweenies reminisces about a trip to Haworth a couple of years ago. Incidentally, the road to the Brontë Falls is the subject of this picture uploaded to flickr by Charlotte.Taylor83. Finally on youtube, Jim Clark has posted a poem animation of Charlotte Brontë's Mementos.
What followed was a passage equal in horror and desperation to Bronte’s description of Mister Rochester’s mad wife in Jane Eyre. You know, the hidden loony, the “dark secret” of the family, sitting in the gloomy attic, all hope gone.
It seems that, following the federal mandate to switch from analog to digital TV, Melissa was enticed to get Cable TV with some “On Demand” options. The addiction began almost immediately. (Hugh Gilmore)
Unless explicitly said
