"The book is becoming reinvented through computers. We all read computer screens, but after I saw these beautiful hand-made books, I asked, 'What about the texture of books? What about the feel of paper?' There's something missing when we read digitally,"' said Leitner, who counts "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" among the books she has most frequently reread. (Colleen Smith)Something also out of a (permanent) 'exhibition' is this post from the Brontë Parsonage Blog. It compiles several comments taken from the visitors' book at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. It's interesting to see how wide-ranging the visitors at the Parsonage are.
The Women in the Attic of Choices Meant for GodsFunny, it's usually reviewers who trace and are surprised by these influences. Never the authors themselves :P Sandy Lender also has a post celebrating Charlotte Brontë's birthday yesterday.
Or...how Charlotte Bronte influenced my fantasy novel
Yes, I will openly admit that there are allusions to Jane Eyre in Choices Meant for Gods. Now, I didn't lift any text -- no plagiarism for me. (I went in and fixed that moment of insanity during editing. Yeah, believe it or not, I had a scene almost verbatim from the garden when Rochester proposes. Can you imagine? I was horrified when I figured out what I'd done.) Anyway, on this, the birthday of Charlotte Bronte, I wanted to pay homage to her and do my daily marketing for my fantasy novel. [...]
Okay, yes, I had purposefully included a scene where Nigel tells Chariss she's his "lifeline" and there's a "string" tied to his heart between them. Oh, how very "Rochester" of him. But I didn't realize as I wrote his lines that I lifted the entire scene between Rochester and Jane in the garden and nearly got myself sued by some estate (probably the Bronte Society of which I'm a member!).
So there I sat stupefied by the fact that Charlotte's subconscious influence had directed much of the novel without my knowledge. I started seeing similarities. The Taiman Estate, Arcana, bears many similarities to Thornfield Hall, complete with passageways no one's allowed to go into for which only the master keeps a key. Loetha could be Mrs. Fairfax (if she were straight). The family keeps a variety of secrets. Chariss arrives as an orphan with a troubled past. The master of the house falls in love with her but the reader is led to suspect a reason she cannot return the sentiment, despite an ardent desire to. The family takes in another orphan, Sorne, whom I see as a variant of Adele Varens in this list. And the list could go on... It's insane. I had no ideaSo, for Book II, I just gave in and named a character General John Riverson. Blatant. You'll hate him instantly because of it. [...]
Exploring the ways Choices Meant for Gods was influenced by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was an interesting exercise for me. Interesting and fun because I adore Charlotte, and I had no idea I was letting her characters and her themes manipulate me. After you've read Choices, you'll have to let me know what other similarities or influences you noticed.
1. Chapter 1 ~ New Beginnings by Vampgirly (NC-17) [Reviews - 18] Characters: Genres: RomanceWarnings: Adult Language, Sexual SituationsSummary: Elizabeth Summers takes a position as Governess at Thorndale Hall, owned by the charismatic William Rochester. Things are not always as they seem though; as Elizabeth soon discovers. Love, Passion and Betrayal are all combined as Elizabeth fights to find herself and her true love. Will she succeed? Based on the novel Jane Eyre, only with a Spuffy Twist! Nominated at the Spark & Burn Awards round 2 for Best Fantasy and Best New AuthorThe links to the following chapters are available here.
Charlotte: The Juvenalia [sic]Yet another Charlotte Brontë the dog/pet. They're becoming fashionable, you know ;)
Since Charlotte functions as my child in every way but the natural, I've been doing what lots of mothers do once they see what it's like to have a little one around the house: I'm planning for another one. Charlotte follows me everywhere and I worry she will be lonely without me when I'm working in the fall. So, I have a plan: Brontë Puppies Unabashed. I want to get another puppy, probably another Welsh terrier, and name her Emily. Then Charlotte and Emily can spend their days happily cooped up in their big house, dreaming up stories and carving their initials into the table. If only we lived on the moors...In anticipation of the highly successful literary career of my girls I am publishing Charlotte's first story on my blog.
Playing Fetch at Sunrise (read and look at the story)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, Northern EnglandBrief news: a graduate student remembering that her "class had great discussions about Wuthering Heights" in Livingston Daily, the Guardian (Nigeria) uses a bizarre Wuthering Heights metaphor:
The Yorkshire Moors are the setting for this classic novel. If you like pathetic fallacy, and quite frankly, who doesn’t, then this is the book for you. The anti-hero, Heathcliff, rants and raves whilst storms abound, as he lives a life tormented by his thwarted love for Catherine Linton.
The novel explores the destructive forces which their unresolved passion unleashes on them and others caught up in the drama. Part romance, mostly gothic fiction, the setting matches perfectly the isolation of many characters and the harshness of the landscape is an ideal backdrop for Heathcliff’s elemental nature to show its true colours.
If Yenagoa looked secure and tempting like a young girl in the summer of pubescence, the wuthering heights of life in the Delta is in the uncertainty of hope. So much potential hobbled by the failure of Nigerian politics. (Reuben Abati)Cate Masters interviews author and Brontëite, Sandy Lender:
Who are some of your favorite authors and books? What are you reading now?Only Sometimes Clever, Community of Readers Book Reviews, The Read Queen and June Women have read (or reread) Jane Eyre, The weird world of Dani posts about Jane Eyre 2006 (in Dutch), 5 Minutes for Books reviews Jillian Dare, Savidge Reads posts a review of Justine Picardie's Daphne and Dalal Al Shareif posts an article by Sundus E. Al. Nabhani: Essential Differences Among Brontë Sisters’ Works.
Sandy Lender: I love Charlotte Bronte (and her sisters). My favorite book of all time is JANE EYRE, and if you look closely, you’ll see influences in CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS. Right now I’m reading a book called CHARLOTTE IN LOVE by Brian Wilks. It’s driving me mad because, bless his heart, Mr. Wilks keeps saying the same things over and over and over…and they’re mostly things that Bronte scholars already know. So I keep putting the book down to read other books. That sounds very harsh of me. I should also say that he has done his research well. The things that he repeats are accurate and well-placed to make his arguments in the text.
5. Who are you reading right now?That's too bad because The Brontës: A Life in Letters is one of the best reads in the Brontë bibliography. Juliet Barker truly lets the Brontës speak for themselves.
[...] Juliet Barker's The Brontes A Life in Letters (I've picked through this before for research purposes but I've never sat down and read it straight through -- I'm hanging my head in shame); The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte.
14. Who are the biggest influences on your work?We love the paranthesis and the fact that she includes Anne too. And, by the way, Sandy Lender has her own blog too.
[...] Charlotte Bronte (as well as Emily and Anne)
Our trip was to see ‘Withering Looks’ starring Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding who together with their team make up the Manchester-based Lipservice theatre company. This was superb performance. Both actors have an exceptional ability to interact with the audience. Maggie Fox combines the best of Joyce Grenfell and Frances de Latour, and Sue Ryding is equally adept at contorted expressions. As a duo they have that effortless timing and understanding which only few achieve.And an alert for Reno, taken from the Reno Gazette-Journal:
‘Withering Looks’, now in its 22nd year has lost none of its appeal, being as witty and entertaining a tour of the Bronte sisters as ever. However, it is only one in a series of comedies that Lipservice has produced and fans will be looking forward to the forthcoming ‘Live and Let’s Dye’ (with Jane Bond) which starts its tour this autumn.
Parents can bring their children ages 3 to 7 to a storytelling hour conducted by storytellers trained by the Washoe County Library.Enjoy it if you're in the area.
Adults can attend the poetry writing workshops conducted by members of the Unnamed Writer's Group, which follow the storytelling hour.
Volunteers are needed to lead the Book Club in each park (books and a literary guide will be provided).
Books chosen for this session include "Fahrenheit 451" and "Wuthering Heights."
This program is offered on Saturdays in July and August free of charge in the following eight neighborhood parks: Comstock Park, Huffaker Park, Panther Valley Park, Rainbow Ridge Park, Village Green Park, Wheatland Park, Silver Lake Park and Valley Wood Park.
For a schedule or additional information, contact at 334-2417 or visit http://www.renoparksandrec.com/.
Asphalt Pro (December 2016 Issue)(Via Sandy Lender)
Editor's Letter
Luddites Unite For Sustainability
As a fan of Charlotte Brontë and her novel Shirley, I learned about Luddism through literature, rather than a history class. You can blame that on the sparse education in our public school system or my selective attention span. The point is I guard against technophobia in myself when I sense it, but I also guard against judging technology solely on its wow factor. (Sandy Lender)
Emily Brontë's eternal love story Wuthering Heights has inspired about 30 adaptations. Each new version clamours to set itself apart from the rest.The Independent quotes Wuthering Heights in an article about fusion across the arts:
Deepak Verma has found the perfect way to make his telling of the tragic love story stand out from the crowd. He has moved the story wholesale from the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors to the sun-scorched desert of Rajasthan.
Heathcliff becomes Krishan and song-and-dance numbers a la classic Bollywood movies become part of the script.
"People who love the novel understand that it's a universal story. To me it's about a kid with nothing brought up in a house where he sees the good life and where he meets the love of his life," says Verma.
"Reading the story, I found a real parallel, because of the social structures and all the other frameworks of the story, with today's India.
"It might seem strange to some people to relate Victorian England with modern India, but the issues of class and society and all those big things are there in the story and in today's India. I wanted to embrace that with this piece."
The project has been a labour of love for Verma, who has spent almost five years seeing his original idea go from concept to stage.(...)
But it takes some guts to bring a new version of Wuthering Heights to Yorkshire.
"I'm really excited about it coming to Yorkshire. It's the last venue on the nationwide tour and we're going to be really celebrating when it comes to an end next week," says Verma.
Not even a little nervous?
"It's been really well received and we're talking to people about it going into the West End. I think that helps, the fact that it has been so well received."
He doesn't seem to quite grasp the gravity of the situation. He has not just moved one of Yorkshire's greatest novels to Rajasthan, but has also, judging by early reports, fair butchered the story.
Verma's version features Catherine and Heathcliff and their love story, but does not follow the latter half of the novel and the story of their children.
"I took a long look at it and had to decide what story from all of this I wanted to tell in the two hours that I had on stage," says Verma.
"And it was clear to me that the story I really wanted to tell was the eternal love story between Cathy and Heathcliff."
Verma finally reveals the other reason he is confident that Yorkshire audiences won't simply be up in arms and see it as sacrilegious.
Brontë's book, clearly, is the major source of inspiration for the new play.
But Verma has also returned to the classic age of Bollywood of the Fifties and Sixties for his inspiration.
"The stories from Bollywood of that era are about big emotions and big stories. It seemed a perfect fit for this story and particularly the way I wanted to tell it. I wanted to take the aesthetic of those classic movies and bring that to the stage as a part of this story. It just made sense to me," says Verma.
The musical has already secured a loyal – and culturally diverse – following at its London performances. Verma says that Indian audiences are fiercely loyal to shows that they enjoy, but the universal nature of the story has brought in people from all cultures.
The show has been developed and produced by Tamasha, one of the leading Asian theatre companies in the country.
Run by Kristine Landon-Smith and Sudha Bhuchar, who played Sanjay's love interest Meena in Eastenders, the company was set up almost 20 years ago. Its name is taken from the Punjabi word meaning commotion, and it was established to address the paucity of Asian work on British stages.
Verma says that it is recognised now not as a leading Asian company, but a leading "theatre company whose work has an Asian slant to it".
"The reason I wanted to tell Wuthering Heights on stage was because I have always felt a real connection to the character of Heathcliff," says Verma.
He says he was also always attracted to the darkness of the novel.
"I love the images of the dark moors, but for me, the key to Wuthering Heights is the love story that is at its centre. That's why it works perfectly as a Bollywood musical."
Wuthering Heights is at Harrogate Theatre, June 16 to 20. (Nick Ahad)
The worry now is that the concept could soon buckle with the strain of carrying so many disparate meanings – some contradictory – and market pressures. "Fusion" for example, describes Chadha's populist pastiche Bride and Prejudice as well as the new, colourful production of Wuthering Heights by theatre company Tamasha, which transports the story to Rajasthan using both Bollywood and British musical theatre styles, a combo previously served up in Bombay Dreams. Audiences do love such productions of borrowing and cheek. (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown)The Telegraph interviews Tom Hardy and several mentions to Wuthering Heights 2009 slip in (with the eternal will be on ITV1 later this year):
Hardy’s also played Charles Bronson, the notoriously violent prisoner, and Bill Sikes. And he’s going to be Heathcliff in ITV1’s upcoming version of Wuthering Heights. In episode one of that he bashes his head against a wall with such force that you can hear a crunch. (...)We were afraid that someone would link together the results of the Ryan Commission in Ireland and Jane Eyre and it has happened. In The Independent or the Irish Times:
In a preview of the ITV1 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, it’s hard to tell whether Hardy’s Heathcliff is going to hit or kiss his Cathy (who will be played by his The Take co-star Charlotte Riley) – which is just how you want him. And there’s a tenderness to his performance that he hasn’t had the chance to show before now. (Serena Davies)
"Some of us read the Bronte's accounts of what their powers-that-be did to orphans. We were horrified. It gave us bad dreams. But it was fiction. That was the great thing. It was fiction. It hadn't happened. Not really. And certainly not in Ireland. Now, we know different. Now, we know, courtesy of the Ryan Commission, that, within living memory and within our own country, we visited comparable horrors on our children. Let us not hide behind euphemisms. This was not just 'failure to protect'. This was torture, pure and simple." (Lise Hand)The Books on Film Examiner talks about Robert Pattinson and suggests a period piece for the actor:
Would you pick a "period" piece such as his part as the older Rawdy Crawley in Vanity Fair based on the classic novel by William Thackeray (that subsequently got cut but put back in for the DVD)? A Jane Austen or Bronte novel, perhaps? How about another biopic, something like his role as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes? (Connie Ann Kirk)And the St Petersburg Times reviews Jack Murnighan's Beowulf on the Beach:
Then he offers, for each book, the Buzz, which he defines as "your cocktail party Ph.D." — what most people know about the book whether they've read it or not. (A Farewell to Arms is a great war novel, Jane Eyre's title character is a fine role model for girls.)(Colette Bancroft)Hungtington News selects Jayne Eyre (sic) and Wuthering Heights as favorite romantic movies. The Banned Books Group recommends both novels as Urgent Reads: The 20 Books You Must Read This Year!, in the Rockland Republican Journal. The Worksop Guardian talks about an awarded local teacher with a Brontë project:
Since winning the award, the Valley teacher has brought in a new lesson plan for Wuthering Heights that includes group discussions and presentation that prompted quiet murmurings of applause from her pupils. (Tom Glover)The Times (South-Africa) concludes this article about reading love stories with a mention to Wuthering Heights:
I’m a collection called My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, a book of classic love stories edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides, offered as “a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery.” I like the idea that reading saves marriages; it should be used in literacy campaigns. The book includes stories by Anton Chekhov - The Lady with the Little Dog, which recently starred in the film of The Reader– Alice Munro Denis Johnson, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. With such a variety of well-written takes on everything love related you might as well just marry this book. I’m sure that by the time I finish it, the sun will shine and I can finally fall asleep without artificial assistance. Until then, if you’re reading this, I still like to imagine you as Heathcliff to my Cathy, throwing yourself on my grave when you realize your mistake and I’m using the book to disguise myself as I sit, watching your building, waiting to see what you’re reading now. (Tymon Smith)On the blogosphere, Love Romance Passion interviews the author Sandy Lender, an absolute Jane Eyre fan (as we posted before):
10. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?When You're Happy, I'm Happy =D and Giraffe Days post about Wuthering Heights, Hey, Little Sister talks about samplers, embroidery and the Brontës, ihartyou23 finds echoes of Emily Brontë's novel in the Filipino soap opera Tayond Dalawa.Sandy Lender: This might seem a wee bit odd, but in addition to my Choices Meant for Gods, I would encourage folks also to read Jane Eyre,
by Charlotte Bronte. This novel is one of the best ever written. It’s my favorite of all time. There are elements in Jane Eyre that influence my writing on a conscious and subconscious level, and folks who have already read the book will probably pick out a few of those elements in Choices Meant for Gods.
Sandy Lender, the author of Choices Meant for Gods, continues to show her Brontëiteness. We have featured previously some of her comments about Charlotte Brontë and she herself commented on BrontëBlog some days ago:The novel I've written is a far cry from the masterpieces Charlotte penned, but I've got more allusions to Jane Eyre in my book Choices Meant for Gods than you can shake a stick at...right down to my heroine's orphan status. A few of the hosts on my current online book tour have asked questions that have let me gush about Charlotte, and I've mentioned a few of the elements in my novel that are directly influenced by her and Jane Eyre especially.But this interview on Blogging Authors is special. Here Ms. Lender proposes herself to be nominated as Brontëite of the year:
Q: Your book Choices Meant for Gods is a fantasy story about a young lady on the run from a madman. When she stops running and starts fighting, she discovers she’s wrapped in centuries of prophecy. Where did you get the idea for your novel?And there are more references, you can check these interviews on Reading Rucker and Charlene Leatherman, for instance.
A: Strangely enough, it occurred to me as I was writing promotional/marketing material (read: after the book was at the printer) that Amanda Chariss, the heroine, and her wizard guardian spent the 16 years prior to the novel’s beginning moving from place to place, literally running from home to home, benefactor to benefactor in mimicry of my childhood.
Subconsciously, the idea for one of the plotlines came from my experience as a child in a military family. I was born on Homestead Air Force Base, and, even though my father completed his service by the time I entered school, we still moved frequently as I grew up. I guess it influenced me more than I realized.
The idea of the Taiman estate grew out of Anglo-Saxon mead halls and Charlotte Bronte’s Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Readers will find myriad Old English, Anglo-Saxon, and Bronte references speckled throughout the novel. I also take a lot of images from song lyrics, and let those fuel my imagination (...)
Q: Have you always been interested in fantasy? Which fantasy authors do you read?
A: I’ve always enjoyed fantasy literature. From Tolkien to Eddings to Goodkind, but Charlotte Bronte (and, oh, just listen to Edward Rochester to hear those speculative fiction elements shine through) is my favorite.Q: Who is your favorite author and why?
A: Charlotte Bronte. That woman…I wish I had half her talent. There’s something absolutely mesmerizing about Jane Eyre. The first time I read the gothic novel, when I got to the wedding scene, and that cataclysmic revelation, I literally yelled. And then Charlotte takes us away from Thornfield for about a third or so of the novel, leaving us to believe the situation won’t be resolved!? I was livid. So many moments in that novel had me either laughing or excited or ready to throw the book out the window of a moving vehicle that I had to get myself to a library and find everything she and her sisters had written.
When I read the final page of Charlotte’s Villette, I knew I’d found the greatest writer in English literature. Hands down. It just doesn’t get any better than this: “That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had gorged their full sustenance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he fold his wings whose waft was thunder—the tremor of whose plumes was storm….Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.”
The hero died. That’s rich.
And Charlotte had an intriguing life as well. Her personal tragedies mirrored her work. I had the opportunity to visit Haworth Parsonage a couple years ago and as I entered her bedroom, I felt overwhelmed with sadness. It was incredibly moving for me to be in that space where she once breathed and thought about her professor in Brussels and wrote her letters to him…
Another sort of dread haunts today’s literary pilgrim: what if Haworth is a Brontëesque theme park? Reader, fear not. The steep, cobbled main street is lined with shops and lace-curtained houses. A few establishments borrow names from the books, but you’ll find a place the Brontës would definitely recognize. [...]Our only objection is that somewhere in her article, the journalist writes,
Rather than linger over Yorkshire tea and scones, Bronte fans hike the path—13 kilometres round trip—to Top Withens, a ruin that, legend has it, inspired the house in Wuthering Heights. The reclusive Emily’s novel captures the haunted strangeness of her beloved moors. Our group followed a knowledgeable guide whose interests veered toward the geological: disused coal mines, the mid-Pennines (where we were standing), Bronze Age burial sites, the delta that existed here 300 million years ago.
“Did you get lost on the moors?” asks a Toronto friend. How did she know? “It’s because you lose the horizon,” she laughed. Fifteen of us reached the stone ruin with its dramatic fir—the sole tree for miles. Dragging ourselves from the romantic hilltop, we notice we are ten hikers short. Someone (I’ll name no names, Sean) has taken charge and, like moorland sheep, we’ve followed him over fields of heather under a vast and moody sky.
Not to worry: Brontë Waterfall is well-signed (in English and Japanese) and a joyful group reunion there ensues. A torrent rushes down the hillside; the chair-shaped rock where the sisters liked to sit perches above the water. Charlotte and her husband walked here from the parsonage on a November afternoon in 1854. She loved it. (Nancy Wigston) (Read full article)
Although Rev. Patrick Brontë’s church needs repair (donations welcome), . . .Actually, the only thing standing left from Patrick Brontë's church is the church tower. The rest was demolished.
As Jane Eyre prepares for yet another bow, we’ve reexamined the many interpretations of this feisty heroine who’ve come before, with four of the most-noteworthy collected below.As it is known the new Jane Eyre will open next March 11. According to Screenhead:
Silent Jane
“The total and somewhat dreary silence” is how Eyre describes Lowood Institution, the charity school she arrives at after fleeing her evil Aunt Sarah at Gateshead. It’s also what I expected to find reviewing several silent films fashioned from Brontë’s book, but such is not the case as these films are able to blow out much of Brontë’s imagery into stunning visuals. Lucasta Miller, writing in The Guardian, points out these silents make “the most of the wild-eyed madwoman” in the attic, while not always keeping their eye on plot. A 1914 version concludes with the cliffhanger of a blind Mr. Rochester stumbling toward a precipice. The best of the bunch is a 1915 Travers Vale version that truncates the plot to three reels and takes some liberty with the text, but captures Eyre with the wide-eyed Louise Vale, who died shortly after the film’s release.
Undead Jane
“Life appears to me too short,” Helen Burns counsels Eyre at Lowood. One can only imagine her trying to apply this advice to zombies that roam the Caribbean sugar plantation in Val Lewton’s 1943 horror film “I Walked With a Zombie” by director Jacques Tourneur, both following up their successful “Cat People” pairing the year before. This film is probably one of the more outré takes on Eyre — including everything from Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” to Sherri Browning Erwin’s mashup Jane Slayre, which has the heroine battle both Bertha Rochester and vampires — but it is also one of the most successful. In the film, a Canadian nurse falls for plantation owner Paul Holland while she tries to figure out what to do with his cationic wife, Jessica. Before the final credits roll, there’s animal sacrifice, voodoo dolls, and secret island rituals in a plot that manages to track Jane Eyre pretty miraculously.
Upper G.I. Jane
Eyre recalls her childhood’s ever-present threat of being packed off to the poorhouse as “a vague sing-song in my ear,” but could the put-upon Eyre have ever imagined a full-blown, Broadway musical of her travail? Composer-lyricist Paul Gordon sure could and, along with book writer and co-director John Caird, he opened the “Jane Eyre” musical on December 10, 2001, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater where it played thirty-six previews and 209 performances. With musical numbers like “The Icy Lane” and “The Death of Mrs. Reed,” the common complaint was that events flew by lickety-split making the musical feel more like a movie trailer. Still, it wound up with a few Tony nominations, even if friend of the show Alanis Morissette had to buy up a 150K block of tickets just so it would still be on the boards at Tony time. It didn’t win, but it’s definitely slouching toward a reappraisal.
All-Star Jane
With this many fine adaptations, it’s tempting to compile an all-star cast in one’s head, the fantasy football approach to one of literature’s most-beloved heroines. But to quote Eyre herself, “To attack the first is not to assail the last.” That said, most of my all-star picks came from the BBC’s 2006 miniseries. This would include almost all below-the-line talent as this production’s design is letter perfect. Sandy Welch’s adaptation doesn’t need to be compressed into a feature length, but roams free over four parts. After much thrashing, this production’s Jane, brought to life flawlessly by relatively unknown Ruth Wilson, would lead my all-star “Eyre.” Higher profile actors from Joan Fontaine to Samantha Morton have played this part, but none better than Wilson. Supplementing some of her supporting cast, however, I’d grab Elizabeth Taylor’s Helen Burns from Robert Stevenson’s 1943 production. I’d also pull Fiona Shaw’s Mrs. Reed and Joan Plowright’s Mrs. Fairfax from Zeffirelli’s 1996 version. I might even steal his Claudio Capponi and Alessio Vlad’s score. And finally, because heavy material needs a fresh open, I’d let SCTV’s Andrea Martin kick off the proceedings with her 1982 Emmy-nominated turn as Jane Eyrehead, a character with origins “so low, you’d have to limbo under her family tree.” (Tony Phillips)
The movie will be released in New York and Los Angeles by Focus Features on Friday, March 11, 2011; and in additional cities on Friday, March 18 and Friday, March 25.
Do you have a favourite genre of film to work in?The Jane Eyre he helped create was the one embodied by Charlotte Gainsbourg in 1996. And speaking of that film, a good many websites such as Alt Film Guide, AFP, Sky Movies, Digital Spy, The Buenos Aires Herald, TheCelebrityCafe, The Vancouver Sun, The Times, etc. mourn the untimely death of Maria Schneider and mention her role as Bertha Mason in it.
I've loved the period films I've done, like Jane Eyre, Little Buddha, The Scarlet Pimpernel. Period hairstyles are very challenging, there's more to get your teeth into. (Leah Hyslop)
He's got a new book, Faulks on Fiction: Great British Characters and the Secret Life of the Novel, which I haven't read, but has been excerpted in the Daily Telegraph extensively. Just reading the subtitle of the book makes me close my eyes and shiver in delight. But when I read the second excerpt published by the Daily Telegraph, all about Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp, I must admit: reader, I sputtered. [...]The book is also reviewed by The Independent:
I still love Faulks, and, for the record, I love Becky Sharp and many, many Victorian femme fatales as well. But, to ignore Jane Eyre's essential independence and even rebelliousness, especially in comparison to the Becky Sharps of that world, is to perpetuate that boring, yet tenacious good girl/bad girl stereotype. Sure, bad girls are exciting and defiant and make their own rules — and so do good girls. (Barrie Hardymon)
Faulks's selection nods to this mighty counter-tradition and its landmarks: in Wuthering Heights or Money, in Gormenghast or Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Boyd Tonkin)Mark Brown comments on yesterday's debate about arts funding in the House of Lords and quotes from Joan Bakewell's speech in the Guardian:
My grandfather, an iron turner in a Salford factory, died at the age of 33 and my father was sent to Chetham's Hospital, then an orphanage for poor boys in Manchester and now a world-famous music school. Chetham's had, and still has, one of the finest 17th-century libraries in the country. My father grew up loving books. The importance of libraries in the life of a child should not be underestimated. He left school at 13 to work in a foundry and enjoyed a career in engineering. My mother, the daughter of a cooper in a Manchester brewery, also left school at 13. Many years into their marriage they made up for the lost years by studying at the Workers' Educational Association. I am the child of their aspirations. I grew up in the 40s and 50s, enjoying a grammar school and university education without fees and without debt. My life is a testament to social mobility. My arrival in this House is surely its crowning glory.The New York Times looks into the origins of the idiom 'If Worst Comes to Worst’:
This, then, is the life that has turned to the arts to understand the world about me. From reading that encompassed Jane Eyre and Mrs Gaskell's novels about industrial Lancashire, visits to Manchester City Art Gallery and concerts by the Hallé Orchestra, I have continued to find nourishment in the sensitivities of those who create and perform works of art. I believe profoundly that the arts are more than the entertainment that awaits us at the end of the working day—a light relief from the real business of living. I believe the arts to be a core essential in shaping and sustaining our human values.
The earliest version of the idiom is in the form “if the worst come to the worst,” complete with definite articles and a subjunctive form of the verb come. In his 1596 pamphlet “Have With You to Saffron-Walden,” Thomas Nashe compared death by drowning to death by burning: “If the worst come to the worst, a good swimmer may do much.” Since then, the same turn of phrase has shown up in the work of John Dryden, Henry Fielding, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë. (Ben Zimmer)LiveMint on cricket umpires:
Occasionally portly, always courteous, they look like English vicars who have stepped off the pages of a Jane Austen or Emily Brontë novel. Umpires, they are called, and the question I put before you is: Are they in danger of becoming obsolete? (Shoba Narayan)Portly and courteous doesn't sound at all like a vicar Emily Brontë would include in a novel, though.
My advice for a budding writer? Holy cow. The memorable-scene thing is a good one, but, I always harp on dialogue. I'm a proponent for letting the characters tell a story, and I get that from the master of all writing, Charlotte Bronte. If you want to learn how to write clever and masterful dialogue, read Jane Eyre, Villette, The Professor, and Shirley. Her juvenilia isn't as well-developed (obviously), but the novels have excellent examples of how to let the characters show you what actions are taking place without the narrator spelling it out.The New York Times finds weird connections between the Peter Braunstein's case and Wuthering Heights (!):
IT’S a long way from Emily Brontë to Lauren Weisberger, and even further, perhaps, to Peter Braunstein, the former media columnist for Women’s Wear Daily. Or is it? (Anemona Hartocollis)Yeah. Whatever. Wuthering Heights is used again in this review of Mylo's last CD Destroy Rock'n'Roll:
Listening to Destroy Rock ’n’ Roll, the new CD from Scotlands’ Mylo, is a bit like reading Wuthering Heights. Sure, it is a good piece of work, but at the same time, it’s painful to get through it. (John Kujawski)At least, this mention was well used.
It’s not surprising to hear, for example, that she was headstrong from the start, when she overruled her label (at 19 years old, no less) and insisted her first single be, not “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” but “Wuthering Heights,” a bizarre and complicated song that was inspired by the Emily Brontë novel—and became the first British No. 1 single written by a British woman. (Jeffrey Ricker)Finally, some blogosphere entries: Streams of Consciousness publishes a quite interesting post about Wuthering Heights; A Random Stranger seems to be worried about Grace Poole's qualifications and A World Incalculable is very disappointed with the last adaptation of Jane Eyre.
What was the one thing that influenced you most in writing Choices Meant for Gods?The controversy goes on regarding Dickens World. The Star talks to Kevin Christie, managing director, who explains why Dickens World is any different than, say, Brontë World.
It's so difficult to narrow all my sources of inspiration down to the most influential one. There are elements of Chaucer (specifically the Troilus and Criseyde story), Bronte (particularly Jane Eyre), Old English, and Duran Duran in the fantasy novel. The one that probably had the biggest impact on me, without me realizing it until the novel was complete and in the publisher's hands, was Charlotte Bronte and her novel Jane Eyre. I choose that one because Amanda Chariss mimics the orphan Jane on a couple of levels, because Nigel mimics Edward Rochester on a couple of levels, because the Taiman estate mimics Thornfield Hall on some levels, because I feel the Yorkshire moors in the Freotho Mountains, because I feel Charlotte's heartbreak over her real-life professor in the character of Abigail Farrier. It's amazing to me that I didn't realize I was channeling these elements as I prepared an epic fantasy novel. Perhaps I missed it because there are so many other characters and so much more depth to the story than these few pieces I've just listed. Then I guess I'd have to say the Old English inspiration was the most influential, eh?
"Personally I wouldn't dream of trying a Charlotte Bronte World or a Victor Hugo World or a world built around anyone else for that matter," said Christie.That said, a Gaskell World would be possible for instance. Who depicted the changes of the Industrial Revolution better than her? Yet no one would dream of making a smoggy, unhealthy theme park on the outskirts of Manchester. Or would they?
"The reason the concept works with Dickens is that we're working not only with someone who is probably England's greatest storyteller but with a very compelling period in history.
"People say, `How do you make a visitor attraction out of squalor and poverty?' But this is Dickens World, not Dickens's books. What we've tried to do is build something that is really about Empire – Victorian England – which Dickens wrote about so evocatively.
"It really was the best and worst of times. It was the richest and most powerful nation on Earth and contained within it some of the most deprived people on Earth at the same time. That is the landscape we've tried to create." (Mitch Potter)
But I did get a chance to have a look at the Bronte Parsonage, where the Bronte Sisters Daughters wrote their novels while wutherin' on the heights... OK. :) If you're wondering what on EARTH that's about, go to this link and listen to episode 4. Very amusing, particularly if you've got a bit of knowledge about the Brontes and what they did and didn't write...It reminded us of the fabulous time we had listening to it. We are still laughing about 'my daughters the Brontë Sisters' and 'YEEEES!', among many other things.
How did women who lived sexless lives end up writing the steamy and passionate "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre"?Salon reviews the new novel of Karen Joy Fowler, Wit's End and makes the following passing comment:
If one is expecting an answer from the American premiere of "Bronte," playing at Remy Bumppo Theatre in Chicago, one will be sorely disappointed.
Written by Polly Teale, this limp and lumbering work lacks dramatic insight into the lives of the spinster novelists who lived in the English moors in the 19th century.
The father (Patrick Clear) of the three Bronte sisters -Charlotte (Susan Shunk), Emily (Carrie A. Coon) and Anne (Rachel Sondag) - was born into an illiterate Irish family but became self-educated and went on to college.
Because he was transformed by literature, the Bronte patriarch encouraged his daughters to read in a time when women were far removed from such intellectual pursuits.
The sister's brother, Branwell (Gregory Anderson), became a gambler, an alcoholic and a drug addict. The Bronte women used him as a model for their fictional male characters.
Surely, an examination of such a family would make for intriguing drama. But it doesn't.
Teale's tedious script doesn't offer clear motivation for these people. Indeed, the father who pulled himself up from poverty and the brother who had the family's expectations pulling him down have interesting possibilities that are not realized.
As presented in this production, the Bronte women come across as so boring that it's impossible to believe they wrote the hot, best-selling novels of their time.
James Bohnen's direction isn't much of a help, either. His staging staggers from natural realism to dreamy symbolism that has the play lurching between "now" and "then" and some place in between.
Because the Brontes' lives were uneventful, Teale attempts to get beneath the surface of the women's dull everyday existence into their inner emotions.
Teale attempts this by dredging up ghostly incarnations of characters from "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre." The episodes in which Linda Gillum, who portrays these ghostly specters, swishes, swirls and falls into a faint come across as laughably amateurish.
Not only are the characters in this production lifeless and the isolated environment in which they lived poorly evoked, but the accents of the performers are all over the place. One actor speaks in an English accent, another seems to have a Scottish dialect, and still another leans to an Irish lilt.
The production pokes along at such a sluggish pace that paying attention to "Bronte" is a struggle. That's a shame because the Bronte sisters deserve better. (Betty Mohr)
That equipoise is a function of the author's ear, and in her last book, the bestselling "The Jane Austen Book Club," the pitch rarely wavered, right up to and including the title, which managed in a single swipe to siphon off its target demographic. Presented with that book cover, pretty much every straight man in America executes a 180-degree pivot, scanning the horizon for Colin Harrison titles, while his bookish girlfriend -- the one with the Colin Firth screen saver and the cats named after the Brontë sisters and the serious stash of tea -- stays rooted in place, eyes shimmering. She's home. (Louis Bayard)Via Trashionista we have noticed the recently published Freya North's top 10 romps and romances in The Guardian:
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëRandom Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover comments Justine Picardie's Daphne. The book has re-awaken the Brontëite inside her:
Another classic - but where Moll Flanders is deliciously bawdy, Jane Eyre is devastatingly romantic. The passion comes from the love between Jane and Rochester, so pure yet so constantly thwarted - they literally go through fire for it. I read somewhere that you won't understand true love until you've read this book.
With that one small caveat I can say that I found this book fascinating and intriguing and has, once more, sent me back to my book cases to look at all my Bronte biographies, pull out my old Bronte Society papers, and plan a visit to Haworth again and perhaps take the walk to Top Withens. This may have to wait until the autumn, best not to visit the Parsonage at the height of the tourist season, best to visit when the days are drawing in, the lamps are lit and the wind is 'wuthering' and just wallow in the atmosphere.And the Brontë epiphany continues...
And apropos of nothing, when I first visited Haworth as a teenager I stayed at a bed and breakfast in the village and was told by the landlady that they had had 'one of them authors' staying the week before and I was having her room. As with all things serendipitous, it seemed the former lodger was Winifred Gerin, whose biography of Branwell threatened to be published before Daphne's. So there you go. Make of that what you will. (Elaine Simpson-Long)
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