A new theater production inspired by Wuthering Heights opens today, January 31, in Dublin, Ireland:PlaygroupMore details can be found in The Independent:
THE HEIGHTS
A show by Playgroup
inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
8.15 PM 31 JANUARY - 16 FEBRUARY 2008
I'm coming back, love,
Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream,
My only master.
Too long I roamed in the night.
I'm coming back to his side, to put it right.
Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights
The love story of the century told by the children left behind. Wuthering Heights filtered through a kaleidoscope of 1980s excess and remixed in the decade of decadence. A visceral and visual piece of extreme storytelling featuring live video, big hair, rock ballads, and dancing.
A story everybody thinks they know reimagined for our time.
' a courageous project... takes performance out of the predictable and into uncharted territory ' -Evening Echo on the Irish Theatre Award Nominated Dark Week
Performance Dates, Tickets and Information
MON-THURS ~ Tickets €15 & €12 (conc*)
FRI-SAT ~ Tickets €17 & €14 (conc*)
Preview(s) 29 JANUARY - 30 JANUARY ~ Tickets €10
Matinee(s) SAT 9 & 16 FEBRUARY ~ Tickets €10
"It's an attempt to transpose the plot, characters and key ideas from Wuthering Heights into a contemporary urban context," explains the show's director and designer Tom Creed. "We wanted to look at the idea of place as an emotional state. In the book, it's all about the people being from the moors and infused with that wild moorish passion. We wanted to see what would happen if you infused that story with the energies of the city.In The Irish Times we can read:
"We also wanted to examine the fact that the book is essentially divided into two parts, the first being the ill-fated love story between Cathy and Heathcliff and then the part where their descendants get together and repair all the damage that's been done.
"Our two settings are the present and in the 1980s. And our Cathy and Heathcliff are playing out their wild passions against a backdrop of '80s pop and that huge wave of new money."
Creed claims this is not a musical, but then admits the cast will be singing text and songs will be a key feature of the mise-en-scene.
"The music will be adding elements to the plot, but you won't have Cathy suddenly bursting into song," he insists.
But although the characters themselves will not be singing the songs, there will be a lot of '80s music and some numbers will be performed live. There may also be singalong moments, as few of us can refrain from joining in when A-Ha is playing.
The press release explains further, describing the show as being "filtered through a kaleidoscope of 1980s excess and remixed in the decade of decadence. A visceral and visual piece of extreme storytelling featuring live video, big hair, rock ballads and dancing."
But there is one word that's most noticeable for its absence and that's a word that can strike fear into the heart of many a theatergoer -- 'devised'. (...)
And Creed does admit he consciously avoided using the dreaded d-word, but does have a reasonably good explanation. "The plot is from Wuthering Heights and much of the text is from the book, but we do consider this a collective rather than devised work."
Creed himself manned the reins during rehearsals and script editing and was aided by the company's dramaturg, Lynda Radley.
"But keeping us on the straight and narrow is a really good story written by Bronte herself. And the reason we haven't credited anyone with writing this particular production is that the main author is Bronte herself. About 60 per cent of the text is hers and a sizeable amount of the rest is song lyrics.
"We've also drawn on various screen adaptations to a degree without taking anything verbatim from them. Essentially, it has all come together through improvising situations from Wuthering Heights in a contemporary context."
It's Bronte, Jim, but not as we know her. (Sophie Gorman)
WHAT on earth is "extreme storytelling"? This is the phrase used to describe The Heights , a new stage adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights (a story which was extreme enough to begin with).If you are interested check this previous post of ours.
In the hands of the restlessly imaginative theatre company Playgroup, though, the 19th-century story of destructive passion and bitter revenge on the bleak Yorkshire moors has been updated, relocated and reshaped to include almost every reference to Brontë's novel in contemporary culture - from 1930s movie adaptations to 1980s power ballads.
"Extreme storytelling is something we made up," admits Tom Creed, director of the show and (with Hilary O'Shaughnessy) joint artistic director of the Cork-based company. "Part of the project with The Heights is to look at storytelling and to look at the theatre and see how it works now: how you tell a story using whatever you have to hand. We've created a world where it can make sense as part of the act of storytelling to include singing 1980s cover versions and doing aerobics or acting out melodrama and all sorts of other things we've thrown at it."
That may sound wilfully idiosyncratic, but such an approach may ultimately prove archly faithful to a novel described by Charlotte Brontë as "hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials". It's a good description, too, for the work of Playgroup - if YouTube footage of Kate Bush dancing in the wily, windy moors still counts as homely material. (...)
Given the radical reworking, it may seem odd to hear her say that they went by the book. "It's actually quite faithful," Creed says of their 90-minute version. "The decisions that we've made structurally have all come from a very close reading of the novel."
Their interpretation, however, is certainly extreme, transposing events from the moors to a contemporary city, where the story of Cathy and Heathcliff has now become world famous, and is told and retold through rumours, tabloid spreads, television interviews and Wikipedia entries. In Playgroup's version the second generation characters, generally ignored by film adaptations, have taken on the mantle of the tale, piecing together the lives and times of their parents in the lurid excesses of 1980s art scene.
"Some people have found that to be the most difficult jump," Lynda Radley says of the story's relocation. "For me the most important thing in the Cathy and Heathcliff story is the effect that the environment has on them, and the isolation that they manage to create within it, whether that environment is in the country or the city. The idea of lonely souls wandering through the city, of people being totally alone despite being in a crowd, of two young people who can see nobody but each other still translates quite well."
"And also, do you make a nod to the fact that everyone knows the story?" wonders Creed. "Or that at least everyone has an idea of the story."
"It is sometimes overwhelming when you're trying to acknowledge all [the many previous versions] and yet create something new, that is our own," says Radley. So it is that Playgroup's The Heights stages classic material as though it's a contemporary work, conceiving of Cathy as a model and artistic muse, whose relationships with gallery owner Edgar Linton and her adopted brother Heathcliff are the stuff of intense media speculation, while one of the novel's original narrators, the housekeeper Nelly Dean, is now a music journalist and author of a controversial exposé.
"We're having a go at all the iconic scenes," says Creed. "And some of them are being reshaped as [ Cathy and Heathcliff] booking into a hotel for two weeks, or talkshow interviews, conversations with your hairdresser, or songs: some scenes we're rendering as 1980s cover versions." (Peter Crawley)
The Heights, is a work-in-progress production, based on Wuthering Heights, that was performed last week in The Arches, Glasgow:Arches Company in ResidenceToday, The Herald publishes a review:
Playgroup presents
The Heights
Work in Progress
Thurs 12th – Fri 13th July
The Heights is a work of extreme storytelling inspired by Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, exploring the idea that the metropolis represents to the modern imagination what the wild Yorkshire moors did to the 19th century: a site of alienation, unrequited love, and lost souls wandering alone at night.
Playgroup were formed in Cork, Ireland in 2002. Most recently they presented The Art of Swimming as part of Arches Live 2006.
Director: Tom Creed
Dramaturg: Lynda Radley
Composer: Michael John McCarthy
Cast includes: Hilary O’Shaughnessy
Categories: Theatre, Wuthering HeightsRating: ***
Kate Bush got it right when, aged 19, she condensed Emily Bronte's doomed moors-set romance into a four and a half minute pop classic. The young Cork-based Playgroup company don't quite go that far in this work in progress developed over a two-week residency at the Arches, but they come pretty close. More show and tell than show per se, this is a 35-minute presentation concerning what may or may not be required to put on something that could eventually end up as a finished product of The Heights.The result is a self-referencing sketch-book juxtaposition between out-front contemporary reworkings of the piece's source material set against deadpan folksy renditions of Bonnie Tyler's bombastic smash hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart and, yes, Kate Bush's precocious mini masterpiece. The image of street corner buskers is all too appropriate.
While one could question the necessity of showing such developing work on a public platform, let alone charging eight quid for the privilege, it will be fascinating to see the finished whole when the company return. As speculative as any interpretation is just now, one can imagine director Tom Creed and his bright if at times rudderless young cast ripping up Bronte's set-text classic and injecting new life into it. (Neil Cooper)
Can you name Britain's first seaside resort? Congratulations to those who said Scarborough. Established as a spa town in the 1620s with the discovery of a mineral spring, the resort took its next step a few decades later when a local physician, Dr Wittie, recommended the benefits of a bracing dip in the sea. By the 19th century, Scarborough was the queen of British resorts, rivalled only by Brighton. Victorians flocked to its imposing spa complex (still there) and fine beaches, while three million came each year into the 1950s. The rise of foreign travel in the 1960s, however, hit Scarborough in the same way it did other UK seaside destinations.With some delay we report the January meeting of the Todmorden Ladies’ Probus Club where Ian Emberson made a talk. From Todmorden News:
The town's renaissance is driven not only by a renewed appreciation of the British seaside but also by new money from northern financial centres such as Leeds, along with an influx of creative types. Its appeal is clear enough. Wide, sandy beaches curve around the town's two bays - the smarter South Bay, with its backdrop of shops, restaurants and hotels, and the North Bay's more bucket-and-spade appeal. A headland divides the two, topped by a 12th-century castle that overlooks a tiny harbour.
Scarborough has culture, too. Not many seaside towns have four theatres, including the acclaimed Stephen Joseph Theatre, where Alan Ayckbourn has premiered most of his 60-odd plays. You can add a well-regarded jazz festival and Britain's last seaside orchestra. Anne Brontë loved the town and used it in Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I look down on the bay from the balcony of the Crown Hotel, whose Victorian elegance is typical of the town's finest buildings. The nearby Grand Hotel is being restored, while Scarborough has its first boutique hotel: Beiderbecke's. (Norman Miller)
The continuing search for unpublished material surrounding the world-famous Brontë family could throw up some welcome "finds" in the Todmorden area, a local expert believes.A week ago, Mr Emberson gave another talk in Mytholmroyd:
Speaking at the January meeting of the Todmorden Ladies’ Probus Club, Ian Emberson, said that the Brontë sisters had some considerable links with the area.
Their mother’s uncle, the Rev John Fennell, was vicar of Cross Stone during their young lives and Charlotte’s husband, the Rev Arthur Bell Nicholls, was a friend of the Rev Sutcliffe Sowden, who was Mr Fennell’s curate before becoming vicar of Hebden Bridge.
Mr Emberson, a retired music librarian, said it was highly probable that the literary sisters had made a number of visits to the Cross Stone vicarage and that the descendants of people living in the parish at the time could reveal some interesting information that had never before been published.
Mr Emberson and his wife, Catherine, have published “Recollections of the Brontës” by George Sowden, who succeeded his brother, Sutcliffe, at Hebden Bridge. His article had remained virtually forgotten for more than 100 years. They came across the material by chance while researching for an article on Mr Fennell (Brontë Studies 2005).
At the Probus meeting, Mr Emberson, a member of both the Gaskell and Brontë Societies, was assisted his by wife, and together they presented a carefully-crafted talk about Todmorden’s Brontë links, interspersed with readings from letters and other material penned by the Brontës or their friends and acquaintances.
It proved the perfect combination, with Mr Emberson explaining the Brontë story and his wife reading the passages that so brilliantly illustrated the theme.
Mr Fennell was vicar of Cross Stone from 1819 until his death in 1841 at the age of 67. An eloquent tribute by Mr Fennell to his first wife, Jane (Mrs Maria Brontë’s aunt), inscribed on her gravestone at Cross Stone, and Charlotte’s letter to her father while staying with Mr Fennell with Emily, Anne and Branwell were included in the presentation.
Mr and Mr Emberson were thanked on behalf of the Probus Club by Mrs Liz Gore.
Mytholmroyd Methodist Church, Historical Society 7.30pm, speaker Ian Emberson on The Brontes. (Halifax Evening Courier, February 8)On The Loy we can read more comments about The Heights, the contemporary setting of Wuthering Heights performed in Dublin by The Playgroup Company:
"I like to call is "making up" rather than devising," says director, Tom Creed, of his latest show, The Heights, a brand new stage version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.The National Post talks about zombies in films. Our very own Brontë zombie movie (Jacques Tourneur's 1943 I Walked with a Zombie) is mentioned:
Or almost a version of Bronte's novel, because according to Creed, the play is as much a homage to movie version of the book, and even Kate Bush's hit single version of the story.
"I think a lot of people feel they know the story of Wuthering Heights, but they haven't actually read the book. Kate Bush, for instance, hadn't read the book when she wrote the song…and the idea for the play came from thinking about the Merle Oberon / Lawrence Olivier film version."
All the same, Creed and company did get the book off the shelf too, although leafing through it has not exactly produced a facsimile version. For a start, The Heights is set in a city…
"The characters in the book have the moors running through their veins. And for a 19th century audience, the moors will have represented something cool and romantic, the sort of place where you could go and just get lost. Today, it is the city that has that quality for me, this place where you can go and disappear..."
And then there is the little business of period. The Heights is set in the 1980s…
"The story is told by the decedents of Heathcliff and Cathy, who we imagine to be living today, so then we imagine that the love story happened more than twenty years ago, which leave us…in the 1980s." (Luke Clancy)
The next significant zombie film was refined at its roots; I Walked with a Zombie, a 1943 collaboration between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, is a loose retelling of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. The story of a Canadian nurse who travels to the Caribbean to cure a woman suffering from a strange ailment is free of the genre's more blunt elements, relying on mood and atmosphere to create suspense. (Joel McConvey)And...
En suma: una cuidada edición, una novela inolvidable y el lujo de contemplar los dibujos de Balthus. Todo un placer. (Banda aparte)Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Talks, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
The moorland that inspired Wuthering Heights has remained untouched by time since the Brontë sisters visited its wild beauty in search of inspiration.Keighley News talks about the Hands-On History activities at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
But now the glorious carpet of heather is in danger of being usurped by invading flora planted by mourners who have scattered the ashes of loved ones on the moors.
Penistone Hill, which features in Wuthering Heights as Penistone Crag, has become a focal point for those brooding on the loss of family and friends.
As a high point above the former Brontë Parsonage at Haworth, it has long been a favourite spot for memorial benches.
But it seems many are no longer content just to sit and reflect, or lay the odd wreath. They now turn up with trees, shrubs and flowers to plant on the moors.
Problems have emerged as few are indigenous to Howarth - or moorland in general – and have been spreading through the landscape like wildfire.
The Brontë Society is concerned that - if left unchecked - the traditional flora such as heather and harebells so beloved by the sisters will be lost forever. The spread of foreign plants is also endangering the fragile habitats of moorland birds that the Brontës wrote about, such as lapwings, curlews, and skylarks.
Penistone Hill has a special place in the hearts of Brontë fans since it inspired the great romantic scene between Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the 1939 film.
Members of the Brontë Society are so concerned for its future that they have teamed up with Bradford Council to create a memorial garden.
The aim is to draw the problem away from the moorland wilderness to the tidiness of Haworth Park - where council gardeners can contain the threat of alien spores.
The heritage and conservation officer for the society, Christine Went, insisted the threat to the literary landscape and its sites of special scientific interest was very real.
She said: “As far as we can tell from the Brontës correspondence the moors have changed very little since they walked upon them.
“Much of the poems and writing on moorland themes and mentions include heather, harebells, lapwings, curlews and skylarks.
“They are all still there - along with a lot of other species. So the last thing we want is non-indigenous species coming in and putting pressure on natural habitats.
“These include a great variety of mosses which are very delicate habitats. It would be so easy to upset the balance and wipe out whole species.”
Young visitors to the Brontë Parsonage stepped back in time during holiday activities at the Haworth museum.La Opinión de Málaga (Spain) talks about first times and revelations:
A Hands-On History Day gave children the chance to try 19th century skills such as sewing a sampler, spinning a top and coaxing a spark from a tinderbox. And youngsters were able to look the part by dressing up in top hats, bonnets, cloaks or shawls from the museum’s dressing-up box.
Julie Akhurst, for the parsonage, said: “Half-term has been very busy with lots of younger visitors having fun learning about the Brontës and finding out about local history – and we have many more activities coming up over the summer.”
La segunda revelación de la semana vino con la lectura de Orgullo y prejuicio, de la enorme Jane Austen, obra que cumple estos días doscientos años desde su publicación. Esta lectura me llevó a Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë. Novelas inmensas, sólo aptas para ánimos agrietados, de idas y vueltas. Tras vivir unos días con las heroínas que soportan estas obras, Jane Eyre y Elisabeth Bennet, me tragué las adaptaciones cinematográficas más recientes. La de Orgullo y prejuicio lleva la firma de Joe Wright, ese tipo que le tiene pillada la medida a la traducción del lenguaje literario al audiovisual, prueba de ello es Expiación o Anna Karenina; mientras que la de Jane Eyre ha sido realizada por Fukunaga. (Cristina Consuegra) (Translation)The Herald (Ireland) talks papers and exams:
I enjoyed my three texts (Sive, Casablanca and Wuthering Heights) and tried to sneak as many Kate Bush references into paper two as possible.Howard Jacobson discusses in The Independent the words of the new UK Children's laureate, Malorie Blackman:
There’s another way of putting this. If I didn’t feel invisible, it was because I wasn’t. Madame Bovary c’est moi, Flaubert declared, invoking the writer’s creed. The reader’s creed is similar. Jane Eyre c’est moi, I felt when I read Charlotte Brontë’s great novel at school, and she was no less moi because she was a girl. If we should resist the principle of ethnic identity when reading, we should resist the gender principle no less. I was not invisible when I read Jane Eyre a) because the best writers make general what’s particular, and b) because I, who had not been taught to go looking for myself missing, honoured the writer/reader compact and found me in characters who weren’t me.The Times talks about Scarlett Johansson's suing a French publisher for using her in a novel:
Johansson's actions comes amid a global debate over real-person fiction, highlighted when Sonia Gandhi tried to ba a novel in India about her dynasty. Defenders of free speech argue that there is a tradition of works about real people in Western literature dating back to Charlotte Brontë's musings about the Duke of Wellington. (Adam Sage)The Guardian analyses the gender balancing of UK literary culture:
It's less than 100 years since women got the vote in the UK. It's just 170 years since the Brontës were writing with men's names. Changing laws is one thing, changing attitudes is quite another. (Alex Clark)Examiner reviews Wuthering Heights 2011:
There is much more to the story but Heathcliff has been called the ultimate Byronic hero. Dark and full of anger but with wells of deep emotion. This film gets that essence but focuses on long takes of their struggling relationship as the wind blows by them on the hills.Página 12 (Argentina) interviews the writer Ernesto Camilli and makes a reference to a popular Argentinian 1941 radio adaptation of Wuthering Heights:
I love the story so much that I would love any version but if I had never seen the earlier versions, I would not have a good idea of the actual story from this version. Still when something has been done repeatedly, it is probably best to provide something different. This is different. (Paul O'Callaghan)
Yo me recibí de maestro en el Santa Catalina de Brasil y Piedras, donde los curas eran todos tránsfugas, mentirosos y bloqueados. Y me jodió el alma un padre Olivieri que nos mandó a un amigo y a mí al cura Laburu que decía (pone voz tonante de Pedro López Lagar haciendo de Heathcliff, en Cumbres borrascosas): “¡Hijo cierra, cierra, cierra! ¡Piensa en tu futuro casamiento! ¡Cierra que Cristo ya va a iluminarte!”. (María Moreno) (Translation)And Las Provincias (Spain) makes a reference to the Luis Buñuel adapation of Emily Brontë's novel:
El cine nos ha ofrecido turbadoras secuencias sobre 'lo inconsolable'. Viene a mi memoria el sublime final de 'Cumbres borrascosas' (Buñuel, 1954), con el valenciano Jorge Mistral desenterrando a Catherine (Catalina en la película, rodada en México) para abrazarla de nuevo. (Translation)Clarín's Ñ (Argentina) reviews Indias Blancas by Florencia Bonelli:
Hay un aire a la novela romántica del siglo XIX, definida por el top tres del amor novelesco: Jane Eyre ,Cumbres Borrascosas , Orgullo y prejuicio. (Flavio Lo Presti) (Translation)The actress and singer Leonor Watling interviews Tom Waits in El Periódico (Spain). The legendary songwriter says:
¿Comparte música con Anton Corbijn cuando salen en coche para hacer fotos? Su música está llena de imágenes ¿Qué música tiene este libro?MediaSet (Italy) presents the Spanish soap-opera El Secreto as follows:
¿Una banda sonora del libro? No. Con Anton a veces sí... En general vamos conduciendo buscando lugares que se parezcan a Cumbres borrascosas o Larga es la noche, un callejón donde parezca que te puedes encontrar a Jack El Destripador. (Translation)
Ambientata nella Spagna rurale dell'inizio del XX secolo "Il segreto" ripercorre i modelli della letteratura classica romantica: amori impossibili, vendette, tradimenti e segreti inconfessabili, echeggiando capolavori come 'Cime tempestose' e 'Jane Eyre', e descrivendo una società in rapida trasformazione che, come nel resto d'Europa, stava passando dal mondo rurale all'era industriale. (Translation)Books We Love interviews the writer Joan Hall Hovey:
Choose one person, living or dead, you'd like to share a meal with.The Guardian's Teen Books site includes some Brontëites; this journalist of De Morgen (Belgium) doesn't feel like reading Wuthering Heights again; Girl Goes Adventuring and Caitiewriters have visited Haworth; Une lyre à la main (in French) reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Your Bibliomaniac posts about Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; remittance girl talks about the sexed up classics frenzy, in particular the Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights ones; jessicaminiermabe is publishing a Reader's Guide to Jane Eyre; Poems & Perceptions posts a poem about Blanche Ingram; the Brontë Parsonage website publishes some pictures of the Victoria Brookland exhibition private view.
JHH: Charlotte Brontë. She was a passionate woman, intelligent, and driven to succeed. She accomplished so much in her short life, with few of the tools we writers have today. She dealt with so much sickness in her family, including her own, and cared for her father until her own death at 39. A tragic life in many ways, yet a triump of the human spirit.
Women in Texas were once in the thrall of Charlotte Brontë and her literary masterpiece Jane Eyre. Back in the mid-1800s, Texans, along with the reading public as a whole, made the novel an immediate bestseller when it was published in 1848.Seven years later, a schoolteacher organized the Texas Brontë Club, a milestone that created a literary gathering place and boasted a lending library that years later evolved into the Victoria Public Library. Though it ultimately became a civic organization that did good works in communities, books continued to hold a prominent place in the society’s programs. The group thrived well into the 20th century, retaining its standing as the oldest literary group in the state and even once hosting a lecture by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.Fast forward to 2026. Today the great Victorian-era romance novel with a pioneering feminist message has earned a new place in Texas history —an infamous one— with four school districts banning it as unsuitable for younger readers. This is happening, it’s worth noting, at the same time that China made Jane Eyre compulsory reading for 14 and 15 year olds. Why? As a counter to social media and its touting of “materialistic culture and money.”You’re not alone if the Texas ban on Jane Eyre is a head scratcher. After all, the book is consistently near the top of major literary canons, has been on school reading lists, likely for over a century, has no steamy content at all, and has been adapted for as many as 25 to 30 movies and television series, most rated PG. [...]So why did four school districts in Texas decide to remove this celebrated, classic novel from its libraries, picking up the aging thread of distaste from Victorian critics?The 19th century’s favorite orphan is likely a casualty of the Texas legislature. Since the passage of the SB 13 law in 2025, school administrators and librarians have found it impossible to confidently interpret the labels “profane” and “indecent” — part of the new, lower bar for what makes a book bannable in Texas. As a result, some districts have placed restrictions on anything written for adults, including classics.Restrictions across four districts include banned pending investigation (removed from shelves, sometimes indefinitely); restricted to upper grade levels; and limiting only to AP English students.Some people will say age restrictions are normal, even good sense. The case of Jane Eyre shows the harm these measures can do. Young readers who become lifelong readers often benefit from reading above grade level, reading challenging prose that gives them a window into history. Denying them that opportunity limits their horizons.“Generations of young people, especially young women, have discovered a love of classic literature through the works of the Brontë sisters, reading above grade level to do so,” said Philomena Polefone, a senior manager of PEN’s Freedom to Read team and an author of the recent report. “Jane Eyre is a book that inspires young people to love reading and brings them into the library.What continues to be clear during Banned Books Week and every week is that book bans pose a threat not only to literacy and education but to democracy and pluralism.At PEN America, we believe that all students — and all parents — benefit when kids are given more choices of what to read, and encouraged to read freely. To those who spend time concocting dubious reasons to ban books, or (this being the 21st century) having AI do it for them, perhaps it’s time to heed the advice of Jane Eyre’s friend Helen Burns, who says: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” (Suzanne Trimel)
Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as “Jane Eyre:” in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.
Caird’s justification for this reduction is compelling. In an interview, he described Jane Eyre as “fundamentally an intimate, emotional, small-scale work”, pointing to the novel’s first-person narration and its intensely interior focus.But Jane Eyre is not a “small-scale work”. Certainly, Jane’s journey takes her through only a handful of Yorkshire houses and a school. Yet Brontë’s imagination repeatedly exceeds these confines. The novel conjures supernatural forces, wild landscapes and sweeping moorland. Its emotional world is equally expansive, moving from the warmth of passion to the terror of fire and freezing wastes. Its Yorkshire landscapes convey a strange, almost supernatural power. The result is a novel that constantly stretches beyond the limits of Jane’s confined domestic world. [...]Taking my seat at Southwark Playhouse, I was struck by how effectively Morgan Large’s set balances intimacy with gothic grandeur. It captures the small scale Caird sought for this chamber production, while suggesting a much wider and eerier world beyond the stage.The palette is black and white. The set backdrop is a video screen showing a slowly moving landscape of clouds, bare trees and wintry moorland. There is even a bit of mist rising.Stage right and left are clothes horses draped with everyday cloaks, pristine white shirts, nightshirts and caps. These have a prosaic quality and bring the audience close to a theatrical version of Brönte’s domestic realism. However, even these well-starched clothes are imbued with a ghostly quality, bereft as they are of wearers and lit in sharp contrast to the black backdrop. It is a clever combination of the ghostly and the mundane, which renders the most familiar things uncanny.Jane Eyre: a Musical abounds in excellent performances, exciting staging and orchestration, but despite the verve of the ensemble cast and the vocal crescendos, the heart rarely skips a beat in fear – and certainly not in gothic terror.This is largely due to the awkwardness and confusion in the representation of Bertha, who is little more than an obstacle in Jane and Rochester’s romance. Played by Hannah Lindsay, she appears veiled in pale lace wedding clothes, her face obscured. Even when she attacks Rochester, Lindsay’s long blonde curls hide her face.Brönte’s creation of the violent, swollen-featured, monstrous Bertha who also has bad breath and hasn’t brushed her hair is problematic to a modern audience. She is Creole and she is insane. What may once have appeared as a gothic representation of madness, now raises difficult questions about race, colonialism, gender and confinement.Even without having read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) or the seminal feminist study The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), modern audiences approach Bertha with a different understanding of colonial history than that of Brontë’s time.However, the answer is not to erase Bertha as a gothic force, which this production does. At one point we even see Bertha carrying a doll. If directors John Caird and Megan McGinnis choose to depict her as a childish innocent our sympathies must lie with her – but this sympathy goes nowhere and she is still removed as an obstacle to the romantic plot.Jane Eyre is so rich in imagery and intricate plot that three hours can never do it justice. However, more could have been done in this production.The musical offers a touching love story and a moving tale of a young woman’s struggles. Yet the novel’s much darker narrative is absent. Brontë creates this shadow narrative through gothic elements including dreams, Bessie’s local folklore and folk song, premonitions and monstrous night visitations, mysterious voices and uncanny laughter. A reference to Bessie’s folksong about the “orphan child” crossing the cold moors could have enriched the music.Most crucially, Brontë mirrors Bertha and Jane throughout the novel, but this mirroring is largely absent from the production. That is particularly striking because of the set’s prominent bird imagery. A plinth around three sides of the stage bears Jane’s declaration to Rochester: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” [...]The production’s confused portrayal of Bertha leaves little room for this gothic threat. Yet the novel repeatedly uses images of wildness and savagery to align the two women. These connections matter, particularly when Bertha’s role is so heavily downplayed.The musical misses the alignment of the two women. In Sweet Liberty, Jane (played beautifully by Charlie Burn) sings of “boundless skies” and declares: “I will fly.” Yet there is no reference to Bertha, the woman literally confined at Thornfield who ultimately flies from its roof. Bertha has no voice, and she certainly does not get a song. (Sophie Gilmartin)
Jane Eyre (2011)It's quite possible that Cary Joji Fuku[n]aga's 2011 adaptation of "Jane Eyre," the massively influential dark romance written by Charlotte Brontë, flew under your radar upon its release. If you love "Verity," though, this is another pick — like "Rebecca" — where you can clearly see the story's influence on writers like Colleen Hoover. Mia Wasikowska plays the titular Jane, who endured a difficult childhood as an orphan and thinks that her life will be forever changed when, as an adult, she meets the dashing and wealthy Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) while working as a governess at his property of Thornfield Hall. Despite Mr. Rochester's apparent betrothal to the beautiful Blanche Ingram (Imogen Poots), Jane finds herself developing feelings for him, and he returns them ardently.There's just one small problem, and it has to do with an attic and a spate of small fires — and even though "Jane Eyre" is an old story that's probably familiar to most people, we won't get into the specifics just in case you don't know how this wonderfully twisted story ends. Wasikowska and Fassbender are excellent and flanked by great performers like Dame Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins, Tamzin Merchant, and Simon McBurney, making this adaptation of "Jane Eyre" a worthy watch once you're finished with "Verity." (Nina Starner)
The divisive adaptation from the director of Saltburn and Promising Young Woman is finally on Prime Video for anyone looking for something other than horror this October. How does one even begin to describe this lavish, arguably ridiculous film? You kinda need to see it for yourself and decide what you think of the work of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in a movie that equal numbers of people loved and hated when it dropped in February of this year. (Brian Tallerico)
Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëThe only published novel by Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights is the beautifully crafted, haunting story of the enthusiastic love between the tortured Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of Heathcliff’s benefactor.First published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights was remarkable for its unflinching and honest portrayal of obsessive love and its accompanying cruelty, which was out of character for novels of the era.It’s been adapted for the stage and screen many times, most recently as a major motion picture starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.For me the adaptation was a step too far away from the original.I love Margot but she can no longer pass as a 20-year-old, and the wardrobe was not something you would have seen from a wealthy family in the Yorkshire Moors.There must be an authentic honesty to our classics, and if you do want to watch an adaptation, I would go for the Tom Hardy 2009 version.I give this latest adaptation 5/10 and the 2009 adaptation 8.5/10. (Julie Chessman)
Sense and Sensibility (2026) proves you don't need a varnished scene of oral sex backed by the latest Charli XCX track to demonstrate an undying passion between lovers. Georgia Oakley's Austen adaptation has everything Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights (2026) lacked. (Alice Lewis)
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