T' maister's dahn i' t'fowld

John Mullan writes in The Guardian about the different uses of dialect in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and compares it to Emily Brontë's use of Yorkshire dialect in Wuthering Heights:

Such dialect may be thoroughly non-standard in its spelling, but it is transparent compared with, say, the speech of the servant Joseph in the first edition of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. "'T'maister's dahn i' fowld. Goa rahnd by th'end u' laith, if you went tuh spake tull him." This is his first sentence in the book, and makes Welsh's Edinburgh smack addicts seem lucid in comparison. (After Emily Brontë's death, her sister Charlotte rewrote the dialect to make it easier for those she called "Southerns".)

Well, actually the first edition of Wuthering Heighs reads: "T' maister's dahn i' t'fowld. Goa rahnd by th'end ut'laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him". Charlotte Brontë edited it to: "T' maister's down i' t' fowld. Go round by th' end o' t' laith, if ye went to spake to him". And later editors seem to have taken it upon themselves to edit Joseph's dialect as well.

Daoud Hari, the author of The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur has been featured previously on BrontëBlog. Now, The Times interviews him:

His father sent him away for safety to boarding school in the city of El Fasher, where he learnt his English and developed a deep and perhaps improbable affection for classic English literature. 'We had very good education for English in Sudan in the 1980s, and some very good teachers,' he says. 'They taught us the classics: Treasure Island, Animal Farm, Oliver Twist. My favourites were Jane Eyre and Kidnapped. I read them over and over. Even now, the characters are with me.' (Richard Grant)

Will Self in his column in The Independent succumbs to the Haworth misspelling disease:

Yes, it was that time of the year again when I spent a day with the successful bidder in The Independent's Christmas charity auction. This year the Reverend Liz Cannon had bought me, ably assisted by her husband, David, a retired systems analyst, who – among other talents – has internet auctions down to a fine art. (...)
And after a curacy in Norfolk, during which she and David met and married, they moved to a parish at Cross Roads near Keighley in West Yorkshire. The parish abutted the Brontë's Howarth, but it was more the experience of working in a hilly, and ethnically mixed community, that struck the couple. That, and the way the position crept up on Liz: "Initially I found the moors very claustrophobic, and the town looked very dour.

The Book Reporter interviews Stephenie Meyer. Although her Twilight saga has been linked to Wuthering Heights several times when asked what are her favourite authors, she says:

Q: What adult authors do you read?
SM: I’ve been reading books for adults my entire life. Growing up I was an avid reader --- the thicker the book, the better. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SWORD OF SHANNARA, JANE EYRE, REBECCA, etc. I’m a huge fan of Orson Scott Card, and Jane Austen --- I can’t go through a year without re-reading her stuff again.

The Montclair Times reviews “Darkness to Light,” a play by Alan Shapiro about Ludwig von Beethoven's life and thinks that:

The dialogue and the characterizations, the lines and the acting, are in that straightforward, literate earnestness we’ve come to expect from Masterpiece Theatre adaptations of Jane Austin [sic] and the Bronte sisters. (Thom Molyneaux)

Comedy Queen talks about Jane Eyre 2006. Millennium of British Lit describes a visit to Brontë country. My West Virginia Life has seen the Clay Center's performances of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre. And Romantic Times reviews the upcoming Dangerous by Monica Burns:

Jane Eyre meets The Mummy, with lots of passionate sex thrown in for extra spice! Burns' characters are so multidimensional that readers will swear they're based on real people. Fans of Egyptology, gothic mysteries, ghost stories, romance and/or erotica will love every word -- and Lucien's meddling grandmother too.

The author seems to be a truly Jane Eyre fan, as can be read here.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre,Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Sing and Dance

Two alerts for today, May 31:

1 - Deborah Dunn's dance piece Wuthering Heights (more information on this previous post) is being performed at the 2008 Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival (Guelph, Ontario, Canada):

Mainstage A
Friday, May 30th | 8pm | Gala/Talkback | 9:30pm | $28
Saturday, May 31st | 4pm | $25

Trial & Eros [Montréal]
Wuthering Heights (2007)
Choreographer: Deborah Dunn

Inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Nocturnes explores the darker side of romantic love. Six characters, finding themselves in three couples, enact the themes of desire, possession and loss within a piece that unites melancholy and humour. The score mixes pieces by David Cronkite, which were inspired by Chopin's Nocturnes, with three original Nocturnes. The costumes by Deborah Dunn, Josée Gagnon and Sarah Tracey are a gorgeous hybrid of Victorian and contemporary design.

Photo by Nicolas Ruel
Photo of Sara Hanley, Sonya Stefan, Audrée Juteau.

2 - And in Arcata, California:

The Humboldt Light Opera Company celebrates its 35th anniversary at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 31 at HSU’s Van Duzer Theater. Over 100 singers from the last 10 years’ productions, including 35 local and returning soloists, will perform medleys from Titanic, The King & I, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Jane Eyre, The Full Monty, King Island Christmas, Quilters and The Music Man. (Maia Cheli-Colando in The Arcata Eye)

Categories: Dance, Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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Charlotte Riley as Cathy and more names

Baz Bamigboye writes in The Daily Mail about the ITV's new Wuthering Heights miniseries produced by Mammoth Screen and points out to her Cathy: Charlotte Riley (Picture Credits: Bee Gilbert) and not Katie Riley as was previously reported.

Charlotte Riley, who will play Catherine Earnshaw opposite Tom Hardy's Heathcliff in a two-part version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which Coky Giedroyc starts shooting next week for ITV. No, this is totally different from the big-screen production I've been banging on about for months, which films in the autumn. Ms Riley, currently to be seen as Anya in The Cherry Orchard at Chichester, will also appear in Stephan Elliott's film of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue later in the year. Burn Gorman, Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Lancashire also star.

EDIT:
Thanks to Faye who in a comment has pointed us to this Digital Spy discussion where several more names, besides Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, Andrew Lincoln as Edgar Linton and Sarah Lancashire as Nelly Dean have been disclosed.

From left to right: Hindley-Burn Gorman ; Isabella-Rosalind Halstead (EDITED); Linton Heathcliff-Tom Payne and Hareton-Andrew Hawley; Cathy Linton -Rebecca Night; Joseph - Des McAleer.

Picture Credits: Matt Holyoak / Sasha Gusov /Angus Deachar/Jerry Lampson/Sasha Gusov/Russel Erskine



Other names of the production include Olivia Hetreed (writer), Coky Giedroyc (director), Radford Neville (producer), Grenville Horner (production designer), Marella Shearer (make up & hair).

Let's end with some comments by Michael Fassbender, Heathcliff in the new Wuthering Heights film project, in The Irish Times:

In Cannes, it was announced that he will play Heathcliff in John Maybury's new movie of Wuthering Heights . Natalie Portman was to have played Cathy, but dropped out because of other commitments. "I'm very curious who they will cast as Cathy," Fassbender says. "Heathcliff is a great role, but I'm a bit nervous about it until I get my Yorkshire accent right."
He is bemused that the producers of Wuthering Heights are already claiming him as "the most exciting contemporary British actor" and "a Brando for Britain".

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights

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Eerily Atmospheric Brontë

Yesterday we posted an interview with Shannon McKenna Schmidt, one of the co-authors of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Today it's the other co-author, Joni Rendon, who chooses for USA Today her top ten of favourite literary hikes including Brontë country, of course:

The Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens
Haworth, England

"The windswept Yorkshire Moors immortalized by the Brontës are one of the most eerily atmospheric places to hike in England," Rendon says. "A 2½-mile walk from the sisters' former home, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, through heather-strewn hills leads to their favorite destination, a gentle waterfall and stream. Rest on the stone slab known as the Brontë chair before walking a mile farther to see the ruins of an isolated farmhouse, Top Withens, the possible setting of Wuthering Heights." (Kathy Baruffi)

Hollywood Today reviews Laura Joh Rowland's The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë:

“What particularly stuck in my mind was the thought that no matter how much adventure she’d experienced, she always craved more,” says author Laura Joh Rowland. “Brontë was the ultimate yearning, romantic, creative spirit. I decided that Charlotte would make the perfect heroine for a historical suspense novel.”
British novelist Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) is best known for Jane Eyre. There are other novels employing famous authors who solve mysteries. One that comes to mind is the Jane Austen Mysteries by Stephanie Barron. The big difference is that ‘Secret Adventures’ has Charlotte Brontë telling the whole story, but she uses letters and journals written by her brother Branwell and Emily to add to her story.
“As I wrote the book, I combined the rich material of her life with the political and sexual intrigue beneath the prim morality of Victorian England,” says Rowland. “I tried to give Charlotte the adventure she craved. The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë is my heartfelt tribute to one of the greatest authors of all time.”
Rowland took more than seven years to research and write the book. “I was enthralled by her experience at a grim Victorian boarding school, her extraordinary siblings, her dramatic rise to literary fame, her late in life marriage, and her early, tragic death,” says Rowland. “I love Charlotte ’s letters. She was amazingly frank. She’s always carrying on about something, or telling someone off. She was a very vocal correspondent.”
In ‘Secret Adventures’, Brontë receives a letter from her publisher, George Smith, accusing her of breach of contract. While in London to confront her publisher, Brontë witnesses the ghastly death of a poor lonely girl. Brontë vows that she will solve the mystery of why the girl was killed.
If Rowland had kept the plot simple, it would have been more engaging. Brontë is a famous world figure, so straying too much from what’s known about her tends to strain. For example, that Brontë would have as her protector and possible love interest a British spy seems fantastic. A Victorian Charlotte Brontë dallying in Brussels and in her travels around the United Kingdom unchaperoned with a man goes beyond belief. Still, it’s a fun story. (Gabrielle Pantera)

A brief comment of the novel is also available on Read & Reel.

Although we also said that Rowland's Charlotte goes beyond belief on occasions, we wonder if the reviewer knows that the actual Victorian Charlotte Brontë did indeed dally in Brussels all by her herself.

Another usual guest on recent BrontëBlog newsrounds is Margot Livesey's latest novel The House on Fortune Street. The Christian Science Monitor reviews it and it's not an exception:

Bookworms love to imagine having real life mirror the plot of their favorite novel. What could be more romantic than, say, reliving the first encounter between Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester outside Thornfield Hall? Plenty, as Margot Livesey shows in her engrossing new novel, The House on Fortune Street. (...)
Livesey (“Banishing Verona”) then rewinds the action to Dara’s childhood, as related by Dara’s dad. Dara herself covers her relationship with Edward, à la Brontë; and Abigail tells the story of their friendship at St. Andrews college in Scotland. (...)
Everyone had a book, or a writer, that was the key to their life,” Abigail’s beloved grandfather believed, and Livesey changes up her novel by having an English author preside over each section: John Keats, Charles Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll), Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. This is more than a gimmick – Livesey uses each writer to provide extra resonance to her tale. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to have a copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature handy to enjoy “The House on Fortune Street.”) (Yvonne Zipp)

Metro.co.uk reviews Anne Donovan's Being Emily:

Its narrator, Emily, is a Glasgow teenager whose struggles to make sense of the litany of woe marking her adolescence are aided by her fascination with the Brontës – in particular, her namesake.
She is plucky yet vulnerable and deserves a book with a little more grit and a little less whimsy than this sweet but essentially unsatisfying tale. (Tina Jackson)

Do you remember these exchange of letters between two young women living in Israel and Gaza? Now BBC News publishes their third letters and Anav, the Israeli, replies to the Heathcliff metaphore used by her correspondent:

I read your second letter with interest, noting that your comparison of Heathcliff with Israel is inaccurate and does not reflect the complete reality of the conflict.

The Brussels Brontë Blog reviews Sarah Fermi's Emily's Journal:

I have loved reading this book. Even though the author, based on her research, had to imagine how things might have been in Emily’s life (since so few real facts are known to us, Emily being a very private person), you can really believe this story and believe that these things actually happened. The author has really succeeded in convincing me of her theory. It made me look at Emily from quite a different perspective. It is a wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable book, one that each Emily Brontë fan should have read! (Marina Saegerman)

Doing it the hard way is always easier talks about Wuthering Heights. La fabuleuse bibliothèque de Madame Charlotte reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in French.

Categories: Books, Haworth, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights

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Mr Charlotte Brontë

As we have previously informed on BrontëBlog, Alan H. Adamson's new biography of Arthur Bell Nicholls has been published by McGill-Queen's University Press:

Mr Charlotte Brontë The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls
Alan H Adamson

A biography of Charlotte Brontë's husband that highlights his protection of her literary reputation.

Cloth (0773533656) 9780773533653
Release date: 2008-02-28
CA $29.95 | US $24.95 | UK £13.99
6X9
216pp
19 b&w photos

Few people seeking to avoid the glare of publicity have had more of it turned on them than Charlotte Brontë's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Some critics have implied that he not only put a stop to her writing but might even have inadvertently caused her death.
Alan Adamson's biography takes recent scholarship into account and adds new material about Nicholl's family, education, and early life in Ireland to give a more balanced view. The book explores why Brontë, cool and often hostile towards Nicholls in the early days of his curacy at Haworth, came to respect and love him, and how Patrick Brontë, her difficult father, grew to rely on him after her death.
Drawing on Nicholl's correspondence with, among others, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ellen Nussey and Harriet Martineau, Mr Charlotte Brontë: The Life of Arthur Bell Nicholls presents a compelling picture of Nicholls' efforts to emphasize Brontë's literary reputation and curtail speculation about her private life.
Alan H. Adamson is distinguished professor emeritus of history, Concordia University, and the author of several works, including Sugar Without Slaves.

This is the table of contents:

Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
Illustrations xv
Family Tree xxvi

1 The Irish Background 3
2 Mr Macarthey 21
3 Macarthey in Love 35
4 Tomkins’ Brief Triumph 64
5 Her Will Be Done 83
6 Return to Banagher 127
7 The Struggle over Copyright 138

Epilogue 158
Notes 165
Bibliography 179
Index 185

Categories: Books, Biography, Brontëana

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Charlotte in politics

Taking into account Charlotte Brontë's interest in politics, we are quite sure she would have liked being quoted at a conference session of the Delegation of the European Commission to the USA:

Ján Figel’—EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth
Promoting Understanding and Dialogue
NAFSA Conference session: International Student and Scholar Mobility: Programs, Trends, Challenges and Impact
Washington DC, 27 May 2008

(...)In the end, what really counts is that higher–education systems are better connected and that more and more young people receive a good education in their countries or anywhere else in the world.
And the reason was simply explained by Charlotte Brontë:
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.

The quote is from Jane Eyre (Chapter XXIX).

The Daily Freeman interviews Shannon McKenna Schmidt, one of the co-authors of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West:

Schmidt, 37, a freelance writer who spent a decade in publishing, met another English major, Joni Rendon, a couple years ago. They not only hit it off, they realized they had similar interests that went beyond classic literature to the actual residences of the writers. In 2006, they visited together the home of the Bronte sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne - in England, where Rendon had moved.
"We hadn't sold the book at that point," Schmidt said. "What it did for us is that it allowed us to see how these kinds of trips could be for people."
The women stayed at a bed and breakfast that once was the home of the Bronte sisters' physician, they visited the pub where the Brontes' brother drank and they inspected the parsonage museum. They also took a walking tour of the town and rambled about the moors.
The trip turned out to be a highlight, for Schmidt, of the approximately 200 sites the women eventually visited, apart and together.
"I'll try not to go on and on about Bronte Country," Schmidt said, "but .... I was a huge fan of 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte. The backdrop of that book is just so atmospheric. As you're reading, you get these vivid images of the moors and what they're like. For some reason, that really resonated with me, and I wanted to go there." (Bonnie Langston)

Coal Valley News talks with Elaine Carol Tapley, Jane Eyre in the Clay Center’s presentation of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre in Charleston, West Virginia:

Directed by David Wohl, the play is an adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s renowned romantic classic, Jane Eyre, a novel religiously assigned to students of Literature and widely referenced as a one of the most famous of British novels.
A word of caution to those planning on attending the play – do not expect to see a chapter-by-chapter rendition of the novel.
In the adapted version, the protagonist, or heroine Jane Eyre has an alter-ego, Bertha, who is locked in a “Red Room,” waiting for her chance to escape society’s stigma of “accepted” behavior by breaking a rule or two.
Bertha isn’t the only one breaking a few rules – the “powers that be” decided to build audience seating directly on the stage for the two weeks this play is scheduled to run at the Clay Center. (Joanie Newman)
Picture: (L to R): Former Boone County teacher and part-time actress Elaine Tapley poses with actors Chris Terpening (Rochester) and Marlette Carter (Bertha) during Friday's performance at the Clay Center (Source)

Another Brontëite, the OUP blog writer. She reveals her Brontëism in this post where she includes an extensive quote from Janet Gezari's Last Things. A book about Emily Brontë's poetry published last year and reviewed by BrontëBlog here. By the way, the book will be published in paperback this summer.

The Brontë sisters are three of my all-time, all-star favourite authors. I first read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre when I was at school and was instantly bewitched by them, and have re-read them both often in the years since. Every time I read the Brontë sisters’ novels (not just those two) I find more in them to love. By the time you read this post, I will be in the midst of two long weeks off on holiday, and during that time I’m going to make my very first trip up to Howarth [sic] to see the parsonage where the girls lived with their brother and father - I can’t wait - talk about kid in a sweet shop!

The Independent reviews Simon Patterson's exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London which includes a Brontë-related piece:

Another work consists of three giant sails, all side by side, and leaning into some phantom wind. (The only movement in this room is the gentle flutter of the attendant's eyelids.) These sails have names of writers on them – Currer Bell (better known as Emily Brontë), Laurence Sterne and Raymond Chandler. The guide tells us that they are named in this way to remind us that the sea has been written about a great deal, and often very well. Not quite in those words. How lame is that? (Michael Glover)

We are no one to judge Simon Patterson's works but if a critic wants to be taken seriously he can only do it checking his sources. Currer Bell was Charlotte Brontë's nom de plume ... not Emily's.

It's even worst when in order to promote something, a comic in this case, you have to denigrate another one. Jane Eyre in this case. Beware of strong language:

Man, do I love me some Garth Ennis. Garth Ennis could turn mind-numbing drivel like Jane-fucking-Eyre into a comic and it would rock out with its cock out, I’m sure. (Wildstar on Geeks of Doom)

In this other case, at least the reviewer is more polite. Talking about a rumour about a Broadway musical based on Ugly Betty, we read:

A musical can have the best plot ever, and sucky music can just bring the whole thing crumbling down. See Jane Eyre, Cry Baby or the recent Saved as examples. Good in concept. Bland in execution. (Angel Cohn on Television Without Pity)

Adventures in Reading talks about Wuthering Heights. SimplyScenic posts a nice picture of the Brontë way. Other Stories posts some pictures of Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage. Gondal-Girl (quite a Brontë name for a blog) wonders what Heathcliff's star sign would be.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Haworth, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

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The House of Dead Maids

We have discovered via Becky's Book Reviews a new book by Clare B. Dunkle based on Wuthering Heights that will be published in 2010:

The House of Dead Maids (working title), a Wuthering Heights prequel which will probably be scheduled for early 2010.

Ginee Seo of Atheneum (Simon & Schuster) acquired The Sky Inside and The House of Dead Maids for her own imprint of Ginee Seo Books and asked me to write The Walls Have Eyes for her.

Becky's Book Reviews interviews the author and gives more information:

And I was very very intrigued to see that you’re working on a prequel for Wuthering Heights! Can you share any little tidbits—tease us a bit with what’s in store for readers—I must say I’d be eager to read both of those!

The Wuthering Heights prequel draft is done, and I think it horrified my editor when she got it—something like sending a rabid Chihuahua through the mail. It's based on a lifetime of mulling over that book; you might say its my own literary criticism of Emily Bronte's novel, but written in the form of another novel.

My take on Heathcliff is that he has no place in Wuthering Heights. He doesn't want to be there, nobody else wants him there, and aside from causing misery to everyone (including himself), he is largely powerless. Think about how the novel progresses: we're pretty sure Edgar would have married Cathy whether Heathcliff had come along or not, that she likely would have died having their first child, and that Cathy II and Hareton would have wound up engaged in order to unite the family fortunes. Heathcliff can't endure these turns of events, but they take place in spite of everything he does to prevent them. By the time Lockwood comes back to visit his landlord, Heathcliff has vanished from the book, leaving scarcely a trace.

For all Heathcliff's brilliance and ruthlessness, he can't change one bit of the plot. Clearly, then, he's a character who belongs in another story, a story where the ghostly and demonic forces that surround him make sense and where he can be who he really wants to be. I give the little boy Heathcliff that story in my prequel. And, just as an act of misplaced kindness at the beginning of Wuthering Heights delivers this imp into Emily Bronte's story, a similar act of misplaced kindness at the end of my book removes Heathcliff from his proper milieu and sets him on the path to Wuthering Heights.

Apparently, where Heathcliff is concerned, kindness doesn't pay. He never asks for it, and he certainly doesn't understand it.

Categories: Books, Sequels, Wuthering Heights

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The mad woman at the Grange

We are sad to open this post reporting the death last Monday of Sydney Pollack. The Brontës reach practically everywhere and thus we read the following on The Baltimore Sun:

Pollack movies, such as the tragicomic romance The Way We Were (1973) and the exhilarating show-biz comedy Tootsie (1982), shot into the realm of beloved classics usually reserved for Old Hollywood love stories such as 1939's Wuthering Heights (one of his own favorites) or romantic comedies such as 1940's The Philadelphia Story (another Pollack favorite). (Michael Sragow)

The New Zealand Herald has an article on 'mad women' (that would be its not very politically correct description anyway). Journalists never fail to surprise us. You would expect a reference to Bertha, the 'mad woman' in English literature par excellence, wouldn't you? Well, you get a short allusion to Cathy instead.

It's easy to get carried along in the throes of a romantic passion for a man who's "mad, bad and dangerous to know" but love is far more difficult to sustain when endearing quirks and idiosyncrasies blossom into full blown neuroses and /or personality disorders as a host of women, from Wuthering Heights' Cathy to Kate Moss have found out to their cost. (Noelle McCarthy)

Hermione Buckland-Hoby writes in her Guardian blog about virtual bookshelves, but ends her post with a funny anecdote regarding the traditional bookshelf.

It's wonderful for finding new books, but an equal pleasure is to be had from making kneejerk character judgements: I've just stumbled upon a bookcase with one shelf devoted to classics with a capital C: War and Peace, Jane Eyre and co are all lined up with rigid neatness, each one perfectly pristine in its jacket and clearly untouched. And on the shelf below them? A dog-eared sprawl of much-thumbed Bernard Cornwells.

But haven't we all seen similar things? Some bookshops sell books by the foot even.

The OUP Blog etymologist seems to be very fond of analysing the word 'wuthering', as today is not the first time it's featured in a post.

I doubt that anyone acquainted with Emily Bronte’s novel pronounces wuthering, as in Wuthering Heights, with the vowel of strut, though the name Wuthering does have such a vowel. (Anatoly Liberman)

Monsters & Critics reviews Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres. And Crescent Moon Book Reviews gives Shirley a 10/10.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Shirley, Wuthering Heights

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Scarborough, 28 May 1849

On Anne Brontë's death anniversary, what better than letting her speak for herself?

Severed and gone, so many years!
And art thou still so dear to me,
That throbbing heart and burning tears
Can witness how I cling to thee?

I know that in the narrow tomb
The form I loved was buried deep,
And left, in silence and in gloom,
To slumber out its dreamless sleep.

I know the corner where it lies,
Is but a dreary place of rest:
The charnel moisture never dries
From the dark flagstones o'er its breast,

For there the sunbeams never shine,
Nor ever breathes the freshening air,
­- But not for this do I repine;
For my beloved is not there.

O, no! I do not think of thee
As festering there in slow decay: ­-
'Tis this sole thought oppresses me,
That thou art gone so far away.

For ever gone; for I, by night,
Have prayed, within my silent room,
That Heaven would grant a burst of light
Its cheerless darkness to illume;

And give thee to my longing eyes,
A moment, as thou shinest now,
Fresh from thy mansion in the skies,
With all its glories on thy brow.

Wild was the wish, intense the gaze
I fixed upon the murky air,
Expecting, half, a kindling blaze
Would strike my raptured vision there, --

A shape these human nerves would thrill,
A majesty that might appal,
Did not thy earthly likeness, still,
Gleam softly, gladly, through it all.

False hope! vain prayer! it might not be
That thou shouldst visit earth again.
I called on Heaven --­ I called on thee,
And watched, and waited --­ all in vain.

Had I one shining tress of thine,
How it would bless these longing eyes!
Or if thy pictured form were mine,
What gold should rob me of the prize?

A few cold words on yonder stone,
A corpse as cold as they can be -­
Vain words, and mouldering dust, alone -­
Can this be all that's left of thee?

O, no! thy spirit lingers still
Where'er thy sunny smile was seen:
There's less of darkness, less of chill
On earth, than if thou hadst not been.

Thou breathest in my bosom yet,
And dwellest in my beating heart;
And, while I cannot quite forget,
Thou, darling, canst not quite depart.

Though, freed from sin, and grief, and pain
Thou drinkest now the bliss of Heaven,
Thou didst not visit earth in vain;
And from us, yet, thou art not riven.

Life seems more sweet that thou didst live,
And men more true that thou wert one:
Nothing is lost that thou didst give,
Nothing destroyed that thou hast done.

Earth hath received thine earthly part;
Thine heavenly flame has heavenward flown;
But both still linger in my heart,
Still live, and not in mine alone.

This poem was arguably written in memory of William Weightman in April 1847, but whatever the case, we believe it fits our purpose today. (Text courtesy of Mick Armitage's wonderful site, as usual with all things Anne Brontë)

Categories: Anne Brontë, Poetry, Reminder

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Beryl Bainbridge Launches Brontë Weekend

A press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

BERYL BAINBRIDGE LAUNCHES BRONTË WEEKEND

6 – 8 JUNE 2008


Dame Beryl Bainbridge, one of the nation’s most prolific authors, will be visiting Haworth on the afternoon of Friday 6 June 2008 to launch the Brontë Society’s annual weekend. Beryl Bainbridge will be reading from and discussing her work at the West Lane Baptist Centre at 3.30pm. Tickets cost £5.00 and will be available on the door.

An evening panel event on Saturday 7th June will see prominent authors Sally Beauman, Stevie Davies, Helen Dunmore and Toby Litt discussing Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights and how it has influenced their own writing. The event coincides with the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s special exhibition for 2008, No Coward Soul, which focuses on Emily Brontë. 8pm, Tickets cost £12.00 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Jane Eyre’s wardrobe is brought to life with the return of the popular History Wardrobe on Sunday 8th June at 3pm. Gillian Stapleton performs The Well Dressed Governess, using exquisite replica clothes and original items to examine Jane’s wardrobe in detail, following her fictional career from charity schoolgirl to governess then fairytale bride, and exploring just how close the sartorial links between Jane and her creator really were. Tickets cost £12 and can be booked from hedley.hickling@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640195

"Rich in historical detail and marvellously funny!" The Jane Austen Festival, Bath Theatre Royal

All events will take place at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth.

“We have a great line up of events for this year’s Brontë weekend - from costume through to contemporary writers who’ll be discussing the influence the Brontës have had on their own work. Artists, writers and scholars travel to Haworth from around the world every year for the weekend so there is always a special atmosphere. We hope lots of people will join us to find out more about the Brontës and to hear these amazing writers in conversation”.

Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer, Brontë Parsonage Museum

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontë Society

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Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers in the Web

Two very different articles coincide today quoting a well known paragraph from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The Times does it in an article about cricket:

In the build-up to this Test match, Michael Vaughan said that England go out to bat in every first innings with the aim of reaching 400. Just for the record - because it may not be obvious - I must state that whenever I lift the lid of my laptop I intend to write the next Wuthering Heights. That does not happen, either.(...)
Selectors responded to England's last defeat by dropping Stephen Harmison and Matthew Hoggard. This time the bowlers have kept them in the game and today may well represent one final chance for certain batsmen. The sleepers, as Emily Bronte put it, would have suffered some unquiet slumbers last night. (Richard Hobson)

And the Mail on Sunday ends an article about the English willage West Tanfield like this:

As Emily Bronte wrote: 'I wondered how anyone could ever imagine anything but unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' (Roy Hattersley)

Actually, and for the sake of completeness, the novel ends:

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Philippa Gregory selects Dragonwyck by Anya Seton for a list of summer books on CNN. This is how she describes it:

"A gothic novel set in 1844 America. At times it's utterly ridiculous, but it is truly haunting. Think an American Jane Eyre at high speed. A great book to gulp down in a day."

Einsiders reviews the A&E Romance Collection DVD box set which includes Jane Eyre 2006:

"Jane Eyre" rivals "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" as the most often filmed book. Is there a British actress who has not played the title role. Read the book instead. This version clocks in at 108 minutes. Needless to say, much of the book falls to the wayside. (Rusty White)

On the blogosphere we found today a brief comment about Jane Eyre on Sarit's Little Craze.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

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French Jane Eyre

Two new editions of Jane Eyre in French. First, an edition including juvenilia by not only Charlotte but Emily, Anne and Branwell:

Jane Eyre : Précédé de Oeuvres de jeunesse 1826-1847

• Hardcover: 1723 pages
• Publisher : Editions Gallimard (20 mars 2008)
• Collection : Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (542)
  
• Language : Français
• ISBN-10: 2070114953
• ISBN-13: 978-2070114955
• 20-03-2008. 55,00 €

Includes :
Récits et poèmes (1826-1839) de Charlotte et Patrick Branwell Brontë
Poèmes (1837-1848) d'Emily Brontë
Alexander et Zenobia (1837) d'Anne Brontë
Poèmes publiés (1841-1847) de Patrick Branwell Brontë
Poèmes (1846) de Charlotte, Emily et Anne Brontë, et Jane Eyre (1847) de Charlotte Brontë .

Édition publiée sous la direction de Dominique Jean avec la collaboration de Sylviane Chardon, Robert Davreu et Michel Fuchs, trad. de l'anglais par Sylviane Chardon, Robert Davreu, Michel Fuchs, Dominique Jean et Pierre Leyris, 1776 pages, rel. peau, 105 x 170 mm.

And a new abridged version of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher : L'Ecole des Loisirs (24 avril 2008)
• Collection : Classiques abrégés
• Language : Français
• ISBN-10: 2211090176
• ISBN-13: 978-2211090179
• 24 April 2008
• Translation by Mme Lesbazeilles-Souvestre.
• Abridged by Marie-Hélène Sabard.
  

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Juvenilia, Translations

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Jane Eyre in Fort Wayne

An alert from the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana:

Event Type: Book Group
Date: 5/27/2008
Start Time: 7:00 PM
Description: Discuss those classics you always wanted to read or would enjoy reading again. This month we will be discussing Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
Library: Dupont Branch
Location: Large Meeting Room

Categories: Alert, Jane Eyre

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Time stops

Let's begin with a short newsround around some non-English newspapers, shall we?

We are very pleasantly surprised to find a review of the scholar book A Breath of Fresh Eyre on the German website Literatur Kritik. German-speakers might find it interesting.

Il Velino - in Italian - has an article on gypsies which includes several references to Jane Eyre.

Le Monde slips a reference to Charlotte Brontë in a very interesting - though not without controversy - article from its Books section.

The Spanish El País rather digresses in a political article when it pauses to think that expression 'time stopped' is 'cheesy' and typical of Charlotte Brontë (?) when describing an eternal-love embrace. Oh, make of that silliness what you will.

Another article from a Spanish newspaper, ABC, has Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters all uniformly tied to the 'romantic novel' category.

The actual English news is not a paradigm of Brontë knowledge either. According to The Sydney Morning Herald,

More than a decade later, when offered a role in a television adaptation of Austen's last novel, Persuasion, [Sally Hawkins] says she was "incredibly flattered" but hesitant. Hawkins had just re-read Northanger Abbey, the closest thing in Austen's repertoire to a brooding Bronte novel, and started to re-read the more conventionally romantic Persuasion with mixed feelings. Unexpectedly, she was drawn into it and embarked on a journey through Austen's entire library, including letters and other surviving fragments of her life. (Michael Idato)

Finally, Luck favors the prepared looks deeply into Wuthering Heights and Flyy before Midnight discusses Jane Eyre in depth as well.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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Dressing History

Serena Dyer from Dressing History recently got in touch with us to share the news that her website was now online. It contains her wonderful designs of period clothes, such a Charlotte Brontë-inspired dress (in the picture),and much more besides, such as typical songs, etc. But who better to describe the website and everything behind it than Serena herself?

My new site, Dressing History, is now online at http://www.dressing-history.co.uk . Dressing History provide accurate historical fashion reproductions, engaging historical interpretation, original garments for sale and a series of talks and accompanying books. With an emphasis on quality and historical accuracy, we are able to provide a reliable resource for dress historians, re-enactors, museums and the heritage industry. We believe in the importance of dress as a tool to understand the past, both when addressing the social history of and era, and in understanding individuals, and try to convey this in our work.

Dressing History offers two 1 hour talks, which incorporate our own accurate reproductions, and original items. Based around Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, the talks draw on various sources, including letters and their novels, as well as surviving garments, to accuratly present what the clothes worn by these remarkable women could have looked like.

Dressing History is also able to supply thoroughly researched, highly accurate reproductions or recreations of historical garments from any era, and from a variety of social classes. We use exclusively natural fibres, and try, where possible, to use authentically woven fabrics. Many of our pieces are based on original garments, portraits or fashion plates, and a research portfolio is available for each garment.

The Dressing History historical interpretation service offers a wide range of characters, both in third and first person, and covers the 16th to 19th centuries. Many of the characters portrayed are real historical people, and are presented as my interpretation, after thorough research, of what that person was truly like. I can also offer more general services, using a constructed character of my own, for any era, or alternatively I can give various demonstrations.

We are also able to offer a selection of original items, both for sale and for study. These items vary from shoes and parasols to complete dresses and vary in age from c.1800 to the 1970s. Please see the site for details.

All feedback, comments and publicity is very much appreciated, and will be returned. The latest version of flash is needed to view the site, but a link to a basic html only version is also there. This html version will be improved upon shortly! Go to http://www.dressing-history.co.uk to view the site. The site went live on 23rd May, and while it is already very comprehensive, will be enlarged and improved as time goes on.

We shall certainly keep an eye on this promising website, and so should you!

Picture Details: 1837. Spotted Cotton. Made for historical interpretation work as Charlotte Bronte. It is made of a white cotton with a silk spot, and has piping in white satin around the bodice and cuffs. Design taken from fashion plates and an extant dress in Gloucester Museum. Source.

Categories: Victorian Era, Websites

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Good Luck, Alan

We read on the Brontë Parsonage Blog that Alan Bentley, director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum will leave his position at the end of this month:

I am leaving the Bronte Society on the 31st May to work freelance and to develop my consultancy business. It is sad to be leaving after seven highly enjoyable years and I hope it will not be the end of my association with the Brontë Society and the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

I am sure that with the redevelopment of the exhibition room and the extra media interest which will follow next year's adaptations of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and the possible Brontë movie, coupled with the continuing development of the contemporary arts and education programmes, the Society will continue to go from strength to strength. (Alan Bentley)

From BrontëBlog we would like to wish Mr. Bentley the best of luck in all of his future endeavours and thank him for the many times he has helped us in the past.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontë Society

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Trees and roses

Let's begin today with some update on the Wuthering Heights film project. Not really anything new but The Independent (Ireland) credits another Irish production company for the project:

THE $15m budget movie Wuthering Heights could be shot in Ireland in late October after advanced discussions to bring the film to Ireland were held at the Cannes film festival last week.
Michael Fassbender, who starred in the I'm Sorry Guinness advert, the semi-animated epic 300 and who plays the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands in Hunger, will play the role of Heathcliff in the romantic fiction.
If some of the film is shot in Ireland, the film will be co-produced by British film producers, Ecosse Films, and the Irish production company, Octagon Films. The rest of the film would be shot in Britain. Octagon and Ecosse recently co-produced Becoming Jane, a romance about Jane Austen. (Louise MacBride).

Keighley News republishes the news about the cyprus pine tree souvenirs initiative of the Brontë Society. In the picture (source): Brontë Parsonage Museum director Alan Bentley (check the following post for news about Mr. Bentley) with the remains of the felled tree.

Art Daily presents the upcoming exhibition Matthew Carr – New York (25 June - 19 July 2008 at the Marlborough Fine Art, London):

On a larger scale, Carr has produced majestic drawings of a range of subjects: a rhinoceros, crows and Mimi the family dog together with a powerful nude and the enigmatically beautiful five-panel study of Whitby headstones. Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire has a brooding, Bronte-esque atmosphere and is where Dracula is reputed to have first tasted English blood. The tombstones emerge as five richly textured compositions in which one may read the poetry of sky, clouds, mountains, rivers, trees and rocks at will.

musicOMH reviews the BAC's performances of Goat Island's dance piece: The Lastmaker (more information on this previous post):

The performers charge from one side of the space to the other, springing and leaping in a manner reminiscent of children at play – sudden brief bursts of energy. One of the five takes a microphone and launches into Lenny Bruce’s familiar drawl, this is interwoven with recitals of Emilys Dickinson and Bronte. (Natasha Tripney)

The Observer talks with Siri Hustvedt and traces her Brontëite beginnings:

When did she know that she wanted to write? 'It happened at 13, in Reykjavik. My father was studying the sagas. There were English books in the public library: David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. I read compulsively that summer.' (Rachel Cooke)

Kyle Post writes a letter to his newborn daughter in The New York Post which includes this passing comment:

Wear sunscreen. I can get sunstroke from a reading lamp, and your mom is so pale she looks like the illustration of a ghost in a Bronte novel.

FilmJournal reviews William Nicholson's film Firelight (a forgotten gem in the opinion of this half of BrontëBlog):

The most fun to be derived from Firelight, a rather tortured bodice-ripper, comes from discerning its all-too obvious inspirations. There's the mousy governess and mysterious lord out of Jane Eyre and Dragonwyck (with that disturbed wife thrown in for good measure); the ominously spectral house and grounds from The Turn of the Screw; the monstrously bratty kid from our old friend, The Bad Seed, and the noble teacher who strives mightily to instruct her impossible student out of The Miracle Worker. (David Noh)

On the blogosphere today: South in the Winter is reading Jane Eyre and posts about the figure of the madwoman on the attic, Pelargonium oasen posts the left hand side picture (source) of a Jane Eyre-named variety of rose (Stanley P. Stringer, 1968). As far as we know, there is another variety of Jane Eyre roses, click here to see them.

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëites, Dance, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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Jane Eyre in Rockdale

Somewhat belatedly, we present this Australian production of Jane Eyre:

Picture Source.

Jane Eyre

The Guild Theatre - Community Theatre Group
Railway Street
Cnr Walz St, Rockdale

By Constance Cox
Directed by Anthony Stirling-Edgar

Small, plain and poor, Jane Eyre comes to Thornfield Hall as governess to the young ward of Edward Rochester. Denied love all her life, Jane can't help but be attracted to the intelligent, vibrant, energetic Mr Rochester, a man twice her age. But just when Mr Rochester seems to be returning the attention, he invites the beautiful and wealthy Blanch Ingram and her party to stay at his estate.
Meanwhile, the secret of Thornfield Hall could ruin all their chances of happiness.

Performance Dates
May 16th till June 7th 2008

May: 16, 21,23,24,28,30, 31 at 8 pm
May: 17, 18, 24, 31 at 2pm
June: 4, 6, 7 at 8pm
June: 7 at 2 pm

The Cast

Clare Mason, Paul Newton, Veronica Saville, Peggy Leto, Olivia Regueria Garcia, Adrian Thompson, Yolanda Spata, Denise Kitching, Geoff Greenup, Prudence Hudson, Paul Fabris and Hilda Janes.

Shire Arts posts additional information:

Stars glowing behind lace curtains, a fireplace and an antique chair. One could almost see the grey moors of Bronte country just outside the window. The attention director Anthony Stirling-Edgar paid to the set design was delightful, but there’s a lingering disappointment he didn’t pay as much attention to his actors.
This charming adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s novel seems content to story-tell rather than to invent. Sticking to the text religiously, Constance Cox’s script will fill the every desire for fans of the book. Audience members will appreciate Cox’s clever editing of the notoriously lengthy text to unfold in one room of Thornfield Hall. And yet, it yearned for that little something else to set it apart from other page-to-stage adaptations.
Success depends on the sizzling relationship between the two lead roles. Filling the shoes of Jane is demanding work and Clare Mason almost achieves our heroine’s quiet yet passionate character, but lacks luster in her affection for Rochester. Paul Newton is also impressive as the love-sick Master of Thornfield Hall, but again fails to capture Rochester’s severity at the beginning of the play.
Stirling-Edgar has an eye for aesthetical precision which reflects in his casting choices. The supporting actors really do resemble the character descriptions in the book, but unfortunately were cast on appearance over acting ability.
At best Jane Eyre is a humble achievement, but will assuredly have you leaving the theatre with a romantic sigh.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Theatre

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Heathcliff of the potting shed

The Guardian publishes a top ten of the best smokes in literature. Number one is Mr. Rochester's in Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Once upon a time, the smell of cigar smoke was thought to be delicious, arousing. In the proposal scene of Brontë's novel, Jane catches the whiff of Rochester's cigar - "I know it well" - in the garden at Thornfield. It mingles with "sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose". With the heroine giddy on these blended scents, only one outcome is possible.

Zadie Smith writes also in The Guardian about George Eliot. Jane Eyre is mentioned when Middlemarch is discussed:

The older reader is more likely to accept the justness of Virginia Woolf's famous judgement: "One of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Middlemarch is a book about the effects of experience that changes with experience. Jane Eyre is understood by the 14-year-old as effectively as the 40-year-old, possibly better. Surely few 14-year-olds can make real sense of the marriage of Lydgate and Rosamund.

Some days ago we presented an upcoming interesting new book: Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon's Novel Destinations. The authors are interviewed on Book Reporter:

Question: How did you come to write NOVEL DESTINATIONS?
(...) We realized that we were probably not the only ones who seek out these kinds of places during our travels and that there might be the kernel of an idea for a book there, but it was the following year when we took our first literary trip together to Brontë Country that the concept really began to take shape. Shannon flew to England, and we drove from London up to the Yorkshire Moors, most famously immortalized in Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS. There, we visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum where the three Brontë sisters lived for most of their short lives, took a literary-themed walking tour of the town, rambled along the moors, and even stayed at a bed-and-breakfast that was once home to the Brontës’ physician. While we were doing all of this, it struck us that we would love to have a book that would take us to other literary sites like Steinbeck country in California or Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg. (...)
Q: What is your favorite literary destination?
SMS: The Yorkshire Moors in northern England, otherwise known as Brontë Country, was one of the highlights for me. I had wanted to visit there for years since reading WUTHERING HEIGHTS as an English major in college.

Author Jo Hiestand is interviewed in the St. Louis's Post-Dispatch:

Q: How did you become intrigued by the British mystery? What influenced you? What was it about the genre that attracted you?

A: I’ve loved Britain for as long as I can remember — the folk music, the sound of the accents, the history, British classics such as those written by Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Robert Louis Stevenson…. I think the English mystery fascinates me for two reasons: first, of course, it fuses the elements I love. Great atmosphere, landscape, historic great houses, foggy London streets and a sense of adventure in a ‘foreign’ land.

The Book Vault interviews Martin Dubow, author of Francey:

Do you have any favorite books?
(...) The authors who’ve most influenced me are from a bygone era. They are those whose names are mentioned in Francey: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. Whenever I'm feeling uninspired, or lazy, or distracted, I'll open up a copy of, well... Jane Eyre, for instance... and read through some of my favorite passages. And just like that, I've perked up, and am ready, once more, to keep on trucking. I swear to God, if Charlotte Brontë were alive today, I’d seek her out and ask her to marry me.
And to answer the question posed to me here, my favorite books, if I had to narrow down the field, are Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and David Copperfield. I actually get teary-eyed just thinking about them.

And finally, The Independent considers the different candidates to take the lead presenter of BBC's Gardeners' World. The favourite is Matthew Wilson who is described as a Heathcliff of hedgerows or as

[t]alk, dark and handsome. Heathcliff of the potting shed, seen as natural heir as Berryfields' top hoe. 2/1 Favourite. (Jonathan Brown)

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, References, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights

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A Room of Their Own about to be released

A couple of months ago we posted about A Room of Their Own, a book by our friend and collaborator Sarah Barrett celebrating the 80 years of the Brontë Parsonage as a museum. We now have the gorgeous cover and back cover of this unique book (click on the images to enlarge them), which will be available just in time for the AGM weekend at Haworth from the Parsonage shop for just £4.50.

For information about other sellers or to place an order, just send an email to cbellpublishers@aol.com.



Categories: Books, Brontë Parsonage Museum

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Jane Eyre is breathtaking

A couple of reviews of the the performances of Polly Teale's Jane Eyre at the Clay Center in Charleston, WV.

The Charleston Gazette:

The play is set in many short scenes, which are brought together with graceful transitions, aided by tasteful lighting and music. The single set was dark and beautiful, and served well in most scenes, except it sometimes seemed a bit cramped when characters needed more distance from each other.
Jane begins the story as a headstrong young girl, who becomes a restrained and modest woman. In Teale's adaptation, she physically leaves part of herself behind, as her willful alter ego is locked in the attic. The play gives a vivid depiction of Jane's battle between duty and desire.
Jane's youthful self returns in later scenes as Brontë's character Bertha, a madwoman in the attic. As Bertha, Marlette Carter shows a range from youthful energy to disturbing adult passions. Bertha's reactions depict Jane's inner feelings throughout the play. Her presence is what enables this novel to work so well on stage.
Elaine Carol Tapley gives a strong, measured performance as the title character. Christopher Terpening showed Rochester as both a thoughtless entitled gentleman and a man of deeper feeling. While the love story is between Rochester and Jane Eyre, the best chemistry in this show was between Jane and Bertha as two sides of the same person.
The rest of the cast skillfully portrayed their roles, often taking multiple parts.
The greatest range came from Joe Biller, who played characters ranging from a clergyman to Rochester's faithful pet dog. (Mona Seghatoleslami)

Charleston Daily Mail:

Charleston Stage Company's current production of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is breathtaking.
Coming from someone who considers literary works of this nature, slushy, aesthetic, sentimental claptrap, I never would have believed that Jane Eyre, of all things, would move me so thoroughly.
This presentation works in several unique and interesting ways.
Think of theater in the round, but not quite. More like theater in Cinemascope, for all who are old enough to remember the transition of movies from a flat screen to a concave screen.
Audience seating semicircles the multilevel stage and everything is actually on the stage of the Clay Center auditorium.
Let's hear it for director David Wohl and the "techies" - Troy Snyder, set and light design, Kit Reed, costume design, and Jason Hively, technical director.
Their vision and the actuating of that vision make this one of the most aesthetically satisfying plays that I have seen in a long, long time.
In fact, the bountiful audience seems to share with me a serene comfort in the stage setting that allowed the players to cast a spell on us without being encumbered by the reality of tables, chairs and whatnot moving on and off the stage levels.
Of course, Elaine Carol Tapley, as Jane Eyre, is just out and out righteous, just as Chris Terpening, as the miserable Rochester, is forthright and commanding.
They strike a balance of believability that is rare and beautiful.
Other members of the cast, Marlette Carter as Bertha Taylor Horst as Adele and Jim Stacy, Terry Terpening, Courtney Flint, Kelly Strom and Joe Miller each performing multiple roles. They glide effortlessly on, off, across, around, behind and over the stage seemingly lubed by theatrical WD-40.
Music is very tastefully used to augment the dramatic sense of the actors and adds to the general feeling of calm tension.
Violent action begins within minutes of the opening with a rat bite, and what a lovely rat it was.
Also you will be cautioned to stay out of the way of the horse, and don't forget to feed and pet Pilot the Dog. One of my favorites.
This story of "Jane Eyre," as adapted for stage by Polly Teale, is good theater done extremely well by people who know what they are doing and is not to be missed. (Rick Justice)

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Theatre

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Wuthering Heights by mistake

The International Herald Tribune reviews extensively Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres. The review is full of Brontë mentions:

Early in Queen Victoria's reign, 30 percent of adult Englishwomen were single - and considered, as one social commentator put it, "redundant." If of gentle birth and no means, without a family to care for, an extra woman naturally sought work as a governess. Living in another family's home made romance unlikely and isolation inevitable, with poverty and unemployment always on the horizon. It was a grim life, grimmer still because it was the only choice open to many. As Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre decides, "I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better."
In "Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres," Ruth Brandon covers about 80 years in the profession, concentrating on the era when a rising cadre of nouveaux riches and an abundance of single women came together to make the at-home lady educator a household staple. Few of the 25,000 governesses in England in 1851 were employed past the age of 40, since most families preferred to hire malleable young things, despite the dangers of youth: husbands and sons could always be tempted. (Witness Mr. Rochester.) (...)
It's surprising that Brandon didn't devote a chapter to Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, given her frequent references to the governesses in novels like "Agnes Grey" and "Jane Eyre." Those famous novels could have benefited from an analytical eye. Brandon is also a fiction writer, and she leans heavily on the novels of the period to provide cultural background; she might have spent more time exploring the ways in which a novelist's imagination transformed the governess's actual experience. (...)
The shorter chapters about hitherto overlooked women are far fresher. In 1784, Agnes Porter entered the new profession early enough to eke out a quite pleasant existence with an earl's extended family. Just a couple of decades later, however, Nelly Weeton's letters and diaries recorded suffering to rival Brontë's most gothic moments: a cruelly selfish brother, nasty employers with nightmarish homes and a disastrous marriage entered into, apparently, solely for the chance to bear a child of her own. (...)
Young women today," Brandon notes, "grow up in the world that Mary Wollstonecraft dreamed of." While that may be too sunny (and novelistic) a conclusion, at least we're better off than poor Nelly Weeton, with more to hope for than Jane Eyre. (Susann Cokal)

The National Newspaper (United Arab Emirates) finds Jane Eyre references in Daoud Hari's The Translator. (More on these previous posts)

Despite its harrowing content, this is not a bleak book. Seamless digressions evoke Hari’s childhood, a vivid blend of traditions stretching back thousands of years and fragments of Western culture – novels like Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre along with Clint Eastwood movies. His love of the natural world and of camels in particular is transcendent. (Hephzibah Anderson)

Alice Walker's daughter, Rebecca, writes in the Daily Mail about her relationship with her mother and quotes a poem of hers with a Brontë reference:

I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me - a 'delightful distraction', but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

On the blogosphere, Mi Butaca reviews (very unfavourably) Wuthering Heights 1939, Old Fogey briefly reviews and classify several Jane Eyre adaptations in an excellent and highly recommended. Check it out. Ratatosk's Acorns posts about Janians (for Jane Eyre) vs Catherinites (for Wuthering Heights).

Finally, BBC News reports the following curious news:

An investigation has begun after it emerged some English students in Bedford were given the wrong books to study before an exam.
About 20 AS level English Literature students had read Wuthering Heights by mistake, Redbourne Upper School said.
The mistake was noticed before the exam had begun and the school informed the examination board.
Headteacher Nigel Croft said it was "not a major issue" and that no student would be disadvantaged.
Letters have been sent to parents notifying them of the error and the school's inquiry into how the mistake occurred.

We swear that we didn't do it :P.

Categories: Books, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights

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