Victorian luminaries

counterpunch reviews A True Novel by Minae Mizumura:

Here’s something different: shifting Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to Japan with the audacity of calling it “a true novel.” But wait a moment—as my mother-in-law used to say—you don’t really mean that, do you? Well, I don’t, but Minae Mizumura does, so let me explain. Mizumura sets up an elaborate façade: the story we eventually read is purported to be what literally happened to a man called Taro Azuma, whose life in many ways parallels Brontë’s Heathcliff. There are also suggestions at the beginning of the novel that Japanese readers do not like first-person narratives, so it is necessary to create an observer/witness who can relate Azuma’s story, though in fact two people narrate the story, one of them being Minae Mizumura herself, the author of A True Novel and an accomplished Japanese novelist. (...)
It is, thus, from Yusuke’s perspective that we learn about Taro’s early years—before he went to the United States. The second narrator is a woman named Fumiko (ten years Taro’s elder, and the equivalent of Ellen Dean, the housekeeper in Wuthering Heights) who relates the more recent events, after Azuma’s so-called disappearance. (...)
And because of the sympathy of the matriarch of the family Fumiko worked for, that boy (Azuma) became the close companion of one of the matriarch’s granddaughters, Yoko (the equivalent of Catherine in Brontë’s novel). (...)
Are the parallels between the two novels convincing? I’d say yes, particularly the replicated characters and romanticism of Brontë’s masterpiece. That noted, I’m not so certain that the 876 page story will grip Western readers as much as Asian ones. There are quite a few lengthy digressions that add little to the main story. Some of the other anomalies of A True Novel (such as a series of photos of traditional buildings in the country) appear to be little more than superfluous. You may want to read A True Novel out a sense of curiosity, especially if you are a Brontë fan. (Charles R. Larson) 

Los Angeles Times recommends the book as a gift book:

Some are almost traditionally rendered, such as Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura's ambitious "A True Novel" (Other Press, boxed, $29.95 paper). It is published as a two-volume boxed set including photographs and inspired, in some sense, by "Wuthering Heights," while also raising questions about where the line between fiction and remembrance lies. (David L. Ulin)

The Telegraph talks about the jeweller Annina Vogel:

At her concession in Liberty, hand-selected antique rings are engraved with quotations from Victorian luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and Charlotte Brontë while the customer waits. (Wendy Douglas)

Joe Queenan in Wall Street Journal has read the mind of this half of BrontëBlog:

Here is my basic problem. I like to put nutritious things with lots of roughage and fiber in my head. Shakespeare, the Brontës, Vermeer. Except when I watch sports, I never fill my brain with the intellectual equivalent of trans-fats: game shows, talk shows, reality-TV shows.The concerts and plays I attend, the paintings I look at, the books I read, are all, in their own way, every bit as nutritious as beets and organic zucchini and walnuts. To my way of thinking, Michelangelo is nothing more than cerebral kale.
But I don't like healthy food. I never have. 

Los Angeles Review of Books reviews the new film Mary, Queen of Scots by Thomas Imbach:

A sort of dark fairytale cut from the same cloth as Jane Eyre and Farewell, My Queen, Imbach’s biopic Mary, Queen of Scots is sumptuously photographed and less interested in history than atmosphere. (Michael Nordine)

Cricket and Jane Eyre in The Guardian:

This is the joy of [Jonathan] Trott, who has for the last four years acted as a kind of Jane Eyre of the top order, England's own winningly stubborn little 19th-century governess of a No3 batsman, the player you weren't supposed to fall in love with, of whom you may have even been rather grandly scornful – this mousey creature, this pinafored artisan – before finding yourself seduced, irresistibly, by his quietly insistent rhythms. (Barney Ronay)

Leeds Student reviews a performance by The Leeds Tealights at the Library Pub:

Stephen Rainbird was the dark horse of the evening in my opinion and his facial contortions were unparalleled. His gestures were very much Mr. Beanesque; a childish silliness which had everyone in stitches. The Wuthering Heights routine in particular was nothing short of ridiculous. (Polly Gallis)

The Shields Gazette reviews a recent concert by the band China Drum:

Biscuit Barrel, Wipe Out, Baseball In The Dark, Fiction Of Life, God Bets, Wuthering Heights and, finally, weirdly, a cover of Erasure’s A Little Respect were all delivered with power. (Paul Taylor)

Rzeczpospolita talks about the Polish publication of a new translation of Villette and the (in)famous book  Charlotte Brontë i jej siostry śpiące by Eryk Ostrowski:

Śpią także zmarli spoczywający na cmentarzu w sąsiedztwie ponurego budynku. Za to z pokoju stołowego dochodzi dziwny stukot. To trzy siostry chodzą wokół ogromnego stołu. Najstarsza Charlotte, młodsza Emily i najmłodsza Anna. Jest jeszcze brat Branwell, alkoholik, opiumista i mason, ale on jeszcze nie wrócił z oberży Pod Czarnym Bykiem, by jak co noc zwalić się na posłanie i czekać na kolejny dzień swego zmarnowanego życia. Po co one tak chodzą? Zobacz na Empik.rp.pl
Eryk Ostrowski, autor książki poświęconej trzem siostrom Brontë, nie daje jednoznacznej odpowiedzi na to pytanie. Raczej sugeruje, że to właśnie podczas tych dziwacznych spacerów mogły powstawać fabuły, które złożyły się potem na takie książki, jak „Jane Eyre", „Wichrowe wzgórza", „Shirley" czy „Vilette". Klasyki literatury europejskiej powstałe w Anglii podczas długiego panowania królowej Wiktorii.
Życie Charlotte Brontë było nacechowane nieopisaną stratą. Nastąpił feralny rok 1848. Najpierw odszedł Branwell, z którym Charlotte od dzieciństwa była bardzo związana. Zapił się i zaćpał do szczętu. Nie to jednak było najgorsze – w grudniu na gruźlicę umiera Emily, a w maju następnego roku z powodu tej samej choroby odchodzi 29-letnia Anna. Stukot kroków jednej już tylko kobiety wypełnia stołowy pokój. Charlotte wciąż chodzi. Oczywiście w tym czasie są już wydane książki trzech sióstr, które ukrywały się pod męskimi pseudonimami jako Currer, Ellis i Acton Bell. W książce Ostrowskiego mamy opisaną ze szczegółami tajemnicę sióstr, o której zresztą spekulowano już za ich życia: twierdzono bowiem, że autorką wszystkich książek sygnowanych pseudonimami jest tylko jedna osoba, czyli Charlotte, która – chcąc zapewnić byt swym obydwu siostrom – zdecydowała się na rozdzielenie praw autorskich do honorariów. A jak było naprawdę?
Chodzi i chodzi wokół stołu. Strata po ukochanych osobach jest dojmująca. Z żałobnego stukotu powstanie najbardziej dojrzała powieść Charlotte zatytułowana „Vilette", opublikowana w trzech tomach w roku 1853. Po 100 latach wzbudzi zachwyt m.in. w Wirginii Woolf, która nazwie dzieło: „najlepszą powieścią Charlotte Brontë". (Wojciech Chmielewski) (Translation)

Wuz (Italy) reviews Amorino by Isabella Santacruce:

Siamo a Minster Lovell, freddo e austero villaggio inglese. E al tempo stesso "paradiso terrestre" del romanticismo nero. Un luogo fatato che è già da solo un romanzo - un luogo, si direbbe, non troppo dissimile dalla brughiera selvaggia delle sorelle Brontë.  (Claudia Consoli) (Translation)

Targatocn (Italy) posts some biographic data of the Brontës presenting Wuthering Heights:

Immaginatevi una storia triste. Poi immaginatevi la vita dell’autrice dietro questa storia ancora più triste.
Bisogna sempre fare attenzione a cercare negli spunti biografici dell’autore una lanterna che ci guidi nel testo: ma nel caso di “Cime tempestose”, il faut conoscere la vita dell’autrice. Perché leggendo la sua biografia, non si capisce più dove finisce il romanzo e inizia la vita. (Marta Gas) (Translation)

Zaman (Turkey) talks about Byzantium by Neil Jordan:

İrlandalı Neil Jordan’ın ‘Byzantium’u başka bir gözle izlendiğinde ise Viktoryen hikâye anlatıyor seyirciye. Clara ve kızı Eleanor’un erkekler dünyasında, erkeklere rağmen ama onların yardımını umarak var olma savaşı, vampir öyküsünden bağımsız olarak Kraliçe Viktorya’nın 19. yy. İngiltere’sini resmediyor. Bu yönüyle Clara ve kızı Eleanor’u Dickens, Doyle, Conrad, Eliot ve Wilde gibi erkek yazarlar karşısında çetin bir var olma savaşı veren Brontë Kardeşler, Emily Dickinson ya da Christina Rossetti’ye benzetebiliriz. (Ali Koca) (Translation)

The Bibliophilic Book Blog  interviews the writer Jac Wright:

Q. What are you currently reading?
I am re-reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ because it is one of the all-time greatest love stories. I read it in my early 20s.

Keighley News gives more details about the campaign against the closing of the Haworth Central Park's public toilets; Le Nouvel Observateur (France) describes Twilight as a mixture between Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet; bibliodevafiliala3 (in Romanian) posts about Jane Eyre;  Or Up to the Stars reviews one of its most recent retellings, Tina Connolly's Ironskin; the Brontë Parsonage Facebook publishes a picture of Anne Brontë's last letter.

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Jane Eyre dresses in Charleston

An exhibiton in Charleston contais dresses inspired by the Brontës:

Cathy Earnshaws and Elizabeth Bennets generally don't have that much in common. One, the headstrong heroine of Wuthering Heights, is reckless and passionate, in touch with her inner wildness, beautiful but cruel. If, during your girlish literary daydreams, you imagine yourself running across a misty moor, your unkempt hair flying behind you, you might be a Cathy.

The other, the "prejudice" in Jane Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice, is independent and a bit mischievous, but always held together. If your dearest fantasy involves dancing decorously in a beautiful ballroom while you swap witty remarks with a wealthy, handsome stranger, you're almost certainly an Elizabeth Bennet.

The two fictitious ladies really couldn't be more different, but through April, you'll find them both at the Charleston Museum — in spirit, at least.  (Elizabeth Pandolfi in Charleston City Paper)

Fashion in Fiction
From the pages of classic literature comes the Charleston Museum’s latest textile exhibit, Fashion in Fiction, on exhibit October 19, 2013 to April 6, 2014. This exhibit explores the fundamental role clothing and style play in some of our most beloved works of fiction. From Jane Austen’s sprigged muslin dresses to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s swinging flappers and dapper gents, fashion often becomes integral to a story and even helps to fix it to a particular time in history. Using clothing and accessories from our historic textiles collection as well as books and illustrations from the Archives, the Charleston Museum offers a light-hearted look at popular 19th and early 20th century fashions and shows off styles brought to life by some of literature’s most memorable characters.

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A familiar literary trope

The Memphis Flyer features the exhibition We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Terri Phillips, currently at the University of Memphis' ArtLab.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the title of a psychological thriller written in the 1960s by the novelist Shirley Jackson, who is most famous for her short story "The Lottery." The novel's teenage female protagonist, Merricat, lives with her troubled, half-dissolved family in a disintegrating mansion. It is a familiar literary trope, more common in the 19th century than the 20th: females living isolated lives in strange houses that echo their psychological struggles. Most people who sat through high school English can remember Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham or the troubled wife in the attic in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. (Eileen Townsend)

Comicus (Italy) interviews graphic novel author Ramón Pérez who speaks about his future plans:

La classica domanda di chiusura: progetti futuri? Su cosa stai lavorando?
Al momento, come stavo dicendo a qualcuno l'altro giorno, non penso più in settimane e anni, sto cercando di pensare in anni perché la tabella di marcia sta diventando molto fitta. Ho un sacco di cose, sto solo cercando l'ordine in cui farle. Lavorerò ancora con Archaia su un altro graphic novel con la sceneggiatrice Aline Brosh McKenna, che ha scritto Il diavolo veste Prada. Stiamo lavorando a una reinterpretazione moderna di Jane Eyre. Sembra forte, in pratica farò quello e un graphic novel un po' sul genere romanticismo nero, spero di essere il disegnatore giusto per il compito. (Dario Drago Forti) (Translation)

Still in Italy, TargatoCN features Emily Brontë.

The Telegraph and Argus has an article on a local pub landlord who has become a member of the Fellowship of Professional Celebrants. Meaning that he

is willing to conduct services anywhere, from his own watering hole to the wild Bronte moors. He has trained with the Fellow-ship to carry out ceremonies in whatever form, location and costume his clients want.
He said: “I can hold a ceremony in whatever style people want, such as a football or pagan theme.
“I think the Great Northern is the first pub in West Yorkshire where you can do the whole package, but we can also do it outdoors, from the Brontë Waterfall to Ilkley Moor.” (David Knights)

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Diana Damrau sings Chaslin's Wuthering Heights

The composer, conductor and pianist Frédéric Chaslin has written to BrontëBlog announcing the world premiere recording of Cathy's Vocalise from his opera Wuthering Heights. It is included on the latest CD by no other than one of the most celebrated sopranos today, Diana Damrau:

Diana Damrau
Forever
Unforgettable Songs from Vienna, Broadway and Hollywood
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abell
With Rolando Villazón

The soprano Diana Damrau stars in the operas of Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti and Strauss, but Forever is the ‘soundtrack of her life’ in the form of much-loved numbers from operetta, musicals and the movies – including Die Fledermaus, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, The Phantom of the Opera and The Little Mermaid. “This music shows a side of me that many people don’t know yet,” she says. “These tunes are great art, because they are associated with unforgettable moments in everyone’s lives.”

The last track of the album is Cathy's Vocalise. You can listen to it (courtesy of Mr. Chaslin) here.

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The ultimate heroine

Bustle recommends '9 Big, Fat Books to Devour on Your Precious Days Off'.

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, or Winter Solstice, the holiday season has finally arrived. With any luck you’ll have a few precious days to finally sink your teeth into that novel you never have time to read (let’s be honest, you never got around to reading Jane Eyre in college) during the work week. [...]
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Many people are quick to assume they know the books of the Brontë sisters but in reality have never read their work. Do yourself a favor and read Jane Eyre, a compelling, empowering novel about self-reliance in the face of adversity. Jane is the ultimate heroine. In spite of her underdog status she refuses to be taken advantage of — a huge statement considering this novel was published in 1847 under a pseudonym. Oh, and there’s the love story — between Jane and Mr. Rochester — that pretty much tops all love stories in the history of English literature. (Jessica Ferri)

John Mullan discusses Bridget Jones in the Guardian and recalls a Brontë reference in the first book.

We know Bridget Jones's Diary is based on Pride and Prejudice, and Bridget half knows it, too. She latches on to the comedy of handsome, aloof Mark Darcy sharing a name with Jane Austen's paragon of pride. When she first encounters him, at Una and Geoffrey Alconbury's New Year's Day turkey curry buffet, she notes the parallel. Instead of mingling happily, he stands with his back to the room, scrutinising the Alconburys' bookshelves: "It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party." As bad, she thinks, as being called Heathcliff and spending your evening in the garden "shouting 'Cathy' and banging your head against a tree". 

The Times Law Section quotes from Jane Eyre:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre observes that "Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. " That wisdowm can apply not only to outbursts such as that of Mr Higgins but also to those who use the law to settle a score after a long, smouldering lapse. (Gary Slapper)  

The Nation (Pakistan) mentions the poetry of Ayesha Zee Khan and thinks that

The reader can smell of Emily Dickinson and Charlotte Brontë. (Faizan Hussain)

Which we would consider two very different kinds of poetry.

The Republican Herald discusses books as gifts for children.

Tiffany Reedy, principal at Pottsville Area High School, likes that students read, but what they read could be better.
"Some of our students like to read, but I would think for most it would be a more popular series, like 'Hunger Games,' not a classic like 'Pride and Prejudice' or 'Wuthering Heights,' unfortunately," she said. (Stephen J. Pytak)

We think that if they enjoy reading they will read them sooner or later. Get them reading now and they will find their way to those books.

Esquire's The Politics Blog promises the following for next week:

Next week -- why Charlotte Bronte would have painted her face and brought an octopus to a Red Wings game. (Charles P. Pierce)

That will keep us on the edge of our seat.

Via DeHavilland we have noticed this speech by Labour MP Nic Dakin at the House of Commons which is a bit misleading:

MPs debate Tuberculosis (diagnosis and treatment worldwide)
Tuberculosis [Jim Dobbin in the Chair] 2.30 pm Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab): Let me start in the past. In 1821, Maria Brontë died of consumption. Two of her daughters died of the disease in infancy and her four older children—Bramwell (sic) and his famous.siters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte—also died of it. According to the history books, they became
“ill from dampness and terrible living conditions”.

Maria Brontë didn't die of consumption. The most likely cause of her death was cancer, probably of the uterus. And when he says that her children died of consumption, that's wrong too, as Charlotte Brontë's probable cause of death was hyperemesis gravidarum.

Onirik (France) reviews a theatre production based on Marie-Aude Murail's novel Miss Charity.

Au moment de la sortie de son roman, Marie-Aude Murail expliquait : « J’ai écrit Miss Charity pour rendre hommage aux créatrices du 19e siècle, à la volonté de fer qui leur fut nécessaire pour se frayer un chemin dans un monde régenté par des hommes. J’ai hésité sur le modèle à suivre, Jane Austen, la comtesse de Ségur, Charlotte Brontë ou George Sand ? Puis je me suis souvenue d’une biographie qu’on m’avait offerte quelque vingt-cinq ans auparavant, Le petit monde animal de Beatrix Potter, par Margaret Lane. Je l’ai relue et j’ai été émerveillée. C’est une vraie vie d’héroïne dans cette Angleterre victorienne que j’aime tant. J’ai transformé cette vraie vie en une fausse autobiographie, celle de Charity Tiddler, une héroïne qui, au fond, me ressemble, petite fille enfermée dans un cercle magique, et qui, peu à peu, lentement, parvient à exister aux yeux des autres. Elle en dessinant, moi en écrivant ». (Claire) (Translation)

Aunt Branwell’s Japan dressing box can be seen on the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page.

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Gothic Fires

Two more variations around Jane Eyre to be found on Smashwords:

A lesbian twist on Jane Eyre:

Fires I Would Like To Know
Hannah Johnson
Published: March 09, 2012
Words: 6,810 (approximate)
ISBN: 9781465981448

'He tells me, like a regular Bluebeard, never to visit the third floor.' What if Jane Eyre had found another source of fascination at Thornfield Hall?

Gothic West
by Jill Morrison

Published by J Z Morrison Press
Published: April 13, 2013
Words: 40,780 (approximate)
ISBN: 9781301929184

Two novellas of love and obsession: In the Shade of Horses A reclusive artist, her nurse and her two sons struggle to keep their secrets. Lightspeed In a twist of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, a male tutor comes to ruined Las Vegas to encounter, and fall in love with, his female employer.

Lightspeed
In the early days of a very close future, Owen Bland is on his way to Vegas, a place inhabited by the obscenely wealthy and the obscenely poor. He has taken a job as a tutor, escaping his savage boarding school life. His employer, Evelyn Sales, is beautiful, rich and brilliant. As Bland comes to love this complicated woman, he finds himself drawn into the terrible secret she cannot leave behind.

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Rooting for the orphans

The Christian Science Monitor looks into what literature can teach us about handling money. The article ends with the question

Who knows what financial lessons are lurking in the pages of Austen, Brontë, and Dostoyevsky? (Husna Haq)

The Boston Globe reviews a local stage production of A Little Princess and reaches the conclusion that,

It is, of course, hard not to root for a small girl abandoned in an unfeeling orphanage or boarding school, whether her name is Jane Eyre or Annie. (Jeffrey Gantz)

Business Day (South Africa) has a Q and A with author Amy Tan.

Q: Which literary character most resembles you?
I would say the young Jane Eyre, before she goes off to be somebody’s wife and caretaker. (Anna Metcalfe)

Writing about The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone, the reviewer from the London Review of Books recalls the early days of Amazon.

At first only web geeks shopped from Amazon, and for a year its bestselling book was How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide Web Site: The Guide for Information Providers. To make the site livelier Bezos hired an editorial team to review books, but sacked them when he realised that customers preferred doing it themselves. (My first book review was a freebie for Amazon: five stars for Jane Eyre.) (Deborah Friedell)

Minefield Wonderland wonders if Rochester would have married Jane if he hadn't 'experienced his downfall'. The Top Shelf Book Shelf features Wuthering Heights.

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Feminism, Flowers and Secularity

More recent Brontë research:

Elements of Feminism in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Asha Kaushik

Centre for Professional Communication, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Bidholi, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India-248007

Anne Brontë was the youngest among Brontë sisters. Although her works are not as much celebrated as of Emily or Charlotte but her contribution towards the demand of rights for women can not be simply ignored. She wrote two novels namely Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These works of fiction depict the saga of women’s struggle during Victorian era and contain the elements of feminism. She raised many issues about the grim condition of women which either remained unnoticed earlier or her predecessors could not dare talk about them. Her dedication to women’s rights and betterment and her distrust of men as superior gender led her to declare that women must look to defend their self-respect. She openly challenged the double standards that insisted for different rooms and yardsticks to judge and justify what was and was not proper and permissible in male and female writings and demanded equality.

The Language of Flowers in the Victorian Knowledge Age
Molly Engelhardt
Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi
Victoriographies. Volume 3, Page 136-160

The language of flowers is typically dismissed as a subgenre of botany books that, while popular, had little if any influence on the material culture of Victorian life. This article challenges this assumption by situating the genre within the context of the professionalisation of botany at mid-century to show how efforts to change attitudes towards botany from a fashionable pastime for the gentler sex to a utilitarian practice in service of humanity contributed to the revitalisation and popularity of the language of flowers. While scientific botanists sought to know flowers physiologically and morphologically in the spirit of progress and truth, practitioners of the language of flowers – written primarily for and by women – celebrated uncertainty and relied on floral codes to curtail knowing in order to extend the realm of play. The struggle for floral authority was centred in botanical discourses – both scientific and amateur – but extended as well into narrative fiction. Turning to works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot, I show how Victorian writers expected a certain degree of floral literacy from their readers and used floral codes strategically in their fiction as subtexts for practitioners of the language of flowers. These three writers, I argue, took a stand in the gender struggle over floral authority by creating scientific botanists who are so obsessed with dissecting plants to reveal their secrets and know their ‘life truths’ that they become farsighted in matters of romantic love and unable to read the most obvious and surface of floral codes. The consequences of the dismissal of the superficial are in some cases quite disastrous.

Choice in the Patriarchal Society: Secularity and Religiousness in Jane Eyre 
Yi-ling LinDepartment of Applied Foreign Languages English, University of Kang Ning

Charlotte Brontë describes diverse forms of female oppression in Jane Eyre. The oppressions are social practices, gender and religion. There are three male characters who profoundly influence Jane’s growing: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers. They are typical patriarchal males who impede Jane’s attempts to achieve freedom and autonomy. This thesis will explore these three male characters and their notion of secularity and religiousness.
 In this thesis, Chapter One is an introduction depicting the background regarding Victorian society and Charlotte Brontë’s life and her novel. Chapter Two examines the hero—Rochester, with an emphasis on his mental development from his first marriage to Bertha Mason to his union with Jane. Chapter Three discusses Brocklehurst’s and St. John’s behavior with respect to religion. Helen Burns, Jane’s good friend, is mentioned because of her religious faith even if she is a woman. The two males allude to theocratic policies to threaten Jane, which causes her to be oppressed by the authority of God. Chapter Four utilizes William Glasser’s “Choice Theory” to analyze the basic human needs of Rochester and St. John. Their attitudes toward love and marriage are affected by different needs in different periods. In the final chapter, Jane’s choice between Rochester and St. John will be dealt with. She prefers to build her marriage on the concept of secularity so that she chooses Rochester in the end.

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Not all aliens can be into Wuthering Heights

The Roanoke Times' The Back Cover considers Wuthering Heights 'a book to curl up by the fire with'.

“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë
No one does bleak like a Brontë sister, especially Emily. “Wuthering Heights” is not so much a love story as a passionate one. This book has a great atmosphere to read about, yet not inhabit — wild and fraught and crazed. It’s full of characters you don’t want to meet, moors you don’t want to roam and houses you don’t want to enter. “Wuthering Heights” is great to curl up with not just because of its intense characters, but the intense emotions it spurs in readers. Most people love or hate this book, and it’s easy to see why: Heathcliff, Cathy and the rest of the Earnshaws and Lintons themselves stagger along the thin line between love and hate, taking readers along for the ride. Like the wind that rattles the treetops and the whirling snow, Heathcliff is himself a chaotic force and nature — fun to watch, not to experience. (Suzanne Wardle)

Robert McCrum is reading his way through the 100 best novels as selected by the Guardian. He tells about it in the Guardian:

Now that I'm approaching the 1840s, it's time for Dickens, Thackeray and the Brontës. And beyond them, Stevenson, Twain and Thomas Hardy beckon.

The Independent recommends a Christmas trip to the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Celebrate Christmas (and probably count your blessings) at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. From now through December there are mince pies, mulled wine, readings by the Ilkley Players, and tales from the Brontës’ servant, Tabby. 

Brain Pickings features Jane, le renoir et moi in its English translation.

a stunningly illustrated graphic novel about a young girl named Hélène, who, cruelly teased by the “mean girls” clique at school, finds refuge in Charlotte Brönte’s [sic] Jane Eyre. In Jane, she sees both a kindred spirit and aspirational substance of character, one straddling the boundary between vulnerability and strength with remarkable grace — just the quality of heart and mind she needs as she confronts the common and heartbreaking trials of teenage girls tormented by bullying, by concerns over their emerging womanly shape, and by the soul-shattering feeling of longing for acceptance yet receiving none. (Maria Popova)

The Simpsons episode The Kid Is All Right is reviewed today by We Got This Covered.

During a rainy recess, Lisa ducks into the library and meets the new girl at Springfield Elementary, second grader Isabel Gutierrez (guest voice Eva Longoria). They bond over the Brontë sisters, and the fact that they’re both middle children who have to sit on the hump in the middle of the back seat, and later they decide to do a project about FDR together; Lisa from the liberal point of view, and Isabel from the conservative. Yes, Isabel confesses, she is a Republican. Not a Lincoln Republican, or even a Reagan Republican, but something else… (*cough*Tea Party*cough*) (Adam A. Donaldson)

This columnist from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner discusses life in other galaxies:

After I waxed lyrical about the possibility of there being life in other galaxies, Allen Jenkinson said the human race would never find it because the laws of physics meant we couldn’t travel those distances.
Well, not travel there and be back in time for tea.
Hah, I pointed out, but wait until we invent Star Trek's Warp Factor. I believe Sir Patrick Stewart has a team working on it at Huddersfield University as we speak.
Our email discussion then diverted into alien abductions which usually seem to take place in out of the way places.
“Why would beings with interstellar travel capabilities come all that way just to land on the moors above Keighley when they could just as easily have gone to Miami?” he said. “They can't all be into Wuthering Heights.” (Denis Kilcommons)

A replica of Charlotte Brontë's (lost) wedding dress can be seen on the Brontë Parsonage Facebook page. Flickr user Woffenden has uploaded a lovely set of pictures taken on the moors near Haworth.

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A Radio Polish Villette

A new radio adaptation of Villette is being broadcast this week on Polskie Radio:

VilletteWith Elżbieta Łukomska
Septeber 25-29, 09.45

Brontë oparła "Villette" na wątkach autobiograficznych. Pod tytułową nazwą kryje się Bruksela, gdzie w latach 40. XIX w. przyszła pisarka przeżywała zakazaną miłość do żonatego mężczyzny, profesora Constantina Hégera.
Główna bohaterka powieści, Lucy Snowe, pozbawiona w Anglii widoków na przyszłość, decyduje się wziąć los we własne ręce i wyrusza do Europy. Przypadkiem trafia na pensję dla dziewcząt mieszczącą się w budynku dawnego klasztoru żeńskiego. Otrzymawszy tu posadę, wiedzie z początku bezbarwne życie nauczycielki angielskiego. Wkrótce jednak spostrzega, że każdy jej ruch jest przez kogoś obserwowany. Usiłując rozwiązać zagadkę, zostaje uwikłana w wydarzenia z pogranicza świata materialnego i duchowego… (notka prasowa Wydawnictwa MG)
Audycję przygotowała Elżbieta Łukomska.
25-29 listopada (poniedziałek-piątek), godz. 9.45 (Translation)

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The force of Wuthering Heights found in London

The Telegraph wonders 'what drove the great Ian Nairn to his early death'. The British architectural critic is quoted:

Here, for contrast, is one of his capsule descriptions from Nairn’s London. It is much more carefully wrought Nairn:
Here [All Saints Margaret Street] is the force of Wuthering Heights translated into dusky red and black bricks, put down in a mundane Marylebone street to rivet you, pluck you into the courtyard with its harsh welcoming wings and quivering steeple. Butterfield never repeated this – how could he?… Perhaps he met too many portly bishops; perhaps there is no way but death to discharge an experience as violent as this. (Andrew M Brown)

Back to current television shows now, as Den of Geek! reviews The Simpsons' episode The Kid Is All Right where

Isabel Gutierrez (Eva Longoria) can make Brontë references, solve anagrams and she doesn’t have a green M&M in her inner ear. (Tony Sokol)

Tim Sandlin writes about a recent colonoscopy in The Huffington Post.

As I was lying on the skinny hospital bed on wheels, slowly rising out of the anesthesia, my brain in blackest smog, the curtain parted and in floated the angel of the Lord. I knew who it was, right off. Imagine Merle Oberon in 1939, in Wuthering Heights. Radiant vestments, tasteful wings, a glowing golden aura bleeding into pumpkin coloured spires -- what you would expect if you were a shepherd guarding your flocks by night, but something of a surprise in a Wyoming recovery room.

Audiophile Audition reviews 'Liszt: 12 Transcendental Études – Vadym Kholodenko, piano' where

Liszt has Khoodenko depict an icy snowstorm in the B-flat Minor Chasse-neige, whose series of Herculean tremolandi call forth the dual aspect of Mother Nature in all her splendid ferocity. Listening to Kholodenko, we can literally see Cathy and Heathcliff urge each other to their secret promontory to declare their love in the midst of the mortal storm. (Gary Lemco)

International Cinema Review posts about Jane Eyre 1944.

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The Brontës go to Harrogate

An alert for today, November 25 in Harrogate:

The Brontës go to Harrogate
Monday 25th November, 2pm at Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate

Visit the Harrogate exhibition of Charlotte Cory's Brontë-inspired work and hear Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manger of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, give a talk on the remarkable Brontë family.
Tickets £5
Please book via museums@harrogate.gov.uk / 01423 556188

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Quiet Governess-Turned-Passionate Mrs. Rochester

Eric Ostrowski, the author of Charlotte Bronte i jej siostry śpiące is interviewed on Polskie Radio. Once again his odd/bizarre/controversial (put the adjective you prefer) theories are explained (you know, that Charlotte was the only author of all the Brontë novels):

Eryk Ostrowski, poeta i eseista młodego pokolenia, stawia w swojej pracy bardzo odważne tezy, odsłaniając kulisy życia pisarki. Obfitowało ono w liczne dramatyczne wydarzenia. Brontë zadbała, aby wiele z nich nigdy nie dotarło do wiadomości publicznej.
Autor ukazuje, w jaki sposób jej osobowość kształtowały skomplikowane relacje z mężczyznami - najpierw z bratem, z którym w latach młodzieńczych dzieliła tożsamość literacką i sympatię do doktryny masońskiej, później z belgijskim nauczycielem, w którym była zakochana, wreszcie z jej wydawcą, którego miała nadzieję poślubić. Stara się też rozwikłać niejasne okoliczności śmierci pisarki i wyjaśnić, czy jest możliwe, jak przypuszczali niektórzy z jej przyjaciół, że Charlotte Brontë została zamordowana…
W audycji z cyklu "Ćwiczenia z myślenia" zadajemy słuchaczom pytania związane z tematem spotkania. Dla osób, które jako pierwsze dodzwonią się do studia Dwójki i poprawnie odpowiedzą na pytanie - czekają nagrody książkowe!  (Translation)

Women in the World discusses the drawings of Sylvia Plath and the envelope scrawlings of Emily Dickinson:

A born seducer, [Ted] Hughes pulled her aside for a kiss, ripping off her headband; she responded by biting his cheek and drawing blood. Their mutual raw power whipped through their poesy, blackening the literary world like the barren heaths and hardscrabble crags of Hughes’s Yorkshire moors. Plath drew this “substanceless blue/pour of tor and distances” during a 1956 visit to Haworth, in her sketch Wuthering Heights Today; five years later, on a visit to her in-laws, she wrote her “Wuthering Heights” poem about that stony, savage place: “If I pay the roots of the heather/Too close attention, they will invite me/To whiten my bones among them.” Decades after her death, Hughes wrote a response breathtaking in its bleak and desolate beauty: “You breathed it all in/With jealous, emulous sniffings. Weren’t you/Twice as ambitious as Emily? … what would stern/Dour Emily have made of your frisky glances/And your huge hope? Your huge/Mortgage of hope.” (Katie Baker)

DVD Verdict reviews the Blu-ray edition of Jane Eyre 1944:

Whatever its other flaws or virtues, this is certainly a lean, fast-paced version of the tale—at 96 minutes, it's shorter than every other big-screen adaptation. Even so, nothing feels particularly compromised or short-changed—it's simply that Stevenson and his co-writers John Houseman and Aldous Huxley (!) don't have much interest in digging too deep below the surface of the novel or indulging the sort of moody, atmospheric material that has played a key role in other adaptations of this tale (though there are certainly some moments of gothic melodrama). (...)
Jane Eyre (Blu-ray) has received a 1080p/Full Frame transfers that highlights Greg Barnes' effectively moody cinematography (the film's other primary virtue). There are, unfortunately, quite a few scratches and flecks present throughout, largely due to the fact that the film hasn't been terribly well-preserved over the years. The image is also wobbly and soft at times—it looks better than it did on DVD, but not by a huge margin. The DTS HD 1.0 Master Audio track is similarly mixed, suffering from some occasional hiss and never really permitting Herrmann's score to sound as robust as it ought to. Dialogue is generally pretty clean, though. Supplements include two audio commentaries (one with Joseph McBride and actress Margaret O'Brien, another with Julie Kirgo, Nick Redman and Steven C. Smith), a featurette called "Locked in the Tower: The Men Behind Jane Eyre" (19 minutes), a propaganda short directed by Stevenson called "Know Your Ally Britain" (42 minutes), an isolated score track and a trailer. Props to Twilight Time for delivering a strong supplemental package this time around rather—hopefully it's a trend that will continue. (Clark Douglas)

The Hebden Bridge Times talks about researching your roots and heritage:

Jan Bridget, who has been involved with setting up the group, will speak about her own family history at the meeting at 1pm. (...)
“My interest has become, to be honest, a bit of an addiction, especially when I discovered that one of my ancestors was a role model for Heathcliff and that not only had a booklet been published on the topic but also several academic papers, culminating in a film documentary in 2009,” she said.

The Ventura County Star reviews Death of a Schoolgirl, the first of the Jane Eyre Chronicles novels by Joanna Campbell Slan:

Literary Happenings: Jane Eyre turns sleuth in new series. Fans of Charlotte Brontë's classic "Jane Eyre" can rejoice. Thanks to author Joanna Campbell Slan, the quiet governess-turned-passionate Mrs. Rochester has a newfound calling. (Jo Ellen Heil)

The Star (Malaysia) reviews The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert:

The beginning chapters of Signature is reminiscent of Wuthering Heights, with Gilbert tracing Henry’s rags-to-riches story like Emily Brontë does with Heathcliff. (Dinesh Kumar Maganathan)

The Scotsman on Sunday reviews Unfashioned Creatures by Lesley McDowell:

Unfashioned Creatures – the title comes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – neatly captures the fevered menace of later 19th-century classics such as Wuthering Heights or indeed Frankenstein itself, along with the era’s fascination with the supernatural. Isabella sees ghosts – chiefly that of the dead sister whose widower she married, breaking a Biblical and legal taboo. (Mary Crockett)

The Dallas News recommends ten works not to be missed at the local Kinsall Art Museum:

Frederic Leighton
Portrait of May Sartoris, c. 1860
This is among the handful of pictures owned by Kay and Velma Kimbell to be shown regularly at the museum they founded. Its combination of precise descriptive painting and a moody, almost Brontë-like subject make it one of the most enigmatic British portraits of the 19th century. (Rick Brettell)

The Hindu explains what to do to fight boredom:

The famous Brontë sisters who wrote some of the finest work in literature were brought up in an isolated environment where their only form of entertainment was to create stories and go for long walks in the moors. Their novels (Jane Eyre, Wuthering heights) explore the complexity of the human relationships and their stories reflect great depth and sensitivity. (Anuradha Shyam)

The Guardian interviews the actress Marine Vacth and describes her like this:

She's wearing jeans, boots and a rough-knit shawl and, with her hair vaguely dishevelled, looks as if she's just been auditioning to play the part of Cathy in Wuthering Heights. (Jonathan Romney)

PTC (Serbia) announces the screening on PTC1 tonight (21:08) of Jane Eyre 2011; the Christmas activities of the Brontë Parsonage Museum reach national newspapers with this mention in The Independent; The Times mentions Moira Buffini (author of the screenplay of Jane Eyre 2011) in an article about the presence of women in the British film industry; also in The SundayTimes, an interview to the actress Lorna Quinn mentions that she was Jane Eyre in a 2008 City Theatre production; Denis Billamboz posts about his love and admiration for the Brontës on Les Belles Phrases (in French).

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Cinema, Post-Colonialism and Headaches

New Brontë scholar works from all around the world:

O cinema dos ventos uivantes – versões cinematográficas do romance de Emily Brontë
Luiz Fernando Gallego

Fórum Nacional
Sessão Especial
Brasil: Estratégia de Desenvolvimento Industrial, com Maior Inserção Internacional e Fortalecimento da Competitividade. E o Povo vai às Ruas - a Terra Treme: como entender o Espírito Moderno?
Rio de Janeiro, 18-19 de setembro de 2013

Quando o diretor de cinema William Wyler (1902-1981) lançou sua produção  de 1965, O Colecionador, uma resenha da revista Time chamou o personagem  deste filme de “moderno Heathcliff”. O roteiro de The Collector (título original)  era baseado no romance homônimo de John Fowles (1926-2005) no qual um  bancário introvertido, colecionador de borboletas, sequestrava uma moça e a  mantinha em cárcere privado. Este “colecionador” pretendia que a jovem  estudante de arte “colecionada”, Miranda, viesse a gostar dele.  (...)

Estudo Pós-Colonial Em Heathcliff de O Morro Dos Ventos Uivantes de Emily Brontë 
Júlia Costa Mendes; Eduardo Marks de Marques

XXII Congresso de Iniciação Científica da UFPel 2013
Universidade Federal de Pelotas

Este trabalho tem por objetivo comprovar, a partir de elementos da obra, a análise do personagem Heathcliff de O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes de Emily Brontë sob a perspectiva pós-colonial. Para tal, utilizarei o recorte de sua infância.
A história que Emily Brontë conta em O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes está
inserida em um período histórico denominado colonialismo (século XV ao século XX). A narrativa se inicia na Inglaterra em 1801 e retorna à segunda metade do século XVIII. Inserem-se nesse período histórico as grandes descobertas de terras e povos até então desconhecidos, o advento das grandes navegações e um aumento do fluxo comercial. Com um melhor entendimento sobre a geografia da Terra, a população europeia cruzou os mares à procura de novas colônias. Com isso, foi necessário, então, também lidar com os nativos dessas regiões descobertas. Os europeus brancos e bem estruturados afirmaram-se colonizadores e, portanto, superiores e mais desenvolvidos que aqueles povos chamados por eles de “não civilizados”. A dinâmica social se dava pela dominação e imposição da cultura imperialista do colonizador. Em muitos casos, os nativos eram considerados até mesmo parte da fauna, já que o que diferenciava os animais dos humanos, para os colonizadores, era a cultura europeia.  (...)

Headache in the writings of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865)
AJ Larner
Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Liverpool, UK

Published online before print November 14, 2013, doi: 10.1177/0967772013506817
Journal of  Medical Biography November 14, 2013 0967772013506817

Abstract

Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell was a celebrated author of the Victorian era, a friend of both Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë and the latter’s first biographer. References to headache in Mrs Gaskell’s six major novels, published between 1848 and 1866 as well as some of her shorter fiction, have been collated. These multiple references suggest that Elizabeth Gaskell used headache as a narrative device, possibly based on her own experience of headache and that of female acquaintances, most notably Charlotte Brontë.

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Written in this very house

A weekend in Haworth in The Times:

Sooty-stoned, slate-roofed terraces climb the hillsides like steps, and the steep main street, with its cafés and pleasantly chintzy gift shops,its bric-a-brac-eries and well-stocked bookshops, has an out-of-hours, out-of-season calm. There's hardly anyone about. At the top, the wet cobbles shine in the lamplight and cats scuttle across the path to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which faces a gloomy churchyard one way and the forbidding moors the other.
We visit it the next day. The sisters spent most of their lives here and it's a treasure house of Brontëana. Here is the black horsehair sofa on which Emily died; here is Charlotte's white wedding bonnet [...]; here is Anne's collection of pebbles, gathered on the beach at Scarborough, the town where she died. Most compellingly, here is a display of the sisters' manuscripts, some in the tiniest handwriting; written in this very house. (Stephen McClarence)

The Telegraph & Argus gives details of the Brontë Parsonage Museum plans for Christmas:

Join us as we celebrate Christmas here at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
We’re taking our inspiration from surrealist artist Charlotte Cory’s exhibition Capturing the Brontës and decorating the house ready for a Victorian Christmas, complete with a traditional tree in the foyer.
Every weekend we’ll be opening early at 10am and staying open until 6pm every Saturday, with a range of Christmassy events to get you in the festive mood!
On Saturday it’s the Steampunk Weekend in Haworth, with stalls, costumes and exhibitions. From 2pm to 4pm we’ll have local storyteller Adam Sargent retelling tales from the Brothers Grimm as you’ve never heard them before (free with museum entry).
And all weekend we’re offering ten per cent off at the museum and in the shop for all of those in steampunk costume.
Tabby, the Brontës’ servant, used to tell the sisters of how the last of the fairies left Haworth with the coming of the mills. They are finally returning with our weekend of fairy-themed activities on November 30 and December 1.
On the Saturday, Tabby will be entertaining visitors all day with tales of the fairies of Haworth, or make your own Christmas fairy at our drop-in craft session from 10am to 4pm. They’re both free with museum entry.
On the Sunday, we have a talk on Victorian fairies in folklore from noon to 12.30pm, or listen to our brass quartet playing Christmas songs from 11am to 1pm, all free with museum entry.
Step back to the Parsonage of Christmases past with our Victorian weekend on December 6 to 8. On the Friday at 7pm, Dickens will be dropping by for carols and a candlelit tour of the house on our Visitorian Christmas Eve (e-mail louisa.briggs@bronte.org.uk to book).
The Saturday is our Visitorian Christmas Day. From 11am to 4pm you can meet our staff in Victorian costume and join in the yuletide fun with a Bronte puppet theatre and carols round the tree.
And the first ever Brontë carol service will take place at 3pm on the Sunday at Haworth parish church, with singing from Haworth Primary School.
The fun continues on December 14 and 15.
We have two wreath making workshops at 10.30am and 1pm on the Saturday (same booking details as above) where you can tuck into some mince pies and mulled wine.
Ilkley Players will be reading atmospheric Christmas passages from your favourite stories from 1pm to 4pm (free with museum entry).
On Sunday you can make those last few Christmas decorations at our drop-in session, from 11am to 4pm, or hear our talk on Victorian Christmas trees at 2pm, both free with museum entry. We look forward to seeing you! (Sarah Browncross)

The Spenborough Guardian recommends visiting the North Kirklees museums:

Oakwell Hall Country Park was is “an excellent facility for families. Touring round the Hall is a ‘must see’ and should not be missed!” And “a visit to the Red House Museum will inform, entertain and ensure a great afternoon out! Devotees of Charlotte Brontë will not be disappointed.”

The Globe and Mail chooses the English translation of Jane, Le Renard et Moi as one of the Best children books around:

Jane, the Fox and Me
By Fanny Britt, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, translated by Susan Ouriou (Groundwood)
Gorgeously tying Hélène’s teenage growing pains to her consoling reading of Jane Eyre: a graphic novel that deals with childhood cruelties without being a “bullying” book – it has much more going on. A real beauty. (Lauren Bride)

Financial Times interviews the writer Amy Tan:

Which literary character most resembles you?
I would say the young Jane Eyre, before she goes off to be somebody’s wife and caretaker.

According to Lucky Magazine, Maura Lynch (which is the Senior Beauty Editor) just wants to dress like an Emily Brontë heroine:

“I’ve read Wuthering Heights at least 10 times,” says Lucky senior beauty editor Maura Lynch of the classic novel. “I love its gothic, slightly eccentric tone.” It’s a vibe that’s spilling into her wardrobe this season in the form of hyper-feminine silhouettes, moody floral prints and polished accessories in rich crimson and violet. “I’m all about taking something quintessentially ladylike, turning it on its side and giving it an edge,” she says.

A press release from Oxfam says:

To help inspire Christmas shoppers as they head to the Oxfam bookshops this festive season, the charity has asked some of its celebrity supporters which book they would choose as their Christmas 'gift to the nation'. (...)
Book lovers Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley chose Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, and The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Monsarrat, respectively.

News.com (Australia) recommends thirty books to read before you are thirty. Among them:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
Have you ever belted out Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights at karaoke after downing a few too many tequila shots? Of course you have. Well, now you can find out just who the hell Heathcliff is and what the deal is with Cathy. Warning: wear a heavy jumper. Even reading about those windswept moors will make you cold.

The Dallas Morning News remembers how on November 22, 1963 in Dallas:

• Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier, was playing at the Inwood Theatre.

Ryu Spaeth in The Week remembers why he likes Hugh Grant:

In my case, England is not only a physical space on the globe with a long history, but a place where fictions occur. England is where Walter Hartright once encountered a mysterious woman all dressed in white on the road outside London; where Pip met Miss Havisham and Estella in a dilapidated old house; where Heathcliff and Catherine fell passionately and tragically in love.

Douglas LaBier recommends in The Huffington Post that psychotherapists read:

So I encourage them to read such writers as Alice Munro (another Nobel Laureate), Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Melville, to name a few. And, of course, Shakespeare and the Greek Tragedies.

How a book survives and passes from person to person? The Millions thinks about it:

Still, if one puts pure vanity aside for a moment, the process by which a book survives more than a century is a fascinating thing. When I held a copy of Wilkie Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone, or an early American edition of Wuthering Heights, I’d sometimes reflect on the many deaths the book had to avoid on its way to me. It had to be bought, first of all, and not left to linger on a bookstore shelf, and later pulped — or, as is sometimes the case, burned. Then someone had to keep it after the first read, keep the bindings dry, move it from house to house, and later, after that person died, the book had to be inherited, or else sold, instead of thrown away; at the very least it had to be packed in such a way that the book block didn’t warp and the pages didn’t go moldy: all the little deaths to which a hardbound book is vulnerable. (Sam Allingham)

Meridian Booster talks about the local author Kelsey Greye:

Greye was born and raised in Lloydminster and has always been an avid reader. Two of her favourite authors are Charlotte Brontë and Agatha Christie. (Simon Arsenau)

Novelicious interviews the auhtor Samantha Tonge:

What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
It would have to be the Sophie Kinsella Shopoholic series. Whilst I’ve read lots of Austen and Brontë classics, and used to love Maeve Binchy, my heart lies with the witty, accessible writing of the chick lit genre. I am currently loving the latest Bridget Jones book.

Keighley News recalls that Sally Wainwright's iss penning a biopic about the Bronte family for the BBC; A reader of The Chicago Tribune shares that at her wedding, her vows came among others from Charlotte Brontë; AV Maniacs reviews the Blu-ray edition of Jane Eyre 1944.

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Wear a novel

Would you like to wear (literally) Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? You can now with Litographs:

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
Design by Rachelle Meyer

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
Design by Nick Lu





The designs are available in several colours and also as tote bags or posters.

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Envious of the Brontës

Dave Astor looks at novels without the basic boy-meets-girl premise in The Huffington Post, though he doesn't forget his Brontëite side.

I'm a big fan of fiction's most romantic works -- whether the romances depicted are happy, sad or illusory. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen's Persuasion, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Erich Maria Remarque's Arch of Triumph, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, Colette's Cheri and so many more. But a terrific novel obviously doesn't need love as its main attraction.

The Daily Mail has a bookish chat with writer Veronica Henry.

[What book] ...LEFT YOU COLD?
It's probably heresy to say it, but I’m not a huge fan of Pride And Prejudice.  I much prefer the sweeping passion and murky secrets of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.  I can appreciate P and P’s merits but I don’t feel envious of Jane Austen’s writing in the way I do of either Brontë’s.  A mad woman in the attic sticks in my mind far longer than a bloke in a wet shirt (yes, I know that was the film ...)

PopMatters reviews Ronald Frame's Havisham.

The tone of Frame’s writing recalls Jean Rhys’s in Wide Sargasso Sea, if more minimalist; both novels eschew the straightforward realism of the original novels in order to capture more vividly the psychic landscape and subsequent breakdown of its central characters. It works, for the most part, but the towards the last quarter of the book, when the timespan of Havisham merges with that of Great Expectations, Catherine starts becoming a caricature of herself. (Subashini Navaratnam)

Inside Higher Ed is missing the point of classic novels adapted as board books for babies and toddlers.

The BabyLit list features Wuthering Heights:A BabyLit Weather Primer (useful, I suppose, if your 8-month-old has shown an interest in moors, climatology or dating ghosts) and Sense and Sensibility: A BabyLit Opposites Primer (although it may still be best to start with “near” and “far”). Really, when an infant cries, he/she is saying “Feed me” or “Change me,” not “Tell me again why Heathcliff is such a tortured soul.” [...]
Can a 1-year-old fully appreciate the complexities of either the marriage plot or Mark Darcy? (For those who agree that Austen might not be quite the thing for babies and toddlers, there is The Jane Eyre Counting Primer; I’m guessing that it must go something like this: “1 Rochester, 2 wives”). (Carolyn Foster Segal) 

Francine Prose reviews  The Most of Nora Ephron in the New York Review of Books:

There is a beautiful essay in which Rebecca West speculates about how much greater an artist Charlotte Brontë might have been had she not been hobbled by the pressure of supporting her siblings.

The Rebecca West essay was published on The Saturday Review, November 5, 1932, pp. 217-218 and can be read here.

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Haworth Steampunk Weekend

The Brontë Parsonage Museum participates in the Haworth Steampunk Weekend (23rd-24th November):

Join us 23rd-24th November as we celebrate Haworth Steampunk Weekend!
10% off the museum entry price and in the shop for all those in steampunk costume.

Come to the Brontë Parsonage during the Haworth Steampunk weekend and listen to local storyteller Adam Sargent retell stories by the Brothers Grimm as you've never heard them before.

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Jane Eyre with a bow and arrow

After reporting the words of advice to other publishers from a HarperCollins UK boss, the Guardian looks back on the publishing house's origins:

HarperCollins traces its history back almost 200 years, on one side of its lineage to Glasgow-based millworker William Collins who set up to print sermons and hymn books, later moving into dictionaries and atlases and obtaining a licence to print the Bible; on the other to New York's Harper Brothers, who brought the Brontë sisters and Thackeray to American readers. (Jennifer Rankin)

The Guardian also describes the book The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston as follows:

If the Brontë sisters had penned magical realism, this would have been the result. (Eric Brown)

The Herald (Scotland) reviews the second film installment of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

As played by the ever more impressive Lawrence, Katniss Everdeen is a feminist heroine for the age. Smart, self-sufficient, brave, and principled, she is Jane Eyre with a bow and arrow, Germaine Greer with added grrr.

SCNow reviews the film The English Teacher, where

The 40-something, single Linda reads “Wuthering Heights,” “Little Women” and other classics, but it’s all just window dressing. (Laurie Crosswell)

More snark on Taylor Swift's discovery of Francis Scott Fitzgerald on Grantland's Hollywood Prospectus.

 I'm always just waiting for the day Swift gets into Kate Bush via "Wuthering Heights." She's so close! She just got into F. Scott Fitzgerald! (Molly Lambert)

The Hull Daily Mail features the east coast resort of Hornsea and recalls that

One famous visitor who came to "take the waters" was the author, Charlotte Brontë, who stayed in Hornsea for several weeks in 1853.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die posts about Agnes Grey. Flickr user Old76 MIA has imagined a portrait of Emily Brontë.

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A talk and a play

A talk in Illkey for today, November 21:

Professor Ann Sumner will give a talk in Ilkley on Thursday, November 21, about family life at the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth.
The talk, Heaven Is A Home, is part of the Jubilee Ilkley Arts Festival, and will take place at All Saints Parish Church, starting 7.30pm.
It is being organised by Olicana Historical Society. The lecture is also a joint meeting with the Friends of the Manor House and will be given at the usual time of 7.30pm. (The Telegraph & Argus)

A student production in East Grand Rapids, MI:

East Grand Rapids High School
Jane EyreAdapted by Robert Johanson from the Novel by Charlotte Brontë
November  21, 22, 23, 2013
7:30 pm
Performing Arts Center

Charlotte Brontë’s magnificent Gothic love story is brought to stirring life in this class tale. Jane Eyre  narrates the disturbing events of her childhood and young adulthood: her miserable upbringing as an orphan, her trials at the infamous Lowood School, and eventually her acceptance as governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane eventually unravels the secrets of this mysterious place and it’s enigmatic master: Edward Rochester. A moving story for all time and a stunning portrayal of one of the world’s greatest heroines.

More details on Michigan Live.

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New information panel for Brontë buffs

The Telegraph and Argus reports the news about the new information panel installed at Top Withins.

Thousands of literary pilgrims who make the trek to Top Withens above Haworth every year can now learn more about the site.
The derelict moorland farmhouse attracts Brontë buffs from across the world due to its alleged inspiration for the location of Emily’s Wuthering Heights.
Now an information panel has been installed explaining its history and the people who lived there.
The venture is part of the award-winning Watershed Landscape Project, managed by Pennine Prospects and financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund and South Pennine Leader.

The Boar adds to the classics at the classroom debate.

As many of us struggled through the spiels of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, with its defiantly complex plot which twists and turns dizzily through time, it is safe to say the minority of people actually understood why we were reading it. (Amber Reeve)

The Denisonian discusses Denison English professor Diana Mafe's new book Mixed Race Stereotypes in South African and American Literature: Coloring outside the (Black and White) Lines.

The literature under Mafe’s critical gaze also showcases two sharply different perspectives from two different centuries on what makes the mulatto “mad.” In Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, Rochester’s wife Bertha is mentally ill and “racially suspect,” writes Mafe. There’s no context to her madness in the 1847 novel; her mental state, like that of other mulattos in literature, is considered to be a given. However, in Jean Rhys’ prequel to “Jane Eyre,” “Wide Sargasso Sea,” chronicles Bertha’s life before her marriage to Englishman Rochester, and it shows the reader, through a 1966 post-colonial lens, that Bertha is not crazy because she is a mixed-race Creole; she’s crazy because society has marginalized her as a result of her mixed-race heritage. (Curtis Edmonds)

Writer Collette Auclair doesn't seem to be a Brontëite according to this interview on Westword.

No Jane Austen or Brontë influence? I know them, but I haven't delved in lately. I always preferred Dickens as far as Victorians go. (Byron Graham)

Vanity Fair jokes about Taylor Swift 'discovering' Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

Now that Taylor seems to be in touch with her literary side, we have our fingers crossed for a song from Elizabeth Bennet’s perspective, a Wuthering Heights–themed music video, and the album title The Swift Also Rises. (Josh Duboff)

Finally, you can see pictures of the Brontë Parsonage Museum's stall at Haworth's Christmas Market on their Facebook page.

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EcoJane and more

New scholar Brontë research:

Seeking Wild Eyre: Landscape and the Environment in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Jennifer D Fuller
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, Vol 4, No 2 (2013), 154

Abstract

Applying techniques from the growing field of ecocriticism, this article uses Jane Eyre to explore a growing environmental awareness among middle-class Victorians and demonstrate how their need to preserve a “wild” or “natural” landscape coincides with ideas of liberty and freedom prevalent in the novel. By looking at Jane’s changing interactions with and interpretations of the natural world, we can gain a better understanding of the value and interpretation of landscape to the Victorians. In Jane Eyre, Jane’s journeys continually lead her to finding a way to balance her human wants and needs with the “wildness” of the natural world.

Tesi di laurea magistrale (2013-07-01)
Benedetta Dazzi, Università de Pisa
La corrispondenza di Charlotte Brontë' con i suoi editori: la filiera del libro. Traduzione e commento di una selezione di lettere

Il lavoro è organizzato in due sezioni: la prima è una cronistoria delle vicissitudini editoriali e biografiche di Charlotte Brontë' nel decennio 1845-1855; nella seconda si presenta invece la traduzione di una selezione di lettere che l'autrice scrisse agli editori delle sue opere nel periodo preso in esame.

"Reader" in Jane Eyre  (5-2012)
Siruo Li
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

This thesis is designed to show the development of feminist power of Jane Eyre, the  heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, by examining how her reader is addressed in the totality of this novel. The main body of this thesis will follow the four parts of Jane Eyre’s  different period of her life: in childhood, in Thornfield, in Moor House and in Ferndean  Manor. The rhetorical instrument of addressing her reader is influenced by her speech and silence, and appears in a gradually increasing frequency in the four parts. In this sense, Jane Eyre’s female voice is also empowered by the increasing addresses of her reader. Through the overturning the male voices by Jane’s female voice, her self-empowerment is achieved.

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"Not die"

This is how Slate begins an article on Doris Lessing:

Doris Lessing is dead, finally dead at age 94. When I heard the news I thought right away of the moment when Jane Eyre is being terrified into obedience by the loathsome Mr. Brocklehurst. “Should you want to fall into a pit and be burning there forever?” he asks her, hoping to scare her into cowering Christianity. “No, sir.” So what will you do to avoid it, he asks her, will you repent? I have a better idea, she replies: “I must keep in good health, and not die.” Repenting—to ministers, to capitalist fat-cats, or to p.c. bullies—was never an option for Lessing. But refusing to die (or to shut up) worked pretty well for Lessing right up to yesterday. (John Plotz)

Truth be told, though, the original doesn't explicitly mention repentance, just avoidance.

Aftonbladet (Sweden) places Doris Lessing among other great women writers (and why not men?) such as Charlotte and Emily Bronë (and why not Anne?).

The Christian Post's Insights features Jane_E author, Erin McCole-Cupp.

I have read Jane E and met the author and been impressed by both. I am looking forward to reading Don’t You Forget About Me. If you want a book that will awaken your imagination and stir your soul…and will last in your memory – try reading a book by Erin. Enjoy! (Ann Frailey)
Be Salt, Not Salty: The Catholic Writer and the Non-Catholic Character
In my speaking repertoire, I have a presentation for junior high and high school English classes. It’s called “Why Should I Care About Jane Eyre? How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love Assigned Reading.” In this presentation, I tell the teens why we read fiction: if nothing else, fiction helps us learn new ways of solving our problems—or, in literary speak, “resolving our conflicts.” So it may come as no shock to you that I am of a mind that fiction, in order to be interesting, must include conflict that we humans need to learn how to resolve. [...]
Don’t You Forget About Me is written in first person. I was genuinely concerned that people would assume the interior monologue of a pro-choice, prejudice-plagued, “fallen away” main character was actually my editorializing as the author. On the other hand, I was concerned that, in writing another non-Catholic character who never gives any serious consideration to becoming Catholic, as I did in Jane_E, Friendless Orphan, my faith would not be blatantly obvious enough. In both cases it seems there were some readers who fulfilled my fears.

PolicyMic looks at the differences between male and female humour.

The other night we were together—three women at a dinner party, off in a corner, wiping away tears of hilarity. My friend had just gotten engaged and simultaneously been informed by her doctor that she had a mysterious lump in her abdomen that needed a CT scan pronto.
You just found love and you’re dying! How very Brontë, we screamed. (Nina Burleigh)

Interia's Fakty (Poland) has an article on the book Charlotte Brontë i jej siostry śpiące by Eryk Ostrowski. Andy's Film Blog compares briefly Wuthering Heights 1939 to Wuthering Heights 2011. Antique Fashionista has drawn a lovely watercolour featuring the five main places where Jane Eyre takes place.

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