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Thursday, September 24, 2015

Keighley News reports the reaction of the Brontë Parsonage Museum to the new Jane Eyre ballet production announced earlier this month by the Northern Ballet Company:
News of the Jane Eyre production was this week welcomed by Ann Dinsdale, collections manager at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
She said: “We’re absolutely thrilled about it. We have already had a meeting with some staff from Northern Ballet about the production.
“We’ve worked with them in the past, and Wuthering Heights has been touring the country this year. We’re talking with Northern Ballet about some of the Jane Eyre cast coming here.”
Ann said the Jane Eyre ballet was just one of several exciting events to mark Charlotte’s bicentenary, some already announced and some still to be revealed.
Northern Ballet,, which is based in Leeds, said Jane Eyre would be choreographed by acclaimed international dance maker Cathy Marston, with music by Philip Feeney. (...)
In Northern Ballet spokesman said: “The ultimate dramatic tale of romance, jealousy and dark secrets, Jane Eyre is the story of one woman’s indomitable spirit overcoming all boundaries.”
Sets and costumes for Jane Eyre will be designed by Patrick Kinmonth[.] (David Knights)
Official London Theatre gives voice to Sally Cookson, director of the Jane Eyre production now at the National Theatre:
The starting point for this production was Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. There are several play adaptations out there already, but I was keen to make a new version and discover with the company what gives the book its enduring power, what has kept it on the bestsellers list for the last 170 years.
I find it thrilling to excavate a text with a company of creative theatre makers because the possibilities of what you discover are extraordinary. At the beginning of the process, before we went into rehearsals, I spent time investigating which elements of the story I wanted to emphasise.
Jane Eyre has become known as a passionate love story, which indeed it is, but that is only part of it. The voice of Jane Eyre speaks of passion, lower caste aspiration and female rage – it is a story of a young girl’s longing for fulfillment, and fulfillment on her own terms – a concept very much at odds with the dictates and confines of the Victorian society of her day. (Read more) (Kate Stanbury)
BBC News reports the children's literacy campaign supported by the UK Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and children's author and comedian David Walliams:
The classics of English literature should be given to England's secondary schools by leading publishers at low cost, the education secretary has said.
Nicky Morgan called for books by authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë to be made available so all pupils can enjoy them.
The government is also offering new resources to help get children reading before they start school. (Hannah Richardson)
The Yorkshire Post celebrates that Scarborough is considered a good example of heritage activity:
A new Heritage Index developed by the think tank RSA and the Heritage Lottery Fund ranks for the first time which areas are making best use of their heritage assets through activities such as volunteering, the number of people visiting museums and the number of nights people spend on holiday in a local area.
While the City of London, with its huge number of heritage assets and visitors, predictably came top in the overall index, Scarborough topped the survey for heritage activity, and came third in the overall ranking. (...)
The town’s literary heritage is also recognised, with plaques at the former home of the Sitwell family on The Crescent, and at the site of the favourite lodgings of Anne Brontë, where the Grand Hotel now stands. (Lindsay Pantry)
Bath Chronicle recommends the Lewis Noble exhibition at the Bath Contemporary Art Gallery:
Noble's landscapes have a Brontë-esque sense of romance about them.
He expresses the notion of feeling submerged within the awe of nature, capturing the enormity and power of our beautiful and sometimes harsh world. (Dan Biggane)
Football365 talks about the new book by Alex Ferguson, Leading. The first paragraph is epic:
As you may have heard, Sir Alex Ferguson has another book out. It’s not just any book either, but the book which makes him as prolific an author as the Brontë sisters combined, which I hope you’ll agree is quite something. That nugget reminded me of the wonderful piece of trivia that pop group Blue have as many Greatest Hits albums as actual albums, but I digress. (Daniel Storey)
More Spanish news outlets talk about Ángeles Caso's Todo ese fuego. Like Cadena SER Málaga or Diario Sur:
La escritora, periodista e historiadora abría ayer las actividades del Ateneo con su nuevo libro bajo el brazo, ‘Todo ese fuego’ (Planeta), el relato de la vida de las hermanas Brontë, precisamente «un ejemplo del ansia de libertad». «Se rebelaron contra las condiciones de encierro intelectual, vital y moral al que la sociedad victoriana sometía a las mujeres. Era una rebelión total aunque silenciosa», detalló. (...)
En ‘Todo ese fuego’, hay otra gran reivindicación de la que Ángeles Caso hace bandera: ser mujer y escritora. Las hermanas Brontë dieron una lección de valentía publicando a escondidas, incluso, de su círculo más cercano. (Regina Sotorrío) (Translation) 
The Almanac tells the story of a future college student with cerebral palsy, her dog and her passion for books, including the Brontës:
The many spacious bookshelves in her bedroom are populated with a lot of fantasy and science fiction, including works by George R.R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson, but Jane Austen is also there, and Charlotte is quick to point out how much she likes works by the Brontë sisters, particularly "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Brontë. (Dave Boyce)
Education Week Teacher gives advice to prepare the SAT exams:
1) Revisiting the Classics and Text Complexity
One of the hallmarks of the test is its increased emphasis on text complexity. All of the SAT reading passages are from previously published high-quality sources. Just to name drop a few authors who appear on the released practice tests: Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. No lightweights here! Their diction and syntax alone can prove challenging. Asking students to decipher these authors’ meanings and messages takes guided instruction with lots of practice. This revelation triggered our reevaluation of content in our English courses to allow students sufficient preparation in wrestling with these types of texts. (Kim McCready)
Rudolph Giuliani is interviewed by Baylor Lariat and makes an interesting point when he says
What would your advice be today to students who want to pursue a legal career?
Well, it would be to get the broadest possible education at the university level. I’m not a big believer in starting to be specialized very early. I think the best lawyers are the lawyers with the most knowledge and the most wisdom, which doesn’t mean just about the law. It means about the world. So I always recommend to young people who want to be lawyers, get the broadest possible education in college. Study history, study philosophy, study literature.
Analyzing literature in a good literature class is very similar to analyzing how a Supreme Court decision should be interpreted. If you’re analyzing, what did Emily Brontë mean when she wrote this, it’s not too much different than trying to analyze, what did Judge Renquist mean when he wrote this. (Helena Hunt)
Image Magazine (Ireland) asks which literary lady are you?
Scarlett’s most striking feature is her green eyes – a killer attribute she has in common with three other leading ladies who regularly top the fiction charts: Holly Golightly, Jane Eyre and Becky Sharp. This cabal of green-eyed heroines is frequently obliged to keep their gaze downcast as a way of veiling an intelligence that would otherwise blaze forth.
(...) Jane Eyre’s level look reduces the flinty Mr Rochester to rubble (almost literally), while Becky has the speculative regard of a professional gambler. (...) Jane’s strength is her faith, Scarlett’s her determination. Becky’s is her ambition, Holly’s her adaptability. These traits more than compensate for their lack of conventional beauty. Their singularity even manifests itself in the way they dress: for her first encounter with Rochester, Jane’s only adornment is a single pearl. (...)
The self-worth of these women is not defined by their relationships with men: each of them is fiercely independent. They are prototype feminists in a way that even Austen’s heroines are not. Jane Eyre rejects two lucrative proposals of marriage, because to accept would be to compromise her integrity. Becky uses a succession of beaux as stepping stones towards self-advancement, as does Scarlett, while Holly floats between men, “light as a scarf”.
Of the four, only one ends her story with a wedding, and when Jane finally marries Mr Rochester, it is on her terms and as his equal. The stress in that famous sentence rests firmly on the pronouns: “Reader, I married him.”
Once again Guillermo Del Toro mentions Jane Eyre as an inspiration behind his Crimson Peak movie. In Latin Post:
The gothic aspects in "Great Expectations" served as one of the many inspirations for "Crimson Peak," and when asked during a separate press conference what film he would like to see accompany his latest work in a double bill, del Toro listed two movies. One was "Jane Eyre" with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and the other, which he noted would be "aiming too high," was David Lean's famous "Great Expectations." (David Salazar)
South Carolina Morning News on Mia Wasikowska performance as Jane Eyre in 2011:
In 2011, the talented Mia Wasikowska played the heroine Jane Eyre to gothic perfection, fleshing out a character that had previously been portrayed on screen as too dark or too remote to be real[.]  (Laurie Crosswell)
We wonder exactly which scene from Wuthering Heights is on the author of this article's mind. From Inquisitr:
The funniest parts of the Barbie Instagram account show scenes where the doll is looking wistfully out at the shore of a beach, and quips about how she took a minute from her reverie in order to snap a photo of herself staring wistfully at the water, like some sort of scene from Wuthering Heights. (Paula Mooney)
A Vietnam English visitor describes to Vietnam Express his experience:
Khi còn ngồi ghế nhà trường, tôi đã đắm mình trong các khung cảnh thơ mộng của miền Bắc nước Anh, miền Yorkshire… quê hương của gia đình Brontë: Emily Brontë, Charlotte Bronte, tác giả của các tác phẩm văn học Anh nổi tiếng Đồi gió hú; Jane Eyre... Tôi hình dung mình như Catherine và Heathcliff chạy trên các đồng cỏ hoang vu, lên những mỏn đá … (Lê Thị Tố Uyên) (Translation)
Le Monde (France) covers the London Fashion Week:
Certains détails paraissent lourds ou hors sujet (des sandales grillagées, quelques minirobes en tricot et dentelle) mais l’ensemble est évocateur. On pense tour à tour aux personnages torturés des Hauts de Hurlevent, aux mystérieuses filles de la famille Bellefleur du roman de Joyce Carol Oates ou encore aux âmes sombres de « Penny Dreadful », série télé à succès qui rassemble les créatures de la littérature et des bas-fonds victoriens. (Carine Bizet) (Translation)
Same as BBC Culture:
 Erdem Moriaglu also knows his ‘girl’. She’s a pioneer woman on a prairie in hig.h-necked Edwardiana, awash with embroidered florals. Combine that with the vibes of a stormy English period drama – Far from the Madding Crowd or Jane Eyre perhaps – and you have yourself a mise-en-scènethat fits right into Moriaglu’s penchant for an ethereal narrative. (Susie Lau)
And do not forget that today is the 167th anniversary of Branwell Brontë's death. Both the Parsonage Facebook and The Sisters' Room post about it;  Twierdza Zbudowana Z Książek reviews Wuthering Heights in Polish.

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