Warmth and safety

First of all, an announcement from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Due to the severe weather conditions and to ensure the safety of our staff and visitors, the Museum will not be open today, Wednesday 28 February. We wish all our followers a warm and safe #snowday. #Haworth

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) February 28, 2018

Bustle wonders 'Why Female Monsters In Fiction Are Always Single — And What It Says About How Society Views Unattached Women'.

In the world of English literature, the witch or monstrous woman eventually begins to take on a slightly more "realistic" appearance. Instead of the snake-haired gorgon in her secluded liar, we have Miss Havisham, Charles Dickens' wealthy spinster who was jilted at the altar. She still wears her rotting wedding dress from all those years ago, holed up in her ruined mansion as she plots her revenge on the young men of the world. She's described as "the witch of the place."
Instead of a murderess cannibal demon, we have Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre. She was a beautiful Creole woman from Jamaica who married Mr. Rochester, began showing symptoms of mental illness, and was subsequently locked up in the attic for the rest of her life. As an ex-wife and "madwoman," she has no place in society, and the conventional love story cannot move forward until she is killed.
Neither woman is responsible for her respective failed marriage, but both are hidden away in fetid rooms until they're eventually burned to death, because both have failed to become adequate wives. (Charlotte Ahlin)

TV Insider shares '13 TV Themes You Didn't Realize Were From Movie Maestro John Williams', including

Jane Eyre (1971)
Williams took home his second Emmy for his score to another adaptation of a classic. This version of Charlotte Brontë's novel aired theatrically in Britain in 1970 before hitting U.S. airwaves a year later, with Williams' swooning music capturing the essence of the Gothic romance. (Jeff Pfeiffer)

Popolis (Italy) features Prof. Maddalena de Leo's literary competition.

In tre, nei pressi di un antico cedro “Deodara”, a prendere un thè. Fra queste, la scrittrice bresciana Luisa M.C. Sala, seconda classificata alla quinta edizione del premio letterario, organizzato e curato da Maddalena De Leo, che è stato dedicato al duecentesimo anniversario della nascita di Charlotte Brontë. [...]
Esistenze che si intrecciano per affinità, secondo la riflessione impressa da Luisa M.C. Sala nella sua opera dal titolo “In caduta libera” che è pubblicata nella raccolta degli elaborati testualmente denominata “Brontëana V” dove il numero romano sta per l’esplicito rimando alla quinta edizione dell’annuale premio letterario, ispirato alla sequela stilistica dell’impronta culturale lasciata dalle sorelle inglesi Bronte, nelle persone delle scrittrici e poetesse, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) e Anne (1820-1849). [...]
Il tema del “luogo”, legato a quello del “viaggio”, a loro volta connessi fra loro con lo “scrivere”, pure inteso come riferimento di fusione fra punti d’incontro, contestualizzato nel cogitabondo innesto con il mondo reale, per inseguirne, però, la parte più celata, ovvero “i significati sospesi”, spesso individuabili a presupposto di un mandato di esplorazione conteso fra “spazio” e “tempo”.
Una bipartizione di elementi che appare attraversata da un “ardore”, promosso, secondo l’espressione usata dall’autrice, “nell’inconcepibile curvatura spazio-temporale” soggiacente ad un fisiologico alone di mistero che è, per propria natura, apportatore, fra l’altro, di un motivo di riflessione a tutto campo e quindi rivolto anche sull’oggi, con le vibranti prospettive d’analisi aderenti a risvolti di senso e di significati, anche enucleati a raffronto fra l’epoca attuale e quella vissuta dalla scrittrice inglese, come musa, di fatto, ispiratrice di questo raffinato lavoro epistolare che ne emula, in parte, il periodare stilistico d’insieme.
Nel suo “In caduta libera”, valevole per il secondo posto classificato nella sezione “lettere” della menzionata edizione del “Premio letterario De Leo”, Luisa M.C. Sala, fra altri spunti d’elaborazione, precisa che dal romanzo “Jane Eyre” si “è accesa la volontà di impossessarmi della mia volontà”, rivolgendo alla scrittrice inglese l’interlocutoria divagazione: “Sa dove l’accompagnerei? Poco lontano dal luogo dove le scrivo, esiste una dimora straordinaria preceduta da un immenso cedro Deodara. Lì, l’anno dopo la sua scomparsa, nel 1856 (altra suggestionabile complicità consequenziale) nacque Paolina Calegari, che diventò da adulta, Calegari Torri. Che donna! Avvincente, geniale, fiera, allegra. Adorava la cultura e ne sapeva trarre vitalità. (…)”. (Luca Quaresmini) (Translation)

Viva Media (Canada) reports on a school trip to see the play Hurlevents.

Heureusement, le talent de Fanny Britt, l’auteure, nous permet de trouver des repères aisément et de nous guider dans l’action trépidante d’Hurlevents. Le texte étoffé nous fait entrer dans l’univers des trois colocataires. Un univers mélangeant et perturbant du début à la fin nous oblige à rester éveillés. Les liens intrigants avec le livre Les Hauts de Hurle-Vent nous donnent envie de savoir la fin de la pièce et de plonger dans l’histoire d’Émily Brontë. Ce spectacle enivrant a eu cet effet grâce au texte et à l’ingéniosité de Claude Poissant. Contrairement à ce que l’on peut penser, le décor est simpliste, mais idéal pour la création. Une table située au plafond de l’aire de jeu paraît inutile, mais a une signification particulière après réflexion. De plus, la lumière émise par la table crée une ambiance intime. Cette dernière est rehaussée grâce aux effets sonores percutants utilisés par Claude Poissant. Le décor et le son nous permettent de croire encore plus à la pièce et de plonger plus profondément dans l’univers d’Hurlevents. Le son, la mise en scène et la précision des comédiens rendaient justice à l’excellente plume de Fanny Britt. Hurlevents est une pièce singulière qui nous fait réfléchir à nos sentiments et à nos amitiés. Un message difficile à saisir, mais une fois qu’il est trouvé, plusieurs autres surviennent. Impossible d’avoir la tête vide après un tel phénomène! (Eugénie Pilon) (Translation)

TSF (Portugal) interviews artist Eduardo Batarda.

Fartei-me de ler coisas fundamentais para mim e para a minha geração que também o tinham sido para a geração deles.
Por exemplo? Liam línguas, havia livros em várias línguas. Lembro-me que o primeiro livro que li em casa, talvez não inteiro, tinha oito ou nove anos, foi A Paixão de Jane Eyre [Charlotte Brontë, 1847], porque era o livro com mais páginas e estava numa estante onde eu chegava sem problemas. Fiquei de tal maneira assustado e assarapantado com a cena da loucura e da louca que sai do sótão ou lá de onde estava presa que voltei rapidamente ao Júlio Verne durante alguns anos. (Ana Sousa Dias) (Translation)

The Nation (Nigeria) announces the publication of Akogun Tola Adeniyi's new book and reminds readers of the fact that,

Adeniyi was the first to adapt Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart for stage production in 1966, James Ngugi’s Weep not child in 1967, Cyprian Ekwensi’s Iska and Brontë’s Jane Eyre in 1968. (Ozolua Uhakheme)

A quiz on famous first lines in The Times includes one by the Brontës.

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54 sings Jane Eyre in New York

An unmissable event today, February 28, in New York:

54 Sings Jane Eyre, Starring Samantha Massell
Februrary  28, 2018
Feinstein's 54 Below
Wed, Feb 28: 7:00 pm
Wed, Feb 28: 9:30 pm

From Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece, Jane Eyre tells the story of an orphaned girl, brutalized by her aunt and then sent to an orphan school for girls where she suffers more mistreatment.  There she meets a young girl who changes her life forever.  When Jane later becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall she meets a mysterious man who holds a dark secret.  Love, forgiveness and transformation are the themes in this gothic romance for the ages.
Jane Eyre was produced on Broadway in 2000, featuring a book by John Caird and music and lyrics by Paul Gordon. Nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Musical, hear the Tony-nominated score sung for the first time in New York since its premature departure sung by a dazzling cast led by Samantha Massell (Fiddler on the Roof, Rags).

Featuring:
Amisha Amy
Dana Costello (Finding Neverland)
Deirdre Donohue
Asher Dubin
Alexandra Frost
Alex Hartman
Celia Hottenstein (Desperate Measures)
Sean Konopka-White
Ethan Larsen
Kevin Massey (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder)
Paris Nesbitt
Mavis Simpson-Ernst (You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown)
Clay Singer
Ryan Speakman (Jane Eyre, 2017 workshop)
Mary Stout (Jane Eyre)

Musical direction by Cameron Moncur
Directed by Robbie Rozelle
Assistant directed by Yoni Weiss

Broadway World has further information.

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Rebecca and Jane in the year of #MeToo

We mostly disagree with John Sutherland when, in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the publication of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, he wonders whether this classic novel will 'stand up in the year of #MeToo'. From his article in The Times:

Generically Rebecca belongs in the line of romance fiction that took off with Jane Eyre. Maximilian de Winter is Edward Rochester reborn. Jane Eyre’s husband is also a first-wife killer, the evidence of Charlotte Brontë’s novel strongly suggests. He pushed, we may suspect, Bertha off the burning roof of Thornfield, which, like Manderley, is burnt to the ground as a final act of woman’s vengeance. [...]
It’s magnificent — and tantalisingly enigmatic. Who has perpetrated this act of arson? We are driven to suppose it is the woman who has haunted Manderley throughout. If Thornfield was burnt down by the madwoman in the attic, Manderley is burnt down by the corpse in the cabin. Je Reviens. But who really believes in ghosts? 

We know that John Sutherland loves a literary enigma, but we are pretty sure that Rochester didn't push Bertha to her death. Had he treated her properly before that? Not at all, but if he had wanted to get rid of her, he could have done so before and much more easily than up on the roof during a fire that's burning Thornfield to the ground.

Similarly, though, this columnist from The Troubadour Online describes reading Jane Eyre as exploring

 the recesses of an abused woman’s conscience. (Allegra Thatcher)

A columnist from Metro discusses World Book Day and the fact that it means that kids have to go to school dressed up as their favourite characters.

You see, I was quite a weird child. When other people dressed up as Hermione Granger or a member of the Sleepover Club, I insisted that I wanted to be Jane Eyre. Which meant an entire day tripping over the floor length skirt my sleep deprived mother had spent the weekend making, and answering the question ‘who are you meant to be?’ [...]
Children are way more image conscious than adults realise, and having to dress up as your favourite book often means picking a character who wears great clothes, who won’t stand out among your friends, rather than choosing one you actually love. As someone who made the fatal mistake of dressing up like characters I really liked, and then feeling stupid all day, I know exactly how that feels. (Rebecca Reid)

Another fan of Jane Eyre on Eagle Herald Extra:

These six bags were the books I could not live without: poetry books of Rumi, a vast Hemingway collection, dog-eared books full of life lessons and Post-it notes (I never write in books or fold the pages) and antiquated editions of Great Expectations and Jane Eyre. These would not be donated, but would make the trip across country to our new home in the Pacific Northwest. (Cassandra Sturos)

Anika entre libros reviews both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in Spanish. The Bubble has an essay on the links between Jane Eyre and Heart of Darkness.

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Imagination, Harry Potter and Abject Subjects

Recent Brontë scholar published papers:

Imagining Imagination in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette
Elena Violaris
Durham English Review. An Undergraduate Journal, Vol. 5, No.1, Winter 2018

‘Imagining imagination’ suggests two lines of thought: imagining the mental images of somebody else, and mentally picturing the imaginative process. The vividness of Charlotte Brontë’s imagination,from childhood fantasies of Angria to her mature novels, prompted a self-reflexivity – she was interested not just in what she could imagine, but in the act of imagining. (...)

A Comparison of Jane Eyre and the Harry Potter Books as Novels of Development
Amanda Sellers
ENGK01
Degree project in English Literature
Autumn Term 2017
Centre for Languages and Literature
Lund University
Supervisor: Cecilia Wadsö-Lecaros

Although written during different centuries, both Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter books follow the protagonist’s journeys from childhood to adulthood, which is why they are both often described as novels of development. This essay therefore aims to compare the protagonists’ development, looking at the differences and similarities which can be found when analysing them according to the pattern of the Bildungsroman. While analysing this in relation to their relationships and to their own identities it can be seen how these protagonists show similarities since they search for similar concepts: self-discovery and the establishing of a family. However, there are also differences in how they develop since they have different needs due to how society shapes them, Jane has a need to find independence, whereas a major part of Harry’s identity is to defeat evil in the form of Voldemort. 

“Mimic (Wo)man” or “Abject Subject”? Crisscrossing Glances of Postcolonial and Psychoanalytic Theories in Rhys's Wide Sargasso SeaShima Peimanfard, Fazel Asadi Amjad
Advances in Language and Literary Studies, Vol 9, No 1 (2018)

This study intends to examine the intersections of Postcolonialism and Psychoanalysis in Rhys’ literary oeuvre, Wide Sargasso Sea. In the light of Kristeva’s Abjection theory, the paper challenges Bhabha’s notions of hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence as he accentuates them as a form of resistance against White hegemony. Notwithstanding Bhabha’s arguments, the novel also indicates that the hybrid woman’s mimicry of whiteness subjects her to an ambivalent space, which not only make her incapable of distorting the master’s hegemony, it dooms her to get lost in a constant psychotic delirium and abjection.

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The haunted and haunting landscape of Yorkshire

The Independent (Ireland) questions author Jane Urquhart about her cultural life.

Book: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë was the first adult novel I read as a child. It was an ideal introduction to grown up literature in that the opening chapters dealt with a little girl who was fully misunderstood by the those in power - the adults - who cared little for her but nevertheless controlled her fate. Every child, regardless of the warmth and stability of their home life, can imagine themselves in this predicament. It was also a highly visual reading experience for me as a child as I conjured the tough, haunted and haunting landscape of Yorkshire in my imagination.

Meanjin Quarterly (Australia) has an essay by a college student discussing her experience there.

Throughout nineteenth century literature written by women, inner unrest is reflected in the dimensions of inhabited space. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar taught a Women in Literature course in the early 1970s and found that ‘Images of enclosure and escape … metaphors of physical discomfort manifested in frozen landscapes and fiery interiors’ were recurring patterns in the texts explored. Riddled with ‘fantasies with maddened doubles functioned as asocial surrogates for docile selves’, the literature firmly establishes its own tradition. A classic example is the Madwoman in the Attic of Jane Eyre. Bertha dramatically represents a lineage of women who, in a historical, male-dominated space (which can also be likened to literature itself) the woman is captive, wreaking havoc in her dark corner, until her temperament imposed by the walls ignites destruction and/or escape. Enclosure, as inflicted by a male overbalance, catalyses change.
Gilbert and Gubar observed that ‘not only did a nineteenth-century woman writer have to inhabit ancestral mansions (or cottages) owned and built by men, she was also constricted and restricted by Palaces of Art and Houses of Fiction male writers authored’. They look at how the female writer has worked, oscillating between a desire to escape and the persistence required to write. This relates to the act of writing and to the challenges of contributing to a body of literature with a male gatekeeper. (Agatha Moar)

According to Feminism in India,

There exists a Jane Eyre like angel-demon dichotomy in Urdu poetry. Either the woman is the evil beloved or she is angelic and indescribable. On one hand, there is the docile, innocent, ‘angelic’ woman with her ‘bholi surat‘ whereas, on the other hand, there is the extremely beautiful woman just waiting to trap men with their ‘kali zulfein’. (Ismat Ara)

The Telegraph reports that, 'Robin Hood's 'grave' could be bulldozed and covered in concrete'.

Max Rathwell, Chairman of Spen Valley Civic Society, said: “The whole plan is tragic and stunningly stupid. People are enraged. The whole idea is bonkers.
“We know how well preserved the land is because it is still exactly as Charlotte Brontë described it in Chapter 12 of Shirley.
“It is a treasure island in an industrial landscape and Robin Hood’s grave would be a focal point.
“If this crazy idea goes ahead it will devastate the area. Instead of woodland and meadows and fields of wheat and barley it will just be a sea of monstrous sheds.” (Victoria Ward)

It does sound like a shortsighted decision.

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Jane Eyre in Millville, Utah

The Gordon & Caird Jane Eyre musical is performed at the Ridgeline High School. Millville, UT:

"Jane Eyre" Musical @ Ridgeline
Feb. 22, 23, 24 and 26, 2018
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM

The story of an orphan girl who grows up feeling unwanted but finds a deep faith and hope in life. She is employed by the bitter and cold Mr. Rochester to serve as a governess at Thornfield, where she surprisingly finds love and a home. But a secret of the house could ruin it all ... 

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Literary Pilgrimages, Sleeping Habits and Parachutes

Via Country Living we have discovered this infographic by Hoppa on 2018 literary journeys featuring the Yorkshire Dales:

Another infographic is Valuewalk's, on the sleeping habits of famous people. Regrettably, the Emily Brontë part is quite misleading.

The Daily Mail reports a curious (albeit sad) Haworth anecdote:

By the end of the 19th Century, Britain was packed with parachuting women. One such was ‘Leaping’ Lily Cove, famous for her trademark trick of tearing off her skirt to reveal beribboned bloomers. She would then hop on to a tiny trapeze suspended beneath a balloon, ascend, and parachute back to earth.
In the summer of 1906 she was to provide the finale at the annual gala in Haworth, the Yorkshire village that had been home to the Brontës.
Seven thousand people gathered on a lovely summer evening to see her. Balanced on the swing beneath her balloon, the parachute attached to its side, Lily appeared confident as she began to soar, headed for the heavens to the sounds of an ecstatic crowd and Haworth Brass Band playing with gusto.
The drill was to wait until 700ft, then jump from the trapeze, her weight snapping the cord that attached the parachute to the balloon, and drift to earth in a performance she had perfected. Suddenly, something went catastrophically wrong. She began plunging towards a reservoir, going too fast for the parachute to open in time. To the horror of those on the ground, she came free of the parachute altogether. Cartwheeling helplessly in the air, she plunged into a field.
Her legs and skull were smashed and she died shortly after spectators reached her. It was thought she had panicked when drifting towards the reservoir – she was unable to swim – and had unthinkingly unfastened her parachute. (Sharon Wright)

The Register-Guard on royal weddings:

Some might find it puzzling why our nation, which fought a revolution to rid itself of British rule, should now be so entranced by English aristocracy. My guess is that this sentiment is rooted in our longing for fairy-tale endings, aided and abetted by timeless Shakespeare plays and our infatuation with the novels by Austen, Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and countless other skilled British authors and poets. In all of these literary and entertainment venues, the rulers of Britannia play a role to greater or lesser degrees. (Joseph Lieberman) 

The Sunday Times interviews Clio Barnard, film director of Dark River:

For Dark River, Barnard filmed in Skipton, North Yorkshire, near where she grew up, and her influences are what she remembers as a child, as well as passages of rugged Thomas Hardy and the muddiness of Cary Fukunaga’s film version of Jane Eyre. (Jonathan Dean)

A Cidade. O Jornal de Votuporanga (Brazil) reports the death of scenographer Guto Viscardi:

Ele integrava a Mundin Cia de Teatro, na qual dirigia atualmente o espetáculo Processo Brontë, inspirado na história dos irmãos Brontë, que estava previsto para ser encenado em julho. (Translation)

Elle's French readers choose the best books of February:

Le Document: "Les Soeurs Brontë" de Laura El Makki (Taillandier)
« Ce livre ne m’a pas seulement éclairée sur la vie de ces femmes, mais il m’a fait voyager dans le temps. J’ai été submergée par cette force d’exister qui en ressort. » (Cynthia Honoré)
« Quel livre ! Je l’ai dévoré en deux jours. La famille Brontë me fascine. Je ne la connaissais pas très bien. Je l’ai découverte en profondeur. » (Sandrine Blicq)
« C’est aussi l’évocation de l’Angleterre victorienne qui nous est contée. Naître fille et pauvre au XIXe siècle était un double fardeau. Sans l’écriture, que seraient-elles devenues ? » (Elisabeth Roblin) (Translation)

MaxMag (Greece) lists writers of only one novel:

Ανεμοδαρμένα Ύψη – Emily Brontë
Η Brontë το 1847 το δημοσίευσε με το ψευδώνυμο “Ellis Bell” και απέσπασε ανάμεικτες κριτικές λόγω των  χαρακτηριστικών της προσωπικότητας των ηρώων. Ωστόσο, αναγνωρίστηκε από αναγνώστες και κριτικούς η δυναμική της γραφής της και η πρωτοτυπία. Δυστυχώς, η ίδια δεν γεύτηκε τους καρπούς του κόπου της, αφού πέθανε έναν χρόνο αργότερα.

CiociaraReport24 reviews Phantom Thread:

Il Filo Nascosto rappresenta una perfetta chiusa della poetica del suo cinema nel XXI secolo: se il cineasta losangelino ci aveva raccontato della ricerca dell'amore e della pace interiore nella vita di coppia in Ubriaco d'Amore, se ci aveva spiegato la ricerca del potere e la bramosia capitalista ne Il Petroliere, se ci aveva delineato gli effetti dell'amore negato sull'anima umana (e soprattutto sulla psiche) in The Master, Il Filo Nascosto lega con precisione sartoriale (il gioco di parole era d'obbligo) tutti gli argomenti dei film precedenti, ma allo stesso tempo se ne distacca notevolmente assumendo toni da romanzo gotico (c'è un po' di Jane Eyre), da thriller hitchcockiano (c'è anche un po' di Rebecca - La prima moglie), da mèlo intrigante, seducente, sinuoso e insinuante. (Emiliana Favoloro) (Translation)

Steven A. McKay reviews an audiobook Wuthering Heights version (read by Janet Paulson).

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The Moors in Durham

Jen Silverman's The Moors is performed in Durham, NC:

The Moors
by Jen Silverman
February 22 – March 10, 2018
Directed by Jules Odendahl-James
Produced by Manbites Dog Theater

A family quarrels. A governess arrives. A servant schemes. A hen falls from the sky. A hound hunts his prey. Join us for Jen Silverman’s decidedly modern take on the Romantics’ dark and brooding landscapes. Finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

Triangle Arts Entertainment publishes a review:

Jen Silverman’s dark comedy, The Moors, previewed at Manbites Dog Theater on Thursday night to a sold-out crowd who delighted in the eyebrow-raising and irreverent trip into the bleak landscape that inspired the Emily Brontë classic, starring Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Silverman utilizes that stark setting, places very different characters into the windswept countryside, then turns the conflict between them on its ear.
The result? An excursion into the world of women, left alone to their own devices to dream and survive and to determine their place in what is, for them, a rather gloomy world. Though the story is a darkly funny one with many original lines that make you feel guilty for laughing, the show’s bright and shining moments are the result of an extremely talented ensemble led by director Jules Odendahl-James, in her last directorial assignment for the beloved institution. (...)
Jen Silverman, an award-winning playwright whose work has been performed throughout the United States, is highly considered as a playwright, as well as a novelist (with two books under contract with Random House). She uses her talent as a satirist to bring an otherworldly feel to this play that references not only the bleak landscape that the Brontës used as a backdrop for several novels, but also mentions the Brontë sisters’ brother, Branwell, as an important component of the story, yet he’s a character who never comes on stage. (Dawn Reno Langley)

IndyWeek also reviews it. 

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Jane Eyre's Layers

Westword discusses the performances of Jane/Eyre in Denver:

“We liked that Jane Eyre is an early story written in a first-person woman’s perspective,” says [Miriam] Suzanne, who wrote the adaptation. “It really follows Jane in her own words through a coming-of-age story. It’s a real mix of these tender emotional moments, bits of storytelling, and then these political asides where she talks about early feminist ideas. We found those layers interesting.”
Suzanne and [Julie] Rada also appreciate that the novel was originally published under Brontë’s androgynous pseudonym, Currer Bell.
“I think that the biggest conceptual change that people will notice is that looking back on the novel, things that at that point would’ve been read as close friendships between women — since both Julie and I are queer — read as very romantic. We decided to go with that and take that angle, even if it’s not the angle that was intended,” says Suzanne. “It’s not just a love story about Mr. Rochester anymore.”
In transforming such a prominent literary work into an intimate production, Suzanne and Rada were forced to shed a lot of the excess content, including peripheral characters and side plots. They also created an older Jane, who narrates the action, and a character representing Brontë herself. Actor Meghan Frank plays multiple characters, including Mr. Rochester and several women.
To pull off the production, Suzanne decided to incorporate one of her other artistic projects: Teacup Gorilla, a local indie-rock group that melds storytelling and poetry with music; Dameon Merkl of the Lost Walks also contributes original music to the project.
“The music allows us to be a little bit less literal," Suzanne says. "It’s not a musical, but the production is sort of interspersed with songs in a back-and-forth between theatrical scenes and scenes that are sung.”
Suzanne and Rada also had to figure out how to represent a character named Bertha, who was treated in ableist and racist ways in the novel, Suzanne says. Changing this representation was important to them, because ultimately they want to create socially positive art. (Sage Marshall)

Yorkshire Evening Post awaits eagerly the upcoming performances of the Northern Ballet Company's Jane Eyre production in Leeds:

The ultimate heroine, Jane Eyre’s journey to overcome the odds is one of literature’s finest love stories and it will be brought to the stage in Leeds thanks to Northern Ballet. Orphaned at a young age and cruelly treated by her Aunt, Jane Eyre grows up knowing little kindness but goes on to become one of the most iconic heroines in literature.
With choreography by Cathy Marston, and music played live by Northern Ballet Sinfonia, Northern Ballet’s dance actors will bring this tale of romance to life.

Colour politics in The Daily Star (Pakistan):

Moreover, the protagonist Jane fainting in a 'red' room in the classic novel Jane Eyre out of sheer fear of a ghost is a shout-out to the strong emotions associated with the colour. (Ramisa Haque)

The New York Times reviews some new DVD releases, including Pedro Costa's 1994 film Casa de Lava:

Mr. Costa, who wrote and directed the film, has said that he made it under the spell of the luridly titled Val Lewton B-movie “I Walked With a Zombie”(1943), itself inspired by the novel “Jane Eyre.” As in the Lewton film, a professional tending to a mysteriously bewitched patient is transported to a tropical island where, fascinated by the indigenous culture and colonial legacy, she strives to resolve her own sexual identity. (J. Hoberman)

Windy City Times interviews the writer John Rechy:

Owen Keehnen: Speaking of, what writers most influenced you as a novice writer?
JR: A whole range: the classic writers, Greek tragedies, modern writers, Faulkner, Lorca, Styron, Carson McCullers ( Reflections in a Golden Eye is a tight masterpiece in which every character is despicable, and I love that ), Nabokov, Brontë, Thomas Berger, Proust, Joyce, Djuna Barnes, Flannery O'Connor. So many more. But I've been influenced by movie-serials, comic books; Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Billie Holiday, Maria Ewing, Chuck Berry.

The poet Selina Tusitala Marsh describes in The Guardian her experience writing and performing a poem for Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of 53 nations for Commonwealth Day at Westminster Abbey:

Earlier, in the semi-empty abbey, I had wandered through the brass gates and up the stairs to the Henry VII Lady Chapel, sky-gazed at the pendant fan-vault ceiling – the orbis miraculum – milled round Poets’ Corner fingering Chaucer’s name (interred in 1556), tracing the Brontë sisters’ plaque, accidentally stepping on CS Lewis (it’s OK, his bones aren’t there). I needed to exit for a quick slice of sun after hours of being inside this most magnificent mausoleum of princes and poets. I remembered the passageway to the cloisters.

A press release from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Arts Council England, and Michael Ellis MP alerts of the possible exit from the UK of John Martin's painting The Destruction of the Pharaoh's Host:

Martin’s mezzotints of Biblical subjects, such as The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host published in 1833, were hugely popular and influential with admirers including Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters who grew up with them on the walls of their father’s parsonage.

The Riverside Dickens Festival events at The Press-Enterprise:

Performers fill the streets and buildings to portray famous authors and other personalities, including Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens himself. Guests can have serious discussions with them, or simply take a photo or two. (Deanna Gomez)

The readers of Eastern Daily Press recommend books for World Book Day 2018:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
As a teenager I was bewitched by the love story between Jane and the brooding, troubled Rochester. The whole story was tomb-dark lit only by the flickering flames of the fire that engulfed them and all that passion glowing in the embers! (Liz Coates, Great Yarmouth)

The Huffington Post (in French) reviews the Québec performances of Hurlevents:

Hurlevents, la dernière création de Fanny Britt, porte bien son nom, et ce, au-delà du jeu de mots tiré du titre du roman dont elle est inspirée : « Les Hauts de Hurle-vent ». J'en suis sortie complètement étourdie, car fouettée d'un tourbillon de thèmes controversés dont souffre notre société. Et peut-être là mon seul reproche sur cette écriture brillante et modeste. (Marie-Claude Plourde) (Translation)

Tips (Austria) is excited about the upcoming performances in Gmunden of Jane Eyre. The Musical:

In seinem vierten Jahr zeigt der Musical Frühling in Gmunden die deutschsprachige Erstaufführung des Broadway-Musicals Jane Eyre, nach dem gleichnamigen und mehrmals verfilmten Roman von Charlotte Brontë. (...)
Elisabeth Sikora spielt die Titelheldin: „Jane Eyre ist eine der schönsten Rollen der Musical-Literatur. Eine spannende Figur, eine starke Frau, die für Freiheit und Selbstbestimmung kämpft. Dazu diese wunderbare Musik – es ist jede einzelne Nummer so schön!“ Yngve Gasoy-Romdal, der den geheimnisvollen Mr. Rochester mimt, freut sich schon auf die Produktion: „Eine tolle Geschichte und tolles Team, Markus Olzinger und natürlich Caspar Richter, mein alter Dirigent vom Musical Mozart in Wien. Ich freue mich auf Österreich!“ (Daniela Toth) (Translation)

Le Devoir (in French) talks about the writer François Blais:

François Blais se souvient d’avoir longtemps potassé la bibliothèque familiale de son père prof de français et de sa mère infirmière, une collection « assez fuckée », qui abritait à la fois de la science-fiction, des Agatha Christie, du Boris Vian et du Réjean Ducharme. Une absence de hiérarchisation entre culture savante et populaire trouvant son miroir dans les émois culturels désordonnés de ses personnages, lecteurs des soeurs Brontë et de Stephen King, amateurs de cinéma d’auteur et de jeux vidéo débiles, sur qui le poids de l’actualité littéraire ou des « livres-qu’il-faut-absolument-avoir-lus » n’a aucune emprise. (Dominic Tardif) (Translation)

Libreriamo (in Italian) lists books to read if you are in love with someone already engaged:

Un libro che racconti un amore travagliato come quelli di Heathcliff e Catherine in Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë è il suggerimento di Emanuela Isola. (Translation)

Maybe the above-mentioned someone should have read this Actitud Fem (in Spanish) list of books you should read before you marry:

Cumbres Borrascosas - Emily Brontë
Una historia de amor que sufre los peligros de la mente humana, el amor, la locura, la venganza, el odio y la frustración.
Heathcliff llega a las Cumbres Borrascosas para desatar una serie de emociones que se van revelando a través de una historia de amor. (Translation)

Finding Wuthering Heights on both lists is a bit confusing.

Levante News (Italy) presents a curious theatre production: La radio racconta at the Sori Teatro:

Martedì 27 febbraio, alle ore 21.00 al Teatro comunale di Sori, “La radio racconta”. Anteprima nazionale.
Di e con Gian Luca Favetto e Marino Sinibaldi
Produzione Teatro Pubblico Ligure (...)
Dal palcoscenico i due protagonisti della serata sveleranno i segreti nel lavoro di autori, conduttori, tecnici e registi, ripercorrendo la nascita di alcuni programmi culto del canale Rai, di cui si ascolteranno sigle e voci, divenute negli anni veri e propri marchi di fabbrica evocativi di un tema: il cinema per Hollywood Party, i libri per Fahrenheit (inventata da Sinibaldi), l’attualità per Tutta la città ne parla, la lirica per La Barcaccia, la storia delle religioni con Uomini e profeti, il teatro con Piazza Verdi proseguendo con Radio3 Scienza, Radio Tre Suite, le splendide letture ad alta voce (in questo periodo Anna Maria Guarnieri legge Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë). (Translation)

The rise of bibliomemoirs in Financial Times including Samantha Ellis’s Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life. Country Living lists positive quotes about life including one by Charlotte Brontë. Englishable talks about the 'romance' in Wuthering Heights.

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We Are Brontë in Salisbury

After some performances in Cornwall (Hall for Gwinear and at the Grampound Community Hall), Publick Tranport's humour piece We Are Brontë is touring again across the UK. Today, February 24 is Salisbury's turn:

We Are Brontë
Salisbury Playhouse
Theatre Fest West 2018
A Publick Transport Production in The Salberg
Saturday 24 February at 2.45pm & 7.45pm

Morecambe and Wise meet David Lynch in this madcap reimagining of the Brontë myth, presented in Publick Transport’s playful and irreverent style. Taking the real and fictitious worlds of Yorkshire’s literary siblings as their inspiration, two performers combine rigorous physical theatre with anarchic comedy to deconstruct not only gothic themes of love, madness and revenge but also themselves.

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Emma Donoghue developing an adaptation of Villette

According to Screen Daily,

eOne [...] is also developing an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette with Room author and screenwriter Emma Donoghue. (Manori Ravindran)

It's a 5 x 60mins TV Drama Mini-Series, according to one of the co-producers, Adorable Media.

Wouldn't that be great?

The West Georgian features a recent local event:

Novelist Patricia Parks read from her debut novel Re Jane last week in Kathy Cashen auditorium in the Humanities building at UWG. The novel is a retelling of the classic novel Jane Eyre, retold from the point of view of a Korean-American girl named Jane Re. The reading was a good opportunity for students to not only hear from a professional, but to also learn about her creative process as well.
        “The novel took me about seven years to write,” said Parks. “Jane Eyre is such an upset from these conventionally beautiful heroines. She is scrappy and she is an underdog. You can’t help but root for her. She was a character that really stuck with me, and as it developed from a prose poem into a novel, I couldn’t help but wonder how she would fit into the modern world that I knew.” [...]
Her next project features a character in her novel.
        “He’s a secret favorite character of mine,” said Parks. “All he’s doing in Re Jane is wiping some WD-40 on a door in the same store Jane works at, but my next novel is all about him. The character’s name is Juan Kim and he’s part of this community of Koreans in Buenos Aires, Argentina who falls in love with jazz piano. It’s all set in the backdrop of the time of the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina and eventually moves to New York. I’m fascinated by these groups of minorities within minorities, so that’s been an interesting project to research and write.”
         The reading saw a turnout of about 40 students who all engaged heavily in asking Parks questions after her reading about her process of writing this novel. [...]
 Parks originally came up with the idea of a retelling of Jane Eyre when she used a writing exercise to lean on a classic. After writing scenes of her novel multiple times, using the story as an opportunity for a retelling was a success.
        “No one teaches you how to write a novel,” said Parks. “Everyone writes differently. I thought as an exercise to lean on a classic, and that was Jane Eyre. I just never removed that scaffolding of the original text.”
        A reception at Underground Books on the square followed the reading, allowing students even more valuable time with the author. Refreshments at the reception and students were happy and grateful that Parks was able to come share her work and her insight with them. (Kristian Flinn)

The New York Times' By the Book features author and illustrator Brian Selznick.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously? Morning or night? I usually read books that are actually in the form of books, with paper, covers and binding. I like the weight of the book in my hands and I prefer the experience of actually turning pages. I like the smell of books as well. I usually have two books that I am reading simultaneously. One is normally a paperback that fits into the back of my pants and is easy to travel with when I’m heading out. The other is often a hardcover and it stays at home waiting for me by my bed. That said, I do love audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks while I’m drawing. For example, I’ve listened to books by St. Augustine, Oliver Sacks, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Patti Smith and Carrie Fisher.

El País (Spain) interviews writer Alejandro Palomas about his stay in Tromsø  (Norway).

¿Cuáles son los colores del Ártico? Aparte de los colores brillantes de las casas, el resto del paisaje y también el cielo es muy hermanas Brontë: todo grisáceo, azulado. Solo había una especie de tundra, nada de árboles altos. Para mí era una combinación perfecta: ballenas y el universo de las hermanas Brontë en un mismo lugar. (Mercedes Cebrián) (Translation)

Más de arte (Spain) lists several books which, if you read before you're 15, will turn you into an adult who reads. One of these magical books is Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
No lo decimos (solo) porque podamos entenderla como una novela tan decimonónica como feminista, sino por el talento de Brontë a la hora de novelar, probablemente, su propia vida tras quedar en la infancia huérfana de madre, y de adoptar, no solo miradas, sino formas de contar de una enorme modernidad hablando de la educación en la infancia y del amor. (Translation)

The Guardian discusses pregnancy in literature:

It is taken for granted that birth is attendant on marriage, and so stories stop at the altar. Nothing interesting can come of us afterwards, unless it is as a coda to another’s story: Jane Eyre persists so far as the birth of her first son, only so we might be reassured by the detail that Edward Rochester’s eyesight has returned. (Jessie Greengrass)

Emily Brontë's treatment of Cathy's pregnancy in Wuthering Heights would have added to the article.

Last December, The New York Times also challenged teenagers 'to connect something you’re studying in school with the world today' and so

Certain issues in the news also appeared in all kinds of contexts. The #MeToo movement reminded students of literature like “Jane Eyre” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but one student also thought Newton’s first two laws of motion applied, while another saw an analogy to the rock cycle in geology. [...]
Honorable Mentions [...]
Laura Liao, 14, West Windsor Plainsboro High School North: “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë and “At the Golden Globes, Stars and Their Activist Guests Talk About Why They Fight” (Katherine Schulten)

Antiques Trade Gazette comments on the export bar issued by the British government of a watercolour by John Martin and recalls the fact that,

Martin’s mezzotints of Biblical subjects, such as The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host published in 1833, were hugely popular and influential with admirers including Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters. (Laura Chesters)

The Guardian reviews the new TV show Young Sheldon.

Yes, it is a prequel – like Better Call Saul or The Wide Sargasso Sea, although you might argue that it is born of less pedigree stock. (Sam Wollaston)

Nerdist would like to see Andrea Arnold direct Batgirl.

We adore Arnold’s singular vision, and she already has one of our favorite literary adaptations under her belt with her brutalist version Wuthering Heights. (Rosie Knight)

Literary Leisha posts about Jane Eyre.

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Jane/Eyre in Denver. You on the Moors Now in Puget Sound

Several alerts for today, February 23:

At the Puget Sound University, WA:

You On The Moors Now
by Jaclyn Backhaus
directed by Prof. Jess K Smith

Performance dates:
Feb. 23 - 24, 2018, Mar. 1 - 2, 7:30 p.m.
Mar. 3, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Norton Clapp Theatre, Jones Hall

Suburban Times adds:

The play, performed by University of Puget Sound theatre arts students, opens with the heroines from Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre running from their marriage proposals. The men don’t take rejection well and respond by waging a war—the “Moors War.”
Through ridiculous wordplay, hilarious banter, and heightened stakes, playwright Jaclyn Backhaus navigates a playful contention with the gender norms of the 19th century.
“Thisultimately moving and inventive play ends in beautiful prose, like a chapter from the books where these women originated—asking us all to reconsider how we love, how we grieve, and maybe, just maybe, if female friendships can be enough,” says director Jess K Smith, assistant professor of theatre arts at Puget Sound.

In Denver, CO:

Grapefruit Lab presents
Jane/Eyre
Author/musician, Miriam Suzanne
Director Julie Rada
Original music by Teacup Gorilla and Dameon Merkl

Feb 23, 2018 – Mar 3, 2018 The Bakery

Songs and stories from Jane Eyre: a queer adaptation of the classic novel.

This is not for persons who hold solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of literature or theater: but we are not here to flatter egotism, or prop up humbug; we are merely telling the story. We value what is good in books; but we believe in the existence of other, and more vivid kinds of goodness. It is narrow-minded to say that we ought to confine ourselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

InFocus interviews Miriam Suzanne:

Eden Lane: What was is about Jane Eyre that inspired you to create this as your first full-length show?
MS: Julie has loved Jane Eyre since she read it in school. When she proposed it as one of several options, Miriam had to do some research to get caught up – and fell in love quickly. (Julie Rada clarified: “I didn’t read it in high school. I read it a few years ago for fun.”)
We were excited by the first-person, internal perspective of a woman growing up – a format that jumps quickly between exposition, private emotional ruminations, and cutting political statements. This is complex woman, trying to find independence in a world that won’t allow it. She’s acutely aware of power, privilege, and class in every moment – and willing to step outside the story to address it.
Meanwhile, she’s just a kid growing up: falling in love, experiencing heart-break for the first time, and pondering death, religion, and forgiveness. She’s in the action, and also looking back on it. This wild mix of personal and political, action and reflection, is how life feels to me – and I find that interesting to explore. We highlight it in production by having two Jane’s on-stage, passing the story between very personal moments, and outside commentary or narration. Lindsey Pierce plays in the action, with Miriam commenting as she provides underscore with the band.
For the second edition of the novel, Charlotte Brontë (as Currer Bell) writes a scathing preface – a defense of her character against pious critique – and then suddenly wanders off into a tangent about her favorite author: William Thackeray. The books has an attitude, and an agenda, in addition to an interesting character. We love the tangents as well as the layered authorship – Brontë writing as Bell, who writes as Jane, narrating from 10-20 years in the future. So we put Brontë on stage as well, played by Julie – sometimes defending her work, and sometimes commenting on it from a more contemporary perspective.

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Writing the Brontës and Brontë Treasures at the Parsonage. Jane Eyre in Cincinnati

More alerts for today, February 23:

Jane Eyre
by Polly Teale
Adapted from the novel by Charlotte Brontë
Student Direcors:
Audrey Button, Delaney O’Toole

Friday, February 23 at 7:00 pm
Saturday, February 24 at 7:00 pm
Sunday, February 25 at 2:00 pm
Anderson Theatre, Anderson High School, Cincinnati, OH

Join Anderson Theatre for a winter classic. As a child in 1800’s England, the orphaned Jane Eyre is forced by the era’s harsh rules concerning feminine freedom to lock away her natural high spirits and intelligence. She survives into womanhood, and is hired as a governess by the mysterious Mr. Rochester. There, her vitality reawakens at the same time as dark secrets in the attic challenge her search for happiness. With her play adaptation of this literary classic by Charlotte Bronte, Polly Teal strives “to make visible what is hidden, to give form to the world of imagination, emotion and memory, to go beyond the surface of everyday life.” The bold and theatrically inventive play premiered in 1997 and, and has been called “One of the finest and most searching stage adaptations of a great novel ever seen."

Behind the Curtain Cincinnati has further information:

“We always want our shows to be relevant to the students lives,” says Anderson Theatre Director Hannah Linser-Wilder, “and I chose ‘Jane Eyre’ because it speaks to issues of female empowerment that we are still dealing with today.” Anderson Theatre’s Winter Play, “Jane Eyre,” opens on February 23 and runs through the 25th. Incorporating dance and shadow-box lighting techniques, it ties the original story to the current day.

And in the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

Parsonage Unwrapped: Writing the Brontës
Exclusive evening event
February 23rd 2018 07:30pm

Since the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë in 1857, countless biographers have researched, detailed and (on occasion) embellished the lives of the Brontë family. Join Principal Curator Ann Dinsdale for an evening considering Gaskell, Leyland, du Maurier, Gérin and Barker and how their perspectives have shaped our understanding of Haworth’s most famous family.

Brontë Treasures
The ultimate Brontë experience
February 23rd 2018 02:00pm

The Brontë Parsonage is home to the world's largest collection of Brontë artefacts, manuscripts and personal belongings. During 2017 we are offering a unique opportunity to go beyond the security cord into the Parsonage Library for a close-up viewing of some of the items not on display. During these special hour-long sessions, a member of our curatorial team will share facts and stories about a number of carefully-selected objects, offering a specialist insight into the lives and work of this inspirational family. Fascinating and moving in equal measures, Brontë Treasures is a not-to-be-missed experience.

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'I was bowled over by the fact that a small, plain, poor girl could be an amazing heroine'

Latrobe Valley Express features a Theatre Studies student who did a monologue based on Jane Eyre.

The day after moving to Ballarat to begin an acting degree, Kurnai College graduate Chantal Patton wowed audiences at the Beyond the Classroom exhibition opening night with her year 12 theatre studies piece, a monologue adapted from the novel Jane Eyre.
The annual exhibition showcases the 2017 VCE works of local students.
"My monologue is from Jane Eyre, but it is a play version created in London," Ms Patton said.
"[The theatre company] didn't have a script to begin with, so it cast the company ... and they picked the parts of the novel they liked and thought were really important and turned that into the script.
"There are three parts to the monologue and it is pretty high tension and [has] high emotion.
"There is a lot of inner conflict which has been really interesting for me to portray and do the research behind it, to get into the whole character." (Heidi Kraak)

Gulf News features author Jacqueline Wilson.

A book that changed me… was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I first read it when I was 10 or 11 and I was bowled over by the fact that a small, plain, poor girl could be an amazing heroine. (Suparna Dutt-D’Cunha)

The Bookseller tells about the new work by Caryl Phillips, author of the Wuthering Heights-inspired novel The Lost Child.

Vintage has acquired a "beautiful, heart-breaking" novel about the life of Jean Rhys by Booker-shortlisted novelist Caryl Phillips. [...]
Publishing on 21st June, A View of the Empire at Sunset begins as Rhys – not yet famous as the author of Wide Sargasso Sea – is presented with an unexpected opportunity to return to the island of her childhood. Rhys lived in the Caribbean for 16 years before going to England. But in the novel, while far from "the lonely nights and failed dreams of England", a visit home to Dominica compels her to reflect on the events of her past and on what they may mean for her future.
In this way, the book will explore Rhys' "tempestuous" life: her schooldays in Edwardian England, her training as an actress, her life in Paris in the 1920s, and her return to London. According to Vintage, readers will see Rhys "battling to find her place in the world and bracing herself for the end of her marriage", branding it a novel "of the complexities of family, the nature of alienation and exile, and ultimately a story of courage and hope". (Katherine Cowdrey)

Il Libraio (Italy) interviews writers Laura Martinetti and Manuela Perugini.

Da lettrici, quali sono le vostre passioni? Laura: “Quando avevo undici anni mia madre mi diede un’edizione della sua infanzia di Jane Eyre. Ne rimasi ammaliata. Da quel momento non ho più abbandonato la lettura. (Translation)

News Whistle has a Q&A with English Professor Devoney Looser, author of the book The Making of Jane Austen.

So many people claim Jane Austen and interpret Jane Austen, and as you point out in your book, this isn’t anything new.  I discovered the novels on my own as a teenager, thanks to one of my aunts who gave my sister a collection of all the books in one volume (I stole it from her), and just uncritically enjoyed the stories and the fine writing.  When I was an English major in college, I studied Jane Austen as an satirist, reading Pride and Prejudice alongside the novels of Evelyn Waugh and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (the Penguin abridged version).  I still love the stories and the intelligent writing and I appreciate the wit and all of the subtle irony.  (And I find myself a little annoyed when people “Brontë-fy” Austen…I appreciate the Brontë sisters, too, but they had a very different sensibility.)  So, what (or who) is your Jane Austen?  What camp do you fall into?  What adaptions or interpretations speak to you? My Austen is definitely the satirical, feminist social critic Austen. I know that not everyone reads her that way. In order to read her that way, you have to say that the most important thing is *not* their ending in fairy tale marriages. You have to say that there is a lot more going on than that. A happy-marriage ending is what a comedy does. It’s not the be-all, end-all of her fiction, which also explores dissatisfying marriages, economic struggles, family conflict, dependence and independence, and how to live a meaningful life in a world that is often deeply unfair. But the novels do it with laughs, everything from light humor to dark satire, and without hitting you over the head with a one-size-fits all moral lesson. That’s my Austen.
I think some adaptations showcase that Austen better than others. My favorite adaptations are Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995), the BBC Pride and Prejudice (1995), and Clueless (1996). You might notice that all of those came out when I was a lot younger. I don’t think it’s an accident that adaptations of Austen that we see at a particular age or stage in our lives imprint themselves on us differently. Like you, I can’t embrace the Joe Wright Pride and Prejudice (2005), because it’s just too Brontë-ized. I’m worried about this new one that’s being done by the Poldark team for the same reason. I hope they don’t out-Wright Wright. (Laura LaVelle)

Independent reviews the film Dark River:

[Director Clio] Barnard’s narrative style is elliptical and mysterious. The sun rarely shines. Nonetheless, the film has an impressive intensity. Although it is set in the present day, it evokes memories of some of the bleaker Thomas Hardy adaptations or even of Wuthering Heights. (Geoffrey Macnab)

While Manga Forever (Italy) reviews the film Phantom Thread.

Il Filo Nascosto rappresenta una perfetta chiusa della poetica del suo cinema nel XXI secolo: se il cineasta losangelino ci aveva raccontato della ricerca dell’amore e della pace interiore nella vita di coppia in Ubriaco d’Amore, se ci aveva spiegato la ricerca del potere e la bramosia capitalista ne Il Petroliere, se ci aveva delineato gli effetti dell’amore negato sull’anima umana (e soprattutto sulla psiche) in The Master, Il Filo Nascosto lega con precisione sartoriale (il gioco di parole era d’obbligo) tutti gli argomenti dei film precedenti, ma allo stesso tempo se ne distacca notevolmente assumendo toni da romanzo gotico (c’è un po’ di Jane Eyre), da thriller hitchcockiano (c’è anche un po’ di Rebecca – La prima moglie), da mèlo intrigante, seducente, sinuoso e insinuante. (Matteo Regoli) (Translation)

Finally, on YouTube, Brontë Society Young Ambassador Lucy Powrie talks about what Emily means to her and about this year's exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Making Thunder Roar.

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I Hate Everybody

Another recent scholar contribution to Brontë studies:

Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature
Invalid Lives
by Alex Tankard
Palgrave MacMillan, 2018
ISBN: 978-3-319-71445-5
Literary Disability Studios

Contains the chapter:

'I Hate Everybody!’: The Unnatural Consumptive in Wuthering Heights (1847)

In a novel of 1847, one might expect piety and sentimentality—the moral lessons of suffering and sympathy—to dominate, but the narrative structure of Wuthering Heights ensures that the sentiments being expressed always belong to a wide array of narrating characters with varying emotional responses to the consumptive, ranging from pity to revulsion to outright abuse, without privileging any one. I still remember the physical tug of horror I felt, probably 20 years ago, when I first read Heathcliff’s response to young Catherine begging for help to nurse a dying consumptive: ‘None here care what becomes of him; if you do, act the nurse; if you do not, lock him up and leave him!’ (II. XVI, p. 259) I had never imagined a Victorian novel in which an invalid might be locked up to die alone—in which the sacred sickbed scene could be violated so callously (I had not yet read Jude the Obscure).

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Heathcliff and Hermione

Newsday interviews writer and professor André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name).

You’ve said in interviews that you read no contemporary fiction. Why? I like the classics. I’d much rather reread a book that was formative for me. Like now, I’m rereading Proust for the umpteenth time. I reread “Jane Eyre” a few months ago. I’m looking for something ancient, archaic or obsolete. (Tim Murphy)

Entertainment Weekly interviews writer Heather Webb, who is about to publish her novel The Phantom’s Apprentice, inspired by Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

WEBB: [...] I also really like the 2011 version of Jane Eyre with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, as well as Great Expectations with Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke. (David Canfield)

Meanwhile, The Boar imagines several 'First Dates in the World of Books', including one between Heathcliff and... Hermione Granger from Harry Potter.

An unlikely pairing sits not too far away from Jay and Daisy in the form of Heathcliff and Hermione. Heathcliff does not know why he is there; Catherine has just married Edgar Linton, and his heart is broken. But, he has a plan. Hermione asks him all sorts of things – what he thinks about the University and Colleges Union strike, and other grand political ideas he knows nothing about. She even tries to lighten the mood with a question on how he feels now Jin’s has announced it won’t be closing. The response to every question is a grunt. He is too wrapped up in his emotions regarding Catherine Earnshaw’s marriage to Edgar Linton – how is he supposed to have room to care about a café closing?
‘Tell me about your school,’ he requests, tearing the conversation away from himself and directing it in the way of his revenge plans. Hermione instantly begins talking about Hogwarts and her adventures with Harry and Ron. Heathcliff shows a particular interest in her magical ability, and how he can use it to execute his revenge plan. Level-headed as ever, Hermione refuses and uses her time-turner necklace to disappear from the sea of dates in the restaurant. (Georgia Simcox)

Echo News features the life and work of social reformer Reverend Benjamin Waugh who, among many other things, set up the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in Great Britain. But also,

Waugh and his wife Sarah Elizabeth had 12 children including a daughter, Edna, who would become a notable watercolour artist and draughtsman and most famous for providing the illustrations to Emily Brontë’s blockbuster novel Wuthering Heights. (Emma Palmer)

We are somewhat baffled by this demand by an English philologist in Cuba, as reported by Vanguardia.

«En las últimas ferias me he ido con las manos vacías. Un spot de este año mostró que se venderán en la feria Papa Goriot y Cumbres borrascosas, una vez más. ¿Quién no se ha leído esos dos libros en Cuba? ¿Por qué no se imprime otra obra de Balzac o de Emily Brontë?», refuta Alejandro, joven filólogo, y añade un sinfín de cuestionamientos.(Yinet Jiménez Hernández) (Translation)

We are also rather indignant about it, to be honest ;)

Sandra Danby has romance writer Julie Stock tell about her 'porridge and cream' read, which is Jane Eyre. Lisabeth Westwood posts about a trip to Haworth. Lots of pictures of the visit of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall to Haworth and the Brontë Parsonage Museum can be seen on the Brontë Parsonage Museum Facebook page.

Finally, an alert from Ascoli Piceno (Italy):

February 21, 17:00
"Biblioteca Creativa 2018" alla Biblioteca Comunale Gabrielli di Ascoli Piceno.
Il libro ottocentesco "Cime tempestose", romanzo d'amore per antonomasia, sarà al centro della lezione spettacolo che vedrà protagonisti Cesare Catà nel ruolo di Hitcliff e Pamela Olivieri in quello di Catherine.
“In questo romanzo – spiega Catà - terrore e meraviglia si mescolano a dialoghi struggenti, si indagano le parti più nascoste, terribili e trascinanti dell'animo umano, che hanno da sempre affascinato generazioni di lettori. Cogliamo l’occasione per ringraziare l’Amministrazione Comunale per la fiducia e il pubblico che continua a seguirci sempre più numeroso”. (Informazione.tv)

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Emily Brontë. Complete poetry in Spanish

The complete poetry of Emily Brontë has been translated into Spanish in this brand new publication:

Emily Brontë. Poesía completaTranslation: Xandru Fernández
Alba Editorial
ISBN: 97884-90653852

La vida entera de Emily Brontë está recorrida por una misma pasión: la poesía. Estos poemas, compuestos en complicidad con sus célebres hermanas, Charlotte y Anne, comparten y amplían algunos de los temas centrales de su famosísima novela Cumbres Borrascosas: el amor que se sobrepone a la muerte y a la esperanza, el poder de la fantasía, la lealtad y la traición, las energías que solo se desprenden en soledad… y están escritos con la misma fuerza visionaria que sobrecoge en sus mejores páginas narrativas.
Para situar la acción de sus poemas, Emily Brontë levantó con la imaginación un espacio mítico que bautizó como Gondal: una isla situada al norte del Pacífico. Sus versos exploran las costumbres, las rivalidades políticas con los reinos vecinos y las intrigas entre la familia real de Gondal y sus nobles, bajo los que se transparentan sus propios anhelos y opresiones como mujer que vive casi aislada en un rincón de la Inglaterra del XIX.
Brontë combina en estos poemas un ojo sereno y exacto para la descripción de los paisajes con una inaudita fuerza para explorar de manera minuciosa las pasiones ocultas que mueven a los seres humanos, añadiendo un acento femenino a las posibilidades descubiertas por los poetas románticos ingleses.

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Misreading Heathcliff

BBC Radio 4's Front Row asked for your favourite female-created works of art:

Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush
Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights inspired 18-year-old Bush to write this song, which she fought to convince producers to use as her debut single. Turns out she was right, as the track catapulted her to fame and is now ranked as one of the top singles of all time. 

IAI wonders why we fall in love with fictional characters:

No more do readers typically offer monogamy; if Emily Brontë's Catherine Earnshaw is one soulmate, Bulgakov’s Margarita may be another, and no exclusivity is offered or required. (...)
Let us consider an inverse case: female attraction to a dangerous male for his dangerous qualities, alongside fictionalisation of him as safe. It seems likely that generations of heterosexual female readers of Wuthering Heights have felt at least a degree of attraction to Heathcliff; and, since he is fictional, they have remained safe from physical and emotional harm. But in life this would not be so, and to read the novel in this spirit is, it is implied, a misreading. Brontë seems to have written Isabella’s plot with respect to such a possibility. When Isabella falls in love and lust with Heathcliff, Catherine feels compelled to tell her: ‘It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head.  Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior!  He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.’ So he proves, in his elopement shortly afterwards with Isabella, who hardly outlives the relationship. She is Brontë’s warning to the fictionalising reader: ‘It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head.’
This has not stopped certain kinds of couples since 1847 from modelling themselves on Catherine and Heathcliff. Of these the most famous are Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. On their return to England from America in 1956, they immediately visited Top Withens, the Yorkshire ruin thought to be the model for the eponymous house. Both subsequently wrote poems entitled ‘Wuthering Heights’, and Ted’s compared Sylvia to Emily Brontë herself. I might add that four decades later, when I was studying at Cambridge, two of my fellow undergraduates – the female partner American, the male partner English,  and both poets – were highly conscious of the antecedence in Cambridge of Plath and Hughes, and, through and beyond them, of Catherine and Heathcliff. (Catherine Brown)

Westword interviews Miriam Suzanne on the upcoming Jane/Eyre premiere in Denver:

Susan Froyd: What’s on your agenda in the coming year?
Miriam Suzanne: We’re currently in rehearsal for a (somewhat queer) stage adaptation of Jane Eyre. It’s a collaboration between my new theater company, Grapefruit Lab, my band and a few others. That has all my attention until it opens on February 23.
After that, the band will be recording a new EP, and Grapefruit Lab will start talking about a fall show. Life is never boring!

myNews LA describes what the visitor could find at the Riverside Dickens Festival:

The festival formally begins at 9:45 a.m. Saturday at the flag pole adjacent to Ninth and Main streets, in front of City Hall, where visitors will encounter actors representing Dickens, Queen Victoria, Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Edison, Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — to name a few. (Ken Stone)

Variety reviews the new TV remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock:

[Natalie] Dormer added that the casting was actually accurate for the time, pointing to such literary characters as Jane Eyre and Blanche DuBois. “A woman was a spinster if she wasn’t married by the time she was in her late 20s.” (Ed Meza)

The Independent quotes film director Clio Barnard (Dark River) as saying:

I’d seen the Brazilian cinematographer Adriano Goldman’s Jane Eyre [he also shot Dark River], and that was a representation of the Yorkshire countryside that wasn’t picturesque in a cosy way. I wanted the film to look at what it really is. (Nick Hasted)

BookRiot lists young adult biographical fiction:

The World Within: A Novel of Emily Brontë by Jane Eagland
Spanning several years of Emily Brontë’s life, The World Within depicts Emily’s life with her siblings (Charlotte, Bran, and Anne), her father, and her aunt. Surrounded by death, Emily grieves constantly and aches to hold onto the writing games she plays with her siblings. However, her siblings have agendas for their own lives to follow, some of which includes sustaining the family. As Emily copes and endures trying real-life events, she grows as a young woman and a writer. Moments from her (fictionalized) real life will sparkle as readers recognize details from her famed Wuthering Heights. (Abby Hargreaves)

herinterest gives you tips when 'i love you' is not enough:

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”
It was Charlotte Brontë who said those words, in Jane Eyre. One of my favourite things to do is look deeply into your eyes, often revealing many of the things that you can’t or choose not to say. (Kimberley)

Diario Córdoba (in Spanish) talks about a recent Wuthering Heights lecture:

Bajo el título de Conversaciones enamoradas en torno a Cumbres borrascosas se ha desarrollado una interesante actividad en la Biblioteca Provincial de Córdoba, donde hemos analizado en profundidad dicha novela. Al frente, dirigiendo, ha estado la profesora María Valero Redondo. Está considerada como novela gótica de finales del siglo XVlll y es la tórrida, tormentosa y apasionada historia de amor entre Catherine y Heathcliff, lo que lleva a los protagonistas en ocasiones a colocarlos en el desdibujado y turbulento límite del abismo. En su momento hubo críticos que lo denominaron como un texto vulgar, repulsivo, morboso, etc. Dentro del contexto queda clara la relevancia de la metáfora. De este libro se han realizado varias y diferentes versiones cinematográficas en diferentes países. Alguna extracta y elimina parte del texto original. (Read more) (Pilar Redondo) (Translation)

Arab News recommends a visit to Yorkshire, PopMatters mentions the 'anachronistic' appearance of Emily Brontë in Jean Luc Godard's 1968 film Weekend.

Le Huffington Post (in French) interviews an expert of the work of John Irving:

Les libraires de Bookwitty: Comment expliquez-vous l'immense popularité de John Irving?
Karine Placquet-Wiltord: C'est un écrivain à la fois très traditionnel et atypique, et je crois que les gens sont assez sensibles à cette tension, que l'on retrouve aussi dans ses livres. Il a des accents très réalistes, des tonalités qui rappellent Charles Dickens ou Charlotte Brontë. (Translation)

Sveriges Radio and Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish) reviews The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry:

Mot slutet av romanen skriver Cora i ett brev att hon läser böcker av "Brontë och Hardy, Dante och Keats, Henry James och Conan Doyle". Utan tvekan har författaren Sarah Perry själv läst dem. Väldigt mycket. För stundtals känns det som om Emily Brontë skrivit ännu en bok som utspelar sig i dimman på de engelska hedarna. (Lina Kalmteg) (Translation)

Kärnpunkten i ”Ormen i Essex” är närheten mellan Cora och Will. Det skulle kunna vara en viktoriansk roman, en Charlotte Brontë, fast med betydligt mer humor och sälta. (Lotta Olsson) (Translation)

El Punt Avui (in Catalan) reviews the performances of Frankenstein in Barcelona:

[Carme] Portaceli va arribar a Shelley a la vegada que amb Jane Eyre, de qui també va fer una adaptació al Lliure de Gràcia, amb molta sensibilitat. Però si a Eyre el discurs rebel és la bandera, a Frankenstein Shelley desapareix. absolutament. (Jordi Bordes) (Translation)

According to Diario Motor (in Spanish):

Hethel es el idílico pueblo de la campiña inglesa donde Lotus tiene su sede. Es un sitio que perfectamente habría sido el emplazamiento evocado por Emily Brontë para su mítica novela “Wuthering Heights”, “Cumbres Borrascosas” en su traducción al castellano. (Sergio Álvarez) (Translation)

SyFantasy (in French) reviews Melmoth the Wanderer by Anne Radcliffe:

Dans les romans gothiques, il est d'usage de voir l'héroïne poursuivie par unvillain ténébreux, puis de la voir épouser le jeune premier. Ou alors, comme Jane Eyre, de provoquer la rédemption de celui qu'elle aime. Point de tout cela dans Melmoth ou l'Homme errant ! Immalie aime Melmoth tel qu'il est. Pourtant, celui-ci fait clairement comprendre à la jeune fille (parfois de façon très amère et dure) qu'il est ce qu'il est, qu'il ne peut pas changer, et que leur relation est vouée à l'échec. Pour savoir comment tout ça finit, il vous faudra lire le roman... (Adeline Arénas) (Translation)

The Brussels Brontë Blog continues mapping the Brontës' Brussels: now Mary and Martha Taylor.

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