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Friday, April 20, 2018

Friday, April 20, 2018 11:13 am by Cristina in , , , ,    No comments
The Telegraph (India) has an article on Charlotte Brontë's artwork.
Not many people know that under different circumstances, Charlotte Brontë - whose 202nd birth anniversary is tomorrow - might have gone down in history as an artist. As a 12-year-old, the first ambition of the author of Jane Eyre was to be a professional miniature painter. For her, art was not just a passion, but a career goal and a means of escape. Charlotte constantly battled a deep sense of unfulfilled ambition, exasperated by the societal constraints of her time. She did not want the kind of jobs available to unmarried women from modest backgrounds - she wanted to draw and paint. [...]
Charlotte's keen study of visual imagery helped her 'read' paintings - this played a big part in her growth as an author. The visual arts provided her succour in her early life, helping her to bring the ideas and subjects of pictures into her literary writing.
Charlotte's dream of being a professional painter may never have been realized, but she made sure her experiences with art counted for something. Her ability to notice minute details in people - a skill likely inherited from her study of fine points in prints and engravings - is reflected in her writing. Sample her description of Edward Rochester: "I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw - yes, all three were very grim... His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonized in squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term - broad chested and thin flanked; though neither tall nor graceful." Charlotte's description is as good as a portrait of the man.
In the year 1848, Charlotte received a letter from her publishers asking her to do the artwork for the second edition of Jane Eyre. She responded with her characteristic wit: "I have... wasted a certain quantity of Bristol board and drawing-paper, crayons and cakes of colour, but when I examine the contents of my portfolio now, it seems as if during the years it has been lying closed some fairy has changed what I once thought sterling coin into dry leaves, and I feel much inclined to consign the whole collection of drawings to the fire." Thankfully, she did no such thing - at present, close to 200 original artistic works of Charlotte Brontë exist in the world. (Nayantara Mazumder)
Apollo tells about a recent celebration of Romani art and culture which included this:
At the Long Night of Coming Out evening, a stage dressed to resemble outer space played host to a range of of performance pieces by Romani artists from across Europe. A futuristic sisterhood of Romani alchemists claimed to possess the secret of human survival. The ghost of Heathcliff appeared in a straitjacket to ask why his Gypsy ethnicity had been whitewashed from so many interpretations of Wuthering Heights. (Damian Le Bas Jr)
Another recent event told by El Mundo (Spain) was a gathering of women from all walks of life to read fragments of works of literature against prejudice. The texts had been compiled by Ángeles Caso, who wrote the Brontë-related novel Todo ese fuego.
Los fragmentos leídos abarcaron textos escritos por mujeres desde el Siglo de Oro hasta la primera mitad del siglo XX (María de Zayas, Juana Inés de la Cruz, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë y Edith Wharton entre otras) muestran muchos temas todavía vigentes hoy en día. La periodista Ángeles Caso se encargó de la selección. "He buscado textos que expresasen bien la rebeldía, la insatisfacción y el combate. Tenemos un gran árbol genealógico de mujeres valientes y luchadoras reclamando la igualdad de derechos", resumió. (Translation)
This columnist from Diario de Cádiz (Spain) looks back on her first grown-up reads.
Y Jane Eyre: historia que, leída con gafas violetas, da para un cuento de terror que el Ancho mar de los Sargazos sólo empieza a abarcar. Somos todas nuestras historias, las de dentro y las de fuera de la sangre. (Pilar Vera) (Translation)
Mirror describes the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as
Very much a love letter to literature of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, so true to form our romantically named heroine is caught between the attentions of Glen Powell's dashing American diplomat, and Michiel Huisman's hunky book-loving farmer, called Darcy, sorry, Dawsey. (Chris Hunneysett)
The Sun tells how actress Claire King was 'groomed by a man when holidaying with her family as a teen'.
The star admitted she kept her plans a secret from her parents as she was obsessed with the idea of her having a holiday romance with the man, who she said "looked like Heathcliff", the handsome anti-hero from Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights.
Recounting the ordeal, she explained: "I was 14, as well, when I had a similar thing.
"'I wasn't groomed' - but I was. I was on holiday with my parents and I got taken out.
"And my idea was all the romance and things because he looked like Heathcliff and I wanted to be Cathy." (Kayleigh Giles)
My Palm Beach Post features a local co-valedictorian whose favourite novel is Jane Eyre. An announcement from Emma Butcher on Twitter:

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