Patrick in the cellar

Keighley News  has Diane Fare from the Brontë Parsonage Museum tell what's on.

I’ve mentioned in previous columns that we’re really excited about working with Frank Cottrell-Boyce in the second part of the year.
I’m delighted that I can finally announce to the world what it is that Frank will be doing.
Frank has devised an innovative installation that will be sited in the Parsonage Cellar – a space not usually visited by daily visitors.
When Patrick Brontë was 70 years old, having seen his wife and two of his children die, he travelled to Manchester for a cataract operation.
After the surgery, he lay still in a darkened room for weeks to heal, being cared for by Charlotte.
It was at this time that she began to write Jane Eyre. Frank has chosen to focus on this aspect of Patrick’s experience through an installation that explores Patrick’s memories and imagination as he recovered from his cataract operation.
The installation is called How My Light is Spent and invites visitors to enter the Parsonage Cellar to share Patrick’s experience of darkness, hear the memories he held dear and see the dreams and visions he shared with Charlotte.
The immersive installation combines light and sound to create what we hope will be a memorable and moving experience for people of all ages.
The installation opens on July 13 and is free with admission to the museum, so if you want to try something a little different, do come along in the summer.
Also new in July is an exhibition of photography by Helen Burrow. The exhibition explores the places that shaped the lives of the Brontes.
Helen’s evocative images are accompanied by selected writing about and by this creative family.
As with the installation, the exhibition is free with admission, as is our Tuesday talk on July 2 at 2pm, which focuses on Patrick’s aspirations to become a writer. The talk will look at his poetry, fiction and non-fiction and ask the question… was he any good?
Our Parsonage Unwrapped evening on Friday 28 June also focuses on Patrick the writer – specifically his poetry.
We’re delighted to welcome a guest speaker for this month’s Parsonage Unwrapped: Dr Simon Avery from the University of Westminster, who will look at Patrick’s volumes of verse and consider what his poems reveal about his social conscience, his relationship with his Irish background, and his sense of the importance of literature in the turbulent political environment of the early 19th century.
Tickets cost £22.50/£20 and are available from bronte.org.uk/whats-on or call 01535 640192.
But before we get to all the above events and experiences, we have Fathers’ Day on Sunday June 16, and we couldn’t not mark Fathers’ Day in the year we’re celebrating the father of the Brontes!
Dads will get into the museum on Fathers’ Day for £5, providing they have a child (of any age!) with them, and can enjoy 10% off in the shop.
So if anyone is stuck for an idea as to what to do on Fathers’ Day, bring Dad to the museum, where he can find out more about Patrick Bronte, and his long, fascinating life.

As per the Brontë Parsonage Twitter, Frank Cottrell-Boyce himself will be speaking about his project on BBC 6 Music tomorrow (Sunday) at 1pm: Paperback Writers.

Dance Tabs gives 2 stars out of 5 to Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre ballet.

But for all Marston’s qualifications, I found her Jane Eyre to be a dreary affair, theatrically dutiful and choreographically thin. The production, designed by Patrick Kinmonth, is handsome and spare, with large panels of cloth defining the space and a platform upstage used to create separate tableaux. But a drab palette – even Jane Eyre’s wedding dress is in a shade of putty – eventually tires the eye. The quotations of Mendelssohn (Felix and Fanny) and Schubert, woven into a larger musical tapestry by the composer Philip Feeney, form an endlessly looping sea of sound, without pauses for breath. The music becomes a backdrop, a mood enhancer rather than a set of contrasting musical scenes.
Marston does tell the story, in almost too much detail. She begins at the beginning. There is Jane’s miserable orphanhood: the funeral of her parents, her mistreatment at the hands of an aunt and her hateful cousins; her eventual education at a school for orphan girls. (The young Jane is danced with great fierceness by Catherine Hurlin.) For long stretches of the first act, the production is like a play without words, in which Jane Eyre fights off various foes. Her predicament is further represented by a pack of men in gray tailcoats, described in the program as her “inner demons.” Repeatedly, they mandhandle, fling, lift, and push her down, an obvious metaphor for the hard knocks she must endure in a paternalistic society.
But more than the literalness of the storytelling, what is disappointing is the pedestrian quality of the movement ideas. In scene after scene, most of the action happens through stylized gesture, repetitive and relentless. Teaching and learning is shown by pointing into the air, as if writing on a blackboard. An arm in front of the torso is the signifier of Jane’s self-abnegation. Edward Rochester – the dashing employer with whom she falls in love – expresses himself through a stiffly outstretched leg, foot rigorously pointed. (It was unclear to me what this gesture was supposed to mean.) Upright Mr. St. John (Aran Bell), a curate who offers Jane a life of devotion and respectability, repeatedly frames her torso with his arms, as if imprisoning her in church walls. Beyond that, the dancing lacks defining features; it’s bland and spare. [...]
Ironically, the one spot of color, both dramatic and visual, is given to Bertha Mason, Rochester’s mad wife, whom he keeps hidden somewhere in the back of the house, looked after by a surly maid. (Victorian mental health practices at their finest!) She wears a tattered red dress as she slinks and creeps around the corners, finally bursting forth during the abruptly curtailed wedding of Jane and Rochester. Danced by Cassandra Trenary, she is all seething eroticism and manic energy, legs and arms flailing and eyes gleaming as she wraps herself around Rochester like a vine. In their second encounter, during the dramatic fire that will end her life and leave him blind, she is even more dynamic and wild.
Once again, the madwoman steals the show. The ever sane, forgiving Jane is left to pick up the pieces, cradling Rochester in her arms, asking him to marry her. (An arm revolving around the other arm signifies marriage.) This could be read as a feminist moment – the moment in which Jane takes full control of her life – or as the ultimate self-abnegation. However one chooses to interpret it, what is missing in this Jane Eyre isn’t an understanding of the text, but rather a visual language that makes a case for translating it from words into movement. (Marina Harss)

Herstory lists '10 women in fiction we absolutely adore', including

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
She was one of fiction’s earliest representations of a passionate, complex, independent character who brooked ‘no nonsense’! Charlotte Brontë’s novel about a shy, quiet governess who becomes a tutor in a rich house and falls in love with its rich and mysterious master is one of the greatest classics of English literature. The portrayal of the female protagonist was way ahead of its time, perhaps even one of fiction’s early feminists! Over and over, Jane’s put into situations where she’s too young, too poor, or too powerless to win, but she has to try anyway. She always relies on her self-confidence and strength to get back on her feet and that makes her one of our top heroines to emulate!
Famous quote: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” (Rekha Balakrishnan)

The New York Times shows David Austin's Emily Brontë rose among others. Rachel Sutcliffe has a lovely post on Patrick Brontë and what he can ' teach us about what makes a good man and a good father'.