They ache for something we can feel without seeing

Keighley News reports good news for the Haworth Parish Church:

A £25,000 boost to historic Haworth Parish Church has come from the church’s volunteer support group.
The Friends of the Brontës’ Church handed over money for the Church Restoration Fund during the weekly Sunday service.
The money was raised through a series of events as well as a weekly souvenir stall at the church, known as St Michael and All Saints.
The Victorian church building, on a site where services were led by the Rev Patrick Brontë, father of the famous writing sisters, currently faces a bill of more than £40,000 for essential electrical re-wiring.
Peter Breed, churchwarden and the Friends’ chairman, said the group was focused on raising funds and awareness for the church. (David Knights)

IndieWire lists the best movie scores of the decade so far:

14. “Jane Eyre” (Dario Marianelli)
The heart and soul of Cary Fukunaga’s brilliant and bleakly atmospheric 2011 version of “Jane Eyre,” Dario Marianelli’s haunted score doesn’t just distill the melancholy of life on the moors, it also doubles as perfect listening for a rainy Sunday afternoon train ride or a night of old-fashioned yearning.
Anchored by British violinist Jack Liebeck, Marianelli’s score is a very gray thing, gloomy even when it’s dressing up for a wedding. But there’s a powerful pulse underlying even the darkest of these tracks, the strings kicking around each other like violent windstorms as they ache for something we can feel without seeing. That’s a trick that will come in handy, if not for Jane then for the man she loves most. (David Ehrlich)

The strongest female characters in literature according to Cosmopolitan India:

Jane Eyre
A character set in 1847 but still relevant (and inspirational!) on so many levels! The Charlotte Brontë protagonist could have started out as an angry rebel, but soon turns into a sensitive, fiercely independent young woman, who doesn’t mind rejecting status-elevating, financially-stabilising suitors, for love, principles and values. Even better, she doesn’t let social constraints or pressures and her position as a governess get into the way of achieving what she wants. She wants it, she works for it, she gets it. (Humra Afroz Khan)

The Berkshire Eagle interviews the writer Linda Hirshman:

Charles Xu. What book do you find yourself coming back to?
L.H. "Remembrance of Things Past" [by Marcel Proust]. Since the first time I've read it, each time there's a new translation, I reread it. I love that book. It's a story about society and that's what interests me. He was a genius and he saw [society] in a very interesting way. In some ways, I do find myself coming back to Proust, but depending on what I'm doing, I also go back to "Little Women" [by Louisa May Alcott]. And from time to time, I read "Jane Eyre" [by Charlotte Brontë]. 

Hindustan Times is against categorizing writers according to their gender:

Creative forces like Krishna Sobti, Amrita Pritam, Mahadevi Verma and Kamala Das, to name a few, dealt with an abundance of vicissitudes to leave their mark on the world of literature. In the West, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf struggled to establish themselves in a milieu dominated by men. The dialogue on gender led to the evolution of Women Studies. The cultural battles fought by Western feminism from which the contemporary Indian movement takes many of its cues were like rites of passage. Categorizing writing according to gender emerged from this ferment. (Mita Kapur(

Lena Dunham makes a brief Brontë mention in this article in The Guardian about her current obsession with... Love Island:

As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma, The Woman In White to Notting Hill, filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthering Heights. And my nights were short because soon I was smacked with a 9pm curfew. No, I haven’t been convicted of a crime and placed under house arrest. I discovered Love Island.

The Belfast Telegraph publishes a sad and tragic story. The death of a 15-year old girl, all dreams and hopes:

She wanted to join the debating society, to visit more art galleries, to read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, to play more tennis. (Charlotte Edwardes)

Xinhua talks about the current Jane Eyre production at the NCPA in Beijing; The Sisters' Room has a post on Emily’s artist’s box at the Parsonage.