Lucy Snowe: complicated, difficult woman

The Telegraph and Argus reports that there's a new visitor guide to the Bradford district.

The guide, which encompasses the whole of the Bradford district - from the city centre to Haworth and Brontë Country, Ilkley and UNESCO World Heritage Site Saltaire, is packed with ideas of where to go, what to see and where to eat. (Felicity Macnamara)

Yorkshire Live has an article on the Haworth volunteer Visitor Ambassadors.

If you love Haworth and Brontë country you might be what tourism bosses are looking for.
Visit Bradford, Bradford Council’s tourism team, is looking for volunteer Visitor Ambassadors to help those visiting the area to make the most of their stay.
Visit Bradford is working with the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, who have provided space within the Haworth Station ticket office for a visitor information point.
It will provide information on the local area for visitors to Haworth and Brontë country and will also provide a base for the volunteer Visitor Ambassadors.
The unpaid role is to provide a warm welcome and to help visitors to get the most out of their visit. They will update visitors on attractions and events and help with maps and directions.
The Visit Bradford team are looking for people aged 18 or over, who are passionate about the area, enjoy meeting new people and sharing their knowledge. Shifts are flexible and will be available seven days a week.
Staff from the Visit Bradford team will be at Haworth Station between 10am and noon.
Councillor Sarah Ferriby, Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Healthy People and Places, said: "This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who is passionate about the area, enjoys meeting new people and is able to spare some of their time to share with visitors information about the great things to see and do in and around Haworth." (Andrew Robinson)

Yorkshire Live also discusses the impact coronavirus may have in the area.

Asked about coronavirus, [Tricia Tillotson, head of Visit Bradford] said it was too early to say what impact it would have on Bradford.
She said places such as Haworth, famous for its Bronte connections, were popular with visitors from China, Japan and America, and the district also attracted many visitors from the Indian sub-continent.
She told YorkshireLive: "At the moment it's business as usual...we are coming up to peak season. We are just carrying on as usual."
Ms Tillotson said concerns over coronavirus and foreign travel may actually encourage more 'staycations' which would benefit UK destinations including Bradford. (Andrew Robinson)

Also in Bradford:

Our Principle Curator @ann_dinsdale and Audience Development Officer @HarryJelley were invited by @BradfordCollege to open the Brontë Lecture Theatre today.

This space dedicated to learning and art now bares the name of a family who cherished education and nurtured creativity. pic.twitter.com/iT4hMRLi1Q

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) March 9, 2020

Atlas Obscura features Stanage Edge.

The walk up to Stanage Edge takes you past the proud and stately North Lees Hall, built in the 16th century and the ancestral home of the Eyre family. This prominent Catholic family was driven from the area by Protestants in the 17th century, but their name would go on to inspire a British literary icon. It is thought that a visit to the house was the catalyst for Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel, Jane Eyre, and she drew inspiration from the dark and beautiful moors around Stanage Edge.

Refinery29 recommends '8 Books That Celebrate Complicated Women'.

The Hero’s Journey is a common narrative trope that has its roots in ancient mythology and lore: very simply, the Hero sets forth on an adventure and through a crisis or battle is changed (think: Odysseus, Beowulf, King Arthur.) We tend to think of the Hero as a man, someone who conquers through violence, overcomes the temptations of evil women, and returns a leader – a patriarch. But literature has had its share of women heroes in abundance: Jane Eyre, Hester Prynne, Katniss Everdeen.
But what of the books that tell a quieter story, and diverge from the traditional hero’s narrative? What of the books that are quietly radical because they tell stories of the inner lives of women, women who are flawed, women who are powerless by circumstance, women who are mean, women who dream, women who refuse to be bound by society’s expectations?
These books exist, though they’re not usually considered as canonical as those that revolve around men and their battles. But, they are all the more revolutionary because of the way  they dare to delve into the most feared and mysterious part of a woman – her psyche. These books tell the stories of women who challenge society’s idea of what a woman should be. Here you will find women who are not defined by their role as mother, daughter, sister, or wife. They are, simply, themselves. And in this way they are challenging, and thrilling.
Villette by Charlotte Brontë Though less famous than Bronte’s portrait of the poor, obscure, plain, and little Jane Eyre, Villette might be her greatest novel, daringly feminist for its time. Published in 1853, the novel follows narrator Lucy Snowe as she leaves behind a traumatic childhood in England to become an instructor at a French boarding school. The novel is most notable for its perceptive insight into Lucy’s interior mind and life. She is, like Brontë herself, a woman who refused to be confined by the conventions of her time. [...]
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhy Dominica-born British author Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 as the feminist and anti-colonial response to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The novel is told from the perspective of Bronte’s “madwoman in the attic,” Antoinette Cosway, who has been given away in an arranged marriage to a very different Rochester than Brontë fans recall. He renames his Creole wife Bertha and confines her to the attic of Thornfield Hall where, as her sanity slowly erodes, she burns it all down. And by it, I mean the patriarchy, not just Thornfield Hall. (Leah Carroll)

Los Angeles Review of Books also lists Lucy Snowe from Villette as one of the 'Best of…Difficult Women'.

A contributor to Focus Vif (Belgium) loves Jane Eyre but gets tired of Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre's Library (Spain) features a couple of recent Brontë graphic novels.