Anne Brontë in the Big Book Weekend

Express and Star and others announce the celebration of the Big Book Weekend online (8-10 May), where some of the cancelled events in the numerous book festivals in the UK will be virtually held:

 A three-day virtual book festival bringing together the best of the cancelled UK literary events will feature Killing Eve creator Luke Jennings, a celebration of Anne Brontë and a discussion about contagion.
The Big Book Weekend will be part of BBC Arts’ Culture In Quarantine initiative, to bring arts and culture into people’s homes while they are in lockdown. (...)
The line-up also includes actor and director Adjoa Andoh, poet Jackie Kay and graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg in conversation with Cathy Newman to mark the 200th anniversary of Anne Brontë’s birth.
The session will feature graphic artworks and live readings from The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall.

National Review rediscovers Jane Eyre through the Sally Cookson adaptation recently premiered online by the National Theatre:

Every English major is familiar with Freudian, Marxist, feminist, and “queer” readings, contorting and cheapening even the most potent love story into a petty power grab. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, about a young woman who falls in love with her employer, is, like all great novels, susceptible to being hijacked by monomaniacal agenda-pushers.
Commendably, Sally Cookson’s 2015 adaptation for the National Theatre in coproduction with the Bristol Old Vic avoids this nasty habit. Cookson’s Jane Eyre, which was made available for online streaming last week in response to theatre closures during the coronavirus shutdowns, was modern in staging only: “devised by the Company,” who showed up to rehearsal with copies of the original book rather than the script. The cast, wisely, stuck closely to Brontë’s text. (...)
In the 1970s, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote a comprehensive guide to feminist literary criticism called “The Madwoman in the Attic.” There they argued that Mrs. Rochester was Jane’s alter ego. Jane was able to escape patriarchal oppression only through “flight,” “starvation” (i.e., death), or “a third, more terrifying, alternative: escape through madness.” The authors note that her quest is similar to Christian’s in The Pilgrim’s Progress but claim that it is without “the devout substance.” Ironically, this feminist interpretation is merely the inverse of that of Brontë’s earliest critics. “Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of unregenerate and undisciplined spirit,” wrote Elizabeth Rigby in The Quarterly Review in 1848. “She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature — the sin of pride.”
Both interpretations fundamentally miss the point. Charlotte Brontë, the daughter of a clergyman, was clear about her intentions. “Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last,” she wrote in her preface to the second edition, dedicated to her friend, William Thackery. “Appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.”
In other words, Jane Eyre resists predestination in all its forms: Calvinist, feminist, Marxist, etc. Jane is a character constantly growing in faith. (...)
The success of Cookson’s stylish production can be measured in the extent to which it communicates that Jane Eyre, rather than being ideological, is a story about a woman, “a free human being with an independent will,” who falls in love, but — more important — who chooses to love and, in doing so, becomes, in some mysterious way, herself. (Madeline Kearns)

The Lamron explores isolation issues in the production:

National Theatre Live streams “Jane Eyre” online, reminding viewers that it’s better to be voluntarily isolating than locked away in some rich guy’s attic.
This timely production is a great excuse for me to blabber on about my favorite novel. Jane Eyre is a whirlwind of female agency, denunciation of inequality between social classes and condemnation of the manipulative nature of power dynamics—but in this article, I’ll do my best to limit my analysis to the sections of the story involving themes of isolation and confinement. Because … you know. Those seem the most relevant to us right now. (...)
Hopefully we can all be like Jane Eyre and come out of this isolation even stronger than before we went into it—but until then, let’s just try not to start any fires or convince ourselves that we’re seeing ghosts. (Madelyn Dewey)

Sylvia Howe in Daily Express (Malaysia) does not have a clear opinion about it:

Also Jane Eyre from the NT, which was interesting. I enjoyed it for nearly two hours and then realised I found it a little boring.
Rochester isn’t glamorous enough – it’s essentially a Barbara Cartland, better written, but also unremittingly gloomy for the first half, and not exactly a laugh a moment for the second. Charlotte Brontë is excellent on the melodrama, but also on how Jane feels, which sets it apart from the rubbish.
She was of course knocked into touch by her madder sister Emily. Wuthering Heights is the peak of every girl’s romantic pitch (I loved it and wept with the best of ‘em), but on rereading it recently, I found it overblown and rather annoying.

The Guardian also tries to find the good in isolation, telling the story of Jean Rhys:

I recognise that dream state well: the shifted priorities, the uncanny calm amid chaos, and the way that the minutiae become unexpectedly luminous. It was here that Rhys finally began to write the story she had yearned to tell about the first Mrs Rochester, the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. It was a long time since she had been able to write at all. Her early literary promise seemed to have dissolved. But here, in the most straightened of circumstances, she was able to find a new perspective, and, most of all, she had time.
It’s tempting to claim that this period in exile gave birth to her enduring classic, The Wide Sargasso Sea. But that would be a gross overstatement: Rhys signed a contract for the book six years later and only delivered the manuscript nine years after that. Her masterpiece was 15 years away from that little room with its flowers and elephants, and there was certainly more tumult to come. But for all its trauma, Rhys’s time in Maidstone was something of a relief. The worst had happened. Everything stopped for a while. And in that space, she could think differently. (Katherine May)

The Unionville Times recommends a virtual visit to the Brontë country:

 If you’re a fan of the literature written by Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Brontë, you’re in luck.  Google Arts & Culture (https://artsandculture.google.com/story/FwLyGtC06USyJA) offers a virtual tour of the all places that inspired the Brontë Sisters. (Denny Dyroff)

The Stuff (New Zealand) thinks that

Thandie Newton's Jane Eyre is a masterful and compelling performance. (Kylie Klein-Nixon)

Clacton Gazette and a photoshoot on the Essex marshes:

“It’s taken us several months to get diaries and weather to coincide for a fashion-based shoot in the wild slat marshes of Essex.
“I find the landscape barren and wild, like Wuthering Heights meets Macbeth! (Pape Gueye)

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books revies Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town:

Glass Town is an enchanting graphic novel that has, in professional terms, “weird but effective art.” That’s the kind of lofty professional assessment that gets me the big bucks, folks. Glass Town is about the imaginary worlds that the Brontë siblings created. While I was initially put off by the art, it grew on me, and the plot enchanted me from the first page. (...)
Finally, this book stuck in my head. It’s easy to feel empathy towards the characters even when they are acting badly. I felt Charlotte’s temptation to lose herself in Glass Town in a visceral way. The longing for a more colorful imaginary world, one full of exactly the right amount of drama, one that is exciting yet controllable, came across powerfully and I related to it as I’m sure many others will as well. I’ve found it hard to start a new book since closing this one. Like Charlotte, my thoughts remain in Glass Town. (Carrie S)

Télam (Argentina) talks about an online conversation between Mariana Enríquez and María Gainza who discuss the quarantine and the false myths about it:

Los universos de Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Irène Némirovsky, Natalia Ginzburg, Mildred Burton, Jane Eyre, Samuel Pepys y alguna película de Armando Bo toman la charla en la que las autoras recurren a ficciones que leyeron o rememoraron estos días en los que reconocen estar viviendo "una cuarentena burguesa". (Emilia Raccitti) (Translation)

The writer Lisa McInerney chooses Wuthering Heights as one of her favourite novels in The Guardian. El País (Spain) quotes from Rachel Vorona Cote's Too much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today in a review of the TV series Marnie. Cn24TV (Italy) gives more quarantine reading recommendations:

Prosegue l’iniziativa promossa dall’assessorato alla cultura di Rende con il nuovo decalogo di letture scelte e ragionate su tema. “La cultura non va in quarantena”, giunta alla quinta settimana, propone questa volta scritti ispirati all’amore e alle sue differenti declinazioni attraversando Tolstoj, Barthes sino ad arrivare a Pamuk e Bouraoui. (...)
Emily Brontë, inglese, Cime tempestose.
Pubblicato nel 1847 (sotto uno pseudonimo maschile, così come il coevo Jane Eyre della sorella Charlotte), questo grande classico della letteratura narra la storia dell’amore di Heathcliff e Catherine, un amore così violento, assoluto e passionale che alla fine li distrugge entrambi, così come le loro famiglie e i figli. Nel bel mezzo della brughiera inglese continuano a sentirsi i lamenti degli eterni innamorati. (Translation)

T L Clark's Blogspot reviews Villette. The Brontë Babe Blog posts about Charlotte Brontë's poem Parting, her very own We Will Meet Again moment.

Finally, a nice initiative from the Newark Book Festival:

Will you accept the challenge of creating a teeny tiny book?

In 1830, Charlotte Bronte created a tiny book no larger than a matchbox packed with stories, pictures and advertisements. Now, is it your turn! @BronteParsonage #writingcompetition #newarkbf pic.twitter.com/8jIco8EvpS

— Newark Book Festival (@NewarkBookFest) April 19, 2020