Charlotte Brontë's Hyphen Nation

BBC Culture takes a look at the 'women who created a new language'.

Taking as our inspiration such gifted wordsmiths as George Eliot and Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and Dorothy Wordsworth, perhaps we can distil some helpful principles – some New Rules, to do a Dua Lipa – for sculpting a vocabulary to describe the surreal realities that will surely come to define these tense and trying times.[...]
Rule no. 3: Join the Hyphen Nation. Another way to reinvigorate a lacklustre lexicon is to pull together words that have never been tethered before – a little like constructing an impromptu meal from random reached-for tins dragged to light from the fumbled darkness of a kitchen cupboard. (Chutney pasta anyone? Anyone?) Charlotte Brontë was a genius of such curiously compelling compounds. To her it is likely we owe the origin of ‘self-doubt’ and ‘Wild-West’ as well as that activity to which many of us have found ourselves suddenly engaging with obsessive vigour: ‘spring-clean’, which Brontë niftily neologised in a letter she wrote in April 1848. (Kelly Grovier)

In the first instalment of a column discussing books to read in quarantine, Varsity explores Jane Eyre.

Two weeks ago I picked Jane Eyre up for the first time, not really knowing what to expect. Being a much talked about book, a sort of enduring ‘hot topic,’ I felt that sense of compulsion people get with classics that they feel they must read even if they don’t particularly want to read them. I must ashamedly confess, then, that I didn’t start the novel with the most optimistic outlook, almost feeling a sense of obligation to see it through. Needless to say, slowly, but most definitely surely, Jane Eyre drew me in until, and I really hate to say this, I couldn’t put the book down. (read more) (Scarlet Rowe)

The South African has compiled a 'Lockdown library: Women power and love in the time of corona' which includes

'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Brontë
This book has been considered a classic for many years and with good reason. It is a beautifully written historical fiction set in the 19th-century England. It follows the story of an orphan, Jane Eyre, her life as a governess and her struggle fighting a sexist and classist system. Need I say more? (Carmen Coetsee)

Fodor's Travel has selected Wide Sargasso Sea as one of '20 Books That Will Take You Around the World Right Now'.

'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys
Where: Dominica
English lit majors will likely have a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea hidden away somewhere, and should dust it off and re-read. Everyone else interested in the colonial-era Caribbean should pick up a copy of this 1966 classic. Set on the tiny island of Dominica, Jean Rhys’ short novel is the reimagining of beloved Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. It explores the story behind Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic,” recasting her as a mixed-race Dominican woman. Exploited by an insensitive English man who embodies Britain’s exploitation of its colonies, she’s driven to mental illness. (Elen Turner)

ABC (Australia) on rereading books:

"There is also the business of going back and reading a book and finding out that Wuthering Heights is actually not about what you thought it was about at all. The book hasn't changed, you have," he says.
"So when you re-read something, what you're really mapping is your own life." (Hannah Reich)

According to What's on Stage, 'Streaming has created the best free festival in history – but theatre needs donations to keep the show on the road'.

Fringe work (from the likes of Teddy Lamb, Breach, Poltergeist and oodles more) sits side by side with big productions from big producing houses – rock musical Eugenius, Curve Leicester's Memoirs of an Asian Football Casual, the Globe's historic Richard II with Adjoa Andoh, or Sally Cookson's Jane Eyre. There's certainly no comparison whatsoever with witnessing it live (and, even with all the free content, audiences will still treasure that experience when it does return), but it's a pretty veritable embarrassment of riches nonetheless.
What all the online theatre has done is beamed out UK-grown shows to global audiences. It's brought work to UK shores – The International Online Theatre Festival has presented some gems, including Schaubühne Berlin's Katie Mitchell and Alice Birch-led Orlando (Barbican audiences were robbed of the chance to see it in April), or Milo Rau's Lenin. What's more, it gives fan favourites another spot in the limelight – the tear-away Brontë musical Wasted being an obvious example. (Alex Wood)

Camden New Journal recommends watching Wasted, too.

• The Southwark Playhouse has released online their production of Wasted, a rock documentary which explores the heartbreaks and triumphs of the three Brontë sisters Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and their brother Branwell. Brought up in a remote town in Yorkshire, they fought ill-health, unrequited love and family feuds to write such classics as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Score by Christopher Ash, book and lyrics by Carl Miller, this is the Brontës as you’ve never seen them before. Visit: southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/streaming (Lucy Popescu)

Gazette & Herald looks at the writing style of Irish writer John McGahern.

His second book, The Dark, opens with a father raging at his young son and about to beat him. For sheer terror, seen through the eyes of a child, it bears comparison with such scenes in David Copperfield and Jane Eyre. (Lance Christopher)

University of Delaware asks some UD inventors to weigh in on how their mothers have inspired them.

Babatunde Ogunnaike and his mom
Babatunde Ogunnaiki, named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2015, is the William L. Friend Chair of Chemical Engineering and professor in the Center for Systems Biology at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. The former dean of the College of Engineering, he pursues research focused on process control, modeling and simulation, systems biology and applied statistics.
My mother’s name is Ayoola Ogunnaike (maiden name Oduneye). She was born May 24, 1931, and died April 13, 2005, just shy of her 74th birthday.
Q: How did your mom cultivate your curiosity when you were little? Ogunnaike: My mother was an English teacher who later became principal of an elementary school. My love for reading widely was cultivated by my mom, who always had books around, especially classic British literature like Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, etc. As a result, I started reading much earlier than anyone would expect, and I ended up starting elementary school a whole year before my peers. (Tracey Bryant, Beth Miller and Karen B. Roberts)

Brisbane Times (Australia) discusses how houses are more than just bricks and mortar.

Each time it had come up for sale over the years, I’d flicked through the photos online, happy to see that the interior was virtually the same as it was in my childhood, even though the latest owners had terrible furniture. But it was only now that it was going to be destroyed that I understood a vague fantasy I had carried about the house: that like Heathcliff returning in Wuthering Heights, if I ever won the lottery or made my fortune, I would return one day to buy it. (Clint Caward)

Yorkshire Live lists '11 things you should probably never say to someone from Bradford'.

2. Tourism, in Bradford? Are you sure? Yes, very sure. Tens of thousands of visitors a year. Haven't you heard of Hockney, the Brontës, Ilkley Moor, Haworth, Saltaire, City of Film, Curry Capital, Little Germany, Leeds and Liverpool Canal, Bradford City FC...?"
3. Ah but name me ONE famous son or daughter of Bradford. I will name you one for every letter of the alphabet - twice over. There's Frederick Delius, Rodney Bewes, David Hockney, the Brontës, Kiki Dee, JB Priestley and Dynamo. Not to mention Harry Gration and Christa Ackroyd. (for 'Z' it would have to be Zayn Malik, which would be cheating). [...]
5. But isn't Bradford one big concrete jungle? You really don't get out much, do you?
As well as an incredible number of listed buildings, Bradford district has HUGE expanses of open countryside, picturesque valleys, rural villages and some impressive parks and woods. Why not take a walk around Haworth, Ilkley, Saltaire, Queensbury, Denholme, Shipley, Wilsden, Bingley, or Cullingworth? If you love architecture, try Little Germany. (Andrew Robinson)

El territorio (Argentina) recommends reading Wuthering Heights.