Rebecca is Bertha

Today we have more reviews of Netflix's new adaptation of Rebecca. The Spool has a theory:

Because Rebecca is such an overtly gothic work of fiction, it makes sense that her unrepentant sexuality would make her a monster, much like Jane Eyre’s Bertha Mason. Both women are written as malignant, manipulative beauties in contrast with Mrs. de Winter and Jane Eyre’s wide-eyed innocence. In Jane Eyre, Rochester frequently describes the heroine as “clean” and “pure,” free from all that worldliness and sexuality that make these women worthy of imprisonment and murder. (Beau North)

The Canberra Times mentions it, too:

It might be fairer to say some remakes, especially of pre-existing properties, are new adaptations of the original material unless there are obvious connections or allusions. And some movies are, ahem, "inspired" by others and always have been (Rebecca itself is reminiscent in some ways of Jane Eyre). (Ron Cerabona)

I-D comments on the new trailer for another forthcoming film, Ammonite, an imaginative take on the life of palaeontologist Mary Anning, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan.

A brand new trailer for Francis Lee’s Ammonite has just arrived, and if we’re going by this short clip, the movie is already set to rise that heady ascent into the realm of highly revered and delicious queer period drama. Period dramas, you see, always tend to be dead boring, unless the Ls, Gs, Bs and Ts get involved. Wuthering Heights? CBA [Can't Be Arsed]. Carol? Iconic. The King’s Speech? Boring. Maurice? J’adore! Next up: Ammonite. (Douglas Greenwood)

The Spool also recommends Crimson Peak.

There’s also little doubt as to who the real villain is, and why many reviewers cited Rebecca and Jane Eyre (one version of which also starred Wasikowska) as clear influences. Both feature young, strong, yet naive heroines who must contend with older, worldly, deeply sexual women as obstacles to the happiness awaiting them, and Edith is certainly in that heroic mold. With her bright blonde hair, yellow dresses, the way her hands tremble as she wanders fearfully alone through her creepily oppressive home holding aloft a lit candelabra, she is the innocent virgin, the victim we always sympathize with. How could we help ourselves? (Andrea Thompson)

MissionsBox discusses how hazardous life still is for little girls in many countries and, weirdly enough, refers to Jane Eyre as written by Currer Bell (only in a parenthesis are we told that its author's real name was Charlotte Brontë).

Nearly 173 years ago, on October 16, 1847, a book authored by “Currer Bell” rolled off the presses and quickly provoked a combination of praise, revulsion and gossip.

“It is a very remarkable book,” wrote a reviewer named Elizabeth Rigby. “We have no other remembrance of one combining such genuine power with such horrid taste.”

Many literary critics today still consider Bell’s novel, Jane Eyre, remarkable, but perhaps not for the same reasons Rigby did. For one thing, Jane Eyre opens with a girl at the center of its action. And this girl is a dynamic and well-rounded protagonist with a depth, voice and independent spirit that were groundbreaking for the time.

As grown-up Jane narrates her story, readers journey with young Jane through girlhood. They feel what she feels as she experiences the sting of abuse, the devastation of loss, the joy of friendship and the empowerment of education. They watch how these experiences shape Jane into a young woman who faces messy adult situations with resolve and integrity.

Jane Eyre stands as one of the earliest and most prominent examples of a coming-of-age story with a female protagonist, and it is still considered by some to be one of the greatest novels ever written. Much of the strength of this story derives from the strength of its female title character, a character created by an author who had experienced girlhood herself. (“Currer Bell” was in fact a woman named Charlotte Brontё.) This novel preceded countless other popular woman-authored novels and series describing a girl’s journey to womanhood: Little Women; Anne of Green Gables; Little House on the Prairie; To Kill a Mockingbird and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, to name a few. These stories have captivated audiences spanning generations and nationalities.

According to Vox, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is 'the perfect genre for thinking about empires'.

Jane Eyre’s Bertha is European, but there’s a possibility of racial ambiguity lingering around her. She is English, but not quite; she is Other, but not quite. She is confusing and frightening and probably violent, and the only thing we can do with her is violently repress her, shove her into the attic and hope she doesn’t cause too much trouble. But of course she gets out anyway, and of course all sorts of trouble ensues.

The colonial gothic is all about these fears and anxieties: We have committed violence, and now we fear violence in return; groups are mingling, and that is threatening, but isolation will lead only to decay; what can we do, how can we maintain control?

But going into the 20th and 21st centuries, we started to see new gothic novels that were written from the point of view not of the colonizer, but of the colonized: the postcolonial gothic. Wide Sargasso Sea responding to Jane Eyre.

That’s the tradition that Mexican Gothic is working with. And it’s doing incredibly interesting stuff with it. (Constance Grady)

Here's how Carmilla (Italy) describes writer Lisa Tuttle:

Texana trapiantata da decenni in Scozia, Lisa Tuttle si può considerare una delle principali eredi dirette contemporanee della grande tradizione femminile anglosassone della weird fiction, quella lunga e gloriosa traiettoria che dai Gothic novel di Anne Radcliffe, attraverso il Frankenstein di Mary Shelley, il romanticismo oscuro delle sorelle Bronte, le inquietudini vittoriane di Charlotte Riddell o Edith Nesbit, e quelle primo novecentesche di Edith Warthon, Elizabeth Bowen o Vernon Lee, giunge tortuosa e troppo spesso ingiustamente sottovalutata, fino al magistero di Shirley Jackson e Flannery O’Connor. (Walter Catalano) (Translation)

Elle (France) comments on the capsule collection created by Sandro in collaboration with Clara Luciani.

Cette capsule éphémère représente absolument tout ce que la chanteuse Clara Luciani apprécie : « C’est une collection qui nous ressemble à toutes les deux, faite pour des femmes qui aiment courir partout en restant élégantes. Des vêtements qui viennent ranimer des souvenirs de mon enfance : la chaleur du Sud de la France, les couleurs des films de Demy, la dentelle que j’imaginais Jane Eyre porter. » (Noémie Sadoun) (Translation)

SWR2 (Germany) shares the fifth instalment of the podcast about the Brontë sisters accompanied by music based on their works.