Being Sucked In

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviews country singer Caylee Hammack:

Melissa Ruggieri: What have you been listening to?

C.H.: A lot of Kate Bush. I found (her 1978 debut single) "Wuthering Heights" one day, and I saw the video and was like, what the hell is this? It sucked me in, even though it was my least favorite (Emily) Brontë book. 

The Sunday Independent (Ireland) interviews author Danielle McLaughlin:

The book that changed your life?

Lots of books have been changing my life in various small and incremental ways since childhood. One that stands out is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which I read in my late teens. It gave me an understanding of the need to question received narratives.

And The Observer talks with ten of the best debut novelists of 2021. Including JR Thorp:

We’re living through a moment in which there’s real interest in suppressed female narratives. Were you aware of being part of a movement?

I think it was something I was aware of because, growing up, I was obsessed with Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Wide Sargasso Sea, which I guess are the forerunners of this movement. That idea of the madwoman in the attic, asking why isn’t she there. This book took me since 2015 to write, and a lot of the books you’re talking about have come out in the interim – The Silence of the Girls and A Thousand Ships – but I looked at them and thought: Oh good. I’m not striking out on my own. I’m part of a community that thinks the same way about these things.

Live for films reviews a film seen in Sundance 2021: Ma Belle, My Beauty by Marion Hill:

 We meet Bertie (Idella Johnson) practicing a song, singing something that she isn’t artistically connecting to alongside her husband Fred (Lucien Guignard) who is playing guitar.  (...)  Bertie spends most of her days puttering around the large farmhouse, lounging in its pool reading Jane Eyre or shopping in the market of the nearby village.  She seems in stasis, withdrawn from her surroundings. (Hillary Butler)

Žena (Croatia) has an article about the Brontë sisters. A pity that the first picture that they use is... controversial, to put it mildly.

Bezvremenska inspiracija
Charlotte, Emily i Anne Brontë: Tri sestre koje su promijenile književnost
Sestre Brontë odrasle su na surovom sjeveru Engleske, a iako im ni društvene norme ni okolnosti nisu išle u prilog, uspjele su postati jedne od najutjecajniji britanskih spisateljica svih vremena. Životne priče Charlotte, Emily i Anne Brontë. (Translation)

Filipstads Tidning (Sweden) recommends Amy Corzine and James M. Burns's comic adaptation of Jane Eyre:

Väck läslusten med omarbetade klassiker

Charlotte Brontë (Argasso bokförlag). Boken handlar om föräldralösa Jane Eyre i 1880-talets England. Jane tvingas bo med sin elaka elaka fru och blir senare skickad till en skola för fattiga barn. Där stannar hon för att sedan själv bli en av skolans lärare. Men Jane längtar efter självständighet och tar tjänst som guvernant hos en mystisk Mr Rochester och hans gods Thornfield. Efter en tid upptäcker Jane att  godset döljer mörka hemligheter. I det här seriealbumet får manusförfattaren Amy Corzine och illustratören John M. Burns läsaren Burns läsaren att uppleva den klassiska berättelsen på ett helt nytt sätt. Passar barn från nio år. (Emely Wallo Bergare) (Translation)

El Confidencial (Spain) publishes another list of classics everybody should read (this one by the Alibrate platform) which includes Wuthering Heights:

Publicada en 1847 bajo el seudónimo de Ellis Bell, Cumbres borrascosas hipnotiza y envuelve al lector en una maraña de pasiones, odio, sed de venganza, amor no correspondido y desengaño. Se trata de una historia de pasiones encontradas en la Inglaterra rural más conservadora. La trama se inicia con Catherine, la hija de una familia distinguida, y Heathcliff, un campesino adoptado por esa familia, que pasan de ser compañeros de juego de infancia a enamorarse. Las secuelas de ese amor imposible afectarán a sus protagonistas y también a sus descendientes a lo largo de varias generaciones. (Translation)

El Cultural (Spain) interviews writer Maryse Condé: 

Nuria Azancot: ¿Tiene ya clara su identidad, ha descubierto si es una autora caribeña, criolla, africana, francesa, afroiamericana, o quizá le molestan las etiquetas, los intentos de domesticarla y clasificarla?

M.C:. No me gustan las etiquetas. Para mí, la literatura es lo que une a los hombres. Descubrí mi vocación leyendo Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë. Emily Brontë es una autora inglesa, hija de un pastor protestante, que vivía en el condado de Yorkshire, en Inglaterra. No puede haber nada más alejado de mí, nada más diferente.  (Translation)

The New York Times publishes the obituary of the TV host, broadcaster and producer Sonny Fox (1925-2021), a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic. Among his many credits, he was the executive producer of Brontë (1983) with Julie Harris. Marseille News (France) mentions the Jane Eyre audiobook read by Sarah Coombs available on Spotify. Yesterday's crossword in USA Today included the following four words word: "Younger Brontë". Lynne Luvs Books reviews Wuthering Heights.

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Exploring Feminist Themes

A new scholar book with Brontë-related content:

Young Adult and Canonical Literature:
Pairing and Teaching, Volume 2

Edited by Paula Greathouse and Victor Malo-Juvera

Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 978-1-4758-6071-9

In the last decade alone, the world has changed in seismic ways as marriage equality has been ruled on by the supreme court, social justice issues such as #metoo and BlackLivesMatter have arisen, and issues of immigration and deportation have come to the forefront of politics across the globe. Thus, there is a need for an updated text that shares strategies for combining canonical and young adult literature that reflects the changes society has – and continues to - experience. The purpose of our collection is to offer secondary (6-12) teachers engaging ideas and approaches for pairing young adult and canonical novels to provide unique examinations of topics that teaching either text in isolation could not afford. Our collection does not center canonical texts and most chapters show how both texts complement each other rather than the young adult text being only an extension of the canonical. Within each volume, the chapters are organized chronologically according to the publication date of the canonical text. The pairings offered in this collection allow for comparisons in some cases, for extensions in others, and for critique in all. Volume 2 covers The Canterbury Tales (1392) through Fallen Angels (1988).

The book includes the chapter: 

Exploring Feminist Themes in Jane Eyre and Dark Companion by Amber Spears and Ciara Pittman

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The imagery as it was written

More wishful thinking for after-lockdown as The Telegraph and Argus recommends 'Five top-rated West Yorkshire hotels to visit after lockdown'.

The Fleece Inn, Main Street, Haworth

Rating: 9.3

Estimated cost: £100-£175

Fancy visiting the Haworth parsonage museum or taking a trip to the Brontë Waterfall? If so, The Fleece Inn is the perfect accommodation to return to after a day of exploration.

The rooms are traditionally refurbished but each benefit from freeview TV as well as coffee and tea making facilities.

The on site restaurant is also enviable, serving home-cooked dishes using local ingredients.

An English breakfast is served each morning and guest can also enjoy a beer on the rooftop berr garden.

One person wrote: “We had an excellent stay and were well looked after – even with Covid.

“The room was fantastic and the views to die for.” (Sarah McGee)

Independent (Ireland) interviews poet and playwright Rita Ann Higgins.

What was the first book you loved?

Wuthering Heights because I could see the imagery as it was written. I felt I knew Heathcliff and Cathy. (Bairbre Power)

A columnist from Enid News & Eagle looks 'clearly at our society, through the eyes of Anne Brontë'.

While reflecting on the recent inauguration of our nation’s first female vice president, I happened on some notes I wrote on the birthday of Anne Brontë, on Jan. 17, 2017, and they seemed appropriate to our time — and to the persistent misogyny of our society, which did not magically go away on Jan. 20. [...]

One of the reasons her work is overshadowed by her sisters is the criticism it received in its day. In “gentle” Victorian society, Anne had the audacity to point out evils like misogyny and endemic injustice. And she paid a price with her male critics.

Her response to the critics speaks volumes to our contemporary “let’s pretend injustice didn’t happen, and isn’t still happening” sensibilities: “O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts — this whispering ‘Peace, peace’, when there is no peace — there would be less of sin and misery to the young ... who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.”

These are the words of a strong woman, living in a time when strength was neither encouraged nor accepted from women, challenging us all to face down the injustice and misery of our world, rather than hide them behind a socially acceptable facade.

Anne was excoriated for her unvarnished treatment of society. But, surely today we wouldn’t patronize, hush-up, marginalize and vilify someone simply for pointing out the difficult and painful shortcomings of our society. Right? Unfortunately, no. (James Neal)

Daily Mail picks up the story of the 1950s so-called Battersea Poltergeist.

Art historian Susan Owens, author of The Ghost: A Cultural History [...] claims the heyday of ghost stories was the Victorian era. 

During this time some of the most famous ghosts of literature emerged: those in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and Cathy's ghost in Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847). While Scrooge's ghosts came to him as a warning, clad in chains, Brontë's creation was much more human and could even bleed. (Stephanie Linning)

Wuthering Heights has made it onto the '27 best romance novels ever' according to Glamour.

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You’ll die to eat here

This is a short story (part of a series mystery series apparently) which has just been published on the ebook world:

Bronte's Tale (The Starr Mystery Series
Book 3)
by L.R. STARR 

ISBN: 9780463343302

You’ll die to eat here…
Daniel Paul is a Chicago chef known across the globe for his culinary genius on and off the TV. He has experienced heartwrenching tragedy, losing his English wife in a horrific plane crash and has since buried himself in work to mask the pain.
The time comes where he makes a spur of the moment decision to purchase an old run-down pub in the north of England as an ode to his wife, and in search of peace with his now teenage daughter; Frances.
Clara, the magical owner of the apothecary Odd Peculiarities in Haworth is the last woman he thought would spark his numb heart when he arrives, but when the over-confident American saunters into her shop, both their hearts are forever changed.
Before a budding romance can ensue there’s trouble brewing in the bleakness of the moors, tucked in amongst the moss and heath.
Deep in the shadows lies one that has a bone to pick, and he’s keen to bring death to the door of Haworth’s people using their beloved against them.
Can Daniel Paul and Clara work together to beat this killer and create their own brand of culinary magic together?

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Any list would include Emily Brontë

iNews has interviewed writer Kate Mosse.

Who is your favourite author and why do you admire her/him?

I tend to have favourite books, but any list would include Emily Brontë, TS Eliot, Agatha Christie, Adrienne Rich, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgette Heyer and Alice Walker.

The Washington Post reviews The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah.

But Elsa is about one strip of yellow wallpaper away from a nervous breakdown. Her heart is a thumping muscle of unsatisfied longings and unrealized ambitions. Like Jane Eyre, she fumes with the exasperation of a passionate woman long dismissed and repressed. “If she didn’t do something soon, something drastic, her future would look no different from her present,” Hannah writes. “She would stay in this house for all her life” with novels as her only friends. (Ron Charles)

The Guardian has ranked 'Ralph Fiennes's 20 best film performances' and although Wuthering Heights 1992 doesn't make the cut, it does get a mention.

3. Schindler’s List (1993)

Before this film, Fiennes had been known for some distinguished stage work at the National Theatre and the RSC, and possibly for his film debut as Heathcliff opposite Binoche in Wuthering Heights in 1992. But what exploded him into international stardom was his chillingly persuasive performance in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. (Peter Bradshaw)

The Guardian also discusses what may happen in terms of sequels, prequels and retellings now that The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain.

[Anne Margaret Daniel, an F Scott Fitzgerald scholar], who has yet to read Nick [by Michael Farris Smith] when we speak but is looking forward to it, points to a line scribbled by Fitzgerald in one of his notebooks: “Nostalgia or flight of the heart”. “Anybody who comes up with a successful Gatsby-derivative novel has got to have that same sense of flight to the heart or else they will just be turning everything to straight parody,” she says. “If there is a Wide Sargasso Sea out there for Gatsby, I would welcome it with open arms. But it would take a writer like Jean Rhys to have both the imaginative capacity and the literary grace to do it. The novels coming out that are derived from Gatsby, the good ones, will have to be written by people who not only love Fitzgerald and love the book, but who are able to at least approach his writing style, and I can’t think of many people who can touch that.” (Alison Flood)

Biba (France) includes both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights on a selection of the best 9 love stories to read at least once in a lifetime.

Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë

Pauvre, orpheline et pas très jolie, Jane Eyre a tout de même développé une force de caractère qui l’aide à se faire une place dans la société rigide de l’Angleterre victorienne. Elle arrive même à trouver l’amour, tout en défiant tous les obstacles !

[...]

Les hauts de Hurlevent, d’Emily BrontëL’histoire d’un enfant orphelin, recueillit par la famille de Mr Earnshaw, dont les enfants ne sont pas tous ravis par le nouvel arrivant. Entre sentiments opposés, vengeances et destruction. (Laurena Valette) (Translation)

El economista (Spain) also recommends reading Wuthering Heights in 2021.

Página 12 (Argentina) mentions the fact that Gael Policano Rossi reimagined Wuthering Heights as a short theatre piece in which the characters are electric appliances.

Por último, “Cumbres Borrascosas” revisita la obra de Emily Brontë, y la dispone para un elenco de electrodomésticos. Ciertamente, a partir de este texto Lolo y Lauti, en el año 2014, diseñaron el espectáculo interpretados por los mismos artefactos. (Leonardo Gudiño) (Translation)

The Telegraph lists '10 annoying things UK tourism needs to fix before our Great British summer':

Coach drivers must be banned from parking in the centre of historic villages

Time and time again, when wandering in the hamlets of the Cotswolds or the Peak District and spying a church straight out of Brontë novel, you’ll find a ‘Smethwicks of Luton’ coach parked directly in front of it with the engine still running and the driver immersed in the Daily Mirror crossword; none of which is conducive to the bucolic, atavistic vibe we all travelled for. (Rob Crossan)

The Utah Statesman has included a quote from Villette on a list of 'Words of inspiration from women (from “A Woman’s Book of Inspiration”) for a new semester'. Mozart Cultures examines Jane Eyre as an early feminist novel. About Manchester recommends exploring 'the world of Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell with online tours of Gaskell House' (via Zoom), reminding readers of the fact that Charlotte Brontë visited once.

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The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë in Chinese

 The complete poems of Emily Brontë have been published in a new Chinese translation:

副标题: Complete Poems of Emily Brontë
译者: 刘新民 (Translator: Liu Xinmin)

出版社: 四川文艺出版社 (Shichuan Publishing House)
出版年: 2021-1
ISBN: 9787541156052

《艾米莉·勃朗特诗全集》收录了艾米莉·勃朗特近两百首抒情诗。抒情内容极为丰厚广泛，情感也极其真挚深沉。然而艾米莉·勃朗特主要以小说《呼啸山庄》闻名于世，《呼啸山庄》的光芒掩盖了她的诗名。在她笔下，北太平洋贡达尔王国的几大家族众多人物围绕着史诗主角——美人奥古
斯塔·杰拉尔丁娜·阿尔梅达，上演了一幕幕曲折离奇、慷慨悲壮的动人故事。据信现存诗篇仅是该史诗韵文部分，仅是韵文便已如蒙太奇般叠合幻化，营造出一种奇峭迷蒙的神秘感觉。艾米莉钟爱的风暴意象，女主奥古斯塔的一生充满风暴侵袭，而艾米莉又何尝不是，在其短暂30年光阴里，风暴般的宿命为世人奉献了一份绮丽的瑰宝，在这里，荒原与坟茔同在，严酷与浪漫并行。

More information on Sina or Sohu.  

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In the footsteps of the Brontës after lockdown

The Yorkshire Post, like all of us, has its sights on the end of lockdown. First of all it recommends some 'Must-see film and TV locations to combine with Yorkshire staycations after lockdown'.

Bradford

[...]

Bronte Country is also a draw for literature lovers, with locations such as Haworth offering bundles of charm for visitors wanting to see where film versions were made on long walks. It's a stop on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, a service which has been used numerous times in screen productions. (John Blow)

And secondly, it suggests '9 of the best walking holiday locations in Yorkshire to escape to after lockdown', such as

1. Haworth

Home of the famous Brontë sisters, the pretty village of Haworth is surrounded by beautiful countryside, with footpaths leading to famous sites including the Brontë waterfall, Brontë bridge and Top Withens, while the Brontë Way stretches for 43 miles and takes around four days to complete. (Claire Schofield)

The Guardian has selected the 'Top 10 books about children fending for themselves'. No Brontë has made it directly to the list but Jane Eyre is there via 

4. Milkman by Anna Burns

Burns captures the absurdity of childhood in the midst of armed conflict. The unnamed narrator defies expectations because she’s not interested in babies or bombs, but books. “Longest friend” advises against her “deviant” behaviour of walking while reading. “Are you saying it’s okay to go around with Semtex but not okay for me to read Jane Eyre in public?” The narrator catches the unwanted predatory attention of a paramilitary called Milkman. “I came to understand how much I’d been closed down, how much I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man,” she says, “by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion”. (Una Mannion)

The Guardian also features the winner of the Costa book of the year award, The Mermaid of Black Conch’s author Monique Roffe.

It’s really not as simple as that, Roffey points out: “I think if you unravel female jealousy, you find the patriarchy. It’s a competition for the alpha male, and we’ve ever been thus. Our patriarchy is highly internalised.”

One result of that internalisation has been the “madwoman in the attic trope”, which was transported into Caribbean literature by Jean Rhys via her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which reinvents the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre as a white Creole. “I think we’ve had enough of this historic, hysterical Freudian woman,” says Roffey. “I have every respect for Rhys, but we need new, different types of characters coming out of the region. (Claire Armitstead)

IOL (South Africa) has interviewed actor Tom Wilkinson about his role as Earl of Brockenhurst in the period drama Belgravia.

Why do we love period drama so much?

The Jane Austens and the Brontës tell really good stories which are very easy to watch.

From a narrative point of view, they are excellent stories, and that's why we keep coming back to them.

They are wonderful tales, and that's the reason why they have lasted.

There's an article on women publishing behind pseudonyms in Periódico Correo (Mexico). The Sisters' Room follows in Anne Brontë's footsteps in York.

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The Brontë Lounge with Sharon Wright

The first virtual Brontë Lounge of 2021:

The Brontë Lounge with Sharon Wright
The Mother of the Brontës
Thursday 28 January 2021, 19:30 h

Brontë Parsonage Museum via Zoom

We're thrilled to kick off the Brontë Lounge for 2021 by welcoming author and biographer Sharon Wright. In this zoom event, Sh
aron will discuss with our host Helen Meller why Maria Brontë is such a shadowy figure, and how she set out across Britain in search of this clever, resilient and witty lady of letters.
This year marks the bicentenary of the death of Maria Branwell Brontë in 1821. In the first biography of the enigmatic mother of genius, The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick Sharon Wright reveals the extraordinary, forgotten life of the first, last and only Mrs Brontë.
Sharon was born in Bradford and is an award-winning journalist, nonfiction author and playwright. She began her career on the local paper that covers Haworth before moving to the national press. Sharon has written for The Guardian, Daily Express, New York Post, BBC, The Lady, Glamour and Red. Her first book Balloonomania Belles about the first women to fly was published in 2018, followed by Maria’s biography in 2019. She is also the author of critically acclaimed plays Full Fat and The Social Notwork, plus Friller based on a true story from Edwardian Haworth. The Brontës even feature in her new paperback The Lost History of the Lady Aeronauts, out in Spring 2021.

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In the Brontës everything happens

The Telegraph has an article on why 'The real sexual charge of Jane Austen is far more interesting than Bridgerton bodice-ripping' and we love the description of Bridgerton with which it begins:

It’s best compared to an episode of Hollyoaks directed by Baz Luhrmann, with unfeasibly gorgeous people copping off in interesting settings; in a field, on an ornate staircase, suspended on a ladder in the library, as you do. [...]

As a regency romance, Bridgerton has inevitably invited comparisons with Jane Austen. The sex scenes in Bridgerton, wrote one reviewer, would have “Jane Austen reaching for the smelling salts!” They echo a familiar caricature - that of prudish Aunt Jane, the narrow chronicler of sterile romances - a stereotype that has endured ever since Charlotte Brontë wrote dismissively of Austen “the passions are perfectly unknown to her”. 

Perhaps this is why modern adaptations are so often embellished with extra dollops of concupiscence and lust - even Austen devotee Andrew Davies couldn’t resist inserting some extra-curricular nookie to his Northanger Abbey adaptation; though this was not a patch on the diabolical liberties he took with Sanditon, Austen’s unfinished novel. Who can predict how it would have panned out? But I suspect Austen would probably not have stretched to heavy petting and an incestuous kiss, had she lived. (Madeline Grant)

We can't help but be reminded of that newspaper clipping in the Brontë Parsonage Library: 'In Austen, sex is just a kiss on the back of the hand, whereas in the Brontës everything happens' (which according to Patricia Ingham in her book Authors in Context: The Brontës was said by the producer of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 1996 in the Observer Review on August 25th, 1996).

Parade has interviewed The Wife Upstairs author Rachel Hawkins. Her first answer matches what was said above.

For your adult debut, how did you decide upon such a suspenseful domestic thriller? And a retelling of a Brontë classic?

When you reread Jane Eyre, you quickly realize just how many big (and very modern!) ideas Brontë was dealing with. Sex, money, power, class…all these things make for an excellent domestic thriller plot.

And on that note, would you call this a modern retelling of Jane Eyre? Or more of a reimagination?

Definitely a reimagination. Or maybe closer to a remix. I wanted to take those familiar elements of Jane Eyre and spin them a new way.

What was it like writing and developing your Jane? Where did she differ from Bronte’s in your opinion?

I really thought a lot about what a character like Jane might look like in 2021, how her experiences in a more modern setting might turn her into a different person than the Victorian version. She’s definitely a little spikier than Brontë’s Jane, and certainly a good deal more foul-mouthed! [...]

What was the best book you read in 2020?

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Megan O'Neill Melle)

Looper recommends watching I Walked with a Zombie.

Most importantly, I Walked with a Zombie takes Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and adds a welcome, frightful flair. (Eammon Jacobs)

Shemazing offers advice on reading more classics including Wuthering Heights.

‘Wuthering Heights’ – Emily Brontë

In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere…

As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim Wuthering Heights house. It is a place he will never forget.

There, he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since childhood. How her choice led to  betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present. And how love can transgress authority, convention and even death…

This dark, stormy and romantic tale is told in the past and present, moving between two generations of young lovers, showing the past can haunt the present. Romantically gothic, it is a Brontë classic, and always a good one to be able to reference, as well as an absolute gem of a book. I think there was a recent film adaptation that’s on Netflix, starring Kaya Scodeliario of ‘Skins’ and ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ fame as Cathy. A tale of obsession gone wrong, it’s a fantastic read. (Fiona Murphy)

Dominica News Online offers some insight into the owner of Jean Rhys House whose death has given way to the demolition of the house.

Vena McDougall passed away on the 12th of January, 2021.  Her life story is noteworthy, not only from her significant contribution to Dominica’s development, especially in the areas of business, tourism, culture and conservation, but also because it can be a motivational model for today’s and future Dominican women in their struggle… [...]

Jean Rhys House

Many of our elders, historians and literary luminaries, referred to the 150years old, recently demolished wooden building at the corner of Cork St and Independence st, as the Jean Rhys building. And they were not wrong, because Jean Rhys, author of more than two dozen books and short stories, including The Wide Sargasso Sea , lived in that House for the first 16 years of her life. Indeed, Jean Rhys was, a prolific writer who glorified Dominica’s Beauty and culture in her novels.

From Jean Rhys to Vena’s Guest House

My generation however, who referred to this said building as Vena’s Guest House, are also correct.

Vena Mcdougal who was awarded Dominica’s Meritorious Service Award in 2004, lived in the Jean Rys House for many years more than our much acclaimed writer Jean Rhys.

Vena though a small business woman, acquired the Jean Rhys House in the 1980s and held unto it till 2009.

Writes. Polly Patuollo in Repeating Islands, “……on the death of Mr Winston in the early 1980s, the house was sold to an inter-island trader called Vena McDougall, who turned the building into Vena’s Hotel. At that point much of the interior was adapted to accommodate guests: …. the yard, however, retained some of its charm, and in the 1980s it became a pleasant restaurant known as the World of Food. The huge mango tree still provided shade, and at that time a plaque associating Jean Rhys with the house was nailed to its base. It remained the only tribute to the writer. Harry Sealey was the restaurant manager at the time and remembers how people would come there because of its associations with Rhys. (Norris Prevost)

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Balls online

Via the Brontë Parsonage's Twitter we have realized that Lily Cole's Balls short film is now being streamed online:

A short fiction film exploring the hypothetical origins of Wuthering Heights Heathcliff - based on true stories of foundlings from 18th and 19th Century England that might have inspired Emily Brontë's character.
Balls was commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Foundling Museum, with support from RRU Liverpool and Impossible. It was produced by Fury Films.
Balls exhibited in both museums to celebrate Emily Brontë's 200th birthday on July 30th 2018.
Balls was selected as The Guardian’s Exhibition of the Week; nominated for Best Director, Best Producer and the XX Award at Underwire Festival; and nominated for Best Film in Official Competition, at London Short Film Festival.

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Jane Eyre on Spotify

All over the place is the announcement that Spotify now allows users to choose from a few audiobooks, including Jane Eyre narrated by Sarah Coombs. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Spotify on Monday released a small collection of exclusive audiobook recordings on its platform, a move that signals its interest in continuing to broaden its library of non-music programming. [...]

The other titles that Spotify is releasing as part of the collection are Jean Toomer’s Cane, narrated by Audra McDonald; Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, narrated by James Langton; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, narrated by Sarah Coombs; Nella Larsen’s Passing, narrated by Bahni Turpin; and Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, narrated by Santino Fontana.

To accompany the audiobooks, Spotify has commissioned series Sitting with the Classics on Spotify, in which Harvard professor Glenda Carpio offers a deep-dive on each book, exploring the history and breaking down the narratives and themes for a modern audience. (Natalie Jarvey)

Listverse shares 'Ten Amazing Slips In Time', including one connected to Top Withins.

6 Wuthering Heights 

In summer 1959 (writes Richard Davis) the British actor Alan Helm was working in a theatre in Bradford, not far from the famed Brontë village of Haworth. Before performances Helm liked to walk out on the moors which inspired Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. He had done this walk many times in the past four years. One fine day he strode out, reaching the ruin known as Top Withins around lunchtime. Here he saw a man in a deerstalker hat with a shotgun. When the man disappeared, Helm went toward the ruin to look for him. On his way, he suddenly found himself looking down at a big Georgian farmhouse.He ran down, knocked on the door, and peered into the windows to see a table set for lunch. He could smell pigs and hear cattle. But when he entered the barn it was empty. Looking back up toward Top Withins, he found that it had vanished. He briefly saw the deerstalker man once more; and now, badly spooked, more or less ran back to Haworth. During this experience Helm had checked his watch and found it stopped, at 1.45pm. Just before curtain up he checked it again, as of long habit, and saw that it was telling the right time (5.45) although he had not rewound it. (Richard Sugg)

Express wonders, 'How do the sex scenes in Bridgerton compare to other period dramas?' and claims that,

Period dramas have varied in their sexual content over the years from the likes of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South to countless Brontë adaptations which keep tensions simmering below the surface and the rating decidedly PG. (Neela Debnath)

Sara Tor in The Times has a very unambigous opinion about Bridgerton: 

How bad is Bridgerton?

I hate Bridgerton. There, I’ve said it. I know 63 million households would disagree but I can’t hold it in any longer; I think it is absolutely awful. You see, I am someone who adores Jane Austen, bows down to the Brontës, idolises Elizabeth Gaskell. I revere Anthony Trollope and I worship Wilkie Collins. Having also, therefore, watched every single BBC programme set in times gone by, I’d say I’m likewise something of a period drama connoisseur. In my eyes, Bridgerton is simply a raunchy, snuff-sniffing wannabe.

Siglo XXI (Spain) has included Wuthering Heights on a list of 12 classics to be read in 2021.

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Heathcliff in Seoul

 A new musical based on Wuthering Heights is opening tomorrow in Seoul, South Korea:

MBJet Company /  2020 Creative Lab New Musical of the Year present

히드클리프 (Heathcliff)

January 27 - February 7; 7:30 PM

Arko Arts Theater, Seoul, South Korea

Director: Go Seonwoong 

Adapted by:  Ko Sun-woong

Music by  Jeong Min-seo

With Moon Gyeong-cho, Lee Ji-soo, Moon Seong-il, Park Byeong-hoon, Ju Da-on, Choi Baek-na, Kim Do-wan. Ensemble | Jaehyun Lee, Wooseok Shin, Myungsook Bae, Jieun Park, Daye Jung, Byeongcheol Yang

Koya-Culture has further information.

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Highbrow Anne

The Telegraph and Argus discusses how books are helping many people get through lockdown.

Being stuck at home for months on end, I’ve been reading more books than ever. Mostly my usual mix of contemporary fiction and memoirs, but I’m also making an effort to tackle some of the literature I really should have read by now (Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the latest on my ‘high brow’ list). (Emma Clayton)

Les Echos (France) describes the work of writer Daisy Johnson as follows

Daisy Johnson est une enfant du siècle. Ses frangines ont beau être des lointaines cousines des héroïnes des soeurs Brontë ou de Daphné du Maurier, elles assument pleinement leurs désirs charnels et n'ont pas peur d'y céder. (Philippe Chevilley) (Translation)

Quadratin Oaxaca (Mexico) examines the work of author Sergio Pitol.

Lo extraordinario de la obra es la minuciosidad con la que el escritor aborda cada personaje real. Se pierde en la profundidad de sus escritos y los saca a relucir con  algunas precisiones pero siempre con el gran talento que tenían. Con inquietud se mete en la vida de dos talentosas señoritas, Emily Brontë y Jane Austen, para describir la vida que arrastró a ambas mujeres con 43 años de diferencia, a una soltería obligada por las circunstancias, pese a ser mujeres bien dotadas, cultas y miembros de familias relevantes. Cumbres Borrascosas y Orgullo y Prejuicio de cada una respectivamente, como sus obras centrales, son libros que han atravesado en largas generaciones, impresas en el mundo del cine y otros géneros y objeto de análisis incluso para los misóginos. (Teresa Gil) (Translation)

Segre (in Catalan) quotes from Jane Eyre in an article about winter. AnneBrontë.org has a post on Charlotte Brontë and William Makepeace Thackeray.

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An Unfortunate Governess

A new Brontë-related scholar approach:

An Unfortunate Governess Received: Anne and Charlotte Brontë’s Portrayals of the Feminine Occupation
Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson
Momentum 2020
Columbus State University's Undergraduate Research Journal

Volume VII, pp. 18

Abstract

Charlotte and Anne Brontë, while both talented and canonized authors in their own right, display different approaches in their writing style. Both of the Brontë sisters worked as governesses at some point in their lives, then created novels with a plain governess as a main character. Although Anne was the first to do so, she faced difficulties in publishing her book, Agnes Grey, due to the candid nature of her writing. Agnes faced criticism from her sister, who maintained that Anne’s style was inappropriate for the readers of their century. However, Anne’s lengthier career as a governess allowed her better insight into the profession. Unlike her Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey exhibits what a 19th-century governess would have encountered in her career: loneliness due to her awkward social position, disrespect from her employers, and difficult, unruly children whose behaviour could endanger her career. Aside from Jane’s childhood at the Reeds’ residence and Lowood School, her career as a governess is one contrary to what governesses at the time recorded. Jane has an employer that sees her as her equal, a loving student, and coworkers that respect her. Agnes experiences the complete opposite during her life, supporting the assertion that Anne’s career influenced her to write a more realistic portrayal of the feminine occupation. Letters and books concerning the livelihood of being a governess reveal that most women employed in that profession would have claimed themselves as “an unfortunate governess received,” rather than attest to any of Jane’s experiences.

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Whirlwind romance

The New York Times reviews Harold Bloom's late book The Bright Book of Life:

Nor do we understand why he is really more interested in Emily Brontë as a poet, wonderful as she is, than as the author of “Wuthering Heights,” or why of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” we hear practically nothing. (Robert Gottlieb)

The Delaware Gazette recommends Rachel Hawkins's The Wife Upstairs: 

Mild-mannered Jane cobbles together a living as a dog walker for the wealthy residents of Thornfield Estates, when an encounter with Eddie Rochester turns into a whirlwind romance. But plain Jane has a mysterious past…and so does everyone else in this upscale neighborhood. Loosely inspired by Jane Eyre, this domestic suspense novel features the twists and turns that fans of the genre expect. Perfect for fans of Liv Constantine and Louise Candlish. (Nicole Fowles)

Bright Lights Film Journal talks about Rebecca 2020:

With the narrator’s perfect first line – “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” – the novel plunges into a turbulent nightmare of the unconscious, with all of its attendant Freudian undertows: Rebecca is a mad Gothic masterpiece. And with overtures toward Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898), Rebecca, a ghost story in search of its ghosts, interrogates and undermines our cultural codification of heteronormative domesticity and ancestral inheritance. (Wilson Taylor)

The Sunday Times publishes the results of the Clue writing contest 1846 Eyes Right:

What Rochester has lost Jane restores with this command
If you can see (so to speak) the right literary connection, you may realise that the clue is talking about Mr Rochester whose sight was lost in a fire, and his employee and later not quite his wife, Jane Eyre. If you “restore” SIGHT, EYRE you have the answer. But both parts of the anagram fodder are indirectly indicated, and as Jane does not restore his eyesight in the book, the story contradicts the context that you need to solve the clue. So this feels like a Times or Sunday Times clue that might have been printed in about the 1950s. In more modern clues, I’m reluctant about words like “restore” or “correct” as anagram indicators, as the answer is only the “correct” order of the anagram fodder after you know the answer.( Richard Biddlecombe)

The Link discusses the future of journalism:

In the beginning, there was an unsuspecting, ordinary hero. Thrust into an adventure, they meet a mentor, assemble allies, discover enemies and face numerous challenges along the way. After vanquishing the enemy in a decisive crisis, our hero returns home. Their adventures have transformed them, and they have gained insight, knowledge, or perhaps even a physical reward.

Sounds familiar? That’s because it is. This classic story trajectory is called the monomyth, or the hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell popularized the pattern in 1949, and it forms the backbone of many famous works such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and—perhaps most well-known—George Lucas’s Star Wars.  (Helen Gemmrich)

Financial Express (India) reviews the film Bulbbul:

 Filmmaker [Anvita] Dutt agrees, saying that, unlike history and most of the epics, which were written by men, women were the original storytellers for ghost stories. “Biology has nothing to do with intellect. Be it Margaret Atwood, Jo Walton, Daphne du Maurier, Sarah Perry, Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, there are women writers who are heard and will continue to be heard,” she says. (Reya Behrotra)

Yeni Asıt (Turkey) explores women in literature:

Jane Eyre, yalnızca kadının erkek egemen toplumdaki konumuna gözü pek yaklaşımıyla değil, şiirsel duygusallığı çağdaş bir gerçekçilikle harmanla dığı anlatımıyla da öncü olmayı başarmış klasik bir başyapıttır. 19. yüzyıl İngiltere'sinde, her türlü tutuculuğun kol gezdiği Victoria döneminde geçen Jane Eyre, birçoklarınca kadın hak ve özgürlüklerine sahip çıkan ilk romanlardan biri olarak kabul edilir. Yazarı Charlotte Bronte'nin yaşamından izler de taşıyan roman, zorlu bir yaşam süren yapayalnız bir genç kızın güçlü bir kadına dönüşmesinin öyküsüdür. (Translation)

Hairdos against bad weather in El Correo (Spain):

Corona de trenzas. Como recién salidas de una novela de Emily Brönte (sic), las coronas de trenzas siempre tienen ese irresistible halo lánguido de las protagonistas de ‘Cumbres Borrascosas’ y son las favoritas de las mujeres de espíritu bohemio. (María Calvo) (Translation)

El Sol de Tampico (México) explores Juan Rulfo's influences:

 Se le ha querido encontrar influencia a la prosa de Rulfo con los grandes escritores como Faulkner, Prost, Joyce o Kafka; sin embargo, el apego a las supersticiones, a los mitos de aparecidos, a los veneros populares y a las descripciones marcadamente locales de paisajes fantasmales, hacen que la literatura rulfiana se acerque más a los autores nórdicos como Lagerlöff, Ramuz, Bjornson, Hamsun e, inclusive, con la Emily Brönte (sic) de “Cumbres Borrascosas”, en el tratamiento del amor fou –tan atrayente para los surrealistas franceses-. (Juan José González Mejía) (Translation)

Le Parisien (France) has an article on Augustin Trapenard mentioning, of course, his Brontëiteness:

cet agrégé d'anglais qui fut bouleversé, adolescent, par la lecture des « Hauts de Hurlevent», d'Emily Brontë. (Joséphine Lebard) (Translation)

Diacritk (France) reviews La Pensée Blanche by Lilian Thuram:

L’exemple donné de Maryse Condé est tout à fait éloquent. Elle a raconté comment la lecture des Hauts de Hurlevent l’avait transportée, adolescente et elle avait alors déclaré qu’elle serait romancière, prétention dont l’amie… noire… qui lui avait offert le roman s’était moquée : « Mais tu es folle ! Les gens comme nous n’écrivent pas ! » (147). On peut ajouter qu’elle a publié, en 1995, des Hauts de Hurlevent antillais, La Migration des cœurs. (Christiane Chaulet Achour) (Translation)

Mymovies (Italy) recommends Jane Eyre 1986, tonight on TV2000 (21.05 h). Yorkshire Live has a live feed of the snow over Yorkshire, including this stunning view of Brontë country.

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In Emily's Words. Work in Progress

 A new musical about Emily Brontë is on the works. Broadway World informs:

In Emily's Words is a new musical about English novelist Emily Brontë and her great creation: Wuthering Heights. With book, music, and lyrics by Jessy Tomsko (Boleyn), the musical follows Brontë as she brings her story to life, the characters jumping off the page as she is writing them, and Emily herself becoming more immersed in the story as it progresses. Emily Brontë paved the way for future generations of female writers, and she continues to be an example of the boundlessness and power of the human imagination.

Watch the video below!

(...) Jessy Tomsko is also the composer/lyricist for Boleyn, and a contributing writer for Ramona. She began writing In Emily's Words when she re-read Wuthering Heights in 2019 and felt inspired to bring the Brontë literary classic to the world of contemporary musical theatre. "At first, I thought I would write a new Wuthering Heights musical adaptation because I love the novel and I'm fascinated by the tragic and corrosive love of Cathy and Heathcliff," says Tomsko. "But I soon realized that I wanted to find another way in. when I began to research Emily Brontë's life and legacy, I found the way in that I was looking for... and having Keri René Fuller bring this song to life was an absolute dream!" The song also features an extra element of warmth and depth provided by cellist James Wright Glasgow.

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'Just take it from Heathcliff and Isabella'

A student from Bromley High School writes for This is local London on reading during lockdown.

Take Wuthering Heights, for example. Emily Brontë might have written the book in 1847, but I'm sure we all think of Cathy and Heathcliff when anyone says, "whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same". And maybe  love worked a little differently back then, but it did teach us all something pretty important: if the love of your life marries another guy, don't marry his sister just for revenge. It's not gonna work out. Just take it from Heathcliff and Isabella. (Alice Febles)

The Daily Mail is critical - Daily Mail-style - of the new English literature curriculum at Leicester University.

He argued that minority teaching staff, who represent roughly 14 per cent of Leicester’s payroll, were ‘chronically absent’ across British higher education.

‘When you have a large proportion of ethnic minorities, like in Leicester, we need to make sure they can identify with that curriculum,’ he said. ‘But I think there’s still more work to be done to truly decolonise the curriculum.’

The interview told how Leicester was attempting to attract more minority students via targeted scholarship schemes, along with changes to the syllabus of major subjects.

For example, it noted: ‘The English BA at Leicester has been changed to include more diverse texts and authors set and written in countries across the world. The reading list now includes Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and NW by Zadie Smith.’ (Guy Adams)

An interview with screenwriter Russell T Davies on Pink News may just answer the above:

I’ve never been on a Yorkshire Moor crying over my lover, but I still like Wuthering Heights. I’ve never got a DeLorean to travel at 88 miles an hour, but I love Back to the Future. It’s not what fiction does. When fiction’s good and true it appeals to anyone, anywhere. That’s how it works. (Darren Scott)

Kaleva (Finland) recommends watching To Walk Invisible later today, giving it 4 stars out of 5.

To Walk Invisible 

Charlotte Brontë kirjoitti Kotiopettajattaren romaanin, sisko Emily Humisevan harjun, ja Anne Wildfell Hallin asukkaan. Sisarusten koti kukki kirjallista kutsumusta, mutta kyse oli myös selviytymisestä: edesmenneen papin tyttärillä ei ollut 1800-luvulla monia vaihtoehtoja, jos halusivat pysyä riippumattomina. Finn Atkinsin, Chloe Pirrien ja Charlie Murphyn rooleista on paperin maku kaukana. Sally Wainwright ohjasi. (Britannia 2016)

Frii klo 17.25 (Pekka Eronen) (Translation)

Io Donna (Italy) finds a definition of freedom by for each zodiac sign written by a writer of that sign.

Ariete

Non sono un uccello e non c’è rete che possa intrappolarmi. Sono una creatura umana libera, con una libera volontà.

Charlotte Brontë (Francesca Tumiati) (Translation)

Buxton Advertiser features North Lees Hall in connection with Charlotte Brontë and Jane Eyre. However, it seems to claim that Charlotte Brontë slept there on a particular bed but, as far as we know, she only went for daytime visits. Las provincias (Spain) shares pictures of writers' houses, including the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The Eyre Guide posts about Bella Ellis's The Diabolical Bones.

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Turkish Jane

A new Turkish translation of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë
Translation : Nihal Yeğinobalı
Collection : Klasik Kadınlar
Can Yayınları, 2021
ISBN : 9789750748974

Küçük yaşta öksüz kalan Jane Eyre, kendisini hiçbir zaman sevmeyen ancak kocasının vasiyeti üzerine bakımını üstlenen yengesiyle zor bir yaşam sürmektedir. Katı kurallarla yönetilen bir yatılı okula gönderilince, bu kez hayatın başka zorluklarıyla yüzleşmek zorunda kalır. Okulda geçirdiği on yılın ardından öğretmen olarak mezun olur. Edward Rochester’ın malikânesinde mürebbiye olarak iş bulur. Evin gizemli efendisi Rochester’a âşık olur; ancak onu hayal bile edemeyeceği zorluklar ve acılar beklemektedir.

19. yüzyıl İngiltere’sinde, her türlü tutuculuğun kol gezdiği Victoria döneminde geçen Jane Eyre, birçoklarınca kadın hak ve özgürlüklerine sahip çıkan ilk romanlardan biri olarak kabul edilir. Yazarı Charlotte Brontë’nin yaşamından izler de taşıyan roman, zorlu bir yaşam süren yapayalnız bir genç kızın güçlü bir kadına dönüşmesinin öyküsüdür.

Jane Eyre, yalnızca kadının erkek egemen toplumdaki konumuna gözüpek yaklaşımıyla değil, şiirsel duygusallığı çağdaş bir gerçekçilikle harmanladığı anlatımıyla da öncü olmayı başarmış klasik bir başyapıttır.

Both Cumhuriyet and Milliyet, highlight this publication.

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A murderer's reading bucket list

According to The Week, Wuthering Heights is one of the books that should 'be on your reading bucket list'.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (1847)

First published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights was the only novel written by Emily Brontë, the second-youngest of the Brontë siblings, and she died a year after its publication at the age of 30. “The scope and drift of its imagination, its passionate exploration of a fatal yet regenerative love affair, and its brilliant manipulation of time and space put it in a league of its own,” writes McCrum in The Observer. “This is great English literature, the fruit of a quite extraordinary childhood.”

Wuthering Heights was even on an Italian murderer's bucket list. As reported by L'Unione Sarda:

There is no lack of traces of repentance: "The other day a strange thing happened, while I was reading 'Wuthering Heights' (novel by Emily Brontë, ed) ... I remembered that evening, the night of the murder, but not as I always do , it was much stronger ... And for the first time I felt real sorrow for what I did, maybe I was even close to crying. But if I think about it now I don't feel the same things, I just don't feel anything, but maybe I'm getting close to true repentance. "

Agenzia Italiana and other news outlets also report it.

De Volkskrant (Netherlands) has an article on colour-blind casting.

Toch is dit te simpel gedacht als het gaat om historische films en series, zeggen critici. Nu is het inderdaad wel eens tijd dat kostuumdrama’s wat minder wit worden. Als er al personages van kleur in voorkomen, staan ze doorgaans te zwoegen in de keuken, en dat klopt niet. Andrea Arnold castte voor haar Wuthering Heights (2011) een Afro-Caribische Heathcliff omdat hij in het boek van Emily Brontë wordt omschreven als ‘een zigeuner met een donkere huid’. (Floortje Smit) (Translation)

Jane Eyre is the book of the month at the University of New York in Prague. Luccia Gray lists '10 Lies Edward Rochester told Jane Eyre'. Heart Wants Books posts about Wide Sargasso Sea. There's a post on 'Brontë Ghosts and Legends' by MJ Wayland. Huffington Post illustrates an article on the devastating effects of Storm Christoph with a picture of Haworth's Main Street deserted (also because of lockdown, of course). Finally, something to watch tonight:

Back in the summer, we welcomed the very lovely @SusanCalman to Haworth, and we're very happy to share with you that her #GrandDayOut in Yorkshire will be airing this Friday 22 January at 8pm on Channel 5. We've included a little sneak preview for you below ... pic.twitter.com/QR8BJXJ2tg

— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) January 21, 2021

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Timeless stories

RBA publishes in Italy the collection Storie Senza Tempo which includes both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights:

Una collezione unica che rende omaggio ai romanzi che parlano di noi.

Cime Tempestose, Jane Eyre, Orgoglio e Pregiudizio, Piccole Donne, Ragione e Sentimento o Madame Bovary sono solo alcune di quelle che possiamo chiamare Storie Senza Tempo, grandi storie scritte molti anni fa che ad oggi continuano a essere lette con lo stesso entusiasmo e continuano ad emozionare le nuove generazioni.

Libreriamo recommends botht titles. 

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'Jane Eyre without being Jane Eyre'

The Daily Star (Bangladesh) has an article on Virginia Woolf.

We get to read Woolf's scathing scrawl about the Ulysses being "a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster", along with her profound admiration towards Charlotte Brontë, who "has you by the hand and forces you along her road, seeing the things she sees and as she sees them." (Jahanara Tariq)

In The Bookseller, writer Dallas Athent reflects on ill narrators (or, rather, the lack of them).

I tried to remember how many novels I've read (not just recently, but in the past 30 years), where the narrator had a health issue that moulded their perspective, without said illness dictating the overall theme or plot of the story. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t think of many, I couldn’t think of a single one. I examined my bookshelf. There was The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Kudos by Rachel Cusk, and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. In terms of classics, I had The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradubury (sic). I’m not saying these books should be anything but what they are. They’re all some of my favorites! I’m simply illustrating how shocked I was, that in my entire bookshelf, I hadn’t read a novel with a background that was similar to my own.

Urban Matter describes the latest on-screen adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca as 'Jane Eyre without being Jane Eyre'. La opinión de Murcia (Spain) begins an article on the use of pseudonyms by women writers by quoting from Robert Southey's letter to Charlotte Brontë. Book Riot has a lovely selection of 'literary greeting cards for almost any occasion' and some of them are Brontë-related.

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Victorians: Anne Brontë's Bicentenary, Special Edition

A special issue celebrating Anne Brontë's bicentenary has been published on the Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature journal:

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature

Number 138, Winter 2020

Anne Brontë Bicentenary, Special Edition

Greetings from the Editor
Deborah A. Logan
p. 1

Introduction: Anne Brontë Bicentenary, Special Edition

Deborah Denenholz Morse, Amber Pouliot

pp. 105-111

"Give me back my barren hills": Representations of Space in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Elizabeth Langland

pp. 112-123

Anne Brontë's works have yielded fewer critical insights focusing on her representations of space than have her sisters' novels. This essay argues that, in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne is equally attentive as her sisters to environment. She echoes, albeit in a different register, their representations of freedom and delight in the natural world, while she explores even more deeply her protagonist's ongoing experiences of enclosure and imprisonment in the middle-class home. In her sensitivity to these constructed spaces—how they are accessed, by whom, and under what circumstances—Anne Brontë shapes her novel's themes. The physical distance and tension between Grassdale Manor (Huntingdon's estate) and Wildfell Hall (Helen Huntingdon's remote retreat) charts the psychological escape and emergence into autonomy and self-government of the novel's protagonist—Helen Graham, the tenant of Wildfell Hall.

"Uncivil Usage": Shifting Forms of Control in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Elizabeth King
pp. 124-140

The question of how authority is maintained is a major preoccupation in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where the treatment of animals serves as a significant indicator of different strategies for exerting control. Brontë's mirrored structure of two separate courtships enables a comparison of the different forms of control exhibited by each of Helen Graham's suitors; encoded in their treatment of animals are insights into the alternative manifestations of authority each man represents. Although Arthur Huntingdon and Gilbert Markham use very different methods to assert control, ultimately they are both deeply concerned with maintaining a position of structural privilege. While Arthur embodies an entitled, thoughtless masculine power typical of an upper-class gentleman, Gilbert exemplifies a much more deliberate maintenance of control, indicative of new forms of governance emerging in nineteenth-century England.

"penance and mortification for ever": or, How Agnes Grey Bucked the Trend and Found True Happiness

Margaret Markwick
pp. 141-155

The question of how authority is maintained is a major preoccupation in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where the treatment of animals serves as a significant indicator of different strategies for exerting control. Brontë's mirrored structure of two separate courtships enables a comparison of the different forms of control exhibited by each of Helen Graham's suitors; encoded in their treatment of animals are insights into the alternative manifestations of authority each man represents. Although Arthur Huntingdon and Gilbert Markham use very different methods to assert control, ultimately they are both deeply concerned with maintaining a position of structural privilege. While Arthur embodies an entitled, thoughtless masculine power typical of an upper-class gentleman, Gilbert exemplifies a much more deliberate maintenance of control, indicative of new forms of governance emerging in nineteenth-century England.

Sav(or)ing the Soul: Alimentary Excess and the Decline of Body and Soul in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Lesa Scholl

pp. 156-168

Many scholars connect Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) to Brontë's experience of living with her brother Branwell's alcoholism. There is further scope for understanding this novel in the context of alimentary excess in the nineteenth century, through medical and theological discussions on the relationship between body, soul, and nutrition that are consistent with the Brontës' Anglican ethos. While not dismissing Huntingdon's alcoholism, this essay focuses more on the prevalence of unhealthy alimentary excess in Brontë's novel, and the violence wrought by poor nutrition on the body and soul of self and others. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall engages closely with the 1830s and 1840s medical and theological understandings of nutritional links between physical and mental health. Brontë's novel further shows how neglect of bodily health through poor nutrition not only damages the individual body but compromises the moral health of society.

Anne Brontë's Labors

Drew Lamonica Arms

pp. 169-180

Unlike her sisters Charlotte and Emily, Anne Brontë professed to write for the moral edification of her readers, a duty she saw as God-given and part of her Evangelical calling. This article considers Brontë's literary principles, most clearly communicated in the Preface to the Second Edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by exploring her religious poetry and establishing her sense of authorship as Christian labor. Drawing on the many uses of "labor" in her poetry, this discussion examines the necessary connections Brontë affirms between an inward labor of spiritual self-improvement and the labor she hoped to do in the world "amid the brave and strong." A close reading of Brontë's final poem offers another opportunity to reevaluate Charlotte Brontë's portrayal of Anne, given in letters and published writing after Anne's death, that mischaracterizes her artistic aims and aspirations.

"Thy love to me impart:" The Literary-Theological Legacy of Hymns in Patrick and Anne Brontës' Father-Daughter Relationship
Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
pp. 181-199

Little information survives regarding the theological or the familial relationship between the Reverend Mr. Patrick Brontë and his daughter, Anne. This analysis utilizes an obscure Sunday School hymn book held at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, from which Patrick selected hymns for his annual Sunday School Anniversaries. The hymnal helps clarify his theological beliefs, especially regarding sin and the afterlife, and their influence on Anne's theology. A close-reading of two such hymns and of Anne's poems, "Confidence" and "A Prayer," reveals connections linking the father's beliefs and the daughter's doubts.

"And is that the use you make of your Bible?": Universalism in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Susanna Millsap
pp. 200-211

Although scholars have offered varying interpretations of the "truth" mentioned in Anne Brontë's preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, one primary lesson is often overlooked. The importance of universalism—for both Brontë and her narrative—deserves further study, as it is part of the truth the author wished to convey. A close reading of the preface, the novel, and biographical materials demonstrates the savviness with which Brontë incorporated this controversial belief into her narrative. Her choices to argue both sides of the issue and to present a character study in Arthur Huntingdon demonstrate keen rhetorical and audience awareness. Ultimately, Brontë's nuanced portrayal of universalism highlights the importance of other lessons in the novel, suggesting that assured salvation is no excuse for immorality.

Peripheral Voices in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Grace Pregent
pp. 212-230

The character system developed in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall offers a case study of characters and characterization through its focus on their "proper place." What is the proper place of major and minor characters? This article argues for a reconceptualization of character landscapes within narratives. Despite the overwhelming presence of rupture in Tenant—bonds broken by death, infidelity, or abuse—from the margins, a host of minor and very minor characters encourages a consideration of how peripheral voices are perceived. Studying minor characters and their interrelationships expands the thematic discourse surrounding the novel, whose characters model a range of bonds between men, between women, and between men and women.

Consent and Enclosure in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: "You needn't read it all; but take it home with you"
Catherine Quirk
pp. 231-241

While much recent scholarship situates The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a proto-feminist text, highlighting Helen Huntingdon's status as a working woman and her radicalism in leaving her first husband, this article argues that Anne Brontë's narrative structure in fact limits the character's radical potential. The novel's structure replicates the form of nineteenth-century coverture, which establishes her husband, Gilbert Markham, and not Helen, as the center of narrative power. Markham's framing letters enclose Helen's text within his own; while this has been read as granting authority to the woman's narrative, such framing instead contains it and controls the possibilities of its interpretation.

"It seemed as if they looked on vacancy": Life Writing in Agnes Grey
Maria Frawley
pp. 242-252

This essay reads Anne Brontë's first novel through the lens of life-writing, moving beyond restrictive notions of the autobiographical to encompass a range of narrative strategies deployed by authors exploring selfhood and subjectivity. Agnes Grey reveals Brontë's relatively sophisticated understanding of different dimensions of identity, both her own and that of her eponymous heroine. Brontë explores personhood in order to encourage readers to consider the ways humans come to be understood and treated as persons, and the situations that cause persons to think of themselves as fundamentally human. Further, she deploys a range of rhetorical tools and narrative techniques that foreground the intersubjective nature of her heroine's self-understanding and the dynamics of her interiority, complicating in the process any superficial understanding of the character as quiet and, in turn, unsettling the impression that biographers of Anne Brontë, beginning most influentially with her sister Charlotte, have perpetuated.

The Word of a Woman, Thanks be to God: Women's Writing in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Clara Poteet
pp. 253-267

Anne Brontë's use of Victorian iconography of religious awakening and biblical language in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall highlights the potential for women's writing to facilitate spiritual conversion. Milicent Hargrave's letters and Helen Huntingdon's diary offer powerful explorations for both the legitimacy of women's writing and the role of Scripture in spiritual conversion. Gilbert Markham and Ralph Hattersley, through their conversions, participate in a new egalitarian Christianity, one that is just as much about behavioral reform as spiritual transformation, and one that honors women's words and lived experiences as metaphorical scriptures. For Anne Brontë, the spiritual and earthly planes were inseparable, and her novel of social realism points to a Christianity made of lifelong listening, learning, and relearning.

Disconsolate Tenants of the Metabolic Rift: An Anthropocene Feminist View of Farming in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Shawna Ross
pp. 268-289

This article argues that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an ecofeminist text by showing how maladaptive patterns of land management, which contribute to the decay and depopulation of rural areas, are connected to Anne Brontë's exposure of women's vulnerabilities in the Victorian period. Through a series of material and aesthetic links between land productivity and familial discord, Tenant provides a gendered account of the nineteenth-century energy crisis that Marxist ecologists refer to as the metabolic rift. In doing so, Brontë's narrative constructs a feminist history of the Anthropocene, as well as a critical counter-narrative of the British Agricultural Revolution.

Angel Bright, Infernal Demon: Tracing Parallels between Arthur Huntingdon and John Milton's Satan in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Alexa Kelly
pp. 290-302

Anne Brontë invests the villain of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall—Arthur Huntingdon—with qualities similar to John Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost. Both figures assume false exteriors to tempt others into sin, thereby exerting their corrupting influences on those around them. However, while Satan is punished by an eternity in Hell and doomed by the promise of the conquering Son, Huntingdon's punishment lies not in the afterlife, but in his erasure from the novel and replacement by his son. Huntingdon's Satanic qualities increase the efficacy of Brontë's cautionary tale by revealing the sinful nature inherent in every human being, a nature that can only be overcome with the help of God.

Satisfied With Such a Life
Alexandra Lewis
pp. 303-315

This neo-Victorian short story offers a perspective "from below" on the miserable first marriage of Helen Huntingdon, the eponymous tenant of Wildfell Hall. Presented in the form of a confidential communication from servant Rachel to her co-worker Benson, the story examines the dangers to which women subject themselves when they marry. Despite her loyalty, Rachel is acutely aware of the ways Helen minimizes and underestimates her worth and that of other members of the servant class. It is the unlettered Rachel who better understands what Helen risks in her engagement to Gilbert Markham, and who perceives the dangers, for women, of "want[ing] too little and forget[ting] too much."

Review Essay: New Work on Anne Brontë
Deborah A. Logan
pp. 316-320

Robert Butterworth, Anne Brontë and the Trials of Life (Peter Lang, 2017), 165 pages, ISBN 978-1-78707-403-3, $65.00.

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. Edited by Robin L. Inboden (Broadview Press, 2020), 268 pages, ISBN 978-1-55481-455-8, $16.95.

Contributors
pp. 322-323

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