2023. A Brontë year

2022 has been quite a year. Not many times History (with a capital H) happens in our lifetime. The death of Queen Elizabeth II was not only the death of a monarch but the end of an era. We experienced how a man with serious delusions of grandeur didn't hesitate to invade another country and trigger a spiral of violence and an economical earthquake with huge consequences all over the world (yes, we are not naive and we get that the West is not an innocent witness in what happens in Ukraine... but the one shelling and killing civil population is the one in the Kremlin). We have seen prime ministers come and go at neck-breaking speed. At the same time, the social fabric of the country (yes, that one that Thatcherism tried to deny the existence of) is being severely wounded by the runaway inflation that good old Vladimir helped to unleash, but whose seed was already planted when the COVID crisis clearly revealed the flimsy foundations of Western civilization. COVID is over (we'd like to imagine that China is now only trying to hide its shame in its blatant clumsiness when it came to handling the disease and not something worse)...  but the climate crisis has only just begun. The economic elites are discussing tenths of degree conference after conference and the environmentalists are transitioning into a religion competing for the purest version. None of them looks for an honest, plausible solution to the imminent crisis. While in Iran women fight with their lives for their freedom to exist, in the Western world we are fighting for the use of pronouns. Everything matters. But when everything matters the same, nothing matters anymore.

And, underlined with a Trump sharpie, we corroborate that the common ground is lost. Everything is judged from the extremes. Everyone is one of us or of one of them. Every term is weaponized, vampirized and turned into an insult: woke, TERF, #metoo... Yes, there are many sociological reasons and dozens of theses can be written about it. But, there are some unique 21st-century things which without none of this will be remotely similar. Dare we speak out loud the name of the beast? Social networks. Sure, it is a simplification, but not an oversimplification.

The Brontë landscape for 2023 for all that we know and can project at this moment, is relatively calm and uneventful. Frances O'Connor's Emily film will continue to feature prominently in Brontë news as the film will be premiered in Canada, India, Japan, Australia, United States (February, after a limited release in January) or France (March). We will see if the film will be nominated to some categories in the BAFTA awards, as this will obviously help the film to maintain its visibility.  

There are rumours of an AMC Wuthering Heights project which Rolin Jones in the works and of an Italian project written by Martina Badiluzzi, but still nothing solid.

In the literary world, we will have some fiction fuelled with numerous Brontë juvenilia references in the novel debut of Nicola Friar, Brontë scholar and one of the more reputable voices of the Brontëverse, A Tale of Two Glass Towns (January).  Bella Ellis will publish her fourth Brontë Mystery: A Gift of Poison (February) where

Anne and Emily Brontë have had their books accepted for publication, while Charlotte’s has been rejected everywhere, creating a strained atmosphere at the parsonage.

At the same time, a shocking court case has recently concluded, acquitting a workhouse master of murdering his wife by poison. Everyone thinks this famously odious and abusive man is guilty. However, he insists he is many bad things but not a murderer. When an attempt is made on his life, he believes it to be the same person who killed his wife and applies to the detecting sisters for their help.

Despite reservations, they decide that perhaps, as before, it is only they who can get to the truth and prove him innocent – or guilty – without a shadow of doubt.

Still fiction but with a realistic vocation, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor (July) that

Reimagines the lives of the Brontë siblings-Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and brother Branwell-from their precocious childhoods, to the writing of their great novels, to their early deaths.

The revamp-a-Brontë-novel section comes from the plume of Melodie Edwards and her  Jane & Edward: A Modern Reimagining of Jane Eyre (March), where she does exactly that:

This powerful reimagining of Jane Eyre, set in a modern-day law firm, is full of romance and hope as it follows the echoing heartbeats of the classic story.

The scholar must of the year will be, undoubtedly, Frances O'Gorman's Selected Writings of Emily Brontë (August) which 

Includes the complete literary works of Emily
Brontë, fully annotated and introduced. 

A presentation of Emily Brontë's work as she was first known, rather than Charlotte Brontë's versions of her. 

Offers a new account of her reception in the nineteenth century, in both verse and prose. 

With an extensive introduction, including a sustained analysis of Emily Brontë's relationship with the imagined world of Gondal. (Note: The website says Gondor... which is a delicious Tolkienish blunder)

In theatre, the Wise Children Company will continue touring the Emma Rice adaptation of Wuthering Heights in the US: Los Angeles (January), Chicago (January-Febuary), and Princeton (March).

Another adaptation, very different for sure but nonetheless equally transgressive, will be the Inspector Sands version of Wuthering Heights will tour the UK this year (April-June). The company is

Channelling Emily Brontë’s piercing wit and fierce emotion, Inspector Sands presents a retelling of this classic story of obsessive love and revenge in their boldly humorous and humane style. Their thrilling new version for our times, draws out themes of intergenerational trauma, radicalisation, and social exclusion…confronting audiences with urgent questions and home truths.

Not the only Wuthering Heights in town, of course. In Oslo (and later touring Norway), the Riks Theater will present a new adaptation: Stormfulle Høyder by Rebekka Nilsson and Florian Hellwig (January).

Jane Eyre will also be on the billboards in different adaptations: In Philadelphia, a Jane Eyre (May) adapted by  Jessica Bedford, Kathryn MacMillan, Charlotte Northeast and Meghan Winch "features a large ensemble and utilizes a chorus of "Janes" to theatricalize the heroine's rich inner life".  In Aarhus (Denmark),  Jane Eyre (April-June) features a "violent portrait of a woman who struggles to hold on to herself and her choices." in a new adaptation by local talented director Sigrid Johannesen. In Hertfordshire, Lou Wallace adapts in Being Jane Eyre (June), "probably the shortest version of this epic story!" A musical adaptation will open in Anderson, IN: J. Eyre (April) by Paige Scott, "charts the life story of the literary heroine and her pursuit to find herself after a childhood trauma".

The Gordon & Caird's musical will also be produced in Prescott, AZ (April) and Nordhausen, Germany (February). Polly Teale's adaptation will be performed in Blackburn (May). Still morePolly Teale, her Brontë play will also be on the stages of Hertford (January), Tucson, AZ (February) or Brighton (May).

But probably the most exciting of the new plays is the world premiere of Villette (February-April), adapted by Sara Gmitter and produced by the Lookingglass Theater in Chicago:

You’ve never met a heroine like Lucy Snow. Suddenly bereft of family, friends, and funds, young Lucy journeys unaccompanied to France an unfamiliar land as a vain debutante, quarrelsome teacher, and mysterious ghost draw her into a complicated maze. Will tenacious Lucy, and her wry wit, emerge intact?

At the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the 2023 exhibition will be The Brontës and the Wild (February-December):

Highlights of this fascinating new exhibition include the Brontë family copy of Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds, poetry manuscripts by Emily and Charlotte, early printed works by Patrick Brontë, copies from Bewick by Emily and Charlotte, plus two wood blocks on loan from the Wordsworth Trust.

Our displays will also include items from the 2022 film Emily including a signed copy of the screenplay.

The Brontë Society Conference this year will take place in Leeds: How Beautiful the Earth is Still and 

draw on the theme of the natural world, providing opportunities to engage with issues and ideas around climate change and environmental sustainability.

That is what we know. And, paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, there is plenty of things that we know we don't know. Even some that we don't know we don't know. But known or unknown, there will be plenty of them for 2023 being considered a very Brontë year.