Happily-ever-after

ChesCo presents the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective production of Jane Eyre:

“Jane Eyre has been a project four years in the making,” said PAC Co-Founder/ Producing Artistic Director Damon Bonetti. “We were originally asked by a university to produce a Jane Eyre.  We read a number of adaptations but were dissatisfied with them all.  The Creative Team just had a hit with The Complete Works of Jane Austen, Abridged. Charlotte being with that cohort and also being tapped to play Jane, it made sense to create our own.  The pandemic made us rethink how we wanted to present this play in terms of location and making it an all professional cast.  So we decided to make it part of our first full season back.”

The Guardian talks about the decline of the happily ever after endings:

 It follows that the traditional marriage plot will change in art as it has in life. The popular idea is that 19th-century female novelists romanticised marriage – Eliot, the Brontë sisters, and, above all, Austen. A “Jane Austen ending” is supposedly a happily-ever-after. (Naoise Dolan)

Hmmm... Wuthering Heights, Villette... are they happily-ever-after endings? Really?

In this obituary of Martin Amis, Jane Eyre gets a mention: 

Acording to reports, Martin was "pretty illiterate" until around the age of 17, until his stepmother encouraged him to read the Brontë classic 'Jane Eyre' and after completing a degree at Exeter College at Oxford in 1971, began a career in journalism and published his debut novel 'The Rachel Papers' in 1973. (Bang Premier) 

Insider lists some of Taylor Swift's literary references in her songs: 

Many fans have noted a parallel between "Invisible String" and Charlotte Brontë's Victorian-era novel "Jane Eyre," when Mr. Rochester finally professes his love for the titular heroine.

"I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame," Rochester says. (...) 

The premise of "Mad Woman" can be easily connected to the famous proverb from "The Mourning Bride" by William Congreve: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

However, Swift's use of the word "mad," an adjective that can mean both "angry" and "crazy," feels very intentional. Once again, it calls to mind "Jane Eyre." (Spoilers ahead!)

When Jane finally agrees to marry Mr. Rochester in Brontë's novel, it's revealed that he already has a wife named Bertha Antoinette Mason, who's been locked away in his attic.

"Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family — idiot and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a mad woman and a drunkard!" Rochester tells Jane. "Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points."

Rochester claims he imprisoned Bertha because she lost her mind, painting it as a genetic illness — passed down from her mother, specifically.

Jean Rhys gives Bertha a more sympathetic backstory in her 1966 novel "Wide Sargasso Sea." The prequel reimagines how Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress, became "Bertha" in her unhappy marriage to Rochester. In short, she was driven to madness by his patriarchal cruelty.

At one point in the novel, Antoinette scolds her new husband for believing lies about her family.

"I know what he told you. That my mother was mad and an infamous woman and that my little brother who died was born a cretin, an idiot, and that I am a mad girl too," she says.

She adds: "There is always another side, always."

Antoinette's old nurse Christophine also denounces these rumors, accusing Rochester of greed and betrayal: "You want her money but you don't want her. It is in your mind to pretend she is mad."

The themes of "Wide Sargasso Sea" are reflected in "Mad Woman," which fans believe was inspired by the sale of Swift's master recordings without her consent.

"Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy, what about that? And when you say I seem angry, I get more angry," she sings. "And there's nothing like a mad woman / What a shame she went mad / No one likes a mad woman / You made her like that." (Callie Ahigrim)

La Vanguardia (Spain) talks about Marguerite Yourcenar:

Hay autores, sobre todo autoras, que escribieron para generaciones posteriores a la suya. O como decía Shelley, hablando de poetas y filósofos, los hay que son “los legisladores no reconocidos del futuro”. Como las hermanas Brönte (sic), Caterina Albert, Virginia Woolf o, incluso, Annie Ernaux, Marguerite Your­cenar sería una. (Translation) (Andreu Gomila)

Le Monde (France) publishes an article about the cultural journalist Augustin Trapenard.

Ses deux livres fondateurs restent pour toujours Les Hauts de Hurlevent, d'Emily Brontë (sur laquelle il commencera une thèse, jamais terminée)[.] (Translation) (Emmanuel Poncet)

Cuartel del Metal (Spain) lists the best songs of the band Angra:

 «Wuthering Heights» (Cover de Kate Bush): Angra ha demostrado su versatilidad musical con este sorprendente cover de la canción de Kate Bush. Incluida en su álbum «Angels Cry» (1993), esta interpretación demuestra la habilidad de la banda para adaptar y poner su sello en canciones de otros géneros. La versión de Angra destaca por su enfoque más pesado y las potentes voces de Andre Matos. (José) (Translation)

El País (Spain) reviews the book A biography of loneliness by Fay Bound-Alberti:

Fay Bound Alberti hace en su libro un ejercicio de comparación entre dos novelas icónicas como son Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, y la reciente saga Crepúsculo, de Stephenie Meyer, dos maneras alejadas en el tiempo pero con un mismo mensaje: el deseo de hallar el amor, pero no solo el amor, sino el “alma gemela”. A estas alturas, entendemos perfectamente el daño que ha causado esa idea contemporánea del amor romántico, pero no nos engañemos, ya hablaban de ello Aristófanes, Platón o Samuel Coleridge. En las dos novelas vemos a figuras femeninas en busca de esa alma gemela, hasta el punto de que Cathy, en Cumbres borrascosas, llega a decir que Heathcliff es ella, “yo soy él, él está siempre en mi mente como mi propio ser…”. (Use Lahoz) (Translation)

El Tiempo (Colombia) interviews the writer Carmen Posadas: 

Si pudiera invitar a dos personajes literarios para sentarse a tomar una copa o un café con ellos, ¿a quiénes elegiría?

A la duquesa de Guermantes (en homenaje a mi padre, que adoraba a Proust) y a Heathcliff de Cumbres borrascosas. (Translation)

El Plural (Spain) interviews yeat another writer, Alaitz Leceaga:

Marisu Moreno: Me has comentado que tus referentes son los clásicos, ¿qué libros son los que más relees?

A.L.: Cuando te dedicas al mundo de la escritura, encontrar tiempo para leer por placer es un poco complicado. Mis referentes son 'Cumbres borrascosas', que está siempre presente en lo que escribo, las novelas de Sherlock Holmes, y la Barcelona gótica de Zafón. (Translation)

Another writer that is an usual suspect in these newsrounds is Mariana Enríquez, She is interviewed in Infobae (Argentina): 

Lala Toutonian: ¿Lo que leía tu mamá de Baudelaire era macabro?

M.E.: ”Una carroña”: “Recuerdas el objeto que vimos, mi alma/Aquella hermosa mañana de estío tan apacible/A la vuelta de un sendero, una carroña infame / sobre un lecho sembrado de guijarros”. Las flores del mal fue mi primer encuentro con él. No muy apropiado (risas). Después encontré otro: Mi corazón al desnudo y otros papeles íntimos –tengo muchas cosas de él– donde habla sobre la belleza. Leí esto de muy chica, y entre esto y Heathcliff de Cumbres Borrascosas todo lo que asumo como bello en un personaje está acá. “He encontrado la definición de lo bello, de lo bello para mí. Es algo ardiente y triste, algo un tanto vago que hace lugar a la conjetura”. (Translation)

Eroica Fenice (Italy) lists some poetries about night, including Night by Anne Brontë.