2024. A Brontë year

2023 came and went, and 2024 begins with strange happenings. While the climate crisis increasingly shows obvious signs that it is nipping at our heels, we inch ever closer to triggering feedback cycles that will be extremely difficult to reverse. Yet even as we play at gathering in the Persian Gulf and squabble over semantic details, we remain incapable of looking beyond our ideological blinders.

We ban plastic straws and feel ourselves better about no longer flying on polluting planes. We shift the blame onto the average citizen instead of making courageous decisions: Investing money (lots of money) into research to improve carbon capture technology and develop truly disruptive innovations like nuclear fusion. Meanwhile, we overcome the outdated left's nuclear phobias, a post-Hiroshima syndrome, and invest in nuclear fission that we know works and doesn't contribute to climate change.

And while humanity's future is decided in the background, in the foreground we encounter our unbribable talent for killing each other. After thinking the Ukraine war was reenacting World War II and would lead to World War III, we find it has now regressed to World War I-style trench warfare. As for the war in Gaza, better not even speak about it. Whatever we say, we'll be judged and flayed by the online justice warriors. If we criticize Israel for its tactics of collective punishment (nothing more than the old tactic of punishing the entire class when someone misbehaves, but with death and disregard for human rights), we become complicit with a fundamentalist terrorist organization like Hamas. And if we criticize those fanatics whose actions have caused not only innocent deaths in Israel but terrible suffering among Gaza's civilian population, we'll immediately be labeled as complicit with the Zionist state.

Beyond wars and the climate crisis, we have the emergence of AI that goes far beyond anecdotal language predictors like ChatGPT, Bard, or Claude. This is a genuine revolution on much deeper levels than we can predict right now. Whether it represents a revolution comparable to how smartphones and social media have changed our society in recent decades, or how electricity radically altered our species at the turn of the last century, we'll know in a few years. Not decades. Years.

We are rather sure, not totally though, that no AI could have brought us anything comparable to what the Brontës did. Sure, they will (or maybe they already can) deliver a Brontë-like novel or poem. But, one thing is to create something in the style of, and another, very different one, is to create something from scratch. Being truly original is something that no AI can (will?) do.

What will this Brontë year bring? For young adult readers, two books will re-imagine the Brontës’ novels in ... wait for it... "exciting and empowering ways" (two magical words in today's Orwellian newspeak). Escaping Mr. Rochester (January) by L.L. McKinney tells the story of Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, who must work together to escape the horrifying machinations of Mr. Rochester, who is not the romantic hero he seems to be. This novel will challenge the traditional interpretations of Jane Eyre and give voice to the marginalized character of Bertha. Heathcliff’s Fortune (January) by Gordon Robert Howdle imagines what happened to Heathcliff when he left Wuthering Heights after overhearing Catherine say that marrying him would degrade her. The novel follows Heathcliff’s journey to India, where he finds work, love, and wealth, thanks to an amulet that brings him luck.

The Brontë Girl (March) by Miriam Halahmy is arguably more child-oriented. It follows the life of Kate, a 15-year-old girl who works as a cleaner at the Parsonage, the home of the Brontë family. Kate dreams of being a writer but faces many obstacles due to poverty and gender. She befriends Charlotte Brontë, who encourages her to pursue her passion for books and writing.

The Everyone Can Be a Reader series, which aims to make classic literature engaging and readable for a wide range of readers featuring dyslexia-friendly fonts, paper tones, and formatting, will publish both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (April)  rewritten by Tanya Landman. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre are both novels that will be published on April 2, 2024.

In May, a new biography of Charlotte Brontë will be published: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her by Graham Watson promises to tell the story of a "doomed survivor of a family of geniuses, Charlotte Brontë had a life as dramatic as Jane Eyre. Turning her back on her tragic past, she reinvented herself as an acclaimed writer, a mysterious celebrity, and a lover. Doing so meant burning many bridges", particularly through Elizabeth Gaskell's "tell-all biography, which was so scandalous it was banned and rewritten twice in six months - but not before it had given birth to the legend of the Brontës." If it sounds a bit sensationalist, it's because it is. We can only hope it's just a marketing strategy.

Another biographical account about the whole Brontë family, but through their dogs (in real life and in fiction) will be published in April, Grasper, Keeper and Flossy. The Brontë Family Dogs in Fact and in Fiction by Jane Sunderland. This year Eleanor Houghton may publish her research in Material Witness: Charlotte Brontë’s Life Through Clothes (June?) And who knows, maybe even Ann Dinsdale & Sharon Wright will publish their most intriguing The Brontës in Brick and Mortar.

In Theatre, Sara Gmitter's Villette adaptation (January) which premiered last year in Chicago, will be performed in Malibu, presented by Pepperdine Theatre. A new Jane Eyre adaptation, by Laura Rocklin (February), will be in Annapolis, courtesy of The Classic Theatre of Maryland. Meanwhile, the Elizabeth Williamson take on Jane Eyre (which premiered in Hartford in 2020) will be performed in Houston (April) and Ashland, Oregon (May). Another recent Jane Eyre adaptation is Chris Bush's, which premiered in 2022 in Scarborough. A new production is scheduled for September in Bromley. A much more performed adaptation: Polly Teale's Jane Eyre will be part of this year's Forest Park Reading Series (March). The Gordon & Caird Jane Eyre musical will be produced in Moline, IL (March), Tigerville, SC (April), in Marshall, TX (April), or in Hartland, WI (July). Meanwhile, the Cathy Marsden Jane Eyre choreography will be performed several times again in Hamburg (Germany) (February, July).

As compared with Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights stage adaptations will be much rarer this year. In Köln (May), Germany a new production will be performed, written by Maria Strauch. The Langajà-Groupement presents a work in progress known as De Hurlevent à Marie-Galante (February).

Finally, in May at the National Theatre in London (and tour later), Underdog: The Other Other Brontë by Sarah Gordon

this play is an irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters, and the story of the sibling power dynamics that shaped their uneven rise to fame. This is not a story about well-behaved women. This is a story about the power of words. It’s about sisters and sisterhood, love and jealousy, support and competition.

In the film world, the same rumours that we already commented on last year continue without substantiation: an AMC Wuthering Heights project in which Rolin Jones is in the works (or maybe not), and an Italian project written by Martina Badiluzzi.

At the moment of writing this post, nothing is known about the new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, but the recent announcement of the funding of the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton gives us hope that sooner rather than later we will see common projects between the two institutions. A little bit of consolation after knowing that the Red House in Kirklees will no longer be in public hands.

Well, this is what we know. We know something about what we don't know. And, of course, we don't know really how much we don't know. It's in all these unknowns (and in the few knowns) that we will hope that this year, as all of the previous ones, will be a very Brontë year.