It could have gone down in history

Tatler reviews Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

Gordon uses the fact that Charlotte banned all publication of her little sister’s hit book ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ after she died at the age of 29 as her starting point and works backwards. Why might Charlotte have prevented her own flesh and blood achieving a legacy status? she asks. Was it, really, a means to lift herself up as the greatest Brontë of them all?

So, the Charlotte we see is built with envy. She schemes openly to ensure she comes out on top and fears acutely that there is only the space for her own success. Gordon’s script pits Charlotte and Anne (a very good Rhiannon Clements) against each other, attempting to show the ridiculousness and total ineffectiveness of women fighting - there are always bigger (and usually male) fish to fry. But, in doing so, she ironically pushes the third Brontë sister, Emily, to the sidelines.

We hear little of Emily’s writing process - Wuthering Heights, potentially the most boundary pushing of the sister’s novels, is due more grace! And Adele James - who is a powerful actor in the scenes where she does appear, deserves more stage time. If it was Gordon’s aim to teach her audiences about these celebrated novelists, she only succeeds in part. We don’t quite get to their artistic significance, both then and now and much of the play is bothered by showing - perhaps justifiably - how difficult it was for women of the day to flourish. But these are the Brontës - their place in the literary canon should seem justified, at the very least.

Qualms aside, Gordon’s writing is fuelled by quick wit. The play’s short running time flies by, and her dialogue is rich with jokes and laughably vicious asides. She makes the fourth Brontë sibling, a wayward Branwell, into a drunken joke. The Poet Laureate Robert Southey is mocked and called a ‘bell***’. Designer Grace Smart has made the stage into a twirling semi-circular cock-pit: an apt home for humour. Actors disappear before they’ve finished talking - as if the stage is the evening’s mastermind. It is a stylish take on a classic story. With one last edit, who knows? It could have gone down in history. (Anya Ryan)

Northern Soul reviews the novel The Other Side of Paradise by Vanessa Beaumont.

Beaumont’s prose after a significant loss is intensely emotional when describing the most heart-breaking consequence of female sexuality: the anguish of a mother without her babies. The desolating separation of interconnected souls, from lovers and sons alike, is the greatest source of Beaumont’s tragedy. Classics such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are mirrored in Jean’s reality. (Rachel Pennington)

A contributor to The Oracle prefers Jane Eyre to Pride and Prejudice:

A book that is similar but worth the read is “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. While both of these novels have strong female leads, the work of Bronte is way more eventful and has harder hitting quotes. (Liv Baker)

We don't think Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice are similar at all, though.

AnneBrontë.org had a post on Anne on the 175th anniversary of her death yesterday.