Brontë Above and Below: Landsat and Overgrown Graves

Broadway World reviews the Glasgow performances of Jane Eyre:

The open-air setting is beautiful (if a little cold on this alleged summer evening). A cast of six take on a variety of roles for this production. Stephanie McGregor plays Jane, the perfect embodiment of a defiant 10-year-old girl and later, a confident young woman. (...)

The ensemble are incredibly tight, dipping in and out of different roles as required. The dynamic between McGregor and Panchaud is brilliant as Jane and Rochester fall for each other. There's a slight issue though, he's not been completely honest with Jane...

Jane Eyre is a classic for a reason and it's great to see such a professional production in such an intimate setting.  (Natalie O'Donoghue)

NASA's Earth Observatory publishes some satellite pictures of the Yorkshire moors:

The North York Moors in Yorkshire, England, is a place where time seems to stand still. Wide-open undulating hills, interspersed with 18th-century farmhouses, store thousands of years of peat beneath flowering heather. The open hills of moorland landscapes inspired scenery in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by Emily and Charlotte Brontë, who grew up among the moors of western Yorkshire.
The OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 captured this image of the North York Moors on December 26, 2023. The moors themselves, brown in this image, become seas of blooming purple flowers in late August and September. Shrubs growing on the upland moors give them their darker color. Between the moors, valleys that were gouged out by glacial meltwater appear light green.

MovieWeb lists books with the most movie adaptations:

Published by novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë under her norm de plume, "Currer Bell," Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman book that tells the story of the orphan, Jane, from her childhood days to her stint as the governess at the estate of Mr. Rochester. While working for the aristocrat, she falls for him, only to make the shocking discovery that he is married and is hiding his mentally ill spouse in the attic.

Jane Eyre touches on feminism, race, and classism, making it as relevant today as it was when it was first published. The book’s plot, which involves embracing someone and then finding out they are not who they claim to be, is very relatable.

Such a kind of narrative has been used consistently by screenwriters of romance movies, and the trend is unlikely to change. The most notable adaptations include the 1943 film starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and the 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, and Judi Dench. (Philip Eternesi)

The New Yorker interviews the writer Tessa Hadley:

Deborah Treisman: Evelyn [from Vincent's Party] is at a turning point—no longer a schoolgirl, starting to outgrow the narrowness of her family life. She’s enterprising and literary and also ambitious. She reminds me a bit of Cassandra, in “I Capture the Castle,” or Sybylla, in “My Brilliant Career,” even a little of Jo, in “Little Women.” Were any of those voices, or others, echoing in your mind as you were writing?

T.H.: I love the idea that Evelyn’s sparkiness, her mixture of confidence and self-doubt, her bookishness, make her something like those classic literary heroines. I suppose whenever a writer imagines a bookish young girl, dreaming of a bigger life, then Cassandra and Jo and Sybylla (and Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver, Isabel Archer, Ursula Brangwen, and so many others . . .) will flicker somewhere in the background, as inspiration.

The genderqueer affair (or how the Brontë Parsonage decided to enter into the cultural wars with good intentions, spurious arguments, biased conclusions, and hyperbolic overreactions) is crossing the pond. The Mexican newspaper El Debate contributes to the snowball effect by titling the article "They are trying to link the Brontë sisters to homosexuality" (sic).

"Title governess Jane in a Charlotte Brontë novel" appears in the June 24th  Daily Pop Crossword. A fascinating account on Through the Eyes of the Brontës of a series of Brontë-related encounters and visits shared by the author and Eileen Prunty, an Irish Brontë enthusiast. They explore St. Oswald's Church, Woodhouse Grove School, and Oakwell Hall, with a notable adventure uncovering and cleaning the Wooler sisters (including Margaret's) overgrown graves at St. Peter's Church in Birstall. AnneBrontë.org discusses how Charlotte Brontë's enduring friendship with Laetitia Wheelwright and disdain for Maria Miller, both rooted in their shared time in Brussels, influenced Villette.