'A fine autumn morning'

The Washington Post has an obituary of Sandra M. Gilbert, of Madwoman in the Attic fame.

Sandra Gilbert, a poet and professor of literature who co-wrote a landmark analysis of works by 19th-century female writers, “The Madwoman in the Attic,” which reinterpreted characters and images as symbols of feminist discontent, died Nov. 10 at a hospital in Berkeley, California. She was 87.

The death, from obstructive pulmonary disease, was announced by her family.

The title of the 1979 book — written with Susan Gubar — refers to the fictional Bertha Mason, who was locked away in an isolated room by her husband in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel “Jane Eyre.” In the end, Bertha Mason sets fire to the home and leaps to her death from the roof.

To Dr. Gilbert and Gubar, the tormented life of Bertha represented Brontë’s anguish at the limitations English society placed on women at the time. The two scholars saw similar strains of rebellion in novels by other prominent female writers: Jane Austen attacking conformity with the opiniated and headstrong character Mary Crawford in “Mansfield Park” (1814) and Mary Shelley using “Frankenstein” (1818) as an indictment of a male desire to control nature.

“The Madwoman in the Attic” argued that the female authors of the era, including Emily Brontë, the pen-named George Eliot and others, used their characters and descriptions as proxies for defiant feminist messages. Their books, Dr. Gilbert and Gubar concluded, comprised a distinct canon of literature separate from their male contemporaries.

Almost immediately, “The Madwoman in the Attic” was widely hailed as a masterwork in literary criticism and became essential reading in feminist scholarship.

Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air,” described her “thrilling” discovery of “The Madwoman in the Attic” when she was in graduate school in the early 1980s. “As though you’d been introduced to a secret code in women’s literature, hiding in plain sight,” Corrigan wrote in a 2013 essay for NPR.

“The madwoman in literature by women is not merely, as she might be in male literature, an antagonist or foil to the heroine,” wrote Dr. Gilbert and Gubar. “Rather she is usually in some sense the author’s double, an image of her own anxiety and rage.”

While “The Madwoman in the Attic” remained a cornerstone of feminist studies, other reviewers saw such shortcomings as Dr. Gilbert and Gubar not fully exploring racism and colonial-era discrimination — particularly the depiction of Bertha Mason as a “creole” from the Caribbean, suggesting a mixed-race background.

Dr. Gilbert and Gubar met as professors at Indiana University while riding an elevator in 1973. They put together a syllabus for a joint course the next year on women and literature, seeking common themes from writers ranging from Austen to the 20th-century poetry and prose of Sylvia Plath.

Part of the course became the foundation for the 700-page “Madwoman in the Attic.” “It’s incredible to me now that we wrote that big a book so fast,” Dr. Gilbert recalled. “We were ourselves on fire.” (Brian Murphy)

Infobae (In Spanish) has an obituary, too.

The Guardian reviews director Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches.

Cuts are culled from witch-themed films such as Häxan (1922), Witchfinder General (1968), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Witch (2015); Sankey also weaves in bits from Girl, Interrupted (1999), The Snake Pit (1948) and Jane Eyre (1943) that touch on the themes of mental health. All in all, this is a powerful example of a bricolage-like editing technique that relies heavily on exploiting the copyright laws around fair use to create a prismatic, provocative style of cinema that’s very 21st century. (Leslie Felperin)

The Times takes 'A good walk: Stanage Edge from Hathersage, Peak District, Derbyshire'.

In 1845 Charlotte Brontë spent three weeks staying with a friend at Hathersage Rectory. It’s widely thought that the characters, stories and brooding Dark Peak landscapes she encountered during her visit inspired her to write Jane Eyre. The George, where we had based ourselves, was a busy coaching inn back in Brontë’s days, and she borrowed the landlord’s name for the fictional village of Morton.

Leaving Hathersage on a bright, cold morning, we walked past grand houses in sombre shades of local gritstone. This coarse-grained sandstone has been used for centuries to make millstones for grinding grain, wood pulp and tools, and many hefty wheels still dot the moors. A pleasant, gravelly trail led through pastures above the wooded valley of Hood Brook, the canopy a delicious riot of green, gold, crimson and russet. “It was a fine autumn morning,” Brontë wrote, “the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields.” Hidden in trees to our left, the towering chimneys of Brookfield Hall inspired Jane Eyre’s Vale Hall. Further on, past the peaceful, national park-run campsite, North Lees Hall, built in the 1590s by Robert Eyre, became Thornfield, home of Mr Rochester. (Jen and Sim Benson)

Tatler considers the new cast announcements for Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights as 'A Saltburn reunion' while The Mary Sue reports how so-called fans on X are still angry.