2025. A Brontë Year

2024 has not been a good year. Just as 2023 wasn't, and as all signs indicate, neither will 2025 and the years to come. Dark times approach and it will not be pretty. The successive economic crises, COVID-19, regional wars, and uncontrolled inflation have only brought to the forefront what the prosperity of the last third of the 20th century had swept under the rug: the very fragile foundations upon which the capitalist model is built, and how the myth of infinite growth and Western democracy are wobbling under the Lampedusian pressure that everything must change so that nothing changes.

Trump's return to power is yet another symptom of the collapse of the democratic model based on principles ultimately inherited from the French Revolution, with the nuances that workers' struggles after the Industrial Revolution and World Wars managed to introduce. Western democratic society, built upon what was once called the Welfare State, shows itself incapable of responding to the challenges of the 21st century. The climate crisis and migration crises, above all, are the perfect incubator for the serpent's egg. And it's hatching everywhere, as we can see in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, England, Spain, Russia... and the United States. But it's in 2025's America where something new is emerging. Something truly disruptive. The rise of techno-feudalism represented by Elon Musk, though not only by him, poses a danger of enormous proportions. Because it comes at a time when AI and its sponsors should be regulated. Are we conspiracy theorists imagining that the world techno-feudalists are preparing for us is one where the only jobs reserved for the new techno-serfs will be manual labor since all those requiring intellectual work—and therefore people who can think for themselves—will be taken over and improved by AIs? What social democracy once represented has handed the fire extinguishers to the arsonists and devoted itself to fighting sterile and byzantine culture wars, abandoning the middle classes who are alienated by the new Churches of Social Networks. Not a new opium of the people, paraphrasing Marx, but the Fentanyl of the now agonizing Nixon's silent majority. The Trump-Musk alliance threatens to completely redefine the values, pacts, and agreements that maintained stability and prosperity—as precarious as one might consider it, but still the most lasting in human history—of the world as we know it. And it will not be pretty.

So we'll take refuge in our hobbies, in the things that make us happy and that we like to share, while we still can. Because sooner or later, as Niemöller would say, the barbarians will also reach our shores. On the Brontë coast, we can say that 2025 seems rather peaceful, even somewhat uneventful.

We will see the shooting of Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights film. A film that has been vilified for its casting choices using poor, biased arguments that blindly follow an agenda whose ultimate goal is to limit creators' freedom. We'll see more people making a huge fuss for reasons as futile as they are useless, but since the film apparently will finally be released in 2026, we'll have to wait a bit longer.

Paradoxically, the behemoth of Brontë scholarly books was published a few days ago, still in 2024, but it will reach the university libraries and the shelves of Brontë aficionados with big pockets in this new year. We are talking about The Edinburgh Companion to the Brontës and the Arts (December 2024), edited by Amber K. Regis and Deborah Wynne. Some of the usual suspects of Brontë scholarship have contributed to the book: Jane Sellars, Deborah Denenholz Morse, Simon Marsden, Carl Plasa, Claire O’Callaghan, and Jo Waugh. Another scholarly book will be The Brontës as Gothic Writers. The Afflicted Imagination by  James Thomas Quinnell (April). The book is a study that reframes Gothic elements in the Brontës' work from mere horror devices to a fundamental lens through which they processed and expressed their deepest anxieties and viewed the world. An interesting addition to the Anne Brontë studies will be Anne Brontë and Lord Byron. Lost Echoes of Influence by Jessica Lewis (March). Also, probably in July, we will be able to read the much-awaited The Brontës in Brick and Mortar by Ann Disndale and Sharon Wright and at some time in 2025, Eleanor Houghton's Charlotte Brontë, Material Witness.

There's not much to report on the fiction side. A novel with an intriguing title, Brother Brontë by Fernando A. Flores (February) in which the Brontë reference seems to be more of a MacGuffin than something relevant to the plot. A new Jane Eyre Abridged by Katherine Tarring and Cristina George (August). 

We'll have canonical and non-canonical versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights on stage. For example, a queer gothic rock adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane/Eyre (January)in Denver (the work premiered for the first time in 2018). The Australian and Asian tour of the Wise Children Company touring Wuthering Heights by Emma Rice (January-February). The Northern Ballet Company will tour a new production of Cathy Marston's Jane Eyre (Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, London and Norwich) (March-April). New productions of Elizabeth Williamson's Jane Eyre in Pasadena (March-April), of the Gordon & Caird musical in London (a student production at Urdang (March), in Freeman, SD (April), in Grove City, OH (April-May). A new Czech adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Na větrné hůrce, will be premiered in Plzeň (June).

The Brontë Parsonage Museum will present From Haworth to Eternity: The Enduring Legacy of the Brontës (February-December) exploring the many films and TV adaptations of the Brontë novels. More initiatives will be linked to the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, like Wandering Imaginations where four writers will revisit the Brontës’ imaginary world of Angria for a new collection of stories and animations.

And that's what we know. As we always say, there is more that we know we don't know. And even much more we don't know that we don't know. But what we do know is that all in all, this will bring us a very Brontë year.