Mystic of the Moors

Slipped Disc has a recommendation by Ruth Leon, which uncovers an almost forgotten documentary made some twenty years ago:

What inspired Wuthering Heights? In this short documentary, narrated by former Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, and directed by Tim Brearley, we take a journey across the Yorkshire Moors to Haworth to find that the romantic myth of Emily as ‘The Mystic of the Moors’ hides a more complex and fascinating truth.

With the help of Emily Brontë’s biographers, Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies, her connection to the land and the intellectual life of her time is examined and presents a picture of a woman very different from our convention picture of her from the various films of her classic novel. (Norman Lebrecht)

The documentary data:

In Search of Emily Brontë, 2003

Directed and Produced by Tim Brearley

Produced by Samphire Productios for Channel 5 (28 Dec 2003)

Presented by Chris Smith, MP

Music by Sarah Class

With Clare Barrett as Emily Brontë, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Lockwood

With Lucasta Miller and Stevie Davies.

Eastern Eye interviews the writer Reeta Chakrabarti about her debut novel, Finding Belle:

Reeta Chakrabarti is wonderfully eloquent when talking to Eastern Eye about her debut novel, Finding Belle, which she says has been “inspired” by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, rather than a retelling of the classic published in 1847. (...)

Reeta said she has always been a bookworm and read Jane Eyre at the age of eight. Five novels she would take to a desert island would include Jane Eyre, (...)

She said Jane Eyre “is the book I have read most”. When she was growing up, she was “consumed by the romance between Jane and Rochester”.

“But then as I got older, I started to think Rochester is q
uite a bastard because he locks up his wife in a cellar. She’s ill, very ill, but instead of finding a treatment, he locks her up. Then he leads Jane a merry dance. The themes within Jane Eyre are of secrecy, a marriage where the wife becomes very mentally ill and is hidden away. She’s a shameful secret, and our attitudes to mental illness these days are entirely different. So that’s where my novel comes from. Schizophrenia is a particular form of psychosis whereby somebody, who may lead their lives fairly normally, can have delusions so they hear voices or imagine scenarios that are not real. This is the condition that I decided to give my fictional character, based on the classical reference to Bertha from Jane Eyre.” (Amit Roy)

Collider ranks the 'best contemporary romance movies based on books:

Jane Eyre 2011

Mia Wasikowska stars as Jane Eyre, a resilient young woman who, after enduring a traumatic childhood, receives an education and eventually accepts a job as a governess at the home of Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). As Eyre and Rochester begin to fall in love, Eyre learns there's more to her new love interest than she ever expected, forcing her to flee and find comfort in the company of another, St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell).

Jane Eyre is a classic romance that has been adapted into several films, but the most recent adaptation is easily one of the finest. The 2011 version received immense praise and earned dozens of awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design. Wasikowska gives Brontë's famous heroine immense justice, delivering a highly underrated performance alongside an equally exceptional cast. (Andrea Ciriaco)

A couple of TMWHDE news: Otago Daily Times (Dunedin) and The Inverness Courier (Cromarty).

The Giornale di Puglia (Italy) illustrates an article about Emily Brontë with a very unlikely A.I. Emily.