It has been my persistent belief, backed by empirical evidence, that Gordon Brown is responsible for the wild, wet weather we have been experiencing since he came to power. Last week, he more or less admitted that he is the storm incarnate; for he is Heathcliff.The Sunday Herald contributes with a proper definition of what happened: the Heathcliffgate.
The Prime Minister's bantering acceptance in a New Statesman interview that he resembles one of the most savage men in literature, albeit an "older, wiser" version, has been derided by politicians.
David Cameron and George Osborne clearly hope the reference will stick. Chris Grayling called Brown "out of touch and deluded". Political researchers thumbed the novel for many references to lunacy and sadism. Why, Heathcliff's own wife said of him: "Is Mr Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil?" What a gift to the opposition!
I am not so sure. Heathcliff was foul to his wife and his son. Brown's hopeful redemptive reference to an "older, wiser" man is a misreading of the character. He gets loonier. And yet, Heathcliff is also one of the most romantic figures ever created. For it is love that has made him mad....
Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre remain the most popular classic books in libraries. In an age of "issues around commitment", men who exhibit souls in flames are a rare and attractive commodity.
The Brontë romantic heroes do not offer easygoing, witty, Etonian charm. Heathcliff and Mr Rochester are dark and profound and sincere. Life has gone badly for them and they expect the worst. But the women who reach the hearts of these wounded beasts find them liquid jelly. This is what romance is made of.
The trouble with Gordon Brown is that he tried to wander off the moor into normal society. Of course, he was mocked and kicked. He was the Liverpool orphan all over again. The force of nature who replaced Blair could not defend himself. (...)
Political commentary a year ago was full of relationship metaphors. Tony Blair was the smooth talker who betrayed his partner. Gordon Brown – not flash, just Gordon – was the reliable one. He was Colin Firth to Blair's Hugh Grant. He was Mr Rochester. He was the undeclared Heathcliff.
We have felt the lashing of economic ruin and social calamity, but Heathcliff was never going to give us a smooth passage. Material prosperity means little to him.
He is at his best when the wind is howling and the windows rattling and we are wondering if we will all be murdered in our beds.
When Brown warned recently that rough times demanded his kind of leadership, he only spoke the truth.
He may be the cause, but he is also the solution. Heathcliff is with us until the blasted end and beyond.
GORDON BROWN comparing himself to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights was bad enough, but having to listen again to the caterwauling of Kate Bush really was too much. Talk about bad dreams in the night.The Times concludes that Gordon Brown is no Heathcliff but Macbeth:
Actually, Broon was fitted up over Heathcliffgate. He was clearly joking when he "agreed" in the New Statesman interview that he was like the Wuthering madman. The PM was trying to be matey; trying to sound human and self-deprecating. Unfortunately, Brown just doesn't have the knack of sounding human.
The image of the dour and vengeful character from the northlands sticks too easily to him. And it has stuck in the minds of the metropolitan media now they've done with Stalin and Mr Bean. Yes, London increasingly regards the Prime Minister as a borderline psychopath so deranged by sadness and rejection that he is capable of digging up the dead. Who knows, after Glasgow East, it may come to that.
Actually, all the Wuthering diverted media attention from a more serious blunder. This was Brown's proposal that we should eat up our leftovers and not waste food. Why, we could save eight poonds a week and ease pollution and waste. He didn't mention the little black babies in Africa, but it was in that vein. (Iain MacWirther)
Is this a dagger he sees before him? He wanted to be known as Heathcliff, the tortured, brooding anti-hero created by Emily Brontë and immortalised by Kate Bush, the pop singer. But the British public sees Gordon Brown somewhat differently.Alan Taylor's Diary in The Sunday Herald goes further and thinks that Rochester suites better Gordon Brown (who probably is the only person alive compared to a literary character and his wife):
According to a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, the parallels between the prime minister and Shakespeare’s Macbeth are just too close to be ignored.
A third of people likened him to the eponymous regicide of the Scottish play, compared with only 2% who could imagine him wandering the moors in Wuthering Heights. (David Smith)
MR ROCHESTER, I PRESUMEMartin Ivens in The Times:
IRN Broon says it is "absolutely correct" to compare him to Heathcliff, albeit a wiser and older version of the Emily Bronte character who was into domestic abuse, hanging dugs and digging up deid lovers. For this, Mr Broon has been roundly pilloried. Nothing he says, it seems, can rescue him from his fate. If the voters in Glesca's east end reject Maggie Curran, he could be toast before the end of July. But back to Heathcliff. He is one of those characters, like Jean Brodie, who people think they know but don't really. In the popular imagination, the unattractive side of Heathcliff has been forgotten. Instead, he is regarded as Byronically rugged and romantic, much loved by women. The same applies to Jean Brodie, who many see as their ideal schoolteacher: unconventional, inspirational and sexy. They forget she was a selfish, fascist-loving bampot. As for Mr Broon, a better Bronte comparison is Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre. Dark and given to mood swings, he is also kind and intelligent, and must suffer loneliness, maiming and blindness before finding love. In short, he is redeemed, something that can't, alas, be said of the evil demon that is Heathcliff.
That is the prospect facing Gordon Brown. He looks as friendless as Heathcliff, the brooding anti-hero of Wuthering Heights to whom he has acknowledged an affinity.(...)Categories: In the News, Weirdo
The Sunday Times/YouGov poll today says the voters think he is not Heathcliff but vindictive and bloody Macbeth. The Scottish play, you will remember, is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, but this production looks protracted.
It is hard to find anyone who wants our country to be run by Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Emily Bronte's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.Bruce Anderson in The Independent:
Ever since our Prime Minister, apparently with no shade of irony, acceded to the suggestion by a New Statesman journalist that many women saw him as a Heathcliff figure, media commentators have been exposing the dangers in such a role model.
The general consensus is that it must be a long time since Gordon Brown read the novel, and some speculation that the closest he may have got to it is the classic Laurence Olivier 1939 film adaptation.
Indeed, most newspapers have published photographs of the dashing young Olivier as Heathcliff next to the 50-something Gordon Brown.
The Prime Minister did add that he could be considered "an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff".
We see Heathcliff age during the course of the novel and it cannot be generally regarded as an improvement in terms of positive leadership qualities.
Wisdom is not a virtue for which the world of Wuthering Heights has much time. Gordon Brown pointed us in the direction of his wife to provide a reference on his romantic qualities.
It begs the question of what Cathy or Isabella would have said about Heathcliff's capacity for romance. Cathy would have stopped eating for weeks at the very thought. (...)
If you think Heathcliff is a bit on the obsessive side for a PM, the female characters created by women tend to make him look quite wishy-washy in the introspective stakes.
Think Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf ,Rebeccca West, Alice Walker, Sarah Waters.
Male novelists produce virtually no appropriate women -"Telling", I say, "That's how it is," responds my husband.
We considered Nancy in Oliver Twist but she is too on the Heathcliff line. I think Betsy Trotwood, David Copperfield's aunt, is a strong contender.
This is not politics. It is is vivisection. Unable to resist blundering into unforced errors, Gordon Brown cannot decide whether he is Marie Antoinette or Heathcliff. "Dithering heights'' might become the defining phase of his premiership. (...)The Independent (Ireland):
It is almost the recess, and the Labour Party cannot wait. August is usually good for governments. There is no Parliament, less political news and the hope of decent weather to improve the voters' mood. That said, few Labour MPs question Gordon Brown's ability to find the thorns on every rose-bush. They never had much of a summer at Wuthering Heights.
In fact, only two groups of people really want him to stay in power. One is the cartoonists. They have had a wonderful time ever since he confirmed that he saw himself as "an older, wiser" version of Heathcliff, the classic creation of Emily Bronte in the novel "Wuthering Heights".It really seems that the Heathcliffgate shocking wave is getting even at the sports journalists in the UK. That's the only explanation we can find to the following comment that can be read on Eurosport concerning transfers in the Premier League:
The original Hollywood film version, made in 1939, still turns up regularly on afternoon television. It stars Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff, with support from Merle Oberon and Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance.
She died just three years ago at the age of 91, but anyone who had the good fortune to enjoy her famously feisty company during her regular visits to the Dublin Theatre Festival can easily imagine the scorn with which she would have greeted Mr Brown's comparison. (Nicholas Leonard)
Tottenham defender Ricardo Rocha met Hull City manager Phil Brown at the club's training ground on Friday.Categories: In the News, Weirdo
The subjects discussed included the works of Emily Bronte, differential equations and a possible move to the KC Stadium. (Alex Chick)
Biographies feature strongly, with a range of authors and subjects including the Brontes. Charlotte Bronte biographer Lyndall Gordon will talk about her life and work and journalist Justine Picardie presents her novel about Daphne Du Maurier’s obsession with the literary family. (Emma Clayton)The Old Registry B&B in Haworth is mentioned in The Times which also uses Gordon Brown's Heathcliffgate:
After bizarrely comparing himself with Heathcliff, Gordon Brown might like to learn more about the Brontë sisters and their novels. You can do the same and wander the Yorkshire moors while staying at the Old Registry near their home in Haworth. A double en suite room for two costs a total of £180 for three nights from July 24 with bookdirectrooms.com. Other offers include a family room for four at the Shaven Crown hotel in the Cotswolds for £170 for three nights from July 27. 0845 1211523 (Tony Dawe)The Brontë Society itself uses the Heathcliffgate in the publicity of the temporary display of the Gondal Poems notebook and Branwell's portrait of Emily at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Gordon Brown may think he’s Heathcliff but the Brontë Parsonage has just taken receipt of a genuine Emily Brontë from the National Portrait Gallery. (Read the rest of the press release here)Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph feels responsible for the incident:
I wonder if I am responsible for Gordon Brown comparing himself to Heathcliff. Five or six years ago, a Scottish newspaper implored me to write a piece extolling Brown's sex appeal.The Independent presents the new play 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (written by Leah Chillery, Ben Ellis, Stacey Gregg, Lucy Kirkwood and Ben Schiffer) at the Bush Theatre (21-26 July). Cathy and Heathcliff appear:
My mortgage was large and my ingenuity boundless. Thus I extemporised: "Do you mean his brooding Heathcliffean temperament?" And continued for another 400 words.
There was mileage in turning the dour Scot into an unlikely romantic hero, so I included him in an Erotic Review list of the 50 sexiest men alive.
Our line-up included the outrageously handsome artist Harland Miller. Our list of male totty was reprinted in the Evening Standard and when Harland walked into his corner store the shopkeeper said: "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
As is traditional, he asked for the good tidings first, "Mate, apparently you're one of the 50 sexiest men alive." Then he added: "But here's the really bad news - Gordon Brown ranks higher."
The playwrights have also interspersed several recurring characters into the swiftly moving action, including a couple whose relationship is built on frequent bust-ups and a soft-hearted guy who can't get his words out – as well as the redacted break-up scenes of some famous lovers from the annals of history – from Cathy and Heathcliff ("He's just got a bit more money than you. Nice house. Other side of the moor...") to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir ("the one theeng I am certain of is that NATHING eez certain, Simone. Nat even LAV.") (Alice Jones)Trashionista interviews Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and a Brontëite:
Your favourite chick-lit book? I'm never sure how to define chick-lit t-- nor am I really crazy about that term. But if you go by the general guiding principle of a book about women, written by a woman, with romance at its center, then I'd have to say Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. Bronte was the pioneer of fiction about women, and she certainly captured the torments of love.We are not really crazy either about putting Jane Eyre and chick-lit in the same pack. But we understand the point.
Condensing the lives of four siblings over almost four decades into two an half hours is not easy. When that family is the Brontës, the task would seem impossible.Howard Jacobson writes in The Independent about the Carmen Callil-Philip Roth Man Booker's Prize controversy:
However, Polly Teale not only manages it, but offers a much more complex portrayal of the sisters and their brother Branwell. Here Charlotte is a talented writer, but she’s also domineering, relentlessly ambitious and at times, plain selfish. Directed by Nancy Meckler, the action cuts between the family at home and their fictional creations. At times it’s a little laboured, but the play is saved from cliche by some stand-out performances.
Kristin Atherton shines as the often unlikable Charlotte, Elizabeth Crarer plays Emily with a perfect mad glint in her eye. Flora Nicholson successfully brings the usually two-dimensional Anne to life, while Mark Edel-Hunt often steals the scene as Branwell, the brother intent on self-destruction.
Too often the Brontë legacy is treated with kid gloves and while Teale may employ a little artistic licence, the result is great drama. (Sarah Freeman)
It has already been well argued that the charge of going "on and on" would knock out most writers from Rabelais to Proust, and that as many women writers are as interested in themselves as women as male writers are interested in themselves in men. Reader, when it comes to novelists sitting on your face, nothing beats the experience of having all three Brontë sisters lowering themselves on you simultaneously.We read in El País (Spain) about the new project of the writer Elif Batuman:
Mientras mantiene sus colaboraciones con The New Yorker prepara su segundo libro: "Una reflexión sobre el amor y el matrimonio, una novela gótica sobre Charlotte Brontë, que antes me parecía solo una escritora para chicas y se ha convertido en mi nueva obsesión". (Elsa Fernández-Santos) (Translation)It seems that the Heathcliffgate will be after Gordon Brown even now that he is considered to be president of the IMF:
We can't have someone in charge who doesn't accept how important it is to bear down on excess debt, Cameron trilled brightly when putting the boot in. We're yet to discover how well Dave does on that score. It could be less well than the glowering Heathcliff of the heather. (Michael White in The Guardian)
It takes some remembering, but in the days when people read newspapers, the Iron Chancellor was similarly feted. He was both saviour of the economy and Heathcliff lookalike. GB was number one on the Observer's "Lust List" for a "Bohemian Rhapsody"-busting 14 weeks (eventually ceding to Piers Morgan). The likes of Carmen Callil wrote "long think pieces in GQ magazine" imagining the Great Man sitting on their face. Yet within a decade he would be forlorn and forgotten. (Gideon Donald in New Statesman)The performance of Beyoncé's new single 1+1 in American Idol is described by Crunk like this:
The song sounds a lot like, “What if Alicia Keys could sing a Prince inspired song without sounding like Heathcliff hooked up to an oxygen machine?”We have said before that considering the Brontës a precedent of chick-lit was not only wrong but misleading. This article in the Sabotage Times is a correct measure of how dangerous comments like that are:
Chick-flick. The very word alone is enough to send an apathetic shudder down the backs of most red-blooded males. Bridget Jones’ shopping list – groan, The Bronte sisters’ Parisian hen night – pffffft, Carrie Bradshaw’s endless, seeping, BULLSHIT inner-monologue? Zeus, Vishnu, Diana, if any of you are up there, kill me now. (Adam Clery)An article about the Paganisan province in Philippines in The Philippine Enquire contains a curious Brontë reference:
The resort has two viewpoints that are, as the media colleagues pointed out, nice spots for writing. So I felt like Heathcliff on the cliff brooding over the Yorkshire moors. Or, to make it more Hollywoodish, we felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic”—“on top of the world.” (Amadís Ma. Guerrero)The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle talks about Paula Haffen, webmaster of Living Gluten Free Rochester who is reading Jane Eyre; and former Olympic champion swimmer Mark Tewksbury will read it soon according to The Globe and Mail; St Albert Gazette (Canada) mentions Jane Eyre 2011.
There is not a whit of humor in Jane Eyre. I defy anyone to point out anything funny anywhere in the novel. One could legitimately view it as a humorless, orthodox Christian screed. (Brassawe)We cannot but be a bit perplexed. Shall we take up the challenge? Let's begin with Jane's answer to Mr Brocklehurst:
Mr. Brocklehurst: And what is hell? Can you tell me that?Espido Freire, author of Querida Jane, Querida Charlotte, slips a Brontë reference in her column in ADN (Spain):
Jane Eyre: A pit full of fire.
Mr. Brocklehurst: And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?
Jane Eyre: No sir.
Mr. Brocklehurst: What must you do to avoid it?
Jane Eyre: I must keep in good health and not die.
Es lo que tiene la falta de experiencia en trepar entre huecos de escaleras mientras se habla por el móvil. Emily Brontë, tuberculosa y todo, lo hubiera logrado. (Translation)EFE (Spain) lists some of the favourite writers of the author Carmen Posadas:
Entre sus autoras favoritas figuran, las inglesas Emily Brontë, Jane Austen y Virginia Woolf, pero no deja de destacar a la española Santa Teresa, a quien calificó como su "favorita de todos los tiempos", no solo por su obra religiosa sin también como "precursora del psicoanálisis". (Translation)The new film by Pablo Berger, an artsy new version of Snow White, is described in El Correo (Spain):
Su versión será «muy libre, oscura y sombría, más cerca de 'Rebeca' y 'Cumbres borrascosas' que de los dibujos animados». (Oskar L. Belategui) (Translation)Once again, Meg Cabot's Brontëiteness is mentioned. In an interview on Paperblog (Italy):
Sul tuo sito ufficiale hai postato un lungo elenco dei tuoi autori preferiti classici e contemporanei. Mi puoi dire qual è il più rappresentativo per te?The South Korean film Hanyo (The Housemaid) is reviewed by Mauxa (Italy):
Amo i libri di ogni tipo: per bambini, chick-lit, di memorie, fumetti, romanticismo, horror, fantascienza e romanzi fantasy. Non c’è effettivamente un genere che non abbia letto e amato... Persino i "classici", come Jane Eyre di Charlotte Brontë e Orgoglio e Pregiudizio di Jane Austen. (Alessandraz) (Translation)
Euny, infatti, Jane Eyre d'oriente, vive con timorata compiacenza l'amore del suo signore-padrone. Rigida e svuotata, si abbandona alla passione in maniera compiacente, remissiva. (Giulio Trivelli) (Translation)Cyberpresse (Canada) talks about the French translation of Claire Holden Rothman's The Heart Specialist:
En 1869, à St. Andrew's East, village au nord-ouest de Montréal rebaptisé Saint-André-d'Argenteuil, l'une de nos plus brillantes scientifiques voyait le jour. Maude Abbott a affronté mille obstacles pour percer le masculin univers de la médecine, après une enfance digne d'un roman gothique, où planait le spectre des soeurs Brontë. (Sylvie St-Jacques) (Translation)A new blog about the Brontës (in Portuguese) has now joined the blogosphere: Leituras Brontëanas, which today has a post on Jane Eyre 1944. Her Telden writes in Turkish about the 2006 adaptation while Worthwhile Books and Passionista post about the actual novel. The Loud Librarian reviews briefly Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. Mujeres en la historia has a post on Charlotte Brontë in Spanish. Flickr user Hannah Harding has created a series of drawings inspired by Wuthering Heights.
As I noted in my original review, Simmonds "the ability to capture the voices of a wide range of characters, mix prose and art on a page, and gently mock everyone in sight without belittling any of them." I hope she has plenty of time and watercolors on hand: I can't wait to see what she has planned for George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Oscar Wilde.What Mr Duin probably doesn't remember is that Ms Simmonds already had a take (just a vignette though) on Charlotte Brontë. Check this old post for more details.
HeathcliffEDIT (28/12/08): The Toronto Star also remembers the incident:
Up in the windy rooms of Number 10, a magnificent, brooding, dark-browed Mr Brown was hatching ideas to save the economy. In an embarrassing episode, he appeared to tell the New Statesman he thought he was a little like an "older, wiser" version of Heathcliff, the dastardly anti-hero of Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights. It was not long before the Bronte museum pointed out this character might not be the best role model, given that he was guilty of domestic abuse and was possibly a murderer who had dug up the remains of his dead lover. Well, no-one's perfect. (Justin Parkinson)
The U.K.'s stodgy, taciturn PM, Gordon Brown, said it was "absolutely correct" to compare him to Heathcliff, the passionate anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, although "an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff." No, Gordon, not even close. (Lynda Hurst)And on Christmas Eve, nasimrochester has added a new story to Jane Eyre FanFiction.net: A Waft of Wind.
Jane Austen was the queen of Monster Lit in 2009. While 2010 proves to move onto some other lady writers like Alcott, and rumors abound of Brontës and Eliot, Jane Austen is Monster Lit’s favorite whipping girl. [...]We are afraid that Wuthering Bites and Jane Slayre are more than just rumours at this point.
Out of the Jane Austen monster novels, Jane Bites Back is perhaps the most original of them all. [...]In addition to Jane Austen as vampire, we also have Austen’s maker, Lord Byron (who is credited with founding the monster) and the Brontë family. (Selena Chambers)
Most of these people actually were getting violated, in some unfortunate ways, by the social and physical climate of their times. Charlotte Bronte wrote Robert Southey a letter about her desire to be a writer, and was basically told that nervous illness was a girl’s only role in the literary world. (Elizabeth Bachner)Another book (or series) connected to the Brontës is of course Twilight. The Snapper discusses the film adaptations and says,
But Edward isn’t a good boyfriend. Telling someone, “You’re my only reason to stay alive, if that’s what I am,” as Edward does in “New Moon”, isn’t love; it’s dysfunctional. And outside of the time spent with Edward, Bella doesn’t do anything except go to school and read “romantic” novels like “Wuthering Heights.” Speaking of which, the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff is probably the most dysfunctional in all of literature, but I digress. (Lyndsey Sturkey)Speaking of Wuthering Heights, the Daily Mail has an article on Heathcliff... - er - no, we meant Gordon Brown. Again.
Will [political editor of GMTV, Gloria De Piero] charm the pants off them? Anyone with the brass neck to tell Brown he was like Emily Bronte's fictional weirdo Heathcliff is surely in with a chance. (Peter McKay)Yes, she was the one to begin this never-ending Heathcliffgate.
While it is well known that the Brontë sisters both wrote under pen names in the 17th century to hide their identities, protect their reputations, and increase their chances of being published, it is surprising to many that our generation’s own beloved J.K. Rowling did the very same. Rowling used the initials “J.K.” instead of Joanne, her full first name. Although it is unclear whether this was her own doing or the creation of her publisher, Bloomsbury, it is evident that the reasoning behind it is no different than that of the Brontë sisters: a fear that men would not purchase her book knowing that it was written by a woman. (Vaidehi Joshi)We find it hilarious that a sentence that contains a mistake by a difference of two centuries (!) starts with 'while it is well known that...'. Because it's not, actually.
In the summer of 1839, Charlotte Brontë, then working as a governess in Skipton, Yorkshire, wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey about her holiday plans. At the age of 23, she said, she'd never been to the coast, never seen a beach, never clapped eyes on rolling waves. The prospect of doing so, on a proposed trip to Bridlington, was intensely exciting: "The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind. I shall be discontented at nothing." Did she feel a big anticlimax on finally clapping eyes on the briny? Not at all. According to Ms Nussey, she "was quite overpowered, she could not speak until she had shed some tears ... her eyes were red and swollen, she was still trembling ... for the remainder of the day she was very quiet, subdued and exhausted."Check this previous post for more precise information about the aforementioned quote.
Gordon Brown claimed to identify with Heathcliff, Emily Brontë's complex Byronic brooder, but frankly appeared more short-tempered than saturnine. (Judith Woods)The Wall Street Journal reviews The Wave Watcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney:
Allusions to Robert Burns and Emily Brontë share space with the film maker Jacques Tati and the movie "When Harry Met Sally" (the scene where Harry tells a friend about his failing marriage as both men compulsively do "the wave" at a baseball game). (Jennifer Ouellette)The Daily O'Collegian challenges one recurrent romantic fantasy:
Our culture insists on telling women to believe one whopping fallacy: a man can change with the love of a good woman.Unthinkable? gives a Brontë example in an article about Kindle:
Novels such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, movies as diverse as Rebel without a Cause and The Breakfast Club and reality shows such as Dad Camp and Tool Academy sell this falsehood. (Karen Sisk)
All I can say is that somewhere at Amazon there is a graph showing how many of everything they can se ll if the price of the Kindle gets reduced to $99, and then watch these numbers explode. Even a cheapskate like me will buy a Kindle at that price just to read Jane Eyre and the like.(US Chick)Regrettably Bessie A. Winn-Afeku (in The Huffington Post) will not have a good memory of Jane Eyre (Kindle reading or not):
I spent so much time writing thesis papers about Jane Eyre I never wanted to write for fun.Marie Claire talks about the London boutique Apartment C which apparently has curious new initiatives:
The venue also provides guests with the option of listening to romantic readings, given by a wandering handsome waiter, ranging from classics such as Wuthering Heights to the wonderfully trashy Love machine by Jacqueline Suzanne.We think that Colin Sokolowski doesn't qualify to enter our Brontëite ranks:
What was your first favorite book?A retired teacher and Brontëite in Fort Mill Times, Touring Old Blighty visits Brontë country, No Charge Bookbunch posts about Romancing Miss Brontë, Reading at the Moonlight reviews Rachel Ferguson's The Brontës Went to Woolworths (in Spanish), jill_rg asks for help in the interpretation of a scene of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Breakfast at Lucie's and La vie page à page... review Agnes Grey in French, Eygam who cried Wolf reviews Wuthering Heights in Czech and Les Brontë à Paris posts about Patrick Brontë's Cottage Poems in French.
Either Lord of the Flies or Of Mice and Men. I seem to recall they were among the first books I actually didn’t fake book reports on for my ninth-grade English class (unlike Wuthering Heights). (Jodi Chromey in Minnesota Reads)
Eggers sets his fiction in a “near future” when computers analyze massive amounts of information about how people read ebooks, with software finding patterns that precisely reveal what these readers find satisfying or unpleasant. Take the literary classic Jane Eyre. According to the algorithms Eggers conjures up, many people stop reading it “around p. 177.” Given what’s happening at that part of the story, one of Eggers’s typical techie characters concludes readers find the character Grace Poole “scary and depressing” and wish Charlotte Brontë devoted more pages to the “romance with Mr. Rochester.” The techie laments Brontë didn’t live long enough to “learn from the data” and “fix” her flawed story.Fortunately for the authors living in Eggers’s imaginary world, they can outperform Brontë even if they lack her talent. For starters, they can use software to help them craft pleasurable plots and characters. [...]Eggers is, in fact, horrified by the prospect of computationally coached crowd-pleasers replacing the likes of Brontë and Beckett. (Evan Selinger)
A public sick of sophistry was at first glad of Brown’s dull, chewy speeches, his saltiness refreshing after the saccharine Tony. But then, inevitably, we tired of it. Voters yearned for a bit of razzmatazz. Towards the end, there was a cringe-making phase where the dour old Heathcliff had been advised to smile more; a steward masquerading as a star. He tried but it wasn’t him. (Clare Foges)
Regna il male invece a Bly, in Giro di Vite; e nonostante diverse vicissitudini la portino di qua e di là, è impossibile pensare a Jane Eyre senza pensare ai segreti racchiusi in Thornfield Hall. E c’è lei, Shirley Jackson, che ci insegna che tutte le case sono case infestate. (Anna Maniscalco) (Translation)
bell hooks: When I read Wuthering Heights as a working class girl struggling to find herself, an outsider, I felt that Heathcliff was me, you know? He was symbolic to me of a kind of black race: he was outcast, he was not allowed into the center of things. I transposed my own drama of living in the apartheid south onto this world of Wuthering Heights and felt myself in harmony with those characters.Maya Angelou: Absolutely.Melvin McLeod: It strikes me you are suggesting that reading is a more powerful way to develop empathy with people of different races or classes or times than even our normal day to day relationships.bell hooks: Well, this is so because reading requires that you have to use your imagination. When I'm reading Wuthering Heights I have to imagine what Heathcliff looks like, I have to imagine what Katherine (sic) is like. I have to imagine and so my mind has to be working.
At the Google-owned YouTube, there is the YouTube Screening Room, which every two weeks, adds four new films — mostly independent works — to the site. Hulu, the joint creation of NBC Universal and News Corp., has hundreds of films available for stream, from "Basic Instinct" to "Wuthering Heights." (Jake Coyle)Another Wuthering Heights adaptation, Studio One's 1950 one with Charlton Heston recently released on DVD is reviewed on EInsiders:
Although most of us are attuned to having seen Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in the classic Bronte tale of "Wuthering Heights", did you ever think you would get the chance to see it performed by the late, great Charlton Heston? It, too, is included here; and while Mr. Heston would not have been my first choice to play the lovesick Heathcliff, it is a treat to see him in a role that is far removed from any other he ever played. (Frank Cifaldi).McSweeney's publishes an analysis of fifty years of popular songs condensed into single sentences, including Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights:
I'm an 18th-century fictional character and I want to do it with another 18th-century fictional character. (Marc Haynes)Curiously, you will find that all the other forty-nine songs have basically the same summary.
Harmon has been a big fan of 19th century English authors Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters since she was 15.Louis Nowra talks about love and passion in literature in The Australian. The Brontë sisters, as an abstract object, are referenced:
There are several novels by Colette that are beautiful studies of the complicated dance of emotions men and women go through when they fall in love, and the Bronte sisters describe brilliantly how a woman is attracted to a demon lover. But there are few others that immediately come to mind as significant works written about the love between a man and a woman.PR Week-UK makes a reference to the Heathcliffgate:
Brown is an arrogant, angry man who has surrounded himself with attending courtiers. He considers himself complicated in a good way, the brooding academic, recently comparing himself to Bronte's Heathcliff. He resembles more the sinister farm hand Jud Fry in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma. (Tara Hamilton-Miller)Pegasus News informs about a new production of Charles Ludlum's The Mystery of Irma Vep in Azle, TX:
The Mystery of Irma Vep, presented by Azle Arts Association's Popcorn Players. The Mystery of Irma Vep is a campy tribute to Gothic horror films, liberally stealing from well-known film classics like Wuthering Heights, The Mummy's Curse and Alfred Hitchcock's Academy Award-winning Rebecca. Literary detectives will also recognize dialogue lifted from Ibsen, Shakespeare, Poe, the Bront*s, Omar Khayyam, and Oscar Wilde. (Shawn Parikh)The New York Times mentions the web Booksthatmakeyoudumb and gives the following (disturbing) preview:
A look at Griffith’s “books that make you dumb” project is here: booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr. A preview: “The Book of Mormon” apparently doesn’t make us as dumb as “Wuthering Heights.” (Virginia Heffernan)We already posted about this funny site here.
The good news? Director Catherine Hardwicke knows it's cheesy, and she does what she can to contain the fromage. "Twilight" is packed with wry, understated humor, and Hardwicke gets lively, authentic performances from her young cast, even when they're standing on northwestern U.S. moors and saying Bronte-ish stuff like, "That was the first night I dreamt of Edward Cullen." Yes, she says "dreamt." (Chris Hewitt in St Paul Pioneer Press)
"It's so superficial, so much more about that vampires make pretty boys and pretty young women. They're beautiful and have this romance around them, the frills and the lace and the trappings of the vampire that have more to do with Meyer's interest in things like the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen's 'Emma.' (Chris Garcia in Austin American-Statesman quoting Thomas Garza, chairman of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas)
Thankfully, Hardwicke tossed some interesting character actors into the mix — notably Anna Kendrick from “Camp,” now all grown up with the décolletage to prove it — to imbue the second bananas with some spark for the few moments they can pull focus from Jane Eyre Lite and The 100-Year-Old Virgin. (Alonso Duralde in MSNBC)
Also, characters Edward and Bella have conversations about classics they're studying in their high school literature courses - books like “Wuthering Heights” and plays like Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet.” This has inspired some students to check these classics out of the library, [Sue] Johnston said. (Russ Keen in Aberdeen American News)
Got what, you say? Well, that "Twilight" isn't about special effects or horror, for a start. It's a Gothic romance reconceived for 21st-century teens. Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) is the new girl in Forks, Washington, where she's moved in with her dad. Forks may not be Wuthering Heights, but it's wild, and it's wet, and her lab partner in biology class has a Heathcliff-Darcy-Rochester thing going for him. When she sits down beside Edward, he looks like he wants to throw up. (...)
The second half is more tongue in cheek, closer to "Buffy" than the Brontes. A vampire baseball game? The pure Bella doesn't even get to first base. (Tom Charity in CNN)
[Robert] Pattinson[, Edward in the film based on Twilight,] believes that it is Edward's gentlemanliness that compares him to the likes of classic characters Heathcliff and Mr. Darcy, and that these men are so well responded to because of their chivalrousness-not to mention dashing good looks. (Jess Herbine in Drexel University Triangle)
Thus was born the incarnation of the vampire as a sort of undead Heathcliff, a mysterious, tormented alpha male. That opened the Pandora's casket from which issued a thousand fanged lotharios. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Forbidden love, ancient curse, teenage lust and repressed urges are given a heightened quality that make them luridly palpable. Heathcliff had his moors, and "Twilight" has the Pacific Northwest, whose monochromatic skies, fog-shrouded vistas and verdant rainforest, accented by shafts of sunlight, are the visually dreamlike expression of the characters' stormy longings. (Duane Dudek in The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel)
Did the girls giggle because they found Edward impossibly good-looking? Or because he looks flat-out ridiculous? I couldn't tell you, because this Edward Cullen, with his brooding eyes and mile-high blond quiff, is both. Part Elvis, part Simon Le Bon, and a direct descendant of both Heathcliff and the Leader of the Pack, the movie version of Edward Cullen -- who's 17 going on 1,700 -- is a pure pop creation, a fantasy who's taken up temporary residence in the body of an actor. When this Edward speaks haltingly to the love of his (eternal) life, new girl at school Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), his diction is stiff, Victorian. (Stephanie Zacharek in Salon)The blogosphere today brings an essay linking Jane Eyre and Kant's Categorial Imperative, courtesy of The Writings of Joel David Harrison, a brief post (in Swedish) about Wuthering Heights 1998 on Matkonster & livsmönster, a post about the original Emily Brontë's novel on Eagleton Book Notes, an Anne Brontë sampler made by Horas Buenas (in Spanish) and a brief review of Classical Comics's Jane Eyre on brochettes:
In terms of editing, I feel that they did a pretty good job- I don't think anything important from the original was left out, and generally the book was fast paced and kept the reader engaged. There were a few times where I felt that a bit of background information should have been given, as I think the jumps between certain scenes may have been a bit abrupt for someone not familiar with the material. Still, I think this is an excellent way of introducing someone to a classic who is reluctant to tackle the lenghty original, and it may even encourage them to read the actual novel after this.Categories: Brontëites, Comics, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights
7. Rebecca Hall. You may remember her as: Christian Bale’s doomed wife in The Prestige. Check her out as: Charlotte Brontë’s famous madwoman in the attic in the breathtaking Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea. (Aubry D'Arminio)As a matter of fact, Rebecca Hall was/is/will be (?) attached to Charles Sturridge's film project Brontë which seems to be quite inactive at the moment. She was/is/will be (?) playing Emily Brontë.
More precisely, what is going on in the mind of Gordon Brown as he reads the savage personal attacks and reflects on poll ratings so low that they break records? No one knows for sure. They are not clear from Brown's public interviews, which have a habit of going in bizarre directions, with the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and Heathcliff becoming inadvertently and bizarrely part of the story. (Steve Richards in The Independent)
So, our PM's morphed from Mr Bean into Heathcliff, a soubriquet that seems ominously destined to stick. As well it might. No longer merely a bumbling blunderer, Brown's taken the unimaginably crass step of trying to cast himself as a romantic hero. The deluded imbecile actually seems to believe that his repellently curmudgeonly personality is somehow glamorous. This, surely, ought to bury him for ever. Except, as Norman Hadley has pointed out on Cif, Brown didn't really liken himself to Heathcliff at all in his New Statesman interview. On the contrary, he specifically rejected the comparison.The Brontë blogosphere is full of Jane Eyre references: Evangeland posts a nice drawing inspired by Jane. Perception Without Deception has read and liked the novel. Tuesday in Silhouette posts a nice story of love for Jane Eyre.
It wasn't Brown who raised the issue of Heathcliff, but his beguiling interviewer, Gloria de Piero. This is how she reports the exchange: "Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff, I suggest. Brown is, after all, brooding and intense. 'Absolutely correct,' he jokes. 'Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff.'"
The "he jokes" is crucial, and De Piero is to be commended for using this phrase. She could have got away with "he says". It reveals that Brown had no genuine ambition to align himself with Heathcliff. He was merely trying to laugh off politely what he took to be a light-hearted aside. Naturally, being Brown, he fumbled the job horribly, failing to spot the swing in a ball aimed unerringly at his middle stump.
Once he'd collected his wits, a terrible microsecond later, he reversed the position he'd inadvertently taken. Too late, too late, just as with the 10p tax band. His considered view, for what it's worth (nothing), turns out to be that he might resemble somebody older and wiser than Heathcliff. Such a character would have little in common with the hero of Wuthering Heights, but you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube as easily as that. (David Cox in The Guardian)
I think I can say without hesitation that the one book that really turned me into the bibliophile I am, was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. (Read more)More stories that transpire affection for the Brontës works. From The House of Edward:
Once a Bronte girl, always a Bronte girl (Read more)Finally, Knitting a dissertation reviews The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
In England, the use of the word “anonymous” to describe a literary work dates only from the sixteenth century, but by the end of the eighteenth seventy per cent of all novels were published “in secret.” Mullan traces the flourishing of the practice in this detailed history, arguing that concealment was only rarely the aim. Anonymity and pseudonymity might be invoked out of fear or diffidence: in 1555, one punishment for treasonous writings was the loss of the right hand; “modest” women authors were long identified simply as “A Lady.” But anonymity could also incite interest: Jonathan Swift constructed elaborate hoaxes, “more promotional than shy,” to veil his authorship of “Gulliver’s Travels,” and the guessing game surrounding the true identity of Currer Bell, the professed author of “Jane Eyre,” was such that, in its first year of publication, reviews outnumbered copies sold.The Boston Globe interviews singer Laura Marling:
"I did lock myself away and read for a long time," says Marling, on the phone from her flat in London's Shepherd's Bush neighborhood. "My favorite escape is the Bronte era, that dark, graceful, elegant old English way of life that I wish I was born into, and in a way believe I should have been born into." (Joan Anderman)The Independent reviews Britain Since 1918 by David Marquand and concludes the article with a reference to the Heathcliffgate:
But perhaps there is hope. During Gordon Brown's first days in power, the "Governance of Britain" green paper proposed democratic reforms, over war powers, treaty-making, free speech and the rule of law, to nurture a new sense of British identity. The select committee scrutinising the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill saw it as an incoherent retreat. But it still conveys impetus for reform, notably its attack on the royal prerogative, that Berlin Wall against active citizenship. Just possibly, Brown – democratic collectivist in his socialism, Whig imperialist in his prudence, nationalist in his unionism, Scottish republican as Jimmy Maxton's biographer – could reconcile all these ancient traditions. Perhaps the doomed hero of Marquand's crusade is not Heath but Heathcliff. (Kenneth O'Morgan)The North County Times presents the San Diego's Old Globe Theatre new season which includes:
The summer's in-the-round production will be Charles Ludlam's gothic English comedy "The Mystery of Irma Vep," which spoofs British literary classics from "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" to "Rebecca." Director Henry Wischamper will make his Globe debut. (Pam Kragen)The Cumberland News publishes one of those seasonal beginning-of-a-new-school-year articlesec :
To the best of our ability, we did too – fretting over apostrophes, distinguishing their from there, principle from principal, advise from advice, whether writing essays on sexual tensions in Wuthering Heights or forging a note from Mum to seal a skive from hockey. (Anne Pickles)Trashionista interviews author Jane Beaton:
Do you have a theme song?On the blogosphere, Letras en el Tiempo briefly posts about Charlotte Brontë in Spanish.
Oh, Wuthering Heights. Does everyone say that?
What question have you never been asked in an interview, but think you should have been? (Tell us the question and answer it too, if you like!)
Well, this is my first interview, so I suppose anything! I suppose people would want to know if I actually did my research at a real boarding school, and I would have to say no - I did my research reading Enid Blyton, Elinor Brent-Dyer, Susan Coolidge, Antonia White, JK Rowling, and Charlotte Bronte!
With pistons thrusting and steam hissing, it has featured in dozens of TV dramas and films, most famously The Railway Children, as it runs from Keighley, a sturdy town once big in wool, to the village of Oxenhope, in the South Pennines. Its major stopping point, however, is Haworth, childhood home of the Brontë sisters ('Oooh, Haworth,' said an old lady I met here a few years ago. 'There are some lovely cemeteries up there.') (Stephen McClarence)Also in The Observer we found a curious reference to the Brontës in an article about enviromental responsability fundamentalism:
If, crudely, morality is about individual choices and positions, then ethics inevitably involves other people. Given how much emphasis is currently put on 'ethical' choices, the word seems curiously ill-used, since most of the choices advocated are essentially individualistic. They're also mostly negative: not driving a car, turning the house lights down to levels even the Brontë sisters would consider too murky to read by, never eating anything that grew any further away than Carlisle. (Brian Morton)The Times (South-Africa) talks about John Connolly's latest novel, The Reapers:
The carefully chosen guest- list comprises an interesting and eclectic mix — and, some of Connolly’s favourite fictional characters, he tells me: Lew Archer is there, together with the sexy and exciting Catherine Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights. Jeeves, arguably PG Wodehouse’s best- loved creation, is chatting to Becky Sharp, the minx from Vanity Fair.Another b
ook with Wuthering Heights references is Out Backward by Ross Raisin. The Toronto Star reviews it:Accused of sexually assaulting a female student at the school he was subsequently withdrawn from, Sam now harbours a brooding resentment worthy of a 21st century Heathcliff. (...)But of course, what's better than the real thing? The Independent asks several writers about their summer book lists. Actor and writer Julian Fellowes says:
Like Bronte's moor-dweller, who directed his tempestuous rage against those who made him feel like a reluctantly adopted mongrel, Raisin's Sam Marsdyke directs his anger against the marauding makeover class. Those people come to the moors for weekend amusement and sound investment, who ramble happily amongst the sheep until they step into the 'shite'. (Geoff Revere)
And if there was any space left in my suitcase, I would tuck in a copy of Wuthering Heights (Penguin £5.99) because one cannot read it too many times.The Heathcliffgate resists to die:
It was in an interview in the New Statesman recently that the interviewer made a comparison with the saturnine Heathcliff, the hero, if you can call him that, of the novel Wuthering Heights. It was on the reading list at school and I failed to get through it, as I have not managed to do to this day.Finally, The Guardian reviews Alphabeat's latest album with some Wuthering Heights (à la Kate Bush) references.
It was the interviewer who brought this up and not Mr Brown, who treated the reference with self-deprecation. Immediately, Westminster exploded with hilarity, dithering heights being a particular favourite with the legislators.
Curiously, another woman interviewer, in another paper – The Daily Telegraph – had drawn precisely the same comparison a decade earlier when Mr Brown was Chancellor. On that occasion there were no scornful remarks. How apt, people said, how very apt! But then, time changes perspective. (Alan Watkins in The Independent)
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel of the same name, the heroine marries a wealthy older man and goes to live with him in Manderley, his estate. She soon realizes all is not as it seems. The book is worth reading — especially if you find the Brontës’ language too stiff; it’s like Jane Eyre on crack — but the heroine is a timid mooncalf. (...)L'Avenir (Belgium) talks about the 2009 film Bright Star by Jane Campion:
Del Toro’s heroines have a bit more gumption and kick more ass than the average Gothic heroine, whether they’re in a Radcliffe or a Brontë narrative. (Lauren Sarner)
«Mes films sont des réactions à l’obsession de la société pour la normalité, sa propension à exclure les déviants», racontait, en 2010, au Monde Jane Campion, passionnée de littérature anglo-saxonne romantique, avec une prédilection pour Emily Brontë et Emily Dickinson, ou encore Virginia Woolf. (Translation)The Criticwire classic of the week is I Walked with a Zombie 1944:
Director Jacques Tourneur brings out the buried complexities of the film's "Jane Eyre"-inspired script, courtesy of Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, to life through noir shadows and suggestive camera movements, capturing an ugly haunting colonial history without putting too fine a point on it. (Vikram Murthi)The Christian Science Monitor reviews Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans:
The shelves are already crowded with literary orphans, cramming in everyone from Harry Potter and Mowgli, to Huck Finn and Anne Shirley, Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre. But even among literature’s lovable urchins, Noel Bostock is a bit of an odd duck. He was raised by a suffragette, not wolves. He’s not cute or plucky and he doesn’t sing a note. He has jug ears; a bad leg, thanks to polio; and an outsize vocabulary, thanks to his godmother Mattie. (Yvonne Zip)Verve Magazine interviews the writer Kiran Manral:
What are your go-to books?(...) But I would think the book that will always stay with me is Jane Eyre, because it was the first time for me that the heroine was not pretty, not a princess and did not end up with a Prince Charming.”The Austin Chronicle has an article about a local restaurant with a literary twist:
Which literary/fictional romance made you want write love stories?“So many, so many. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind and Bridget Jones. And all the M&Bs that fuelled my adolescent, burgeoning fascination with the opposite sex.” (Zaral Shah andNatasha Sahjwani)
For example, Weinbrot's favorite characters serve as inspiration for the different recipes. Scheherazade, the storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights), influenced the use of Middle Eastern spices in the namesake knish. Dulcinea del Toboso, the true love of Cervantes' Don Quixote, suggested a mix of spicy (chipotle) and sweet (brown sugar, maple syrup). An upcoming chocolate knish will be named after Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Fittingly, it will be dark, brooding, and very alluring. (Serena Yeh)The Irish Times traces the figure of the writer Joseph O'Connor:
To some degree, Star of the Sea can be read as a sustained meditation on the authority of writing itself. One of the leading characters, the American journalist G Grantley Dixon, is an aspiring novelist whose various writings are cleverly stitched into this complex narrative. The inclusion of his newspaper report on the famine in Ireland for the New York Tribune is a clever expositional device deployed by O’Connor. The reliability of his account, however, is undermined by the character, Merridith, who dismisses Dixon as a ‘coffee-house [radical]’ . Further into the book the reader comes upon a fragment of Dixon’s unpublished novel. This extract, combined with Dixon’s spectacularly misguided appraisal of the recently published Wuthering Heights, might lead the reader to incline more towards his proficiency as a journalist than as a novelist. (PJ Matthews)One of the Hillary Clinton's emails released recently contains a Brontë reference, do you remember the Heathcliffgate? In the London Evening Star:
In April 2010, he [Sidney Blumenthal ] told his Democrat friend: “Clegg is a Tony stand-in love object, Cameron a pretender. Alas, poor Gordon, Heathcliff, unloved, unlovable, suffering.”Keighley News reports the arrival of the two watercolours that were bought at a recent Sotheby's auction:
Two of Charlotte Brontë’s watercolours have been delivered to the Brontë Parsonage Museum ready for display next year.Sitepoint discusses the Google change of logo:
The Brontë Society, which runs the Haworth museum, bought the paintings in July during an auction at Sotheby’s.
Experts have attributed both pictures to Charlotte, the writer of classic novel Jane Eyre and the eldest of the tragic Brontë sisters.
The parsonage this week tweeted a picture of the watercolours on a desk at the museum, and said they will be handed to conservation staff so they can be prepared for display in 2016.
One watercolour is a study of a white carnation, and the other depicts a convolvulus, a crocus and an aster. (...)
“We look forward to putting them on display in the Parsonage as part of Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary celebrations next year.”
The Brontë Society has also announced a major conference in Manchester as part of its celebrations for Charlotte’s 200th birthday.
The event, at the Midland Hotel from August 19 to 21, will focus on the issue that most concerned Charlotte herself – the position of women in the mid-19th century.
Speakers, who include famous feminist Professor Germaine Greer, will address the subject from many different angles,
Other speakers include Prof Sally Shuttleworth, an expert on the medical and mental problems of women in the early Victorian era; Claire Harman, noted author of the new biography Charlotte Brontë, A Life; and Prof Christine Alexander, who is currently working on the first new scholarly edition of Jane Eyre in more than 40 years. (David Knights)
To me, the update to a sans-serif typeface seems to make more sense. Their former serif font — particularly that ‘reading-spectacles g’ — always had an older, bookish feel of romance novels and Brontë sisters. The new geometric sans-serif is much more of a happy engineer’s construction. (Alex Walker)Check out this Art in Yorkshire video on Diane Howse's The Silent Wild exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage.
This subversive ChickLit title raises some intriguing questions about marriage, friendship, commitment and the modern gal's perpetual quest for independence. Domestic novels are often overlooked due to their sole focus on cloying topics like relationships, shopping and girlfriends. The cutesy pink covers don't help, either. Yet there's no shame in producing great ChickLit. Daria Salamon has written a funny, dark, quirky take on one woman's epic struggle with the harsh realities of adult life: angry boyfriends, dull colleagues and meddling girlfriends. Jane Austen penned some stellar domestic fiction. So did the Brontë sisters, Margaret Drabble, Alice Munro, Anne Beattie and Lorrie Moore. Novels used to be considered the television of their times, and only serious non-fiction was suitable brain fodder. What utter nonsense. (Patricia Robertson)The San Francisco Chronicle publishes yet another review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:
Though the novel's style doesn't break any ground, its familiarity is more an homage than a retreading of old themes. Many of the characters cite Austen and the Brontës. With its sharp-witted heroine and her lineup of potential suitors, "Guernsey's" plot is obviously influenced by those authors' books. Likewise, the structure pays tribute to the earliest novels: epistolary romances, written by women and ignored by some as trivialities. (Margot Kaminski)Los Angeles Times, which published a positive review of Justine Picardie's Daphne a few days ago includes the novel in its pick of the summer:
Daphne: A Novel by Justine PicardieCoincidentally enough, the Guardian's Digested Classic for today is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier which in John Crace's adaptation finishes with this sentence:
The lives of Daphne du Maurier and the Brontës intertwine in a story of literary obsession and deception.
"Oh darling," I said. "I always knew you were only a pretend wife-murderer. And look! Isn't that Manderley on fire? Silly Mrs Danvers. I told her not to read Jane Eyre."The press is completely unwilling to let go of the Heathcliffgate. Today the Scotsman, in an article presumable about David Cameron giving his MPs a reading list, the following turns up not so surprisingly:
To enjoy the imminent demise of Gordon Brown, there's always Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which, rather like Labour, lends itself to dozens of different interpretations. Is the governess of the story unbalanced (ie psychologically flawed) and do the ghosts only exist in her imagination? Given that our PM is now comparing himself to Heathcliff, why not reacquaint yourself with Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights?And finally Associated Content has an article entitled 'Integrity and Societal Conditioning in Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and the Invisible Man' by Alexis Williams.
Unless explicitly said
