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Thursday, March 28, 2024

A Bewitching Emily

On Thursday, March 28, 2024 at 10:27 am by M. in , , , , ,    No comments
A property for sale in Stanbury features in Daily Express:
Every one of the three cottages has its own terrace, making it the perfect place to take in the beauty and serenity of the Brontë countryside—made famous by the Brontë sisters and Wuthering Heights. (Millie Bull)
Collider has a list of period dramas that 'sweep you off your feet':
Emily by Frances O'Connor
Filled with excitement and inspiration, Emma Mackey-led drama introduces audiences to the life of the iconic English writer Emily Brontë, who died soon, at age 30. The film presents a new vision of the author's life, showcasing the misfit's remarkable journey from being a girl to transforming into a confident woman.
Emily, which serves as a love letter to the late writer, is not a flawless period piece. However, it is assuredly a bewitching one. The amazing acting from Mackey, who delivers a tour de force performance as the lead protagonist, as well as the great costumes, are also big standouts in this Frances O'Connor film. (Daniela Gama)

La Tercera (Chile) also highlights the same film. 

Deseret News has also a list of period romances available on streaming: 
‘Jane Eyre’ (2006)
The 2006 “Jane Eyre” BBC miniseries is likely the most book-accurate adaptation out there. The four-part miniseries, based off of the Charlotte Brontë of novel the same name, follows Jane Eyre, a young girl with a traumatizing past.
After being raised by her cruel aunt and being sent off to a strict boarding school, Jane leaves to work as a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she meets Edward Rochester, the master of the estate and guardian of Adele, Jane’s pupil.
As Jane continues to work at Thornfield Hall, she develops romantic feelings for Mr. Rochester — and eventually discovers that not everything is as it seems. (Natalie Issa)
Times Now News has a list of famous authors who died young including Charlotte Brontë:
Author of 'Jane Eyre', Charlotte Brontë challenged Victorian conventions through her strong, complex female characters. She died at 38, her novels remaining influential explorations of women's social issues. 
Lambda Literary nominates the best LGBTQ graphic novels of the year:
A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll (First Second)
A Guest in the House is a haunting horror story that puts a unique spin on Jane Eyre as it follows a young woman named Abby, who’s just married a recently widowed and incredibly kind dentist. He just moved to town with his young daughter, and the memory of his late wife haunts them both. Unfortunately, her memory also begins to haunt Abby as she uncovers a sticky, entangled mystery surrounding the woman’s death. (Samantha Puc)
The best places to visit in Yorkshire according to The Tech Advocate:
 Quaint and charming, Haworth is enveloped in literary history as the home of the Brontë sisters. Ambling through cobbled streets or across windswept moors that inspired classics such as “Wuthering Heights” offers a deeper sense of connection with England’s cultural past—and often provides a mood-enhancing perspective shift. (Matthew Lynch)
The Tab looks for films with Kaya Scodelario:
Wuthering Heights 2011
 Bit of a literary classic. If period dramas are your thing, this moody, misty, depiction of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is the perfect thing for you to watch next. Kaya stars as Catherine – a foundling who falls in love with the tortured Heathcliff and, of course, a massive romantic headache ensues. (Lydia Spencer-Elliott)
Architectural Digest discusses the TV show Palm Royale:
“We almost wanted a Wuthering Heights feel to her house, where it had been this grand estate, but as she’s gone into assisted living, ivy and vines are taking over the house in a very beautiful and romantic way. And it shows the historic history of her presence in Palm Beach,” says [production designer, Jon] Carlos. (Sarah Archer)
Hall of Series (Italy) looks into the books that Penelope Featherington from Bridgerton could be reading:
Cime Tempestose
 Ovviamente Penelope non potrebbe farsi mancare dei grandi classici. Quindi non viene difficile immaginare sul suo comodino anche Cime Tempestose di Emily Brontë. A lungo scambiato come semplice romanzo d’amore, Cime Tempestose è un classico senza tempo sulla solitudine, l’odio e la vendetta. La tossica relazione romantica tra Heathcliff e Catherine fa da collante per questa storia incredibile dal fascino pericoloso. A distanza di anni dalla prima pubblicazione, era il 1847, Cime Tempestose è uno dei romanzi più letti e amati, un classico imperdibile che ha reso eterna la sua autrice. (Diletta Chiarello) (Translation)
12:30 am by M. in    No comments
The Moors by Jen Silverman is currently performed in Seattle:
By Jen Silverman
Directed By Annie Lareau
Seattle Public Theater, Seattle, WA
March 22 - April 14, 2024

Isolated on the moors, two sisters, a maid, and a mastiff live in a desolate mansion teeming with secrets. When a hopeful governess is summoned and a curious moorhen arrives, expectations are turned on their head. 
The Moors is a deliciously dark comedy full of intrigue and manipulation. 
Seattle Times reviews the production:
Silverman’s work is a somewhat surrealist homage to the work of the Brontë sisters, altering 19th-century novel tropes with 21st-century shears and creating a Rorschach test of empathy and understanding, with glancing blows at patriarchal structures and female constriction. (Gemma Wilson)

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Wednesday, March 27, 2024 10:38 am by M. in , , , , , , , ,    No comments
The Guardian talks about the new National Theatre premiere, Underdog: The Other Other Brontë and particularly about the director Natalie Ibu:
Natalie Ibu is about to make her National Theatre debut directing a new play about the Brontë sisters, but the Kardashians keep creeping in. “I’m constantly comparing them, because they’re the ultimate disruptors – and they’re also three sisters with a brother that no one really remembers. We may not like what they stand for, but they are successful and exquisite at what they do,” she says.
Ibu is well aware that some will see this as an appalling slight against the 19th-century daughters of a country clergyman, who disrupted the canon by producing some of the most important novels in the English language. She means no disrespect, either to them or to those who know and revere their work, “but the idea that we can’t talk about the Kardashians in the same breath as the Brontës I find deeply offensive,” she says. “Our audiences are cultural consumers who go wherever they find something they like. I want them to be fans of theatre in the way that they’re a fan of Harry Styles.”
It’s Monday morning on the week before rehearsals proper begin, and a day of pre-production consultations lies ahead for Ibu, who strolls in from her Airbnb clutching a takeaway coffee. Underdog: The Other Other Brontë was brought to her attention after it won Sarah Gordon the Nick Darke playwriting award in 2020. And though it was very different to Ibu’s usual work – including a recent hit show for young people, Protest, she thought: “Yes, we have to do this.” It is a co-production with Northern Stage, where Ibu has been artistic director for the last three years.
The underdog is Anne Brontë, who died at just 29 having never quite achieved the success of her two older sisters. The play explores the role that sibling rivalry played in her eclipse, particularly with Charlotte, who altered Emily’s poetry, and is known to have suppressed Anne’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for years by vetoing a second print run after the first edition sold out.
In a key scene, Anne berates her sister for gazumping her novel Agnes Grey with Jane Eyre. “Charlotte has this great line, ‘I’m telling you, the novels could not be more different. Mine is strange and gothic and intense. Yours is … realistic.’ She is creating a narrative that excuses what she’s done. But it also makes an important point: that male writers tread over the same ground, with endless stories about kings, and no one questions them. So why can two women not write in the same space?” (...)
People with an established relationship with the Brontës are welcome, she says, but it’s also for the 17-year-old girl who thinks they have nothing to say to her.
“My own relationship with the Brontës began with this play – I’m very honest about that,” she adds. (Claire Armitstead)

Fine Books Magazine also reports the premiere. 

The 32789 publishes the list of the selected plays for the upcoming 7th Annual Florida Festival of New Musicals:
In Emily’s Words (adapted from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights): This original musical tells the story of English novelist Emily Brontë as she writes Wuthering Heights. Despite having little worldly experience, she created a sweeping melodrama that has left a legacy nearly two hundred years after her death. Book, music and lyrics by Jessy Tomsko.
Pakistan Observer talks about tuberculosis in literature:
Examples include works by John Keats, Charlotte Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Mann, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, who portrayed either their own experiences of suffering from tuberculosis or faced the loss of friends and family due to this disease. These writers’ prolific creative power and simultaneous experience of TB lent currency to the belief that the disease was somehow connected with literary genius and artistic craft. (Dr Ayesha Ashraf)
Books about imaginary characters and mystery in The Mary Sue:
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Another book where characters can jump right in to other fictional worlds, The Eyre Affair is a metatextual novel set in an alternate reality where advanced genetic engineering has brought extinct creatures back to life, Imperial Russia has been at war with England for more than a century, and various specialist police forces handle weird and metaphysical crimes. Literature is an important part of this society, with gang wars breaking out over Shakespeare, and in the midst of this, literary detective Thursday Next must enter Jane Eyre to rescue the kidnapped Jane, as well as several of her own relatives who are being held hostage by her former professor Acheron Hades, who is now a Moriarty-style villain. (Siobhan Ball)
The Simon Fraser University's Department of English organized recently and English Network Relaunch Party with Quiz included:
Alumni and students then teamed up for English literature and SFU trivia. Could you answer some of the questions that stumped them?
What is the name of Mr. Rochester's house in Jane Eyre? (Rebecca Saloustros)
Multiversity Comics reviews Webtoon's Children of the Night by yuugi:
Since this is a Victorian-era gothic romance, we start with our heroine, a bookish young lady named Elizabeth (Beth, for short). She would much rather stay in her room and read “Wuthering Heights” than endure her mother’s constant criticism.  (Mel Lake)
The Mirror and The Sun share a list of thee 40 most inspirational books which includes Wuthering Heights. Curiously, Times Now News also shares their list of literary classics that fail modern readers and guess what, Wuthering Heights also is there:
A tale of intense passion and revenge set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors, this novel features complex characters entangled in destructive relationships. Despite its undiminished emotional intensity, modern readers may find it challenging to empathize with the extreme behaviours and toxic dynamics presented, potentially detracting from the novel's enduring appeal. 
Espresso is rather exaggerated including Wuthering Heights 1992 in a  list of the most disastrous book-to-screen adaptations ever:
Emily Brontë’s only novel is a monument of English and world literature. The big-screen adaptation attempts to summarize a story that takes place over 30 years and three generations in the space of less than two hours, clearly not enough time to do justice to Heathcliff’s personality and amorous obsession. Critics have also pointed out a lack of emotion that’s sure to confound readers of this powerful tale of love and revenge. (Dina Blewagi)
Stylenest has a guide for visiting Yorkhsire in Easter:
Brontë Country
At its heart is the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the preserved former home of the Brontë family. There, visitors can not only learn more about these famous authors’ lives but also explore the quaint town of Haworth. Nearby, open countryside and steep hills carve a truly captivating landscape. It’s easy to get lost in your imagination in Brontë country. (Charlie Bloom)
Trade Show News Network interviews  Kitty Ratcliffe, president of Explore St. Louis:
Lisa Plummer Savas: What advice would you give to the next generations of female leaders in the events industry?
K.R.: Charlotte Brontë, author of Jane Eyre, who kept her identity as a female a secret in order to get her novel published, is credited with the famous quote, “Look twice before you leap.” The meaning is often misunderstood – many think she is cautioning against taking a leap, but that’s not what she said. She said to leap, but just gauge the distance first. 

Indeed. The quote comes from Shirley (Chapter IX). 

Today's The Times Daily Quiz includes a Brontë-related question:
The 2000 Broadway musical of which Charlotte Brontë novel features the songs Forgiveness and Sweet Liberty? (Olav Bjortomt)
GMA News Online (Philippines)  reports Kapuso series you can watch on Netflix:
 "The World Between Us" is about an orphan boy who falls in love with the daughter of the family who takes him in. However, they face many obstacles to their love.
Based on the English novel "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë, it stars Alden Richards, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Tom Rodriguez, Sid Lucero, Jaclyn Jose, Dina Bonnevie, Kelley Day, and more. (Marisse Panaligan)
12:30 am by M. in    No comments

One of the highlights of the Brontë season opens today, March 27, in London:

Underdog: The Other Other Brontë
a new play by Sarah Gordon
a co-production with Northern Stage
Directed by Natalie Ibu
Wed Mar 27th - Sat May 25th
National Theatre, Dorfman Theatre, London SE1 9PX, UK

Gemma Whelan ... Charlotte Brontë
Adele James ... Emily Brontë
Rhiannon Clements ... Anne Bronté
James Phoon ... Branwell Brontë, Ensemble
Kwaku Mills ... Tabby, Cunliffe, Ensemble
Julian Moore-Cook ... George Smith, Mr. Heger, Ensemble
Adam Donaldson ... Thomas Newby, Mr. Brocklehurst, Ensemble
Nick Blakeley ... Mrs Ingham, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ensemble

Reader, I think you know who is most quotable.

Charlotte Brontë has a confession about how one sister became an idol, and the other became known as the third sister. You know the one. No, not that one. The other, other one… Anne.
This is not a story about well-behaved women.
This is a story about the power of words. It’s about sisters and sisterhood, love and jealousy, support and competition.
Directed by Northern Stage Artistic Director Natalie Ibu (The White Card), Sarah Gordon’s (The Edit) new play is an irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters, and the story of the sibling power dynamics that shaped their uneven rise to fame.
12:25 am by M. in ,    No comments
Today at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
A hands-on craft workshop for the Easter holidays!
March 27th 2024 11:00am - 03:00pm

There’s more to do with eggs at Easter than eat too many of the chocolate variety!
Join our Wild Wednesday drop-in session to learn some beautiful decorative techniques from local artist Rachel Lee, and make your own colourful, exotic egg to take home with you.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 8:44 am by M. in , , , , ,    No comments
In Your Area tells the story of the acting career of the local Lancashire actress Phyllis Connard from Ormskirk to Broadway, including the performances of Jane Eyre in 1937 with Katharine Hepburn as Jane:
After a couple of short runs of a play at the 48th Street Theatre, Phyllis joined the Theatre Guild Touring Company of Jane Eyre, taking the role of the maid Leah at Thornhill, the home of Mr Rochester. Jane Eyre was played by Katherine Hepburn who was already a star in Hollywood. The two performed together for the whole of the tour. (Dot Hawkes)
Lifehacker lists some 'nerdy podcasts made by women':
Hot & Bothered
Vanessa Zoltan and Lauren Sandler host this romance-analysis podcast. If you think you’ve devoured every form of your favorite romance novel, from Twilight to Jane Eyre, think again. Hot & Bothered breaks down popular books and movies to, as they say, “better imagine our own happy endings.” Their current season focuses on the timeless romance How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days. (Lauren Passell)
New Jersey Monthly interviews Simeon Marsalis, assistant professor of jazz literature in Rutgers-Newark (and son of Wynton, yes): 
Kate Tuttle: When did you fall in love with literature?
S.M.: I became a reader of literary fiction in my senior year of high school. There was a teacher named Adam Morrison who refused to teach to the test and said, “I’m going to give you three book projects this year.” The first one I wrote was about [Emily Brontë’s] Wuthering Heights. But the book that really did it for me was Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.
The Times recalls a racist incident in Haworth we reported some months ago:
[Viji] Kuppan joined the University of Leicester’s rural racism project as a research associate after being threatened and racially abused during a trip to Haworth, West Yorkshire, which is famed for its connection to the Brontë sisters. He was visiting a pub with his partner when a man waving a large knife stopped them from entering and shouted that he wanted to “kill and burn the lot of you”. (Kate Gibbons)
The many ways of diversity in Britain are also explored in The Times:
As Britons, we have not always understood each other. In the first series of Alan Partridge’s TV show, the East Anglian Alan struggles to understand a Geordie waiter. Some passages of Wuthering Heights are difficult to understand for people with a native knowledge of English: Emily Brontë deploys Yorkshire dialect to startling effects. Most of us need help to read the poetry of Robert Burns. (Tomiwa Owolade)
Vanity Fair has an article about Anne Hathaway and remembers how
Hathaway is not easily talked out of things she believes in. She took drama classes, understudied future Tony winner Laura Benanti in a production of Jane Eyre at 14, and had the chutzpah to write to an agent with her headshot at 15. (Julie Miller)

Soulmate quotes and one by Emily in BestLife

12:30 am by M. in ,    No comments

A revival of a previous Korean production of a Jane Eyre musical, first premiered a couple of years ago

네버엔딩플레이 (Never Ending Play) presents
브론테 (Brontë)

Music by 양지해 (Yang Ji-hae)
Book and lyrics by 성재현 (Sung Jae-hyun)
Directed by 조민영 (Jo Min-young)
Link Art Center Dream Hall 1, Seoul

With 강지혜 (Jeong Ga-hee), 김히어라 (Jeon Sung-min) and 이아진 (Song Yeong-mi)

"Brontë" is an original Korean musical that depicts the lives and literary pursuits of the famous Brontë sister novelists - Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

The musical is produced by the company Never Ending Play. It has a book and lyrics by Sung Jae-hyun, music composition by Yang Ji-hae, and is directed by Jo Min-young.

"Brontë" first premiered in 2022, running from September 4th to November 13th at the Daehak-ro Jajyu Theater in Seoul. It is being revived in 2024 for another production run from March 4th to June 2nd at the Link Art Center Dream 1 theater.

The 2022 cast included Kang Ji-hye, Kim Ryu-won and Lee Hyu playing the roles of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë respectively, with some rotating alternates. For 2024, the lead roles will be played by Jeong Ga-hee, Jeon Sung-min and Song Yeong-mi among others.

The musical is set in 19th-century Yorkshire and explores the Bronteë sisters' struggles and determination to pursue writing and become published novelists during the restrictive Victorian era when it was socially unacceptable for women. It depicts how from a young age they bonded over storytelling.

The staged plot has a meta-fictional element, with the sisters collaborating on a story inspired by voices Emily heard on the moors, only to then receive mysterious letters claiming the writer witnessed their deaths.

"Brontë" had an initial run length of 90 minutes in 2022. For the 2024 revival, it has been extended to 100 minutes running time. The production offered re-watch incentives, merchandise, and special event weeks during its original 2022 engagement.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Monday, March 25, 2024 11:18 am by M. in , , , , ,    No comments
Daily Express has an article on Haworth. A rather insipid, unappealing one:
This beautiful village has been frozen in time as tourists say it's "like stepping into another era". Haworth is nestled within the picturesque Yorkshire countryside, once home to the famous Brontë sisters. The former family home has turned into a museum, making it a popular spot for book lovers. (...)
At the museum, a rare miniature manuscript written by Charlotte Brontë is available to view, dating back to December 1829. (Cally Brooks)
Deadline talks about the new TV series Too Much:
The show follows Jessica ([Megan]Stalter), a New York workaholic in her mid-30s who, reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever, is slowly isolating from everyone she knows. With every block in New York telling a story of her own bad behavior, the only solution is to take a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Brontë sister. (Matt Grobar)
Free Line Media Orlando announces that In Emily's Words will be performed at the upcoming Florida Festival of New Musicals:
After reviewing multiple shows, the Winter Park Playhouse has selected the six musicals that will be showcased for the first time this summer during the annual Florida Festival Of New Musicals.
“Excitement is in the air,” the Playhouse noted as the theater announced the schedule for the 7th Festival of New Musicals, which will be held June 20-23 to showcase new musical theatre in the works, “one of very few in the nation and certainly the only one of its kind in the Southeast region,” the theater added. (...)
In Emily's Words
Jerry Tomsko of Astoria, New York adapted Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, writing the play and the lyrics and composing the music on his own.
The synopsis: “This original musical tells the story of English novelist Emily Brontë as she writes her magnum opus: Wuthering Heights. Emily’s imagination knew no bounds, and in spite of having seen very little in the world, she was able to craft a sweeping melodrama that has left a legacy nearly two hundred years after her death.”

Patch Waukesha (Wisconsin) announces auditions (next April 8th) for an upcoming production of Jane Eyre. The Musical in Hartland. A walk around Brontë country by the Rossendale Ramblers is reported in In Your Area. AnneBronte.org tries to answer the question 'Where Was The Real Thornfield Hall?'

1:39 am by M. in ,    No comments
A new novel about the Brontës has just been published:
by Miriam Halah
ZunTold Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1915758064
24 March 2024
“I am just going to write because I cannot help it.”
Charlotte Brontë
Haworth 1847. When Mother and her beloved twin brothers are taken by the Haworth ‘miasma’, to keep her family from the workhouse, 15-year-old Kate takes a cleaning job at The Parsonage, home to the Brontë family. Kate dreams of being a writer. Poverty and gender stand in her way and Luke Feather who wants to marry her, believes writing stories is a waste of time.
When Charlotte Brontë discovers Kate’s passion for books and writing, an important friendship develops. Kate begins to embrace Charlotte’s radical ideas of equality and is thrilled when she spots clues that the Brontë sisters are writing stories. But how can Kate achieve her ambitions to write, while locked in the daily struggle to survive in Haworth?
Miriam Halahmy has written a novel which brings the Brontës alive for a new generation of readers. Themes of women’s rights, inequality and poverty are illuminated in beautiful character-driven storytelling. In a world of increasing inequality and global attacks on women’s rights, this is a novel for our time.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Travel+Leisure and famous authors' homes you can visit:
The Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England
Admirers of Brontë and Victorian literature must visit The Brontë Parsonage Museum, providing insight into the lives and creative sensibilities of the Brontë sisters. Formerly the Brontë family home where Anne, Charlotte, and Emily spent most of their lives, the museum now showcases the dining room, kitchen, study, and bedrooms, as well as personal belongings and manuscripts of the sisters. (Yashita Vashishth)
CBC Sports News reports how
Standing at centre ice in the Bell Centre in Montreal, the Canadian ice dance pair twirled and saluted to cheers from their home crowd after delivering a breathtaking performance that ultimately earned them silver medals Saturday at the figure skating world championships. (...)
Skating to the "Wuthering Heights" soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Toronto's Gilles and Poirier of Unionville, Ont., gave the 8,000 fans on hand goosebumps and posted the best score of the free dance with a season-best 133.17 points. (Daniel Rainbird)
You can listen to the winners in this brief clip
Canadian ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier discuss the reasons for basing their free dance program on the 19th century book, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë. Poirier says the book explores the themes of love and hate which can sometimes drive people into insanity.
The Daily Express and the Sunday roast in Haworth:
The head chef at a gastropub in Brontëland has revealed the secret to her beloved Sunday roast. (...)
She said that the Georgian gastropub gets a “real mix of people”, with both tourists in the area for its connection to the Brontë sisters and locals who block book Sunday roasts for weeks at a time. (Grace Piercy)
More local news. The Haworth Hobble fell race in The Bolton News:
Starting from the picturesque village of Haworth, famed for its association with the Brontë sisters, the race takes participants on a gruelling journey through the surrounding moors and hills. (Samantha Sale)
Shemazing looks into the classical canon:
‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë
Another gothic and atmospheric read (can you tell I love them?), this is a staple of the classics and one I would recommend to anyone. After you read this, go find ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, which has an alternative telling of the story form an unexpected perspective.
Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.
But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again? (...)
‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë
This one is probably my favourite, for the pure gothic, stormy romance of it all. A social drama with a hint of the supernatural, the tale of two houses at war is slowly uncovered from the darkness of the past.
Marooned overnight in a lonely home on the Yorkshire moors, Lockwood dreams of a wraith locked out in the snow. Gradually he learns the violent history of the house's owner, the fierce, saturnine Heathcliff and the thwarted love that has led him to exact terrible revenge on the two families that have sought to oppose him. (Lulu McKenna)
El Periódico Extremadura (Spain) recommends both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre as Easter reads.
Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë
La única novela de la autora victoriana Emily Bontë, debido a su temprano fallecimiento. A lo largo de vida solio publicó algunos poemas y esta novela.
Se trata de una historia no linear y con más de un narrador, los cuales penetran y manipulan a los personajes a su gusto. La novela lleva a sus máximos extremos el amor y la venganza despiadada de Heathcliff, que una vez alcanzada la riqueza regresa al territorio de su infancia para recuperar a su amor de juventud, del que se vio privado por su bajo estrato social.
Jane Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë
Una novela de descubrimiento personal y biográfica de la hermana de Emily Brontë, Charlotte.
Dueña de un singular temperamento desde su complicada infancia de huérfana, primero a cargo de una tía poco cariñosa y después en la escuela Lowood, Jane Eyre logra el puesto de institutriz en Thornfield Hall para educar a la hija de su atrabiliario y peculiar dueño, el señor Rochester. Allí la protagonista se encuentra con diversas adversidades personales, desentramando la terrible historia que el señor Rochester esconde.
Como precuela de esta novela, la caribeña, Jean Rhys le da voz a uno de los personajes de Jane Eyre en Wide Sargasso Sea. (María Indias) (Translation)
St. John Alexander is a journalist on CTV News Vancouver:
He's often asked about his name. St. John is originally British and is pronounced "Sinjin." His parents discovered it in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre.
AOC Média reviews Quitter Hurlevent by Laurence Werner David: 
Dans Quitter Hurlevent, Laurence Werner David s’écarte de la vision conventionnelle de la littérature comme source d’émancipation pour révéler son côté obscur, en tissant une histoire marquée par l’influence trouble de la famille Brontë. Un roman qui explore avec audace les liens familiaux, qui libèrent autant qu’ils emprisonnent, posant un regard neuf sur le pouvoir complexe de la fiction dans nos vies. (Éloïse Lièvre) (Translation)
Diario Jaén (Spain) puts in the same genre Jane Austen and Emily Brontë (when barely share the same universe):
Me pregunto si problemas tan graves como trastornos de la alimentación o la obsesión por supuestos defectos físicos —trastorno disfórmico corporal— son recientes o ya existían en “Sentido y sensibilidad” o “Cumbres borrascosas”. Subjetivismo e idealización en estado puro, un chorro de miel sobre una realidad social que nada tenía que ver con las novelas románticas de Jane Austen y Emily Bronte, dos autoras que dominaban como nadie el mundo de las emociones. (Mari Carmen Álvarez) (Translation)
Glamour (Spain) quotes Emily Brontë. Times Now News looks into sun signs and literary characters. Apparently, Jane Eyre is a Taurus. Radio France also shares a clip about Kate Bush and Wuthering Heights. La Bottega di Hamlin (Italy) posts about the Italian translation of Ángeles Caso's Todo ese fuego. Il Manifesto (Italy) interviews the author:
Alessandra Pigliaru: Esistono numerose biografie delle sorelle Brontë. Qual è la ragione per cui ha scritto questo libro?
A.C.: Perché le ammiro molto, le sento come se fossero davvero mie amiche. A volte succede di provare cose vere nei confronti di persone che hanno vissuto nel passato, e mi succede con alcuni scrittori, musicisti e artisti. Non è solo ammirazione, è qualcosa di più profondo, di più vivo. (...)
A.P.: Bellissime parole sono infatti dedicate alla passione, all’amore incandescente. Tutte e tre erano innamorate, nonostante le notizie controverse su questo aspetto della loro vita.
A.C.: Non ho mai creduto che Charlotte, Emily e Anne abbiano potuto scrivere ciò che hanno scritto sull’amore e sul desiderio senza averlo provato in prima persona. Charlotte si è imposta di creare un’immagine molto vittoriana di sé e delle sue sorelle, come se fossero tre donne molto caste che non avevano mai provato le tempeste sentimentali di cui scrivevano. La verità è che erano figlie del loro tempo, del Romanticismo e dell’esaltazione assoluta delle emozioni. Tutto questo era già presente nelle saghe che scrissero da bambine e adolescenti. Non erano le virtuose signore di cui ci hanno parlato, le rispettabili figlie di pastori, ma donne disposte a lasciare la pelle e forse anche l’anima nelle loro relazioni e nelle loro fantasie. La storia che spesso è stata raccontata su di loro è in questo senso molto patriarcale, molto ottocentesca e poco credibile. (Translation)
2:32 am by M. in    No comments
A new independent bachelor thesis just published:
Heathcliff’s Complex Character: Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality and Reader-response Theory to Understand Heathcliff
Mohamed Ashmawi, Karlstad University 
2024 

Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, presents Heathcliff as a complicated character that makes it hard for readers to declare him a victim or a villain, hence leaving them with questions about his morality. This work looks deep into Heathcliff’s tough character by integrating the view of psychoanalysis with reader-response theory. Using Freud’s ideas helps ussee how the Id, ego, and super-ego and defense mechanisms work together to help understand Heathcliff’s personality. It also shows how basic instincts and psychological aspirations pushhim desperately for revenge. Moreover, the essay explores Rosenblatt’s idea of reader-response theory and shows how different readers’ feelings and starting points make them give different opinions on Heathcliff. The changing relationship teaches us how people behave differently and that moral views can be transparent and fair. Brontë’s significant gothic parts make it hard todefine Heathcliff’s character. Her use of unreliable narrators and the horrific atmosphere challenge reality and perception, hence making the reader confused and as disoriented asHeathcliff, who cannot really justify his actions. Ultimately, this essay presents the depths of Heathcliff, explaining his complex character beyond the surface of the surrounding Wuthering Heights. Further explaining that his tragedy is a result of his own past, the demons within him, and our own subjective reaction. Combining the two theories – psychoanalytic and reader-response – will help to reveal his mystery, providing a glimpse into the depths and shadows lurking in the human mind.

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Saturday, March 23, 2024 9:00 am by Cristina in , ,    No comments
The Bookseller features Bridget Collins's novel The Silence Factory.
It is no coincidence that Collins re-read Jane Eyre when writing The Silence Factory—the Victorian idea of the “mad woman in the attic” gains new resonance when the silk’s power is manipulated by men. (Katie Fraser)
The Independent has an article on TB, which is on the rise in the UK.
“The poet Keats, composer Chopin, and authors Brontë and Orwell are just some of the people throughout history who have died from tuberculosis,” notes [Dr Colin Michie, associate dean for research and knowledge exchange at the University of Central Lancashire]. (Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
Edge Media recommends '12 Must-Read Books From Outstanding UK Authors' and one of them is Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.
#3. “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde
If you thought literature was boring, Fforde’s mix of time travel, crime, and classic literature will prove you delightfully wrong. It’s like if your English lit class and a sci-fi convention had a baby.
Times Now News lists the 'most iconic literary couples of all time': Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Cathy and Heathcliff are all there.

 A mew look into Bertha Mason and Jean Rhys rewriting of her character:

Being Bertha Mason: Rhysian reworkings and Jane Eyre, 1930–1970
Amy Walford  & Maebh Long
Feminist Modernist Studies, DOI: 10.1080/24692921.2024.2326355

Jean Rhys's corpus is known for its continual rewriting and revisiting, yet scholarship on Rhys's reimagining of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has concentrated on its extensive treatment in Wide Sargasso Sea. When traces of Brontë are found in Rhys's earlier works, they are most commonly understood as foreshadowings of Rhys's final novel, a position that figures Rhys's corpus as a practice of practising, whose potential is finally realized late in Rhys's life and career. This article, instead, emphasizes Rhys's sustained creative practice of rewriting, presenting her engagement with Brontë not in linear or developmental terms, but as a long-standing critical fascination worked out and through all of her novels. Traces of Bertha's distress, Rochester's control, and rooms that restrict and depress recur across Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). We show that Brontë's novel was a major influence on the settings, characterizations, and preoccupations across Rhys's earlier novels, arguing that Jane Eyre is a fundamental part of Rhys's imaginary and Bertha is an inextricable aspect of Rhys's protagonists.

Friday, March 22, 2024

Friday, March 22, 2024 7:35 am by Cristina in , , , ,    No comments
The new episode of the Brontë Parsonage Museum's podcast, Behind the Glass, is out now.
Sassy and Sam chat to producer Piers Tempest, who produced the 2022 'Emily' film about Emily Bronte.  We'll take a peak behind the scenes of 'Emily', and discuss with Piers some of the iconic moments in the film.
According to Times Now News, Bertha is one of the '10 most misunderstood characters in literature' and two well-known quotes from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights make it onto a list of the '10 most iconic book quotes of all time'.
12:30 am by M. in ,    No comments
A new production of Willis Hall's Jane Eyre adaptation is performed in Ramsbottom, UK:
by Willis Hall
Directed by Natalie Crompton
Performance Dates: Friday 22 March – Saturday 30 March 2024; curtain up at 7.45pm.  Matinee performance on Sunday 24 march 2024; curtain up at 2pm. 
Theatre Royal, Theatre Royal, Smithy St, Ramsbottom BL0 9AT, UK

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, adapted for the stage by Willis Hall in the most complete adaptation of the classic novel – compelling and dramatic as the story itself – tells the tale of Jane Eyre, orphaned at an early age and leading a lonely life, until she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of brooding Mr Rochester.
As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall’s terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions– even if it means leaving the man she loves?
A story of intense power, intrigue, tempestuous passions and dark secrets, this stage adaptation of the gothic classic the will enthral audiences with its passionate depiction of a woman’s search for equality and freedom.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

The Stage interviews Gemma Whelan, who plays Charlotte in the about-to-open play Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.
“I’ve learned so much about the Brontës in the past few weeks,” says Gemma Whelan, on a break from rehearsals of Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, Sarah Gordon’s irreverent new play for the National Theatre and Northern Stage about the Brontë sisters, in which she plays Charlotte alongside Adele James who plays Emily and Rhiannon Clements as the oft-overlooked Anne. 
Whelan remembers being forced to read Jane Eyre at school and finding it “such a chore”. When revisiting the novel as an adult, however, in preparation for the role, she found it extraordinary. “I feel sad for the younger me that didn’t take it seriously,” she says.
Whelan has been immersing herself in the world of the Brontës. “Charlotte wrote that she wanted to be forever known. She wanted fame. She wanted notoriety. She wanted to be recognised for her work. She wanted to rub shoulders with the greats.” She was confident in her abilities, she was ambitious – and she was strong. 
When Whelan was playing the warrior Yara Greyjoy in the HBO fantasy-epic Game of Thrones, she was often asked about what it was like to play such a strong woman – a question she found frustrating, with its implication that women aren’t ordinarily strong. “Charlotte Brontë was similarly determined. She was feisty, fiery and fully aware. She was a person of the world,” Whelan says.
When Whelan’s agent sent her the script for Underdog, she was about 10 pages in when she knew she had to do it – “I devoured the whole thing.” While the play contains weighty themes, she says, “it’s also extremely funny and lightly held. It’s rambling, wonderful and wild, as well as deeply sad and moving”.
Since Elizabeth Gaskell’s posthumous biography of Charlotte was published in 1857, the Brontë sisters’ lives have, Whelan says, “been revised, reworked and reimagined by so many people that actually no one really has a hold on the reality anymore”. A mythology has built up around them – something Gordon’s play acknowledges and explores. At the same time, the position the sisters occupy in both literary history and the public imagination can lead to a sense of protectiveness over them. Given that their story has been reworked so often, says Whelan, “why not ruffle feathers as well?”. After all, Whelan adds, this urge to keep reimagining the sisters “has kept them alive”. (Natasha Tripney)
WAMU reviews Percival Everett’s novel James:
Admittedly, the strategy of thrusting a so-called supporting character into the spotlight of a reimagined classic has been done so often, it can feel a little tired: We’ve heard from (among a multitude of others) Ahab’s wife; Daisy Buchanan’s daughter; Father March, the patriarch of those Little Women; and Bertha Mason, that poor “madwoman” in the attic who terrorizes Jane Eyre. (Maureen Corrigan)
Also inspired by the same novel, The Week goes on to list the 'Best novels retold from a different character's point of view' and one of them is
'Wide Sargasso Sea', by Jean Rhys
Stretching the premise slightly is this prequel to "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, although it does, of course, give "a voice and an identity to Mr Rochester's first wife, Antoinette – aka Bertha, the madwoman in the attic" and it has become a "gateway text to post-colonial and feminist theory", said the BBC. Antoinette is a "potent heroine, plucked half-formed from the shadowy margins of one of literature's best-loved romances". From "Jane Eyre" we "learn little about Bertha", only that she's "a monster who must be bound with rope, a white woman from the Caribbean whom Rochester was long ago pressured into marrying for her money", said Time. But Rhys, who grew up in the Caribbean, "presses on the silences in Brontë to give Bertha her own story" and "turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman". (Adrienne Wyper)
The Argonaut lists Wuthering Heights as one of '5 must-read Gothic novels'.A contributor to The Town Line recommends The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
 A ZOOM alert from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
Thursday 21 March, 7:30pm

In this special evening event, we welcome Karen Powell, author of 'Fifteen Wild Decembers', to discuss her novel that creatively reimagines the life of Emily Brontë.

'Isolated from society, the Brontë children spend all their time inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape she loves and no longer able to immerse herself in the fantastical world of Gondal that she and her younger sister Anne have created, she is simply unable to function.'

Hosted by Helen Meller, we’ll delve into Karen’s novel, and explore the imagination of Emily Brontë and Karen Powell.
12:30 am by M. in    No comments
A few days ago took place a Brontë-related event in Saint-Estève ( Pyrénées-Orientales), France:
March 19,  18 h 30
Théâtre de l’étang

Dans les Pas des Soeurs Brontë: Charlotte, Emily et Anne 

Une famille d’écrivaines, avec 3 romancières de génie : Charlotte, Emily et Anne Brontë. Le génie est-il héréditaire ? Si oui, de qui tenaient-elles, ces 3 jeunes filles qui ont défrayé la chronique de leur époque ? Le génie pousse-t-il comme la bruyère sur les landes du Yorkshire ? Le premier biographe de Charlotte Brontë a fait courir le bruit d’une fratrie maudite par le destin, un très bel argument publicitaire qui a fait mouche. 

L'Indépendant (France) has further information. 

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 7:23 am by Cristina in , , ,    No comments
 Inspired by an article from the latest issue of Brontë Studies, Jewish News Syndicate tells how 'Throughout her career, novelist Charlotte Brontë drew on ‘Book of Esther’'.
Brontë had “a prolonged intertextual relationship with the ‘Book of Esther’” throughout her career, reaching a peak in her 1853 novel Villette, Channah Damatov, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan University, wrote on March 15 in the journal Brontë Studies.
Considering Brontë’s writings in light of both the persecution of women and Jews, Damatov studies the ways that “Brontë uses the biblical story to address sexism and xenophobia with a triply disadvantaged Esther figure in Lucy Snowe.”
Villette thus offers one of the first proto-feminist, intersectional readings of Vashti and Esther, setting the stage for more emphatic female-authored exegesis to champion Vashti and Esther as paragons of action against oppression,” Damatov writes. “In this sense, Brontë’s approach to the ‘Book of Esther’ as a source text for her unique brand of fictionalized proto-feminism and social criticism is an as yet unrecognized pioneer of such hermeneutics.”
The daughter of an Anglican Christian clergyman, Brontë “held the Bible close—and in her vocation as a writer, she held the ‘Book of Esther’ even closer,” according to Damatov, who notes that Branwell Brontë painted a scene depicting Queen Esther when his sister, the writer, was 14. The work was prominently displayed in the parish.
“That she was meditating on the ‘Book of Esther’ throughout her career, there can be no doubt; its figures—from Vashti’s mutinous, dramatic and tragic character to Esther’s demure, strategic and successfully heroic one, and from Ahasuerus’s egoistic self-service to Haman’s vindictive power-hunger—serve Brontë well,” Damatov writes. [...]
In Brontë’s most famous novel, she writes the biblical book directly into a dialogue between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, who reference the biblical King Ahasuerus’s repeated offers to Esther of “half of my kingdom.”
“‘Jane Eyre’ demonstrates a stronger take on Queen Esther, as someone who has a refined sense of right and wrong and exercises greater choice based on her conscience, and against her self-interest,” Damatov writes. “Brontë offers an overt window into her reappropriation when Mr. Rochester, eager to secure the novel’s heroine as his wife, presses the wary Jane to make her request and says, ‘Utter it, Jane: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.’” [...]
Damatov concludes that Brontë is one of the first writers to interpret the story of Esther “with an eye for its treatment of women and the national—religious minority, the ‘other,’ in tandem.”
Brontë’s and her characters’ words, and perhaps Esther’s, too, “will live on to give her readers the courage to defy gender expectations,” she adds, “and pursue a daring outer life that reflects their own inner will.”
After weeks of including it on every and any list that's going, now Times Now News lists Wuthering Heights as one of '15 Overrated Classics that Don't Live Up to the Hype'.
12:37 am by M. in , , ,    No comments
This is a new, and unexpected, scholarly book:
Screendance Remixed
Edited by Priscilla Guy, Alanna Thain
Routledge
ISBN: 9781003335887
2024

This edited collection assembles international perspectives from artists, academics, and curators in the field to bring the insights of screendance theory and practice back into conversations with critical methods, at the intersections of popular culture, low-tech media practices, dance, and movement studies, and the minoritarian perspectives of feminism, queer theory, critical race studies and more.
This book represents new vectors in screendance studies, featuring contributions by both artists and theoreticians, some of the most established voices in the field as well as the next generation of emerging scholars, artists, and curators. It builds on the foundational cartographies of screendance studies that attempted to sketch out what was particular to this practice. Sampling and reworking established forms of inquiry, artistic practice and spectatorial habits, and suspending and reorienting gestures into minoritarian forms, these conversations consider the affordances of screendance for reimaging the relations of bodies, technologies, and media today.
This collection will be of great interest to students and scholars in dance studies, performance studies, cinema and media studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies.
The book contains the chapter:
This chapter emerges from a research-creation project conducted using MikuMikuDance (MMD), a freeware program where 3D digital models can be choreographed into various dance sequences through the use of motion data and keystroke animation. The program was originally produced for the Vocaloid character and Japanese hologram popstar, Hatsune Miku. In the resulting dance translation project, titled “Let Me in Through Your Window,” the author used her own body and a Microsoft Kinect to feed the choreography for British singer Kate Bush’s iconic song, “Wuthering Heights” into the MMD interface, prompting Miku and Bush to dance “together.” This chapter explores the ways in which dance choreography passes between bodies, virtual and organic, dispersing agency often attributed to humans alone. The author allows her datafied gestures to dance through and with Miku’s avatar, thereby relinquishing puppetry in exchange for the machine’s lively, glitchy output. Following Legacy Russell’s theory of glitch feminism, “Let Me in Through Your Window” proposes the glitch as an improvisational dance that resists choreographic hierarchies of control and MMD’s grid-like governance. Bergen’s project attends to the porous nature of dancing bodies in order to reveal moments of posthuman collectivity, contagion, and relation.