A combination of words so fair

The Collector publishes an article vindicating Anne Brontë:

Anne Brontë: The First Feminist Novelist?

In her classic novels, Anne Brontë fearlessly championed women’s issues, challenging not only Victorian social mores but English law and Church of England theology. 

In just two novels, Anne Brontë took on the plight of governesses and married women’s legal rights (or lack thereof), as well as putting forward her own theory of universal salvation, which, at the time, was considered blasphemous and highly controversial. Yet today, her fame has yet to reach the heights of her two older sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Here, we will look into why that is the case – and why it is an unfair reflection on Anne as a writer – by exploring her life, work, and values. (...)

Anne’s reputation, then, has suffered through unfair criticism, neglect, and poor editorial decisions, the effects of which can still be seen in accounts of the Brontë family. However, since the 1990s, biographies of Anne have helped question the narrative of Anne as “the other Brontë” and there has been a concerted effort to reevaluate her work in a manner that recognizes its radical politics. Through her classic novels, Anne Brontë sought to challenge social injustices and to improve the lives of others, and it is as such that she deserves to be remembered. (Catherine Dent)

AV Club discusses the film Gaslight 1944:

Paula becomes both the lady of the house and the madwoman in the attic, to borrow a phrase usually applied to Victorian novel Jane Eyre. In Jane Eyre, which, as it so happens, was also turned into a 1944 film, Jane’s stay at Mr. Rochester’s home quickly sees strange things happening. As his governess, she hears noises and voices in the attic, to say nothing of the fire that mysteriously starts in the middle of the night. Later, as she’s set to marry Rochester, there is a scandal at the altar: He is already married. His wife Bertha fell victim to congenital madness, you see, so he kept her locked and hidden in his attic. It was the only thing he could think to do. Jane runs away in the middle of the night, but returns later in the novel. Bertha has since burned the entire house down and died, and Rochester is disabled in the process. Jane agrees to marry him, and they look together toward the future—one that presumably doesn’t end with Jane in the attic.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that won’t happen, just as there was never a guarantee that the man Paula quickly married wouldn’t try to drive her to madness. While Gaslight isn’t a straight adaptation, this influence, and the Jane-Bertha dichotomy, plays out in the single character of Paula. She must hold both realities and both experiences because the man she was supposed to be able to trust has thrust them upon her. (Drew Gillis)

A shocking story gives way to a great article in Culturamas (in Spanish): 

Es curioso, además de triste, pensar que encontré una novela como Cumbres borrascosas a los pies de un cubo de basura. Es también poético saber que ese cubo de basura es el que recoge los deshechos de los habitantes de la Casa de las Flores, lugar en el que vivió Neruda, y en cuyos ladrillos se guarda el recuerdo de los encuentros entre los grandes poetas de su generación. Qué habrían pensado ellos al ver una obra, sea cual sea, despreciada hasta el ridículo, solitaria entre la suciedad, anhelando unos ojos que se posasen sobre ella y la salvasen de tan terrible destino. (...)

Quizás el cuerpo desalmado que cometió tal injuria no llegó a leer la que sería la mayor obra de Emily Brontë, su única en solitario. Sería alguien que no entendió lo que ella escribió: que “el mundo es para mí una horrenda colección de recuerdos diciéndome que ella existió y yo la he perdido”. En realidad, es reconfortante pensar que leyó esas palabras y no fue capaz de comprenderlas, porque quien las lee y ha experimentado el dolor de una pérdida no puede evitar sentirse herido por el cortante filo de su significado. (...)

Pero, el final. Emily Brontë, cómo vas a escribir una combinación de palabras tan bella como lo hiciste en el final de Cumbres borrascosas. Tan sentido, tan sutilmente bello y a la vez tan poco comentado por los críticos. Se han resaltado muchas frases de esta obra, pero nunca la que pone el punto final, y no hay ninguna como esa. Por los mismos motivos éticos que me impiden tirar un libro a la basura, no me permito escribir aquí esas palabras, pues es un final que debe ser leído en exclusiva por el lector que descubra la novela al completo. Solo puedo decir que yo sí me detuve al lado —del libro— bajo el cielo sereno, siguiendo con los ojos el vuelo de las libélulas entre las plantas silvestres y escuchando el rumor de la suave brisa. Aquel que tiró el libro a una basura frente a La Casa de las Flores, sepa que no ha de tener inquietos sueños porque su libro duerme ahora en un lugar tan apacible como el estante más alto de mi librería. (Natalia Loizaga) (Translation)

El Universal (Colombia) mentions the Brontës' pseudonyms (and publishes the wrong portrait):

Ante la imposibilidad de firmar con su nombre, muchas escritoras del pasado se vieron obligadas a buscar formas alternativas de publicación, como es el caso de las hermanas Charlotte, Emily y Anne Brontë, célebres autoras de obras como “Jane Eyre”, “Cumbres Borrascosas” y “La inquilina de Wildfell Hall”, usaban los seudónimos masculinos: Currer, Ellis y Acton Bell.

Hacerse pasar por hombre para publicar: un rotundo no negociable

Esta elección se debió a lo controversial que podían ser sus temas, que incluían romances desafiantes, alcoholismo y violencia, considerados inmorales para su época. Hoy sus novelas se valoran como obras de arte innovadoras en la historia de la literatura. (Juan Sebastián Ramos) (Translation)

Brontë Babe Blog discusses Military Conversations, a short juvenilia play by Charlotte Brontë, written in 1829.

Dreams of Disorder

A composition workshop dealing with Wuthering Heights begins tomorrow, April 6, in Roma, Italy:

Workshop di scrittura scenica e composizione per attrici e attori

con la regista Martina Badiluzzi

Segni Di Disordine, Cime Tempestose

Programma

Martina Badiluzzi condividerà coi partecipanti le pratiche di scrittura di scena che ha maturato negli ultimi anni e che utilizza per scrivere le drammaturgie dei suoi spettacoli. Il focus del laboratorio è lo studio del dialogo: come due persone possano dialogare su un palcoscenico.

La scrittura di uno spettacolo è un processo collettivo. Scrivere significa innescare un dialogo prima di tutto tra l’immaginazione e la realtà – poi tra le attrici e la regia, tra la drammaturgia e la scena, tra voce e pensiero, tra corpi e spazio e così via.

In particolare ci si focalizzerà sul metodo dell’analisi attiva.

I testi saranno studiati e analizzati in maniera critica per poi utilizzare la scena per praticare e verificare empiricamente le ipotesi.

Il metodo dell’analisi attiva attraversa tutto il novecento ed è giunto a noi attraverso gli studi di Maria Knebel sulle regie di Konstantin Stanislavski e poi nella pratica degli etjude utilizzata anche da Anatolij Vasil’ev. Apprendere le basi di questo metodo permette a ogni attrice e attore di diventare più consapevole su cosa significhi essere autore della propria interpretazione.

Materiali di studio: “Cime tempestose” di Emily Brontë “Everybody” di Olivia Laing

La lettura integrale dei romanzi è consigliata ma non necessaria.

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No One Else is Going to Define Her

A new upcoming novel about Charlotte Brontë is announced in The Irish Times, Charlotte by Martina Devlin:

Lilliput Press have acquired world rights for Charlotte by Martina Devlin. The novel explores the life of one of the world’s most famous literary figures, Charlotte Brontë, by fusing the drama of real events with Devlin’s distinctive style. Narrated by Mary Nicholls, who went on to marry Charlotte’s widower Arthur, we weave back and forth in time through the story of Brontë's marriage, her death, and her afterlife as a haunting presence in the lives of those closest to her. This is a story of three lives irrevocably bound, of passion and obsession, of mutual admiration and friendship, which shows us Brontë's brief but pivotal time in Ireland as never before.

Publisher Antony Farrell said: “The Brontë sisters are considered a jewel in the crown of England’s cultural heritage, so reclaiming Charlotte Brontë for Ireland, where she spent her honeymoon, conceived her only lost child, while seeking out her Prunty forebears in Co Down, is indeed a balancing of the books. The passionate author of Jane Eyre has never been so tellingly evoked in this poignant evocation of her end of days.”

Devlin said: “Objects have an undeniable power. After a visit to Haworth Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, where I saw Charlotte Brontë’s dresses, sewing box, beaded moccasin slippers, wedding bonnet and a toy tea set she and her sisters played with as children, I became convinced I had to write a novel about her. I knew her father Patrick was an Irishman, as was her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls – but I was surprised to discover that he brought her to Ireland on their honeymoon in 1854. Arthur, who was Patrick’s curate in Haworth, was proud of his homeland and keen to share its attractions with his famous novelist wife.” (Martin Doyle)

Houston Public Media interviews Melissa Molano and Chris Hutchison, Jane and Rochester in the current Jane Eyre production in Houston:

The Alley Theatre has adapted the classic literary work in a production that runs through the weekend and stars Melissa Molano in the title role and Chris Hutchison as her boss and eventual love interest, Mr. Rochester.

Hutchison and Molano tell Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty there is still plenty for an audience to identify with, even for a story that's 177 years old.

“It really is about a young person trying to just figure it out and figure life out,” Molano said. “And I feel like no matter what age you are, we never stop doing that.”

Eyre was a proto-feminist of sorts, long before feminist was a term, as she expresses herself and redefines her station in life several times throughout the story.

“She doesn’t let anybody else define her,” Molano said. “And that is what is so — I keep using this word but it’s the best word — is so empowering to me. Even with the person she falls in love with — the people she loves, the people she cares about — no one else is going to define her or tell her who she is. She’s in charge of that.” (Michael Hagerty)

You can listen to the complete interview here.

The author Kate DiCamillo chooses her favourite books in Parade:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

It happens to everyone. They read picture books and then Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys or whatever “kids” book strikes their fancy. Then they make the leap–consciously or not–to their first book clearly written not for them, but for adults. DiCamillo still remembers when it happened for her. 

“Rainy day,” says DiCamillo. “Betty [her mom] wouldn't take me to the library and I pulled Wuthering Heights off the shelf. I was maybe ten, eleven [years old]? It went right over my head, but I didn't stop reading. It cast a spell.” (Michaerl Giltz)

Reactor Magazine reviews the novel Dream Date by Sheridan Smith:

An unexpected combination of Wuthering Heights and A Nightmare on Elm Street. (...)

Returning to Wuthering Heights, Katie’s characterization touches on different points and perspectives in Brontё’s novel: in the opening pages of Dream Date, Katie is like Mr. Lockwood, a visitor to the region who finds himself at Wuthering Heights and in the dark of a stormy night, has a surprising encounter with a spirit connected to that place. Like Lockwood, Katie is both frightened and intrigued by this interaction, with each of them eventually drawn to hear the story of who the spirit is, how they came to be, and why they remain. However, Katie has a more intimate connection as well, playing Catherine to Heath’s Heathcliff, as the two become increasingly focused upon one another. Unlike Brontё’s Catherine, however, Katie is not the only girl that Heath has been fixated on: a local legend recounts Heath’s romance with a girl named Cindy. Despite Heath’s interference, Katie has made a couple of friends at school, including Raquelle, whose older sister is a friend of Cindy’s and who is all too happy to tell the whole dark tale when Katie sees Heath’s picture in an old yearbook and starts asking questions. Cindy dumped Heath at prom, a rejection he responded to with violence. Heath threatened Cindy, saying “nobody dumped him, and he was going to make Cindy understand that … even if he had to kill her” (174, emphasis original). He got on his motorcycle and headed for Cindy’s house—which is, of course, Katie’ new home—but he got into a fiery single-vehicle accident on the way there, and was dead before he could get his revenge. While the relationship dynamics between Cindy and Heath don’t directly echo the complicated interactions between Brontё’s Catherine and Heathcliff, there are some similarities in their toxicity. (...)

The influences of Wuthering Heights and A Nightmare on Elm Street are an unexpected combination in Smith’s Dream Date, but these allusions offer readers the opportunity to think beyond the specific subgenre conventions of ‘90s teen horror and take in the larger landscape. The traditional Gothic tensions of Wuthering Heights, including the significance of place and emotion in hauntings, draw the savvy reader’s attention back to those long established tropes, which are reframed here within the ‘90s horror context, still resonant and powerful.  (Alissa Burger)

OnEurope has looked into the Eurovision Festival rehearsals (so you don't have to, which is nice) and goes mercilessly on Norway's entry:

Your lead singer is all arm waving thinking she is Kate Bush in Wuthering Heights but ending up looking more like Kate Middleton at a rave sponsored by Waitrose or the Women's Institute. (Phil Colclough)

Downthetubes reviews the book A History of Fans and Fandom by Holly Swinyard:

Explore fandom history beyond the 20th and 21st centuries, including the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769, likely to be one of the first “fan conventions”, how the Brontë siblings wrote fanfiction, and the early sci-fi and literature fanclubs that grew out of the 1800s. (John Freeman)

The Independent visits the Peak District:

At Hathersage, just three minutes further down the tracks, the David Mellor Visitor Centre is joined by the burial place of Robin Hood’s Little John in St Michael’s churchyard and vistas that inspired Charlotte Brontë while she was writing Jane Eyre, including Stanage Edge (a two-mile walk away). (Ian Packham)

Love quotes, including one from Wuthering Heights, from classics in Times Now News. Happy anniversary messages in The Pioneer Woman also includes a Brontë quote and May quotes in Good Good Good.

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After Heathcliff Digs Up Cathy

 A recent Brontë-inspired poem featured in:

Spectral Realms No. 20

A Weird Poetry Journal

Edited by S. T. Joshi

Cover artwork Pinckney Marcius-Simons, La Vision du Demon (Vision of a Demon), c. 1900.

Cover design by Dan Sauer.

No. 20 (Winter 2024)

Hippocampus Press

ISBN 9781614984238

Hippocampus Press is proud to commemorate ten years of our acclaimed journal of weird poetry, Spectral Realms, with the publication of the twentieth issue.

As before, it contains a diverse array of poetry by today’s leading versifiers in the realm of horror and the supernatural—John Shirley, Scott J. Couturier, Frank Coffman, Manuel Pérez-Campos, Ngo Binh Anh Khoa, Leigh Blackmore, Ann K. Schwader, and a host of others. Maxwell I. Gold and Jay Sturner contribute provocative prose poems, while a cadre of poets pen tributes to Dylan Thomas (Carl E. Reed’s “Echoing Dylan Thomas”), Robert W. Chambers (David J. Kopaska-Merkel’s “A Vision of Carcosa”), Emily Brontë (Michael Potts’s “After Heathcliff Digs Up Cathy”), and the imperishable Shakespeare (Kyla Lee Ward’s “Malvolio’s Revenge”).

Among the classic reprints are poems by the Scottish writer William Sharp and the Weird Tales poet Mary C. Shaw. The issue concludes with a detailed index of poets and poem titles to issues 11–20.

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The pleasure of reading

The Guardian thinks that the pleasure of reading needs to return to classrooms.

Too much of what is valuable about studying English was lost in the educational reforms of the past 14 years. A sharp drop-off in the number of students in England taking the subject at A-level means fewer are taking English degrees. Teaching used to be a popular career choice for literature graduates, as Carole Atherton warmly describes in her new book, Reading Lessons. In it, Ms Atherton, a teacher in Lincolnshire, explains the pleasure she takes in teaching novels such as Jane Eyre that she first encountered herself as a teenage bookworm.

Culture.org has an article on bildungsroman, citing Jane Eyre as an example.

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: This story follows Jane Eyre, an orphan in England, as she becomes a strong, independent woman facing challenges in love, society, and her own identity. (Grace Angelique)

Times Now News also includes the quote from Jane Eyre on a list of '15 classic book quotes to elevate your day'.

7. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” - Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre’s bold declaration of independence is a powerful feminist statement that resonates with the themes of autonomy and self-determination. This quote underscores Jane's resilience and her refusal to be constrained by the societal expectations of her time, advocating for the integrity and freedom of the individual.

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Victorian Novels and Gothic Modifications

 A new thesis:

Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray: Victorian Novels and Gothic Modifications

by Olivia Balogh

This thesis includes a textual examination of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, as well as background information on social norms and customs in England during the Victorian era. This time period is generalized today as a time of upright morals and near-prudish modesty from the English upper-class. That is, these socialites generally kept up a façade of being restrained and moral, despite whether or not those things were actually true. Beneath that surface, however, many of the intellectual aristocracy engaged in amoral activities and other vices to cope with the changing society. Victorian Gothic novels, like Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray, contained themes of psychological terror, the supernatural, brutal violence, the return of the repressed, and others. This type of content was somewhat, but not entirely, rebellious amongst the prudish society it was published in. I have examined the texts of Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as multiple sources that review them. In this thesis I evaluate multiple scenes in the novels, considering what makes them “Gothic,” and I find that although both of these novels caused a bit of an uproar upon their releases, the Gothic itself is not quite as subversive as one might think.

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'The garden-walk with weeds o’ergrown/I love them – how I love them all!'

The London Review of Books has a really interesting review of Emily Brontë: Selected Writings edited by Francis O’Gorman.

Gondal provided Brontë with a great deal of practice in profiling varieties of extreme behaviour. This is a world in which people routinely conduct themselves with Byronic abandon, regardless of gender. But there’s also evidence to suggest that even as she immersed herself ever more deeply in that world she was already imagining alternatives to it. In September 1838, at the age of twenty, she got her first (and only) full-time paid job, as a teacher at Law Hill, a girls’ school at Southowram, near Halifax. It was hard, isolating work, from six in the morning until eleven at night, with a single half-hour break. The speaker of a poem titled ‘4 December 1838’ in the 1850 edition attempts to relieve her ‘harassed heart’ by allowing herself a choice of ‘places’ to visit in her mind. First up is the garden at the Haworth parsonage:

The mute bird sitting on the stone,

The dank moss dripping from the wall,

The garden-walk with weeds o’ergrown

I love them – how I love them all!

These lines prospect methodically, inching forward through parallelism and internal rhyme until they have identified the exact shape and size of the feeling that originally gave rise to them. Scenting bathos in the weeds, perhaps, the speaker then seeks out ‘Another clime, another sky’: one which, while not altogether incompatible with the moors around Haworth, clearly owes the ‘dreamlike charm’ of its wandering deer and rim of blue mountains to Gondal (always as much Scotland as Yorkshire). But something has changed in the method of description. The attention paid to bird, moss and garden-walk coaxes feeling into form. The blue mountains, by contrast, are a token of scenic grandeur cashed in for off-the-shelf solace. One passage is a rehearsal for a novel, the other a resort to fantasy. (David Trotter)

The Collector has an article on Emily Brontë, too.

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The Case of the Brontës

Neo-Victorian fiction and anything related to in this compilation of essays:

The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism

Edited by Brenda Ayres, Sarah E. Maier

Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN: 9783031321597

This handbook offers analysis of diverse genres and media of neo-Victorianism, including film and television adaptations of Victorian texts, authors' life stories, graphic novels, and contemporary fiction set in the nineteenth century. Contextualized by Sarah E Maier and Brenda Ayres in a comprehensive introduction, the collection describes current trends in neo-Victorian scholarship of novels, film, theatre, crime, empire/postcolonialism, Gothic, materiality, religion and science, amongst others. A variety of scholars from around the world contribute to this volume by applying an assortment of theoretical approaches and interdisciplinary focus in their critique of a wide range of narratives-from early neo-Victorian texts such as A. S. Byatt's Possession (1963) and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) to recent steampunk, from musical theatre to slumming, and from The Alienist to queerness-in their investigation of how this fiction reconstructs the past, informed by and reinforming the present.  

Includes the chapters:

Biofiction and the Neo-Victorian Crime Novel: The Case of the Brontës

by Barbara Braid

Neo-Victorian biofiction self-reflexively appropriates the Victorian past, transforming it freely into a story fitting the current cultural milieu. Despite its essentially fictitious nature, biofiction makes claims to authenticity, drawing in its audiences with suggestions that the sensationalised versions of the famous lives are the “true” ones, and often resists the existing grand narratives of Victorian personages that had been disseminated throughout most of the twentieth century. In the context of the myth of Charlotte Brontë as a model of Victorian femininity and authorship that Brontë herself perpetuated the issue of biofictions’ authenticity and its implications for our relationship with the past is further complicated by the myth-making process of biomythography. This chapter analyses the negotiations of authenticity, sensationalism, and presentism in a corpus of contemporary literary biofictions that adapt the life and writing of Charlotte Brontë into a sensational and detective convention. They position Charlotte Brontë as a stock character in crime fiction, either as a criminal (James Tully’s The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë, 1999) or a detective (e.g. Laura Joh Rowland’s The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë, 2008 and Bedlam, 2010, or Bella Ellis’ The Brontë Mystery series, 2019–21). These adaptive novels attempt to do away with the Brontë myth, which is then subverted to offer a new, more scandalous neo-Victorian version of the author and her life.

Postcolonial and Global Neo-Victorianisms

by Felipe Espinoza Garrido

The theoretical and practical twin interventions of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” have proven programmatic for neo-Victorianism’s ambivalent relation with colonial legacies. As such, these two texts, as well as their reception histories, provide significant inroads to chart the relationships between neo-Victorianism and notions of the postcolonial and the global, with a particular emphasis on critiques of neo-Victorianism’s hegemonic whiteness. Exemplary and necessarily brief outlines of Indian, Black British, African, and Indigenous South Pacific imaginations of the long nineteenth century—many of which have received widespread academic attention outside of neo-Victorian studies—complement such critical engagement with neo-Victorianism’s own coloniality. These case studies do not primarily chart possible future research areas for neo-Victorian Studies but rather pose questions about neo-Victorianism’s (currently lacking) potential to generate insight for disciplines such as Indigenous studies, African studies, or Black studies, which are already acutely aware of how contemporary hegemonies and paradigms relate to the long nineteenth century’s coloniality.

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Resilient and Passionate

Of course, the death of Paul Auster (1947-2024) is all over literary news today. Even with some Brontë mentions:

While to some critics such experimentalism brought to mind the deconstruction approach of Jacques Derrida, Mr. Auster often described himself as a throwback who preferred Emily Brontë over the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, as he said in a 2009 interview with the British newspaper The Independent. (Alex Williams in The New York Times)

Classics every woman should read on WION (India):

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Follow the journey of the resilient and passionate Jane Eyre as she navigates through adversities and seeks independence and love.

Culturess praises The Library of Borrowed Books by Lucy Gilmore:

There are also nods to popular classics such as Wuthering Heights, Psycho, The Haunting of Hill House, and much more. If you're a reader of any kind, you'll be tickled by a lot of these mentions. (Rebecca Mills)

Newsbytes lists novels with 'gripping plots':

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë unfolds on the desolate Yorkshire moors, charting the volatile relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, which descends into a cycle of revenge.

Brontë weaves Gothic elements of curses and a haunting estate into a narrative that echoes the dark complexity found in Frankenstein, crafting a timeless tale of passion and retribution. (Anujj Trehaan)

The poet Collin Kelley talks about his music discoveries in Rough Draft Atlanta: 

Kate Bush somersaulting across my late-night television screen singing “Wuthering Heights,” and Peter Gabriel leading me to the poetry of Anne Sexton with “Mercy Street.”

A jazz concert in Cambridge, UK in Varsity brings us a cover of Kate Bush's song:

After a brief intermission, Daniel Daley Sextet took the stage to perform a slow, soulful cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Cécile McLorin Salvant’s version) led by Maya Moh, whose stunning vocals continued throughout the night. Accompanying her were band members Milo Flynn (keys), Taylor West (bass), Kiran Buzza (guitar) and Charlie Saville (drums). (Madeline Whitmore) 

New Zealand Herald reviews Andrew Stauffer's Byron: A Life in Ten Letters:

As Andrew Stauffer notes in his excellent new biography, moody fictional males from Emily Brontë's Heathcliff to Neil Gaiman’s Dream owe a debt to Byron’s haunted protagonists. (Thomas McLean)

Lifehacker lists non-porn movies but rated NC-17:

Wide Sargasso Sea 1993

Adapting Jean Rhys’ feminist, anti-colonial take on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of that novel’s “madwoman in the attic,” here a West Indian Creole heiress who enters into an ultimately unhappy marriage with Mr. Rochester, and in the process finding herself isolated and alone in England, even more adrift than she had been in the Jamaica of her birth. The movie is damn sexy, which earned it that NC-17, though not everyone agreed it had reached its lofty ambitions (the Washington Post called it, “coffee-table pornography with sound effects.”) (Ross Johnson)

Elle (Italy) reviews the film Emily 2022 by Frances O'Connor: 

Emily è un film sensibile e appassionato, nonché cinetico che predilige la telecamera a mano e il montaggio seguendo da vicino il ritmo della performance feroce e carismatica di Mackey, attrice rivelazione della serie tv Sex Education. La sua Emily Brontë è imbronciata, mortificata dalla realtà che la circonda, tende a intrufolarsi in spazi privati o nella sua testa, è la pecora nera della famiglia spesso rimproverata dal padre autoritario. Il film potenzia le sue emozioni turbolente con un paesaggio sonoro denso, luci tremolanti, una fotografia calda e suggestiva. O’Connor dà a questo film d’epoca una veste diversa, anche molto sexy. Trova un piacere nei tocchi goffi, negli sguardi rubati e in questi personaggi molto coperti che strappano via i vari strati di vestiti in preda alla passione e all’istinto. Il risultato è un’avventura emozionante, ricca di sfumature e nuova per il genere a cui sembra appartenere. (Letizia Rogolino) (Translation)

SentidoG (Spain) briefly reviews Underdog. The Other Other Brontë Sister:

Es un programa inteligente, lleno de pequeñas observaciones inteligentes y también sorprendentemente divertido. Vemos la ambición de las tres hermanas, frustradas por la falta de igualdad de oportunidades e ideando planes para triunfar en un mundo de hombres; en particular, somos testigos de la a veces fea ambición de Charlotte, que no permitirá que nada (ni siquiera la lealtad a su propia familia) se interponga en su deseo de estar “en la habitación donde sucede” y llegar a ser tan famosa como Byron. El guión está lleno de frases divertidas y también tiene algunos momentos divertidos y surrealistas. (Pedro Pérez) (Translation)

Scam (France) publishes the shortlist of the Prix François Billetdoux which includes Quitter Hurlevent by Laurence Werner David. The Brussels Brontë Blog publishes a post by Octavia Cox on Anne Brontë and sea symbolism.

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Primroses in the Porridge

A new scholarly book with some Brontë-related content:

Romantic Women’s Writing and Sexual Transgression
Edited by Kathryn Ready, David Sigler

University of Edinburgh UK

ISBN: 8209928709033

Suggests that women’s writing was a crucial part of the history of sexuality in the Romantic period

• Positions women’s writing as crucial to the history of sexuality in the long Romantic period
• Develops a new approach to the study of gender within Romanticism, by highlighting sexual transgression rather than obedience to cultural norms
• Develops bold new approaches to several now canonical authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, George Sand, and Emily Brontë
• Gives prominence to little known figures such as Mary Diana Dods and Elizabeth Moody
• Includes new work by emerging and leading scholars in the field

Women’s writing was a crucial part of the history of sexuality in the Romantic period, yet has not often been seen as part of that history. This collection shows how women writers fit into a tradition of Romanticism that recognizes transgressive sexuality as a defining feature. Building on recent research on the period’s sexual culture, it shows how women writers were theorizing perversions in their literary work and often leading transgressive sexual lives. In doing so, the collection also challenges current understandings of ‘transgression’ as a sexual category.

The book contains the chapter:

Primroses in the Porridge: Hareton Earnshaw’s Transgression against his Homosocial Family in Wuthering Heights, by Chantel Lavoie

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The script is full of playful one-liners and has a smattering of amusingly surreal moments

Gay Times reviews Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

Directed by Natalie Ibu, it moves at a punchy pace, with two acts of about an hour each. Stylistically it’s an unusual period-modern blend, featuring some traditional costuming and very much set during their lifetimes, yet with elements of contemporary fashion and a handful of present-day references. Despite the name, it feels as though the show is predominantly about Charlotte – playing the role of host, she occasionally addresses the audience directly and provides narrative links between scenes – it all feels as though we’re seeing her version of events, with a focus on her personal journey.

It’s a smart show, full of clever little observations, and it’s also surprisingly funny. We see the ambition of the three sisters, frustrated at the lack of equal opportunity and devising plans to succeed in a man’s world; in particular we witness the sometimes ugly ambition of Charlotte, who will let nothing – not even loyalty to her own family – stand in the way of her desire to be ‘in the room where it happens’ and become as renowned as the likes of Byron. The script is full of playful one-liners and has a smattering of amusingly surreal moments too.

We enjoyed our evening with Underdog: The Other Other Brontë. It tells the story of some of our most cherished novelists in an engaging and witty way, and raises some interesting questions at the same time. (Chris Selman)

A contributor to The Bubble discusses the literary references in Taylor Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Aside from Swift’s own intentions, I couldn’t help but make my own links to some of my favourite texts, when listening to this album, as there are many lyrics that perfectly represent them. ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’, for example, immediately reminded me of the original delusional romantic, Jane Eyre. Despite the revelation that Rochester had been hiding his ex-wife, Bertha Mason, in his attic for years, Jane still declares ‘Reader, I married him’. She blatantly disregards this abhorrent act, which should surely have been a forewarning. I am sure that all readers of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, would be in agreement that Taylor’s lyric ‘They shake their heads Saying “God help her” when I Tell ‘em he’s my man’ is an accurate representation of our reaction to the tale’s outcome. (Bella Farley)

We think this applies more to novels like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë and not Jane Eyre so much.

According to NewsBytes, Wuthering Heights is one of 4 novels that 'captivate readers with their gripping plots'.

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Angels of the Home and the return of the Dionysian

A new Brontë-related article: 

Ángeles del hogar y el retorno de lo dionisíaco sobre relecturas y transposiciones de Jane Eyre
María Luz Revelli, Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto
Revista académica liLETRAd, ISSN 2444-7439, Nº. 8, 1, 2024 (VI Jornadas Internacionales y el II Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Medios Audiovisuales en Lenguas Extranjeras: En homenaje a Samuel Beckett), págs. 311-323

More than 150 years after its first publication, the stereotypes encapsulated in the characters of Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason in the canonical novel Jane Eyre (Brontë, 1847) continue to operate in the Anglophone tradition and beyond it. Victorian novels in general “tend to perpetuate extreme and debilitating images of women as angels or monsters” (Gilbert & Gubar, 1979, p. 68), which continue to be evoked and reinterpreted. In an understanding of adaptation as repetition without replication (Hutcheon, 2006) the ways of being a woman enabled in contemporary rewritings pave the way to question more than the past; they allow the reflection on what survives and how it is resignified from the present. From a Warburgian logic, what survives a culture is “the most repressed, the most obscure, the most distant, and the most tenacious (…) the most deeply buried and the most phantasmal; but equally the most living, because the most moving, the closest, and the most impulsive and instinctual (Didi-huberman, 2017, p. 91). Our objective is then to retrace the monstrous woman constructed in Brontë’s novel and her (de)/(re)construction in the twentieth century in the surviving images of Bertha Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys, 1966) and the feature film of the same name directed by John Duigan (1993).

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The Brontë sisters are seen like never before

This is Local London has a young reporter review Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

‘Underdog’ explores the relationships of the Brontë sisters beneath their authorial works and any preconceived notions about their sisterhood. Sarah Gordon’s play tackles the competition between the young writers fighting for ‘women’s one spot at the table’. Humorous references to the likes of Byron, Thackeray and Dickens are protested by a defiant Charlotte Brontë (Gemma Whelan) who speaks desperately of her need for fame and literary immortality - to the despair of a ‘mouse-like’ Anne Brontë (Rhiannon Clements). 

Quite unfathomably, the play does not include much of Emily Brontë (Adele James), rather projecting her character as someone to chide Charlotte on not wanting to share her authorial stardom, despite being the quite ingenious writer of ‘Wuthering Heights’, also overshadowed by the likes of ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’. 

When taking our seats my partner and I were struck - Gemma Whelan herself emerged from the sides of the theatre and introduced herself as ‘Charlotte Brontë’ in a palpable Yorkshire accent. She makes her way around the audience asking us our favourite Brontë novels, scoffing when not written by herself (‘Villette’ earning a ‘Great choice!) The Dorfman Theatre was beautifully set with a mound of wild flower growth inspired most likely by the natural flora of Yorkshire, violently pulled to reveal the dark undergrowth as a ceiling for the commencing play. The stage featured a turning disk at the centre used humorously and quite perfectly to encapsulate the Brontës physical search for their place in the authorial world, a disco ball dropping down when visiting London among literary high lives. 

The second act of the play becomes heavy, taking on the death of Anne Brontë and exposing how Charlotte edited Emily’s poetry after death, and refused a reprint of ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’. Charlotte Brontë is consumed by the death of her sisters and her strive for fame and at times masculinity, culminating in a very ‘Gen-Z’ haunting inclusion of pop super-star Olivia Rodrigos ‘feminine rage’ anthem, ‘all-american bitch’. 

‘Underdog’ explores a reality where girls are not always supporting other girls and competition is essential to achieve. The Brontë sisters are seen like never before leaving to question who the real ‘OtherOther Brontë’ is. Anne, possibly, dying young and never achieving the same fame as that of her sisters, or Emily publishing only a sole novel, or even Charlotte, overshadowed by her publishers and her ‘one-hit wonder’ with Jane Eyre. Or perhaps director Natalie Ibu hoped to show that each sister spent a life trying to separate themselves from each other, yet are overall entangled by more than a last name. Definitely a must-see, ‘Underdog’ runs at the National Theatre through to the 25th of May. (Rosanna McNeil)

Irish Examiner interviews Lyric FM presenter Aedín Gormley about the culture that made her.

My love of film is down to my dad who was a major film buff. 

We were one of the first families to get a video recorder and I have lovely memories of snuggling up on the couch watching favourites like Rebecca, The 39 Steps, King’s Row and Jane Eyre. 

As a family, we watched these films multiple times and were able to quote dialogue freely to each other and indeed hum the tunes. (Richard Fitzpatrick)

AnneBrontë.org discusses Anne's poem Night.

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Virginia Woolf and the Brontës

A new scholarly book with obvious Bronté connections:

Virginia Woolf and the Lives, Works, and Afterlives of the Brontës

by Hilary Newman

Lexington Books

ISBN:  978-1-66694-022-0 

April 2024

In her feminist polemic, ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf famously wrote of the (comparatively recent) literary tradition of female writers: ‘we think back through our mothers if we are women.’ Woolf’s major literary mothers were those women novelists writing during the Victorian period and earlier. Virginia Woolf and the Lives, Works, and Afterlives of the Brontës examines all of Woolf’s writings on the Brontës, across a wide range of genres: juvenilia, novels, literary essays, feminist polemics, diaries and letters. This proves particularly fruitful as Woolf herself was both a creative artist and a literary critic. As a woman, she was ambivalent towards the Victorian world in which she spent her youth: emotionally she remained in thrall to it; but intellectually she developed the modernist novel. After Woolf ceased to write publicly about the Brontës, she continued to engage with them through the Hogarth Press, which she had founded in 1917 with her husband Leonard. She then chose to publish books on the Brontës whose approaches to them she supported. Newman approaches her subject in a Woolfian way: that is, she avoids dogmatism and aims to open up discussion of the lives, works and afterlives of the Brontës as mediated by Woolf, rather than closing it down to one particular interpretation.

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A Timbre So Effective

Everything Theatre interviews the actor James Phoon, Branwell in Underdog. The Other Other Brontë Sister at the National Theatre:

Dave B.: What can you tell us about Underdog: The Other Other Brontë?

J.P.: It’s a contemporary retelling of the Brontë sisters’ own story of getting their work published in the mid 19th century. It’s told through Charlotte Brontë’s point of view, breaking the fourth wall and directly engaging the audience in her memories.

D.B.: Can you tell us a little about your character Branwell Brontë, the only son in the Brontë family?

J.P.: Branwell is someone who struggles to navigate the world successfully. He is incredibly passionate, and desperate to achieve greatness. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t view him or his work as he does. Instead of figuring out how to overcome those things, he finds himself tilting more and more in the wrong direction, and becomes a deeply unpleasant person to be around. I think there’s real humanity to the comedy and outrageousness of the character – it’s all informed by his pain.

365 Things to Do in Houston recommends Jane Eyre at the Alley Theatre:

Elizabeth Williamson’s stage adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel follows Jane as she navigates the obstacles of coming of age in 19th-century England. As much a love story as a growing-up chronicle, it’s a Gothic classic filled with secrets and passion. (Holly Beretto)

Free Press Journal (India) highlights the importance of reading extensively and deeply to enhance one's writing, imagination, and knowledge:

Then who can forget Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre? Brontë’s words have a timbre so effective that they ring every time you are alone searching for solace. They do not let hopes depart from your breast. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will – Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë (???). The heart of the subject “I” elegantly blends with the soul of object “me” – though there are two verbs – “am” and “ensnares.” 

Regrettably, the journalist doesn't seem to follow his/her own advice as you can see. 

The best film adaptations of novels written by women in Infobae (Argentina): 

‘Cumbres borrascosas’

Un clásico de la literatura inglesa y la única novela de Emily Brönte (sic), que la publicó en el año 1847 bajo el pseudónimo de Ellis Bell. La historia, que no gustó demasiado a los críticos coetáneos de la obra, no sólo es una de las novelas más laureadas, también un clásico ejemplo de infinidad de adaptaciones cinematográficas. Como en el caso de Mujercitas, todos quieren su parcela interpretativa de las páginas escritas por Brönte (sic). Hasta 14 productos audiovisuales han nacido de Cumbres borrascosas, incluyendo una película de Luis Buñuel en la que adapta la historia de la autora: Abismos de pasión, estrenada en 1953. El primero en hacerlo fue William Wyler junto a Laurence Olivier en 1939, pero la fiebre no acabó ahí.

Peter Kosminsky también la versionó en 1992 junto a Juliette Binoche y Ralph Fiennes. Richard Burton también participó en una adaptación televisiva en la cadena estadounidense CBS junto a Rosemary Harris y en 2011 la directora Andrea Arnold contó con la participación de Kaya Scodelario y James Howson para su propia versión. Recientemente, Emma Mackey (Sex Education) protagonizó un biopic de Emily Brontë, Emily (2022). La película narra la vida de la escritora y la inspiración que obtuvo para Cumbres borrascosas viviendo en la campiña de Yorkshire. (Cynthia Serna Box) (Translation)

Marie-Pierre Tachet makes a feminist reading of an extract from Wuthering Heights in Philosophie Magazine (France):

(...) L’écrivaine britannique Samantha Ellis raconte elle aussi dans son essai How To Be a Heroine (Chatto & Windus, 2014 ; inédit en français) le choc de cette découverte. Elle relisait le roman de Brontë tous les ans depuis ses 12 ans, rêvant à son « moment Cathy », son « avalanche d’amour ». Mais en voulant être Catherine dans la réalité, elle n’est parvenue qu’à être l’Isabella du roman : pas de grande histoire d’amour à raconter, seulement des échecs et des déceptions amoureuses. Accuser ces lectrices de naïveté reviendrait à adhérer au discours d’Heathcliff qui fait d’Isabella la coupable des maltraitances qu’il lui fait subir. Personne ne veut être Isabella, comme le remarque Samantha Ellis. C’est un personnage secondaire, maltraité. Pourtant, son expérience est édifiante. Lorsqu’elle comprend qu’Heathcliff ne changera pas, elle songe à mourir, mais son instinct de survie est plus fort, et elle s’enfuit, sans aucune aide. « Je suis guérie de mon ancien désir d’être tuée par lui », conclut Isabella, qui prend son destin en main et s’en va. On peut aussi voir dans les paroles d’Heathcliff une clé pour lire Hurlevent. C’est un roman qui met en garde contre les relations amoureuses reposant non pas sur un amour véritable mais sur des illusions. Sur les cinq couples apparaissant dans le roman, quatre échouent, et ce sont ceux qui reposent sur des illusions (Catherine Earnshaw et Heathcliff, Catherine Earnshaw et Edgar Linton, Isabella Linton et Heathcliff, Catherine Linton et Linton Heathcliff). (Translation)

Clarín (Argentina) interviews the writer Florencia Bonelli:

Inés Hayes: ¿Qué leías cuando eras chica?

F.B.: Las lecturas de mi infancia eran provistas por mi papá, él me regaló todos los clásicos como Tom Sawyer pero hubo uno que fue distinto al resto, Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë. Hay algo en mi naturaleza romántica que hizo que ese libro fuera especial. (Translation)

El Espectador (Colombia) publishes an article about the Brontës, The Brontë Sisters: Between Passion and Mystery (Transgressive Pens). The Parsonage podcast, Behind the Glass, has released the last episode of its first season:

It's our last episode of series 1!!! Expect ghost, ghouls and lots of laughs as we round off the series with  Adam Sargant, AKA Haunted Haworth. We'll be contacting spirits and discussing local folk lore connected to the Brontes... 

The Brussels Brontë Group posts an account of a recent talk by Valerie Sanders on clothes in the Brontë novels.

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Grasper, Keeper and Flossy

A new book exploring the Brontës and their dogs:

Grasper, Keeper and Flossy

The Brontë Family Dogs in Fact and in Fiction

by Jane Sunderland

Ethics Press

ISBN: 978-1-80441-218-3  

April 2024

Details of the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë at Haworth Parsonage in 19th Century Yorkshire, England, are well-known. But what about the dogs with whom they shared their home; Grasper, Keeper and Flossy? And what about the dogs in their novels? There are in fact nineteen named fictional dogs, at least one in each of the seven novels. Many of these fictional dogs can be seen as counterparts of the actual ones, in terms of breed, appearance or behaviour
.

This book looks at the three Brontë family dogs in three different ways. The first is what we know about these dogs from letters and other sources, sticking strictly to actual evidence – textual and visual. The second is what we can infer about the family dogs, and how Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë may have seen them in terms of their sentience, agency and cognition, from their many counterparts in the novels (in particular Wuthering Heights). The third is how the three family dogs, via their fictional counterparts, appear to have shaped the Brontë fiction in terms of plot, characterization and metaphor (again in particular in Wuthering Heights).

This unique book’s examination of the Brontë family dogs and their influence on the sisters’ fiction will be of interest to scholars and students of Victorian literature worldwide, and anyone with an interest in the lives and novels of the Brontë sisters. 

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This book is a classical gem waiting to be read again, and again — a work of genius

Keighley News reports that a public forum is to be debate the controversial plans for a wind farm near Brontë country.

Campaigners say the planned 65-turbine development on Walshaw Moor, between Stanbury and Hebden Bridge, would have a "profound" environmental and visual impact.

Objectors include the Haworth-based Brontë Society. It fears the project would ruin the landscape for millions of people from across the world who visit to experience the surroundings that inspired the literary siblings and see ruined farmhouse Top Withens, which was reputedly the inspiration for the setting of Wuthering Heights. (Alistair Shand)

The Telegraph and Argus has an article about a day out in Thornton.

It’s not picture postcard pretty, but for me that is its appeal. It has the feel of a working mill village from the past - it’s a no-nonsense kind of place. The old centre, a conservation site, retains the character of a traditional Pennine village.

From its quirky place names, the Walls of Jericho and Egypt, to the intriguing Coffin End house, it’s a place like no other. And, surrounded by fields and rolling hills, it has lovely rural views.

My friend Ruth and I have been planning a little trip to Thornton for ages, to visit the historic Bell Chapel and the rather cool South Square complex, and last Sunday we finally got there. Our first stop was Thornton’s best known house, which has also been its best kept secret.

Halfway down Market Street is the house where Emily, Charlotte, Branwell and Anne Brontë were born, and where the family lived until they moved to Haworth in 1820. I first visited this house about 20 years ago when it was owned by novelist Barbara Whitehead, who lived there and ran it as a little museum. More recently it has been a cafe, Emily’s.

As the T&A recently reported, the terraced house has been taken on by the Brontë Birthplace Limited which has raised more than £650,000 from crowdfunding and grants, and plans to turn the Grade 2* listed building into an education centre and literary retreat, with a community cafe and holiday lets giving visitors chance to stay in the Brontes’ bedrooms. Renovation work on the 200-year-old property is due to start soon, with the opening planned for January 2025, when Bradford is UK City of Culture.

More than 700 people went along to an open day at the house on Sunday - Charlotte Brontë’s birthday - to learn more about the project. Joining the crowds snaking through the building, we met Nancy Garrs (a terrific turn by actor/writer/storyteller Irene Lofthouse), who told us she came from a cramped house in Westgate, Bradford, one of 12 children born to a shoemaker, and was 13 when she was taken on by the Brontës as a nanny. “I ‘ad me own room ‘ere - no more top and tailin’ with t’other bairns. I were right suited,” smiled Nancy, referring to the little bedroom at the top of the servants’ stairs leading off the scullery.

Nancy bounced the Brontë babies on her knee at the Thornton house, and told them stories in the nursery, before moving with the family to Haworth. She outlived all the Brontës and died aged 82 in 1866. Nancy spent her later years in Bradford Workhouse, where she was quite the celebrity - interviewed by journalists as the last living person to know the famous literary sisters. She is buried in Undercliffe Cemetery.

Sitting in her rocking chair, Nancy gave us an insight into the busy house in Market Street, home to six children, an Irish father and a Cornish mother. We tend to think of Patrick Brontë as an old man, white-haired and blind in later life, but when the family lived in Thornton he was, said Nancy, a red-haired young father, headstrong and passionate.

A short walk from the house is the Old Bell Chapel, where Patrick was curate from 1815-1820 and where the Brontë children were baptised. Ruth and I headed down to the remains of the old chapel. “Thornton: My Happiest Years” is carved, with a portrait of Patrick, in stone on the wall.

The original church of St James, known locally as Bell Chapel, was built in 1612. When the new church was built in 1872, the old chapel fell into disuse. Little of it remains, but the cupola and one wall is intact in the graveyard. The site has been beautifully restored by the Old Bell Chapel Action Group and is well worth a visit. [...]The Brontë Way, which starts at Oakwell Hall in Birstall and ends at Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham near Burnley, runs through Thornton, with a section of it from the Brontë Birthplace to St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth, where most of the family is buried.

Other walks interlink the four Brontë Stones - each engraved with poems by contemporary female writers. Curated by author Michael Stewart and Bradford Literature Festival, the stones were installed in 2018 to celebrate the bicentenaries of the Bronte sisters.

The Emily Stone, featuring a poem by Kate Bush, is carved into the side of Ogden Kirk; the Anne Stone is in Parson’s Field, behind the Brontë Parsonage Museum, with a poem by Jackie Kay acknowledging a ‘return’ to Haworth for Anne, who is buried in Scarborough and the only sibling not buried in Haworth; and the Charlotte Stone, with a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, is on the outside wall of the Brontë Birthplace. A fourth stone, featuring Jeanette Winterson’s poem for the Brontë family, is in Thornton Cemetery, overlooking Pinch Beck Valley.

The nine-mile Brontë Stones Walk from Thornton to Haworth takes in all four stones. The moorland route includes Ogden Kirk, Denholme Beck and Oxenhope, following the Brontë Way in places. More leisurely is the four-mile Charlotte Brontë Walk around Thornton; starting at St James’ Church, taking in Thornton Hall, the viaduct and Brontë Birthplace. (Emma Clayton)

A letter from a reader to Stuff (New Zealand):

Timeless Jane Eyre

I love to read. Good books are hard to find when you want one. However, I went into the local bookshop looking for a classic novel. I found a grand edition of Jane Eyre. I had read it many years ago but could remember very little about the story. You could say that it is a woman’s story, and it is. But the quality of the writing is as brilliant as any book I have read over many years of reading. Set in the middle of the eighteenth century, people had fewer distractions than in modern day living with busy lives and phones and internet, and consequently observed life in deeper context and nature in great depth. This book is a classical gem witing to be read again, and again — a work of genius. (Terry Huggins, Geraldine)

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The Autobiographical Details in Charlotte Brontë's Novels

An alert from Sydney, Australia:

The Autobiographical Details in Charlotte Brontë's Novels

by Syrie James

Saturday 27 April 2024, 10.00 AM

Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, 169 Castlereagh Street (near Park Street) 

Syrie James from Los Angeles is the author of thirteen novels that have been translated into twenty languages, including the award-winning The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. She will discuss the many ways in which Charlotte Brontë drew from her personal experiences and the people in her own life when writing her acclaimed novels Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor. 

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Is Charlotte the problem?

Church Times reviews Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

In part, this piece seeks to rehabilitate Anne from the shadow of her sisters, Charlotte and Emily. On the whole, it does this, although little is known about Anne, and much of her posthumous reputation was controlled by the dominant and surviving Charlotte. All three sisters wrote their first novel at the same time in the intense atmosphere of the parsonage at Haworth, their childhood home. They had plundered their father’s domestic library and imbibed deeply of the surrounding Yorkshire moors. The 1846 drafts by Anne and Emily were immediately accepted; Charlotte’s was rejected.

Two twists emerge. The first is the competition between the sisters, and Gemma Whelan’s feisty portrayal of Charlotte is the least sympathetic. She begins the show, wandering through the stalls in a flame-red dress, hectoring the audience in flat vowels with questions over their favourite Brontë novel. One chap got sat on. She is the colossus — of both this play and the Brontë legacy. What follows tries to unpick that somewhat.

The second twist is that, at first, the sisters were published under a male pseudonym as the Bell brothers. Brontë loyalists will know this, but not everyone. Although they were unmasked, and their real identity became known, it was as much to do — so this play says — with Charlotte’s wanting due recognition for her own work. Publishing was a male-dominated world, and the sisters were something of a novelty. Sadly, their early deaths ended arguably one of the brightest of family talents in the Victorian era. The battle-of-the-sexes thing is a little clumsily done, yet also amusing. There’s a knowingness to this play. “We may have died young, but we still have an amazing reputation,” the sisters seem to say.

The problem is Charlotte. Whelan plays her convincingly as gobby and domineering, and a domestic bully. At times, the vulnerability and fragility emerge, but rarely. Adele James’s sweet, floaty Emily is a lot more appealing, as is the gentle Anne of Rhiannon Clements. They are much nicer and not developed enough; how could they be, given that it’s the Charlotte Show and they both expired so soon? Unforgivably, Charlotte suppressed Anne’s Wildfell Hall after her death; the limelight had to be hers alone.

The supporting cast are all men (nothing gender-blind here) and match up energetically. James Phoon plays the useless drunkard-brother, Branwell. Adam Donaldson and Kwaku Mills join Nick Blakely with comical results: one moment, a stagecoach complete with clopping horse; another, nasty patrician publishers in hats and coats with cigars. Blakely is a particular highlight in skirt roles such as Mrs Ingham of Mirfield, who brings Anne in as a governess, and then Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the first biography of Charlotte, but didn’t seem to get it.

Everything is beautifully staged in Fran Miller’s production. Natalie Ibu’s witty direction brings a great deal of fun, including a gentlemen’s club turning into a nightclub. Grace Smart’s set and costumes are striking, with Zoe Spurr’s lights creating much intimacy and ambience. But it is difficult to know for whom this piece is intended. It is probably not for literary buffs; and the sight of women oppressing other women feels counter-narrative, which could be the point after all. (Simon Walsh)

The Globe and Mail reviews Gothic Canadian drama The King Tide.

I first saw The King Tide last September at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s haunted me ever since. The rugged Newfoundland landscapes (shot in and around the microscopic outport of Keels), the vibrant cinematography and hypnotic score, the gothic-tinged story – a baby with mysterious powers washes ashore a remote island fishing village – combine to create a film both timeless and out of time. It’s written and directed by contemporary Canadians – Albert Shin and Christian Sparkes, respectively – but could have been conceived, equally plausibly, by Charlotte Brontë, Daphne du Maurier or Stephen King. (Johanna Schneller)

A contributor to The Stanford Daily writes about her former roommate.

In my “Dear roommate” essay to get into Stanford, I asked you about your pet preferences and listed all the pets that I’ve owned (everything except for a cat and dog). I now know that you like slightly fucked-up looking chihuahuas and your favorite birds are crows. I also told you that my shelves were going to be full of books that I haven’t read (still very true), but now they contain books that you’ve gifted me: a beautiful copy of “Wuthering Heights” and a lesser-known Murakami. I warned you about my massive soundtrack playlist that I use to study, now even longer after we’ve watched so many movies and TV shows together. (Emma Kexin Wang)

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