Jane Eyre in Ashland

Today, March 31, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival presents a production of Elizabeth Williamson's Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre

West Coast Premiere

Adapted by Elizabeth Williamson from the novel by Charlotte Brontë

Directed by Dawn Monique Williams 

May 31 – October 11, 2024

Allen Elizabethan Theatre.  15 S Pioneer St, Ashland, OR 97520,

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”

One of the most beloved heroines in literary history shines bright in this adaptation by Elizabeth Williamson. Orphaned as a child and raised by cruel relatives and cold schoolmasters, Jane Eyre embarks on a new life as an adult: working as a governess on a remote estate. But as she slowly falls in love with her moody employer, she discovers that he—and his home—are surrounded by dark secrets. With only her resilience and wits to guide her, how will Jane save her chance for happiness? This Gothic masterpiece is directed by Dawn Monique Williams, who helmed our lush 2023 staging of Twelfth Night.

A musical of a Bildungsroman

Broadway World shares a first look at Julie Benko as Jane Eyre in Theatre Raleigh's production of Jane Eyre the Musical.

Get a first look at Julie Benko starring in Jane Eyre opposite Matt Bogart and directed by Megan McGinnis at Theatre Raleigh. Jane Eyre is written by John Caird and Paul Gordon. 

Jane Eyre brings Charlotte Brontë's great love story comes to life with music. The musical was nominated for five Tony Awards in 2001.

Benko will be joined onstage by previously announced Matt Bogart, who will play the role of Rochester and directed last season's Theatre Raleigh production of Jersey Boys. Bogart is a television, film and Broadway actor with numerous credits, including playing The Four Seasons' bass player Nick Massi in Jersey Boys on Broadway for more than six years. (Joshua Wright)

Click here for more pictures.

A contributor to Daily KOS discusses storytelling.

Embarking from the familiar pier of autobiography into the seas of stories, our first port of call is the Bildungsroman. From its German roots, this is a Novel of Forming or Education. In English, it means a novel that starts with a young protagonist, then maps out their psychological and moral growth—like Joyce’s Portrait. Other Bildungsromane include Tom Jones, Candide, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, and all seven Harry Potter books. (Brecht)

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Jane Eyre in Raleigh

The Jane Eyre musical (Gordon & Caird version) opens this week in Raleigh, NC:

Jane Eyre

Music Paul Gordon Lyrics: John Caird

May 29th – June 9th, 2024

Theater Raleigh Arts Center - De Ann S. Jones Theatre

6638 Old Wake Forest Road

Raleigh,NC 27616

Charlotte Brontë’s great love story comes to life with music to lift your heart and set your spirit soaring. This beloved tale of secrets and the lies that secrets create, of unimaginable hope and unspoken passion, reminds us what it is to fall deeply, truly and completely in love.
Nominated for five Tony Awards, Jane Eyre explores religion, sexuality and proto feminism, all while enchanting audiences with a timeless love story. Jane’s story begins in Gateshead, where she is in the unfortunate care of her cruel Aunt Sarah and cousin, John, as per her uncle’s dying wish. The miserable young orphan is finally rescued when she is sent away to attend Lowood School for Girls. After six years, Jane leaves Lowood and is shortly after hired as a governess at Thornfield Hall. Here, she meets Mr. Edward Rochester, thus beginning her passionate and heart-wrenching journey of love, loss and the struggles of morality.

Via Broadway World. 

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It could have gone down in history

Tatler reviews Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

Gordon uses the fact that Charlotte banned all publication of her little sister’s hit book ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ after she died at the age of 29 as her starting point and works backwards. Why might Charlotte have prevented her own flesh and blood achieving a legacy status? she asks. Was it, really, a means to lift herself up as the greatest Brontë of them all?

So, the Charlotte we see is built with envy. She schemes openly to ensure she comes out on top and fears acutely that there is only the space for her own success. Gordon’s script pits Charlotte and Anne (a very good Rhiannon Clements) against each other, attempting to show the ridiculousness and total ineffectiveness of women fighting - there are always bigger (and usually male) fish to fry. But, in doing so, she ironically pushes the third Brontë sister, Emily, to the sidelines.

We hear little of Emily’s writing process - Wuthering Heights, potentially the most boundary pushing of the sister’s novels, is due more grace! And Adele James - who is a powerful actor in the scenes where she does appear, deserves more stage time. If it was Gordon’s aim to teach her audiences about these celebrated novelists, she only succeeds in part. We don’t quite get to their artistic significance, both then and now and much of the play is bothered by showing - perhaps justifiably - how difficult it was for women of the day to flourish. But these are the Brontës - their place in the literary canon should seem justified, at the very least.

Qualms aside, Gordon’s writing is fuelled by quick wit. The play’s short running time flies by, and her dialogue is rich with jokes and laughably vicious asides. She makes the fourth Brontë sibling, a wayward Branwell, into a drunken joke. The Poet Laureate Robert Southey is mocked and called a ‘bell***’. Designer Grace Smart has made the stage into a twirling semi-circular cock-pit: an apt home for humour. Actors disappear before they’ve finished talking - as if the stage is the evening’s mastermind. It is a stylish take on a classic story. With one last edit, who knows? It could have gone down in history. (Anya Ryan)

Northern Soul reviews the novel The Other Side of Paradise by Vanessa Beaumont.

Beaumont’s prose after a significant loss is intensely emotional when describing the most heart-breaking consequence of female sexuality: the anguish of a mother without her babies. The desolating separation of interconnected souls, from lovers and sons alike, is the greatest source of Beaumont’s tragedy. Classics such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are mirrored in Jean’s reality. (Rachel Pennington)

A contributor to The Oracle prefers Jane Eyre to Pride and Prejudice:

A book that is similar but worth the read is “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte. While both of these novels have strong female leads, the work of Bronte is way more eventful and has harder hitting quotes. (Liv Baker)

We don't think Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice are similar at all, though.

AnneBrontë.org had a post on Anne on the 175th anniversary of her death yesterday.

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You on the Moors Now in Schenectady

Jaclyn Backhaus's You on the Moors Now is premiered in Schenectady. NY:

You on the Moors Now

May 29th - June 1st - 7:30pm

June 2nd at 2:00PM

Yulman Theater

Union College Theater and Dance Department presents You on the Moors Now, by Jaclyn Backhaus, directed by Jasmine Roth.

What would happen if Elizabeth Bennet, Cathy Earnshaw, Jane Eyre, and Jo March leaped out of their novels and ran away together?

These four famous literary heroines of the nineteenth century reject the marriage proposals from their suitors, and instead set out on an epic adventure to find themselves and see the world! But when this radical act ignites a war between the heroines and their gentlemen callers, everything you know from these novels is turned upside down in a battle royale. As the ensemble journeys through the moors, our heroines grapple with love, anger, ambition, grief, and gender expectations of the past and present.

Join us for a wild, raucous romp that catapults through the worlds of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott in a journey between the pages of these books and modern day.

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Rochester: (a)Typical rich boy

A pretty weird description of Jane Eyre in The Hindu today:

Literary enthusiasts would easily discern this as a recurring theme in novels. The brooding Byronic hero who transfigures into Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece is the typical rich boy that Jane Eyre decides to pursue. The only catch, of course, is the ‘mad-woman’ in the attic. (Sana Kamal)

Wide Sargasso Sea serves to feed the social media-oriented obsession with reading many books in as little time as possible. Shemazing includes it on a list of '9 classic books under 200 pages that you could read in a day'.

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys (176 pages)

This is one that will only make sense if you’ve already read Jane Eyre, but it’s honestly one of my favourite modern classics, purely for the interesting angle and social commentary. The story follows Antoinette ‘Bertha’ Mason, the woman who eventually becomes Mr. Rochester’s ‘crazy’ wife that he locks up in the attic in Jane Eyre. But this time, the story is told from her perspective and we take the journey with her as she struggles through life in the colonies before being transported to a strange land in Britain where no one understands her and her new husband is cruel. Although we know her ending we hope for more for her, and this retelling delivers. (Lulu McKenna)

Newsday (Trinidad and Tobago) mentions Wide Sargasso Sea in a much better approach.

Memories of teenage boys I once taught at the International School of Port of Spain (ISPS) and in YTC (now YTRC) popped up unexpectedly after Paper Based bookstore, which specialises in Caribbean literature, posted a picture of the cover of Wide Sargasso Sea by the late Dominican writer Jean Rhys.

This modern classic, which is a prequel to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, tells the story of the first Mrs Rochester, deemed mad and locked away in an attic by her husband who is pursuing Jane Eyre. Rhys gave that first Mrs Rochester a voice and a life. Much to my surprise, it was a favourite book among boys in both my ISPS and prison English classes.

Like just about everyone else, I doubted boys’ interest in reading when I first began teaching 30 years ago, but that prejudice quickly vanished. (Debbie Jacob)

Times Now News recommends 10 Young Adult Novels That Brilliantly Reimagine Classic Literature including

8. Jane by April Lindner and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

April Lindner’s 'Jane' transports Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre' to modern-day America. Jane Moore, an orphan, takes a job as a nanny for rock star Nico Rathburn. Lindner stays true to the spirit of Brontë’s novel while adding contemporary elements that make the story accessible to today’s readers. Themes of love, independence, and self-discovery are central to this engaging retelling. (Girish Shukla)

My Travels with the Brontës has visited William Smith Williams's grave at Kensal Green Cemetery.

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Anne Brontë 175 Anniversary in Scarborough

Anne Brontë died 175 years ago, on May 28, 1849, at Wood's Lodgings in Scarborough. To commemorate the anniversary of her passing, an event is being organized by the Festival Big Ideas in the Sea in collaboration with The Anne Brontë Association. This event will feature a collection of talks, readings, and performances that highlight Anne Brontë's literary works, her life, and her connection with the town of Scarborough

Tue 28 May 2024, 2:00PM - 3:30PM
All About Anne!

The first event is All About Anne! Starting at 2pm, this event showcases how much Anne has inspired, and continues to inspire people in the arts. There will be original poetry performed by Charlotte Oliver and Emma Conally Barklem, and Scarborough born playwright, Wendy Pratt, will have a special performance of To be Undone: The Last Days of Anne Brontë. There is an opportunity to meet the writers, and even a book signing!

Tue 28 May 2024, 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Anne Brontë 175: Remembering Anne Bronte, Memorial Service St Mary's Church Scarborough

Entry to the Memorial Service is free.

Tue 28 May 2024, 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Anne Brontë 175: Tracking the Brontës, Presented by Eddie Lawler with Elaine Minns

Tracking the Brontë’s is a one hour whistle-stop musical tour with the Brontë family on the railway lines they travelled along. Presented by Eddie Lawler with Elaine Minns. The 28th May was the day Anne Brontë died in Scarborough at the age of 29. The performance is in her honour and will be preceded by a visit to her grave.

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Caging social norms

AwardsWatch reviews Andrea Arnold's Bird.

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold has always been interested in humans: the way they live, love, and carry their wounds through a world that is not made for them, really. Her protagonists, women at various ages and stages in their lives, have dealt with the harsh realities of poverty (American Honey), deprivation (Fish Tank), caging social norms (Wuthering Heights), and most of all, marginalization (Red Road). (Savina Petkova)

AnneBrontë.org shares some first-person accounts of Arthur Bell Nicholls.

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Un paradis d'amour

Dave is a Dutch Francophone singer who was pretty popular in the 70s in France. Recently RFI Musique interviewed him on his recent 80th anniversary concert celebration in Paris.

Est-ce qu’on peut s’attendre à ce que vous regardiez dans le rétroviseur dans le choix des chansons ?

Ce sera déjà plus long que Patrick Hernandez ! (rires) J’ai décidé de faire un tour de chant – je préfère ce terme, car je suis de l’époque de Juliette Gréco ou pas loin – qui sera globalement basé sur les chansons qui m’ont fait connaître, majoritairement celles des années soixante-dix. Mon chef d’orchestre a ajouté pour l’occasion deux instruments à cordes. J’ai cinq tubes parmi mon répertoire, ce qui est déjà pas mal. Mais je suis ravi de chanter aussi Hurlevent, Pour que tu me comprennes, Tant qu’il y aura. Ou Doux tam-tam, ne serait-ce qu'en hommage à Marcel Amont qui avait fait une adaptation de cette chanson américaine (Come Softly to me, NDLR). (...)

D’ailleurs, qu’est-ce que vous renvoie le paysage musical français actuel ?

Il y a des perles au milieu de déchets. De toute façon, peu importe les époques, ça a toujours été le cas.  Les succès des années 60, ce n’étaient pas des grands textes. Le son importait davantage que le sens. La décennie suivante, les mots étaient plus littéraires, plus travaillés. Évidemment, on ne peut pas dire ça de Mon cœur est malade. En revanche, Du côté de chez Swann, Hurlevent, c’est d’assez belle tenue. Aujourd’hui, les textes sont moins profonds, ce ne qui n’empêche qu’il y a de bons chanteurs. (Translation)

The song Hurlevent was published in 1976 (two years before Kate Bush made her own Wuthering Heights) in the album Tant qu’il y aura... Written by Patrick Loiseau. Music by Michel Cywie and Gérard Ster.. And here we give you Dave singing the song in 1976 in the TV (Mosaïque, December 15, 1976)

Agonizingly, the music world was deprived of its own version of The Three Tenors on the Moors - a brooding romantic trio dubbed 'Two Heathcliffs and a Cathy' featuring the unlikely yet fated combination of Dave, Cliff Richard (who also made his own Heathcliff thing a few decades later), and Kate Bush. One can only imagine the sublime artistic (wuthering) heights to which their collaborative storm of passion and anguish may have soared, leaving audiences everywhere torn between rapturous elation and wistful devastation.

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If there’s one thing the Brontë sisters could do, it’s writing

BBC News also has an article on the auction of the Wuthering Heights guitar:

A guitar used to perform the solo in Kate Bush's breakthrough single Wuthering Heights is to be sold at auction.

The 1974 Les Paul Custom will be sold at Gardiner Houlgate auctioneers in Corsham, Wiltshire next month, and is expected to attract bids of up to £10,000.

Guitarist Ian Bairnson, who played the piece with his arm in a plaster cast after breaking it, died last year aged 70, and his instruments are being auctioned by his family.

A tribute to Emily Bronte's 1847 novel, Bush's debut song Wuthering Heights surpassed all expectations when it was released in 1978, becoming the first number one written and performed song by a female artist. (Harriet Robinson & PA Media)

The Irish World reviews a live performance by CMAT (Clara May Alice Thompson):

A night of so many highlights: her cover of Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush was extraordinary. (David Hennessy)

The album where the song appeared in 1978, The Kick Inside, is the best album of that year according to Radio X. 

Rising Kashmir explores literary loneliness:

The psychological toll of loneliness is profound. Chronic loneliness has been linked to various mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. In Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” the eponymous heroine endures intense loneliness from her early years at the oppressive Lowood School to her time as a governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane’s isolation, however, becomes a crucible for her strength and resilience. Her story underscores the complex relationship between loneliness and personal growth, suggesting that while isolation can be deeply painful, it can also foster self-discovery and fortitude. (Sanjay Pandita)

Classics that people say are must-reads according to Yardbarker:

If there’s one thing the Brontë sisters could do, it’s writing. Jane Eyre was published just months before Wuthering Heights, making it a great year for the family. Both books have remained lasting favorites among literature fans.  (Acacia Deadrick)

SheKnows and Martha Stewart's desserts: 

Martha Stewart knows how to make our tummies rumble over a new, scrumptious dessert we only thought was possible in Disney movies. Once again, she proves that not only are these dishes real, but you can make them at home easily. On May 23, Stewart shared an idyllic snapshot of her new dessert that’s fit for an Emily Brontë novel. (Delilah Gray)

The Week (India) recommends Tim Minchin's Matilda musical: 

The play opens with the famously enchanting number―‘My Mummy Says I'm a Miracle’―where pampered and happy children prance about joyfully at a birthday party, standing out starkly against the dark and obnoxious ma and pa of the story's titular and pint-sized lead, Matilda, who loathe her for being born a girl. They cannot fathom her affinity towards Brontë, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Eyre [sic], all of who she finds more appealing than television. (Pooja Biraia Jaiswal)

Alison Larkin in The Berkshire Edge:

Elizabeth has Darcy, Jane Eyre has Rochester. But what about me? I suddenly realized I would never find true love if I didn’t do something about it before it was too late.

Cromos (Spain) and summer reads already:

Cumbres Borrascosas 

Emily Brontë

Esta novela clásica inglesa cuenta la apasionada historia de amor entre Heathcliff y Cathy. Ambientada en la desolada región de Yorkshire, Cumbres borrascosas es una historia de amor, odio y venganza.

Il Sussidiario (Italy) reviews Rupert Brooke. Lo splendore delle ombre by Paola Tonussi:

E se l’autrice di Cime tempestose è la giovane donna volitiva solitaria, che esercita la sua ribellione nella letteratura, con la sua immaginazione potente e vivida, e nella sua solitudine a contatto con la bellezza selvaggia della brughiera, Rupert Brooke resta per il lettore fissato nel ritratto del giovane di sfolgorante bellezza, innamorato dello splendore della natura, nel cui grembo lussureggiante riposa per sempre, a Sciro, isola di Achille. (Silvia Stucchi) (Translation)

Libreriamo (Italy) lists books everybody wants to read but few people try:

Cime Tempestose

Altro classico al femminile tra i libri che tutti dicono di leggere ma che in pochi fanno realmente.

Intriso di passioni turbinose come il vento del nord che spazza la brughiera e sibila intorno all’antica casa della famiglia Earnshaw, questa monumentale icona del romanzo europeo restituisce con insuperabile forza drammatica la tragedia di un’umanità sconfitta dalle proprie spietate costrinzioni. (Salvatore Galeone) (Translation)

Bad women in literature in The Objective (Spain):

Aunque en la historia de la literatura las «malas mujeres» siempre han existido, inclusive mucho antes de Lady Macbeth o Bertha Mason en Jane Eyre, en su mayoría la creación se realiza desde la mirada del autor hombre, sin embargo, desde hace algunos años, varios sellos editoriales han apostado por estas historias, más allá de otros arquetipos como la mujer débil o la mujer víctima. (Ariana Basciani) (Translation)

A short story with a Brontë mention in Secret Life of Mom. USA Today recommends Jane Eyre if you like Alexandre Dumas's Le Comte de Montecristo. The New York Times's Crossword asks for "Wuthering Heights Terrain".

Finally, an alert from Mendoza, Argentina:

Nave UNcuyo

Maza 250 . Ciudad, Mendoza 4054890

Sala Azul

May 26, 18.30 h

Wuthering Heights 1939

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Colonial Hauntings

Phantoms in Jane Eyre discussed in:

Phantom Past, Pure Future: Colonial Hauntings and Temporal Disruption in Jane Eyre

by Qian Xun Tie

The Channel, McGill University, XV (2024), p. 24

While a linear reading of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre unfolds within the temporal and geographical confines of Great Britain, a post-colonial lens unveils the looming presence of its colonies. Much scholarly attention, notably Susan Meyer’s “Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre”, has been directed towards the analysis of Rochester’s West Indian wife Bertha Mason, whose racialization becomes a conduit for the spectral intrusion of British colonialism into the novel. It is crucial to note, however, that in conjunction with her proximity to blackness, Brontë writes Bertha as a paranormal entity, a phantom presence that haunts Thornfield Hall and its residents. I endeavour to reconcile these dual images by investigating the theme of the supernatural through Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntology. By way of synthesis, I argue that memories of colonial trauma haunt the domestic spaces of Jane Eyre and subsequently disrupt the linear trajectory of Britain’s national history. As such, a central predicament of the novel revolves around the means to purge both its characters and their dwellings of the racialized other to restore a pure and untainted British past in order to transition into an untroubled future. (...)

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'What was it they knew? Very little about “life.” They knew their own souls, they knew their own minds and hearts'

The Times echoes the news of the Brussels square to be named after the Brontë sisters.

Charlotte and Emily are to give their names to a newly created square in Brussels, Belgium, next year to mark the time the sisters lived in the Belgian capital 180 years ago. Their stay had a marked influence on Charlotte, in particular, and may even have provided the inspiration for the romantic hero Mr Rochester in her most famous work, Jane Eyre.

“The link has never been as widely known as it should be and until now there’s never been a Brontë street or Brontë square,” said Helen MacEwan, author of The Brontës in Brussels. “That this is about to change is great news for Brontë lovers everywhere and good for Brussels.”

“This is a really exciting development. Charlotte and Emily’s time in Brussels is an important part of the Brontë story and it’s totally fitting that their legacy will be commemorated in the city in this way,” said Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society and Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

Brussels had a very different impact on the sisters to Haworth. Both were in their twenties when they came to learn French from 1842 to 1843, because it was cheaper than Paris. They studied at a small school boarding house, or pensionnat, run by the teachers Constantin Héger and his wife, Zoe.

Although both sisters were taught by Héger, many believe that Charlotte fell in love with him and he inspired the character of Mr Rochester.

Emily left the city as soon as she had the chance and never apparently referred to her time in Belgium. In contrast Charlotte returned a second time for another year to teach English and music at the Pensionnat Héger.

The plan is to make part of Rue des Braves in the Koekelberg district into a square, Place des soeurs Brontë, designed by the Suede 36 consultancy, to be inaugurated next year.

The square, which is near a library and a school, will feature trees, a garden with benches and reading areas around a statue of the sisters, and quotations from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, chosen by local residents and carved in stone.

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it,” reads one of the chosen quotes from Jane Eyre.

Tom Frantzen, a popular sculptor whose playful statues are dotted around Brussels, has worked on a maquette of Charlotte and Emily walking on the windswept Yorkshire moors.

MacEwan, the founder of the Brussels Brontë Group, said the link to the Koekelberg suburb of Brussels was an important one for the sisters.

“The link came through Charlotte’s close friend, Mary Taylor, who was studying at a school called the Château de Koekelberg with her sister, Martha, while the Brontës were at the Pensionnat Héger near Place Royale [in the centre]. Charlotte and Emily used to visit,” she said.

“Mary Taylor, a feminist who believed women should earn their own living, went on to run a store in New Zealand, lead a party of women up Mont Blanc [in the Alps] and write a feminist novel, Miss Miles.”

Muriel de Viron, the alderman for public works in Koekelberg, said the square would mark sisters “who left their mark on the history of literature and feminism”. She added: “We need more squares and street names with women’s names to make them visible in the public space.”

Charlotte’s darkly romantic novel Villette, published in 1853 at a bleak time in her life, was set in a fictional European city where both people and places were painted in an unflattering light. “Charlotte’s wonderful, dark novel Villette is closely based on her years in Belgium,” MacEwan said.

When it had been translated into French, the fictitious city name Villette was changed to “Bruxelles” in the text, upsetting many who felt wronged after seeing themselves in her story.

Such was the bad blood that her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, whose Life of Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857, vowed never to write another biography because she faced so many complaints and threats of legal action.

Letters from Charlotte to Héger, a romantic figure who had fought on the barricades during Belgium’s national revolution in 1830, were first published in the Times in 1913, recording her angry despair at his failure to return her affections.

“Day after day disappointment flings me down again into overwhelming misery,” she wrote. “I am in a fever. I lose my appetite and my sleep. I pine away.” (Bruno Waterfield)

Funnily enough, LitHub shares an article by writer Ursula K. Le Guin on 'How to Become a Writer' and mentions Charlotte and Emily's Brussels experience.

The most frequent evasive tactic is for the would-be writer to say, But before I have anything to say, I must get experience.

Well, yes; if you want to be a journalist. But I don’t know anything about journalism, I’m talking about fiction. And of course fiction is made out of experience, your whole life from infancy on, everything you’ve thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn’t something you go and get—it’s a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that “experience”; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing. I invite you to meditate on a pair of sisters. Emily and Charlotte. Their life experience was an isolated vicarage in a small, dreary English village, a couple of bad years at a girls’ school, another year or two in Brussels, which is surely the dullest city in all Europe, and a lot of housework. Out of that seething mass of raw, vital, brutal, gutsy Experience they made two of the greatest novels ever written: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Now, of course they were writing from experience; writing about what they knew, which is what people always tell you to do; but what was their experience? What was it they knew? Very little about “life.” They knew their own souls, they knew their own minds and hearts; and it was not a knowledge lightly or easily gained. From the time they were seven or eight years old, they wrote, and thought, and learned the landscape of their own being, and how to describe it. They wrote with the imagination, which is the tool of the farmer, the plow you plow your own soul with. They wrote from inside, from as deep inside as they could get by using all their strength and courage and intelligence. And that is where books come from. The novelist writes from inside.

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Revenge and Gothic

Brontë research articles produced in Indonesia and Iraq:

Revenge in Emily Brontë's Novel Wuthering Heights
Lia Safitri, Asnani Asnani
Journal of Language,  Vol 6, No 1

The research seeks to uncover the causal factors and detrimental effects of revenge as depicted in Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights. Given its focus on societal phenomena, the chosen methodology is the descriptive qualitative approach, aimed at elucidating these social dynamics. The analysis draws upon theories of revenge proposed by Barcaccia et al. and Schwartz, which respectively delve into the underlying elements of vengeance. Revenge arises from a potent desire to seek retribution for perceived injustices, often manifesting as the infliction of harm or suffering upon the perceived wrongdoer. However, rather than achieving justice, revenge often perpetuates a cycle of retaliation, as individual interpretations of moral equilibrium seldom align. Wuthering Heights serves as the primary source of data, with textual excerpts informing the analysis. The findings reveal three primary instigators of revenge: betrayal, injustice, and insult, with resultant negative impacts including depression and anxiety.

The Gothic complex spectrality in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Haydar Jabr Koban, Asst. Prof., Mazaya University College and  Taif Abdulhussein Dakhil,  Asst. Lecturer., Dijlah University College

International Journal of Health Sciences,  Vol. 6 No. S4 (2022) 

Gothic literature in general and Gothic fiction, in particular, can be defined as a literary piece of writing that uses dark scenery and a whole atmosphere of exoticism, mystery, fear, and terror. This paper aims to explore the elements of Gothic complex spectrality in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847). The novel, known for being one of the greatest love stories ever published, explored many Gothic elements that added a sense of fear and terror to its plot. The Gothic factors were not traditional or similar to other Gothic fiction, even though Brontë was greatly influenced by Gothic fiction in her childhood. Nevertheless, she had created her Gothic world that broke the confines of the traditional and resulted in Wuthering Heights, which is still a topic of interest after more than centuries of its creation.

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A square and a sculpture in Brussels?

More on the square in Koekelberg that could be named after the Brontës in The Brussels Times.

Brussels is attempting to bring back the spirit of the famous Brontë sisters to the city, as the municipality of Koekelberg announced that it is taking concrete steps to name a public square after the English authors next year.

Koekelberg wants to put the Brontë sisters on the Belgian map, as two of them – Charlotte and Emily – came to Brussels in 1842 to study French. This was the only time they went abroad, according to author of 'The Brontës in Brussels' Helen MacEwan.

The square would be the first in Brussels to be named after the Bröntes [sic] . While the various steps for the creation and naming of the square have taken some time – having first been announced in 2020 – the plan is to inaugurate it in 2025, the municipality announced at a public meeting last week.

The plan is to transform part of Rue des Braves into a square and call it the Place des Soeurs Brontë/Gezusters Brontëplein. In addition to discussions surrounding the square's vegetation and street furniture, there was also a proposal to display several quotes from the sisters' famous novels (such as Charlotte's 'Jane Eyre' and Emily's 'Wuthering Heights').

While the funding has not yet been confirmed, sculptor Tom Frantzen (who previously created the iconic statues of Pieter Bruegel and Jacques Brel in Brussels) might also provide a sculpture of Charlotte and Emily. (Maïthé Chini)

The Telegraph and Argus highlights some of the events that will take place during the forthcoming Bradford Literature Festival (June 28-July 7) and one of them is this one:

Brontë enthusiast, Christa Ackroyd, will be leading a historical journey by vintage coach to Thornton village. (Natasha Meek)

A contributor to IWMBuzz claims that Jane Eyre and other novels romanticise death.

Coming to core literature, if you have been a Brontë fan, I would like to mention some of her creations that have largely bothered the readers. Charlotte Brontë’s, Jane Eyre (1847), and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853) and North and South (1855). Arguably, these pieces romanticise death, more specifically, the deaths caused by tuberculosis. By romanticizing the disease, the characters in these novels glorify tuberculosis, portraying it as something beautiful rather than horrific. They also use it as a means to beautify the notion of God taking their loved ones prematurely.

What is felt is that the characters who succumb to tuberculosis are depicted as virtuous and beautiful individuals, and that their religious faith significantly influences their fate in succumbing to the illness. It was common in the 19th century. (Shatakshi Ganguly)

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Telles and Brontë

A chapter in this newly published Brazilian book:

Ciéncias Humanas e Sociais: Tópicos Atuais Em Pesquera - Volume 4
Edited by Marcelo da Fonseca Ferreira da Silva and Flávio Aparecido de Almeida

Editora Científica Digital

ISBN 978-65-5360-584-8

May 2024

Esta obra constituiu-se a partir de um processo colaborativo entre professores, estudantes e pesquisadores que se destacaram e qualificaram as discussões neste espaço formativo. Resulta, também, de movimentos interinstitucionais e de ações de incentivo à pesquisa que congregam pesquisadores das mais diversas áreas do conhecimento e de diferentes Instituições de Educação Superior públicas e privadas de abrangência nacional e internacional. Tem como objetivo integrar ações interinstitucionais nacionais e internacionais com redes de pesquisa que tenham a finalidade de fomentar a formação continuada dos profissionais da educação, por meio da produção e socialização de conhecimentos das diversas áreas do Saberes. Agradecemos aos autores pelo empenho, disponibilidade e dedicação para o desenvolvimento e conclusão dessa obra. Esperamos também que esta obra sirva de instrumento didático-pedagógico para estudantes, professores dos diversos níveis de ensino em seus trabalhos e demais interessados pela temática.

The chapter six is:

Imaginário e Fantástico em Perspectiva Comparada: Lygia Fagundes Telles e Emily Jane Brontë

by Joice Aparecida de Souza Pinto and Lilian Fernandes Carneiro

O presente trabalho baseia-se em atividade de análise textual, com foco nos estudos comparativos de literatura, a partir das relações estabelecidas entre o conto Venha ver o Pôr do Sol, autoria de Lygia Fagundes Telles e do romance O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes (Wuthering Heights), de Emily Jane Brontë, por ênfase os sentimentos que articulam a trama: o amor e o ódio, concretizados nos relacionamentos amorosos dos protagonistas de ambas as obras. A base metodológica concentra-se nos estudos da literatura comparada de Tânia Carvalhal, e circunscreve-se ao espaço das narrativas e suas associações aos efeitos do fantástico com base em David Roas. François Laplantine e Liana Trindade fundamentam os estudos do Imaginário e suas relações com o fantástico. Além disso, analisar-se-á a construção do espaço como elemento essencial na estruturação da narrativa, evidenciando-se como um lugar de referência para analisar a inter-relação amor e ódio. Estudar-se-á nas obras a presença do fantástico e do imaginário, o que possibilitará o entendimento a respeito do tema e, consequentemente, promoverá a aquisição de conhecimento para novas interpretações; conforme Umberto Eco, a obra é aberta e nos permite visualizar esta conexão, como também a sua plurissignificação. Por conseguinte, poder-se-á perceber a relevância de mesclar obras nacionais com textos traduzidos e, seguidamente, favorecer o acesso a outros leitores, difundindo a obra clássica ao propiciar a interculturalidade.

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A couple of plays and a weekend break

Nippertown has a short interview with Jasmine Roth, director of the play You On the Moors Now” at the Yulman Theatre at Union College.

Q: What is the action of “You on the Moors Now” and how does it resonate with you?

A: In “You On the Moors Now” four famous heroines from four famous novels (Lizzie Bennet, Jane Eyre, Jo March and Cathy Earnshaw) all run away from their suitors and find each other instead. They go off on an adventure to find themselves and see the world, but their suitors are angry and wage war against them instead. Throughout so much of human history a woman's societal obligation has been to get married and have children. When the novels this play is based on were written the stakes of turning down a marriage proposal were so high, and yet each of these heroines fought for equality in their own way inside their story. This play- which bends time and space - allows them to do even more than they could in the time frames of their own story- liberating them beyond what could have been. These have been some of my favorite novels throughout my life, so it's thrilling to be able to explore these characters in a new light, and pay homage to the original texts.

Q: What has surprised you about this process that you think the audience might really enjoy?

A: The play is really physical — we're scaling cliff sides and running over hills. We wanted to really bring the adventurous landscape of the moors to life and the set really does that. Our scenic designer Andrew Mannion took a lot of inspiration from photos of the moors, but also kids clubhouses, war museums, old books and playgrounds. (Patrick White)

Still on stage, GB News reviews Underdog: The Other Other Brontë.

At one point in Gordon’s drama, Charlotte Brontë reflects on the perceived witchy nature of her and her sisters’ work; female collaboration has, at various points in history, been seen as a dangerous thing with wicked possibilities.

Considering the Brontës’ firm place in the literary canon, and Sarah Gordon’s work alongside Natalie Ibu with this play, that assumption is proven true.

Gordon’s work certainly akes time to acclimatise to - it is a bolshy, sweary love letter to the power of female authorship which worked well as a complete package, despite certain moments feeling slightly overworked and clunky. [...]

Underdog follows the sisters’ struggle to publish their works, the - at times toxic - rivalry between them, and the heartbreaking deaths of Emily and Anne which cut short their flourishing literary careers.

The boldness and bravery of the Brontës’ endeavour - often tackling taboo subjects of domestic violence, female independence, and financial inequality in an age of rapid industrial expansion - is entirely reflected in Grace Smart’s beautiful costuming.

Charlotte (Gemma Whelan) wears a bright cherry-red gown, with Emily (Adele James) in blue and Anne (Rhiannon Clements) in purple.

Gordon’s biting script for Charlotte is excellently handled by the inimitable Gemma Whelan. It is cheeky and witty and moves at a great pace.

Gordon’s script truly sings, though, when she weaves the Brontës’ own words alongside her own. Anne’s death scene is expertly intertwined with Caroline’s near-death in Charlotte’s third novel Shirley, creating a stunning mix of the real and the fictional; when reflecting on Charlotte’s own futility, Whelan beautifully delivered Emily’s poem, High Waving Heather.

More of these kinds of moments would have certainly tipped the play over into legendary status.

A note once more on Grace Smart’s set design. In contrast to the natural landscape of the moor is a black, worn, scuffed backdrop which serves as a reminder of the contextual industrial setting the Brontës were writing in. Where the staging really came into its own was in the scene where Charlotte and Anne were exchanging letters. [...]

There’s a lot of (at times unnecessary) swearing in Underdog. There’s also a lot of frivolity (a farcical carriage ride to London, say, or Anne’s persistent questioning of Charlotte) which could perhaps be trimmed. But alongside this, there are some excellent observations on a family who created such incredible cultural heritage from a small vicarage in Haworth. (Katie Bowen)

The Telegraph recommends '10 underrated corners of the UK for a weekend break' and one of them is 

The Calder Valley

[...] It is worth visiting just for a wander among the moorlands, but then there’s the brooding, eternally misty Todmorden, which is home to an indoor market serving impressively good coffee. Hike towards Pendle for moody cloudscapes one minute, glowing, sunlit hillsides the next. Literary types can turn the other way for a stomp across Brontë country, or head towards Sylvia Plath’s burial place in Heptonstall. (Sophie Dickinson)

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Exploring Mrs. Reed

Exploring Mrs. Reed in Jane Eyre:

Study of Mrs. Reed’s Multi-dimensional Image from the Perspective of Sigmund Freud’s Personality Structure Theory
by Shihan Wang and Chengyao Jian
Journal of Education and Educational Research, 8(2), 238-240.

Jane Eyre is a classic written by British female writer Charlotte Brontë. In this paper, the author makes a comprehensive analysis of a minor character in the novel, Mrs. Reed. It is found that Mrs. Reed is a hard-hearted and cruel aunt, a doting mother and a jealous wife. Then, Freud’s personality structure theory is employed to interpret Mrs. Reed’s multi-faceted image. Firstly, Mrs. Reed is influenced by the “id” factor which makes her indulgent in her own nature, unconstrained by social rules, and behave as a hard-hearted, jealous and doting woman. Secondly, “ego” factor also shapes Mrs. Reed’s image as Mrs. Reed does show humanity occasionally under the rules and pressures of reality. In order to adapt to the social environment and cope with external pressures, Mrs. Reed displays a multifaceted and complicated personality in different situations.

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Anne Brontë: always on the brink of a revival

We always love an article that vindicates Anne and Financial Times does just that ahead of the 175th anniversary of her death on Monday.

One hundred and seventy five years ago, a young writer died of tuberculosis in Scarborough, where she had begged her sister to take her so that she might see the sea before she left this Earth. Anne Brontë was only 29, but she had already published poems and two striking novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

The quietest of the three Brontë sisters is on the brink of a revival. Recent UK theatrical productions, especially Emme Hoy’s 2022 adaptation of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Sarah Gordon’s light but pointed Underdog: The Other Other Brontë running at the National Theatre in London, are bringing Anne out of the shadows at last.

Anne was never completely obscure, but nonetheless thrown into the shade by the multitude of biographies devoted to her sisters, not to mention the deluge of TV and film adaptations. While the few standalone biographies are excellent, including Ada M Harrison and Derek Stanford’s 1959 volume, Edward Chitham’s 1991 Life and Nick Holland’s illuminating In Search of Anne Brontë, they struggle to compete with the deluge of content devoted to Charlotte and Emily.

I had, like many people, neglected her woefully; reading Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall just recently was a hair-raising experience, an introduction to her merciless eye and boldness in tackling taboos — the casual viciousness of Victorian children, alcoholism and marriage, domestic abuse.

At 19, Anne became a governess at Blake Hall in Mirfield, less than 20 miles away from the Brontës’ home at Haworth. It was, she wrote in a letter, “misery” to be charged with children who acted like “mischievous turbulent rebels”; her only outlet in those eight miserable months was secretly writing Agnes Grey, which drew freely on her travails. Her protagonist occupies a position light years away from the genteel governessing of Jane Eyre. “The name of governess, I soon found, was a mere mockery as applied to me,” Agnes writes. “My pupils had no more notion of obedience than a wild, unbroken colt.”  The boy in her care delights in torturing baby birds; the girl turns into an obdurate block, lying on the floor during her lessons.

Some of her biographers speculate that Mirfield inspired one of the stately manors in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, while Ponden Hall in Yorkshire may have inspired Wildfell Hall itself. She creates a stirring heroine in Helen Huntingdon, who supports herself as an artist by — astonishingly for the period — selling her own accomplished sketches and paintings. She then runs away from home with her young son to Wildfell, rejecting suitors with the bald proclamation that she simply does not like them.

But Anne also conjures the horrors of life with an alcoholic husband. She, Emily and Charlotte had first-hand experience of alcoholism — their brother Branwell drowned his artistic gifts in drink, and the sisters were left to nurse him or clean up his frequent messes. When Tenant was published, the novel stirred up both praise and accusations that it was scandalous. Charles Kingsley, reviewing it for Fraser’s Magazine, said it was powerful and interesting, but also declared that it was “utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls”. The Spectator felt it necessary to warn readers of the author’s “morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal”.

Reading the Brontës, perhaps the greatest difference is, while Charlotte wrote for readers who might prefer high romance to the dreary messiness of life, Anne wrote for governesses like herself — gentlewomen who found themselves thrust into a demeaning position, grappling with little tyrants and their indifferent parents. For, if Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are passionate love stories, Tenant is an anti-romance, profoundly disillusioned by the realities of courtship and marriage — and thus perhaps the first truly feminist novel. In 1914, the suffragist May Sinclair called it “faintly prophetic, propped between Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, it stands as the presentment of that Feminist novel which we all know.”

One of the great literary mysteries concerns Charlotte Brontë’s refusal to allow Tenant to be republished after Anne’s death. Was this sibling rivalry, or a desire to protect her sister’s posthumous image? Or perhaps it was a fear that Anne had succeeded too well in drawing an accurate portrait of Branwell in his cups. It was only after Charlotte’s death in 1855, of complications in her pregnancy after her brief marriage, that the book finally returned to the public eye. 

For anyone searching for the real Anne, not the frail, little, gentle woman of myth, I urge them to read her fiery preface to Tenant’s second edition, published just a few months before she died. “All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read,” she writes. “If I can gain the public ear at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much soft nonsense.” What an unexpected pleasure, to find an author who eschews “soft nonsense”, dipping her pen instead in black irony and molten steel. (Nilanjana Roy)

Somehow we feel that Anne is always 'on the brink of a revival' which never quite materialises, but articles like this one should surely help.

We would like to add, though, that Winifred Gérin also published an excellent stand-alone biography of Anne. We don't think that Charlotte, who was enjoying her own success with Jane Eyre, was particularly jealous of the bad press Anne was getting and her decision not to republish The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was so that her sister's reputation could be saved after her death. However, it was not so straightforward as Charlotte dying and The Tenant of Widlfell Hall being republished. The novel had been published without Charlotte's consent in a maimed version which was seen in editions of the novel released well into the 20th century. That's why it hasn't been seen as the powerful novel it really is as, for many decades, it has been read as an incomplete work.

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Class Consciousness and Intertextuality

Brontë scholars from Senegal and Costa Rica:

Class Consciousness in Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor (1857)
Alphonse Sambou
Université AssaneSeck de Ziguinchor, Senegal
ATRAS Journal, Volume 04, Issue 1, p. 108 (2023)

This article is a reflection on the victorian society as described by Charlotte Brontë. It tries to highlight the different evils of English society in the 19th century. Indeed, it shows to what extent the themes of class struggle, solitude, gender, and, finally, social injustice, are « boisterous metaphors » to the writer Charlotte Brontë.

“The Whole Island”. Literary space and intertextuality in Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
Beatriz M. Goenaga Conde
ÍSTMICA Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras 1 (33):11-39 (2024)

El objetivo fundamental de este artículo está dirigido a valorar las funciones de la intertextualidad en la construcción del espacio insular caribeño en Wide Sargasso Sea, de la escritora dominiquesa Jean Rhys. Por tal motivo se analizaron las relaciones intertextuales entre Jean Eyre, de Charlotte Brontë, y Wide Sargasso Sea, de Jea Rhys, con énfasis en la isla en tanto espacio literario presentado de manera explícita. Como resultado se pudo constatar que la principal función de la intertextualidad en dicho texto responde a la intención calibanesca y desmitificadora de desmonte de los arquetipos en los que la imagen del otro ha sido construida en el discurso del poder. De igual manera, el presente análisis permite develar la riqueza de las connotaciones otorgadas en el texto al espacio isla y a sus significados añadidos. La red de significaciones encontradas refuerza su identidad cultural caribeña.

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'But if you’re really reading, say, Jane Eyre, [...] you have the emotions'

Flaunt features author Joyce Carol Oates.

Oates considers on the learning lessons inherent to fiction. “You go back into another era. And then when you go back into your own life, you compare, and you can see how different things were and sort of feel it, rather than just an intellectual apprehension of it, which you get by reading non-fiction. But if you’re really reading, say, Jane Eyre, or Jane Austen, you have the emotions. I think that we learn so much from fiction that we can’t in any other way.” (Franchesca Baratta)

The Mirror features the Brontë Parsonage lookalike for sale.

David Britton, managing director of David Britton Estates, said: “I love properties with a rich heritage and a tale to tell, and Mossgill House ticks all the boxes. The connection to the Brontë family is fascinating; parts of Mossgill are a direct replica of The Parsonage, which is now a popular tourist attraction.

“This property is substantial, with an acre of fantastic grounds. It’s full of history, charm, and a real touch of class.” Built around 1747, the architect behind Mossgill was the same man who designed the Parsonage at Haworth. Patrick Brontë was a good friend of the Rev. William Fawcett, a Baptist Minister who lived in Mossgill House at that time and he frequently used to visit.

Of course Guitar World echoes the news about Ian Bairnson’s guitar going up for auction.

The electric guitar featured on Kate Bush's 1978 debut Wuthering Heights is expected to fetch up to £10,000 at auction.

The 1974 Les Paul Custom belonged to guitarist Ian Bairnson, who played the solo at the end of Wuthering Heights while his arm was in a plaster cast. (Janelle Borg)

The latest news about the Brontë's very own square at Koekelberg on the Brussels Brontë Blog.

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