Los Angeles Times reviews The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt.
“The Unwritten Book” is by turns mesmerizing, philosophical and funny. In one amusing chapter, Hunt visits a medium to ask Charlotte Brontë’s ghost for a blurb for her new book. (Spoiler: Brontë has lost her eloquence in the afterlife.) (Michele Filgate)
The New York Times also picks up on the anecdote in its review of the book:
A few months before her novel “Mr. Splitfoot” was published in 2016, Samantha Hunt had to solicit marketing blurbs from other authors.“It’s embarrassing to ask my friends and writers I admire to work for me, for free,” said Ms. Hunt, a writer of haunting literary fiction. “Blurbs are work. So I thought, Well, if blurbs are labor, why not just pay for one? It would be easier, fairer. And then I thought, since I was already going to a bunch of mediums as research for ‘Mr. Splitfoot,’ why not just ask one to call up Charlotte Brontë and get a blurb from her?”So she went to see a medium in Albany. In a dark, windowless office, Ms. Hunt said, the medium tried to make contact. Supposedly speaking as the author of “Jane Eyre,” she offered the opinion that “Mr. Splitfoot” was a good title.“‘It’s what people want,’” Ms. Hunt recalled the medium saying, in the Brontë voice. “‘It has a lot of good energy and people, people will like it. It’s intriguing.’”Ms. Hunt doubted that Brontë, the great 19th-century author, would talk like that, but those words appeared as a back-cover blurb, attributed to “Charlotte Brontë, speaking through a medium.” (Kate Dwyer)
Daily Mail asks journalist Clover Stroud all sorts of bookish questions.
WHAT BOOK [...] …left you cold?Perhaps it’s inevitable considering the ferocity with which I loved Wuthering Heights, but Jane Eyre didn’t move me.I wanted to know more about the madwoman in the attic, rather than the relationship between Rochester and Jane, so maybe it’s not surprising I devoured Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys instead.
This contributor to The Daily Trojan joins her in the dislike of the novel:
I hate “Jane Eyre.” Point blank period. It is one of the most chaotically unfeminist endings to a novel, and the beginning of the book gave me so much hope, only making matters worse.Eyre is a young girl who is subjected to the mistreatment of her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her wealthy cousins. She eventually gets sent to a boarding school and receives an education she later uses when she becomes a teacher at her school. After being a teacher for a few years, she goes off to become a governess for a young girl, Adele, who lives with a rich man, Mr. Rochester, at a place called Thornfield.Long story short, she falls in love with Rochester and is set to marry him when it is revealed that his wife, Bertha, is still alive and being held captive in the attic under the pretense that she is insane. Eyre, in order to marry Rochester, appeals to this in order to get Bertha sent to a psychiatric ward and live happily ever after. Ugh, and I thought Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” was bad.Let’s talk about it.First, everyone boasts about this Bronte classic as the pinnacle of good literature. I’m not one to judge people on their favorite book — with the exception of people who say “Moby Dick” is their favorite — but this seems like a hate crime to all women, specifically women who have historically been labeled as “insane” due to their “progressive ideals.” [...]Even if Bertha did suffer from mental illness, it did not warrant being neglected as a human being and having her locked up. On Eyre’s part, someone who suffered abuse as a young girl, I was expecting her to stand up for Bertha and get her the help she needed, not follow obediently behind Rochester.That brings me to my second point: the regression of Eyre.At the beginning of the novel, young Eyre had conviction, wit and independence. She rebelled against her aunt, which made her a colorful character — even growing up at a boarding school did not dim Eyre’s creativity and intelligence. It was upon meeting Rochester that we see a character regression take place. Instead of thinking for herself, Eyre becomes a ghost of who she was, clouded by the idea of love and attempting to get the approval of a man. The thing that angers me the most is how people label the Eyre and Rochester love affair as a fairytale rather than what it was: a relationship between a young girl being coerced by an older man to go against her independent ideals and seek a conventional idea of happiness at the expense of another woman. [...]Not only do I long for justice for Bertha, but also for Eyre, who deserved more than the paper-thin depth she was given by Bronte. But, I guess we can’t just blame Bronte for the societally rooted issue. Historically female novelists were forced to marry off independent female protagonists and subject them to society in the 18th century [sic]. A sad reality.All this is to say that “Jane Eyre,” despite its chokehold on the canon, should not be above criticism. (Myriam Alcala)
It seems like a good moment to remind people of the fact that Charlotte Brontë grew to regret her portrayal of Bertha. From a letter to William Smith Williams written on January 4th, 1848:
It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation, and equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that feeling; I have erred in making horror too predominant. Mrs Rochester indeed lived a sinful life before she was insane but sin itself is a kind of insanity; the truly good behold and compassionate it as such.
The Brown Daily Herald makes the case for 'studying literature at Brown'.
I’m convinced that you do not read a novel or poem in remotely the same way you read math or physics or economics — or even history or philosophy. It will sound loopy, but I believe we read literature to become other. After all, reading, say, Sophocles or the Brontës or Kafka or Morrison entails “inhabiting” — for the duration of the reading experience — those characters’ minds and hearts. No other field asks or even permits you to do this. (Arnold Weinstein)
A contributor to The Critic wonders whether 'we really need so many stage adaptations of novels'.
Unlike television or film, it is essentially impossible to capture the scale of a novel on stage, although Nunn, and a few others, have certainly tried. Instead, great dramatists do not attempt to recreate the book, but to find their own, inimitable spin on the material. The National’s recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights, written by Emma Rice, was much praised for its decision to move away from the novel’s overwrought drama and replace it with camply theatrical humour. One can only imagine what Emily Bronte would have made of Isabella Linton archly declaring that “Sometimes I like to slide down the bannister because it tickles my tuppence.”Perhaps she would have complained and railed and shouted, as authors have done over the centuries at those who have desecrated their work. Or, alternatively, she might have admired Rice’s daring, and acknowledged that an adaptation should never attempt to replace the original, but to complement it. (Alexander Larman)
Nació Digital (in Catalan) features the podcast Punkis Decimonòniques:
"Un programa dedicat a parlar de literatura anglesa i, sobretot, literatura victoriana. L'hem creat perquè sempre ens fan la mateixa pregunta: Però vosaltres que sou tan guerreres i tan feministes, per què us agrada Jane Austen? Per què us agraden les Bronte? A la qual cosa nosaltres responem: Doncs per això!" (Paula Carreras) (Translation)
Clarín (Argentina) interviews romance novel writer Florencia Bonelli.
-¿Y vos qué clase de lectora sos?-Consumo de todo. Soy muy ecléctica para leer. Pero como el 90 % de mis lecturas las dedico a investigar para mis libros, me queda muy poquito tiempo para la lectura por placer. Ahora, por ejemplo, estoy leyendo un libro sobre minería en Famatina, escrito por un ingeniero. Pero cuando tengo que elegir un libro para entretenerme, elijo novela romántica.-¿De qué tipo?-Profunda. Jane Eyre –la novela escrita por Charlotte Brontë y que fue publicada en 1847– fue mi primera novela romántica. Era muy chica pero me shockeó. Jane Eyre es una historia que no tiene mayor complejidad, pero es de una gran profundidad en los sentimientos, en los personajes. (Marina Artusa) (Translation)
A couple of Spanish newspapers feature Siri Hustvedt and her new book Mothers, Fathers, and Others: New Essays, recently translated into Spanish. From La Vanguardia:
Un tema que aborda de manera poliédrica a través de ensayos sobre su relación con su madre, con su abuela, su hija así como sobre sus vivencias o lecturas de escritoras o artistas que siempre están presentes de alguna manera en su obra: Jane Austen, Emily Brontë y Louise Bourgeois. (Pilar Martín) (Translation)
And from El Español:
A través de la memoria, que “se afianza con recuerdos que encarnamos y no comprendemos” según apunta en uno de los textos, las referencias de Jane Austen, Emily Brontë y Louise Bourgeois, entre otras, se entrelazan con los apuntes biográficos a partir de los orígenes humildes de sus antepasados. Desde la maternidad, “una camisa de fuerza cultural”, la autora de La mujer que mira a los hombres que miran a las mujeres desgrana las distintas relaciones que a lo largo de su vida ha mantenido con su madre, su abuela y su hija. (Jaime Cedillo) (Translation)
Star News Online reviews the production of The Moors at Mainstage Theatre, UNCW Cultural Arts Building.
The faint scent of Gothic romance hovers about "The Moors" — of the isolated Brontë sisters' longings as expressed in their novels, letters and diaries — of Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock, and even the mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle. But Silverman wants more for the audience, and they invite the audience to encounter mystery in a world where nothing is what it seems, not even the family pet."The Moors" is habited by sisters Agatha (Julia Murray) and Huldey (Lilly Ferguson); their maid, Marjorie-Margaret-Mallory (Kathryn Dowdee); and an anthropomorphized dog, Mastiff (Cole Warren). Living together on the lush, windswept heather desert of the Yorkshire moors shapes each woman's character.There is an unseen presence — Branwell, brother to Agatha and Huldey, is confined to the attic (think the madwoman in "Jane Eyre"), his position and authority usurped by Agatha. She uses his identity to conduct an epistolary affair with Emilie (Maddy Tamms), a young governess lured to the parsonage to care for a non-existent child. Is your curiosity piqued? Good, because it plays out deliciously, blending horror and humor. It may shock you. (Bob Workmon)
Flood Magazine on the names of the duo Wet Leg:
Malaise and merriment coexist in speak-sung harmony with buzzy single-string guitar nodes and cottagecore aesthetics (“Rhian Teasdale” and “Hester Chambers” even sound like Brontë characters). (Hayden Merrick)
Several news outlets comment on the newly-released trailer of The Railway Children Return. From Daily Mail:
The crew shot scenes in key locations from the original film, including the Haworth, Oakworth Station, The Brontë Parsonage and the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. (Millie Payne)
The Star recommends 'unusual places to stay' near Sheffield and one of them is North Lees Hall.
Sleep in style in a four-poster bed at the historic North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan tower house in the Peak District, just below Stanage Edge, close to Hathersage village and a short drive from Sheffield. It was visited by Charlotte Brontë and is said to be the inspiration for Jane Eyre. The Great High Chamber, accessible via an oak spiral staircase, has a luxurious four-poster bed with a new Vispring mattress, goose down duvet and pillows, and cotton sheets. The decked roof above has outdoor furniture and boasts glorious views. It sleeps two and is available for £96 a night. (Lee Peace)
We love the free use of 'often' and 'time and again' in this article from The Scarborough News which mentions Charlotte's visits to Bridlington (Burlington in her time).
Mr [Aled] Jones said: [...]“In fact, it was a mere back street then, dominated by the rear gardens of palatial King Street.“Those extensive gardens afforded beautiful views of the sea and it’s reputed that the authoress Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) often stayed on King Street.“She visited the resort, as the local historian F. R. Pearson put it “time and again for rest and refreshment during her short and troubled life” paying her inaugural visit in September 1839, which was also her first sight of an ocean."
In this case, 'often' and 'time and again' mean twice: in 1839 and in 1849.
Il Giornale (Italy) reviews the new translation into Italian of The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell. Brontë Babe Blog posts about The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M. Valente.
