Esquire interviews writer Anna Biller about her novel Bluebeard's Castle.
In this book, you often talk about tropes and archetypes. Judith is like the damsel in distress, but in her lucid moments, she thinks of herself as the mad wife from Jane Eyre—the wife who was locked in the attic instead of the wife that was loved. What do you think we can learn from these tropes that Judith wasn't able to?She was deluded by the tropes. She read too many romances, and it turned her head and she made bad decisions. She's like Madame Bovary, because her reading is actually misleading her into thinking that the world is safer than it is because the heroine always wins. I don't want this to be a big downer for the reader, but I think young women especially need to realize that sometimes men are extremely dangerous. I thought the Bluebeard story is a perfect fairy tale to explore that. I really wanted to make the point that intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with the emotional decisions that people make. It doesn't matter how much you intellectualize your feelings, because your emotions can override that. Your mind can reason anything. You can't intellectualize yourself out of being in love. She tries to do it, but she can't. She has no nourishment for her soul without him, and yet he's the worst thing for her. [...]Your work has such a feminine quality. Feminine aesthetics are having a mainstream moment right now, as young people are embracing hyper-feminine aesthetics. But there has always been and still is a backlash against those who appear very femininely—that we're frivolous or unserious. Were you worried about that critique when you published Bluebeard's Castle?Because of that, my work has always been a little bit underground, and not necessarily thought of as serious work. But, no, I didn't occur to me when releasing my book. I thought I was getting out of that by writing a novel and trying to write it so traditionally. I tried to write it in a very classical style, even though it has modern characters. It's written how books used to be written, like novels by Daphne du Maurier or the Brontë sisters. A lot of classic literature has a femininity that is unapologetic. What's so wonderful about novels as opposed to movies is that there's a long tradition of novels written by women, for women, especially in the gothic tradition. And I thought, "I want to be part of that." (Sirena He)
The Kenyon Collegian features writer Leila Aboulela.
Aboulela said that she didn’t see any harm done by anthropological reading and explained how her own culture shaped the way she read books by authors such as Charlotte Brontë. (Osose Omofomah)
Cuba Sí finds a fan of Jane Eyre in journalist Indira Román.
La periodista Indira Román prefiere "Jane Eyre", de la escritora Charlotte Brontë: "Es una historia ambientada en la Inglaterra del siglo 19 y me apasiona desde que la leí por primera vez por varios motivos. El primero tiene que ver con la nobleza y al mismo tiempo, fortaleza del personaje principal. Segundo porque es una historia de amor, algo diferente a lo habitual, donde se pone a prueba hasta dónde el ser humano es capaz de sacrificarse y mantenerse al lado de la persona amada, a pesar de los tropiezos, la ruina económica o el estado de salud. Y tercero porque es una muestra de todo lo que puede lograr una mujer en materia de independencia y determinación en la vida. Y no me refiero solo al personaje sino también a la vida de su autora". (Giusette León García) (Translation)
Daily Mail asks bookish questions to historian Philippa Gregory.
WHAT BOOK … left you cold?I have tried and tried to love Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.I have thrust it on young members of my family for their own good, but now I can say it — it's a great story wrapped up in an absurdly boring narration. The dull ill man in bed! The garrulous housekeeper!What's the idea: is it too good and too sexy a story to put straight on the page? Everyone I know who loves it is thinking of one of the many film versions of the novel or Kate Bush singing.
Singer Cécile McLorin Salvant almost agrees with her in WAToday.
One of which is her spectral take on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights (“the best adaptation of the book”), a highlight of 2022’s acclaimed Ghost Song, an album informed by the pandemic’s othering of time, and by the deaths of Salvant’s grandmother and her friend and drummer Lawrence Leathers. The album was released on the same day her first solo art exhibition, also titled Ghost Song, opened at a Brooklyn gallery. (Jane Cornwell)
Irish Independent reviews Lies We Tell, an adaptation of sorts of Sheridan LeFanu's Uncle Silas.
No sooner is her father in the earth than Silas descends on Knowl like a hound of hell to empty the wine cellar and swagger about the place like the lord of the manor.He brings with him an obnoxious retinue: his son Edward (Chris Walley), a churlish boor who behaves like something out of the Brontes; his wild and barely educated daughter Emily (Holly Sturton); and a snide French governess (Grainne Keenan). (Paul Whitington)
Spooky season is upon us and so Mental Floss lists '9 Authors Who Believed in Ghosts' including
4. Harriet Beecher StoweUncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) author Harriet Beecher Stowe and Middlemarch (1871–72) author George Eliot maintained a transatlantic epistolary friendship. In an 1872 letter, Stowe revealed to Eliot that she had communicated, via a “toy planchette,” with the ghost of Jane Eyre (1847) author Charlotte Brontë, who had died 17 years earlier.The returned Brontë sister was apparently “grieved at the severity of some criticisms” launched at her novel Shirley (1849). Although Stowe briefly considered the possibility that a different spirit was merely passing itself off as Charlotte, she maintained “That spirits unseen have communicated with me I cannot doubt.” (Lorna Wallace)
Travels with the Brontës has followed in Patrick Brontë's footsteps in Cambridge.
