Bonnie Greer- absolutely magnetic

Afternoon Tea with Bonnie Greer and the Brontës

Richard Wilcocks writes:
This event was sold out soon after it was announced: the audience walked past a group of hopefuls sitting beside the ticket desk, but all seats in St Margaret’s Hall were filled. This was one of the most popular events at this year’s Ilkley Literature Festival. On each seat was a pamphlet for people who might have felt an urge to sign up for the Society.

It is likely that the urge came upon more than a few, because Parsonage Director Andrew Macarthy was pretty convincing as he talked about substantial improvements to the Museum and the many artists and authors who have participated in its Contemporary Arts programme. He was followed by the eloquent Liz Henry, who spoke on behalf of Brontë Society Council, welcoming Bonnie Greer and delivering a potted version of her résumé. Chair of Council Sally McDonald began the interview, and soon we were into Wuthering Heights.

“I saw the Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon version at age thirteen... when she said ‘I am Heathcliff’ I understood immediately... the novel brings a realization that we are the only species which knows we are going to come to an end, and it has a woman in it who talks directly about how she feels, about love...

This book doesn’t settle... we are taught that we have to ‘settle down’ when we are young... Emily was restless...”

Bonnie Greer related Emily’s condition to herself and her own writing, mentioning Obama Music and the restlessness of Chicago and explaining that when she wrote her novel Entropy, her dominant thoughts were of synaesthesia. “This is where you smell a word, or see a colour when you read a number...it’s the primitive mind which links everything up... Emily’s state of being was musicality.

All my work is synaesthetically created... Emily heard the music of her environment and it is captured in the words of Wuthering Heights.” Sally McDonald mentioned that the novel had been compared to an overture with a break in the middle.

“The Brontës have been prettified in the movie versions I have seen.... but these are Northern women! And it was appropriate that this man (Heathcliff) was black. Look at history, and Liverpool... this part of the world was tied up with slavery... Wilberforce and Douglass spoke at meetings in Yorkshire where abolitionists predominated... but there was support in the government for a secret deal with the Confederacy... Emily would have heard the abolitionist arguments...she was born in the same year as Frederick Douglass.”

In Jane Eyre I recognize that refusal not to look down when your betters are speaking to you – from my own childhood. It’s in Obama Music.”

Tea, scones and cakes followed, all supplied by volunteers from Council and Parsonage staff, and served to a background of music from the Canzona String Quartet, which visited the Parsonage Library to look at music belonging to and played by the Brontës. They found the original versions of some string quartet movements, which included Locke's overture to Macbeth and Worthy is the Lamb from Handel's Messiah. 


Everybody was deeply impressed by the whole event. Liz Henry (pictured below) told the Blog: “Bonnie Greer has an amazing ability to hold an audience. She is absolutely magnetic.”

From the publicity department of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden:

ROH 2  in the Linbury Studio Theatre

Yes opens on  22 November

In 2009 the writer and cultural commentator Bonnie Greer was invited to appear on the BBC’s flagship political discussion programme Question Time alongside the leader of a right-wing nationalist political party. The BBC’s decision to transmit the programme, and Bonnie Greer’s decision to appear in it, provoked a storm of discussion. Bonnie has written the libretto for this brand-new 'docu-opera' by award-winning composer Errollyn Wallen, which is made from Bonnie’s own experiences and from the many public and private responses to the situation.  An ensemble of six musicians, including an electronic soundscape with the recorded voice of Errollyn Wallen,  will accompany a cast of eight singers, and Bonnie herself, to play out the emotional and political turmoil of a wide range of individual British citizens, each with their own personal and cultural perspective.

October half-term happenings

News release from the Parsonage:

There are plenty of reasons to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth this half-term week, with lots to see and lots of activities planned for younger visitors and families. With the critically acclaimed new film version of Jane Eyre in cinemas, the museum’s displays are focusing on its author, Charlotte Brontë; including new displays of her clothes, letters, manuscripts and personal treasures.  A new adaptation of Emily’s novel, Wuthering Heights is also released next month and the museum’s special exhibition, Genius: The Brontë Story, explores how these two great books came to be written, and also includes lots of interactive displays for children and families.

My Favourite Thing! will run throughout half-term, every day at 2pm, with members of staff at the museum and volunteers talking about the secret history of some of the most  remarkable items in the museum’s collection; whether it be a little book, a brass dog’s collar or Charlotte Brontë’s wedding bonnet, the talks will intrigue young and old alike.

There will also be the opportunity to join local artist, Rachel Lee, for a ‘drop-in’ family workshop on Tuesday 25^th October. Rachel will be demonstrating an ingenious way of turning brightly coloured fleece into little felt creatures and helping children make their own fleecy, furry friend to take home with them. The event takes place throughout the day and is free with admission to the museum.

On the afternoon of Thursday 27^th October, hugely popular children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, will be visiting Haworth to talk about her latest novel Sapphire Battersea and her love of the Brontës. This event is now fully booked.

The museum is open 11am until 5pm daily, with last admission at 4.30pm. www.bronte.info.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Contacts & Further Information:   

               

Andrew McCarthy (Director) – 01535 642323 – andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk

____________________________________________________________________________

Mai più in oscurità

Maddalena De Leo (Ascea Marina, Italy) sent the Parsonage Blog this introduction to her new novel in Italian - Mai più in oscurità (No more in the dark):  

Maria Branwell  (1783-1821) was the mother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, British authoresses of the early Victorian Age, whose literary fame rests on masterpieces like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. We know very little- if not nothing at all - of Maria and her brief life, beside the fact that she, having moved by chance to Yorkshire from her homeland in Cornwall, met and married in 1812 a hot-tempered Irish clergyman named Patrick Brontë, giving birth later to a progeny of literary geniuses.

 I have always been fascinated by the premature death of the Brontës’ mother and, above all, by her homeland, a country incredibly rich in Celtic myths and legends. For this reason, and being myself a scholar of Charlotte and Emily, I have recently visited (or re-visited) not only all the places connected to the two writers, but also Cornwall, especially Maria’s hometown and house. I had therefore the opportunity to access a whole universe of information, anecdotes, doubts, and assumptions about the somewhat 'obscured' personality of this important personage in the Brontë saga, who has unexplainably been forgotten for about two centuries.

The book is based on real information, reliable sources, and above all on my own imagination, because I thought it was right to 're-invent' – starting with documented material – what I believe Maria’s life, cheerful character, and superstitions were, from her twenties to her premature demise.

My starting point was a real event: in February 1850, Charlotte was encouraged by her father to read the letters Maria had sent him during their engagement. With a leap of fantasy, I then had the creator of Jane Eyre herself write a fictional diary of her mother, to describe and re-live in it Maria’s character, wishes, hopes, and sorrows. In this hypothetical diary, Maria recorded the most important events of her life since she was a girl, and could therefore leave us her unintentional autobiography through her own daughter’s literary fame.

In the appendix I translated into Italian for the first time the complete text of Maria’s letters, beating heart and inspiration of the whole novel.

The book Mai più in oscurità has just been published by Photocity Edizioni and can be ordered at   http://ww4.photocity.it/HomePage.aspx#EDIZEXTERN

The Jane Eyre for our times

Penelope Jenkins writes about a Brontë Society event with the writer of the new film, Moira Buffini, and its producer, Alison Owen, which took place on 17 September.

There have been over 30 film and television adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. The latest, showing until October 6th at Warwick Arts Centre, stars Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester. At a recent Brontë Society event the film’s screenwriter, Moira Buffini, and producer, Alison Owen, revealed how they adapted the novel from page to screen.

Producer Alison Owen, known for her previous films Elizabeth and The Other Boleyn Girl was certain that there was room for another film of Jane Eyre. “I didn’t feel that there had been a definitive version and wanted to make a film with a younger Jane – others had been made with an older Jane. The novel is about the discovery of sexuality and emotion," she explains.

Thankfully the film’s backers, BBC Films, didn’t need much persuading to produce a 2011 version, despite BBC television screening its own adaption as recently as 2006. Screenwriter Moira Buffini, with whom Owen previously worked on the film Tamara Drewe, was passionate about the story she wanted to write. “The novel covers society, poverty, women and men, and is not just a love story.” It was her job to distil the novel into 120 minutes of screen time, not an easy task considering the complexity of the novel and its structure. “I could imagine all the scenes dramatically but by the end of the first draft I knew the structure of the book wasn’t going to work on screen,” she says. “Until Jane leaves Thornfield it was going swimmingly. In dramatic terms you want to be tightening everything up and racking up tension, but then introducing a year, a new family and lots of characters didn’t work.”

Buffini’s solution was to begin the film with Jane’s flight from Thornfield Hall. The viewer sees her previous experiences filtered through Jane’s memory. “I think the Rivers are important and really interesting characters,” Buffini explains. “In terms of the austerity of their house and what Jane has been offered by Rochester you can see what her alternative would be.”

Owen and Buffini felt that the story became more powerful when they cut away extraneous material.

Owen and Buffini both recognise that the casualty of this structure and screen time for the Rivers (with Jamie Bell giving an excellent performance as the sympathetic yet repressed St John Rivers) is the amount of screen time devoted to Jane’s formative years at Lowood and her relationship with Helen Burns. Buffini thinks, however, that “because you are looking through Jane’s memory you can be selective”. More scenes at Lowood were shot but Owen and Buffini felt that the story became more powerful when they cut away extraneous material.

There’s powerful chemistry between Jane and Mr Rochester, with the age difference between the actors emphasising Jane’s youth and inexperience. Mrs Fairfax, effortlessly played by Dame Judi Dench, acts as a mother figure, warning Jane to keep Rochester at arms’ length until their wedding, advising that “men don’t often marry their governesses”. Buffini says that they were incredibly lucky with the casting of Wasikowska and Fassbender. “Mia’s intelligence shines through which is one of the qualities that Jane has. Fassbender made Rochester’s authority look effortless. The pair talk each other into love in very difficult language.” Neither actor wanted the language modernising to make it easier to speak.

Ellen Page, the star of the offbeat film Juno, had been the first actress the pair talked to for the part of Jane. Owen is open when it comes to the vicissitudes of casting. They needed an actress who was well known enough to draw in audiences and satisfy the financiers, but who also could equate to the budget. Page was unconfident about tackling the Yorkshire accent (Yorkshire and its moors play a key scenic role in the film) which is when the team talked to Wasikowska. She had been cast as Alice in Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland and showed potential to become a huge star. As Jane they saw a naivety about her, bringing home to the viewer that Jane is experiencing situations and emotions for the first time. Importantly she and Fassbender have the Yorkshire accent down to a tee, belying their Australian and German/Irish roots.

Jane Eyre is, as classic works of fiction go, relatively cheap to make. Jane Eyre, Owen admits with a chuckle, is, as classic works of fiction go, relatively cheap to make. Unlike Pride and Prejudice or Vanity Fair there are no balls, street scenes and sumptuous location changes. The 2011 Jane Eyre, she says, is a film for austerity times on an austerity budget.

The film’s director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, had a clear idea for the way it was to look. Whilst he includes the wild lushness of the Yorkshire scenery there’s also a starkness to his visual direction, making use of low levels of light and gloomy rooms lit by fire or candlelight. Sticking to the original text in an almost documentary way, he avoids the pomp and finery of many classic novel adaptations that become mere heritage productions, bedecked with antiques, carriages and nostalgic representations of yesteryear. In Jane Eyre there’s no unnecessary visual detail.

“We wanted to make the Jane Eyre for our times,” Buffini says. “We wanted to show how modern she still is and how her story is still relevant to us, particularly to young women.” Will this in the future be thought of as the definitive adaptaton? “Someone will come along later and make another for their times,” she says, but the team hope that theirs will be the benchmark from which to measure it by.

Penelope Jenkins is Editorial Assistant for the Knowledge Centre at Warwick University and a member of the Brontë Society. This article first appeared on the Knowledge Centre's website, which can be accessed here.

Contemporary Arts Programme

News Release from the Parsonage:

Autumn/Winter Contemporary Arts Programme

The Parsonage will launch its new season Contemporary Arts Programme with an event to celebrate National Poetry Day. On Saturday 8 October, poet Aoife Mannix will be resident at the museum throughout the day, inviting visitors to contribute to a crinolined dress ‘poetry installation’. Following the event, Aoife will weave these visitor contributions into new poetry which will be exhibited as a series of poetry installations in the rooms of the Parsonage in November.

Other events in the new programme, which will run from October until March 2012, include an afternoon with hugely popular children’s author Jacqueline Wilson (pictured above) on Thursday 27^th October, and an event with the screenwriter for the upcoming film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Olivia Hetreed, on Friday 9 December. Both events will take place at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth.

The Parsonage will also launch a new project with Artist in Residence Rebecca Chesney. Preston-based artist Rebecca will be setting up a weather station at the Parsonage to record weather readings over the next twelve months. She will then cross-reference the data with descriptions of weather in the Brontës’ letters and novels to compare how the weather in Haworth has changed since the Brontës’ day. Working with local people to collect the information, Rebecca will use her research to create an exhibition of new work for the museum next summer.

A full list of events in the new contemporary arts programme is listed below:

Aoife Mannix: Poet in Residence

Saturday 8 October 2011

Brontë Parsonage Museum

To mark National Poetry Day, poet Aoife Mannix will be resident at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. She will be asking visitors to contribute lines of text to a crinolined dress installation that will evolve throughout the day into a sculptural piece. Aoife Mannix will weave these visitor responses into new poetry inspired by her residency, which will be exhibited as a series of poetry installations in the rooms of the Parsonage from 8^th November 2011 until 1 January 2012.

Aoife Mannix is an Irish writer and poet based in London. Her first novel Heritage of Secrets was published in 2008.  She is the author of four collections of poetry; The Trick of Foreign Words (2002), The Elephant in the Corner (2005), Growing Up An Alien (2007) and Turn The Clocks Upside Down (2008).  She is currently poet in residence for BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Free with admission to the museum. Event takes place throughout the day.

Thursday 27 October, 2pm

Jacqueline Wilson

West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth

One of the nation’s favourite authors, Jacqueline Wilson visits Haworth to read from and talk about her work, including her new book Sapphire Battersea. 

Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first ‘novel’ when she was nine years old. She has since gone on to write over forty books, and creating enduring characters such as the famous Tracy Beaker. Her books are loved and cherished by young readers all over the world, and have won numerous prizes including the Children’s Book of the Year, the Smarties Medal and the Children’s Book Award. In 2002 Jacqueline was awarded the OBE for services to literacy in schools and from 2005 to 2007 she was Children’s Laureate. In 2008 she became Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Jacqueline Wilson is also a great admirer of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and she has written the introduction to the Whites Pocket Classic edition of the novel.

Tickets: £5 and must be booked in advance.

Special ticket offer for talk with admission to the museum: £8.40 adult; £6.80 child.

Bookings: jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk/ 01535 640188.

Age guidance 8 + and children should be accompanied by a ticket buying adult.

Olivia Hetreed: Wuthering Heights

Friday 9 December, 7.30pm

West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth

Andrea Arnold’s new film version of Wuthering Heights will be released in cinemas on 11 November. The film’s screenwriter, Olivia Hetreed, visits Haworth to discuss how she adapted the novel for the screen.

Olivia Hetreed’s first feature film, Girl With a Pearl Earring, was nominated for multiple Oscars and BAFTAs including Best Adapted Screenplay. The film starred Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth and was adapted from the novel by Tracy Chevalier. Olivia Hetreed started her career as a documentary, drama and film editor before moving into screenwriting for ITV drama, including adaptations of What Katy Did, E.Nesbitt’s The Treasure Seekers and The Canterville Ghost. 

Tickets £6 and must be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

Friday 24 February, 7pm

A horror of great darkness: Gothic from the Brontës to Twilight

West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth

From Dracula to Twilight, the gothic has thrilled, disturbed and drawn out our darker sides for centuries. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights played an important part in the Victorian reinvention of the genre, and continue to have an influence on the contemporary interpretation of the gothic. Dr Catherine Spooner explores our continuing obsession with zombies and vampires, and shows how the gothic influences contemporary culture, from literature and film through to fashion, advertising and music.

Tickets £5 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

The Garden of Oblivion

Friday 2 March – Thursday 5 April

Brontë Parsonage Museum

Franklin is an artist based in Brussels, Belgium, and has spent many years creating a body of intricate drawings inspired by the Brontës’ lives and works. Franklin has used brush, pencil, pen and china-ink to create this series of detailed drawings, each work taking months to complete. The small-scale works are layered with symbolism, taking inspiration from the Brontës’ imaginative and spiritual world. Franklin’s work draws heavily on poetry and literature, and has been exhibited in Belgium, including Musee Arts et Marges, Brussels and Ermitage Saint Hadelin, Belgium.

Exhibition free with admission to the museum

Ross Raisin

Wednesday 7 March, 2pm

West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth

Novelist Ross Raisin discusses his new novel, Waterline.

Ross Raisin was born in Silsden in 1979. He went to Bradford Grammar School, studied English at King’s College London and has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmith’s University. 

His debut novel, God’s Own Country was published to critical acclaim in 2008, and tells the dark tale of a teenage farmer’s son living on the Yorkshire Moors. Ross was shortlisted for 8 separate awards for the book, including the Guardian First Book Award, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Portico Prize, and won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2009. He lives in London.

Tickets £5 and should be booked in advance from jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188.

For further information please contact the Arts Officer:

01535 640188

jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

www.bronte.info

New Wuthering Heights survey

Paul Daniggelis writes:

This brief survey below was prompted by reviews and trailers of the new

It is primarily designed to satisfy my curiosity of how people see WH. 

Wuthering Heights (WH) film presentation by Andrea Arnold.

It is not a requirement that you have seen this version but if you

respond to these questions it would help if you note that you have seen it.

You may explain or not any of your answers as you will.

You may pass the Survey on to others who may wish to respond

but it is primarily designed for those who have an abiding interest

in the Bronte legacy, not for the casual observer.

I will at the appropriate time compile the results for the perusal

of all who respond.

If you would like to ask your own questions regarding this new film

please do so.

Thank you for your responses.

 

 1A. Do you consider WH to be primarily a Romantic novel?

 1B  A novel of Obsession and Revenge?

 1C  Other?

 

 2A  In your opinion is Heathcliff evil?  

 2B  A person to be admired?

 2C  A product of an abusive background?

 2D  A sympathetic character

 2E  Other?

 3A  In your opinion is Cathy selfish?

 3B  Confused?

 3C  Normal?

 3D  Other?

 

 We know there is sex in WH but it is not explict.

 4   Will you welcome explicit sex scenes in WH?

 

People use offensive language all the time. Presumably

there was explicit language excised from WH.

5. Will you welcome explicit langauge in the new WH

    including the "N", "F" and "C" words?

 

Interpreters of the Brontes and their novels have

occasionally implied "incest" as part of either their

lives or their novels or both.

6. Will you welcome the introduction of incest as a theme in WH?

 

Ms Arnold has filmed only half the novel as has Hollywood far more often than not.

7. Can you accept yet another half-told story?

 

The film cast a black person for the first time in a Bronte story.

8A  Do you find this offensive?

8B  Acceptable?

8C  Other?

 

 9. In this politically correct world, will your opinion of Heathcliff be

altered because he is black in this film?

 

Thank you for your interest.

 

Paul Daniggelis

El Paso, Texas, USA

urbisoler@aol.com

 

Review - We are Three Sisters

Photo by Nobby Clark

Richard Wilcocks writes:
Blake Morrison’s new play We are Three Sisters has opened at the Viaduct Theatre in Halifax’s Dean Clough, and will soon be touring – see the previous blog post for full details. It starts with a hymn, charmingly sung by the sisters and their brother, before the three young women make their way past gravestones to enter a  space with a dining table, where they sit at their little writing desks. Charlotte talks about the death of her mother (I remember them carrying the coffin out and the organ swirling from church and a handful of mourners, black as crows.) This, the audience might guess, is going to be another tale of woe. It is definitely not just that.

Humour is there in abundance, and funnily enough, it works. From what I remember of the last time I saw a production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which was used as the template, there were a few titters and no belly-laughs, but Morrison is far from slavish: he dips into the Chekhovian pot to take what he needs, and manages to find some uncanny connections between the Prozorovs and the Brontës.  This has been done before – it is highly probable that Chekhov read a Brontë biography in Russian, and directors of his play have sometimes made Brontë references, but Morrison has created something which is new and remarkable. We are Three Sisters (title taken from what Charlotte said to publisher George Smith during her trip to London revealing that the surname was not Bell) is partly a work of homage to the great Russian, but also a work of homage to Juliet Barker, who advised the playwright, who must have dipped into The Brontës frequently.

Games are played with the chronology. Although the action is in early 1848, there is a bog-burst, and the curate is a version of William Weightman, who died in 1840. There is some witty interference with historical facts as well, which adds amusing artistic verisimilitude, for example when Mrs Robinson turns up at the Parsonage along with the lovestruck Branwell, and Charlotte and Anne come across them snogging.

All of the sisters are impressively presented to us: our disbelief is truly suspended. The pillar portrait hangs above the fireplace, and the sisters on stage bear a strong physical resemblance to Branwell’s depictions, especially Emily. Sophia di Martino seems to have studied the painting carefully while psyching herself into the part, fixing her mouth to match the one in the painting. She is forthright and challenging, furiously protecting her identity, a parallel for Masha, the quick-tempered one, though Masha is the victim of an early marriage, and this Emily’s husband is all in her imagination, a man who gets so close he could be part of her, she tells us. Di Martino is particularly compelling. Catherine Kinsella’s Charlotte is maternal and caring, just like Olya over there in the Russian backwater, and her reactions to the letters which arrive from London are a joy. Significant decisions are made in London, where there are so many beautiful sights and interesting people! Rebecca Hutchinson conveys the romanticism and fading naivety of Anne with great skill, especially in her encounters with the flirty curate, a general approximation for the lovesick Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin, a character who is fond of expounding on the way the world is going, or should go, and who was played originally by Constantin Stanislavski himself. Anne is also addressed affectionately as a seagull by the doctor. A knowing wink from Morrison?

William Weightman was obviously a charmer, but his flirtations were within strict boundaries as far as we know, confined to smiles and Valentine cards. The curate here (Marc Parry) is also charming, but rather brash at times, sounding like someone with a social conscience in the twentieth century. He brings in the Chartists, who were, I suppose, well before their time. Morrison’s characterisation is perfectly logical, linking with the Year of Revolutions, and he does not push things too far by, say, mentioning Feargus O’Connor and mass demonstrations.

Patrick is sweet and bumbling, an excellent Ulster-accented performance from ex-comedian Duggie Brown, and Eileen O’Brien is simply brilliant as Tabby, the soul of Yorkshire, with a blunt manner which was very recognisable for this audience, and which raised the biggest laughs of the evening. Branwell (Gareth Cassidy) stamps around wonderfully, a spoilt puppy if ever there was one – like Andrei in the Chekhov, who brings in his love, the lower-class Natasha, to spoil the atmosphere and hound the servants.

Natasha in the Morrison is a startlingly vulgar Lydia Robinson. She is just a step or two away from Mrs Bucket, or even the Widow Twankey, but Becky Hindley pulls it off, stopping short of pantomime, truly hideous in a glaring green outfit (colour of bad luck for Chekhov) and providing a powerful contrast for the grey-clad and unfashionable sisters. She treats poor Tabby with utter contempt (A pot of tea would be nice. (To TABBY) Did you hear, tea? Don’t just stand there when I’m talking to you. Go on. Move.) Appalling!

Morrison has drafted in two characters taken from the historical records – the doctor, John Wheelhouse, and the teacher, Ebenezer Rand, well-known in Haworth in their time. Both give opportunities for memorable vignettes. They are side-characters, not all that much more than two-dimensional beings who bring the focus more strongly on to the three-dimensional principals, though the doctor (John Branwell) is given some depth, an ageing, cynical and materialistic wooer of Anne with a hipflask always at hand. He is, like the teacher, a complete Morrison invention, though he seems to come out of a Dickens novel.

Barrie Rutter is riveting as the even more Dickensian Teacher, who presses his self-published writing on everyone he converses with - true to the facts if you heard Ian Dewhirst speak during the June weekend about the many amateur – and seldom readable -  authors around in Haworth in Brontë times. This teacher is a real, Latin-quoting pedant, and I can say that I have met one just like him, larger than life, the sort of character you steer clear of at parties. The Teacher, or rather Barrie Rutter, shook my hand as I came into the theatre, along with most of the other members of the audience, because he is the director and this is Northern Broadsides, the acclaimed Northern Broadsides which gave us those terrific Wars of the Roses and which has worked with Blake Morrison before. It’s a company which stamps when others just walk, and I love that.

Chances are, this play will be around for a long time...

Book for Bonnie Greer

Afternoon Tea with Bonnie Greer and the Brontës is the title of an event which is part of the Ilkley Literature Festival. Tickets are shifting, I am told, so book yours now online here.


It takes place on Sunday 16 October at 3pm in St Margaret's Church Hall, Ilkley. Tickets are £7 - and are not available from the Parsonage. Try ringing the Ilkley box office at 01943 816714 to check availability.

Jane Eyre (2011) review

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Cary Fukunaga was obviously a tad nervous last Friday evening as he waited in the Parsonage garden, standing with dozens of others waiting for a tour of the house and an exclusive preview of his film, specially organised by the BBC. Presenter Christa Ackroyd soon put him at his ease with professional skill, planting him on a bench amongst the shrubs and asking him questions for BBC Look North. So why make another Jane Eyre movie after all those others? What’s different? This one’s such a contrast with what you’ve done before isn’t it? Your second big one? He explained everything, as he has many times before, mainly on the other side of the Atlantic, with a boyish charm and an endearing directness, but there was something extra in his voice – here he was talking to a woman who knew her stuff, at the celebrated spring, where Charlotte had actually penned the original. “I might not survive the night!” he said at the end of the interview.

He did, no problem: the overwhelming feeling from the audience in the Baptist Chapel in Haworth’s West Lane (the only local building suitable for the screening), judging from the applause and from many comments, was of approval. 

The film takes liberties, as it must, but it is loaded with respect for the original text. The adjective ‘faithful’ tends to be over-employed in these matters, but faithful it is, to the spirit of the novel. Some previous versions for the cinema have been the sort of thing to give headaches to those described as ‘purists’, for example the 1918 silent version entitled Woman and Wife in which Rochester believes that Bertha is dead until he is told the truth by Mason, who tries to blackmail him. She then drowns. Fukunaga’s version could just be considered as a very distant relative of the early versions – with spectral figures emerging from gloom – but the plot is reasonably in line with what Charlotte wrote, with a highly competent screenplay by Moira Buffini. 

Fukunaga says he was unaware of all other adaptations until the research period, but that he knew the Robert Stevenson/Orson Welles version well. There are a few similarities perhaps, for example in the sheer malignity of Mr Brocklehurst, but many differences: the fresh, feisty nineteen year-old Mia Wasikowska of 2011 contrasts drastically with the romantically tremulous Joan Fontaine of 1943.

Viewers who have read the book might be a little disorientated at the beginning, because the film begins with Jane’s distraught flight from Thornfield and her progress across bleak moorland until she finds refuge with St John Rivers and his sisters. The flashbacks follow – with brief but telling film space given to Lowood, though the childhood scenes were, as usual in most adaptations, sacrificed for the romance. It was clever to adopt the non-linear approach because it allows interest to be maintained right up until the end, enhances the suspense, puts St John in a significant position and “allows all the scenes to be peppered over the movie to keep them watching” in Fukunaga’s words. The director was worried about Charlotte’s final chapter, which he thought was “the weakest”. The ending he provides is appropriately brief and cameo-like, Rochester and Jane under a tree at Ferndean. All of which could be compared favourably with the previous BBC version of 2006, the very watchable television series with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stevens. This also began with disorientation – a young girl in a red flowing robe in a desert – and practically dumped the Lowood scenes, making little use of an excellent child actor – Georgie Henley.

Fukunaga’s Lowood (and, of course, Moira Buffini’s) is a convincing nightmare of physical and mental abuse, presided over by a quietly sinister, distinctly sadistic Brocklehurst (Simon McBurney) where the relationship of Helen Burns (Freya Parks) with the young Jane ( spirited performance from Amelia Clarkson) is treated sensitively. Craig Roberts’s John Reed is a credible bullying brat, and Mrs Reed (Sally Hawkins made me shudder) chipped out of a block of ice. Jayne Wisener’s Bessie is much younger and prettier than the one I had in my head, Valentina Cervi’s Bertha Mason likewise – she is no neglected horror, just a little dishevelled. Richard Mason in the form of Harry Lloyd looks way behind Rochester in years. In fact youthful looks are quite a feature, or perhaps that is just me, having formed my mental visualisations quite a few years ago.

Mia Wasikowska was an inspired choice for Jane, and Fukunaga was lucky to find the young Australian, because she catches the character’s sense of independence, quick wit, restraint and passionate intensity better than most of her predecessors. Plain she is not – at times she looks as if she has stepped out of a painting by Millais. She conveys Jane’s capacity for mental fight and her gradually emerging love with considerable subtlety, and the crisp exchanges with Rochester, intelligently selected from the original by Moira Buffini, are a delight. Her Yorkshire accent is well...nearly right, but this should not be noticed by many from outside the area. Michael Fassbender’s Rochester has just the right squire-like air about him, and does not reveal much sensitivity until he unlatches himself later – all very satisfying and... faithful. In fact, he is strikingly curt and unpleasant at first, taunting the new governess about tales of woe, when he still sees her as one of a species. The story of how his coarseness is refined by the girl from the class beneath him is beautifully told, and many hearts will race at their final togetherness. Jamie Bell’s dogmatic  St John is also convincing, and Jane must have been simply polite to have told him she wanted him as a brother rather than as a husband, because this one is only a few steps away from Brocklehurst in his enthusiastic religiosity, a kind of non-violent and less-punitive cousin.

One of the most memorable (superb as usual) performances is from Dame Judi Dench as Mrs Fairfax, who has an undebatably perfect Yorkshire accent. The character here claims not to have known about the locked-up woman being Rochester’s wife, but then who was it that warned Mason? A wide-eyed Romy Settbon Moore plays Adele Varens just as I picture her, although she could have picked up a few more words of English to prove that her teacher was effective at TEFL.

Haddon Hall in Derbyshire makes another appearance as Thornfield, and the desolate Derbyshire moors of the Peak District are crucial for the film’s atmosphere, all those greys, etiolated yellows and apocalyptic skies straight out of John Martin paintings boxed up by cinematographer Adriano Goldman, to go with Dario Marianelli’s terrific musical score. I recognised the stunning view from Stanage Edge, just outside Sheffield, where I once climbed. The darknesses in the film provide a realistic period feel. The result is reminiscent of Kubrick’s classic Barry Lyndon, in which lights and music are also exquisitely matched.  Few households of the early nineteenth century could afford constant lighting. Candles, especially those made from beeswax, were expensive.  The light in Thornfield seems to come from the windows during the day, and from candles or the fireplace at night. The scene where Jane arrives at Thornfield to encounter Mrs Fairfax takes place in deep, authentic gloom, with a floating candle flame as the only guide.

The film is in cinemas nationally in a few days’ time and should be as much of a success in Britain as in the States. Hopefully, it will also bring more visitors to the Parsonage Museum.

Jane Eyre movie - Focus Features

The link to BBC Look North seems to have expired..

This one still works - it's 'everything you might want to know' about the film.


http://focusfeatures.com/jane_eyre/articles

Jane Eyre screening in Haworth

We watched it yesterday evening - and met Cary Fukunaga the director, who travelled to Haworth specially. A full report and review will appear on this blog very soon.

In the meantime, here is the BBC Look North report, which won't be available for long:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01407q2/Look_North_(Yorkshire)_02_09_2011/

The Brontës and the Bible - Conference Report

Maddalena De Leo writes:

The Brontë Society Conference was held this year at Homerton College, Cambridge from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 August. Its theme was the Bible and its formative effect on the language and religion of the Brontë family. This was particularly appropriate as 2011 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the promulgation of the King James Bible, the book which above all others the young Brontës would have known by heart.

The talks were opened on Friday afternoon by two famous Brontë scholars  - Tom Winnifrith and Christine Alexander - and concerned Patrick Brontë and his daughters before they began to write their novels. On Saturday morning there was a delightful Jane Eyre panel with no break for questions until the discussion period and then lunchtime talks on The Professor and Villette, finishing with Anne Brontë. The highlight was Dr. Marianne Thormahlen’s talk on Anne and her Bible.

On Sunday Emily Brontë was the subject of Michael O’Neill’s brilliant lecture: he concluded the conference speaking about her ‘visionary religion’. Unfortunately another important Brontë scholar, Dr Brian Wilkes, was not present among us due to serious health problems. In addition to the well-known speakers from all over the world, this year for the first time the Brontë Society included some young PhD students, who lectured on the chosen topic with competence and skill.

The conference venue, carefully chosen by our organizer Sarah Fermi, was the beautiful campus of Homerton College with its amenities and easy access to the centre of Cambridge. Two special treats were also arranged by her for the more than one hundred delegates present. On Friday evening Professor Donald Burrows, the renowed Hándel expert, talked about the Bible and Hándel’s Messiah also playing some short extracts on the piano. The other treat took place after the grand silver-service dinner in the magnificent Great Hall of Homerton College on Saturday when special guest Patrick Wildgust, the Curator of Lawrence Sterne’s Shandy Hall, compared the sermons of Sterne with the two known published ones of Patrick Brontë.

      

During the conference I took many photographs and made many videos, which will appear on Youtube in the near future. I also will compile a DVD of the whole Conference which I’ll donate to the Brontë Society. In conclusion I can say that this great Brontë religious and cultural weekend in Cambridge was for me another important occasion to meet old and new Society friends with whom to share once again a wonderful Brontë-related experience.

Below: Conference Delegates, Maddalena De Leo with Brontë Society Chair Sally McDonald, Christine Alexander:

We are Three Sisters

News release from Northern Broadsides:

We are Three Sisters: a new play by Blake Morrison

Against the backdrop of a dark, remote northern town, three remarkable young women live their lives brightly. Haworth1840’s;  in a gloomy parsonage where there are neither curtains nor comforts, Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë light up their world with outspoken wit, aspirations, dreams and ideas. And throughout their confined lives intensely lived…. they write. Anyone who has read a Brontë novel cannot fail to be stirred by their overwhelming humanity, charged emotion and brooding, prescient unease with the status quo. Now come to know the voices behind them. With exquisitely drawn characterizations, a nod to Chekhov and a touch of poetic license, We Are Three Sisters is a pearl of a play which evokes with piercing clarity the life and distinct personalities of these three spirited individuals. (Review is in the post for 15 September) Tour Dates and Venues: 9 – 17 September: The Viaduct Theatre, Dean Clough, Halifax 20 – 24 September: The Lowry, Salford 27 Sept – 1 Oct: The Dukes, Lancaster 4 – 8 Oct: The Tobacco Factory, Bristol 11 – 15 Oct: The Lighthouse, Poole 18 – 22 Oct: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough 25 – 29 Oct: The Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond 2 – 5 Nov: Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield 8 – 12 Nov: New Vic Theatre, Newcastle under Lyme 15 – 19 Nov: The Rose, Kingston 22 – 26 Nov: York Theatre Royal