Richard Wilcocks reports:
The Re-Visioning
the Brontës Conference took place on 29 January in The Brotherton Room, which
holds about fifty people comfortably. Attached to Special Collections in Leeds
University’s Brotherton Library, it has plenty of atmosphere, with oak columns
and panels, proximity to rare Brontë manuscripts and a presiding bust of a
big-whiskered Lord Brotherton. It has been used on occasion, I was told, for
the telling of ghost stories, which seemed to be an appropriate fact to bear in
mind during the conference, in which one of the unofficial keywords was
‘afterlife’.
Conference
Organiser Nick Cass from the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural
Studies, spoke to us first, and it was soon clear that the acoustics of the
place are not perfect : people sitting on the periphery found it hard to hear,
especially if the speaker did not project in their direction. Listening to
David Wilson’s tenor saxophone was no problem, though. He played beautifully
while we looked at Simon Warner’s evocative landscape photographs on a large
pull-down screen – Top Withins shrouded in mist, a watery sun over Stanbury
- a mood-setting show which was
followed by Jane Sellars, once at the Parsonage, now Curator of Art at the
Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate. She delivered a useful historical overview of
the fluctuating fortunes of the Museum, drawing attention to the effects of
films on attendance and pointing out that it was “extraordinary the amount of
material which has come to light in the last twenty years or so – a substantial
number of items have emerged from the shadows”.
Dr Carl Plasa
from Cardiff University, in ‘Southern Flight: Brontëan Migrations in Kate
Chopin’s At Fault’
spoke about Chopin’s “neglected novel” of the late nineteenth century and the
transatlantic afterlife of Jane Eyre, bringing in many references to contemporary
assumptions about “white creole degeneracy” and the way in which Chopin had
challenged these assumptions in her novel, which is set in Louisiana and packed
full of characters who speak French, Spanish and Creole in addition to English.
His enlightening hand-out (‘Prefigurements and Afterlives: Bertha Mason’s
Literary Histories’) drew
parallels between Charlotte Brontë’s description of Bertha in Jane Eyre, Juanna Trista, a ‘pensionnaire’ in The
Professor and a mentally
‘incompetent’ wife (alcoholic) in At Fault. To my surprise, at least, he made just one fleeting
reference to Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.
Amber Pouliot
from Leeds University, (‘Righting the Life of the Mind: The Significance of
Psychological Discourse in the Brontës’ Interwar Afterlives’) spoke about an
emphasis by critics on Charlotte for most of the nineteenth century which
shifted to Emily to some extent in the early twentieth century, when she might
have been seen as a model of a ‘new woman’, attitudes to mental illness to be
found in the frameworks of nineteenth century belief, and comments by twentieth
century commentators who were influenced by psychoanalytical theories which,
ironically, originated in Gaskell’s view of Charlotte and the Brontës.
Aislinn Hunter
from Edinburgh University began
her lecture, which was illustrated by slides, with references to the ancient
manuscripts of Timbuktu which some people thought might all have been burned by
Islamist extremists (apparently some of them were successfully hidden) because
she had much to say, in ‘The Brontës, Materiality and Resonance: Three Ways of
Looking’ about original artefacts and documents and “the resonances which they
give off”. These depend on context (for example in a museum), on foreknowledge
and on tradition to a large extent, but also on the way our brains work:
specialized parts of this organ deal with memory and with our perceptions of
beauty and truth. She did not quote from Keats, but she did give us a brief
overview of the way neurons behaved. Her illustrations on the screen included
works by Victoria Brookland and Cornelia Parker – “…an encounter with the
artist and with the artist who had the encounter with the Brontës”.
Sarah Prescott,
who is Literary Archivist in Special Collections, introduced us to the Brontë
manuscripts which are kept there, giving us a potted history of how they were
acquired: we saw images of journalist, critic and collector Clement Shorter,
the one who found so much that had been wrapped up in newspaper at the bottom of
the Reverend Nicholls’s wardrobe and, amongst others, the outrageous Thomas
James Wise, who became infamous for literary forgeries and for dealing out manuscripts like a deck of cards
‘”…like a new
picture introduced to the gallery of memory”: Re-Visioning Jane Eyre through
Paula Rego’ was the title for Dr Sarah Wooton from Durham University.
Handed-out papers contained several reproductions of Rego’s lithographs, and Dr
Wooton’s commentaries on them formed the basis of her lecture: “It is not always
clear how Rego’s pictures relate to Jane Eyre… who doesn’t always appear to be
the same person in different depictions… how can Rego picture a heroine who is
reluctant to picture herself?… she tries to depict the ‘plain Jane’ we have come
to know through reading..”
‘Charlotte’s
Dress’ was a presentation by Lisa Sheppy, who graduated with an MA in
Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking at UWE, Bristol in 2009 with a distinction and
based her research on the development of enamel printmaking and warm glass
processes. She told us how a visit to the Parsonage had caused a great change
of direction in her interests. She had been encouraged while she was there to
make drawings in her sketch book – of items like Charlotte’s gloves and bonnet
– and had been inspired to make an imaginary wedding dress – “a sort of ghost
dress. It was constructed by myself and my mother, who had worked as a
professional dressmaker… the
crinoline hoops are showing through…it’s like a cage…”
Dr Richard Brown
from the University of Leeds’s English Department was in conversation with
Professor Blake Morrison from Goldsmiths, University of London on Morrison’s
play We Are Three Sisters, which was shown at the Viaduct Theatre in Halifax, performed by
Northern Broadsides, in September 2011 (see this blog’s review here) before
touring. Intelligently and wittily, Morrison managed to use Chekhov’s Three
Sisters as a template,
which involved some squeezing and shoving (for example, having Mrs Robinson
actually staying at the Parsonage and bringing on a William Weightman character
years after his death) but which resulted in a very watchable play. Morrison
explained the problems involved in pursuing a personal project which dated back many
years.
Dr Jenny
Bavidge, lecturer at Cambridge University, showed clips with music. “The name
‘Wuthering’ invites an auditory experience,” she said, in ‘Listening Out: the
Soundtracks and Film Scores of Wuthering Heights.’ Is music too blunt an instrument? Does
it elicit too much of a Pavlovian response? We watched extracts from the
William Wyler version from 1939 – music all the way through, for everything.
‘Cathy’s Theme’ makes the film “Cathy-centric”. We saw Merle Oberon’s Cathy standing
in front of a window for her declaration of shared identity with Heathcliff – with not just the music but a clap of thunder. Then there was the Peter Kosminsky
version – an edgier sound, Irish connections, and Bunuel’s Abismos de Pasion (1954) with its use of Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde… but what we
did not see an extract of
was Andrea Arnold’s version, where there is practically no music (although the
Young Cathy does sing Barbara Allen) but plenty of wind.
Maria
Seijo-Richart from the University of A Coruña showed us clips and stills as
well, for ‘Wuthering Heights in Japan: the film Arashi ga Oka (1988, directed by Yoshishige Yoshida)’. She
explained how Japanese film-makers relate Western classics (for example Macbeth) to Japanese theatre traditions and
storytelling techniques. It was fascinating to hear how the Noh Theatre
influenced the director – the orphan Onimaru is looked after by a group of
priests who worship a Mountain of Fire and who try to appease gods of anger. He
is in love with Kinu, beautiful daughter of a local family… and she later dies
in childbirth.
Towards the end
of the day, a roundtable discussion chaired by Adam Strickson, Teaching Fellow
in Creative Writing at Leeds University, did not seem to last very long, making
many of those present think that the conference should have had more time allocated to it. Perhaps the next one – let’s hope for a next one – will be for two days.
The new
Director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Ann Sumner, brought the proceedings to
a close with some well-chosen remarks and an overview of the main areas
covered.
The conference
was organized through the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries
& Heritage and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, and was funded by
CCI Exchange – the University of Leeds Higher Education Innovation Fund.
The forgotten Brontë sibling will get his time in the spotlight on Friday with a performance of award-winning play The Brontë Boy in the Baptist Centre.
