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Friday 13 April 2012

Info Post
The windfarm controversy rages on, with articles in The Telegraph and Argus, the Yorkshire Post, The Star, the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Guardian and a funny re-imagining of Wuthering Heights by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as well:
"Oh Heathcliff! Why have you done this terrible, terrible thing?" sobbed Cathy, sinking to the ground and fairly beating the moorland with her tiny but spirited fists.
Heathcliff looked down at her, his brow furrowed with anger, his eyes flashing with an unnamed passion, his mouth twisted in rage. I, unbiased but frequently baffled narrator, Mr Lockwood, was filled with fear. What if his face should drop off, out here in the windswept moors with only the new turbines towering above us to bear witness to our plight?
"Ha!" roared Heathcliff, masculinely. "You ask me why I have done this terrible thing, Cathy? Why I have granted permission for green energy firm, Banks Renewables, to install a windfarm on the moors around my farmhouse, ruining the view from here to Thrushcross Grange and back again? With particular effect on other householders of perhaps more refined tastes and delicate aesthetic sensibilities? The type who, were a movie ever to be made of our mad, wearyingly tormented lives, could well be played by David Niven? Ha! Look into that mad, treacherous, damned organ you call a heart, Cathy, and tell me why!" (continue reading)
Anyway, if one of our readers happens to be wondering what to do with over two million pounds, here's a possibility, as reported by the Sheffield Telegraph:
A medieval Peak District mansion, thought to have inspired the setting for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, is on the market with a price tag of more than £2m.
Hathersage Hall – a ten-bedroom, grade II* listed home set in four acres of walled gardens – was once owned by William Eyre, of the local family whose name was given to Brontë’s best-known heroine.
The village is widely accepted to be the model for fictional Morton and the hall, along with nearby North Lees and Moorseats, would have influenced the young author’s descriptions following her three-week stay at Hathersage vicarage in 1845.
Built more than 500 years ago – a stone in the gable end dates the house at 1496 – it boasts many original features including fireplaces, stone flagged floors, stone mullioned leaded windows, medieval cellars and a Jacobean oak staircase.
Owners have included High Sheriff Robert Ashton, Captain William Spencer of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, and the Shuttleworth family; in 1780 James Shuttleworth unearthed a 72cm thigh bone from the grave of the legendary Little John, just beyond the boundary wall.
More recently the property was used as a home for wartime evacuees, as part of the village school and was then restored and once again became a family home.
One recent owner was a member of the Royal Academy who covered the walls with murals of Peak District landmarks.
These have been papered over by Sheffield businessman Mike Harrison, who has lived there for the last eight years.
Reviewers should really have read the books they mention 'casually' in their reviews. A review of a stage version of The Turn of the Screw in the San Diego Reader:
A young governess on her first assignment can become "easily carried away." Like Jane Eyre, and the heroines of much 19th century fiction, she assumes she'll meet a handsome patron, he will see her inner glow, and they'll fall in love.
But unlike her literary sisters, when the governess comes to Bly, an ancient estate in Essex, she faces "serious duties and little company" and "really great loneliness." (Jeff Smith)
Because, you know, all of Jane Eyre is about Jane being desperate to get married and never having to deal with 'serious duties and little company' and 'really great loneliness'. Oh no, that's never even mentioned in Jane Eyre.

Musical theatre actress Connie Fisher lists her six favourite books for Daily Express and among them is
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
Penguin, £8.99
A prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Partly set in the Caribbean it explains why the first Mrs Rochester became the “mad woman in the attic”. I loved its tone, modernity and language which takes you to a new place and time. It helped me enjoy Jane Eyre more.
And writer Elaine Coffman also seems to be a Brontëite according to this article from My West Texas:
"My mother had books that always fascinated me," she said. "'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' and the pictures in them -- these were published in the mid-'30s and '40s -- were old woodcuts. I was fascinated by those books and I didn't even know what they were about but I would make up stories about what was going on." (Megan Lea)
However, a Book Riot columnist considers this one of her dirty little reading secrets:
I really didn’t like Jane Eyre. Appreciating a work’s significance is not the same as liking it. Simple as that. (Rebecca Joines Schinsky)
The Huffington Post lists 'The 10 Book Prequels We Wish Existed', one of which is
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Brontë's gothic love-story is heavy with mystery, vexed spirits and rain. But while the narrative happily details the incestuous family that grows from the protagonists, we know little about the original Earnshaws, nor Heathcliff.
Heathcliff's origins have been the subject of lengthy academic debate - his ethnicity especially. Where has he come from? What has he seen? And was he born a monster or made into one? As for the Earnshaws, it would just be good to know why they were so compelled to live in the middle of bleaksville. And maybe a prequel would shed some light on Joseph's ability to outlive generations of people born after him. (Alice E. Vincent)
ABC News considers Emily Brontë to have been a one-hit wonder and The Star News Online features a local woman who has answered a Wuthering Heights-related question on Jeopardy!

The Brontë Weather Project is halfway through. Walking with a smacked Pentax and Abigails discuss the windfarm plans. Film Abides reviews (in Dutch) Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights. Lee. Sueña. Vuela writes in Spanish about Jane Eyre and The Chain Reader posts briefly about Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy.

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