Unshaken, but not so much

Keighley News reminds us of the upcoming Brontë Festival of Women's Writing (Friday, August 31, to Sunday, September 2):

Museum arts officer Jenna Holmes said: “The Brontës were pioneering women writers, so it’s fitting that the museum should explore their legacy and showcase the work of both high profile and emerging women writers working today.
“The festival is going from strength to strength and we hope that people will come along and join us, either to listen to our great line-up of speakers, or to try their own hand at creative writing.”
Festival activities will take place at different locations in Haworth, and tickets can be booked from the museum by contacting jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk or calling (01535) 640188. (Miran Rahman)

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reviews Juliet Barker's US edition of her revised The Brontës book. The review is unusually harsh:

Of course, Juliet Barker is one of the supreme authorities on the Brontës. And it is fascinating to watch her correct and add to the record. But too often she is an absolutist. Thus she doubts that Anne's poetry is autobiographical because Emily was writing similar lines at the same time. Why does it have to be either/or? Why does Barker continually ask questions that are really putdowns of previous biographers? No doubt, there has been bad work done on the Brontës, and that needs to be shown up. But the result is that Barker herself sometimes narrows rather than expands our sense of who these complex figures were.
Treat this book as an exceptionally well informed -- indeed, encyclopedic -- authority. But do not for a moment think that this is the Brontë Bible, or the last word on the subject. (Carl Rollyson)

Christian Today presents the book Unshaken and Unseduced: The Place of Dignity in a Young Woman's Choices by Rosalie de Rosset:

Dr de Rosset has just published a new book, “Unshaken and Unseduced”, that is challenging Christian women to reject “cotton-candy” novels for the more rewarding classics of English literature. Her book is peppered with quotes from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
What is it about these characters Dr de Rosset so admires? The heroines have “dignity”, she enthuses.
“Everywhere I go, Christian and non-Christian women absolutely love Elizabeth Bennett and Jane Eyre. But that stands in such contradiction to their behaviour, to their demeanour, and to what they end up expecting as goals and outcomes of their lives,” she laments.
“It seems to me that what every woman really wants is a D’Arcy and Rochester, but what they don’t understand is that coming up with men like that involves who you are too.”
She explains further: “It is the very restraint Jane Eyre has and the very ability she has to turn Rochester down when it’s not appropriate for her to be with him. She waits it out. And it’s Elizabeth’s ability to assess D’Arcy and say ‘there are things I don’t like about you at all’.”
Sadly, whilst many women aspire to be like Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett, in real life – with all its temptations and distractions – many women just “don’t think it’s doable”, Dr de Rosset says, and they “let their standards slip”.

This vision of Jane Eyre contrasts with this comment in The Times of India:

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre shows how we may have to sacrifice our values at times for love. (Nona Walia)

Did both of them actually read the same novel?

Saudamini Jain in The Hindustan Times makes a curious experiment:

Heathcliff is wilder than the moors. But can the Wuthering Heights hero hold his own against the paperback, e-reader, smartphone and audiobook? (...)
Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories ever told. Every time I read it, I discover something I had previously missed – an undercurrent, a quote. So I couldn’t think of a better way to judge four reading platforms. Armed with a paperback, Kindle, my phone and an audiobook on my laptop and iPod, I set out to see if the new devices were any good. Here’s how it went… (Read more)

The Brontës inspire in many different and unexpected ways. Consider the children book series Nanny Piggins by R.A. Spratt. In The Age:

From Emily Brontë and Anthony Trollope, she took the idea of the self-conscious narrator who interrupts the narrative to defray nervous tension whenever Nanny Piggins's misadventures backfire. (Linda Morris)

Montclair Times interviews the local writer Lisa Verge Higgins:

What book can you pick up and delight in rereading each time?
"Wuthering Heights." (Jacqueline Cutler)

The Baltimore Sun talks about the paralympic athlete Tatyana McFadden:

Her back-story reads like something out of "Jane Eyre" or "Anne of Green Gables." She was born with spina bifida in St. Petersburg, Russia. Paralyzed from the waist down, she was abandoned by her parents in a dreary orphanage. (Kevin Cowherd)

Anthony Carew (Music.com.au's Film Carew) really liked Wuthering Heights 2011 as seen at the MIFF Festival:

One of the great radical adaptations of canonical classic lit, Arnold razes Emily Brontë’s book to the ground; scattering the words to the wind, and leaving only the savage landscapes of rural Yorkshire in the 19th century. It’s a film whose darkness, corporeality, and brutal weather stand at odds with every BBC-period-piece cliché.

ksotikoula has posted a reply (Reasons for milder sexuality in Charlotte Brontë's novels after Jane Eyre) to this previous post on The Briarfield Chronicles; Atunci şi acum (in Romanian) and Michael Kamakana reviews Jane Eyre; the reader devotes a post to Wuthering Heights; Le Coin de Joelle (in French), Yksi luku vielä... (in Finnish), Blog Games & Movies (in Portuguese) and Running to Stand Still review Jane Eyre 2011;  La città dei libri sognati (in Italian) posts about Bianca Pitzorno's La bambinaia Francese.