Limited time offer!

Firstly, I would like to draw your attention to the addition to our links list of http://bronteblog.blogspot.com which is always posting astonishing news about everything from new publications to moon craters! Check it out.

Since this is a student blog, part academic enquiry, part personal testament, I should note that yesterday I took the first step towards my dream of Brontë studies. The professor I studied the Brontës with has agreed to help edit my program of study. I have a comprehensive project already laid out, and this I sent to her yesterday while I put together something which will adequately show my range of interests without seeming diffuse… I’m interested in an awful lot of areas: religion, intertexts, construction of gender, folklore, classics, arts (as in painting, needlework, singing etc in literary texts)--and a lot more… Blindness and poetic creation, and prophecy as well… One small step for me, speaking of moon craters ;) I hope this will lead to something ‘Brontëful’ as a friend of mine says.

The ‘limited time offer’ is two radio adaptations of Jane Eyre which have turned up amongst my friends at L.E.R.O. (League of the Extraordinarily Rochester Obsessed). They can be found here, for a very short time (less than a week now). There’s Loretta Young and Orson Welles:http://s18.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3U3VY42CB2Y2A3O2UG1ELMBVF1 and Patricia Elliot and Arnold Moss (a CBS Radio Mystery Theatre production)http://s5.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1Z0WE2ABKWXFG2L3UYX4S530CZ
I have only heard the beginning of the second one so far. It sounds very interesting--the introduction claims that the story is interesting because Charlotte ‘hardly ever left her house’ and goes on to mention Branwell being the model for characters in his sisters’ novels! Thisbeciel, who shared this with me after biedroneczka was kind enough to post them for us, says that there’s a lot of “excessive scary dramatic music.

Jane: "I am going to go for a walk" (DA DA DUM!!!!)
Mr. Rochester: "Let's go into the garden" (DA DA DUM!!!!!)”

And apparently Bertha sounds exactly like a dinosaur. I guess that explains the strange noise at the start. It sounded very like a tyrannosaurus rex. Poor Mr Rochester, things just get worse for that man.

Speaking of adaptations of Jane Eyre, Bronteblog informs us that a new version of the 1970 film with Susannah York and George C. Scott is due for release. This is a good thing, in my opinion, only because it probably will fix that gap which appears in one of the scenes between Jane and Rochester. There’s obviously a scene missing in the current release. And yet, this is the only version that I loathe… And I’ve tried to overcome this, but I can hardly bear watching it. Jane really seems to be a broken down woman with no self-respect, to want to be with a man like Scott’s Mr Rochester. I managed to get my Brontëphobic mom to see it, and she and I ended up laughing through the second half (after the infamous: “Have you ever been to an asylum, Jane?… Jane?” *everyone has left*) He’s about as witty as something that isn’t witty at all, with such gems as “life’s an idiot” which even confuses Blanche. So there you go… And St. John is more moved by Jane’s piano playing than Mr Rochester is in the entire film.

More news! (I’m trying to catch up on some things I’ve simply not had the time to report on here). A few months ago, now, I participated in a “literary role playing game”. The idea sounded absolutely awful, so of course I gave it a try. The concept is all of the famous authors of history born before 1900 are reincarnated in the present and are all going to same high school! It’s a lot more fun than it sounds. Reading the different journals had me laughing for hours. Chaucer does rap now, and doesn’t seem to get on well with Marlowe… Anyway, I created a journal for Anne. And it has gone well, although by a cruel twist of fate the people playing Charlotte and Emily have been too busy to keep up theirs. Emily exited in style by, uhm, …going on a trip with T.E. Lawrence on his time machine. Charlotte just slipped away while no one was paying attention (I hear Jane Austen had been trying to get her to go out with Alexander Pope). Anne is doing well, made a few friends including Wordsworth and P.G. Wodehouse. I’m glad to say that there was a lot of joy when she turned up, and that people not in the game have been following her (limited) adventures so far.

As an aside, has anyone else noted how common ‘huzzah!’ is nowadays? How in the world did that happen?… Or is it just me?