New York City is known for being
obsessed with the now. Time, it is
said, moves faster here, as do the city’s inhabitants who race through the
streets—to the next train, the next reservation, the next meeting. Because of
this, it’s always a particular delight for me to discover (sometimes eccentric)
events created by and for other history lovers, offering a moment to pause and
dwell on the past, in the city that never sleeps.
In the last few weeks I’ve
attended two of these. These were focused, not just on history, but on the
Brontës and Jane Austen, which seemed timely given
my recent post on forthcoming novels inspired by Austen and the forthcoming
publication of my own novel—Brontë’s Mistress.
First up was a play—Anne
Brontë: A Woman of Courage. Presented by the American Chapter of the
Brontë Society in a co-production with KALIDASCOPES
Media & Vision, this ran for two nights at Jefferson Market Library.
The production was a celebration
of Anne Brontë, the youngest and most frequently forgotten
Brontë sister, on the occasion of her bicentenary. It
wove together excerpts from her novels, letters and poetry, as well as other
biographical material related to the nineteenth century’s most famous literary
family.
With minimal props and costuming,
the four actors (Katrina Michaels, Alida Rose Delaney, Miriam Canfield and
Marshall Taylor Thurman) did a great job depicting multiple characters and
capturing the emotional intensity of Anne’s writing. The overall plot might
have been hard to follow for those less familiar with Brontë
lore, but, even taken in isolation, the scenes were an engaging sampling of
Anne’s life and work.
Particularly successful were the
dramatizations of key scenes from Anne’s 1848 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the novel so shocking that her sister
Charlotte apologised for its existence in her biographical notice about the
deceased Emily and Anne in 1850:
“The choice of
subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer's nature
could be conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I
think, slightly morbid.”
For example, Anne’s key sense of
injustice in the exchange between Helen and Gilbert Markham in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is still
resonant in 2020, two hundred years on from her birth, even if the way she
couches her moral argument in religious language may be alien and off-putting
to twenty-first century audiences.
On a selfish note, I would have
loved a deeper exploration of Anne’s relationship with her brother Branwell and
her time working along with him at Thorp Green Hall—the focus of my novel. But here, as in other interpretations of
the Brontës’ lives, more stage time was given to
exploring Anne’s first stint as a governess (as depicted at least
semi-autobiographically in the first half of her 1847 Agnes Grey) and the play’s creators chose to foreground the
relationship between the three sisters, leaving Branwell in the shadows.
Overall I thoroughly
enjoyed the show and was delighted that celebrations of Anne’s life have made
it across the Atlantic.
Second, last weekend I attended a marathon reading of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, at the King Manor Museum
in Queens. This fascinating historic house was home to Rufus King, American
Founding Father and outspoken abolitionist. Built in the 1750s, the museum was
the perfect setting for the event, as attendees, many of them in period
costume, took it in turns to read chapters from Volume I of Austen’s beloved 1818
work aloud.
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| The Secret Victorianist joins other Janeites at the Queens museum |
I’m not much of a crafter, but
those more talented than me stitched clothes, knitted or did embroidery while
listening to the novel, making me feel (in spite of the electric light and
heating) that I’d truly stepped back in time.
It was a real thrill to
experience Jane Austen’s work as many of her first readers would have and
something of a digital detox to spend five hours simply listening and occupying
your hands (I amused myself with a colouring book for the first time in two
decades). This Saturday, the museum is hosting a reading of Volume II. I won’t
be able to attend, but, if you’re a Janeite in NYC, you might consider going
along—even if just for a portion of the five hours.
In what’s shaping up to be a
pretty crazy debut year (we’re now less than six months from the release of Brontë’s Mistress!), both these events were a great way for me
to step back and connect with other lovers of the nineteenth century and I hope
I’ll be able to continue to do this (and write about my adventures on this
blog). Next up, I’ll be attending another play—Cheer from Chawton: A Jane Austen Family Theatrical at the 14th Street Y.
If you know of any other New York
events that might be of interest to me, please get in touch—here, on Facebook,
on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Pre-order information for Brontë’s Mistress can be found here, and, if you want monthly
updates on its release straight to your email inbox, sign up for my author
newsletter below.
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