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In the spirit of "don't just critisize, suggest better options", I followed up my Emily review by pondering how people who want to make movies about (female) writers but have the problem that either little is known about their lives, or what is known is extremely interior and thus doesn't lend itself to cinematic action should do OTHER than annoyingly inflict the plot of their best known novel on their lives. And inspiration struck, to wit: put them into someone else's trope/novel plot line for maximum hilarity and character goodness. By which I mean, using the Brontes as an example:
Emily: seeing as Emily disliked schools both as a student and as a teacher - both attempts at staying at one were brief and miserable -, was, otoh, very practical in her daily life (Emily gets bitten, Emily cauterizes her own wound with a hot iron in a famous anecdote), and had experience with animals, and was a brilliant poet, the solution is clear. Emily gets put in a boarding school fantasy. Severus Snape has nothing on Emily Bronte when it comes to disliking your students and snarling at them, only in her case it's not personal because she doesn't have hang-ups about anyone's parents. If you don't want to do a straightforward 19th century HPverse prequel for copyright reasons and because of JKR's behaviour through recent years, well, it's not like she has a patent on school stories and supernatural events in same. Thus my reccommendation: during Emily's brief stint as a teacher, a a supernatural event (fantasy menace of your choice) occurs. Suddenly the students and the headmistress (an enterprising woman who could have an intriguing bristly yet UST ridden relationship with Emily) realize their only hope is the anti-social teacher no one likes and who likes no one but who thinks nothing of going mano a mano with (supernatural menace du jour). At the end, Emily saves the day but also returns to Haworth to great cheer, the cheer being both for her world saving and her departure, though at least one of the students sees her now as an example and secretly decides to follow her footsteps as a demon slayer, and the headmistress promises to write.
Anne: Anne is the ideal detective for an Agatha Christie type story. She didn't like teaching any more than her sisters did, but she was way more efficient at it, and her students actually liked her. (We know this because the girls in question kept writing to her after Anne had left her job.) She also was very observant, just the type to make herself overlooked while spotting what everyone else was trying to hide. So basically Anne during her governess jobs gets a Miss Marple type of mystery, where the villain even after uncovered thinks they are getting away with it because hey, who's going to listen to the mousy Yorkshire governess, so they don't kill her, and later, after Anne has safely departed, find out Anne has outmanoeuvred them by convincing (sole semi-decent law person of the story) of her theory by presenting solid evidence.
Charlotte: now in rl, the entire Arthur Bell Nichols story of Charlotte's eventual marriage reads like not something from her novels but very much like a Jane Austen penned tale, and considering Charlotte's (hostile) feelings re: Jane Austen's work, I'm tempted to keep it simple and go with that, but that's not creative enough. I therefore declare Charlotte to end up in something else altogether... a Ruritanian type of adventure novel. During her time in Brussels, Charlotte who turns out to be the exact doppelganger of (Insert Princess here - either rl but not that well known - maybe Queen Victoria's half sister? - or fictional) gets kidnapped by sinister villains from a rival court faction. She is able to liberate herself from her first captors but ends up with a third party, revolutionaries (shock! gleeful horror, for Charlotte was a Tory but also somewhat fascinated by uprisings, see many an Angrian tale) who want to use the supposed princess to get some concessions. The ensueing plot includes doublecrossings, hilarity as the princess ends up having to temporarily hide heself as Charlotte Bronte in the Heger school, and Charlotte starting to see some of the revolutionaries points despite herself. Oh, and of course there's male-to-female crossdressing. (That part from Jane Eyre CAN be used in a Charlotte Bronte movie.) The whole thing ends with Charlotte delivering her original captors, the evil courtiers, to justice, lecturing the Princess on her responsibilities, not outing the revolutionaries and deciding she's got enough of living abroad for a while, so will return to England.
I'm not entirely serious about all of this, but also not completely kidding. Because come on: any of these fictions would be both fun and do more justice to their personalities than most (though not all) attempts at Bronte biopics so far.
Emily: seeing as Emily disliked schools both as a student and as a teacher - both attempts at staying at one were brief and miserable -, was, otoh, very practical in her daily life (Emily gets bitten, Emily cauterizes her own wound with a hot iron in a famous anecdote), and had experience with animals, and was a brilliant poet, the solution is clear. Emily gets put in a boarding school fantasy. Severus Snape has nothing on Emily Bronte when it comes to disliking your students and snarling at them, only in her case it's not personal because she doesn't have hang-ups about anyone's parents. If you don't want to do a straightforward 19th century HPverse prequel for copyright reasons and because of JKR's behaviour through recent years, well, it's not like she has a patent on school stories and supernatural events in same. Thus my reccommendation: during Emily's brief stint as a teacher, a a supernatural event (fantasy menace of your choice) occurs. Suddenly the students and the headmistress (an enterprising woman who could have an intriguing bristly yet UST ridden relationship with Emily) realize their only hope is the anti-social teacher no one likes and who likes no one but who thinks nothing of going mano a mano with (supernatural menace du jour). At the end, Emily saves the day but also returns to Haworth to great cheer, the cheer being both for her world saving and her departure, though at least one of the students sees her now as an example and secretly decides to follow her footsteps as a demon slayer, and the headmistress promises to write.
Anne: Anne is the ideal detective for an Agatha Christie type story. She didn't like teaching any more than her sisters did, but she was way more efficient at it, and her students actually liked her. (We know this because the girls in question kept writing to her after Anne had left her job.) She also was very observant, just the type to make herself overlooked while spotting what everyone else was trying to hide. So basically Anne during her governess jobs gets a Miss Marple type of mystery, where the villain even after uncovered thinks they are getting away with it because hey, who's going to listen to the mousy Yorkshire governess, so they don't kill her, and later, after Anne has safely departed, find out Anne has outmanoeuvred them by convincing (sole semi-decent law person of the story) of her theory by presenting solid evidence.
Charlotte: now in rl, the entire Arthur Bell Nichols story of Charlotte's eventual marriage reads like not something from her novels but very much like a Jane Austen penned tale, and considering Charlotte's (hostile) feelings re: Jane Austen's work, I'm tempted to keep it simple and go with that, but that's not creative enough. I therefore declare Charlotte to end up in something else altogether... a Ruritanian type of adventure novel. During her time in Brussels, Charlotte who turns out to be the exact doppelganger of (Insert Princess here - either rl but not that well known - maybe Queen Victoria's half sister? - or fictional) gets kidnapped by sinister villains from a rival court faction. She is able to liberate herself from her first captors but ends up with a third party, revolutionaries (shock! gleeful horror, for Charlotte was a Tory but also somewhat fascinated by uprisings, see many an Angrian tale) who want to use the supposed princess to get some concessions. The ensueing plot includes doublecrossings, hilarity as the princess ends up having to temporarily hide heself as Charlotte Bronte in the Heger school, and Charlotte starting to see some of the revolutionaries points despite herself. Oh, and of course there's male-to-female crossdressing. (That part from Jane Eyre CAN be used in a Charlotte Bronte movie.) The whole thing ends with Charlotte delivering her original captors, the evil courtiers, to justice, lecturing the Princess on her responsibilities, not outing the revolutionaries and deciding she's got enough of living abroad for a while, so will return to England.
I'm not entirely serious about all of this, but also not completely kidding. Because come on: any of these fictions would be both fun and do more justice to their personalities than most (though not all) attempts at Bronte biopics so far.
