The Brontës on the Irish Stage

Abstract ‘The Brontës on the Irish Stage’ reads Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre productions in Ireland from 1849 to 2019. It argues that the novels become Hibernized in such contexts—inflected with Irish accents, Irish props and stage designs. For example, in its choice of setting and stage design, an early production of Wuthering Heights (1934) aligned the novel with the cottage kitchen drama typical of the early Irish stage. The novels, repeated performance suggests, speak volubly to an Irish public at the moment of the emergence of the new nation-state and beyond. Wuthering Heights, in particular, functions as an allegory of Ireland’s colonial past in its emphasis on land ownership (Heathcliff’s) and its confrontation between coarse locals and refined strangers (the Earnshaws versus Lockwood and the Lintons). In this sense, the adaptations operate as a way of processing historical trauma around colonial power, land misappropriation, and, more recently, sectarian violence.