Brontëites' Top Ten

Not so long ago we opened a new category called Brontëites. Most of the time, the people falling into that category won't be real hardcore Brontë fanatics, but simply people who have mentioned their interest or their love for the Brontës or their works.

Browsing though the Guardian Top 10s we have come across a few of these Brontëites:

Sally Beauman's top 10 novels with a powerful sense of place:
1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Yorkshire moors - and one of the most powerful evocations of landscape in the English novel. The narrative divides between the bleakness of the moors surrounding the Heights and the sheltered park of Thrushcross Grange in the valley. This is a binary novel - two narrators, two houses, two families, two generations: the landscape mirrors this duality. Can anyone forget the scene where the young Heathcliff and Catherine escape from Wuthering Heights and run across the moors to spy through the Grange windows? Or Lockwood's last view of the graves of Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff? The landscape embodies choice and becomes a force in the novel. Once read, imprinted.

AL Kennedy's top 10 controversial books:
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Lambasted when it came out as irredeemably perverse and, I quote, as practically "French".

Wendy Perriam's seriously sexy books:
1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
There's no explicit sex, of course, but we all know that Heathcliff is a wonderful lover, without having to see him go through his paces. Charlotte Brontë tells us that her sister didn't even know how the reproductive system worked, but does it matter? She understands passion. Who can ever forget the first Catherine's anguished statement of being torn between two loves: "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. I am Heathcliff!" Every time I read that, it sends a frisson through me.

Sarah Waters's favourite Victorian novels:
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Marred only by the fact that Charlotte clearly liked Mr Rochester too much; but we can forgive her that. Often given to schoolchildren to read, but you have to be a grown-up to really get it. Has to be one of the most perfectly structured novels of all time.

5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Commonly thought of as 'romantic', but try rereading it without being astonished by the comfortableness with which Brontë's characters subject one another to extremes of physical and psychological violence.

Jane Blanchard's favourite midlife crisis books:
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The ultimate book of hope for anyone seeking Mr Right. Jane isn't exactly drop dead gorgeous nor does she have a filofax bulging with helpful connections but she gets her man in the end. Granted she has to wait for his mad wife to burn down the house, and he's blind when they reunite, but hey, who's worrying. One of the all time great romances.

Joanna Trollope's favourite nineteenth-century novels:
We only noticed this one because bearing in mind what it is about we found it too hard to believe that there was not one Brontë novel in there!

Libby Brooks's favourite women's novels:
5. Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë
Passion and romance written like they ought to be.

Philip Davis's top 10 Victorian literature:
What we said for Joanna Trollope's list. Hmph!!

You will notice, as we did, how different the topics for the lists are. In fact, they aren't in two where one would take for granted that they should definitely be!

Do these lists tell us, though, that many of these people stayed on what's known and famous? None of them mentions any novel apart from Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. That's a bit disappointing. And of course Anne is totally missing. Hopefully, in a few years she will get there too. Go, Anne, go!

EDIT: (26/04/2007)

China Miéville's top 10 weird fiction
9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The greatest work of horror ever. OK, technically there are no monsters or aliens or what-have-you, but there's no way this isn't horror. A book about madness, loneliness, manipulation, class and sex that's more frightening than any tentacled thing Lovecraft could come up with.

Categories: Brontëites