The Friend of Brontë characters

Let's begin with movies and TV-series.

Sheila Ferguson talks in The Scotsman about her favourite things. She choses Wuthering Heights (1939) as her favourite film:

I first saw it when I was a child and love it. For me Heathcliff and Cathy (played by Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) are the epitome of love; it's stronger than life itself. Whenever I need to draw upon an emotion to play on stage that gives me the impetus to play certain themes with a degree of depth and sadness. Why that version? Because the remake was crap. You can't replicate the original. It'd be like redoing Al Pacino in The Godfather.

So Demented, It Hurts reviews Jane Eyre 2006.

Now for some books. The LA Times reviews The Friend of Women by Louis Auchinloss.

In "The Friend of Women," a prim English teacher at a posh girls' school reflects on his relationship with three favorite students over several years. Hubert began as their mentor in the late 1930s but gradually assumed the roles of counselor and father confessor. The tone of his reminiscence reflects a life spent primarily with the Bront– sisters, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, rather than living companions. Auchincloss doesn't indulge in labored pastiches of 19th century prose but uses an occasional turn of phrase to reveal his character's academic smugness. (Charles Solomon)

The Asahi Herald reviews Special Topics in Calamity Physics too, whose Brontë connection we mentioned a few months ago.

The Companion Blog to a Collection of Literary Impressions reviews Agnes Grey:

This book reminded me of why I read. There is nothing quite like opening a book and discovering a complete stranger who is more familiar than many real-life acquaintances. Agnes is reasonable, intelligent, forthright, funny, insightful - I could understand how she thought and why she acted as she did. I could sympathize with her and root for her, and I could be eminently satisfied when she ended happily. Agnes Grey is a straightforward, unadorned, sincere portrait of a sensible, thoughtful girl, and I loved it.

And The Washington Post claims this:

I envision a time when TurnItIn.com's database contains millions of essays on Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre." At that point educators may finally understand that no high school student will be able to write another original word on the subject. (Jason Johnson)

We do believe there are infinite takes on Jane Eyre though.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights