Inspiration and Melodrama

This interview to Cheryl Strayer, author of Torch, reveals the Brontëite in her:

I notice the quotes placed on the title pages of each section of your novel are by Charlotte Bronte, Mary Lee Settle, Edna O'Brien, W.H. Auden and Raymond Carver. Are these the authors who have inspired your writing? -- Vicky Krombein, Northwest Portland

The authors I quote in "Torch" have inspired me, instructed me and moved me with their work. I found these quotes without looking for them, in the course of reading good books. Each was a line that took my breath away with its beauty and intelligence and truth. It was an honor for me to include the voices of these great writers in my novel. (The Oregonian)

Frances Wilson, who knows her Brontës, writes in The Independent about the upcoming film (UK release, next March 9) Becoming Jane, and quotes Charlotte's opinion about Jane Austen's writings:

Jane Austen, handsome, clever, and posthumously rich, lived nearly 42 years in the world with, it seems, quite a bit to distress and vex her. The myth that our favourite romantic novelist spent her days contentedly at her desk, mob cap in place, clock ticking peacefully, imagining a world of passion which, as Charlotte Brontë put it, was "perfectly unknown to her", is about to explode.

Janeites reading this will be comforted if we redirect them to this article in The Sunday Herald: The Jane Gang.

Brontë references are, as we know well, quite often wrongly used. This is one flagrant case:

Does Elisabeth Hasselbeck spend all her waking hours shedding tears and pulling out her hair because of how her View cohost Rosie O'Donnell treats her on air? (...)

It got real bad last week when the two went at it over the Patriot Act on air. The conservative Hass said she supported monitoring domestic phone calls. Rosie's like, "You are very young, and you are very wrong." The N.Y. Post says this so shook Hass to the core of her being, she "broke down later off-camera." (Did ABC hire her out of an Emily Bronte novel?) (Tirdad Derakhshani in The Philadelphia Inquirer)

A novel? More precisely, the novel. And using Wuthering Heights as a synonym for melodrama couldn't be more wrong.

Precisely, Persephone writes her opinions about Wuthering Heights, which she is currently reading:

One of my permeating observations, which I believe an online reviewer had once mentioned is that it seems that Emily Bronte did in fact seem to have an aversion of the stereotypical masculine figure. She continuously expresses disdain at the archetype of the emasculate male. (Read more)

Categories: Books, Brontëites, In the News, Wuthering Heights