Today Charlotte Brontë Wins

Sandy Lender, the author of Choices Meant for Gods, continues to show her Brontëiteness. We have featured previously some of her comments about Charlotte Brontë and she herself commented on BrontëBlog some days ago:

The novel I've written is a far cry from the masterpieces Charlotte penned, but I've got more allusions to Jane Eyre in my book Choices Meant for Gods than you can shake a stick at...right down to my heroine's orphan status. A few of the hosts on my current online book tour have asked questions that have let me gush about Charlotte, and I've mentioned a few of the elements in my novel that are directly influenced by her and Jane Eyre especially.

But this interview on Blogging Authors is special. Here Ms. Lender proposes herself to be nominated as Brontëite of the year:

Q: Your book Choices Meant for Gods is a fantasy story about a young lady on the run from a madman. When she stops running and starts fighting, she discovers she’s wrapped in centuries of prophecy. Where did you get the idea for your novel?
A: Strangely enough, it occurred to me as I was writing promotional/marketing material (read: after the book was at the printer) that Amanda Chariss, the heroine, and her wizard guardian spent the 16 years prior to the novel’s beginning moving from place to place, literally running from home to home, benefactor to benefactor in mimicry of my childhood.
Subconsciously, the idea for one of the plotlines came from my experience as a child in a military family. I was born on Homestead Air Force Base, and, even though my father completed his service by the time I entered school, we still moved frequently as I grew up. I guess it influenced me more than I realized.
The idea of the Taiman estate grew out of Anglo-Saxon mead halls and Charlotte Bronte’s Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Readers will find myriad Old English, Anglo-Saxon, and Bronte references speckled throughout the novel. I also take a lot of images from song lyrics, and let those fuel my imagination (...)

Q: Have you always been interested in fantasy? Which fantasy authors do you read?
A: I’ve always enjoyed fantasy literature. From Tolkien to Eddings to Goodkind, but Charlotte Bronte (and, oh, just listen to Edward Rochester to hear those speculative fiction elements shine through) is my favorite.

Q: Who is your favorite author and why?
A: Charlotte Bronte. That woman…I wish I had half her talent. There’s something absolutely mesmerizing about Jane Eyre. The first time I read the gothic novel, when I got to the wedding scene, and that cataclysmic revelation, I literally yelled. And then Charlotte takes us away from Thornfield for about a third or so of the novel, leaving us to believe the situation won’t be resolved!? I was livid. So many moments in that novel had me either laughing or excited or ready to throw the book out the window of a moving vehicle that I had to get myself to a library and find everything she and her sisters had written.
When I read the final page of Charlotte’s Villette, I knew I’d found the greatest writer in English literature. Hands down. It just doesn’t get any better than this: “That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had gorged their full sustenance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he fold his wings whose waft was thunder—the tremor of whose plumes was storm….Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.”
The hero died. That’s rich.
And Charlotte had an intriguing life as well. Her personal tragedies mirrored her work. I had the opportunity to visit Haworth Parsonage a couple years ago and as I entered her bedroom, I felt overwhelmed with sadness. It was incredibly moving for me to be in that space where she once breathed and thought about her professor in Brussels and wrote her letters to him…

And there are more references, you can check these interviews on Reading Rucker and Charlene Leatherman, for instance.
Picture Source.

Categories: Brontëites