The New York Times publishes an article about Jane Austen (commenting about the upcoming US release of Becoming Jane, The Jane Austen Book Club and the Jane Austen complete season at the PBS) and the tiresome comparisons between Austen and the Brontës reappear.
We can agree that:
The 2005 film of “Pride and Prejudice,” with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, so emphasized their physical attraction that Darcy nearly became Heathcliff, a brooding Brontëan hero who fiercely declares his love while standing in a windswept rainstorm. This radically changes Austen. If Darcy isn’t a stick-in-the-mud, who is he? Yet that spark helps make the romance more appealing to a contemporary audience.(Caryn James)
But we can't agree with:
Marsha Huff, the president of the Jane Austen Society of North America (like so many Janeites, she’s not an academic; she’s a tax lawyer)(...)
And however much society has changed, Austen’s heroines — unlike the Brontës’ — deal with the believable, timeless obstacles of class, money and misunderstanding, which make her works adaptable to any era. As Ms. Huff said: “Everyone thinks she’s Elizabeth Bennet; not everyone thinks she’s Jane Eyre. Everyone knows a young woman trying to decide if the guy she’s attracted to is Mr. Right. Not everyone meets a Mr. Right who has a mad wife in the attic.” (Caryn James)
And not because we don't think that Marsha Huff is not right, because we think that the search of Mr. Right is hardly a description of what Jane Eyre is.
Another author becoming a Brontëite.
The American Chronicle interviews
Leslie Dicken, author of The Ladies'Bargain,
MTdeR: Who were your writing influences?
LD: For the most part, they were the literature greats. Most influential to me were the Bronte sisters. "Wuthering Heights" had a huge impact on me. And now I really seem to gravitate towards writing dark, gothic historicals.
On the blogosphere:
Life is Beautiful compares Heathcliff's first introduction in different Wuthering Heights adaptations (particularly WH 1970).
Categories: Brontëites, In the News, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights
Thanks so much for the link and quote! I've been a Bronte fan since high school...guess we can thank those English teachers for having us read classic literature.
ReplyDeleteGlad to have found your site. I'll be adding a link to it from mine! :-)
~ Leslie Dicken
Thanks for stopping by. It's always a real pleasure to read the feedback from the people mentioned in our blog.
ReplyDeleteIt's really nice to read praise for those teachers since what we usually read is how they make the poor students read old books :P
Thanks for linking to us too!!
I agree, Jane Eyre is not about finding Mr Right. Maybe there are the comparisons because the novels are about intelligent women, rare for the time, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI am an academic, a Professor of English, and a former JASNA President. I agree that JANE EYRE is not about finding MR. RIGHT. Neither is WUTHERING HEIGHTS. They are about young women coming to terms with their own circumstances and feelings. Austen writes about this too, but in a different way. The difference between Austen and the Brontes--all great writers-- is that they were writing different types of fiction: Austen was writing novels (meant to be lifelike and reflective of everyday, realistic persons, feelings, and events), while the Brontes were writing romances (which give the writers far greater latitude in imagination, setting, characterizations, feelings, language, etc.). The romance and the novel are sub-groups within the overall genre of fiction. (Read Nathaniel Hawthorne's Preface to the THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES: he understood the difference well.) I don't think Charlotte Bronte recognized this difference when she complained about Austen's limitations, her well-manicured garden, in her reply to George Lewes, who praised PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, much to CB's dismay, in his review of JANE EYRE. Possibly Lewes, himself, did not realize this genre difference within fiction either. But he and other early reviewers of Austen were praising Austen for moving away from what they intuitively knew were early romances such as the Gothic romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. The Brontes, I propose, took the romance part of fiction from the Romantic poets of their more recent literary past, as well as from the spectacular (and romance-like!) landscapes of the Yorkshire moors of their surroundings, and their vivid imaginations at work in their isolated lives. The Brontes and Austen, then, are different, but equally great writers, writing different types of fictions. I do not mean to sound like I am giving a lecture here, but I always remind my students to think of Austen and the Brontes as coming from different directions and writing their books with different "genres" within the world of fiction intuitively in mind. Thank you for your patience!
ReplyDeleteHello Joan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your very insightful comment. We - though not so eloquently - actually agree with you. Charlotte's comments on Jane Austen are usually branded as weapons by people who probably don't really like the Brontës any better than they like Jane Austen.
Jane Austen simply wasn't to Charlotte's taste, who had grown up - as you rightly say - reading Romantic novels and poetry. Austen is nearly the complete opposite of that - describing with fined irony the day to day lives of pretty average middle-class groups of people of the time.
Incidentally, we posted a little something on the never-ending Austen vs Brontë debate, which we don't think leads anywhere. Here is the link: http://bronteblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/jane-austen-was-complete-and-most.html
Thanks, Christina, and I am glad you found my comment useful. Many persons think of all fiction as novels. But particularly in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries, the differences between novels and romances were being distinguished by critics and reviewers.
ReplyDeleteWith kind regards and good wishes for happy reading of both Austen and the Brontes,
Joan