The ProCaths Guerrilla

The Yorkshire Post doesn't hesitate to use the Brontë sisters to promote the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway:

During the Industrial Revolution the mills depended on the tons of coal brought by the railway each week, keeping the looms weaving. The five mile journey is a powerful reminder of Yorkshire's heritage and a unique way of enjoying the beautiful countryside immortalised by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. (Jonathan Walton)

Columnist Commander Coconut at the Orlando Sentinel again shows her/his Brontëiteness:

Agnes Grey: I had never read a book by the third Bronte sister, Anne, so I read this one. She wrote just one other, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. (Agnes Grey, like Charlotte's Jane Eyre, is about a governess; the Brontes knew little else. The plotting isn't as good as Eyre, but it's an interesting read.)

At BrontëBlog we were just expecting that in some review of Becoming Jane, Charlotte Brontë's comments about Jane Austen were quoted. We read on The Toronto Star:

Becoming Jane is finally the victim of its own misguided fidelity. Jane Austen wrote about romance, but she experienced little of it and died a spinster. Her literary rival Charlotte Brontë once said of Austen that, "the passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood."

A cruel comment, but one the movie bears out. Even the notion of marrying for love rather than money is treated with scorn. When Jane tells her mother she wants to marry the man she adores, her mother snaps that she did that herself "and now I have to dig my own potatoes." (Peter Howell)

The reviewer of Preview it's not a reader of BrontëBlog:

Last year Renee Zellweger portrayed Beatrix Potter (Miss Potter). Now we have the life (fictionalized) of Jane Austen. Can a biopic of the Brontes be far off? (Phil Boatwright)

Well... it rather seems so. Daily Film Dose even suggests a possible new title for the biopic (in a completely new approach :P).

On the blogosphere: elle talks about Cara Lockwood's Wuthering High novel. Shewhohashope is re-reading Jane Eyre.

In a Strange Land chooses Charlotte Brontë as the weekly Friday Feminist. Feminism is also the issue of this interesting post in Musings on Muriel. If you want to know what have in common Jane Eyre, Simone de Beauvoir and the Desperate Housewives of Wisteria Lane, read it.

Finally, luckylau85 reproduces some of the Brontë references and jokes in the last and indispensable Jasper Fforde novel: First among Sequels:

[Thursday on the first of her two fictional selves, from a series of 4 books based on her past adventures (she interacts with the characters in the BookWorld).]
"But she wasn't me. She was less like me, in fact, than the talking-to-flowers version [Thursday5], if such a thing was possible. [...] Thursday1-4 was mostly action with very little thought. [...] the books were a parade of violent set pieces interspersed with romantic interludes, and when I say "romantic," I'm stretching the term. Most famous was her torrid affair with Edward Rochester and the stand-up catfight with Jane Eyre. I had thought it couldn't get any worse until Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be a ninja assassin and Bertha Rochester was abducted by aliens." (p. 174)

"Ever since the ProCaths had mounted a guerrilla-style attack on Wuthering Heights during routine maintenance, security had been increased [...]. Heathcliff - possibly the most hated man inside fiction - had not been harmed, partly due to the vigilance of the Jurisfiction agents who were on Heathcliff Protection Duty that day but also due to a misunderstanding of the word "guerrilla," a woeful lexicological lapse that had left five confused apes dead and the facility littered with bananas." (p. 88)

Categories: Books, Humour, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights