Reader, I Dumped Him

Andrew Taylor writes in The Times advising how to create a plot correctly. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights made passing appearances:

We are often told that there are only a handful of plots in the world – woman meets man, they quarrel, they reconcile, for example. But for a practising writer, that’s just a formula, in this case for Jane Eyre and thousands of other stories. (...)
There are no hard-and-fast rules in writing fiction, only guidelines, opinions and suggestions. Few people turn to In Search of Lost Time or The Waves for the quality of their plots; Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf provide other attractions. We read Raymond Chandler for his language, not his convoluted and improbable plots. A good editor would savage the plot construction of Wuthering Heights.But genius can get away with anything – even technical incompetence. The rest of us must remember the importance of plotting, where the art of writing a story becomes a craft.

The Daily Mail publishes one of those articles that define its editorial line. So full of subtlety, delicacy and good feelings. Rochester makes a guest appearance:

More women are getting married later, while yet more are remarrying in their 40s and 50s. So how should we safeguard against becoming a nursemaid rather than a wife if our loved one turns into an old crock?(...)
Call me cold-blooded, but I could see a future in which I was a permanent nurse for a guy I had only just met. True, he was witty, life-enhancing company after the sudden death of the wonderful man I had been married to for 25 years, but I didn't want to set myself up for more heartbreak too soon if he became an invalid or worse.
I was no Jane Eyre, willing to take on the burden of a blind and injured Mr Rochester, so I decided to plump for pragmatism over romanticism. Reader, I dumped him. (...)
In other words, try before you buy. Don't let the worldly-wise sales patter of the older man dazzle you into thinking he's a bargain before you've checked out the goods. And as for Mr Rochester, at least he could afford the nursing staff. (Virginia Harvey)

Jean Martin writes about children reads in an article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

In the eighth grade, I found myself in Miss Sarah Hickman's English class. I read "Jane Eyre" with her, wolfing the story down, staying up much later than I was supposed to, because I needed to know what happened next

The Halifax Courier presents the new book by Juliet Barker, the author of The Brontës, The Deafening Sound of Silent Tears: The Story of Caring For Life, a history of the Leeds-based charity Caring for Life.

On the blogosphere, The Last Leaf talks about her favourite classic novels which include The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights. On Dark Archetype there's a post in Russian on Wuthering Heights adaptations, particularly Heathcliff's role.

Finally, the Brontë horses frenzy reappears in this article that contains this puzzling phrase:

The dam of Torben is Wendy Jayne, who is a daughter of Dryham Lea while being out of a Caballito mare in Jane Eyre. (HarnessLink)

Categories: Books, In the News, References, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights