A prototype of Emily Brontë

Last Sunday a couple of newspapers reviewed The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson and commented on the paralells between Dorothy and William and Cathy and Heathcliff. Today Frances Wilson writes an article for the Telegraph and finds yet another Brontë similarity.

The woman who emerges from these entries is often sad but never the abject figure she is so frequently represented as being. Those who knew Dorothy in her hot youth describe her as an impassioned muse, a risk-taking, restless and melancholic visionary, a prototype of Emily Brontë. The adjectives Dorothy's friends use most to describe her are 'wild' and 'fervent'. William praised the 'shooting lights' of her 'wild eyes', Coleridge wrote of 'the wild lights of her eyes', Thomas De Quincey described her eyes as 'wild and startling' and Dorothy as 'all fire and... ardour', the 'very wildest person I have ever known'. She was distinguished from other women, De Quincey says, by her 'fervid heart' and 'fervent feelings', and he admitted that he had not been the only man to have 'loved and admired' Dorothy in her 'fervent prime'. The term 'admired' was the contemporary equivalent of what we might call 'fancied'.

Vulpes Libris talks to author Sarah Stovell and she joins the ever-growing ranks of the Brontëites.

EH: Which book do you wish you had written?
Sarah Stovell: I wish I’d written Wuthering Heights, because it’s about eternal love and about people feeling so passionate about each other that they’ll starve themselves to death and bite the bark off tree trunks.

Nouse has a funny review of a York coffee place called Coffee Culture:

I sat two floors up in a small, low-beamed Tudor loft with a number of very cultured wooden tables. There was a single lonely window overlooking the street. Bronte fans might speculate that if the Rochesters had moved to town, this would have been ‘that room’: perfect for the secretion of embarrassing, unwanted lunatic relatives. (James Macdougald)

The Preston Planet aptly suggests Haworth as a suitable 'escape from urban chaos'.

Romantic Times Book Reviews have a review of The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland. Unfortunately only subscribers can read it but we see they have given it four stars. BrontëBlog will have a review of the book online soon, by the way.

And finally, Coulour Lovers has created a Jane Eyre 2006-inspired palette.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Haworth, Wuthering Heights