The National Newspaper (United Arab Emirates) finds Jane Eyre references in Daoud Hari's The Translator. (More on these previous posts)Early in Queen Victoria's reign, 30 percent of adult Englishwomen were single - and considered, as one social commentator put it, "redundant." If of gentle birth and no means, without a family to care for, an extra woman naturally sought work as a governess. Living in another family's home made romance unlikely and isolation inevitable, with poverty and unemployment always on the horizon. It was a grim life, grimmer still because it was the only choice open to many. As Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre decides, "I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better."
In "Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres," Ruth Brandon covers about 80 years in the profession, concentrating on the era when a rising cadre of nouveaux riches and an abundance of single women came together to make the at-home lady educator a household staple. Few of the 25,000 governesses in England in 1851 were employed past the age of 40, since most families preferred to hire malleable young things, despite the dangers of youth: husbands and sons could always be tempted. (Witness Mr. Rochester.) (...)
It's surprising that Brandon didn't devote a chapter to Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, given her frequent references to the governesses in novels like "Agnes Grey" and "Jane Eyre." Those famous novels could have benefited from an analytical eye. Brandon is also a fiction writer, and she leans heavily on the novels of the period to provide cultural background; she might have spent more time exploring the ways in which a novelist's imagination transformed the governess's actual experience. (...)
The shorter chapters about hitherto overlooked women are far fresher. In 1784, Agnes Porter entered the new profession early enough to eke out a quite pleasant existence with an earl's extended family. Just a couple of decades later, however, Nelly Weeton's letters and diaries recorded suffering to rival Brontë's most gothic moments: a cruelly selfish brother, nasty employers with nightmarish homes and a disastrous marriage entered into, apparently, solely for the chance to bear a child of her own. (...)
Young women today," Brandon notes, "grow up in the world that Mary Wollstonecraft dreamed of." While that may be too sunny (and novelistic) a conclusion, at least we're better off than poor Nelly Weeton, with more to hope for than Jane Eyre. (Susann Cokal)
Despite its harrowing content, this is not a bleak book. Seamless digressions evoke Hari’s childhood, a vivid blend of traditions stretching back thousands of years and fragments of Western culture – novels like Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre along with Clint Eastwood movies. His love of the natural world and of camels in particular is transcendent. (Hephzibah Anderson)Alice Walker's daughter, Rebecca, writes in the Daily Mail about her relationship with her mother and quotes a poem of hers with a Brontë reference:
I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me - a 'delightful distraction', but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.On the blogosphere, Mi Butaca reviews (very unfavourably) Wuthering Heights 1939, Old Fogey briefly reviews and classify several Jane Eyre adaptations in an excellent and highly recommended. Check it out. Ratatosk's Acorns posts about Janians (for Jane Eyre) vs Catherinites (for Wuthering Heights).
We swear that we didn't do it :P.An investigation has begun after it emerged some English students in Bedford were given the wrong books to study before an exam.
About 20 AS level English Literature students had read Wuthering Heights by mistake, Redbourne Upper School said.
The mistake was noticed before the exam had begun and the school informed the examination board.
Headteacher Nigel Croft said it was "not a major issue" and that no student would be disadvantaged.
Letters have been sent to parents notifying them of the error and the school's inquiry into how the mistake occurred.
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