Jane Eyre Fantasies

India Knight's column today in The Sunday Times contains the following paragraph which shows clear parallels with the situation of governesses in Charlotte Brontë's times. Check it out:

If your child’s tutor is so clever, so qualified, so possessed of all the magical transformative powers that parents will themselves to believe in, why are they tutoring some brat for cash? It can’t all be to do with Jane Eyre fantasies or the opportunity to holiday in exotic places while being treated like a member of staff (although actually people never know what to do with tutors. They’re hired help, but reasonably clever hired help. Do they eat with the au pair or eat with the family? Such are the ludicrous quandaries of the well-to-do). No: the truth of the matter is that the well educated are available to teach your children because that is, right now, the only career path available to them. Ironic, innit?

William Boyd publishes an article about parks and literature in The Guardian putting the Brontës into the category of rural writers:

Rural novelists (a baker's dozen in no particular order): Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, John Cowper Powys, Elizabeth Bowen, John Fowles, DH Lawrence, Walter Scott, Bruce Chatwin, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, John Buchan, William Trevor, Elizabeth Gaskell.

The Washington Times reviews Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger:

There are hints of the dark anger that pervades Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" in this latter-day gothic masterpiece in which Ms. Waters has dexterously set rigid British class conflicts in a subtly eerie setting. This is no easily defined ghost story, because the evil manifestation is only part of the gradual devastation not only of the memorably named house, but of its occupants who once lived an enviable existence. The author has captured sociological change and woven it into the supernatural. She skillfully portrays the strange and sinister force gathering at Hundreds Hall, where its targets are the remnants of the Ayres family, once privileged and wealthy patrons of the community. (Muriel Dobbin)

The Burnley Express talks about the much-awaited meeting of a couple of penpals from both sides of the pond. We are delighted to read that

Nicola, who works for Burnley Council, ensured 37-year-old Marsha saw some of the region's finest attractions including the Brontë's home at Haworth and Burnley's Singing Ringing Tree.

Bookbytes reviews Wuthering Heights, Le fil d'archal posts about the Brontës (in French and with the inclusion of the G.H. Lewes portrait so often mistaken by an Emily Brontë one). Both The Sound of Butterflies (the blog of the author Rachael King) and The Rainbow Notebook review briefly Wuthering Heights 2009.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights