Rochester would probably just rip his shirt off

The Telegraph and Argus has an opinion column (keyword: opinion) by Emma Clayton on why according to her Rochester deserved his recently-acquired throne as number one literary hero. It's a fun read and the ending is simply spot-on.

Taped to a filing cabinet in the reference library at Haworth’s Bronte Parsonage is a faded newspaper cutting: ‘In Austen, sex is just a kiss on the hand. In the Brontes, everything happens.’ While Jane Austen’s men prance around ballrooms, cautiously courting giggling girls with ringlets, the Bronte heroes brood in dark corners, seething with rage and passion. When it comes to men, falling into the Austen or Bronte camp probably comes down to whether you’d prefer a pompous, emotionally-repressed army captain over a passionate Byronic soul riding with wild abandon across the Yorkshire moors. I’d rather endure the black moods, cruel humour and dark secrets of Edward Rochester, brooding hero of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, than the sanctimonious sarcasm and infuriating pride of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. So I welcomed the news, reported by the T&A, that Mr Rochester has beaten Mr Darcy to the top of a Mills & Boon poll of romantic literary characters.
Maybe it reflects the age-old North-South divide; Rochester versus Darcy is a bit like the Beatles vs the Stones, Oasis vs Blur, Corrie against EastEnders. But for me, it’s less about geography and more about sex appeal.
Mr Darcy is a smart Alec who lacks the enigmatic appeal of Rochester.
I’ve never warmed to Jane Austen; finding her characters – with the exception of Elizabeth Bennet – tedious and irritating. Austen’s women sit around drinking tea, wittering on about going to balls. They were the WAGS of their day, the kind of women Jane Eyre observed with scorn from a quiet corner of one of Rochester’s parties. My mum was a fan of Austen’s books – so much so that she named me after one – and encouraged me to give them a go, giving the impression that they were witty. When I struggled to plough through Emma as an A-level text, I found it anything but witty, and was mortified at being named after awful, meddling Emma Woodhouse.
It could have been worse. If my mum had been a Thomas Hardy fan, I could’ve ended up as Bathsheba or Thomasin.
Austen’s heroes are as dull as her heroines because she based them on people she knew from the limited social circles she moved in. The Brontes, encouraged by their father to read poetry, novels and newspapers, were inspired by charismatic, romantic literary and real-life figures.
Yes, Darcy knows how to work the wet shirt look – but Rochester would probably just rip his shirt off.

Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life comments on the news as well and has different views from the column above.

So, in a recent British poll on the most romantic literary character of all time (men, that is; they dealt with women in an earlier poll), top honors went to Rochester, the brooding hunk at the heart of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Though I’m a huge fan of Jane Eyre — I reread my well-thumbed copy at least once a year — I’m not enamored of Rochester, who, let’s face it, wasn’t very nice to poor Jane. (For those who you who haven’t read the book, or who read it so long ago it’s a distant blur, let’s just say Rochester was alternately cold, imperious, and withholding, and he proposed to Jane — and was going through with the wedding — without disclosing that he was already married to a madwoman he kept imprisoned in the attic). But am I possibility in the minority here? British best-selling novelist Penny Vincenzi wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “From that very first meeting [age 13, when she read the book for the first time], when Rochester’s horse slipped on the ice, and he was unseated, and I was confronted by his dark, unsmiling presence, his ‘stern features, and heavy brow… his considerable breadth of chest,’ I was completely in his thrall.” [...]
Several thoughts here. Maybe it’s because I’m a Southern, but Rhett Butler — the dashing Charleston-born blockade runner who lusted after Scarlett O’Hara — is tops with me. (I took umbrage at Vincenzi when she said Butler lacked Rochester’s “complexity.” Excuse me — lacked complexity?) And what’s with No. 2, Richard Sharpe? Didn’t every single woman he romanced die in childbirth? (It’s been awhile since I read the books, so I could be wrong.) And who in their right mind could truly love the unutterable snob Fitzwilliam Darcy? (Oh. Wait. This is a British survey.) (Tina Jordan)

The unveiling of the poll results isn't the only Brontë-related thing to have taken place at the Cheltenham Literary Festival according to John Walsh in The Independent.

Last Saturday, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, I found myself in a heavyweight debate, featuring a classic only-one-thing-known-about-it book. The event was a spoof Booker Prize, in which a panel of bookish geniuses, ahem, discuss what novel should have won the prize in a certain year, eg, 1848: would it have been Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights or Dombey and Son?

It seems that today a huge part of our newsround is about picking books. Sarah Crown in the Guardian Book Blog reflects on Diana Athill's meditation on the books she may be returning to for the last time.

Then, there's the question of which books you'd store up for a final read. I'd put Wuthering Heights in there, I think, and definitely Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, and Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill. If it's not too maudlin, I'd be interested to hear what you'd choose, too. Either way, I recommend Athill's Yesterday Morning heartily – whether you've read it before or not.

So far, one comment agrees about returning to Wuthering Heights.

The Justice reviews the film An Education and mentions its Jane Eyre connection in passing.

Finally, Ramblings of a Raconteur posts about Wuthering Heights.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights