Small, Weak, Delicate but Implacable Jane

The following reference to Villette is not coming from a reviewer but from the author of the theatre play herself. The Boston Globe talks about Sarah Ruhl's play Dead Man’s Cell Phone which is now premiered in Boston:

In “Cell Phone,’’ Jean’s world is turned upside down when she answers the trilling phone of a dead man in a cafe. Ruhl compares Jean to the quiet, passive heroine, Lucy Snowe, in Charlotte Brontë’s novel “Villette.’’
“It’s almost like [Lucy] is an invisible or ghostly presence, in a way,’’ says Ruhl. “But as the novel progresses, she becomes more and more present and alive.’’ (Christopher Wallenger)

What do you think, Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast? In The Guardian:

But not every growing-up story is a Cinderella tale. I once heard an American academic spend a whole lecture trying to show that Jane Eyre was a Cinderella story. She failed, because it isn't: Jane Eyre is a Beauty and the Beast story, in which the physically powerful, sexually potent, threateningly mature adult male, Mr Rochester, is gradually subdued and tamed (not to say shamed and maimed) by the small, weak, delicate, but implacable Jane, who does it all by herself. (Philip Pullman)

More reviews of Brian Dillon's Tormented Hope. Now in the Guardian:

For Brontë, Darwin and Nightingale, being permanently half-ill facilitated withdrawal from society, which enabled them to devote themselves to their projects. (Jerome Boyd Maunsell)

And also in The Guardian a review of Jacqueline Wilson's new novel Hetty Feather:

I approve of the way Wilson includes kind characters alongside cruel ones – and they turn out to be the more powerful. There is a touch of Jane Eyre to Hetty. There is also a Shakespearean spark when Hetty disguises herself as a boy. And the flower girl at the end of the novel is straight out of Shaw. (Kate Kellaway)

The Canadian soprano Sally Dibblee is interviewed in The Telegraph-Journal:

Your favourite hero of fiction?
a Jane Eyre. I love her for her passionate nature and her convictions. There's also an idealistic part of me that is seduced by the romanticism of the Victorian era, when days were spent reading and knitting and sewing.

According to News of the World (ahem), if you are a Pisces you like the Brontës:

You also love places made famous in classic novels, such as the Brontë country of the Yorkshire Moors.(Mystic Meg and Jess Spiring)

More Twilight-Wuthering Heights references in The Cumberland County Sentinel, Apostillas Literarias reviews Jane Eyre in Spanish, Click Me Shoot Me talks briefly about the Tokyo performances of Jane Eyre. The Musical, Lilacs and Lace posts about her personal experience with Wuthering Heights, greenrose18 describes Jane Eyre 2006 (in Russian) and finally Brontë Parsonage Women's Writing talks about Katrina Noemi's visit(s) to the Parsonage as their first Writer in Residence.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Villette, Wuthering Heights