Ah, that great American writer Charlotte Brontë

A couple of newspapers use the Brontës to discuss Lori Gottlieb's book Marry Him: The Case For Settling For Mr Good Enough. From the Daily Mail:

If Jane Austen or the Brontes were alive today, Jane Eyre might have failed to see beyond Rochester's crusty exterior and Elizabeth Bennet could have overlooked cold, arrogant Darcy altogether, in the misguided hope that the perfect man was just around the corner.
The last line of Charlotte Bronte's great novel might have read, 'Reader, I should have married him.' If it's a conventional happy ending you want, as opposed to the prospect of a life alone, then I urge you to take heed of what Lori Gottlieb has to say. (Charlotte Metcalf)

The things is, though, that the last line of 'Charlotte Brontë's great novel' isn't the famous 'Reader, I married him', which is actually the opening line of the last chapter of the novel. The actual last line of the novel

Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!

is not very useful for that article as it is about St John Rivers, but it might be for the article in The Telegraph:

This is not the viewpoint of a spoiled, demanding 21st-century woman. It is the way women have felt since their love lives were first recorded. In Jane Eyre, the worthy, reserved St. John Rivers proposes marriage to Jane because he believes she'd make a good missionary's wife. In a move that Gottlieb would consider foolish, Jane turns him down flat, saying, "I scorn your idea of love … I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer … and I scorn you when you offer it." [...]
Like Jane Eyre and Carrie Bradshaw, most women would rather wait for Mr Right, and risk ending up alone, than settle for dependable, passionless Mr Second Best. A single friend of mine who recently hit 30 insists: "You know what, maybe Mr Right won't ever come along, and maybe some of us will live out our years as spinsters. For some people, it doesn't happen at all. Is that thought so awful?" (Becky Pugh)

Apart from the cringeworthy union of Jane Eyre and Carrie Bradshaw in such a short space, we must point out that even though Jane is honest with St John, she doesn't - at least not initially - 'turn him down flat', as she seriously considers marrying him after all.

The Telegraph too takes a look at book dedications.

Earlier, Charlotte Brontë naively set London literary tongues wagging when she dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to William Thackeray. This was by way of a thank you for his enthusiastic review of the book, but readers saw only parallels between Mr Rochester and Thackeray, whose own wife was insane and who had just published a novel about a governess who tried to seduce her employer (Lizzie Enfield)

The Independent also mentions Jane Eyre, in this case as an example of a 'historical novel', as it's (slightly) set back in time.

Man Booker judge John Mullan explains the preponderance of historical novels on the latest shortlist: "Historical novels were once seen as genre-fiction and not taken seriously, but now most literary novelists are interested in writing about the past. But then, most great Victorian novels – Jane Eyre, Middlemarch – were set earlier than when they were written." (Mark Piggott)

The Guardian has read Angelica Garnett's The Unspoken Truth so that you don't have to (?) and digests it for you.

I was 16 when my parents sent me abroad to perfect my French. Justin had gone to China and I was like the tiniest chick on the edge of the nest when I became friends with Juliana and Gilles in Paris. I felt out of my depth with people who were older than me, so I didn't say very much, though I did imagine myself to be Jane Eyre. (John Crace)

A couple of websites are looking forward to future films: WWD wants to see Mia Wasikowska play Jane Eyre (which is due in 2011 according to them) and Movies.ie 'can't wait' to see Andrea Arnold's take on Wuthering Heights.

And now for the big, BIG blunder of the day, courtesy of Student Pulse, a self-defined 'online academic student journal'. The article begins as follows:

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte's Early American Heroines
Early American women writers, such as Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, often focused on female heroines who defied the social norms of their time. Ultimately, however, these heroines reformed to societal demands through marriage to a handsome suitor. In Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, readers will find two prime examples of this style of heroine in Jane Eyre and Marianne Dashwood. Each woman travels through three stages: youthful passion, somber adolescence, and a secure adulthood. (Stephanie S. Haddad)

The article goes on but, really, can it be taken seriously after such a frightful beginning?

Then again, for Telegraph-Journal, Wuthering Heights is nothing but a 'school book'. However, Matt Asay from CNET News explains that he's willing to pay for a quality version of Jane Eyre as opposed to downloading it - legally - for free online.

The Squee visits Haddon Hall (location of both Jane Eyre 2006 and 1996) and reviews a 1943 Jane Eyre radio version (Weird Circle), Bookhora reviews in Swedish Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre and Szafka z książkami posts in Polish about Elizabeth Gaskell's The life of Charlotte Brontë.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Biography, Books, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights