"It is of all novels I ever read the one I should least like to be a character in myself"

Monster lit is a recurrent topic for news outlets. USA Today looks at forthcoming books of the genre and among them,

In Sherri Browning Erwin's Jane Slayre (Gallery Books), hitting stores April 13, Charlotte Brontë's plain Jane Eyre is an indomitable zombie killer.
The story: Jane is a vanquisher of demons as well as an excellent governess.
Otherworldly villains: Werewolves, vampires, zombies.
Weapons of choice: Wooden stakes, scimitar, saber.
Little-known fact: Rochester's wife is a werewolf. (Carol Memmott)

EDIT: The Little Professor has her own suggestion:

Charlotte Bronte, Vampire. For the first time, it can be told why Charlotte Bronte outlived all of her siblings...

Another recurrent topic is Twilight, of course. On Line Opinion tries to find out why vampires have always been able to 'obsess' readers. In order to do that, a look at 'flawed' heroes is apparently necessary:

Our heroes have always been flawed. Heathcliff was a vengeful misanthrope with necrophiliac tendencies. Mr Knightley was an annoying elitist who belittled his heroine. Mr Darcy was essentially a bad tempered snob. And let’s not get into Mr Rochester and his poor mad wife in the attic. Yet despite their vices, at least in the past we could count on our heroes to at least be human. Today it seems that every protagonist of note has fangs and a healthy appetite for human blood. (Kirsten Oakley)

The Irish Times has an interesting article on Alice in Wonderland (and not just the latest film) where Lewis Carroll's opinion of Wuthering Heights is quoted:

Carroll, the quiet, Oxford University maths don, who never married and was wary of Wuthering Heights – “it is of all novels I ever read the one I should least like to be a character in myself” – created a surreal world rooted in logic and shaped by a prevailing sense of order and an awareness of menace that comes from within. (Eileen Battersby)

A well-known Brontëite, Siri Hustvedt writes about insomnia for The New York Times:

I was 13 when I had my first bout of insomnia. My family was in Reykjavik, Iceland for the summer, and day never really became night. I couldn’t sleep, and so I read, but the novels I was reading only stimulated me more, and I would find myself wandering around the house with rushing fragments of Dickens, Austen or the Brontës whirring in my head.

Blogs for today: The Book Blog of Evil and Looking for Mr Goodbook (in Swedish) both post about Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre. And Scoutie Girl confesses to having become obsessed by Jane Eyre recently.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights