Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights Eclipsed

Stevie Davis reviews for The Guardian Michèle Roberts's Mud: Stories of Sex and Love:

Feminist themes prevail: through invoking and subverting classic Victorian texts – Madame Bovary, George Sand's novels, Jane Eyre – the collection examines women's freedoms from provocative angles. (...)
The short story is an intimate, subtle and enigmatic form: Michèle Roberts reminds us in this virtuoso collection that she is one of our foremost practitioners of the art.

Another book in reviews of which appear Brontë references often (due both to the topic and the author) is Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. In the Washington Times:

Nevertheless, enough of the record remains for the reader to learn about the poet's tastes: She loved the Brontës and Shakespeare. "She was drawn early to Jane Eyre, and Maggie Tulliver, George Eliot's provincial girl 'whose eyes were full of unsatisfied intelligence and unsatisfied, beseeching affection,' " Ms. Gordon writes. (Carol Herman)

John Inverdale chooses for The Sunday Express his favourite books:

Wuthering Heights: Another classic which is a wonderfully passionate book and is set in one of my favourite parts of the country.
I read it at school and have revisited it on several occasions since and every time I read it I get something new from a novel rightly held in such high regard.

We have to agree with Joanna Kavenna in The Guardian - the Brontës are probably not the best writers to turn to for advice in pregnancy:

So I started rereading. I went through a few books by Henry James, Knut Hamsun, Nietzsche, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Mann, but found them unforthcoming. Some writers had a lot to say about love and marriage but less about what might happen later.

True Brontëites will notice the (involuntary) irony of this comment from an article in The Guardian about current soap-operas, particularly Coronation Street:

Fickleness of the heart is all well and good when you're nubile like Tina, but the years fly by and quickly you're Mary Taylor, literally begging Norris to accompany you on a campervan excursion to Brontë country before slashing the phone wires and holding him captive until he agrees to wed. (Grace Dent)

Of course, now that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse hits the screens all over the world the whole Twilight-Brontë references stuff is reappearing again:

EDWARD = HEATHCLIFF?: Rent "Wuthering Heights." (We like the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon and David Niven.) Emily Brontë’s story, with its classic love triangle, was an inspiration for the Bella-Edward-Jacob relationship in the "Twilight" saga. In "Eclipse," Bella actually compares herself to Bronte’s heroine, Cathy, who’s torn between her feelings for two men. (Mary Colurso in The Birmingham News)

Say what you will about Meyer as a writer, she has an easy-to-read style and has created characters straight out of the great romances of classic literature—and that can’t be bad. Just look at the two men who inspired Edward’sname— the tormented Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and the loyal and selfless Edward Ferrars in Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.” Do those traits sound familiar? Plus there are multiple references to Shakespeare, especially “Romeo and Juliet,” as well as Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.” Start reading. (The Buffalo News)

"Edward's always going to have a bit of a lead as he does in the story, as well," said Mark Englehart, senior editor of IMDb editorial.
"Edward personifies that kind of romantic hero from Gothic novels of the 19th century. He's kind of a little like Mr. Rochester in 'Jane Eyre,' the moody, attractive, mysterious man on horseback who comes to sweep the heroine away. ... The whole vampire thing almost seems like icing on the cake with this type of character: It enhances his appeal 10 times more." (Christy Lemire in Associated Press)

Ну а для тех, кому и этого мало, писательница активно вплетает в свое повествование литературные аллюзии: кроме "Ромео и Джульетты" в "Затмении" упоминается такая классика любовного романа, как "Гордость и предубеждение", а главным образом — "Грозовой перевал" Эмилии Бронте, составляющий основное чтение героини "Сумерек" не только из-за отсутствия в доме другой литературы, но и из желания Стефани Майер примазаться со своей политкорректной вампирской сагой к почтенной традиции готического романа. (Лидия Маслова in Коммерсантъ) (Google translation)

LA Weekly presents the L.A. performances of Lin-Manuel Miranda's The Heights with an (obvious) play of words:

WUTHERING "HEIGHTS"
"Wuthering" actually means windy not withering. Though the former is prevalent, the latter also applies to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Latino-rap-calypso musical about living and dying in Washington Heights, and trying to get out of a barrio that's poised for gentrification. (Steven Leigh Morris)

Today's The Mirror's Quizword Crossword contains a very easy Brontë question:

Charlotte Brontë novel featuring the character Helen Burn.

Spanish writer Ana María Matute doesn't miss a chance of reminding us of her Brontëiteness. In an interview in Diario Sur (Spain):

Creo que ya desde niña pensaba en ser como Brontë o Andersen.

-Sí. Primero, porque me contaban cuentos; luego porque los leía, y después porque con cinco años empecé a escribir. Imagina si lo tenía claro. (Marina Martínez) (Google translation)

Lost in Manchester posts about the Blue Plaque that Charlotte Brontë has in Manchester (in Boundary Street where she began writing Jane Eyre while his father was recovering from his cataract operation). Bad Wolf Day recasts Brontë adaptations.

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