Wishing to be Different

An extract from Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman can be read in the Yorkshire Post:

Extract from Brontë in Love by Sarah Freeman. Great Northern Books, ISBN 9781905080700. To order a signed copy, visit www.greatnorthernbooks.co.uk or call 01274 735056. Yorkshire Post readers save £2 on Brontë in Love, price £12.99 (RRP 14.99).
To order your copy or treat a friend, ring our order line 01748 821122, Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post, please send cheque/postal order for £12.99 plus £2.75 p&p made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd. Send to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond DL10 4QP.

Charlotte Brontë wanted desperately to believe that brains were more important than beauty. Yet whenever she looked in the mirror or caught a glimpse of herself in one of the windows of her home, in Haworth parsonage, she couldn't help but feel disappointed.
She was short. Her lips were too small. Her head was far too big for her thin body. As for her hair, when curled, it looked dry and frizzy; when left to its own devices, it sat limply round her bony shoulders.
Charlotte was her own harshest critic. Her heart beat more passionately than anyone she had ever known, but she felt trapped within the plainest of exteriors. Blind to her simple, understated beauty, she spent much of her life wishing to be different.
For Charlotte, her appearance was a constant reminder of the unfairness of real life, and from the earliest age it forced a retreat into imaginary worlds where the heart always ruled the head and where those who loved passionately almost always triumphed. (Read more)

gather talks about this video by Epipheo which parodies the Twilight saga:

[I]t all comes down to a simple, but brilliant 3 step formula. One that has worked for centuries in literature and transitioned seamlessly into decades of cinema.
It goes something like this:
1. The female lead character is basically an empty shell.
2. The male lead represents everything women want in a man - multiplied by 10,000.
3. No one thinks it's strange that the two are completely devoted to each other.
Thinking about it, the theory makes perfect sense. Ever heard of Wuthering Heights? Titanic? (Tom Rose)

Sorry, but if the theory cannot be applied to a novel is to Wuthering Heights. Number One doesn't apply (Catherine an empty shell? It's not easy to identify with such a character); Number Two neither (Heathcliff a male-role model? Come on...) and Number Three again doesn't work (Cathy and Heathcliff's devotion is very misunderstood and everybody thinks is quite bizarre).

Esther Lombardi on About.com shares her love for Jane Eyre:

When I was a girl, I spent many hours buried in a book. I devoured them all--and would have rather spent time curled up with a volume than participated in most other activities... Perhaps that's why I enjoyed Jane Eyre so much. I was never an orphan, but her early experience could have mirrored that of the "everygirl" bookworm--reading, imagining and dreaming of a future I could never quite foretell.

The Dewsbury Reporter mentions briefly the exhibition The Life and Times of Patrick Brontë in Dewsbury at the Dewsbury Museum; a student who read Jane Eyre as summer reading describes the novel concisely in M-A Bear News:

Jane Eyre, which is about a woman who falls in love with an older man who keeps his insane wife chained up in the attic, and is later reduced to caring for him when a fire leaves him blind and mutilated. (Samuel Sexton)

Write Life, LLC interviews author Patricia Orvis:

Favorite Book: Wuthering Heights. I had to read it in high school, which was daunting at first, because I had to give a speech about it, so I needed to read it well. Yet, it ended up being so lovely and tragic a story that I couldn’t forget it. I read it about once a year now!

The Reader Online posts about Emily Brontë's poem A Little While and Les Brontë à Paris posts a French translation by Pierre Leyris of There Should Be No Despair For You; Fabien Legacy posts several Brontë country pictures; Law and Conversation recommends Jane Eyre; Book-n-Roll has seen Wuthering Heights 2009; Könyv, egó, entrópia reviews Wide Sargasso Sea.

Categories: Brontëites, Fiction, Jane Eyre, Poetry, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights