Jane Eyre: the mother of all psycho-in-the-attic stories

The Perpetual Post has an interesting reflection on chick-lit and how it's a sort of wildcard genre these days.

To me, and probably to other readers like me, the idea of the Chick Lit genre is reductive and condescending enough for me to just call the whole thing off. I choose my books based on what I am interested in, not on the fact that I am a woman; I avoid books which are classified as Chick Lit the way I avoid most products and services which are marketed ham-fistedly as “just for women”. And I’m probably missing out on some great books! After all, in this Chick Lit-y age, would Wuthering Heights fall under the Chick Lit umbrella? What about Pride and Prejudice? Or Anna Karenina, which is a book about women’s issues if there ever was one, although it was written by a man? (Molly Schoemann)

Agreed. We still think that anyone who includes Wuthering Heights under the chick-lit umbrella clearly hasn't read the book. The same applies to lots of other books, of course.

There are many men out there who have read and enjoyed Wuthering Heights, such as Tom Vance, a 23-year-old interviewed by the Des Moines Register.

One book everyone should read: "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Brontë. (Brianne Sanchez)

Another man not afraid of reading and/or confessing to liking the Brontës' output is Rich Garrett, the drama teacher at Pau-Wa-Lu Middle School (Gardnerville, Nevada). According to The Carson Valley Record-Courier,

Some of his favorite roles were Che in “Evita,” John Jasper in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” Father in “Children of Eden,” Archibald in “The Secret Garden” and Rochester in “Jane Eyre.”

The Brontës also feature in one of those reading polls. In this case the latest list of Whitcoulls Top 100 books, reported by - among many others - The New Zealand Herald.

He [Whitcoulls managing director Peter Kalan] said enduring romances had not lost their charm with Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice at number seven, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights at number 53, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre at number 72.

Romance is, of course, the other side of the 'chick-lit' coin. Same wildcard nature.

Fortunately, Charlie Higson takes a rather more refreshing look at these two novels in the Guardian.

What constitutes a horror book? A black and red cover? A primary objective to scare the shit out of the reader? A plug from Stephen King on the back? Most of the books on my list would probably be categorised in other genres first, but then – is Alien a sci-fi film or a horror film, or both? Is Wuthering Heights a ghost story? Is Jane Eyre the mother of all psycho-in-the-attic stories?

Buffalo News reviews Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs and mentions its Jane Eyre elements.

Moore said she was aiming for “a Midwestern novel that had both the town and the country in it;I wanted a governess novel a la ‘Jane Eyre’; and I wanted a novel that showed how all our national themes enter our personal lives in various ways.”
Along with the “Jane Eyre” element, the book has elements of both “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and “Alice in Wonderland.” “Both these books are about a girl’s odyssey. In both of these, a sturdy but sensitive girl encounters one bizarre thing after another as she traipses down a path,” she said. (Jean Westmoore)

Georgiana's Garden posts about Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter in Italian and Flickr user takethetoyz has uploaded a nice view of North Lees Hall, one of the possible models for the fiction Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Incidentally, North Lees Hall - among others - can be visited during the Heritage Open Days starting tomorrow until Sunday.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights