"The whole point of Jane Eyre is ... the character of Jane Eyre"

Shirley Dent at the Guardian Books Blog is quite indignant when it comes to U-Star books. You know those kinds of books where you are the main character instead of the actual protagonist. (And don't miss the graphic image that accompanies the article!).

I can see it might be quite fun to present Aunty Mabel (she's always been a laugh) with a saucy tome such as Fever in France where she's the star. But to kick Jane Eyre and Rochester out of bed so you can replace them with Jane Doe and Mr Rogers from down the road – are you serious?
The whole point of Jane Eyre is ... the character of Jane Eyre. Have we so lost sight of great literature, are we so irredeemably self-obsessed that we have forgotten why characterisation matters to literature and why it is at the heart of so many great novels? To wrap yourself into the leaves of a book and to believe in and engage with a character that lives – really lives – in the imagination of writer and reader is a literary pleasure hard to describe. I still believe in the imagined reality of Charlotte Brontë's heroine. The very name Jane Eyre brings to my mind the subtle anger and determined stoicism of that character. In a nutshell, Jane Eyre is not about you, just as Tom Sawyer is now and forever always will be Tom Sawyer and no one else.

The Mancunion is also indignant about an online poll where J.K. Rowling is at the top and Charlotte Brontë is nowhere to be seen.

An online survey of the Top Five female authors (albeit a survey with very few votes), has placed Sophie Kinsella and J K Rowling in its Top three. When considering the ‘Top’ authors, it seems that some people have forgotten the greats, the classics, the timeless masterpieces, in favour of those with recent places on bestseller lists and Hollywood success. Can we really brush aside the likes of Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë, whose greatest works have endured centuries and show no signs of losing popularity, to make room at the top for Becky Bloomwood and Harry Potter?

Well - surely it's mainly young adults and teenagers voting, hence the trendy authors. We don't think this sort of poll is anything to go by.

Anne Rice again today. It looks as if Powell's Books are about to sell 7,000 titles from her private library:

Included in the collection are editions signed or annotated by Ms. Rice, and many have her library markings on the spines. The collection showcases her love of literature and writing and reveals a true intellectual curiosity — classic philosophy, the Brontës, biblical archaeology, and Louisiana history are just a few of the subject areas represented.

Hollywood Reporter reviews the film Juliets:

None of documentary filmmaker Shen’s previous output (not even “Baseball Boys” which swept the board at 2009 Golden Horse Awards) can prepare us for the irresistibly sexy film language and narrative artistry of “Two Juliets.” In a seaside village in the 80s, a vaudeville performer’s daughter Julie (sizzling singer Lee Chien-na whose family runs genuine vaudeville shows) and a puppeteer’s son (River Huang) are forbidden to love because of their fathers’ feud. A mental asylum becomes their love nest — or prison?
This vignette comes closest to “Romeo and Juliet”’s plot yet its ending has a wicked sting that subverts the Bard’s motif of undying love. The atmosphere is as fantasmagorical as Victorian Gothics like “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” The narrative structure, which traverses two eras and connects two love-lorn women, has the sophistication of a feature length film. (Maggie Lee)

A hilarious comment is found in the transcript of a recent NPR programme:

To mark LeBron James' arrival in Miami, NPR member station WLRN and its newspaper partner, the Miami Herald, are sponsoring a contest - a poetry contest. [...]
[Michelle] NORRIS [host]: Thats pretty good. But most people I guess actually do know who LeBron James is.
Mr. GRECH [Dan Grech, radio news director of WLRN Miami Herald News]: Yeah. We had one - that was a haiku. And we had one person write in who said that LeBron James sounded like a character out of Wuthering Heights.
NORRIS: Now I can't get that image out of my head with those mutton chop sideburns.
Mr. GRECH: Exactly. LeBron James.

Taylor Swift's song You Belong with Me is again likened to Jane Eyre by The Phlog - a Boston Phoenix blog.

Kay Woodward - author of Jane Airhead - writes on Normblog about her love for Jane Eyre. Meg's Book Shelf reviews that novel too and The Lost Entwife reviews Jane by April Lindner. The Swindon Collection, Central Library has uploaded to Flickr the front page of a local 1944 stage version of Jane Eyre (by Helen Jerome). PauliVox reads Lines Written from Home on YouTube (a shame that among the accompanying images of Anne the Richmond portrait of Charlotte has slipped in though).

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