"All this time I've been trying to be Cathy when I should have been trying to be Jane"

Samantha Ellis brings a lot of Brontës to her discussion about role models in literature in The Guardian:

Last summer I was on the Yorkshire moors, making the pilgrimage to Top Withens and arguing (over the wuthering) with my best friend about whether we'd rather be Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw. Like Kate Bush, I chose wild, free, passionate Cathy over stoic, virtuous Jane. But my friend found Cathy silly, a snob who betrays Heathcliff for Edgar and makes them all unhappy, while Jane makes her own way. As we reached the top, I had a moment of realisation: all this time I've been trying to be Cathy when I should have been trying to be Jane. (...)
Reading around the books, through writers' biographies, diaries and letters, I tried to work out why some writers forced their heroines to give up and why some were brave enough to try to make their characters' dreams come true. And I wanted to know how the writers' own stories ended, what really happened, which stories they didn't tell. Take Charlotte and Emily Brontë: Charlotte fell in love, got her heart broken, exorcised her demons by writing them out, and married wisely. Emily never got to fall in love – imagine what she might have written if she had. Maybe it would be more interesting to have to choose between Charlotte and Emily than Jane Eyre and Cathy Earnshaw.
I might be older but I'm not wiser; it's still Emily. Not least because I read a telling little story about Charlotte's husband berating the women of Haworth for impiously hanging out their washing in the churchyard, and that makes me think he must have been a bit of a prig. Knowing more about the writers made me realise why so many of them left their heroines on the brink. Because interesting lives are difficult. (...)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
For years, Emily Brontë's novel was my template for raging, tempestuous love (the only kind). Cathy, the headstrong heroine, refuses to become ladylike and runs wild on the moors with brooding hero Heathcliff. Their love is so strong that even death fails to part them! But now, the idea of Cathy dying of a broken heart and haunting Heathcliff (trying to, as Kate Bush put it, grab his soul) seems less appealing, especially because it all comes from her betraying Heathcliff for puny, sallow Edgar.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune recommends summer readings:

"The Eyre Affair," by Jasper Fforde (Penguin, $15) A delightfully unique heist novel that takes place in an imagined, alternate London where literature is so valuable that police have a special unit to fight literary crimes. Fforde's page-turning tale focuses on detective Thursday Next, who seeks to take down criminal mastermind Acheron Hades, who's guilty of numerous literary crimes, including stealing the manuscript of Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" and plotting to kidnap Jane Eyre. Quirky and wonderful fun for book lovers. (Chuck Leddy)

Screenrant talks about the upcoming remake of Anna Karenina by Joe Wright and compares its gestation to Jane Eyre's:

Filmmaker Joe Wright faces a situation with his upcoming Anna Karenina adaptation – similar to that which director Cary Fukunaga faced earlier this year with Jane Eyre. Wright is attempting to realize a story on the big screen that has already been adapted for either the film or television medium countless times in the past (over twenty occasions, for the Leo Tolstoy novel in particular). (Sandy Schaefer)

The Washington Post recommends reading Jane by April Lindner:

Some teens read classics willingly, and not just for English class. If you like fairy tales, mythology and classics, check out Jane by April Lindner, a contemporary take on Jane Eyre that recasts the heroine as a nanny who falls for her employer, a bad-boy rock star. Fantasies are often written as series, which is apt; readers can grow up with their fictional counterparts.  (Katie Aberbach)

The State (South Carolina) has a nice article about Jane Eyre:

As I am wont to do — twice annually is my habit — this writer took upon herself of late the task of removing and replacing each of the dusty denizens of her home library, whence she came upon one long-forgotten volume: “Jane Eyre,” purchased when said writer wished to convey to her four female progeny that others than old or dead white men bore responsibility for production of such novels as were deemed “classic.”
So enchanted did I immediately become with said volume — between whose maroon cloth-bound covers reposes the story of an orphan girl who becomes governess to the presumed illegitimate though comely progeny of a well-spoken man of crude assemblage — that I began to transport it with me everywhere. (Read more) (Christine Schweickert)

The Greenville News asks local personalities about the book which left the biggest mark in their lives:

Dr. Susanna Ashton: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë.
Ashton, now an associate professor of English at Clemson University, was a college student when she first picked up the Emily Brontë classic.
But the book, with its story of tortured romantic yearning, didn’t resonate with Ashton for the usual reasons.
“What was shocking to me is what a terrible book it is,” Ashton recalled. “It’s about terrible people, doing terrible things to each other. … And yet, it’s such a shockingly awful, awful, dreadful novel, that it’s genius, and it stays with me forever.”
The book’s unhappy resolution up-ended Ashton’s view of how literature should be, but it also challenged her to think about the world in a different light.
And ultimately, “Wuthering Heights” made its mark on Ashton’s life. “I think I became a reader and a scholar and an English professor and maybe a more complicated person because of a book that gave me no closure and drew strong, powerful emotions and made me really angry.” (Donna Isbell Walker)

The Tennessean recommends a re-reading of Jane Eyre; Words Into Bytes, Let's Talk About Movies, wayfarings, the film365 project and El Baúl de Utilerías (in Spanish) review Jane Eyre 2011; For the Love of Lit... discusses the American and British posters of the movie; Literature in English and other Things posts about Emily Brontë in Portuguese; Abigail's Ateliers is in Haworth for the Brontë Society Weekend and shares some personal experiences in the Brontë Parsonage.

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