Groundbreaking chick lit novels with depth

A couple of Brontë mentions have us shaking our head today. This Post Crescent columnist (also a high school senior, so perhaps allowances should be made) makes a sweeping statement:

I recently had the great opportunity to tour the birthplaces of some of history’s greatest literary works. I was on a vacation to England with my mother and, as I had chosen the location, she encouraged me to plan all our stops. So, in our itinerary, I included London, home to Sherlock Holmes; Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare; Whitby, the site of the abbey that inspired Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”; and Haworth, the hometown of the Brontë sisters. [...]
During and in the week after this adventure, I did a lot of thinking about those literary masters and mistresses, as well as their works. While I did find a great deal of inspiration and research — I’ve produced five new story ideas as a result — I also found delving into the lives of my literary heroes and heroines to be bittersweet because it forced me to ask myself, “Where have all the innovators and geniuses of the literary world gone?”
I’m an avid reader of Stephen King and various young adult series. Modern writers do produce highly entertaining and wildly popular works, often with quite brilliant aspects. For instance, King is a mastermind when it comes to novel endings.
However, since the days of the Brontës and Edgar Allan Poe, little progress has been made in the way of literary innovation. Eras and themes have come and gone, of course. The cycle of romanticism and realism is evidence.
However, in the early 19th century, the horror, gothic, mystery, science fiction, feminist, and romance novels all were born. Since then, little new and widely impactful additions have been made to the literary world, except for activist novels, though even those have been a concept explored since “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and long before. (Rachel Martens)

Perhaps 20th century literature is not studied at high school? Virginia Woolf and James Joyce to name but two who did make some progress.

And this is Little Rock Book Examiner's list of 'Chick lit novels with depth':

From at least the nineteenth century on the world of literature has offered versions of the chick lit genre. But how often does one find a chick lit with depth. So many chick lit books are frothy tales, filled with shallow characters and fun, but often trite storylines.
While these books definitely have their place; light summer reading on the beach, for example, there’s no reason why even a humorous chick lit can’t have depth. There have been some authors, through the ages, who have managed to produce entertaining books for women that also had substance.
Here are some of the best and most prominent chick lits with depth.
“Jane Eyre” – Charlotte Brontë
“Rebecca” – Daphne Du Maurier
“The Light in the Piazza” – Elizabeth Spencer
“Gone With the Wind” – Margaret Mitchell
“Emma” – Jane Austen
“The Devil Wears Prada” – Lauren Weisberger
“Shanghai Girls” – Lisa See
“Sister Carrie” -- Theodore Dreiser (Jennifer Lafferty)

We had to go and lie down for a while after reading that.

Old-Time Radio Examiner lists what was on the 'wireless' the night before D-Day:

Lux Radio Theater: Jane Eyre (CBS, 1944)—My name is Jane Eyre. I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. Money and position were all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word and religion, too often merely a mask to cover bigotry and meanness—Thus does Loretta Young (in Joan Fontaine's film role) launch the narration in this transcendent radio adaptation of the seventh film version of Charlotte Brontë's classic, in which Young plays the often-abused orphan girl hired as governess to the young ward of a mysterious manor lord with whom she falls in love . . . and with whom she reaches the threshold of marriage, when his and his home's secret, the cause of several unsettling events, stands to be revealed fatefully enough. You can say Lux Radio Theater improved, even deepened a little further from here (didn't it always, for the most part?), but the show just didn't get better than this. (Almost. The music gets a little over the top in the heavy-dramatisation department, but don't let that spoil your pleasure.) Mrs. Reed: Agnes Moorehead, also reprising her film role. Additional cast: Unknown. Host/producer: Cecil B. DeMille. Music: Louis Silvers. Adapted from the John Houseman screenplay. (Jeff Kallman)

The Halifax Courier publishes a letter from a reader on the wind farm plans. Steve98052 posts about Wuthering Heights 2011 and Secret Life of the American Newly-Wed writes briefly about reading the novel. Roof Beam Reader reviews Agnes Grey. VeganYANerds has read April Lindner's Jane.