'In two pages every doubt is swept clean from our minds'

Intelligent Magazine focuses on Jane Eyre in an article well worth reading.

No novel ever shared a point of view more effectively than "Jane Eyre". From the minute the child Jane is unfairly locked in the Red Room by her vicious aunt, Charlotte Brontë gets us on her side. We see what she sees; we fall in love with ugly, rude Mr Rochester as she does. The voice of “Jane Eyre” has no distance. It is raw, persuasive, exhilarating, just as it was in 1847.
Brontë had a short, hard life, dying at 38 of sickness in pregnancy, having already lost all five of her siblings, including the writers Anne and Emily. Her life was ruled by her father Patrick, vicar of Haworth. Her biographer, Mrs Gaskell, said he had a “strong, passionate, Irish nature...compressed down with resolute stoicism”. The same could be said of his daughter’s writing. The substance of "Jane Eyre" is a gothic fairy tale: an orphan, a powerful man, his mad wife, all laced with reversals of fortune. Yet the tone is flattened with Yorkshire terseness. "I have no wish", Jane tells Rochester, “to talk nonsense.”
“Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama?” asks Brontë in a later novel, “Shirley”. "Calm your expectations…Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning." It is these qualities that make "Jane Eyre" thrilling. Unlike Emily’s wilder imagination, Charlotte’s fantasy is anchored in the recognisable emotions of a small, plain governess. After meeting Mr Rochester, Jane stares at the moon and feels her "veins glow", but is brought back to earth by a clock in the hall. "I turned from moon and stars, opened a side-door, and went in." Brontë knows what it is to be one of the millions “in silent revolt against their lot”. Jane is so “tenacious of life” that your veins glow too. “We open ‘Jane Eyre’," Virginia Woolf said, "and in two pages every doubt is swept clean from our minds." (Bee Wilson) (Read more)

DC MetroTheaterArts reviews Dizzy Miss Lizzy Roadside Revue's The Brontës as seen on stage at the Capital FallFringe giving it 5 stars.

The show basically takes us through the lives of all four siblings until they are ushered into the afterlife by a hoodie-wearing death (Jason Wilson).  Now you might think that the lives of the Brontës would not make for a series of rollicking rock songs (and you would be wrong).  We begin with Branwell (Rob Meuller) {who stepped in at the last minute and did an amazing job}) as he drinks and gambles himself to death while trying to write as well as his sisters (which he does not).  We then move on to Emily Brontë (Dani Stoller) who tries to describe Wuthering Heights but is kicked off the mic by her siblings. Dani then becomes Heathcliff (the anti hero of the famous novel) and the rest of the cast shifts from character to character as they describe the story. It ends with Heathcliff going crazy and Emily Brontë exiting this life via an upstage curtain.
Next we discover Anne Brontë’s (Laura Keena) trials and tribulations in dealing with her drunken brother, her search for love, and desire for fulfillment. She finally recognizes that her books are definitely an acquired taste before she, too, is led into death’s embrace. And finally we deal with Charlotte Brontë’s (Debra Buonaccorsi) desire to be recognized for her genius. As her deceased siblings come back, they help her realize that, while she wasn’t rich or famous in life, her books have helped shape all the generations since.  And with that realization she enters the afterlife and we are treated to a final song. (Cyle Durkee)

My Love-Haunted Heart has posted about a 1961 edition of Wuthering Heights with a priceless cover. Antti Alanen - Film Diary posts about the 2011 of the novel. Las mejores cosas al amanecer writes in Catalan about Jane Eyre. The Page Turner reviews Tina Connolly's Ironskin; WutheringHikes tweets a hilarious picture.