The columnist at Stuff's
Reading Is Bliss confesses her love for Heathcliff once again:
Apart from Rhett [Butler], my other all-time favourite literary romantic heroes are, in no particular order: Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights), Adam Trask (East of Eden), Henry DeTamble (The Time Traveller's Wife), Hamlet, Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), Severus Snape (Harry Potter), Lancelot (Le Morte d'Arthur, thanks to my English lit studies) and going back even further to my childhood...the Beast, from Beauty & The Beast.
Clearly, there is a pattern here. What it is I haven't quite figured out yet. It's not tall, dark and handsome, because Gatsby was blonde and blue-eyed and the Beast was, well, furry and hunchbacked, and seriously grinchy.
But, I think the way that literature has spoilt me for real-life romance is that it has made me set the bar for men and relationships at "impossibly high". I don't want a conventional romance, with roses and poetry by moonlight. I don't want Keats, as beautifully as he writes. I want a man who is as strong as he is smart and soulful, who treats me as an intellectual equal and, most important, as human and flawed as he is, is also loyal and kind and true. With the ability to stay emotionally steadfast to one woman (who happens to be me).
And yes, if I'm being honest, I obviously like men with a bit of a colourful past. Men who are dark horses, so to speak. Reformed bad boys, don't we all secretly crave them? Not too reformed, just enough that they still have the rattlesnake's bite, but without the venom.
Do you think literature has spoilt you for romance? (Karen Tay)
A recap of a
Game of Thrones episode (S3E6) in the
Sydney Morning Herald states that (SPOILERS AHEAD!),
Arya is still in the forest near Riverrun, practising her bow work with the Merry Men, sorry, the Brotherhood. She's good, Anguy tells her, but could be better. This tutorial is interrupted by the arrival of a touring Kate Bush, aka Stannis' right-hand demon spawner Melisandre.
But the Red Witch doesn't get around to belting out Wuthering Heights, rather, she's here to interrogate Thoros of Myr about his failure to convert Sir Robert Baratheon (Remember him? Fat guy? Liked a drink? Lost a fight with a wild boar?) to the Lord of Light. (Natalie Bochenski)
While a columnist at
The Huffington Post writes:
I think part of the issue is that male-assigned people are expected to behave like men, whatever that means. I am a man (obviously), and although I like having a beer and watching football, I also like to dance to "Wuthering Heights" while pretending I'm Kate Bush. Is that what behaving like a man is? I have no idea, and my belief is that people should behave in any way they choose to, as long as it does no harm to others. I think that's a fair way of thinking, right? (Daniel Browne)
The
Dayton News reports the results of a local group of dance students, one of which 'performed “
Wuthering Heights” and tied for 12th place overall'. Another student featured in
Index (Hungary) tells about mentioning Charlotte Brontë among others in an exam.
Il mediano (Italy) uses
Jane Eyre as an example of a novel/fil which displays gender-based violence:
Infatti anche se con modalità diverse oggi si ripropongono la violenza di genere, come in ”Jane Eyre” , il romanzo di Charlotte Brontë uscito nel 1847,da cui è stato tratto l’omonimo film (Annamaria Franzoni) (Translation)
The
Brontë Parsonage Facebook page reports that,
Michael Portillo was filming at the Parsonage today for his 'Great British Railway Journeys', talking about links between the Brontës and railways - and it may surprise you to know there are a few. Here's one to start you off: How did Charlotte and Emily fund their trip to study French in Brussels? Answer: with money given them by Aunt Branwell after the sale of her railway stock.
Novel Day posts about
Jane Eyre and its 2011 adaptation.
Daisy Dolls is working on the corset for her Jane Eyre doll.
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