Christian Grey 'is not a misunderstood, romantic Heathcliff'

The Boar has selected the 'Top Five Romantic Reads for Valentine’s Day' and one of them is

5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
A plucky young heroine, a mysterious older man, a moonlit proposal in an Eden-like orchard. What’s not to love? It’s not hard to see the appeal of life in a grand house with the man of your dreams. It’s a story of unconditional love that reveals how even the most unlikely couples can make it work. (Sara Gregory)

The Fashion Spot would rather watch the film and includes it on a list of '11 Romantic Netflix Movies to Watch This Valentine’s Day'.

Unrequited Love: Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre taught us everything we need to know about playing hard to get, and if you’re looking for a story of unrequited love—filled with enough gray misty moors to satisfy anyone feeling dark-hearted this Valentine’s Day—this reinvention of a classic starring Mia Wasikowska will be the perfect match. (Ellen Freeman)

A confession from a St. Helena Star columnist:

Be they Harlequin, Regency or teenage vampire-themed, I’ve never enjoyed romances as much as I probably should. The formula seems so pat and predictable. The few I do appreciate tend toward the tragic (“Romeo & Juliet”), the dark (“Wuthering Heights”) and the slyly unconventional (“Silver Linings Playbook” and “Punch-Drunk Love” -- showing the latter film to a former significant other who’d been expecting the standard boy-meets-girl pablum precipitated a negative reaction of such vociferousness that I resolved to keep my subsequent date night movie selections firmly within Nicholas Sparks territory). But that being said (at some considerable length, I admit), I love Valentine’s Day, in large part because our community always gets into the spirit of the holiday, as you are about to see. (Aunt Helena)

The Huffington Post also mentions the novel in an article about relationships that don't work.

Most of us have loved and lost. Most of us have chosen foolishly. Good novels are full of such mad heroes and heroines. The unrequited, the impossible, the unsolvable dilemmas of status or distance or plain old bad timing. But love perseveres in these books; it perseveres to the point of lasting art. This essay is about these pierced ones, the ones whose paths were warped by love. Was Cupid somehow right to mark them in this way? Should they thank him for giving them a kind of majesty?
I think they should. Yes, we have the Bovaries, the Kareninas, the Montagues and the Capulets as cautionary tales. But do these works really caution us to avoid passion? Hardly, when it's the hunger for passion that makes us such avid readers and voyeurs. For many women, in fact, the "tragic" Wuthering Heights is nothing less than an amorous bible. Heathcliff had no game and he had no shades of grey. He was coal black and bloody red, thundering and stomping without the least ambiguity. When Catherine memorably says, "I am Heathcliff" - confessing this while married to a sensible man, no one throws the book across the room. (Sonia Taitz)

Similarly, Catherine Johnson writes in The Guardian about 'why love hurts'.

When I was the right age I never expected to see someone like me in a book. Books and stories, film and TV were all for white people. The romances I loved included Jane Eyre (Mr Rochester was a bit ooky but Jane’s heartache was utterly relatable).

Catholic Online selects a quote from Wuthering Heights as part of its '40 beautiful quotes about love that will ignite the flame in your heart'.

Times Live (South Africa) goes straight to the point:

Ahead of Valentine's Day, the international condom manufacturer is encouraging couples to put down their copy of Emily Brontë and reach wuthering heights of physical passion instead. (Andile Ndlovu)

And this of course leads to Fifty Shades of Grey. Variety reviews the film adaptation:

Relying on the performances of two appealing, fresh-faced leads with little prior onscreen baggage, the filmmakers have turned their version of “Fifty Shades of Grey” into a sly tragicomedy of manners — Jane Austen with a riding crop, if you will, or perhaps Charlotte Brontë with a peacock feather — that extracts no shortage of laughs from the nervous tension between Ana’s romantic dream come true and the psychosexual nightmare raging just beneath the surface. (Justin Chang)

This Women's Agenda columnist discusses Christian Grey:

He is not a hero. He is not a misunderstood, romantic Heathcliff who needs to be tamed by the right woman. He is controlling, abusive and manipulative - which would be fine if he were the villain of the story. But he’s not; he is glorified. And he is dangerous. (Corina Thorose)

The Guardian reviews the play Boa by Clara Brennan,

a two-hander featuring real-life husband-and-wife team Harriet Walter and Guy Paul, a second edition of Jane Eyre gets a savaging. (Lyn Gardner)

And another play, Murder by the Book, is reviewed by Green Bay Press Gazette:

In the script, the Raven Society is holding its annual meeting to select the best mystery book of the year. The membership in this sacred club is secret, even amongst themselves. Each member attends the three-day meeting, cut off from the rest of the world at the Dickens House, disguised as a famous author.
This year, a new member is being introduced to the club — William Shakespeare. Spouting poetry, he instantly captures the hearts of Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë and Louisa May Alcott. But romance is interrupted when Edgar Allan Poe reads a nasty bit of correspondence announcing that each member of the society will die. Only mystery maven Agatha Christie takes the message seriously, but, alas, it’s too late. Emily Dickinson is the first to die, quickly followed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Terror stalks the meeting as even the indomitable Mark Twain disappears. Only one thing is for sure — one of the famous authors is trying to kill the competition.

The Southern Utah Independent features Brigham's Playhouse take on Jane Eyre. The Musical:

Our production of the musical drama "Jane Eyre" is heading into its final weeks of the run—that means you only have three weeks left to see this superb cast in such a heartfelt show. And what better time to see the classic story of true love than a holiday to celebrate all that is romance?

Luna Station Quarterly reviews Ironskin by Tina Connolly;  Little House on the Circle posts an improbable The Cat in the Hat meets Jane Eyre situation.