Chronically dreary?

Kate Spicer in The Sunday Times feels the character Emma Bovary is still a valid one. Not so for other classical heroines:

The problem with the popular literary heroines is they’re all, however flawed, wholemeal 19th-century characters. Having been force-fed the greats in school, my prevailing thought was: “I know they were different times and the suffragettes hadn’t happened yet, but why are they all so wet, especially that Tess of the d’Urbervilles?”
Am I outing myself as a thicko by saying I enjoyed Jane Eyre, the book, but Jane the person was chronically dreary?

The Whichita Eagle lists several new and notable  books at the local Eighth Day Books:

“The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects” by Deborah Lutz (W.W. Norton, $27.95) – A detailed biography of a literary family that has enthralled readers for nearly two centuries. Victorian literature scholar Deborah Lutz illuminates the complex and fascinating lives of the Brontës through the things they wore, stitched, wrote on and inscribed.

The BBC Radio 4 programme Something Understood talks about institutions and reads from Jane Eyre among others:

Mark Tully discusses the impact and the power institutions have in our lives. From corporations, banks and armies to schools and hospitals, whatever we think of them, institutions are an enormous part of our lives. So how do they influence us and how should we live with them?
In conversation with Professor Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a leading researcher into mental health in the military, Mark Tully investigates the positive power of institutions as well as the dangers of institutionalisation.
There's music from Henry Priestland, the Buena Vista Social Club and the Band of the Grenadier Guards and readings ranging from Charlotte Bronte to screenwriter William Styron.
The readers are Polly Frame, Peter Marinker and Francis Cadder.
Producer: Frank Stirling
August 9, 6:05 AM; 11:30 PM

The Independent talks with Stephen Kelman, short-listed for the Man Booker prize:

It was while growing up there that Kelman, who was born in 1976, decided he wanted to become a writer: “From the age of six, I was a prodigious reader. As a child, I didn’t understand most of Wuthering Heights and The Mill on the Floss but I knew I wanted to write stories. I kept writing but I studied marketing at university, in part because I had this rather high ideal that I’d find my voice as a writer in my own time.” (Max Liu)

Berliner Morgenpost (Germany) interviews the actress Kate Mara:

Durften Sie als Kind keine Comics lesen?
Nein, das war es nicht. Ich habe mich damals eher für so Klassiker wie Charlotte Brontës "Jane Eyre" begeistert. Und ich liebte alte Filme. Ich möchte immer noch eine Rolle spielen, die in einem ganz anderen Jahrhundert angesiedelt ist. (Rüdiger Sturm) (Translation)

La Folla del XXI Secolo (Italy) reviews Il segno del telecomando by Biagio Proietti and Maurizio Giannotti:

Erano i tempi in cui potevi vedere Delitto e castigo in prima serata, Il dottor Jekill e Mister Hyde con Albertazzi, Piccole donne, Cime tempestose, Il romanzo di un giovane povero, La cittadella di Cronin interpretato da un grande Alberto Lupo. (Gordiano Lupi) (Translation)

Lovelybooks (in German) reviews Wuthering Heights. The Facebook wall of the Sezione Italiana of the Brontë Society posts a acouple of images of Maddalena De Leo visiting Penzance with a descendant of the Branwell side of the Brontë family.