Is Mr Rochester a 'sociopath'?

Ilkley Gazette looks at old news stories, including this one from 100 years ago:

100 Years Ago - 1918
Recently Mrs Mary Ann Slade, of Hastings, celebrated her 95th birthday. She is in wonderful health and spirits and retains all her faculties. Her memory is extraordinary. Mrs. Slade was born in Leeds in1823, and at the age of ten was sent to a boarding school at Westfield House, Rawdon. Whilst there she made the acquaintance of Charlotte Brontë, who was governess to the children of Mr. White, Acacia Lodge, Rawdon. Mrs Slade was for many years a frequent visitor to Ilkley; being still remembered by some of the older residents. (Jim Seton)

The New York Times' By the Book interviews writer Lauren Groff.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? To some readers, Mr. Rochester is a romantic hero, but in truth he’s a sociopath who keeps his grieving wife locked in the attic and tries to gaslight poor, plain, abused Jane Eyre then marry her bigamously. Charlotte Brontë was sly and brilliant and I feel sure she knew he was a villain. The great Jean Rhys made his villainy wickedly explicit in “Wide Sargasso Sea.”

On Women's Web (India), the author of the month is Shakhi.

What do you enjoy reading? Does any of it help your writing? I love reading, period.
If I find nothing else I will end up reading paper bags.
I love the old English classics. I love Charles Dickens. Paulo Coelho, Jeffrey Archer, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë are all my favorite. I love reading poetry Keats, Byron, Shakespeare.
I love Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple. I enjoy psychological thrillers. The list of my favorite novels will feature War and Peace, Wuthering Heights, The Devotion of Suspect X, Little Women, The Heart of Darkness, The Little Prince, and so on.
I love reading, period.

The Guardian talks to writer Sophie Mackintosh, whose

grandfather gave her books such as Jane Eyre to read when she was still very young, and Stephen King novels, which she admits were hardly age appropriate. (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett)

The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Gerald Murnane's Collected Short Stories.

There are other times, especially some of the pieces from Emerald Blue, when the narrative risks too successfully containing these feelings; when roads too circuitous risk leaving their image-towns marooned. This instance of recoiling from the narrative's force is captured powerfully by a scene Murnane refers to from Wuthering Heights, when the ghost of Catherine spills through the window of the narrator, who reacts by dragging her wrist back-and-forth across the broken panes of glass.
The question of what fiction can express points to something Murnane dwells on with a unique intensity. Possibly the great theme of his work is the paradoxical relationship – one as profoundly of separation as of intimacy – between the writer and the reader. In various ways, he asks: what can make the crossing between a serious narrator, and a trusted and discerning reader, and what, finally, and despite everything, cannot?
This provides the impetus for some of his most unforgettable pieces, such as Stone Quarry, which conceives of a community of writers who must communicate through fiction alone, and The Interior of Gaaldine, which signalled his first retirement from fiction with the words: "The text ends at this point." (Louis Klee)

The Scotsman reviews Under The Rock: The Poetry Of A Place by Benjamin Myers.

Hughes looms as large as Scout Rock itself. Although Myers evokes him with all the Heathcliff-style machismo and brooding – and I think Myers relies too much on the problematic biography by Jonathan Bate – what he does evoke is a more vulnerable and innocent Hughes. (Stuart Kelly)

Página 12 (Argentina) reviews the film Lady Macbeth and is reminded of Wuthering Heights.

 Pero si los interiores son daneses, cuando Katherine atraviesa el umbral de esa jaula vidriada que es la casa parece ingresar directamente en los páramos de Cumbres borrascosas, ambientada en Yorkshire. Hay otra cosa que Lady Macbeth tiene en común con esta novela de Emily Brontë, a la que se consideró infernal: si en Cumbres borrascosas se despliega una historia familiar en el tiempo para mostrar, sobre todo en Heathcliff, bajo qué circunstancias se puede producir un tirano, Lady Macbeth comprime en 90 minutos un proceso parecido y deja abiertos algunos interrogantes, de los cuales el más actual quizás sea si es posible que una mujer lleve adelante una toma del poder sin convertirse en algo muy distinto a la idea de mujer que ese mismo orden le impuso. (Marina Yuszczuk) (Translation)

My Jane Eyre Collection posts about the facsimile edition of Jane Eyre. On the Brussels Brontë Blog, Eric Ruijssenaars looks into the death of Julia Wheelwright in Brussels. Finally an alert in Shelton,CT:

Plumb Memorial Library
Repeat Reads – On Friday, May 25 at 6 p.m., Adults re-read (or read for the first time) classic favorites from youth. Come debate the merits and values, share tea and snacks, drop in for a reader’s Happy Hour. This month’s selection is The Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. (Shelton Herald)