Travelling from your armchair

Beware of spoilers in this article on the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney's Normal People. From The Independent:

From the moment Prince Charming put a glass slipper onto Cinderella’s dainty feet, we’ve been taught that crossing class divides makes romance doubly as sweet. Happy-ever-afters mean that one person gets saved and the other gets to save them. Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet gets Mr Darcy but she also gets his £10,000 a year and the large estate of Pemberley. In Pretty Woman, Vivian’s (Julia Roberts) straight-talking working girl sass is what millionaire corporate trader Edward (Richard Gere) needs to find happiness. Madwoman in the attic aside, Jane Eyre eventually goes from teacher to lover under Mr Rochester’s brooding glare.
This isn’t how it works out in Normal People, nor in real life. (Annie Lord)

According to Scout magazine (Philippines), 'Society’s hatred of love stories may just boil down to misogyny'.

It’s true, not all romance stories are created equal. Criticism is valid when it comes to certain books. On the other hand, romance books of the past are considered canon in literature. Think of the Brontë sisters with “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights,” or the whole author page of Jane Austen. Just as how Shakespeare catered to the mainstream and the “lowbrow” during his time, it’s now considered high culture. There’s something about time that distances them to us, turning them into something revered. (Katrina Maisie Cabral)

We don't think it's just time, though.

Times of India has selected '10 interesting women characters from literature!' (such enthusiasm!).

02/11​ Antoinette Cosway from ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys
The novel is a feminist and anti-colonial response to Charlotte Brontë’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847), describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage. The daughter of ex-slave owners and the story's principal character, Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl. Eventually her husband brings her to England and locks her in his attic. She becomes delusional and paranoid and ultimately burns down the house.[...]
06/11 ​Jane Eyre from ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë
The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane begins the novel as an angry, rebellious, 10-year-old orphan and gradually develops into a sensitive, artistic, maternal, and fiercely independent young woman. She rejects two marriage offers because she understands she will have to forfeit her independence. Only after she has attained the financial independence and self-esteem to maintain a marriage of equality does Jane allow herself to marry Mr. Rochester.

A contributor to Trinidad & Tobago Newsday shares the pleasures of travelling without leaving the house, ie. reading.

My students in YTC understood that the best means of escape when you are confined is to lose yourself in a book. Even in lockdown, Jahmai used to say, “No one can take away my freedom. I can go anywhere I want. I can travel back in time and read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or go to Africa in H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. (Debbie Jacob)

The Wichita Eagle has a similar recommendation:

3. A charming escape — I’m not usually an escapist reader. I like deep, dark, sometimes soul-crushing literary fiction — novels like “A Little Life” and “My Absolute Darling.” But when pandemic news started getting me down, I reached for “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery, and it soothed my troubled soul. Other escapist options: “O Pioneers!” by Willa Cather, “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë, or anything by Jane Austen. (Suzanne Perez Tobias)

The Times features young people who have gone back to live with their parents during lockdown.

It wasn’t how I’d imagined my return to my childhood home three years after flying the nest to live in Dalston, east London. I turned up on my mum’s doorstep in Putney in tears, refusing to come inside the house.
I was sure I’d caught coronavirus. A colleague who sat next to me had tested positive, and I’d had flu-like symptoms with a fever. All logic went out the window and, aged 24, I went into toddler-tantrum mode. I was hysterical, convinced I’d be locked up in hospital isolation for months, like Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic. So I ran (took a £45 Uber) straight to my mum’s from the office. (Georgina Roberts)

The University of Otago shares the short essay 'From Austen to the Brontёs: A Literary Tour of England'. The Brontës' sewing on AnneBrontë.org.