Every girl who’s read Jane Eyre has had that feeling

Caitlin Moran continues singing the praises of Jane Eyre. We love how she describes reading it for the first time in the Books that Made Me section of The Guardian.

The book that changed my life

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I read it when I was 11, and even though I was a girl in Wolverhampton in 1986 wearing a polyester blouse from a jumble sale, and she was a girl in a castle on a moor in a year I assumed to be roughly “Bonnet05 AD”, I could hear her talking to me. Of course, every girl who’s read Jane Eyre has had that feeling. That’s why it’s one of the greatest books ever written. But because the first “serious” book I ever read was a girl, a “plain” girl – not beautiful, not a princess, not a temptress or a cipher or a “sassy” kung fu scientist, but a plain, poor girl – just talking to anyone who picked up her book and wanted to listen, I had no idea that women were thought to be lesser writers than men, or that great literature was still thought to be a man’s game. I just presumed there must be millions of books out there where girls would tell you their stories. I thought that’s what books were. And, as it turned out, I spent most of the rest of my life only reading books by female authors, so I was right.

Mancunion has some tips for living through lockdown, including

Go for a walk, Brontë style

Walks have long been a staple of our romantic heroes and heroines. Whether it’s merely a turn around the dining room, Bingley style, to gossip, or if you’re more on the troubled side like our Jane Eyre, it’s time to walk around the Peak district and stare in angst into the distance, wondering whether your paramour has indeed got a woman “self-isolating” in the attic.

The best part is that, at least in this lockdown, you can meet up with one other person outside as long as you stick to social distancing rules. What does that mean for you lustful readers? You’ve guessed it, it’s time for sexually tense eye contact from afar! Perfect your Heathcliff style brooding and let that girl know that no, she shouldn’t marry that well-to-do gentleman (or at least choose him for her support bubble). (Rubym)

On the other side of the pond, The Rogersville Review offers some ideas too, sans the tongue-in-cheek.

The library is a great idea too. My hometown library has been so sweet and kind to everyone. You go online, pick out your books, place a request, go by and pick them up. I’m looking forward to getting cozy in my warm house with an English Gothic, like Jane Eyre. I have a picture of sitting on the couch with the cat, hot tea nearby, a soft blanket, snow gently falling outside and swooning over Mr. Rochester. Yep Yep, it’s going to be a good winter. (Teresa Kindred)

Gay Times features Madeira and tracks down the island's Jane Eyre connection.

Then I remembered Jane Eyre – the plainest of all the Janes – having a vague connection to Madeira, in between fending off bonkers Bertha and coming over all coy on the Yorkshire Moors. Fair dos to Charlotte Brontë, though, that was a cracking book. (Stephen Unwin)

Daily Mail updates readers on the latest goings-on on EastEnders.

Kush has taken refuge in Sonia and Whitney’s attic – clearly been reading Jane Eyre – but then heads to Phil’s to plead his case. Phil isn’t budging, however. (Jaci Stephen)

The News (Nigeria) portrays Emily Brontë as a firm believer in nurture (as opposed to nature).

Again, the persuasive argument of nurture or environment over the claims ofblood or sheer biologism is eternally sketched in fictive terms by Emily Brontë in her novel entitled Wuthering Heights. Mr.Earnshaw, the Yorkshire householder, chances upon an infant on a deserted road, abandoned to die by its helpless parents for reason(s) the novelist does not vouchsafe. The Good Samaritan adopts and raises the foundling called Heathcliff in his mountaintop home, unseasonably buffeted by rough winds and tempests. The point is, Heathcliff’s home is located strategically on the craggy ramparts of an eminence called “Wuthering Heights” whereas at the feet of the mountain is an earthly swathe of Edenic plenitude, an Arcadian idyll in which a genteel family, the Lintons, live, distinguished by the trappings of politeness and privilege. Whilst Heathcliff exemplifies all the boorish and loutish disposition of brutish nature, his counterpart, Linton comes across as a prim and proper gentleman, refined in taste and deportment. What Emily Brontë, the 19th-century English novelist is trying to tell her readers is that: environment is everything; it discounts the cradle and directs the feet of the pilgrim along the path of destiny with his iron sway. Environment, in a word, is fate. (Dr. Chris Anyokwu)