Willful young women and curmudgeonly men

We have a couple of articles on Netflix's Bridgerton which mention the Brontës. The Huffington Post has several reporters discuss it:

Friends, you may watch Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë adaptations with the kids, but save this one for adults-only time. I’m blushing right now, in the interest of full disclosure. (Claire Fallon)

Decider goes along the same lines:

Bridgerton is not a pious or historically accurate period drama. It is hardly a match in gravitas for any BBC Dickens, Austen, or Brontë adaptation. But that’s not what Bridgerton is. As an adaptation of romance author Julia Quinn’s beloved Bridgerton novels, the show is pitch perfection. Creator Chris Van Dusen has brought Quinn’s first novel in the series, The Duke and I, to soapy, sexy, and scathingly funny life all while teasing out future heartaches and rival happily ever afters. Bridgerton is a deceptively genius show that will seduce viewers as easily as any rake in any romance novel steals his lady’s heart. It is that damn fun and that damn good. Bridgerton is historic romance gold. (Meghan O'Keefe)

Time magazine finds some similarities with the classics, though:

Rarely has the line separating love from hate been so thin as it is in 19th-century novels, between willful young women and the curmudgeonly men who, after a few hundred pages of bickering, come to adore them. Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Jo March—they all clashed with their future husbands at first. And though the rigid courting rituals of the time have mostly faded into obsolescence, Anglophone pop culture retains its ravenous appetite for such pairings. Hence Austenmania, Downton Abbey and, most recently, the BBC postcolonial-India period drama A Suitable Boy, not to mention contemporary romance plots from Gilmore Girls to Twilight.

The tradition continues in Bridgerton, a lavish, Regency-era spectacle from the venerable executive producer Shonda Rhimes that will tumble down Netflix subscribers’ digital chimneys on Christmas. Strangely, the show left me feeling a bit like Mr. Darcy on Opposite Day. For the first half of the season, I loved it enough to marry it. Then… well, hate is a strong word. Let’s say I was seized by the apprehension that Bridgerton wasn’t quite the same show I’d so hastily committed to. (Judy Berman)

And speaking of Gilmore Girls, Screen Rant has an article on '10 Things Fans Found In Rory’s Bedroom', such as

The Many Women Of Rory's Admiration

As Rory matured and moved around, small pieces of her personality began popping up around her bedrooms. In this case, various posters of historic women popped up on Rory’s walls.

Above is a photo of English novelist, Charlotte Brontë. Growing up in the 1800s, Charlotte was instrumental as a woman in literature because she used pseudonyms to be taken more seriously. Under the name Currer Bell, Charlotte published the iconic novel, Jane Eyre. For Rory, as a hopeful woman in journalism, looking at Charlotte's face every day probably gave her strength. (LA G.)

A contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer makes a point with which we agree: 'From ‘Hamlet’ to ‘(The Great) Gatsby’ to ‘Beloved’: Don’t replace classic literature. Expand it.'.

Some tooth-grinding on Twitter this month revived a debate that begs for side-taking among educators and writers. Since I am both, I jumped into the fray like Chuck Bednarik. The question at hand: Do classics of English-language literature still have value in the classroom? I looked on with shock as young adult authors, their fans, and no small number of educators answered in the negative, pouring venom onto grade school classics like The Great Gatsby (apparently it celebrates stalking?) and Wuthering Heights (allegedly a tale about how cool incest is), arguing they should be removed from the curriculum.

For me, this stance is both galling and difficult to understand, given some of the realities that teachers, particularly teachers in Philly, have to grapple with. (Quinn O'Callaghan)