Flawed Jane

Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton has selected her favourite flawed heroines for LitHub including

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
My idea of the kind of woman I wanted to be spilled into me straight from the pages of this book. Jane’s voice was a rallying cry against all the badges of my own supposed powerlessness: as a girl, a black person, and a child in a world where each of those adjectives moved you further away from the center of things. It’s because Jane was such an outsider, just as awkward and at times as angry as I was, that I wanted her to triumph, and it’s because of those same qualities that she does. She was a Victorian anti-heroine par excellence. For all its fierce, far-flung passions, Jane Eyre is a lesson in self-acceptance: “I care for myself.” Jane declares. “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” Yes, modern women are disenchanted with the hand Bertha Mason was dealt, and yes, it’s a disgrace that Jane finds contentment in a marriage so far beneath her. But to read Jane Eyre is to bear witness to a consciousness coming alive, and to feel the quickening of your own consciousness as a result.

In The Guardian, Kathryn Hughes reviews  Lucasta Miller's book L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated 'Female Byron'.

The teenage Brontës in Haworth certainly lapped up LEL’s work, especially “The Disconsolate One”, whose accompanying illustration – a distraught young lady weeping over a letter – they carefully copied out in their notebooks.

A contributor to Bustle 'Couldn't Be More Excited' about Gentleman Jack's season 2.

Every time the BBC produces a new period drama, excitement builds to an intense level. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does it like the BBC. You know what else builds excitement? Seeing same sex relationships on screen. Especially in terms of period dramas. Because obviously the likes of the Brontës and Jane Austen weren't keen on including same-sex dalliances. Which is a bit like straight-washing queer history. Gentleman Jack provides period and same-sex drama in abundance so obviously it has gone down a treat. But will Gentleman Jack return for a season 2?
Gird your loins and loosen your bodices, because it's a definite yes on this one. (Aoife Hanna)

Books Everywhere posts about Wuthering Heights.