The houses speak histories we might otherwise overlook

Varsity discusses 'the place of the literary home in our post-lockdown world'.

Yet for all this, houses like Austen’s represent all that is vital and cherished in the landscape of our national heritage. They are widely dispersed: from Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in Cumbria to Hardy’s several homes near Dorchester, they are accessible to people up and down the country. They are historically diverse: as Milton’s cottage in Chalfont St Giles allows us to stand briefly in the chaotic death throes of the Republic and the early days of the Restoration, so too standing outside Virginia Woolf’s sometime front doors across London brings us to the seat of modern revolutions of a more literary nature. The houses speak histories we might otherwise overlook: from the Brontës’ parsonage in windswept Haworth, the extent of the effort expended and cultural shock incurred in travelling to London in order to engage with disagreeable publishers becomes apparent. (Adam Dumbleton)

According to The Week, Wuthering Heights is one of 'The books which should be on your reading bucket list'.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847)

First published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights was the only novel written by Emily Bronte, the second-youngest of the Bronte siblings, and she died a year after its publication at the age of 30.

“The scope and drift of its imagination, its passionate exploration of a fatal yet regenerative love affair, and its brilliant manipulation of time and space put it in a league of its own,” writes McCrum in The Observer. “This is great English literature, the fruit of a quite extraordinary childhood.” (Gabriel Power)

Inspired by the words of actress Billie Piper in a recent interview, The Independent discusses whether 'women on screen need the freedom to be 'hysterical''.

hysteria becomes a watchword for an external writing of the female body. Jane Eyre, though written by a female author, also fails to unpick problematic notions of madness in women through its animalistic characterisation of “madwoman in the attic” Bertha Mason. (Lydia Bunt)

Shout Out UK also uses Jane and Bertha to try and explain the Kate vs Meghan phenomenon.

This phenomenon of the ‘good woman’ vs the ‘bad woman’ has been played out in society and culture for centuries. In The Mad Woman in the Attic, (the name of the book is a reference to Bertha, in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar observe how, in nineteenth-century novels written by women, the female characters were either an ‘angel’ or a ‘monster’. But this, they argue, is a false dichotomy, which reflected the prejudices and stereotypes that existed in relation to women at the time these novels were written. Women are complex and dynamic, just like men, and are neither merely ‘angelic’ nor solely ‘mad’ or ‘dangerous’. These are convenient profiles, but nothing more.

The fact that this phenomenon can be observed in nineteenth-century literature goes to show how old and ingrained the instinct to compare women and pit them against each other is. It is also interesting that, whereas the authors explored by Gilbert and Gubar were expressing the sexist nature of their societies in the form of fiction, Meghan and Kate have, in a way, been turned into fictional characters by the tabloid press. This tendency often treads a fine line between news and entertainment, particularly where the Royal Family are concerned. They cannot escape from the characters which they have been cast as. (Laura Brick)

iNews looks at the Twilight fandom reminding us of a low point in Brontë history:

The love story between 17-year-old Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen captured the imagination of a generation and turned the Young Adult shelves of bookshops black with imitations – even Wuthering Heights got a fresh black jacket and a sticker proclaiming it “Bella and Edward’s favourite book”. (Alys Key)

Here's how Thrillist describes Matthew Macfadyen's Mr Darcy.

I, admittedly, was never too keen on the Macfadyen Darcy. I always thought he seemed a bit overly grim and brooding -- more Brontë than Austen, really. (Esther Zuckerman)

This Times Live (South Africa) columnist writes about her reading history.

Reading was my education and I knew enough to know what I didn’t know, so when I started earning my own money I haunted second-hand book shops for the literature that hadn’t featured in my life but that I knew was important. These were the years of Conrad, Eliot, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Bronte, Tolstoy, Austen, Proust, Woolf and also, inevitably, of Orwell, Huxley, Rand, Marquez, Irving, Vonnegut, Murdoch, Faulkner, Potok and on and on. (Shirley Fairall)

Keighley News reports on the future of the Brontë Hotel in Haworth. Travel Daily Media reports that thanks to Wuthering Heights Top Withins and Haworth are among the 'most popular real-life locations' based on number of hashtags.