No more Heathcliffs

Maureen Coleman in The Independent (Ireland) discovers that the Heathcliffs of this world are better off within the covers of books:

No more Heathcliffs... One writer gives up on dark and brooding leaving men

Obsessed by tortured, broken romantic heroes from a young age, Maureen Coleman did eventually find her Heathcliff, but realised dark and brooding types should stay firmly within the pages of her beloved books

'He's not a rough diamond, a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man and he'd crush you like a sparrow's egg." Well, he sounds quite the catch. And yet this man, described here as a monster, is universally considered one of literature's greatest lovers.

But I'm in no position to judge. As a self-proclaimed Brontëphile, I adore the character of Heathcliff. Tortured, broken beyond repair and devilishly brooding, the anti-hero of Emily Brontë's masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, is the Victorian version of a bad boy.

As a child, I wasn't fond of fairy tales. I read them, of course, but their stories of handsome princes and happy-ever-afters didn't appeal. At the age of 10, I first picked up DH Lawrence's Women in Love. I can't say I understood or enjoyed it, but it was much more entertaining than Beauty and the Beast. Then, in my early teens, I discovered the Brontës. (...)

The Sunday Times reviews the latest film adaptation of The Secret Garden:

A peculiarly sickly, late-Victorian pallor clings to it, and to the case of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy that sits at its heart: the grieving Archibald has literally sickened his son with grief, telling him he will be a hunchback just like him and labelling any protest from the boy “hysterics”. It’s Jane Eyre for hypochondriac dads. You can see why they needed Firth so much, to soften the diagnosis. (Tom Shone)

Chuck Haga in The Grand Forks Herald writes about the pleasure of owning books:

And as I read about the Knife River villages, the people who welcomed and sheltered Lewis and Clark, and the smallpox epidemic that decimated the tribe, I glance over at a shelf and see that for some reason I have two copies of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” I have watched the 1939 film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon probably 10 times, but I still haven’t cracked the book. Either copy. Maybe I can trade the extra for a paperback “Jane Eyre,” by sister Charlotte Brontë.

And The Gleaner about the impact of early reading choices:

I read a lot as a kid. I’d like to say that I concentrated on the classics — “Wuthering Heights,” say, or “A Tale of Two Cities.” (Chuck Stinnett)

The Luddites are coming in this article in The Sunday Guardian (Indian):

Books, at large becoming redundant and Google became God. Now, if the BA degree one was pursuing listed a couple of, say Shakespeare’s plays or Victorian novels of the Brontë sisters’ genre, all one needed was to Google. (Renée Ranchan)

Still in India, IOL presents the new novel of Shan Lee (aka Lishantha Govinthu), Love Leiyah:

A fan of classics such as Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, she decided her novel would follow the classic genre. (Tanya Waterworth)

International Business Times reviews the film adaptation of After We Collided:

“After We Collided” showed Hardin giving Tessa her Christmas present, a charm bracelet with a music note, infinity symbol and a book with a “Wuthering Heights” quote (“Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same”). He asks for another chance, and they finally are officially back together. (Nicole Massabrook)

La República (Ecuador) explores the novels of Kate Morton: 

Como heredera del legado de la reina del crimen, Ágatha Christie, y de las hiper románticas hermanas Brontë, con Kate nunca podemos descifrar sus misterios ni menos podemos dejar de estremecernos con sus intensos romances. Si bien es cierto, logramos intuir ciertas pistas, el final siempre nos pilla totalmente desprevenidos. (María José Jurado) (Translation)

Milliyet (Turkey) and El Espectador (Colombia) talk about gender issues in literature and beyond:

Jane Eyre’i birçoğumuz biliriz. Peki, Charlotte Bronte’un Edward Rochester ve Jane Eyre’in aşklarını daha da masalsı kılmak için Rochester’in evin tavanına kilitlediği eski karısını o tutsaklıktan kurtarıp, bir insanın neden çıldırabileceğini anlatan Jean Rhys’ı kaçımız? Ben de Rhys, Sevim Burak ve Ingeborg Bachmann’la tanışana kadar edebiyatın harika çocuklarının erkekler olduğunu düşünürdüm. (Seyhan Akıncı) (Translation)

Me enorgullece el hecho de haber sido criada por una feminista. Leí a Simone de Beauvoir en el colegio y me empapé de Sor Juana, Zayas, Brontë, Austen, Shelley, Wolf. En mi entorno cercano nadie nunca me desacreditó por ser mujer, nadie le quitó importancia a mi voz y seguridad, y, quizás con la ayuda de Mafalda, jamás me dejé silenciar por un hombre. (Catalina Vargas-Acevedo) (Translation)

La Tercera (Chile) interviews writer Jamaica Kincaid:

En el colegio, su profesora de francés la castigó y obligó a leer en un rincón la novela Jane Eyre (1847), de Charlotte Brontë. Desde ahí cambió para siempre. Quería ser como la novelista inglesa del siglo XIX; en su adolescencia, Kincaid caminaba por la calle y fantaseaba con que era Brontë.(...)
En ese entonces, la autora de la novela corta, Lucy (1990), solo había leído literatura del siglo XIX. Pensaba que en los libros solo podían haber carruajes o mujeres con largos vestidos. Pensaba que la escritura era algo que hacía “Charlotte Brontë, y nadie más”. (Guido Macán Marimón) (Translation)

La Nación (Argentina) talks about the Gospels as a narrative:

En buena medida, la vida de Cristo puede ser concebida, mutatis mutandis, como un Bildungsroman, una novela de iniciación, de formación, de crecimiento, de “coming of age”: un iniciado que, a su vez, asume la misión de iniciar al mundo en la Verdad. Lazarillo de Tormes (anónimo), Candide de Voltaire, Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë, Wilhelm Meister de Goethe, La Educación sentimental de Flaubert, David Copperfield de Dickens, Hijos y amantes de D. H. Lawrence, El Principito de Saint-Exupéry, son variantes del Bildungsroman, a veces más próximas al Entwicklungsroman (“novela de desarrollo”), otras al Erziehungsroman (“novela de educación”), acaso al Künstlerroman (“novela de artista”, tal el caso de Retrato del artista adolescente de Joyce). (Jacques Sagot) (Translation)

Badische Zeitung (Germany) reviews the local performances of How to Date a Feminist:

Sie ist mit ihrem Vater aufgewachsen, einem jüdischen Geschäftsmann, der auch in einem Camp gelebt hat, nur eben nicht freiwillig. Seiner Tochter hat er eher konservative Werte mitgegeben, sie mag Lippenstift, Cupcake und Heathcliff (den aus Emily Brontës "Sturmhöhe"). Während sie sich von Steve auf allen Gebieten mehr Initiative erhofft, entschuldigt er sich beim Heiratsantrag für das Patriarchat. Schwer zu sagen, wer hier verspannter ist. (Annette Hoffmann) (Translation)

The German TV channel ARD is broadcasting Jane Eyre 2011 these days (schedule here). Diario de Cuyo (Argentina) recommends Wuthering Heights. The same novel that changed the life of this bookseller in Westfalen-Blatt.