Jane Eyre won our hearts

The New Statesman’s best books of 2021 include Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro:

Ishiguro deploys his favoured mode, the retrospective narrator with a firm grip on the information pipette, so while Klara is modelled in some ways on Lucy Snowe, from Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, the reader possesses no perspectival advantage. We know as little about the customs of this unspecific future as Klara does, and the plot is constructed to yield the things that matter as slowly as possible.

Jane Eyre is one of seven 'Classic literary heroines who won our hearts' according to Times of India.

04/7 ​Jane Eyre from 'Jane Eyre'

From the beginning of the novel, Brontë describes Jane as a strong-willed, passionate and outspoken young girl. She constantly opposes the cruel treatment of her cousin, John, and her aunt, Mrs. Reed. Neither rich nor beautiful, she is intelligent, strong, passionate, straightforward, and honest. She always somehow manages to unveil the hypocrisy of people and institutions. How can we forget a character like her?

The Nation discusses Cathy Curtis's biography of Elizabeth Hardwick, A Splendid Intelligence.

In Seduction and Betrayal (1974), a collection of essays on Zelda Fitzgerald, Jane Carlyle, Sylvia Plath, and the Brontës, Hardwick explores the treatment of women in letters whose boundaries between life and writing are blurred, if not entirely eradicated. She prioritizes the silent, noble suffering of women and the needs of selfish male writers above “the pull of ordinary passions.” (Sarah Wang)

The Postcript Podcast (and the podcast itself) on chapter 9 of Jane Eyre is now available.