The Irish Times discusses fictional aunts.
and who wasn’t traumatised by Jane Eyre’s experiences in the red room, sent there by her Aunt Reed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. (Hazel Gaynor)
Far Out Magazine takes a circuitous road in order to arrive at Carrie Fishers favourite book (
Middlemarch, apparently).
Carrie Fisher’s favourite book by a woman was written by a man. Or, at least, that is what many would still think if they didn’t know enough about Victorian era literature.
Of course, that notion is not uncommon. Wuthering Heights wasn’t initially written by Emily Brontë, but was credited to Ellis Bell, with her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, also writing under the male names of Currer and Acton Bell. Elizabeth Gaskell’s work was originally under the name Cotton Mather Mills. Louise May Alcott is best known for Little Women, but she’d use the genderless pseudonym, A M Barnard, to write more sensationalist works that wouldn’t have been deemed ‘proper’ for a woman.
That was often the reason. Especially with books like Wuthering Heights, which dealt with dark or scandalous subject matter, society wouldn’t easily accept that from a woman. In the language of the time, they’d be considered ‘ruined’—cast out from social circles and unlikely to be read or respected as widely as if the public believed them to be men. (Lucy Harbron)
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