Read the Brontës before discourse domesticates them

171 years ago, Charlotte Brontë died in Haworth. Some websites remember the event: Estadão (Brazil), Good News Network's quote of the day...  Coincidental or not, Parade informs how last night's Jeopardy! final Jeopardy was:

Final Jeopardy today was in the category “Fictional Characters.”

The clue: Literary theories say the first name of this 1847 title character is meant to evoke plainness while the last name hints at a bequest.

The answer: Who is Jane Eyre?

The Yorkshire Post tells about secret doors in Haworth's Oh La La - The Original Brontë Stationery Store:

While renovating her business in Haworth, Pamela Howorth discovered secret doorways where the Brontë sisters would have bought their writing paper.

In 2003, Pamela Howorth, 59, bought a rundown building on Main Street in Haworth and transformed it into a lingerie store called Oh La La.

The business was rebranded into a vintage shop in 2020 with a change of name to ‘The Original Brontë Stationery’ and Ms Howorth, originally from Bradford, delved deep into the history of the building. (...)

Through her research, Ms Howorth discovered that John Greenwood was the owner of the building in the 1800s when it was a stationery shop; Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte regularly bought their writing papers there.

During the renovation of the shop undertaken by Ms Howorth, she discovered secret doorways that were used to get into the building. (...)

During the 1800s, John Greenwood was running a general store in No. 36 Main Street.

“He was a tea merchant during the Brontës' time,” Ms Howorth said.

“Haworth Main Street at that time was a main turnpike road that took people from Toller Lane in Bradford through to Colne.

“From 1843 he started selling paper specifically to the Brontë sisters who were asking him for it and it was very expensive at that time so he couldn’t hold a lot of stock of it.

“But they would request him to get some paper for them and he would ride to one of the mills in Halifax, get the paper, bring it back for the Brontës to be able to do their writing.”

It is thought that upstairs in the shop was where people hand combed wool in the Victorian era.

Ms Howorth found out that the former owner John Greenwood kept diaries that she tried to find. (...)

“John Greenwood kept some diaries and he kept records of his meetings with Charlotte Bronte and her sisters,” she said.

“When Charlotte died, John contacted Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote the biography of Charlotte, and provided her with his information of what he knew about the family and a lot of it came from his diaries.

“She looked at his diaries and took excerpts from them but we don’t know where the diaries are, they never came to light. They may well have been destroyed.” (Liana Jacob)

The Phrasemaker recommends classic novels to read in 2026:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

If you have only encountered Wuthering Heights through reputation, there is a decent chance you imagine it as a tragic, windswept romance.

Emily Brontë’s novel is vicious, obsessive, inhospitable, and often emotionally feral. It is a novel about fixation, revenge, inheritance, cruelty, class, and the way desire can rot into something almost supernatural.

That is why it remains so magnetic, and why 2026 is a good year to read it. Emerald Fennell’s adaptation has already brought the novel back into public conversation after its theatrical release, which means readers are once again arguing about what the book actually is. A romance? A gothic nightmare? A destructive anti-love story? The answer is, conveniently, all of the above.

This is one of those classics that benefits from being read before you absorb too many takes about it. The novel is far rougher and more destabilizing than its cultural image suggests. (...)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre is the storm gathering behind the walls.

The announcement of a new 2026 television adaptation is enough reason to bring Charlotte Brontë’s novel back into view, but the real reason to read it is that Jane Eyre still feels startlingly forceful from the inside. Jane is a moral intelligence, a will, and a voice.

The novel fuses several things that do not always coexist easily: bildungsroman, gothic fiction, spiritual crisis, class conflict, and romance. It is intense without becoming shapeless. It is passionate without losing its sense of self-command.

And because so many later novels borrow from it, reading Jane Eyre in 2026 can feel like discovering the hidden template behind countless stories of emotional self-definition. (...)

Read the Brontës before discourse domesticates them. Read Austen before the algorithm turns her into posture. Read Dumas because narrative pleasure is not a lesser pleasure. Read Shelley, Stoker, and Wilde because the gothic never really went away, and 2026 seems determined to prove it.

The classics are back, once again. The best move is to meet them on the page first. (Vincent Halles)

Both novels are listed in this AI-generated 'greatest romance novels in 2026 Vocal Media's BookClub post. 

RissWrites lists period dramas available on Prime Video:

Jane Eyre, 1983

Is this another one I feature every time I put together this annual best Prime Video period drama list? Probably. But I think it’s a version not talked about as much as newer ones, plus objectively speaking, a version of Jane Eyre is always a good fit on a “best” period drama list. Timothy Dalton plays the iconic Mr. Rochester character in this Charlotte Bronte classic. This is also one of the rare adaptations from the BBC's 1980s films that I do actually like. It’s moody as it should be, and while kind of “clunky” at times, it’s ultimately a solid production that I’ve seen more than once. (Rissi JC)

El País (Spain) talks about the new Spanish edition of Susan Gubar and Sandra M. Gilbert's The Madowman in the Attic:

Cuando Charlotte Brontë publicó Jane Eyre en 1847, las escritoras británicas no tenían libertad para escribir. Cuando Sandra Gilbert y Susan Gubar escribieron La loca del desván, inspirada en el personaje de Bertha Mason de la novela de Brontë, se vivía en el mundo la segunda ola feminista. Era 1979. Hoy, casi 50 años después, la editorial Espinas ha reeditado el ensayo, considerado la primera crítica literaria feminista: una concatenación de mujeres recuperando el trabajo de sus predecesoras. (...)

Bertha Mason, la esposa de Edward Rochester en Jane Eyre, vive encerrada en el ático de su mansión por decisión de su marido, quien cree que ella ha enloquecido. Mason representa a la mujer marginada por el patriarcado, llamada histérica o loca cuando decide no cumplir con lo que se espera de ella: ser dócil, servicial, pasiva y abnegada. Las filólogas Gilbert y Gubar vieron en este personaje, un arquetipo constante en las obras de escritoras victorianas, una forma de expresar el malestar y frustración que vivían las autoras. Una manera de liberarse y decir aquello que no estaba permitido: mostrar sus experiencias en un espacio literario dominado por hombres y por un cánon patriarcal. (Constanza Pérez Z.) (Translation)

The streaming premiere of Wuthering Heights 2026 (on both Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV) is mentioned in several news outlets: Cinebuzz (Brazil), Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, CinemaPlanet (Portugal), Decider, Collider, La Capital (Argentina)...

The Red & Black has a review of the adaptation. Nothing new:

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s casting. Probably the biggest mistake of the movie is its failure to cast Heathcliff as a person of color. Heathcliff’s race influences his romance with Cathy, his way of viewing the world and the way he is treated by every other character. (...)

By miscasting Heathcliff, cutting the second half of the novel and sugarcoating their depiction of 19th-century class dynamics in the name of focusing on romance, the film removes the teeth from Brontë’s social commentary. Perhaps more significantly, though, given their goal, this misinterpretation also takes away anything that might give Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship a claim to being “the greatest love story of all time.” (Alexa Smith)

More reviews: Diario de Córdoba (Argentina):

A veces, uno tiene la sensación de estar frente a un spot publicitario de dos horas y cuarto, porque la factura técnica es impecable y tendente al excesivo esteticismo, aunque la oscuridad se apodere de las atmósferas fotográficas en determinados pasajes.

No obstante, se nota ese intento de darle un estilo autoral a esta producción que no deja de ser gran formato, más centrada en lo formal que en el fondo de la cuestión y en profundizar en los personajes. (Manuel Ángel Jiménez) (Translation)

TelQuel (Morocco):

 La réalisatrice reste fidèle à elle-même : érotique, excessive, délibérément dérangeante. Les landes du Yorkshire y sont âpres et charnelles, la demeure des Earnshaw suinte la violence et la misère, en contraste brutal avec l'opulence froide des Linton. Quant au duo Margot Robbie – Jacob Elordi, il partage les avis : certains succombent à leur magnétisme, d'autres estiment qu'ils n'atteignent pas tout à fait la démesure que leurs personnages exigent. (Translation)

Daily Nexus:

The plot chronology was confusing. Once Cathy and Heathcliff age up, there is no sense of time and little elaboration. Fennell focuses mostly on style and little on actual substance. The film is engrossing and thoroughly entertaining, with humorous moments intertwined (Isabella and the dolls, need I say more), but it has so many loose ends that the film ends with the viewer emotionally unchanged.

She attempts to tie mutual obsession with erotic desire, but there’s a disconnect; it’s not passionate. There’s no burning and longing; it’s all physical lust. It lacks the emotional weight that an adaptation of the powerful and emotionally charged “Wuthering Heights” should possess.

Fennell’s interpretation is like the novel in name only and best enjoyed if the viewer forgets that it’s meant to be an adaptation at all. (Sophia Benito)

Boktanker also reviews the film in Norwegian. 

20 Minutos (Spain) visits both the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks. El Español (Spain) illustrates the dilemma of a young couple between watching Wuthering Heights, Santiago Segura's Torrente, presidente, or Pedro Almodóvar's Amarga Navidad. Vanity Fair (Italy) lists several cottages to live like Heathcliff and Catherine.