#charlotte bronte was a bitch

[janeeyreheresy]

The Cancelled Sister

All three Bronte sisters were talented writers. It's quite amazing there was so much talent in one family. Heck, even brother Branwell could have made something of himself if he hadn't been such a troublemaker, he wrote poetry and painted. Papa Patrick Bronte was a clergyman, of course, but he tried his hand at poetry himself. When they were little, the Bronte children played with wooden soldiers their father bought them, creating whole fictional worlds. The sisters first published a collection of poems, which was unsuccessful, yet they didn't give up. There is no need, there never was and never will be, to pit them against each other. Both is good, or in this case, all three is good. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, Emily's only novel, are the most famous Bronte works. But Anne is overlooked. She wrote two books: Agnes Grey, inspired by her experience of working as a governess and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, a story of a woman who ran away from an abusive husband. I'm sure you agree with me that's an important topic.

But Charlotte fucking cancelled her. This is what she had to say about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

"For my part, I consider the subject unfortunately chosen – it was one the author was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural – quiet description and simple pathos – are, I think Acton Bell's forte. I liked Agnes Grey better than the present work."

And you were qualified to write about someone with a mental illness?

Wildfell Hall it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer.

Can you get any more patronising?

Anne had as much experience as Charlotte. Both had at the time written two books, plus the poetry. 

Charlotte's gatekeeping makes no sense anyway--Anne didn't pull this story out of any part of her body. She wrote what she observed during her stint as a governess. Branwell had an affair with the lady of the house where she worked (she got him a job there as a tutor). A lot of Arthur Huntingdon's traits probably come from him.  

Wuthering Heights was pretty shocking too and Charlotte didn't stop its publication. 

Unfortunately as a result of Charlotte's decision, Anne to this day struggles to be recognised. If you're reading this, please give The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a go. Anne deserves to be as well known as Charlotte and Emily. Believe me--praising the youngest sibling means a lot coming from me (I'm the eldest daughter).

There is a certain detail Jane Eyre and The Tenant have in common. In both we have the heroine's love interest emotionally manipulating the heroine by showing affection to another woman. (No cute fake dating trope, I stress again.) Both feature the heroine running out of the drawing room. Except in The Tenant, this man is a villain--he's the abusive partner.

[ravenkings]

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

–Charlotte Bronte, Villette

[butchsaint]

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Charlotte Bronte: I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck.

Me: *stares in familial and institutional abuse, Mr. Rochester's general ambience, chaining a secret wife in the attic, nearly getting bullied into marrying a cousin you don't even like, and ableist tropes*

Also Me (pointing at Mr. Darcy): I want that one.

[yourlocalfallenstar]

I was told to make one of these?.. Uhhh...

Hello ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

⋆°•☁︎ Name; Elio Beausoleil

⋆☀︎｡ Age; 17 1/2.

☀︎₊˚⊹ Nicknames; Elly, Els, Bitch (from Mattie).

₊ ⊹☼ Gender; Gender Neutral (though I do usually use he/him prns)

⋆｡°•☁︎ Godrent; Apollo...

✷༉‧₊˚. Powers; Light bending or getting possessed.

⋆.˚☀︎٠ ࣪⭑ Weapons; Many, many daggers and a bow and arrow.

⋆⭒˚.⋆ Favorites ⋆⭒˚.⋆

⊹.✮₊⋆ Color; Orange

⊹₊⋆ Food; Anything edible (Gumbo)

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡.• Series/Movie: Matilda

༺☆༻ People; Ethan, Damien, Diane, Matteo, Camille

𝜗𝜚⋆₊˚ Song; Viva La Vida by Coldplay / Living On by ORE0

⋆.˚✰ Book; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte / Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

˖⋆࿐໋ Friends ˖⋆࿐໋

@damiedantediane - All of DLC, really.

@iceweavercatlover - Cool Spiderman dude.

@this-is-homophobic - As an extension of Damien, since they are engaged.

@welkombijspecerijen - He makes food. 👍

@glee-of-ares-wrath-of-aphrodite - Married to Dante, pretty cool god.

@rayof-damnsunshine - Therapist.

@love-lightning-forethought - Cool people who know Brook.

idk who else...

Oh, and Matteo... I'll mention him a lot. Son of Aeolus and Circe, demiboy, Italian American, 16 3/4, blah blah blah.

Ooc: I completely forgot I should've done this, so hi. I'm @debacleofdaemons and... 1, 2, 4... Yeah, those on the list. I also run the separate acc, which gives lore and wishes, @godofwishingwells.

I'm also @iceweavercatlover and @damiedantediane

IC - time for chaos OOC - mod in chat LORE - trauma!

thx ^^

[poppletonink]

Blair Waldorf Reads

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

What Would Audrey Do by Pamela Clarke Keogh

Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar

Grace Kelly by Hourly History

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

My Story by Marilyn Monroe

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers

This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt

Women Don't Owe You Pretty by Florence Given

How To Be Lovely: The Audrey Hepburn Way Of Life by Melissa Hellstern

Why Men Love Bitches by Sherry Argov

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

[figthefruitfaeth]

last + current + next read

as tagged by @gideoncharov and @fragilecapric0rnn about forty years ago ❤️❤️❤️

last — Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir the sequel to Gideon the Ninth. It made me CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY INSANE OH MY GOD IM RUNNING THROUGH A WALL JUMPING OUT A BUILDING INSANE INSANE IN—

current — I’m reading quite a few at the moment! Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong for some poetry. The first work I ever read by him was Time is a Mother, so it’s been fun to work backward through this art—seeing where he grew from and where he’d grow to.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte for the 4th (5th?) time, and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is a retelling of Jane Eyre through Bertha’s eyes, Rochester’s first wife. Interesting, sad, and makes me a little crazy honestly. I’m discovering I’m a gothic bitch.

A Writer’s Workbook by Caroline Sharp. Trying to help get me in a better, more consistent rhythm and habit for writing. Focusing on exercises for the everyday.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I’m only one chapter in but I know it’s going to make me crazy insane and I can’t wait I’m loving it already. This is going to be my weekend, and maybe my personality!

next — I have so many on my shelf right now and in my library holds—I’m finally out of my reading slump thank GOD! Off the top of my head, unincompassing and in no particular order:

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield; Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden (graphic novel); Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers; Vicious by VE Schwab (reread); and 1-3 of the Locked Tomb for a reread because it’s making me INSANE INSANE INSANE—

did you do it already? maybe, but you will suffer my tag anyway :D @cheatghost @hellsfireclub @judasofsuburbia @gothbat99 @pomegranatebb @pinkeebwui @fastcardotmp3 @kkpwnall @starryeyedjanai @peter-pantomime

[pumpkinspice-prouvaire]

17 for jehan for the ask game 🍄✨

What's a book, movie, or show you think Jehan would like? This is all going to be books I think because I a) do not have very interesting taste in movies/tv and cannot think of anything Jehan would like lol and b) I like recommending books

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Andrea Lowler)- 300+ pages of genderqueer smut is ABSOLUTELY Jehan's shit

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Bronte)- Jehan is absolutely a Bronte fan (he has three pet goldfish named Emily, Charlotte and Anne) and he thinks Anne Bronte is an underrated queen

The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings- Maya Angelou

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed- Mariana Enriquez (Jehan is absolutely a horror bitch)

I wish I read more poetry so I could recommend collections I think he'd like but alas...I don't. Tried to include some 'poets who wrote novels' as a consolation prize

[mzannthropy]

Excerpts from L.M. Montgomery's journals that mention Charlotte Bronte.

LMM visited Haworth on her honeymoon (a rare pleasure she got out of that marriage), though she couldn't go inside the Parsonage. However, I have to disagree with her here: "we went to Leeds and next morning motored twenty miles through a very ugly country to Haworth". Don't listen to her, Yorkshire moors are breathtaking! I know bc I've been there too and I have pics to prove! (I mean I've not gone the way from Leeds to Haworth bc I live in Manchester, so that's where I travelled from, but I doubt it's much different; even going on a train from Manchester to Leeds is a pleasant ride). I suppose the moors are an unusual type of a landscape. Also it depends on your own definition of beauty.

Anyway, what I like about these excerpts is that while LMM obviously admired Charlotte a lot, she had no issue with roasting her, and I'm so here for it!

It is customary to regret Charlotte Bronte’s death as premature. I doubt it. I doubt if she would have added to her literary fame had she lived. Resplendent as her genius was it had a narrow range and I think she had reached its limit. She could not have gone on forever writing Jane Eyres and Villettes and there was nothing in her life and experience to fit her for writing anything else.

Ha!

But then this:

There was a marked masochistic strain in Charlotte Bronte—revealing itself mentally not physically. This accounts for “Rochester.” He was exactly the tyrant a woman with such a strain in her would have loved, delighting in the pain he inflicted on her. 

Speaking the truth. LMM had no time for "brooding" heroes. (And yeah, there's Dean Priest, but he's a different case and he was not Emily's true love.)

I have been asking myself “If I had known Charlotte Bronte in life how would we have reacted upon each other? Would I have liked her? Would she have liked me?” I answer “no.” She was absolutely without a sense of humor. I could never find a kindred spirit in a woman without a sense of humor. And for the same reason she would not have approved of me at all. All the same, had she been compelled to live with me for awhile I could have done her whole heaps of good. A few jokes would have leavened the gloom and tragedy of that Haworth parsonage amazingly. Charlotte would have been thirty per cent better for it. But she would have written most scathing things about me to Miss Nussey and Mrs. Gaskell.

I think she gets it.

And this:

People have spoken of Charlotte Bronte’s “creative genius.” Charlotte Bronte had no creative genius.

I love this bc that's totally something I would say. People will be like: "thing/person is sooo amazing" and I'd say, "thing/person is not amazing".

Her genius was one of amazing ability to describe and interpret the people and surroundings she knew. All the people in her books who impress us with such a wonderful sense of reality were drawn from life. She herself is “Jane Eyre” and “Lucy Snowe.” Emily was “Shirley.” “Rochester,” whom she did “create” was unnatural and unreal. “Blanche Ingram” was unreal. “St. John” was unreal. Most of her men are unreal. She knew nothing of men except her father and brother and the Belgian professor of her intense and unhappy love. “Emmanuel” was drawn from him and therefore is one of the few men, if not the only man, in her books who is “real”.

Talk about "burn".

I have argued on my Jane Eyre Heresy sideblog that Rochester, too, is based on Professor Heger. Nothing stopping Charlotte from putting the same dude into more than one book. I actually think Rochester is very real. The way he talks about Bertha is quite typical of douchebags like him talking about their wives/ex-wives/soon-to-be ex-wives/ex-girlfriends. "She a mad bitch" is, like, the most common phrase uttered by men over the course of human history. There is nothing special about Rochester.

Emily Bronte also gets a mention, but Anne does not. I wonder what LMM thought of Anne Bronte, if she had ever read her. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall's romantic hero is named Gilbert!

[nottobehornyonthemain]

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

(Long history with this one, but let’s just say my personal copy of it is the item that family members have told me is the litmus tests if I should ever disappear. If it’s still here, I did not go willingly.)

2. Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

(When I was 12 I was in a weird place, and my mother, who adores the movies, told me that she’d never actually read the books. It took me several weeks, and one night where my mom came to check on me because my light was still on after midnight, only to find that I had fallen asleep and was drooling on top of Return of the King.)

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

(First Brontë I ever read, and I listened to it on audio first. Two years ago I gave my grandparents, who never actually pick gifts, they just want Amazon links sent to them, a choice between Jagged Little Pill on vinyl, and a nice copy of Jane Eyre. Apparently they decided Jane Eyre was less scandalous.)

4. Harry Potter series

(My mom read all seven of these out loud to me and my siblings over the course of seven years.)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

(The summer before I started college, so when I was 15, I worked twice a week at my local library, and I would always go home with huge stacks of books because I was going through one every day, or two if it was particularly dense. I read this one that summer, mostly while spread out on a picnic blanket in my backyard, and I think that’s how it was always intended to be read.)

6. The Bible

(Yes. All of it. In case my blog hasn’t given it away by now, my religious upbringing was… intense.)

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

(I read this book once for school when I was 14 and hated it. I read it again when I was 16 and bought a copy in Grand Central Station, still hated it. But when I read it again at 19, because I was extremely bored at work and saw it on audio? So yeah, I read a book I knew I hated twice, it shouldn’t have surprised me when I realized I actually liked it and it was important to me.)

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

(I actually got into a discussion with my collage English professor at one point about what our favorite books where, and I mentioned Orwell, he had thought I ment this one, but I was talking about Animal Farm. This made me a little self conscious, because I hadn’t read the bigger hit, so I immediately wandered up to the school library and checked this one out, just so I could say I’d read it by Wednesday when class met again.)

9. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

(I had a hot Charles Dickens summer one year. This was the first one I read, and it was because of Into the Spiderverse. Miles Morales is a role model.)

10. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

(I do not love this book. I have watched every adaptation that has ever been made, yes, even the anime. The Greta Gerwig one is pretty good because I’m a sucker for non-linear narratives and Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet are pretty good at it.) 

11. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

(In December of 2021, I realized that I had never read this book, and had the opportunity to do something very funny. So yeah. I read what is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century as a joke to myself. Anyway, it’s very good, you should probably read it, especially if you like WWII stories and Kafka. Again, love a non-linear narrative.)

12. Complete Works of Shakespeare

(Yes. I got a complete edition at a library book sale, and drew stars on the cover in white gel pen so people would know it was mine, because I’m apparently that bitch. Although, I haven’t read the lost plays (obviously) so I don’t know if I can honestly say I’ve read the Complete works.)

13. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

(I read this after watching Hannibal the series for the second time because I got into a very deep Gothic Romance mood. I also accidentally got my friend to read it because we were comparing our current reads at the time, and that is how I ended up reading We Always Lived in a Castle.)

14. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

(The far superior Tolkien work in my personal taste. I love it. One of my friends reads this book once a year, and I love that for them, I’m not quite that in love with it, but this is about where my limits on where I can enjoy fantasy lie. Like, I’ll read higher stuff if I make myself, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to finish and move the fuck on.)

15. Catcher in the Rye

(It’s by J. D. Salinger, by the way. The list didn’t have an author on there. Read this one the same summer as To Kill a Mockingbird. Anyway, I love that Holden Caulfield was just some fucking guy that Salinger made up and decided to put in a bunch of his works, without bothering to make it into a series by making timelines or middle names match. He really just put his OC in situations, and I love that.)

16. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

(My brother used to work a job where he would help a guy in town sort through old books that he got from somewhere, and pick out ones that were still readable from ones that had been completely ruined, and he made a few bucks an hour and got to take home any books he wanted, and the guy would sell the good ones for like fifty cents somewhere. But my brother would always bring home books he thought people would like. At the time I was obsessed with the costume designs Walter Plunkett had done for the 1939 mega-hit film. So, when my brother found one while sorting through books, I ended up being gifted the most beaten up copy of Gone With the Wind I’ve ever seen in my life.)

17. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

(I am obnoxious about this book. I can, and have, talked for hours about this book. There is an audiobook for this book narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal, he is perfect for Nick Carraway. This book is the save me meme for me.)

18. Bleak House – Charles Dickens

(Again. Charles Dickens summer.)

19. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

(Did I read this book after I listened to Great Comet? Yes. Did I read all of it? Also yes. Having done so, and legitimately liking quite a lot of it, I do recommend it if you liked Great Comet, because the detail you get to go into is great, and makes you feel like a huge nerd. Also, recommend for people who want a 55 hour long audiobook.)

20. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

(There’s an audiobook for this one narrated by Steven Fry. It’s also one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.)

21. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

(Have I ever mentioned that I hate “it was all a dream/no one remembers” endings? Because I hate “it was all a dream/no one remembers” endings. I do, however, really like “person goes to a fucked up new place” stories. So I guess it balances out. The Cheshire Cat is on the list of characters I would commit war crimes to play.)

22. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

(Me and my brother both read this book when we were younger and for years whenever we hear the name of this one, or literally anything with the word “wind” or “willows” in the title we’ll go “is that the one with the mole?”, because we think it’s funny.)

23. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

(I was once in a book club with two high school English teachers, and two housewives. We all made the mistake of letting one of the English teachers pick first, and this was the first and only book that club was assigned, as no one but me actually finished it. Anyway, the 2012 film version is a fucking masterpiece and I don’t know why it’s not talked about more.)

24. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens summer. I actually read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver recently too, and that book is very very good, I would honestly say go read that one before this one.)

25. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

(My brother was very into these when he was like, 15, and I read them. They’re not my favorite, and honestly, many people who like them more have more interesting things to say about them than I do.)

26. Emma – Jane Austen

(I don’t know what magic Austen put into this book to constantly get the best film adaptations made of it, but my god she did. It’s a triple header too, because the Gwyneth Paltrow one is a perfectly good older style straight Austen period film. Clueless is probably my favorite of the “let’s do a high school AU of this piece of classical literature” genre, and Emma. (2020) is… just about perfect.)

27. Persuasion – Jane Austen

(This is probably Austen’s best book from a craft standpoint. It’s not my favorite of her works because of nostalgia I have for pride and prejudice, but… I mean, it’s the getting back together one, which is my favorite romance subgenre. Idk, I would recommend this one first to anyone who was asking me where to start with Jane Austen.)

28. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

(Again. People who like this book more than I do definitely have more interesting things to say about it. That being said, the film version of this one fucking slaps, and if you haven’t recently, you should rewatch it.)

29. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

(This is a book that I think would have greatly benefited from being written by a woman. Or someone who grew up in Japan. Or someone who didn’t get sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by one of the geisha he interviewed to write this novel. Anyway, I recommend Mineko Iwasaki’s autobiography, Geisha of Gion.)

30. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

(I don’t have much to say about this one. I read, and then I read something else. This one wasn’t a cornerstone of my childhood like I know it was for a lot of people.)

31. Animal Farm – George Orwell

(One of my favorite books of all time. I read it for the first time at 14, and proceeded to read it 12 more times in two months. It’s a very fast read, and I had anti-totalitarianism sensibilities that were ripe for feeding.)

32. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

(I’m not going to lie. I like the movie version of this one just fine. Read the book anyway. But, fun fact, when this movie came out I lived in Mississippi, and there was a campaign against my local library to get the book taken out of their catalog on the basis of blasphemy. So that’s wild.)

33. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

(In contrast to my last point, this is one that is just so light, and airy, and just reading it makes you feel good. It’s like a scented candle in book form. And no film adaptation is ever going be able to capture that, because it’s not about seeing the world with Anne in it as something shining and beautiful, it’s about how Anne sees the world as something shining and beautiful, and she makes you see it that way too.)

34. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

(So, this book is great. We all know that. Now, onto storytime. Once upon a time in the 90’s, my dad got bored one day and decided to watch the 1990 movie version of this one, he didn’t know what it was about, but had heard that it was sci-fi, and had assumed it was some Star Wars for girls type thing. He was unprepared.)

35. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

(As a child, many elements of my life and behavior was compared to this book in a way that I, with my infinite understanding of social cues, picked up on the subtle fact that this was an insult. Thinking that I was somehow winning, I decided to read this book to prove… some point? And I ended up agreeing with the adults in my life, I absolutely was like that one kid who wanders off into the woods and is never seen again.)

36. Atonement – Ian McEwan

(I think one of my first posts on this blog was me reblogging gif sets from the film version of this.)

37. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

(Forever gate keeping Black Sails from people who think debating whether or not the tiger was real is important to understanding what the story is about.)

38. Dune – Frank Herbert

(I have been banned from talking about Dune around my family anymore after the time I got super wasted at a thanksgiving party my parents’s friends were hosting, and spent 35 minutes explaining Dune, with relevant facts about Frank Herbert’s life, to a woman who had mentioned that her husband has seen the newer one. She hadn’t even watched that one.)

39. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

(This is my least favorite Austen novel. There’s some modern AU version of this that I read at one point that I don’t remember the name of, but there was this scene where the mom was standing on the beach and looking at golden retriever wondering if she could ask the owner for a clipping of its fur so she could show it to her hair colorist.)

40. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens Summer!!!!)

41. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

(If I had a nickel for every 20th century American novel about a deeply strange little man who had to deal with the devastating psychological affects of his best friend’s death, I would have I would have so many nickels.)

42. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

(I think there should be a rule about watching the Kubrick film where, in order to see it, you should have to write a five paragraph essay about the original novel.)

43. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

(This book fucking rocks. It is also my number one on list of novels that I think would most benefit from a podcast adaptation. Not like, a read-along, but like, a story based on the Count of Monte Cristo would kill it in podcast form.)

44. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

(I’ve read it. I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not it was before or after watching supernatural.)

45. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

(So there’s a The Wombats song called “Kill the Director” where the bridge is just “this is no Bridget Jones” several times, and I wasn’t familiar with the reference, so I looked it up, and somehow managed to miss the, extremely popular, film adaptation, and thought it was just a reference to the book. I didn’t realize my mistake until I mentioned it to someone who didn’t know there was a book, and had assumed I was talking about the film.)

46. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

(This is like War & Peace, in that it is a brick and there should be an adaptation that’s just the last 90 pages. But also, I read this book after reading a book of essays called “Why You Should Read Moby Dick” which, convinced me to read Moby Dick. But yeah, you could give this book to aliens and they would be able to recreate the 19th century whaling American industry from scratch.)

47. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens Summer! Also, this is one of those books that was very obviously serialized and would probably benefit greatly from being presented in that format as opposed to in a novel, because it does drag on when it’s just one chunk.)

48. Dracula – Bram Stoker

(I’m not the biggest fan of epistolary novels, but hey, it’s Dracula. I’ve done it all. Every film adaptation? Yes. The Edward Gorey illustrated edition? Own it. Dracula Daily? Two years. Re: Dracula? Got the jumpscare of my life when Dr. Seward started talking because I didn’t realize Jonny Sims was in this.)

49. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

(This book would have been greatly improved by less racism and more talking robins.)

50. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

(This book would be greatly improved by more people who read it understanding what an unreliable narrator is.)

51. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

(This is not a member of the Charles Dickens Summer club. I just read it one Christmas when I was like 8. Anyway, it’s hilarious and exactly what you expect. I also would have assumed that the coffin nail was the deadest nail of all.)

52. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

(Remember when I said that I don’t love epistolary novels? This is a major exception. Honestly, the number of list I’ve seen for contenders to the title of The Great American Novel, that don’t include this one is criminal. I also don’t know how so many people read it and don’t realize that it’s going to be dark as fuck.)

53. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

(Sometimes it’s very healing to read children’s novels as an adult. Just sit, and tear through a book in a couple hours. Any of Kate DiCarmello’s books, Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen, Coroline, and Charlotte’s Web are all staples for me in that area. Because I read them all, over and over again growing up, and just, being able to go back to them and still find that magic is… really moving.)

54. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(I have the two giant complete annotated edition volumes. The one with the essays. I have broken bookshelves with them. And I got them for $3 at a tag sale when I was so small that I couldn’t carry both of them at the same time.)

55. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

(This is the book that made me believe that I could write. This book broke my heart. This is a fundamental touchstone in my development as a storyteller.)

56. Watership Down – Richard Adams

(I liked this book. My brother Fucking Loved this book. My father was deeply scarred as a child by this book. I think that’s about the full range.)

57. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

(Shoutout to those “Great Illustrated Classics” books that were in every library in the late 90’s/early 00’s. Those things were kickass. I don’t know if I would have read the full version of this one if it wasn’t for the Great Illustrated version I read when I was little. But whoever came up with the idea to just, take classical English literature and tell it exactly the same but in a slightly simplified version for a younger audience was a genius, and they deserve kudos.)

58. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

(I once read a post that opened with “spoilers for Hamlet” and… I don’t know if it’s possible to spoil Hamlet. Like, in America and England at least, it’s kinda baked in. Being alive is a spoiler for Hamlet. Also, can you spoil Hamlet, or is knowing what’s going to happen before it does is kind of part of the modern experience? I don’t know.)

59. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

(I met up with my friends this summer and one of them didn’t realize this book had a sequel. Me and my friend who had also read it then spent the next five or so minutes verbally vague posting about plot points for the Great Glass Elevator to each other, and confusing everyone else, because that book is a fever dream. For that experience alone, I will recommend.)

60. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

(If I had a nickel for every giant ass brick of a book that I actually did enjoy that included uncomfortable sexualisation of children under the age of 15 and far too much information about a specific city’s sewer system, I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.)

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[janeeyreheresy]

But Really?

Charlotte's second era in Brussels was apparently unhappy, due to her homesickness and her attachment to Monsieur Heger. In a letter to her friend Ellen Nussey, she drew herself next to the Hegers:

This is displayed at the Haworth Parsonage museum (it's my own pic, taken when I went there). Reminds you of something? In the book, Jane draws Blanche Ingram as a beautiful young woman and herself as a plain little girl. This is before she ever sees Blanche; the portrait is drawn solely from Mrs Fairfax's description. It's a rather flowery description, not really in the style of a practical, uncomplicated housekeeper.

I'm not going to get into any speculating about whether anything took place between Charlotte and Heger. Most likely it was just unrequited love on her part. Whatever the case may have been, dude would have realised which side his bread was buttered. 

Constantin Heger and his wife had six children. They were still having them while Charlotte was at the pensionnat. She returned to Haworth in January 1944.

The first book Charlotte wrote was titled The Professor. (In which the main character is mistreated by his brother, gets a teaching job at a boarding school in Belgium, ran by a woman who he initially is attracted to, but finds out she is deceitful. He starts teaching a young female aspiring teacher whom he falls in love with. The scheming directress of the school actually falls in love with him but he gets another job elsewhere and marries the young teacher-student.) It was rejected by the publishers and only released posthumously. Jane Eyre, the second book she wrote, met with more success.

Later, Charlotte published Shirley and Villette. The latter draws heavily from her time in Brussels, Charlotte used some parts of The Professor and rewrote it into Villette. The villainess is once again a headmistress of a boarding school, who schemes to marry the professor M. Paul Emanuel. Who is really Constantin Heger and Madame Heger is the conniving Madame Beck, but just because they appear in this book doesn't mean they didn't appear in Jane Eyre. Charlotte totally gave herself away by inserting the age difference between Rochester and Bertha. It's not even that it's unnecessary to the narrative, it feels so tacked on that I suspect she added it later, maybe after she had already written the whole book. Hence it contradicting the earlier item of Bertha's older brother Richard being the same age as Rochester.

I've not read any of Charlotte's other books. I do have all the Bronte works as audio plays in my Audible library, though, and it seems to me that Shirley and Villette are better than Jane Eyre. But I don't know, like I said, I've not read the actual books, so I shouldn't judge. Villette has a dark, melancholy atmosphere. Not surprising, written after the death of her siblings, Charlotte's grief must have come through.

So where does the xenophobia come from? 

Fuck knows. But this just proves that being in love with someone from a different culture doesn't exempt you from being discriminative of the culture. "I'm not racist I have black friends". That dig about peasant women is telling. Why it had to be in the book at all, I cannot fathom. It's just like the whole Celine mess. It didn't add anything of value. She's like a typical Brexit supporter, feeling all superior about herself. 

It is quite the twist of fate that Brussels became the capital of the EU.

[cosmicrhetoric]

i want a villette adaptation so bad like yes i love jane eyre but give it a rest! give my girl lucy and the terrifying apparition of a nun that plagues her a shot

[lovers-instead]

self-callout

[gingaahhhh]

Nickname: linds

Sign: capricorn sun, scorpio moon, gemini rising

Height: 5′3″

Last thing I googled: a flight lol

Number of followers: over 1k

Amount of sleep: like 6 hours ish a night

Dream job: not working xx

Wearing: leggings and a cropped sweatshirt

Movie/book that summarizes you: omg, jane eyre maybe

Favorite song: currently buried myself alive by the used

Favorite instrument: violin or clarient

Aesthetic: alt

Favorite authors: jane austen, lois lowrey, charlotte bronte

Random fun fact: i used to get like 10 anon hate messages as a teenaager and i have 2 fan blogs and a hate blog about me xx

tagging: @pop-punk-bitch and @casterlyrockette

thanks for tagging me @captjynandor <3 

Nickname: Eli! (pronounced e-lie, not ellie) 

Sign: Capricorn 

Height: 5′3 (160 cm i think?) 

Last thing I googled: i don’t want to say because it gives away my location lmao 

Number of followers: 221 (thanks porn bots) 

Amount of sleep: i wake up and fall back asleep again constantly but in total i think i slept like 11 hours lol. normally im pretty good about getting 8 though 

Dream job: either a librarian or a writer! 

Wearing: black leggings, super comfy black hoodie, my brand new green flannel, my black nose ring, clear glasses, my flip ring, and my claddagh ring  

Movie/book that summarizes you: oh boy is it a red flag if i say perks of being a wallflower? 

Favorite song: currently it’s probably i wanna be with you by chloe moriondo and all time is probably do me a favor by arctic monkeys 

Favorite instrument: i don’t think i really have one tbh 

Aesthetic: i’ve been told i go between marceline the vampire queen and princess bubblegum so idk 

Favorite authors: Alice Oseman, Sally Rooney, and Natalie Haynes, i will read absolutely anything by these wonderful and brilliant people <3 

Random fun fact: i have a bunch of really weird allergies and none of them are so severe that they could potentially kill me but i have A LOT and im like constantly having allergic reactions and i don’t even know what it is half the time lmao  

i think im going to tag @iknowwhattosaynow and @lena-hills but don’t feel like you have to do it lol 

[neonsbian]

just wrote 7 pages abt why rochester deserved to die, the anger is unreal

[neuronary]

jane eyre’s not a feminist novel

mrs. fairfax is a working class iconic figure of literature tho.