...to Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre. I absolutely loved the book as a kid, but being visual, I was even more enthralled with the movie--the Orson Welles version more so than the George C. Scott version, and I don't even want to talk about the William Hurt version. Although Margaret O'Brien could have been too cute and much too American to be a convincing Adele, and Joan Fontaine wasn't quite plain enough. Still, I'll stick with the 1944 version.While reading Charlotte's brief biography this morning, I discovered her possible cause of death could have been severe vomiting from morning sickness. Huh. I had that, twice. If I had known you could die from that, I might not have opted for that second round. Glad I did, though.
Back to birthdays, it's also the birthday of Sister #1. I was six years old and just starting the first grade when she left for college, so she was more like a second mother to me. We have since become real sisters, which is better. Happy birthday sister. Make it a good one.
Comments
Not so sure about Charlotte, though; those Brontes were untimately responsible for that plague upon literature. chick-lit.
Moby Dick, Frankenstein, Gulliver's Travels, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Through The Looking Glass, Ivanhoe, Civil Disobedience, Huckleberry Finn, Bleak House …
Oooh. Lots of things.
But instead they gave us improbably tight-trousered and insufferably arrogant men and subservient, marriage-obsessed women.
Tsk! Chick-lit …
She wrote what she knew.
George Eliot … ah! Okay. I'll let you have that one.
Drat.
And I also have a big sister, but she is still more mother than sibling.
And, like pretty much all literature, there is a place for "chick lit" just as there is a place for "dick lit."
Did I just cuss? I didn't mean to.
And celebrity "biographies".
EW!
It was so hard to get published then, they had to write that sort of stuff and even had to assume men's names in order to get it looked at. I think they made a good compromise, sticking to a romantic theme ("women, know your limits!") but making it really dark and scary too. Brilliant.
Ah yes Dive but a lot of those authors you mention are male. Very difficult to be taken seriously as a woman. My guess is if they had been, we'd have seen a very different genre from them.
And where's my dinner?