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Happy Birthday

...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

dive said…
Happy birthday Sister no.1. Yaay!

Not so sure about Charlotte, though; those Brontes were untimately responsible for that plague upon literature. chick-lit.
8:09 AM
Scout said…
Chick lit. Huh. I guess you're right, but they were certainly romantic, those girls--all that Heathcliff stuff and Mr. Rochester and all. But in their day, what else could they write?
8:16 AM
dive said…
In their day, Robyn:
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 …
9:33 AM
Scout said…
Point taken. But "in their day," they were women, and with limited exposure to the world around them. As it was they had to publish under male names. Charlotte couldn't reveal herself to be a woman until well after Jane Eyre was published.

She wrote what she knew.
10:04 AM
dive said…
Mary Shelley?
George Eliot … ah! Okay. I'll let you have that one.
Drat.
10:32 AM
Maria said…
I was more of an Emily Bronte fan, but I liked all the sisters. I was so enthralled with Wuthering Heights in high school that I went around quoting it. I can still be moved to tears by the line, "I AM Heathcliff."

And I also have a big sister, but she is still more mother than sibling.
12:09 PM
Gina said…
Happy Birthday to both Birthday Girls!

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.
4:02 PM
dive said…
No, Gina; there is a place OUTSIDE literature for both chick-lit and dick-lit.
And celebrity "biographies".
EW!
4:59 PM
Terroni said…
So...how was Rent?
3:46 PM
Cheltenhamdailyphoto said…
Ohh my favourite book Robyn. Happy birthday indeed.

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.
4:58 PM
dive said…
"Women! Know your limits!"
And where's my dinner?
12:36 AM
Cheltenhamdailyphoto said…
Some of it's in the cupboard, a bit in the fridge, some still on the shop shelf. Enjoy!
6:19 AM
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