By Jonathan Yardley | On March 4, 2013 | Updated August 25, 2024 | Comments (2)
Contributed by Jonathan Yardley, the longtime Washington Post book critic emeritus, this analysis of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier explores how it may have been influenced or inspired by Jane Eyre. Almost from its inception in 18th-century England, Charlotte Brontë‘s gothic novel has been adored by readers; critics, not so much.
For the fastidious ladies and gentlemen of the quarterly reviews and academe, its central conventions — nature red in tooth and claw; haunted castles atop windswept moors; defenseless young women at the mercy of strange, obsessed men with terrible secrets; bondage, imprisonment, sexual torment and ambiguity, raging fires — are simply too too. Read More→
By Maria Grazia | On March 2, 2013 | Updated June 30, 2023 | Comments (1)
If you’re obscure, plain, poor, and little, life may not be smooth and easy for you … but, in the end, you’ll meet your hero— your Mr. Rochester and reap your reward. Read on for professor Maria Grazia’s perspective on teaching Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
You may have to bite wicked older cousins who want to torture you, defend yourself from a jealous aunt who wishes you were dead.
You may have to survive long solitary hours locked in a scary red room, then to strive to keep yourself sane and alive in a bleak, heartless place like a school for poor girls, you must accept to go on living without anybody caring for you or loving you. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 15, 2012 | Updated November 18, 2024 | Comments (2)
In troubled economic times, books (and movies) serve as means of comfort and escape. Here we will explore what Americans were reading during the era of the Great Depression, and which women authors of the 1930s appeared on U.S. bestseller lists.
Shown at right, one of the era’s prominent female authors, Daphne du Maurier.
As we know, books that make it to bestseller lists aren’t necessarily the ones that endure as classics. I had no idea what to expect when I explored the lists of top 10 best selling novels for each of the years of the 1930s, but what I did surprised me.
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By Nava Atlas | On July 14, 2012 | Updated April 27, 2025 | Comments (2)
Louisa May Alcott’s reach into contemporary culture, particularly with her iconic character, Jo March, is never ending. And so, I bring you this interview with Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888) from the great beyond, featuring her forthright answers to my hypothetical questions.
Patti Smith is just one of many modern and contemporary authors who was inspired by Jo March. In her memoir, Just Kids, Smith recalled that her earliest inspiration was the fictional Jo, one of the four sisters in Louisa’s most beloved novel, Little Women.
What would a gawky, bookish teen growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s (albeit one destined to become a punk legend) find in common with a 19th-century girl in crinolines? Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On July 10, 2012 | Updated April 27, 2025 | Comments (0)
It seems only fair that Charlotte Brontë, author of the beloved novel Jane Eyre (and others), the subject of endless film adaptations, and which will be in print for time immemorial, should have her say.
I’m thrilled to say that I’ve conducted an interview with Charlotte Brontë; that she’s been deceased since 1855 is a mere technicality.
Truthfully, her first-person narratives provide incisive answers, needing only someone (that would be me) to ask hypothetical, yet pertinent questions: Read More→
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