i love jane eyre but honestly imagine being friends with that bitch. like imagine trying to convince her to leave rochester and she’s like idk and you’re like he called u ugly???? he keeps his secret wife locked in the attic???? wake up???? and then you think she finally has it sorted out and she calls you a few months later like “his wife killed herself and burned down the house so it’s cool we’re getting married” like !!!!!!!!!!!! HOW DO YOU GO TO THAT WEDDING!!!!!!
Charlotte Brontë: Here’s my novel about a young governess who falls in love with a charming asshole edgelord who keeps his wife in the attic
Emily Brontë: Here’s my novel about a tragic orphan and a young lady who torture each other and call it love
Anne Brontë: Here’s my novel about a woman who leaves an abusive marriage and nabs herself a hot young Yorkshire sheepfarmer who Treats Her Right
Me: Oh thank God, at least one of you is sensible.
This is EXACTLY why The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is my absolute favourite. I mean, yes, Jane Eyre is great, but Tenant is fantastic and scandalously feminist, too, because it tells us that the most Christian thing the heroine can do is leave her abusive husband and take her son with her, and this was SHOCKING. Lovers of Jane Eyre’s ‘independent will’ need to give Tenant a chance.
when women insert idealized versions of themselves into fiction we disdain those characters as “Mary Sues” but when Lord Byron does it we call it a “Byronic hero” and spend two hundred years swooning over dickbags
I’d post that Kate Beaton comic about the Brontës here if I weren’t on my phone
knitting in the dark 