Book Trailers: 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte

Yesterday I told you to read Jane Eyre, and undoubtedly you immediately ran out and did it, so now I implore you to watch the 2011 Focus Features adaptation. There are other movie version (I smell a blog post coming on...) but this one is restrained and moody, just like the book, and never feels the need to indulge in any over-dramatization or sexualization that didn't come directly from the page. Plus, this one has Fassbender so...

The Bookhive List: 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte

This will quite possibly be the easiest blog post I ever write. This book is dope. It is essential. It benefits from re-examination throughout your life, and it only gets better with age.

No one is a bigger pusher of the wider Bronte canon than me (also here and here) but this one is widely considered to be the best, and it is by far the most popular, and for a reason.

The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.

Books on Books: 'The Madwoman in the Attic' by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

I first came across The Madwoman in the Attic via Madeleine's thesis project in The Marriage Plot, but I'm surprised that I made it through four years of humanities studies without having read it, as I, much like the fictional Madeleine, spent a lot of time with books that were described as "discourses." The Madwoman in the Attic is the O.G. of feminist readings of fiction, and its influence cannot be overstated. I've been thinking a lot about it recently as I was reading Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, whose very title and premise are something of an homage. The book is largely concerned with female authors like Jane Austen, the Brontes, and Virginia Woolf, and it's a really excellent follow-up to anyone who has already read and enjoyed some of the major women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It's easy to find a first edition at any decent used book store (especially those in college towns), but do yourself a favor a pickup a newer copy that include their revised introduction, which should give you a better taste of the cultural impact the book had on feminism and literature.