#bronte sisters

[elephantlovemedleys]

marie france pisier, isabelle adjani, and isabelle huppert behind the scenes as charlotte, emily, and anne brontë for les soeurs brontë (1979)

[i-g-nova]

what's interesting to me about classic books is how writers like Jane Austen and the Brontes did feminism better than so many authors in the 1990s onward who were deliberately trying.

you know those girlboss stories, where the only way the author could think to make women interesting is to make them punch away their problems like the men. (i loved Buffy but she's a typical example of this.) they still implicitly support the idea that men's stories are the only ones worth telling, because that kind of might is inaccessible to most women in real life. this is the playschool level of feminism, a gender swap without any deeper engagement with women's perspectives.

whereas old school women writers found a way to make real women's stories compelling, even within the severe restrictions they lived under 100+ years ago. look at how beloved Pride and Prejudice is despite being about 'a bunch of people going to other people's houses.' the characters still have interior lives, their own wills, and the determination to succeed despite obstacles. all this is done without even wanting to make a feminist point; most of these writers would not have called themselves feminists. (Anne Bronte, maybe.) it's so un-self-conscious. they still have something to teach us.

[literaturewoman]

"I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me."

—Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

[madeleineengland]

- To Walk Invisible (2016)

[sireniine]

“heathcliff, its me im cathy ive come home, im so cold. let me in your window.”

[saimusage]

Source: wildfellheights

[edwardian-masquerade]

"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!"

-Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

[thebellekeys]

adolescent boarding-school girl-toff emerald fennell developed a fantasy about falling for one of her father's stable boys after she read wuthering heights and now we all have to suffer for it because the marlborough college dorms had fanfiction.net blocked