Bronte vs Austen – no contest

With nothing much to report on my own writing front except that I’ve almost finished Mrs Osbourne Regrets and I’m pissed off with youwriteon. I’ve been given a good deal of four and five stars for my reviews of Two Become One and yet they’re coming up with an average of 3 stars, thus putting me at number 33 in their chart, I thought I would give my opinion on a literary argument that I’m sure burns on even today. Who is better – Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte?

I absolutely adore Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, both in the book and TV form. I’m watching the 1983 version with Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke for the 100th time and I’m still enthralled. To me, the Bronte sisters wiped the floor with Jane Austen. That woman is to blame for the utter influx of shit chick lit we have littering our bookshops, all her books are about social manners and finding Mr Right, which is all very nice but I’m sorry Mr Darcy (yes, even Colin Firth in that wet shirt) cannot compare to the sheer brooding and Byronesqe majesty of Edward Fairfax Rochester.

Both Eyre and Rochester are flawed characters who, through finding each other, discover things about themselves. I have a feeling that should Jane Eyre had found herself in an Austen novel, she would have found her match in Mr Whoever and would have become somehow tamed by him. With Bronte, she allows the wilful Jane to meet a man who is her equal. They are as wild as each other and you can imagine that they probably have really great sex!

To me it is quite telling of the times that Jane Austen books are so popular in an age where the majority of young women aspire to nothing more than marrying well. If Austen wrote today, Darcy would probably play for Chelsea. Jane Eyre is an independent woman and by the end of the book, it is she who is the stronger one in the relationship, the crippled and broken Rochester relying upon her for physical and emotional support.

Jane Austen is to blame for Mills and Boon and all that rubbishy chick lit. Her books fill young women’s heads with dreams of unrealistic romance and I find anything that just centres around the upper classes quite nauseating. Why do you think there are no soap operas centred around posh people? It’s because more often than not their lives are so boring. If you’re going to do class you should at least have some sort of contrast, some commentary on the differences between people.

Anything to do with Jane Austen triggers the same response in me as the words Sex and the City – I want to stick pins in my eyes. There is more to being a woman than your relationships with men and how other women see you. Maybe this is more about me; perhaps I’m too masculine in my approach to life but anyone who reads my novels will see I’m not afraid to explore the darker elements of life. If I want escapism I’ll watch a sci-fi film.

If they were musicians today, Austen would be Dido; the Brontes would be Radiohead. Nuff said.

Ciao for now.