Bronte or Austen ?

[herethereeverywhere]

Just that really. Just had a debate with my sister regarding them both (all Brontes vs Jane Austen ). I said that although I do love P&P and Persuasion for me it's the Brontes every time. DSis thinks you can't beat Austen for escapism though. Apologies if this has been done on here before but DSis and I have decided to bow down to the mumsnet vote

[ImperialSantaKnickers]

Brontes are for when you're feeling grown up and serious.

Austens are for when you're not.

I've only managed each Bronte once, but the Austens are all on at least their third trip round the bedtime book.

[Poledra]

Austen - your sis is right

[LadyPeterWimsey]

Obviously Austen.

I have a theory that you see the world either in Austen or Bronte terms and you therefore can't equally love both.

I can't be doing with all that Bronte melodrama; her heroines make me want to shake them and tell them to stop over-reacting like hormonal teenagers.

[LadyPeterWimsey]

Austen not shallow!!

[ImperialSantaKnickers]

Hi LadyPeter I'm a tremendous fan of your husband BTW...

Jane Austen isn't shallow of course, its me...

Her work is more accessible though, and I find I can believe in her characters emotionally more than the various Bronte girls.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Brontes are for when you're feeling grown up and serious.
Austens are for when you're not.

I don't know about that - I didn't get Austen at all when I was an early teen, too subtle maybe, whereas Bronte (Jane Eyre anyway) was exactly right.

Lumping all the Brontes together doesn't really work - even just Charlotte's books are disparate.

[LadyPeterWimsey]

He's brilliant, isn't he? And I'm pretty sure, as famously level-headed as he is, that he's an Austen fan...

[HoratiaLovesBabyJesus]

Austen is more rose-tinted. Even those in desperate straits come out ok in the end.

The Brontes are more realistic perhaps, and certainly more gritty.

[MrsBovary]

I liked Bronte best when I was a teenager. I love both still, but prefer Austen nowadays. Favourites being, Northanger Abbey (nostalgic, being the first Austen book I read, and introduced me to Radcliffe), and Sense and Sensibility.

[DuchessofMalfi]

Well I think I'd rather have a Darcy or a Wentworth than a Rochester for a husband :). I'd be forever worrying in case I upset him and he started clearing a space in the attic :o

[StiffyByng]

Austen, Austen, Austen. I like to laugh at books. Bronte is also too teenage angst for me. Even as a teenager myself it irritated me. I had to do Wuthering Heights for A level and loathed every minute of it.

[GrimmaTheNome]

I hated the ending of Villette. Give me a happy ending for preference, or a sad one if you must but that was just a let-down. (trying to avoid spoiler)

[Whitershadeofpale]

Bronte's for me. I think Austen is too chick-lity for me.

[mummytime]

Austin as she has a dry wit, and if you think she is chick lit you really haven't got the irony.

I like Charlotte on the whole, really like Anne, but Emily is so dreadful she drags the Brontes as a whole down to real chick-lit/mills and boon for me.

[SuperScribbler]

I think it's like trying to compare liquorice to lemon sherberts. Both are delicious but in very different ways

I like both, depending on my mood, but not together.

[hackmum]

Grimma: "I don't know about that - I didn't get Austen at all when I was an early teen, too subtle maybe, whereas Bronte (Jane Eyre anyway) was exactly right."

Yes, me too. Loved Jane Eyre at 14. Read P&P at 15, thought it was OK, but didn't get the jokes. Now it's probably my all-time favourite book.

I do enjoy the Brontes - Jane Eyre, of course, also Villette, and Tenant of Wildfell Hall is much better than you might expect. Wuthering Heights is a bit bonkers. But Austen is someone I love - the books are so subtle and so clever and funny but they also resonate and stay with you, I find, in a way that the Brontes don't. At the most basic level, I actually believe in the characters in a way that I don't with the Brontes.

[mummytime]

When I first read Emma at 19, I really didn't get it. The scene discussing if Jane (?) should have gone to the post office, when I re-read in my mid twenties I was amazed at what I had missed.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Having now passed 50, I think I'm nearly old enough to have another crack at George Eliot...I've just started 'Shirley' for the first time though, think I ought to get on and read that first.

[JenaiMathis]

Saw this in Most Active and thought it was a Baby Name thread

[MooncupGoddess]

I was the other way round, loved Austen in my teens but didn't get the Brontes at all. All that agonising!

Now I am marginally less emotionally repressed I love Jane Eyre (often underrated by people who think its main point is the love story), Shirley, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and even Villette if I'm in the right mood.

[EugenesAxeChoppedDownANiceTree]

If I was talking in a cerebral sense; the Brontes (I should say the Bronte, as I've only read Jane Eyre; I didn't get into Wuthering Heights at all). If I'm talking about what I actually prefer reading; Austen.

[LRDtheFeministDude]

I would love someone to name their kids Bronte and Austen!

Are we allowed to say neither?

I quite like both (not read all the Brontes though), but I don't find them easy to compare and don't think the Brontes were all that similar. And I used to hate Northanger Abbey but now I find it funnier.

[AnneElliott]

It has to be Austen. I read P&P at 12 and didn't get it, but once I was older the humour became clear. Bronte is great, particularly The Tenant of Wildfell Hall but Austen is the winner for me.

[highlandcoo]

hackmum : "Austen is someone I love - the books are so subtle and so clever and funny but they also resonate and stay with you, I find, in a way that the Brontes don't. At the most basic level, I actually believe in the characters in a way that I don't with the Brontes."

Totally agree

[GrimmaTheNome]

I would love someone to name their kids Bronte and Austen!

tangentially, that reminds me of when our new neighbours when I was a child introduced their two children - Spencer and Tracy. Mother said, 'oh, he's one of my favourite actors' and the mum said 'who is?'