To think Marianne shouldn't have married Colonel Brandon?

[squoosh]

Okay Willoughby was a cad and a bounder and took himself out of the running, but I do think that Brandon swooped in to take advantage of her rain induced fever which had left her a bit dazed and compliant.

It's a bit creepy that he falls in love with her because she reminds him of his long lost, 'fallen', dead love. Plus he's a bit intense, the laughs wouldn't be forthcoming and I'll warrant he expected her to do all kinds of dark shit in the bedroom.

Ideally she'd have had another couple of seasons in London and met lots of nice suitors or maybe even nipped across to Pride and Prejudice and married that nice Colonel Fitzwilliam.

You can get the DVD ThursdayLast I must admit I don't remember which Bronte sister wrote it . . Emily??

TTOWH is my favourite Bronte book. Can't abide 'Withering' Heights and Jane Eyre is only good in the second half and even then you have to put off with that appalling missionary chap. It's only good in the Rochester bits.

Knightley not at all creepy. He's the only one who shows Emma 'proper' non-spoiled behaviour. her dad doesn't because he's completely self-obsessed other than in his conviction that Emma is perfect and 'poor Miss Taylor' doesn't because she's a servant and is paid to be indulgent. Without Knightley, Emma wouldn't ever learn that her behaviour is sometimes pretty horrible. And doesn't he say that it's only when he thinks she loves Frank, that he realises he loves her? He's seen her as a younger sister figure, until he thinks he's losing her and that's when he realises that actually that love he feels for her isn't just brotherly.

Aha, you see I didn't even know it was Bronte!

Never been a massive Bronte fan full stop. I was s'posed to read Villette for uni, I tried and tried and tried again and I couldn't get to the end. I don't enjoy Wuthering Heights either. I can't remember any more offhand now.

I've started re reading Northanger Abbey thanks to this thread. I forgot how out and out sarcastic it is in the beginning!

I did like Wuthering Heights when I was 16, but as a grown woman I find Heathcliff just utterly ridiculous. The tip off should be when he's hanging puppies over the chair! It's a little adolescent, I think.
TTOWH does ramble, but the heroine is brave and honest, and has a backbone. Cathy, OTOH, I could just slap into non-existance.
I have never ever managed to make it to the end of Vilette. I don't believe anyone has! Likewise any George Eliot at all apart from Silas Marner.
I do though, absolutely love Vanity Fair and Pendennis, and I wish to goodness there would be a decent adaptation of both of them.
I just thought who my best missed opportunity Lizzie would have been, the marvellous Charlotte Coleman, aka as Marmalade Atkins, who was lovely in that drippy Four Weddings and.... Sadly, she is passed on, but she'd have been brilliant.

Agree that TTOWH is the best Bronte, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are all kinds of wrong, Vilette is just depressing, and Agnes Grey is blah. Not read Shirley, of The Professor.

Can't see Marmalade as Lizzy at all tbh, but agree that George E is torturous.

The only Eliot I've read is Adam Bede.

I was underwhelmed. Adam is boring, Dinah is boring.

I do quite like Shirley, but only because I'm a history teacher first and foremost, and it's a smashing account of Luddism and Industrialisation. Without it I don't think there would have been an North and South. It does drag on a bit though, with my "romance" hat on.

My other secret vice is a total Wilkie Collins obsession. There seriously needs to be a decent "Woman in White" film starring either Matthew Macfadyen or Ben Chaplin before I get too old to appreciate it.

I just thought of a possible missed Wentowrth: Nathaniel Parker.

The Woman in White is the most gripping book I've ever read! I adore Marian Halcombe.

Oh, I adore Marian Halcombe too. Massive Wilkie Collins fan.

I very much like Adam Bede, too. I think Dinah's another one that you have to see in the context of the 19th century, not the 21st century, in order to understand how kick-ass she is.

Dinah and Marian Halcombe would make a brilliant detective partnership.

I love everything he's written, it's all good! Yet to find a decent adaptation of WIW on screen though, and I don't know why, it's so richly written. I didn't like the last BBC version that much.

If a decent director ever got round to doing The Moonstone,or WIW, oh my. Just imagine the queue of irascible gent actors for the detective. I think there is a 90's version with Greg Wise which I must catch up with.

'No Name' is my favourite.

oooh, fan fiction possibility there alright, GrendelsMum!

I love 'The Law and the Lady' - they did do an interesting radio adapatation of it recently, but they had to cut quite heavily for time, and that meant that the portrayal of Whatsisname (the 'mad dwarf') was very mad dwarf indeed.

Ooh I haven't read that - mad dwarf sounds great!

No Name is great and Moonstone is also good although that Rachel Verrender was a bit annoying, why didn't she just say what she saw from the start.

I'm surprised too that WIW hasn't had a decent adaptation done yet, it would lend itself perfectly to an adaptation done in the style of the BBC's Bleak House. It swings from cliffhanger to cliffhanger.

Yep, you can't fault Wilkie Collins for excellently overblown characters! Crazy legless people, false imprisonment in asylums, opium addicts,reformed prostitutes, shady beauty shop owners, villanous husbands, it's all there.

My name is Pachacuti and I too prefer TTOWH to either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. This is the sort of opinion I feel nervous about sharing in polite circles but I feel I am among friends here.

I have also never managed to finish Mansfield Park because I find Fanny so annoying. But now I'm reading What Matters In Jane Austen (which I recommend, by the way) I will have another attempt in order to notice the details discussd there.

Fat Italian baddies with mice in their trouser pockets!

Reformed prostitutes, sheridand? I can't remember who that is...?

What do people think about Armadale? Sadly, despite having an excellent villainess, I find it goes on a bit.

I haven't tackled Armadale yet but it's on a bookshelf somewhere so no excuse. It's been a while since I read any of his books so might give it a whirl.

Mercy Merrick in the New Magdalen. Great names!

I have never managed all of Armadale either, the only one i've not got through.

Maybe we should hold an Armadale online book club?

I've read Armadale but found it very long winded - too akin to Dickens for my liking, that one.