Friday, May 02, 2014

Ten fictional men who have set impossible standards for real life men

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Molly Schoemann-McCann tagged ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, including:
Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Oh, Mr. Rochester, you I love the most. You knew that Jane was just a plain, poor governess, but you saw through to her inner beauty and you prized her wit, her intelligence, and her gentle humanity. Just like if we had met when I was in tenth grade, you would have looked past my terrible glasses, my braces, and my obsession with the The X-Files, to see the sensitive, misunderstood poet hiding within. And then you would have taken me to prom on horseback, through a fragrant field of lilies…What? Are y’all still there? Talk amongst yourselves, guys. I’m busy.
Read about another entry on the list.

Jane Eyre also made Becky Ferreira's lists of seven of the best fictional depictions of female friendship and the top six most momentous weddings in fiction, Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Julia Sawalha's six best books list, Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books list, Kathryn Harrison's list of six favorite books with parentless protagonists, Megan Abbott's top ten list of novels of teenage friendship, a list of Bettany Hughes's six best books, the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best governesses in literature, ten of the best men dressed as women, ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, ten of the best smokes in fiction, and ten of the best cases of blindness in literature. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue