Cliches or not?

The first time I heard about the sunny part of England was when I was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. Then, Virginia Woolf was describing another sunny village where Mrs Dalloway spent her summers in her youth. I am not surprised that London shines on me so often.

Talking about these classic books… It is interesting how the modern reader perceives them. I am reading Jane Eyre and although it is a great book and I absolutely love it (and I will write about it when I’ll finish it), it is all a typical telenovela. People with tragic lives, falling in love with the wrong people. North and South was also very predictable for me, a modern reader. But do you realise that these books created the cliches? I am trying to put myself in the (muddy) shoes of someone from the mid-1800s reading something like this for the first time.

I kind of feel bad for these amazing female writers whose works became cliches. People don’t have the patience to read and enjoy them anymore. Even I have problems with this sometimes, but I like to focus on the complexity of characters or something else to keep myself hooked to the story.