a random question

This has occurred to me before, and I bet someone around here knows the answer.

Dahlia Travers and Agatha Gregson: sisters, or not? (Uncle Wiki says they're sisters, but doesn't give a specific citation. So how do we know this? The fact that they share a nephew is not, obvs., sufficient; my nephew has two aunts and we are no relation to each other - not even sisters-in-law, in fact.)

and on to the next Bronte.

Things I knew about Jane Eyre before I read it:

• who was living in the attic
  
• fire bad
  
• "Reader, I married him."

Things I didn't know but saw coming about a thousand words before Jane did

• that Rochester was the gypsy fortune-teller
  
• that the Rivers kids were Jane's long-lost cousins

All in all, I liked it (and now I will have less guilt about going to see the movie, which I think I will do on Saturday). But I did continue to think, as I thought after the first half-dozen chapters, that it was All A Bit Much. Sign of the times, I suppose? Also, I keep hearing things about this being all full of the feminism, and I have to say I'm not sure I saw it?, but maybe I'm looking for the wrong things. I did applaud Jane's refusal to marry Rivers because she knew he didn't actually love her; but her general doormattery, refusal to marry Rivers notwithstanding, made it hard for me to see her as a feminist icon. (Okay, I also see where she was more satisfied with Rochester when she could be of some practical use in the relationship instead of just living off his millions. So okay: two things.)


I've now read one chapter of Wuthering Heights, and so far I think the narrator is even more of a jackass than he wants us to believe Heathcliff is. Are we supposed to find Lockwood sympathetic at all?

so's your old man

Since jae brought up the famous Eskimo vocabulary hoax (and its Dutch and, I maintain, English cousin, as well), I was reminded that from time to time I am amused by how many epithets we can use in English by prefixing something onto the word head. Observe (though this will not be an exhaustive list because I am much nicer than that [g]):

insulting prefixes to add to -head:

• block-
  
• bone-
  
• butt-
  
• chowder-
  
• chuckle-
  
• dick-
  
• doo-doo-
  
• dunder-
  
• lunk-
  
• meat-
  
• poopy-
  
• shit-
  
• thick-

Other suggestions are more than welcome, of course, to say nothing of related concepts like addle- (-pate[d]), bird- (-brain), etc.

All of these imply that the object of the epithet is of less than normal intelligence, of course. Interestingly, I can think of just the one such thing implying that the object is of greater than normal intelligence (and it's not exactly a compliment, is the thing):

prefixes going the other way:

• egg-

Thoughts?