jane eyre question

[schmerica]

Yesterday I was going through all of my books, deciding which few ones I absolutely required to have at school with me for the next few weeks, and I came across my copy of Jane Eyre. The book was a mass-market paperback, and I've read it enough times that it's showing many many many signs of wear, but it's been quite a while since my last reread -- I can't remember exactly when, in fact.

This got me thinking, and thus, poll question:

[Poll #411701]

I can picture Ray responding to it in a very "what the fuck?" way -- "His place burns down and he goes blind? What the hell kind of ending is that?"

Fraser, I think, would love it. A lot.

Also? Jane Eyre is SO much better than Wuthering Heights, omg.

Comments

[aerye.livejournal.com]

His place burns down and he goes blind?

Well. Yes. I imagine Fraser can find much to relate to in this ending. ::g::

It depends on a certain degree on perspective. This is, after all, a story about Jane, not a story about Rochester. So yes, my vote is for happy ending, because for Jane there is self-realization, there is choice, there is independence, and there is Rochester--on her terms.

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Except, y'know, with Jane, it's not about the happy. It's about those other things I listed, which don't exactly equate with "happy".

Hmm.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Bingo. Just as for Fraser, it's not about the happy either. Or at least in my cosmology. *g*

And to me the key thing with Jane (as with Fraser) is that, for all her passionate nature, she is sustained ultimately by principle and judgment. She maintains the right. *g* I managed to locate something I posted a while back about Jane Eyre and Fraser -- "[It] strikes me as a very Fraserish book--the story of an orphan, shunned, reviled, and misunderstood, sustained by principle and an ultimately unshakeable determination to hew to her own understanding of who she truly is."

And then I was looking at some comments on an altogether different Jane-Eyre related entry (http://www.livejournal.com/users/katallison/36231.html), which led me to a remarkable post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/debchan/84237.html#cutid1) by debchan that made me think about Fraser re-reading Jane Eyre in a whole different way while lying in the hospital post-Victoria. Ouch.

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?

Oh, wow. Ouch indeed. Oh, ouchy ouchy smarts.

Seriously, someday I want to spend hours talking about this book with you.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Hmm, indeed. They don't exactly equate, perhaps, but ... a necessary foundation for happiness? I don't think it's exactly that they're more important than happiness, because I don't think the happiness would have existed without them. Rochester might have had a grand time living in sin off somewhere, but Jane could never have.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Oh, and re: Jane Eyre vs. Wuthering Heights -- I'd agree that JE is a more consistently good novel. WH is, I think, quite uneven, but my god, the good parts are *extraordinary.*

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

What good parts?

*g*

I could never really appreciate (or detect) the good parts in WH because I was too busy wanting to reach into the book and kick Heathcliff & Cathy in the behind. Or just ship Cathy off to London for a season to meet some different, possibly *sane*, people.

WH=Drama Queens on Parade. The thing I like best about JE is that Jane herself *isn't* really a Drama Queen: shit happens, and she *deals*.

[katallison.livejournal.com]

I was too busy wanting to reach into the book and kick Heathcliff & Cathy in the behind

But see, this is a big part of what I love about the book. *g* To me, it cuts so sharply against the boilerplate Big Angsty Romance, where the Doomed Romantic Heroes are supposed to be -- well, heroes, glamorous figures we're supposed to like and root for. And instead Cathy is a self-centered bitch, and Heathcliff is a sadistic bully, and they're neither of them likeable at *all*, but at the same time it's so clear that in their *own* minds they're glamorous as hell, while it's also clear that all the grubby or mundane supporting characters are eventually fed to the back teeth with their antics and can see right through them. I love it that even if we come into the book with a predisposition toward Big Doomed Romance, we end up muttering "Those two are *morons*" and rooting instead for the grubby mundane supporting characters who are left sweeping up the pieces.

I love the hellaciously complex narrative structure Bronte sets up, which even though it's often confusing as hell still leads me to think hard about questions of narrator reliability, point of view, etc.

And the place-setting and atmospherics are, I think, superb--both the sweeping grandeur of the moors, and the contrastingly grubby dreariness of everyday life in those dank bleak little farmhouses.

(Apologies to pearl_o for hijacking her comments, btw! *g*)

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I love it that even if we come into the book with a predisposition toward Big Doomed Romance, we end up muttering "Those two are *morons*" and rooting instead for the grubby mundane supporting characters who are left sweeping up the pieces.

Wow. You know, it never actually occurred to me before that the authorial intention was for us to not love Heathcliff & Cathy. I thought she, the author, actually liked them, or at least admired them for being grand & doomed & Romantic with a capital R. I certainly had the vague impression that most readers loved them, or at least loved Heathcliff (and probably thought he just needed the Love of a Truly Good Woman, i.e. Mary Sue). They seemed to me to have pretty much set the mold for e.g. Scarlett O'Hara, and since I knew a lot of people love her I figured most readers love Heathcliff & Cathy, too.

I actually think Emily failed as a writer, either way: if we were supposed to love H&C, it didn't work for a lot of readers; if we were supposed to see through, I get the feeling that didn't work for a lot of readers, either. But then, unreliable narrator is super-tricky.

Now you shall force me to run a poll.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

See, your whole first paragraph there? It's why I ungrudgingly acknowledge Emily's talent but will not reread Wuthering Heights without some immediate compensation (I take cash!). I figure that anyone who can make me detest her protagonists that fixedly must be some kind of genius. By contrast, I have found Jane's individuation fascinating since the first time I read Jane Eyre, and I guess my major beef with Wuthering Heights is that it really lacks that dynamic sweep to most of its character development. Of course, that's partly the point -- C&H are supposed to be these wild and elemental figures, mythic and savage and, yes, romantic etc etc. Still doesn't make me like them. *channels disgruntled help*

[indywind]

Is not genius. Is all too common. Piers Anthony fer crissake.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Kat, my darling, feel free to pack up and move into my comments whenever your fancy strikes you. You're always welcome.

[nasrani.livejournal.com]

But the moors! Think of the moors. It's a good distraction when you feel like kicking anyone's heads in. :D

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre has as happy an ending as you can get in the Gothic genre. I call that "kind of." ;)

Also, I have this longstanding theory that there are two kinds of people in the world: JE people and WH people. I'm the former, because at least Jane has some frickin' gumption. Catherine in WH is all, "Oh, woe, poor little me, I'm in love with a total hunk! Life sucks!" Boo frickin' hoo! ;)

BTW, you have read The Eyre Affair, right?? If you haven't, you must. Right now. Go!

<i>The Eyre Affair</i>

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Seconded - it's a rollicking read, and contains a strange alternate ending to Jane Eyre. :)

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! I did enjoy the Eyre Affair quite a bit. I have the latest Thursday Next on my reading list still, in fact.

[calathea.livejournal.com]

I read Jane Eyre at a ridiculously early age (I liked the school story bit), and probably once a year since. It's only a sort of happy ending, IMO, but it's quite a fitting ending from the Bronte perspective because people get what they deserve. Rochester sinned (or had a damn good try) so he fell, but he was sort of good, so he got Jane anyway.

For a true WTF? ending, you have to read Villette, also by Charlotte Bronte. Quite apart from the fact that the main character (Lucy Snow) spends 2 chapters wandering around in an opium-fuelled daze seeing things, at the end the alleged love of her life is possibly lost at sea, possibly not, because Charlotte Bronte thought that was a better end for him than being married to Lucy.

(Also, I live up the road from Haworth, where they grew up, and brrr, bleak and chilly place, except now curiously full of new age shops selling e.g. incense and crystal balls).

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

The juvenile Brontes wrote a lot of what we'd call RPF today, which IIRC included lots of Wellington-fic. It's no wonder that they're a touchstone for slashers (and all fannish people) today, they practicallly codified the genre.

I made a special pilgrimage to the National Gallery in London so that I could see Branwell's portrait of his sisters -- lots of other wonderful people, but that one in particular I wanted to see in person.

[mz-bstone.livejournal.com]

god, yes.

I HATED Heathcliff and Catherine when I was a kid. Self-serving assholes.

Rochester, on the other hand?

Hot.

I have a really well done version from BBC starring Michael Jayston (sp?) and I've seen the Timothy Dalton one twice.

Can't make myself sit through William Hurt, though.

B

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

The William Hurt one was *terrible* (well, if you'd read the book, that is...I have no idea how it read to someone who was coming in cold). I adored the George C. Scott/Susannah York version though (and agreed, the Timothy Dalton one is v. good)

Oh! There was a 1930's movie version where...Jane was *blonde* And pretty! And Adele was Rochester's niece! And when Jane and Rochester first met (on the dark country road), yes, he falls off his horse, but he brushes it aside - gallant man that he is - and is smiling and charming to Jane.

I watched in fascinated horror. All the way through to the end!

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

Wow! Someone else who loves the George C. Scott/Susannah York version. I saw it my senior year in high school. Then the teacher had recorded it and showed it again in class. Then I got to see it again during study hall. It was great. The 1930's version is probably the the one with Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine. Yes, I am an obsessive Jane Eyre watcher. In fact, I read Jane Eyre to my daughter when she was about six. She loves it too!

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

No, the Orson Welles one was totally canonical in comparison. Check this out: the 1934 version (http://imdb.com/title/tt0025323/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxzZz0xfGxtPTIwMHx0dD1vbnxwbj0wfHE9amFuZSBleXJlfGh0bWw9MXxubT1vbg__;fc=6;ft=20;fm=1). *g*

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh--three! I have that version on DVD!

[fox1013.livejournal.com]

I have. Um.

Never read Jane Eyre OR Wuthering Heights.

I'll be sitting over there, in the corner of shame, if you need me.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

Do you like the strong women? The gothic psychodramas?
...The moody impatient milords with their blemished pasts and wild dark eyes?

Yes, precious. Joins us, yes.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*pets you* I love you anyway!

(The first time I read Jane Eyre was at CTY, summer between sixth and seventh grade. I had the same copy I still own. I was telling the story as a serial to my roommate, who thought it looked boring. I kept her in suspense about the big plot turn for, like, two days.)

[fox1013.livejournal.com]

*loves right back*

You know, if one of us had gone to a different gifted program- and if there hadn't been problems with dates I probably would have done 7 years of CTY instead of 1 CTY and 6 SIG- we could have met years and years and years ago.

I find this troubling, and yet deeply, deeply cool.

[qe2.livejournal.com]

100% with you on Jane vs. Kate. I can't stand Wuthering Heights. Never could. I don't even like the song.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

while i did like jane eyre, and the ending, sort of, i'm a wide sargasso sea kinda girl. by jean rhys. porny, insane, problematic, poetic, and deep. and sort of pretentious, but... who cares? ;)

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think that one of Charlotte's sibs said, "Char? You might want to snap things up a bit, 'cause this is running awfully long," or Regency-ish-era equivalent thereof. Because after such a lot of narrative, it seems to wrap up awfully quickly.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

I liked WH better, to be honest. Jane Eyre ended, as far as I can see, with Jane happy because her husband had been neatly chopped down to size especially for loving her. Comparisons with castration invited. Having said that, it's big melo trash. Lots of fun, and Charlotte herself was pulling a bit of a Mary Sue there. She was crazy about one of her employers and insanely jealous of his wife.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

God, yes. See "Villette".

I like WH better too. Well, actually, I like them both, but for different reasons. I read WH when I was an overheated precocious yet very shy teen and I've loved it ever since. It's just so... violent and irrational and GUH.