The initial thing that occurs to me is that so far, 3 out of 3, these novels have sucked me in pretty quickly. Oddly enough it isn't for the reason that modern "writing experts" proclaim. I've read enough issues of Writer's Digest to know that the single most important thing to hook a reader is an exciting first sentence. Even the first word has to grab the reader, the first paragraph, the first chapter all has to be perfectly tuned to grip the reader by the throat and throw them into the rest of your novel. It's perplexing to me, in a sort of round about way, that so many classics don't sink their hooks in you from the beginning.
"Call me Ishmael."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that..."
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
It doesn't exactly create the sense of "Wait, WHAT? I have to read more!" that all of my writing teachers in college demanded of me. I guess I'm in good company because in my writing I won't force a "perfect hook" first sentence. I'll usually get you by the end of the first chapter though, and that's what these classics have been very good at.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the sleepy little town of Mayberry...sorry, I mean Maycomb. Honestly it may as well be Mayberry it's so delightfully small and idyllic in a retro fashion.
Harper Lee supports her setting with such appropriate usages of language and anecdotes that even my mental reading voice is using a southern drawl. It's so pitch perfect that you don't for a moment question that this town exists nor that it is Ms. Lee's actual experience. One of my favorite things about going back east to visit my relatives in West Virginia is because of language. In fact it is where I first discovered just how delighted I could be by language.
I often relate the story of a time when we visited my Grandaddy and Granny one year. Often the menfolk and womenfolk would separate to talk about things. I was mostly raised by my mother, because my father was in the military and I was homeschooled for a good half of my "learnin'" years, and as such when the separation of the group along gender lines occurred I often hung back with my mother. This allowed me to be privy to all of the good gossip and cooking tips, the later of which set a part of the course for my life.
One year, however, I realized that at some point I had "grown up". I was told, not invited - told, by my father that I was to join the menfolk out on the patio. It was my dad, grandaddy, my crazy uncle Gary, and myself sitting out on the plastic patio furniture on plastic covered cushions. There was an awkward pause as everyone kind of settled in and searched for something to talk about.
Now, talking in the south is not like talking in most places. It's almost a leisure sport. One person, usually the eldest, begins the cycle.
"Went down to the Kroger the other day and got a watermelon they had on special (pronounced spay-shoo) for 99 cents a pound," my grandaddy started it off.
"99 cents a pound?" everyone took a turn saying.
"Yeah. Pretty good for 99 cents a pound," he responded.
The conversation takes another turn towards a secondary topic. A few sentences are said on another topic and then there's another pause before the first topic is folded back into the mix.
"99 cents a pound. Man. I can't imagine it was all that good for 99 cents a pound," my uncle would declare.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty good," Grandaddy reassured.
"And you said you got it on special down at the Kroger?"
"Yeah. 99 cents a pound on special."
A third topic is then brought up, The second topic is then revisited followed by the first.
"Well, I better get on down to the Kroger later to get me some of that watermelon. 99 cents a pound?"
"Yeah, on special. 99 cents a pound. I got it at the Kroger over on that corner down there, but I expect they've got the sale anywhere."
It goes on from there, topic after topic folding back in on themselves til the end of time if you let them, I'm sure. Discovering this delighted me, and now when I'm around groups of people I pay attention to what they are saying it, how they are relating and so on. It delights me to see how these little "conversation fractals work out. Harper Lee's conversations are amazing to watch, from stories about the county's colorful past to Scout's conversations/conflicts with the big city trained teacher.
These stories and word choices give the whole thing an authenticity that can't be fabricated.
"...but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The Haverfords ahd dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody."
Her description of Maycomb is nearly poetry for someone like me,
"Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shad of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Talk about some great writing. It evokes a similar mood and poetry as Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is one of the few books I regard highly enough to read every year.
The Radley place is introduced as the creepy house down the street that everyone is familiar with as a child. "Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked." I particularly love Dill's fascination with it. "In spite of our warnings and explanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate."
I was surprised at how quickly the scissor stabbing incident is mentioned. There is a lot of this that I couldn't remember here in the first third. Which means I performed an amazing display for the teacher. If that was during my homeschooling years...Mom...I'm sorry.
Scout is so amazing as a character. I totally understand why Dill asks her to marry him. When she grows up I imagine men will be falling all over each other for the chance to marry this vibrant, outspoken, "ballsy" woman. Well, I forget that these are qualities I enjoy in women and not all men do. I particularly loved how when Dill, her childhood fiance, starts paying more attention to Jem instead of her she say "I beat him up to twice to remind him, but it did no good".
Her confrontations with Miss Caroline are hilarious. It's funny to see the mentality of "You need to let teachers be the teachers and parents should have nothing to do with your education" back then. This refrain is heard in modern times in Common Core classrooms. A 6 year old who can read? I say more power to her instead of "hold her back, hold her down and force her to unlearn it." She has a particularly trying first day of school and the rest don't fare much better.
"Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the state of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics".
I do have a faint memory of the treasures found in the knot hole of the tree near the Radley house. That's such a fabulous little detail. I loved how it takes Scout nearly a half hour to be sure, through different child rituals, that the gum wasn't going to poison her. Child is full of these hilarious little rituals and superstitions. Oh, and summer. Do you remember how important summer was? Oh, this book gives me an ache for those times.
"Summer was our best season; it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.."
*sigh* I know it would horribly affect our GDP, but couldn't we just take a national holiday from work for the months of summer? I crave having three months off to do as I please so very much. Well, I guess it would help if I also had someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and take care of me when I fell out of a tree and into a patch of Devil's Club as well.
Uncle Jack reminds me very clearly of my own "Crazy Uncle" Gary.
"We saw Uncle Jack every Christmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for Miss Maudie to come marry him. Miss Maudie would yell back, 'Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office, I haven't heard you yet!' Jem and I thought this a strange way to ask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was rather strange."
I swear I've met Miss Maudie while visiting West Virginia the few times that I did.
"True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend."
There is so much in her to love that recalls our own childhoods...well, at least mine. I grew up in Alaska and was allowed to run free and wild. I wonder what city folk think of the novel. Personally, I've always had the pleasure to be around blue collars and red necks. To me it has been a pleasure to not grow up "citified", though I live there now. I'm fairly certain that they saw me as citified though I was born and bred a military brat. I never saw a reason to despise them, as I saw some do in public schools. I didn't understand what was so bad about being the son of a "Dock Rat" or "Oilfield Trash" or any epithet they put to traditional red necks. Maybe it was because my own mother grew up on a farm, but I thought they were some of the most interesting and noble jobs out there and I still do. It doesn't take much to get me on my soapbox about how everything we own, and everything we put in our mouths was made possible by someone with a blue collar or a red neck. I'll take a farmer over a big city...anything any day. I could get into a few more facets of that, but then I'd never get back to the story.
Two things left that I want to get to and then I have some cleaning to attend to:
1) Harper Lee really knows how to make things at once both creepy and heartwarming. When scout rolls down the hill, slams into the steps of the Radley house and she hears laughter behind the door; depending on your disposition towards Boo that's creepy or heartwarming. Boo stepping out of the house to put a blanket around Scout's shoulders and then disappearing could be either. She nudges it over into creepy territory constantly but holds that line masterfully.
2) I'm admiring how much of the surrounding story is filtering through. She brings up bits and pieces of conversations that Scout remembers but didn't understand at the time. For instance the only time she ever heard Atticus speak tersely with someone was when she heard him tell his sister he was doing the best they can for them. It is so accurate to what childhood is like. Children are around adults all the time and not necessarily paying attention to a full conversation but they do when their parent starts acting emotionally. My own daughter often stores things away that I've forgotten about and a year or so later she'll say, "Oh, that's what you were talking about!" It's a trick I'm going to need to steal from Ms. Lee. :)
Things get serious near the end of this first third. Atticus takes a case for a colored man and is accused of being a "nigger lover" so much so that Scout is driven to defend his honor. Through an odd series of events Atticus is compelled to shoot a mad dog wandering through the town. I'm pretty sure this is a foreshadowing of something coming that will be more than a bit tragic.
Pax,
W
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
WIKA "To Kill a Mockingbird"
When I was a bit of a young man To Kill a Mockingbird was required reading in school. By that time I hardly saw the value of a story if it didn't happen to include some element of fantasy or the fantastical. By then I had discovered the works of Stephen King, Robert Aspirin, Brian Jacques and the still incomparable team of Weis and Hickman. My mind was abuzz with dragons, alien clowns, wizards named Skeeve, sword wielding mice, and a Kender named Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I didn't have much room in my head for lazy towns, racial segregation, and some basketcase named Boo. My world, I imagined and could still debate though far more weakly now, was a far better place.
Around this time my brain had fashioned a crude survival defense against such mundane books. Yes, I had to read them, but no, I didn't have to read the whole thing. "Cliff's Notes" was too much like cheating, but skimming half the book, using my wit to fill in the gaps, I could get an "A" on any book report. I did this for years and was never caught. I would give a book two or three chapters to catch my interest, I felt that was fair, but after that all bets were off and I muddled through quite gloriously.
Here's the thing; most of those books I was required to read back then were actually pretty useless. I firmly believe that they did very little to shape me and mold me as a person. I was better served by second hand accounts of the Trojan War in ideals to strive for and heroes to emulate than by reading A Separate Peace. I needed less stories about kids my own age muddling through modern adolescence and probably more about Pirates and Gladiators. Why do I say this? Well, there's a bit of a disconnect when it comes to an adult deciding what children "should" read. I've already read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was immediately transported. I can already see the sleepy, little, idyllic Maycomb. I'm laughing at the dry little jokes everywhere. It is very much a book that I can only "get" now. Perhaps my opinion will change by the end of the book, but this very much seems like a book that can only be fully appreciated as an adult. However I'm sure it has values that an adult thinks that children "should" read about. But back then...gimme Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.
What I know about To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty much that the main character is a girl named Scout, (Which I did think was pretty awesome. I had a bit of a crush on her because of her name and the mental image of a tomboy it conjured, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the book.)she constantly calls her dad by his first name, her dad is a lawyer named Atticus Finch, there's a strange boy named Boo, and there's a moment where shiny steel scissors are stabbed forcefully into a thigh.
My ignorance is fairly considerable on this, however I comfort myself with the fact that it is hardly as vast as my ignorance in regard to Jane Eyre.
I have a feeling this will be a fairly quick read as that it's only 325 pages in a standard paperback format. I'm not sure how many "word nerd" posts I'll have given its modern setting and writing. There may be a few southern colloquialisms that would be quite fun to delve into.
Since this is a "mandatory book" in our schools I'm hoping to hear from you all with your different views on the book and what you took away from it as a child vs. an adult. Please feel free to comment, disagree loudly, or argue with me on any point. :)
Pax,
W
Around this time my brain had fashioned a crude survival defense against such mundane books. Yes, I had to read them, but no, I didn't have to read the whole thing. "Cliff's Notes" was too much like cheating, but skimming half the book, using my wit to fill in the gaps, I could get an "A" on any book report. I did this for years and was never caught. I would give a book two or three chapters to catch my interest, I felt that was fair, but after that all bets were off and I muddled through quite gloriously.
Here's the thing; most of those books I was required to read back then were actually pretty useless. I firmly believe that they did very little to shape me and mold me as a person. I was better served by second hand accounts of the Trojan War in ideals to strive for and heroes to emulate than by reading A Separate Peace. I needed less stories about kids my own age muddling through modern adolescence and probably more about Pirates and Gladiators. Why do I say this? Well, there's a bit of a disconnect when it comes to an adult deciding what children "should" read. I've already read the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was immediately transported. I can already see the sleepy, little, idyllic Maycomb. I'm laughing at the dry little jokes everywhere. It is very much a book that I can only "get" now. Perhaps my opinion will change by the end of the book, but this very much seems like a book that can only be fully appreciated as an adult. However I'm sure it has values that an adult thinks that children "should" read about. But back then...gimme Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.
What I know about To Kill a Mockingbird is pretty much that the main character is a girl named Scout, (Which I did think was pretty awesome. I had a bit of a crush on her because of her name and the mental image of a tomboy it conjured, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the book.)she constantly calls her dad by his first name, her dad is a lawyer named Atticus Finch, there's a strange boy named Boo, and there's a moment where shiny steel scissors are stabbed forcefully into a thigh.
My ignorance is fairly considerable on this, however I comfort myself with the fact that it is hardly as vast as my ignorance in regard to Jane Eyre.
I have a feeling this will be a fairly quick read as that it's only 325 pages in a standard paperback format. I'm not sure how many "word nerd" posts I'll have given its modern setting and writing. There may be a few southern colloquialisms that would be quite fun to delve into.
Since this is a "mandatory book" in our schools I'm hoping to hear from you all with your different views on the book and what you took away from it as a child vs. an adult. Please feel free to comment, disagree loudly, or argue with me on any point. :)
Pax,
W
Monday, February 16, 2015
Turn and Face the Strange Ch-ch-changes
Some time ago one of my cousins commented that they hoped that I would relate how much this book, Jane Eyre", has changed me. The presumption is, of course, that one cannot read this book without being changed. That presumption is, in fact, completely true. I put this book up there with C. S. Lewis' Til We Have Faces in that regard. That book you come away shaken, however, and I think with Jane Eyre I came away more grounded.
The first change I've noticed has been that I use semi-colon's a lot more. No joke. Whether I'm doing it right or not I'm uncertain but even my wife has noticed that I'm using them; excessively. Also my language is slightly more elevated. Funny story aside; My wife and I had a coffee date sans children and so walked through the snow to our local mermaid branded, Moby Dick reference shop. On the way home she used the word "abed" (as in "It won't take long til I'm abed") which only endeared her to my heart more. She mentioned that her coworkers have some issues with her elevated language. Apparently she uses the word "awaiting" and people think it's a typo.
The second change is possibly more controversial, but I'm all about "saying the horrible thing" as a writer. I hold little back, so admitting my bad stuff comes naturally. So...here it is...*sigh* I've had little regard for women as writers. Now, I say that, but you have to understand what writing by women I've been exposed to. Anne Rice (yes...she's a "master" and I can't stand her), Stephanie Meyer (Twilight...really? I've seen better writing on a nutritional facts label), Anne McCaffrey (just never got into it), and a few others I had to stop reading just a chapter or two in. I don't know what it was. I started to think of most female writers the same way I think of female comedians...very, very skeptically. Men and women are inherently different. They focus on different things when they right, and value different perspectives so I wasn't sure I'd ever find a female writer to be compelling at all...ever. With Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, I have found just that. They are two of the greatest writers of all time in my book, not just the greatest female writers of all time. It's almost worse now because I feel fully justified in my criticism of the Rice and Meyer and will hold writers of both genders to an even higher standard. Of course, my problem is likely that I haven't been exposed to enough GOOD female writers and that is something I'm very happy to remedy...72 novels from now. So far, though, Bronte is as good as any writer can be, in my book.
The most significant change as a result of having read Jane Eyre has been a strengthening of my resolve. Her internal speech on the purpose of holding to one's values in the face of challenge altered me the moment my eyes made sense of the words. My faith in God, my values, my principals are for times of great difficulty, for when I am "insane", for when I'm not being rational rather than for when I am rational. Helen was clearly a softening force towards this. There is such strength in Jane I hope to be able to emulate in my own life. Most of my life I have spent, fortunately, being very who I am. Come to think of it that was a compliment that a girl used to take the sting out of a break up. "You'll be OK. You are so who you are and that is so admirable." I'm still not quite sure what to make of that, but I digress. Knowing that one of my newly admitted heroes was that way it certainly makes me feel in good company and like I'm on a right path. Yes, I'm nearly 40 and I'm worried about whether or not I'm on the right path.
When I was knee deep in Jane Eyre my wife asked if I was enjoying the 100BYSRBYD. I said that I very much was. When she asked me what was enjoying the most I took a moment to think. There was so much to pick from; wonderful characters, borderline poetic writing, sweeping vistas, etc. For me, the enjoyment comes primarily from the fact that these characters have a certain set of values, virtues, and principals in common with me. It is extremely gratifying to know that these things I share with the writers, by way of their characters, are things that endure. They are not fads. They are not pointless. They've lasted and speak to us as humans in our language and in our time, not just the 150-250 years ago that they were written. Certain things persist through time and through the waves of fashionable thinking, and I quite happily have discovered that I have somehow dedicated myself to those things. Eventually the world will forget about yoga pants and dude-bros, but the virtues in Jane Eyre will endure.
Pax,
W
The first change I've noticed has been that I use semi-colon's a lot more. No joke. Whether I'm doing it right or not I'm uncertain but even my wife has noticed that I'm using them; excessively. Also my language is slightly more elevated. Funny story aside; My wife and I had a coffee date sans children and so walked through the snow to our local mermaid branded, Moby Dick reference shop. On the way home she used the word "abed" (as in "It won't take long til I'm abed") which only endeared her to my heart more. She mentioned that her coworkers have some issues with her elevated language. Apparently she uses the word "awaiting" and people think it's a typo.
The second change is possibly more controversial, but I'm all about "saying the horrible thing" as a writer. I hold little back, so admitting my bad stuff comes naturally. So...here it is...*sigh* I've had little regard for women as writers. Now, I say that, but you have to understand what writing by women I've been exposed to. Anne Rice (yes...she's a "master" and I can't stand her), Stephanie Meyer (Twilight...really? I've seen better writing on a nutritional facts label), Anne McCaffrey (just never got into it), and a few others I had to stop reading just a chapter or two in. I don't know what it was. I started to think of most female writers the same way I think of female comedians...very, very skeptically. Men and women are inherently different. They focus on different things when they right, and value different perspectives so I wasn't sure I'd ever find a female writer to be compelling at all...ever. With Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, I have found just that. They are two of the greatest writers of all time in my book, not just the greatest female writers of all time. It's almost worse now because I feel fully justified in my criticism of the Rice and Meyer and will hold writers of both genders to an even higher standard. Of course, my problem is likely that I haven't been exposed to enough GOOD female writers and that is something I'm very happy to remedy...72 novels from now. So far, though, Bronte is as good as any writer can be, in my book.
The most significant change as a result of having read Jane Eyre has been a strengthening of my resolve. Her internal speech on the purpose of holding to one's values in the face of challenge altered me the moment my eyes made sense of the words. My faith in God, my values, my principals are for times of great difficulty, for when I am "insane", for when I'm not being rational rather than for when I am rational. Helen was clearly a softening force towards this. There is such strength in Jane I hope to be able to emulate in my own life. Most of my life I have spent, fortunately, being very who I am. Come to think of it that was a compliment that a girl used to take the sting out of a break up. "You'll be OK. You are so who you are and that is so admirable." I'm still not quite sure what to make of that, but I digress. Knowing that one of my newly admitted heroes was that way it certainly makes me feel in good company and like I'm on a right path. Yes, I'm nearly 40 and I'm worried about whether or not I'm on the right path.
When I was knee deep in Jane Eyre my wife asked if I was enjoying the 100BYSRBYD. I said that I very much was. When she asked me what was enjoying the most I took a moment to think. There was so much to pick from; wonderful characters, borderline poetic writing, sweeping vistas, etc. For me, the enjoyment comes primarily from the fact that these characters have a certain set of values, virtues, and principals in common with me. It is extremely gratifying to know that these things I share with the writers, by way of their characters, are things that endure. They are not fads. They are not pointless. They've lasted and speak to us as humans in our language and in our time, not just the 150-250 years ago that they were written. Certain things persist through time and through the waves of fashionable thinking, and I quite happily have discovered that I have somehow dedicated myself to those things. Eventually the world will forget about yoga pants and dude-bros, but the virtues in Jane Eyre will endure.
Pax,
W
A Most Appropriate Ending (Jane Eyre Ch. 31-The End)
In one great blast of reading, many thanks to my children for being understanding and fending for themselves while Papa read "the lady book" (as my 3 year old son referred to it), I finished Jane Eyre. I was told during the course of this novel by a friend that I would cry at the ending. I'm not sure how I could cry given the situation at the end. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself here.
We last left Jane she had left the warmth and hospitality of Moor House for her own austere cottage in her new situation as a teacher to the local poor children. To our modern sensibilities we can easily gloss over some of the statements Jane makes regarding her pupils that were, in all actuality, fairly revolutionary. She declares of them,
"I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest geneaology; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born."
This, in the Victorian era, must have been a touch of a slap in the face. In a time where nobility was still revered as being infallible and your "betters" it would take a character such as Jane to both see and point out that there is little "better" about those "betters". Consider that every "best born" that she has encountered has proven themselves to be both ill mannered and of a baser quality than the servants and commoners all around her. As a teacher of both the noble and the common she would see that there is little difference at all. Every religious person is so far removed from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ as to be unrecognizable. The "heroes" of the novel are men of science (the doctor who tended her compassionately at the Reeds), a headmistress of the school who claimed no particular faith, a child riddled with consumption, and a man a "lord" who cares nothing about the hierarchy of things. The villains claim to know Christ and seek to force change in others while the heroes barely claim Christ at all, have no idea what is best for others let alone themselves sometimes, admit their own faults and failings, and don't seek to change others much at all.
And here is where I must bring up St John Rivers, Jane's cousin. It's hard to decide which "villain" is more vile; Brocklehurst vs. Rivers vs. Aunt Reed...in a cage match to the death! All three are vile in such very different ways. Aunt Reed you can almost forgive simply because of the situation. Does that grant absolution? Likely not. She damaged a child, but if you're a parent you know how easy it is to think you are doing what is "best" for a particularly willful child only to turn around and realize you've made a horrible mistake. Brocklehurst's lack of consistency is to the point of self delusion, which isn't born out of cruelty though it may in effect be cruelty. As with Aunt Reed he seems to genuinely believe what he is doing is what is actually best for these "slatterns".
St John is in a whole other category. Aunt Reed and Brocklehurst didn't seem to use their "piety" for selfish and controlling ends. Neither actually wanted anything from those they treated poorly. St John, however, was more than happy to worm his way into Jane's heart and use whatever he found there to manipulate her into meeting his desire.
On the surface St. John appears to be a decent sort of fellow. He's willing to take Jane in though he mistrusts her at first. He rises in the middle of inclement weather to attend to the needs of a poor person in his congregation. St. John roams far and wide on a daily basis to see to the spiritual health of his parish. All honorable things. I initially took his lack of conversation as general deepness of thought or adherence to the scripture that says one should only speak what is beneficial and avoid idle talk. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the silence is that of a calculating mind. He manipulates Jane into learning Hindustani instead of the German she has been studying. Well, manipulates is too weak a word. He pretty much demands. And why does Jane comply? Our typically strong willed Jane seems to just accept his will over her own. He did save her from certain death. He is her highly respectable cousin so...there is some feeling of indebtedness to be sure. But he begins to push her harder and harder the closer he gets to his date of shipping out to India as a missionary. She begins to sense something is amiss when she realizes the following,
"As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation."
And then the other shoe drops, as it were, and from out of left field he asks her to be his wife and to accompany him to India. First of all...first cousin marriage...yeah...that's weird. He confesses that he's been molding her and shaping her (aka grooming...ya jerk) to become his perfect help meet. She says "As a sister, yeah, totally I'll go with you to India." (abridged version) He continues to demand it has to be as his wife.
Pages upon pages are dedicated to their back and forth on this issue. It very closely reflects the back and forth between Jane and Rochester cattiness, but there is no fun, no joy in it. Why? Because St John is a controlling and manipulative jerk.
Maybe it's because I've watched "Kingdom of Heaven" too many times (Love that film. It speaks to men the same way Jane Austen speaks to women) or perhaps it's my adequate knowledge of history, but anytime someone even hints at saying "God wills it" apart from the original apostles and Jesus himself...I'm going to question the heck out of that presumption. These two go back and forth, Jane the ever resistant when cornered, and here we see the difference between the two suitors. When Jane stands her ground before Rochester, yes he's not happy about it, but his admiration for her grows because she is being very much who she is. She is very much being everything Rochester loves her for. When obstinate before St John he constantly plays the "God's Will" card as a means to force her to bend to his will. Jerk.
She is, unsurprisingly, smart enough to notice that "he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge." He then overplays his hand in responding, "Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case your should be numbered with those who have denied the faith..." Oh, she sees him for what he is now. "As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission -" He's austere, despotic and worried of limiting himself to barren obscurity. All of his trips to help his parishoners, when none would go out into the night and the gale, is for his own glory, not the Lord's.
In reference to the very difference between her refusal to her suitors she tells the reader, "To have yielded then (Rochester) would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now (St John) would have been an error of judgement."
Allow me an aside here to reflect on my own relationship.
There is something in the "religious" mindset that doesn't know what to do with a willful woman. I adhere to the Christian faith intensely and am constantly baffled by this. I've found myself quite unwittingly having been a "Feminist", of sorts, all my life when compared to much of the views regarding women in the older generations whom I've listened to. My wife comes from a far more rigid, right wing, patriarchal system than I ever did. I was raised "non-denominational" which is probably where most of my flexible spiritual thinking comes from, I suppose. We went from Methodist, to Baptist, to Assembly of God, to "community church". I can pretty much praise with anybody. However, there's been a noticeable thread throughout each of them that, as I said, doesn't know what to do with a willful spirited woman. When they find one they'll talk about how she's supposed to be submissive, meek, gentle, kind, respectful and all these virtues that really aren't meant to be limited to women.
So, when I found my wife one of the odd things was that half the attraction was to how spirited and vibrant and willful she was. Well, IS still. She has her own mind and it is a fabulous mind. She's more intelligent than me (by 2 IQ points, but still I grant her the credit of it at every opportunity) and I so value how differently than me she thinks. She has a very strong personality and is intimidated by no one.
She'd told me this before, but it has come up in conversation while reading Jane Eyre, that her parents and grandparents were flabbergasted with her idea of marriage. She declared that she wasn't going to marry a authoritarian man or a controlling man, that she would only marry someone who would make decisions with her. "But...what if you disagree? The man is the head of the house (in our faith) and so he gets to make the decisions. What happens when you disagree?" She shrugged it off and said, "We'll talk it out and come to a consensus." As her husband of 15 years I can tell you that this is precisely what happens, and not because she pushed her philosophy. It's because from the beginning we mutually respect each other and each other's strengths. Now, as a Christian, yes, I do agree that I am the "head of the house" and have the "final say" power granted by God...but if I don't have to pull rank why should I? When people have told me half joking "Will, control your wife!" I jokingly reply back "Ha! You try it and see how far you get", but the truth of the matter is we talk. We share our perspectives (sometimes loudly) and we do hammer out a consensus. 8 times out of 10 we both look at a problem and can see a clear path. The other 2 times it takes some thought and usually we're one or both of us missing information. If my wife and I discussed it and I could see rationally what she could not see and it was going hurt damage one or both of us then and only then would I "pull rank", as it were. I married a rational, intelligent, clear thinking woman. To "pull rank" just because I can would be to deny that she is any of that.
The older generation of ladies, not just the men, also have tended to tell the younger ladies "how to be". In some instances this is actually beneficial and wise advice. My wife has been given advice on a number of occasions to just be quiet, smile and nod, and obey, keep your opinions to yourself, let the man make the mistakes and have his way and that's how you find peace in a marriage. Yeah. Not even so much. How is that being a "helpmate"? How is that being a "co-laborer"? That's not having a wife. That's having an employee. I didn't marry her to just sit there and look pretty, to be seen and not heard. The farther I've gotten into this book the more I realized I sought my wife and married my wife because she's very much like Jane. She even wants to learn to paint.
We not return you to your regularly scheduled program:
Jane "flees" Morton in order to find out more information about her beloved Rochester who as it turns out, is no longer impeded by a previous marriage. Granted he is now blind and mutilated, but none of this even phases Jane because, well, why would it? She does not love with her eyes, but her soul.
When she first appears Rochester doubts his senses and his sanity. I love how the moment she mentions that she is an independent woman with five thousand pounds a year his response is, "Ah! this is practical - this is real! ... I should never dream that." Money was never an issue, never a negative or a positive to him.
Like any man Rochester is leery of imposing his mutilated and unkempt self upon Jane. She would have to feed him, lead him by the hand (literally...one hand is all he has left), and bathe him. He sees himself as an elder invalid and doubts Jane would ever be content as his nurse. She declares nothing would make her happier. Rochester plays a verbal "card" to test her meaning by declaring it is because she delights in sacrifice.
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms around what I value - to press my lips to what I love - to repose on what I trust; is that to make sacrifice? If so, then certainly delight in sacrifice."
The conclusion is one of the sweetest, most heart warming, and life affirming I have ever read. Love has won, though in not the beautiful wrapped in a bow sort of way the world likes. Love has won in the way that life is...a mess.
Why has Jane Eyre endured for 150 years? Why is it so beloved? Because it is true. It is the way life is, warts and all...and there is hope.
Pax,
W
We last left Jane she had left the warmth and hospitality of Moor House for her own austere cottage in her new situation as a teacher to the local poor children. To our modern sensibilities we can easily gloss over some of the statements Jane makes regarding her pupils that were, in all actuality, fairly revolutionary. She declares of them,
"I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest geneaology; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born."
This, in the Victorian era, must have been a touch of a slap in the face. In a time where nobility was still revered as being infallible and your "betters" it would take a character such as Jane to both see and point out that there is little "better" about those "betters". Consider that every "best born" that she has encountered has proven themselves to be both ill mannered and of a baser quality than the servants and commoners all around her. As a teacher of both the noble and the common she would see that there is little difference at all. Every religious person is so far removed from the example of the Lord Jesus Christ as to be unrecognizable. The "heroes" of the novel are men of science (the doctor who tended her compassionately at the Reeds), a headmistress of the school who claimed no particular faith, a child riddled with consumption, and a man a "lord" who cares nothing about the hierarchy of things. The villains claim to know Christ and seek to force change in others while the heroes barely claim Christ at all, have no idea what is best for others let alone themselves sometimes, admit their own faults and failings, and don't seek to change others much at all.
And here is where I must bring up St John Rivers, Jane's cousin. It's hard to decide which "villain" is more vile; Brocklehurst vs. Rivers vs. Aunt Reed...in a cage match to the death! All three are vile in such very different ways. Aunt Reed you can almost forgive simply because of the situation. Does that grant absolution? Likely not. She damaged a child, but if you're a parent you know how easy it is to think you are doing what is "best" for a particularly willful child only to turn around and realize you've made a horrible mistake. Brocklehurst's lack of consistency is to the point of self delusion, which isn't born out of cruelty though it may in effect be cruelty. As with Aunt Reed he seems to genuinely believe what he is doing is what is actually best for these "slatterns".
St John is in a whole other category. Aunt Reed and Brocklehurst didn't seem to use their "piety" for selfish and controlling ends. Neither actually wanted anything from those they treated poorly. St John, however, was more than happy to worm his way into Jane's heart and use whatever he found there to manipulate her into meeting his desire.
On the surface St. John appears to be a decent sort of fellow. He's willing to take Jane in though he mistrusts her at first. He rises in the middle of inclement weather to attend to the needs of a poor person in his congregation. St. John roams far and wide on a daily basis to see to the spiritual health of his parish. All honorable things. I initially took his lack of conversation as general deepness of thought or adherence to the scripture that says one should only speak what is beneficial and avoid idle talk. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the silence is that of a calculating mind. He manipulates Jane into learning Hindustani instead of the German she has been studying. Well, manipulates is too weak a word. He pretty much demands. And why does Jane comply? Our typically strong willed Jane seems to just accept his will over her own. He did save her from certain death. He is her highly respectable cousin so...there is some feeling of indebtedness to be sure. But he begins to push her harder and harder the closer he gets to his date of shipping out to India as a missionary. She begins to sense something is amiss when she realizes the following,
"As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation."
And then the other shoe drops, as it were, and from out of left field he asks her to be his wife and to accompany him to India. First of all...first cousin marriage...yeah...that's weird. He confesses that he's been molding her and shaping her (aka grooming...ya jerk) to become his perfect help meet. She says "As a sister, yeah, totally I'll go with you to India." (abridged version) He continues to demand it has to be as his wife.
Pages upon pages are dedicated to their back and forth on this issue. It very closely reflects the back and forth between Jane and Rochester cattiness, but there is no fun, no joy in it. Why? Because St John is a controlling and manipulative jerk.
Maybe it's because I've watched "Kingdom of Heaven" too many times (Love that film. It speaks to men the same way Jane Austen speaks to women) or perhaps it's my adequate knowledge of history, but anytime someone even hints at saying "God wills it" apart from the original apostles and Jesus himself...I'm going to question the heck out of that presumption. These two go back and forth, Jane the ever resistant when cornered, and here we see the difference between the two suitors. When Jane stands her ground before Rochester, yes he's not happy about it, but his admiration for her grows because she is being very much who she is. She is very much being everything Rochester loves her for. When obstinate before St John he constantly plays the "God's Will" card as a means to force her to bend to his will. Jerk.
She is, unsurprisingly, smart enough to notice that "he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge." He then overplays his hand in responding, "Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case your should be numbered with those who have denied the faith..." Oh, she sees him for what he is now. "As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission -" He's austere, despotic and worried of limiting himself to barren obscurity. All of his trips to help his parishoners, when none would go out into the night and the gale, is for his own glory, not the Lord's.
In reference to the very difference between her refusal to her suitors she tells the reader, "To have yielded then (Rochester) would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now (St John) would have been an error of judgement."
Allow me an aside here to reflect on my own relationship.
There is something in the "religious" mindset that doesn't know what to do with a willful woman. I adhere to the Christian faith intensely and am constantly baffled by this. I've found myself quite unwittingly having been a "Feminist", of sorts, all my life when compared to much of the views regarding women in the older generations whom I've listened to. My wife comes from a far more rigid, right wing, patriarchal system than I ever did. I was raised "non-denominational" which is probably where most of my flexible spiritual thinking comes from, I suppose. We went from Methodist, to Baptist, to Assembly of God, to "community church". I can pretty much praise with anybody. However, there's been a noticeable thread throughout each of them that, as I said, doesn't know what to do with a willful spirited woman. When they find one they'll talk about how she's supposed to be submissive, meek, gentle, kind, respectful and all these virtues that really aren't meant to be limited to women.
So, when I found my wife one of the odd things was that half the attraction was to how spirited and vibrant and willful she was. Well, IS still. She has her own mind and it is a fabulous mind. She's more intelligent than me (by 2 IQ points, but still I grant her the credit of it at every opportunity) and I so value how differently than me she thinks. She has a very strong personality and is intimidated by no one.
She'd told me this before, but it has come up in conversation while reading Jane Eyre, that her parents and grandparents were flabbergasted with her idea of marriage. She declared that she wasn't going to marry a authoritarian man or a controlling man, that she would only marry someone who would make decisions with her. "But...what if you disagree? The man is the head of the house (in our faith) and so he gets to make the decisions. What happens when you disagree?" She shrugged it off and said, "We'll talk it out and come to a consensus." As her husband of 15 years I can tell you that this is precisely what happens, and not because she pushed her philosophy. It's because from the beginning we mutually respect each other and each other's strengths. Now, as a Christian, yes, I do agree that I am the "head of the house" and have the "final say" power granted by God...but if I don't have to pull rank why should I? When people have told me half joking "Will, control your wife!" I jokingly reply back "Ha! You try it and see how far you get", but the truth of the matter is we talk. We share our perspectives (sometimes loudly) and we do hammer out a consensus. 8 times out of 10 we both look at a problem and can see a clear path. The other 2 times it takes some thought and usually we're one or both of us missing information. If my wife and I discussed it and I could see rationally what she could not see and it was going hurt damage one or both of us then and only then would I "pull rank", as it were. I married a rational, intelligent, clear thinking woman. To "pull rank" just because I can would be to deny that she is any of that.
The older generation of ladies, not just the men, also have tended to tell the younger ladies "how to be". In some instances this is actually beneficial and wise advice. My wife has been given advice on a number of occasions to just be quiet, smile and nod, and obey, keep your opinions to yourself, let the man make the mistakes and have his way and that's how you find peace in a marriage. Yeah. Not even so much. How is that being a "helpmate"? How is that being a "co-laborer"? That's not having a wife. That's having an employee. I didn't marry her to just sit there and look pretty, to be seen and not heard. The farther I've gotten into this book the more I realized I sought my wife and married my wife because she's very much like Jane. She even wants to learn to paint.
We not return you to your regularly scheduled program:
Jane "flees" Morton in order to find out more information about her beloved Rochester who as it turns out, is no longer impeded by a previous marriage. Granted he is now blind and mutilated, but none of this even phases Jane because, well, why would it? She does not love with her eyes, but her soul.
When she first appears Rochester doubts his senses and his sanity. I love how the moment she mentions that she is an independent woman with five thousand pounds a year his response is, "Ah! this is practical - this is real! ... I should never dream that." Money was never an issue, never a negative or a positive to him.
Like any man Rochester is leery of imposing his mutilated and unkempt self upon Jane. She would have to feed him, lead him by the hand (literally...one hand is all he has left), and bathe him. He sees himself as an elder invalid and doubts Jane would ever be content as his nurse. She declares nothing would make her happier. Rochester plays a verbal "card" to test her meaning by declaring it is because she delights in sacrifice.
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms around what I value - to press my lips to what I love - to repose on what I trust; is that to make sacrifice? If so, then certainly delight in sacrifice."
The conclusion is one of the sweetest, most heart warming, and life affirming I have ever read. Love has won, though in not the beautiful wrapped in a bow sort of way the world likes. Love has won in the way that life is...a mess.
Why has Jane Eyre endured for 150 years? Why is it so beloved? Because it is true. It is the way life is, warts and all...and there is hope.
Pax,
W
Saturday, February 14, 2015
In Like a Lion...(Jane Eyre chapters 27-31)
Chapter 26 ended with the revelation, blunted for me as it was by my sister's lack of "spoiler sense", that Rochester was already married and married to a crazy lady. The wedding was called off, the madwoman revealed to all parties involved and bizarrely, or so I thought at the time, Jane cutting herself off and away from Rochester.
in Jane Eyre there is not single antagonist, no enemy, no arch villain trying to thwart Jane from every joy and happiness. There are multiple antagonists each with a different mask, each with a different "mental problem". I am putting that phrase in quotes because I'm not exactly certain that they have a "mental problem" and I don't want to diminish the very definition of "mental problem". It may seem a trifle like splitting hairs to you, dear reader, but it is a fairly important clarification in my mind regardless.
First we see John Reed who is all rage and abuse towards Jane for no purpose other than that he can. Mrs. Reed is another "villain" who despises Jane because of ridiculous standards of society. Jane's mother, Mr. Reed's favorite sister, married "low" and now she's forced to deal with her. Her secondary "villainous" trait is that she refuses to see that her children could ever do anything wrong. Denial is such a strong force and causes infinitely more damage than it brings comfort to the denier.
Following Mr. Reed is another self righteous individual in Mr. Brocklehurst. Of all of them I tend to despise him the most. He is a vain man who uses religious piety to shove down, humiliate, and abuse others. I cannot stand his narcissistic inconsistencies. Perhaps it is because I am closer than I'd like to be to a very similar individual. The world around him is well served by his pontificating on how it should run and act, yet he is guilty of sins and improprieties ten times worse. And if you expose his "short comings", as he would call his egregious sins, he will lambaste you for judging and acting like you are so much holier than he. He once laughed and bragged about verbally abusing a store cashier to the point that she was crying. Her sin? Not knowing how to count back change correctly. He actually said how lucky she was to have him criticize her, so lucky that he came along and set her straight.
Sorry, I digress. I just see his face every time Brocklehurst is mentioned.
Miss Ingram, haughty and proud, is another villain...but hardly a villain at all as it turns out. Gone in an instant.
So up until the madwoman in the cage once wed to Rochester, these were all villains that Jane could endure, that Jane could "out live" in a sense. Her situation would one day change and they all could be left behind. Mrs. Rochester, however is an immovable object. Mrs. Rochester cannot be reasoned with, or endured.
Chapter 27 opens with the fallout. Rochester pleads and begs, goes so far as to threaten violence if she will not see reason. (Speaking of which...the footnote in my Penguin Classics edition mentions that the quote regarding "violence" means that he is threatening to rape her. Where do they GET these people? Rochester is many things, including an analogous Beast to Jane's Belle, but a rapist? Did they even read the book they were footnoting?)
I spent pretty much the entirety of chapter 27 feeling nothing but sympathy for Rochester. I'm tempted to think that this is due to my gender. I can't fully say how women would react to his entreaties and all out begging. (Given that my wife has had to stop reading so heavy a book during tax season my usual touchstone for feminine behavior questions is unavailable to me. Le sigh.) Perhaps some ladies see him as a scoundrel or less than honorable. Perhaps some of the female persuasion see him as pathetic for being this emotional and distraught. As for myself...it's all too familiar. I have been there.
I have been on record as having never broken up with anyone I've ever dated. I've always been on the receiving end. The first time I felt like the breath had been stomped out of me and a gaping void where my heart was supposed to have just been. She gave me a note in passing after school as she was going off to her job at the mall. I didn't need to have read the note. It was written all over her face. The only reason that I needed to read it was to find out the why of it. It was the stupidest reason imaginable, in retrospect. It was totally her, not me (she was 17 but had fallen in "love" with a guy who was 34 and who had taken advantage of her) but at the time it couldn't fit in my matrix. What had I done? What could I have done differently? Was she worth winning back? None of that was on my mind. Nothing reached me logically. There was just this psychological gaping, sucking chest wound. She had someone drive her to work...and I ran. I was in such a panic. I begged, I pleaded, I cried, I got down on my knees in the hardware aisle and wailed. That's pretty much how I'm sure Rochester felt, though he probably had more self respect and held a bit more decorum. He had all the more reason to wail since he actually had a woman worth it. This girl I begged to come back came back to me weeks later when she'd had a pregnancy scare and asked me to claim it as my own so her lover wouldn't go to jail for statutory rape. That was a bridge too far given the weeks of pain and depression...and I burned that bridge with a laugh. I literally laughed. Self respect came a bit too late, but I arrived at it all the same.
All this to say, from the male perspective I understand perhaps a fraction of what Rochester is going through. Mine was with a girl unworthy of my affections. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one so truly worthy as Jane.
He is in such a horrible position: stuck between a drooling, murdering, basket case and one of the most noble and praiseworthy of all women. He loses Jane and is stuck with the former.
When Jane says that she believes he would hate her as well were she mad, Rochester replies,
"Then you are mistaken, and know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still..."
He goes on to relate the unfortunate circumstances regarding his former, or rather current in point of fact, marriage. They are an understandable mistake at every point. Rochester then relates how his love grew for Jane over the weeks and months. "I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem". Dang. Yes, he made a mistake in keeping this from her, he doesn't deny any of this. To him the madwoman in the attic is dead and their marriage annulled by her violent, maddened mind. Jane's emotions and resolve appear to be all over the map. There is a war in her soul. This battle is not over whether she forgives him or not, she declares very early in his discourse that she had already forgiven him. To the modern mind this may seem strange. I even have it written in my copy "Jane...stop being DUMB!" and "Sigh...Jane...Oh, Jane...COME ON!". Again, perhaps it's my gender that sides with Rochester on this.
Rochester launches a logical gambit at her, bringing in to question her value placement, "It is better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?" Just as when Jane launched her assault on Mrs. Reed I was cheering him on at this point. Honestly, who is hurt by this? What's her point? Does she really see him as married to this...thing upstairs? How does that count? Who is she trying not to injure? Is it just the principal of the thing?
Jane replies with the very quote on the back of the book, which I presume to be the most famous quote. (though it is truncated and her heroism in this moment neutered by the absence of the direct why of it, namely God).
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God: sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now."
"given by God; sanctioned by man."
Again, as with those precious cranial neuron shifting moments with Helen, I am left with only one response.
"Well...crap."
No single page in this whole book, thus far, is as marked in black ink with all my notes and underlining of quotes as this one. And why? Because Jane give words to what we, the reader, so needs to hear. You cannot help but be challenged, at the very least, or changed, at the very best, by the words she continues with.
"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is not temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe in it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."
My only response that I can muster when I read that is like a black lady in church who replies to the preacher with a deep, soulful "Mmmm hmmm" as support.
This is how you can tell a good writer, a masterful writer, apart from the rest, and I may have mentioned this in Pride and Prejudice, but it bears repeating. There is no villain here. She's not hitting this moment and all the ladies shout, "You go girl! You don't need that man! You fine by yourself! You do you, girlfriend." These are two people, as she declares many times, in such a deep and consuming love who cannot be together. Is it so terrible that he wants her? He wants her for all the right reasons. Rochester loves her for the very essence of her being. She is not a strutting peacock for him to show off and then put away when he's bored. He wants her for everything and in everything good and bad. In the presence of so expansive and anchored a love, when compared to a woman who is violent and literally out of her mind...yeah...I'd try everything to keep Jane as well. Is he wrong? No. Is he going about it in a wrong manner? Hell yes.
It is the principal of the thing. For Jane it is a foundational principal of life and godliness. If she were to marry him while he was still married it is a soul level violation for her. He says it's a convention of man and no one is hurt, so who cares? We hear this a lot in our society. She replies, and rightly, that it is a law given by God, sanctioned by man. Sure, man sanctioned it, but it is God who made it a law. Not a "convention" a law.
As she bears down and maintains the sanctity of her soul and digs her foot in, the most remarkable thing happens. I should expect it of Rochester by now, but it surprised me still. Her defiance, her sticking to her principals...only makes him love and admire her more.
"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and frail and so indomitable."
He's pissed, he's in pain, he wants what he wants, and here she is being more beautiful in spirit, more admirable, than ever before. In the presence of pressure she turns into a diamond.
There is a simple moment two paragraphs away from there that shook me.
"What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly, 'I am going.'
'Jane!'
'Mr. Rochester!'"
This is the moment I want to see done well in the film. So much hangs on this simple exchange of names. There is a tension so thick you'd need a ship to break through. It is the axis upon which the entire book rotates. This is "the moment" if ever there was one yet.
"'Withdraw, then - I consent...'"
In all of fiction I'm not sure I've ever read a more tortured and absolute "I love you" than that fraction of a quote right there. By heaven, I'm tearing up right now...silly sod that I am.
"I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back - walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.
'God bless you, my dear master!' I said."
And that is the most tortured and absolute "I love you too" in return.
I was going to write about how enchanted I was with chapter 28. Bronte has this whole very cool moment where she has Jane alone out on the moors, disconnected from every living thing. There's a character in the novel I'm working on ("The Dawn Chorus") who asks the main character who he actually is when naked, alone, in a cave. That's when we truly know who we are. When we don't have anyone around us to provide context, who are we really? Jane gets to her genuine self there and I love the internal matching the external.
So, there I did it. I feel like it detracts from the discussion of chapter 27, though. Man, that chapter. It's the kind of chapter that makes a writer think he has no business being in the same...well, business as Charlotte Bronte. Lord, these women could write.
Pax,
Will
in Jane Eyre there is not single antagonist, no enemy, no arch villain trying to thwart Jane from every joy and happiness. There are multiple antagonists each with a different mask, each with a different "mental problem". I am putting that phrase in quotes because I'm not exactly certain that they have a "mental problem" and I don't want to diminish the very definition of "mental problem". It may seem a trifle like splitting hairs to you, dear reader, but it is a fairly important clarification in my mind regardless.
First we see John Reed who is all rage and abuse towards Jane for no purpose other than that he can. Mrs. Reed is another "villain" who despises Jane because of ridiculous standards of society. Jane's mother, Mr. Reed's favorite sister, married "low" and now she's forced to deal with her. Her secondary "villainous" trait is that she refuses to see that her children could ever do anything wrong. Denial is such a strong force and causes infinitely more damage than it brings comfort to the denier.
Following Mr. Reed is another self righteous individual in Mr. Brocklehurst. Of all of them I tend to despise him the most. He is a vain man who uses religious piety to shove down, humiliate, and abuse others. I cannot stand his narcissistic inconsistencies. Perhaps it is because I am closer than I'd like to be to a very similar individual. The world around him is well served by his pontificating on how it should run and act, yet he is guilty of sins and improprieties ten times worse. And if you expose his "short comings", as he would call his egregious sins, he will lambaste you for judging and acting like you are so much holier than he. He once laughed and bragged about verbally abusing a store cashier to the point that she was crying. Her sin? Not knowing how to count back change correctly. He actually said how lucky she was to have him criticize her, so lucky that he came along and set her straight.
Sorry, I digress. I just see his face every time Brocklehurst is mentioned.
Miss Ingram, haughty and proud, is another villain...but hardly a villain at all as it turns out. Gone in an instant.
So up until the madwoman in the cage once wed to Rochester, these were all villains that Jane could endure, that Jane could "out live" in a sense. Her situation would one day change and they all could be left behind. Mrs. Rochester, however is an immovable object. Mrs. Rochester cannot be reasoned with, or endured.
Chapter 27 opens with the fallout. Rochester pleads and begs, goes so far as to threaten violence if she will not see reason. (Speaking of which...the footnote in my Penguin Classics edition mentions that the quote regarding "violence" means that he is threatening to rape her. Where do they GET these people? Rochester is many things, including an analogous Beast to Jane's Belle, but a rapist? Did they even read the book they were footnoting?)
I spent pretty much the entirety of chapter 27 feeling nothing but sympathy for Rochester. I'm tempted to think that this is due to my gender. I can't fully say how women would react to his entreaties and all out begging. (Given that my wife has had to stop reading so heavy a book during tax season my usual touchstone for feminine behavior questions is unavailable to me. Le sigh.) Perhaps some ladies see him as a scoundrel or less than honorable. Perhaps some of the female persuasion see him as pathetic for being this emotional and distraught. As for myself...it's all too familiar. I have been there.
I have been on record as having never broken up with anyone I've ever dated. I've always been on the receiving end. The first time I felt like the breath had been stomped out of me and a gaping void where my heart was supposed to have just been. She gave me a note in passing after school as she was going off to her job at the mall. I didn't need to have read the note. It was written all over her face. The only reason that I needed to read it was to find out the why of it. It was the stupidest reason imaginable, in retrospect. It was totally her, not me (she was 17 but had fallen in "love" with a guy who was 34 and who had taken advantage of her) but at the time it couldn't fit in my matrix. What had I done? What could I have done differently? Was she worth winning back? None of that was on my mind. Nothing reached me logically. There was just this psychological gaping, sucking chest wound. She had someone drive her to work...and I ran. I was in such a panic. I begged, I pleaded, I cried, I got down on my knees in the hardware aisle and wailed. That's pretty much how I'm sure Rochester felt, though he probably had more self respect and held a bit more decorum. He had all the more reason to wail since he actually had a woman worth it. This girl I begged to come back came back to me weeks later when she'd had a pregnancy scare and asked me to claim it as my own so her lover wouldn't go to jail for statutory rape. That was a bridge too far given the weeks of pain and depression...and I burned that bridge with a laugh. I literally laughed. Self respect came a bit too late, but I arrived at it all the same.
All this to say, from the male perspective I understand perhaps a fraction of what Rochester is going through. Mine was with a girl unworthy of my affections. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose one so truly worthy as Jane.
He is in such a horrible position: stuck between a drooling, murdering, basket case and one of the most noble and praiseworthy of all women. He loses Jane and is stuck with the former.
When Jane says that she believes he would hate her as well were she mad, Rochester replies,
"Then you are mistaken, and know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still..."
He goes on to relate the unfortunate circumstances regarding his former, or rather current in point of fact, marriage. They are an understandable mistake at every point. Rochester then relates how his love grew for Jane over the weeks and months. "I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem". Dang. Yes, he made a mistake in keeping this from her, he doesn't deny any of this. To him the madwoman in the attic is dead and their marriage annulled by her violent, maddened mind. Jane's emotions and resolve appear to be all over the map. There is a war in her soul. This battle is not over whether she forgives him or not, she declares very early in his discourse that she had already forgiven him. To the modern mind this may seem strange. I even have it written in my copy "Jane...stop being DUMB!" and "Sigh...Jane...Oh, Jane...COME ON!". Again, perhaps it's my gender that sides with Rochester on this.
Rochester launches a logical gambit at her, bringing in to question her value placement, "It is better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?" Just as when Jane launched her assault on Mrs. Reed I was cheering him on at this point. Honestly, who is hurt by this? What's her point? Does she really see him as married to this...thing upstairs? How does that count? Who is she trying not to injure? Is it just the principal of the thing?
Jane replies with the very quote on the back of the book, which I presume to be the most famous quote. (though it is truncated and her heroism in this moment neutered by the absence of the direct why of it, namely God).
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God: sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now."
"given by God; sanctioned by man."
Again, as with those precious cranial neuron shifting moments with Helen, I am left with only one response.
"Well...crap."
No single page in this whole book, thus far, is as marked in black ink with all my notes and underlining of quotes as this one. And why? Because Jane give words to what we, the reader, so needs to hear. You cannot help but be challenged, at the very least, or changed, at the very best, by the words she continues with.
"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is not temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe in it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."
My only response that I can muster when I read that is like a black lady in church who replies to the preacher with a deep, soulful "Mmmm hmmm" as support.
This is how you can tell a good writer, a masterful writer, apart from the rest, and I may have mentioned this in Pride and Prejudice, but it bears repeating. There is no villain here. She's not hitting this moment and all the ladies shout, "You go girl! You don't need that man! You fine by yourself! You do you, girlfriend." These are two people, as she declares many times, in such a deep and consuming love who cannot be together. Is it so terrible that he wants her? He wants her for all the right reasons. Rochester loves her for the very essence of her being. She is not a strutting peacock for him to show off and then put away when he's bored. He wants her for everything and in everything good and bad. In the presence of so expansive and anchored a love, when compared to a woman who is violent and literally out of her mind...yeah...I'd try everything to keep Jane as well. Is he wrong? No. Is he going about it in a wrong manner? Hell yes.
It is the principal of the thing. For Jane it is a foundational principal of life and godliness. If she were to marry him while he was still married it is a soul level violation for her. He says it's a convention of man and no one is hurt, so who cares? We hear this a lot in our society. She replies, and rightly, that it is a law given by God, sanctioned by man. Sure, man sanctioned it, but it is God who made it a law. Not a "convention" a law.
As she bears down and maintains the sanctity of her soul and digs her foot in, the most remarkable thing happens. I should expect it of Rochester by now, but it surprised me still. Her defiance, her sticking to her principals...only makes him love and admire her more.
"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and frail and so indomitable."
He's pissed, he's in pain, he wants what he wants, and here she is being more beautiful in spirit, more admirable, than ever before. In the presence of pressure she turns into a diamond.
There is a simple moment two paragraphs away from there that shook me.
"What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly, 'I am going.'
'Jane!'
'Mr. Rochester!'"
This is the moment I want to see done well in the film. So much hangs on this simple exchange of names. There is a tension so thick you'd need a ship to break through. It is the axis upon which the entire book rotates. This is "the moment" if ever there was one yet.
"'Withdraw, then - I consent...'"
In all of fiction I'm not sure I've ever read a more tortured and absolute "I love you" than that fraction of a quote right there. By heaven, I'm tearing up right now...silly sod that I am.
"I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back - walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand.
'God bless you, my dear master!' I said."
And that is the most tortured and absolute "I love you too" in return.
I was going to write about how enchanted I was with chapter 28. Bronte has this whole very cool moment where she has Jane alone out on the moors, disconnected from every living thing. There's a character in the novel I'm working on ("The Dawn Chorus") who asks the main character who he actually is when naked, alone, in a cave. That's when we truly know who we are. When we don't have anyone around us to provide context, who are we really? Jane gets to her genuine self there and I love the internal matching the external.
So, there I did it. I feel like it detracts from the discussion of chapter 27, though. Man, that chapter. It's the kind of chapter that makes a writer think he has no business being in the same...well, business as Charlotte Bronte. Lord, these women could write.
Pax,
Will
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Vocab Freaks, Feast and Frolic! (and hey...Kickstarter is a thing!)
Once again I'm between chapters (by heaven, this book...I'm pacing myself because it's so good) and so it's time to go through our past chapters and pick out all those pesky archaic words and dine sumptuously upon their definitions, derivations and the odd etymology. It's quite a smorgasbord this time.
Before I get into that I really wanted to let everyone know that I have begun a Kickstarter for my beloved novel The Reliquary. I apologize to those who are attached to me through other social media who may have been subject to my other postings. We're at 3% in three days, which is fabulous. We have only 27 more days to go. Sadly, this project will only go forward if people like yourself choose to back it. It is an all or nothing proposition. Please give generously and you will get generously! There are quite a few reward tiers available from 5$ to as high as 200$ which features super exclusive prizes. There's a perfect fit for anyone who wants to help me in this creative endeavor.
To find out how Kickstarter works you can get that information HERE.
Click HERE for my actual Kickstarter page.
Regardless of how much or how little you are able to do, your support means everything to me. I thank you in advance. Even just hitting +1 and sharing this post with others is ever so appreciated. I want as many people as possible to have a chance to read my novel and come to love the characters as much as I do.
Now! On to the Vocab Freak's Frolic!
I do feast so well upon these old novels. There are so many good words that we've forgotten or have no more "use" for. Of the 27 words we'll be looking at today a mere 13 of the show up as worthy of inclusion in my word processor's dictionary. You know you're a Vocab Freak when you find yourself delighted that you know a word your phone or word processor's dictionary doesn't. :)
Sublunary: Naturally, one expects the word to mean "beneath the moon". However that doesn't quite fit. It is derived from that Latin "sublunaris" which means "terrestrial". Fair enough. The definition is an "belonging to this world as contrasted with a better more spiritual one".
Negus: I was rather interested in this word, given my culinary arts background. One of my other great delights, besides gaining a robust vocabulary, is finding old world drinks and foods that we've lost. A negus was essentially mulled wine but that you swap the hot wine for hot port instead.
Pefidy: "deceitfullness; untrustworthiness"
Canzonette: "in music, a popular Italian secular vocal composition that originated around 1560" One of which you can listen to HERE sung by a lady who appears to be taking it a tad too seriously while simultaneously seeming unimpressed.
Cachinnate: According to the online dictionary, "It sounds exactly like what it is..." to which I thought, "an alien insectoid mating ritual?". Of course I was wrong, but so was the online dictionary, in my opinion. Continuing the quote, "it's what you do when you laugh loudly, guffaw, or cackle, and probably embarrass and annoy everyone around you." Uh...huh. Ca...chi..nnate... I'll let my dear readers judge that one.
Physiognomy: One of the great surprises in Jane Eyre, for myself at least, is how pervasive the pseudoscience of Phrenology is throughout. Some bit of it is in just about every section of the novel. Physiognomy is a companion pseudoscience that is "the supposed are of judging character from facial characteristics". You see this in effect particularly in the "fortune telling gypsy" scene.
Choler: "one of the bodily humors, identified with bile, believed to be associated with a peevish or irascible temparment.
Blent: "past participle of blend" Fair enough. I should have expected that.
Averred: "to state or assert to be the case"
Adventitious: "happening or carried on according to chance rather than design or inherent nature"
Ribald: "referring to sexual matters in an amusingly rude or irreverent way".
Sententious: "given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner" And this usage didn't even come from the section with Brocklehurst in it.
Dentelles: "ornamental tooling used in book binding, resembling lace edging"
Spoony: "sentimentally or foolishly amorous" Apparently my spooning with my wife is spoony behavior...fair enough. :)
Sago: "edible starch that is obtained from a palm and is a staple food in parts of the tropics..."
Abigails: "a lady's personal maid"
Minois Chiffone: (referencing Louisa) "attractive, but in an unusual way". From further research I've found that it generally refers to an unevenesss of facial features. This very imperfection, or multiple imperfections, are considered attractive...because of their asymmetry. Interesting, I thought.
Saturnine: (descriptive of Miss Ingram) "dark and moody"
Contumelious: "scornful and insulting; insolent"
Beldame: "a malicious and ugly woman, especially an old one; a witch". Beldame has got to be one of my favorite words in older language. It's almost a mocking word because it come from the French "bel" which means beautiful and then the English "dame". So it means literally "beautiful older woman" but is spun on its ear in usage. I love fairy tales and fantasy stories that use the world "beldame" as a descriptor. I think I first encountered it in Neil Gaiman's Coraline which was how the ghost children referred to the "other mother" with the black buttons for eyes.
Lassitude: "a state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy" To be a parent is to be in a constant state of lassitude.
Deglutition: "the act or process of swallowing" Huh...
Badinage: "humorous or witty conversation" If you notice, I've added a little badinage to some of these definitions. Let me know if you think it works better than just a list of words and definitions. I kind of like it, but I'm not pertinacious about it.
Pertinacious: "holding firm to an opinion or a course of action"
Seraglio: "the women's apartments in an Ottoman palace"
Dudgeon: "a feeling of offense or deep resentment"
Bathos: "an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous"
I hope you learned a few things. I certainly did.
I'm hoping to have my next blog post, regarding the actual story contents of the book, by perhaps the end of the week. I've gotten to the point where I am compelled to savor it. I wanted them together, now I'm pissed they're apart, and can't wait for them to be reunited. That moment of realization for Jane is going to have to be amazing. I can't wait for it, but I want to draw it out a bit. There should be two more entries before I finish this book and pick up Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird".
Don't forget to +1, subscribe, share and the like if you happen to enjoy my meager scribblings here. I guess they aren't scribblings since I use a keyboard. Would it be "my meager...key clackings"?
At any rate...I remain, faithfully,
W
Before I get into that I really wanted to let everyone know that I have begun a Kickstarter for my beloved novel The Reliquary. I apologize to those who are attached to me through other social media who may have been subject to my other postings. We're at 3% in three days, which is fabulous. We have only 27 more days to go. Sadly, this project will only go forward if people like yourself choose to back it. It is an all or nothing proposition. Please give generously and you will get generously! There are quite a few reward tiers available from 5$ to as high as 200$ which features super exclusive prizes. There's a perfect fit for anyone who wants to help me in this creative endeavor.
To find out how Kickstarter works you can get that information HERE.
Click HERE for my actual Kickstarter page.
Regardless of how much or how little you are able to do, your support means everything to me. I thank you in advance. Even just hitting +1 and sharing this post with others is ever so appreciated. I want as many people as possible to have a chance to read my novel and come to love the characters as much as I do.
Now! On to the Vocab Freak's Frolic!
I do feast so well upon these old novels. There are so many good words that we've forgotten or have no more "use" for. Of the 27 words we'll be looking at today a mere 13 of the show up as worthy of inclusion in my word processor's dictionary. You know you're a Vocab Freak when you find yourself delighted that you know a word your phone or word processor's dictionary doesn't. :)
Sublunary: Naturally, one expects the word to mean "beneath the moon". However that doesn't quite fit. It is derived from that Latin "sublunaris" which means "terrestrial". Fair enough. The definition is an "belonging to this world as contrasted with a better more spiritual one".
Negus: I was rather interested in this word, given my culinary arts background. One of my other great delights, besides gaining a robust vocabulary, is finding old world drinks and foods that we've lost. A negus was essentially mulled wine but that you swap the hot wine for hot port instead.
Pefidy: "deceitfullness; untrustworthiness"
Canzonette: "in music, a popular Italian secular vocal composition that originated around 1560" One of which you can listen to HERE sung by a lady who appears to be taking it a tad too seriously while simultaneously seeming unimpressed.
Cachinnate: According to the online dictionary, "It sounds exactly like what it is..." to which I thought, "an alien insectoid mating ritual?". Of course I was wrong, but so was the online dictionary, in my opinion. Continuing the quote, "it's what you do when you laugh loudly, guffaw, or cackle, and probably embarrass and annoy everyone around you." Uh...huh. Ca...chi..nnate... I'll let my dear readers judge that one.
Physiognomy: One of the great surprises in Jane Eyre, for myself at least, is how pervasive the pseudoscience of Phrenology is throughout. Some bit of it is in just about every section of the novel. Physiognomy is a companion pseudoscience that is "the supposed are of judging character from facial characteristics". You see this in effect particularly in the "fortune telling gypsy" scene.
Choler: "one of the bodily humors, identified with bile, believed to be associated with a peevish or irascible temparment.
Blent: "past participle of blend" Fair enough. I should have expected that.
Averred: "to state or assert to be the case"
Adventitious: "happening or carried on according to chance rather than design or inherent nature"
Ribald: "referring to sexual matters in an amusingly rude or irreverent way".
Sententious: "given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner" And this usage didn't even come from the section with Brocklehurst in it.
Dentelles: "ornamental tooling used in book binding, resembling lace edging"
Spoony: "sentimentally or foolishly amorous" Apparently my spooning with my wife is spoony behavior...fair enough. :)
Sago: "edible starch that is obtained from a palm and is a staple food in parts of the tropics..."
Abigails: "a lady's personal maid"
Minois Chiffone: (referencing Louisa) "attractive, but in an unusual way". From further research I've found that it generally refers to an unevenesss of facial features. This very imperfection, or multiple imperfections, are considered attractive...because of their asymmetry. Interesting, I thought.
Saturnine: (descriptive of Miss Ingram) "dark and moody"
Contumelious: "scornful and insulting; insolent"
Beldame: "a malicious and ugly woman, especially an old one; a witch". Beldame has got to be one of my favorite words in older language. It's almost a mocking word because it come from the French "bel" which means beautiful and then the English "dame". So it means literally "beautiful older woman" but is spun on its ear in usage. I love fairy tales and fantasy stories that use the world "beldame" as a descriptor. I think I first encountered it in Neil Gaiman's Coraline which was how the ghost children referred to the "other mother" with the black buttons for eyes.
Lassitude: "a state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy" To be a parent is to be in a constant state of lassitude.
Deglutition: "the act or process of swallowing" Huh...
Badinage: "humorous or witty conversation" If you notice, I've added a little badinage to some of these definitions. Let me know if you think it works better than just a list of words and definitions. I kind of like it, but I'm not pertinacious about it.
Pertinacious: "holding firm to an opinion or a course of action"
Seraglio: "the women's apartments in an Ottoman palace"
Dudgeon: "a feeling of offense or deep resentment"
Bathos: "an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous"
I hope you learned a few things. I certainly did.
I'm hoping to have my next blog post, regarding the actual story contents of the book, by perhaps the end of the week. I've gotten to the point where I am compelled to savor it. I wanted them together, now I'm pissed they're apart, and can't wait for them to be reunited. That moment of realization for Jane is going to have to be amazing. I can't wait for it, but I want to draw it out a bit. There should be two more entries before I finish this book and pick up Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird".
Don't forget to +1, subscribe, share and the like if you happen to enjoy my meager scribblings here. I guess they aren't scribblings since I use a keyboard. Would it be "my meager...key clackings"?
At any rate...I remain, faithfully,
W
Monday, February 9, 2015
Love in the Time of Madness (Jane Eyre Chapters 21-26)
When it comes to good love stories, I'm a sucker. My favorite love story couples of all time are Benedick and Beatrice from Much ado About Nothing, Patrick and Kat from 10 Things I Hate About You and by extension Taming of the Shrew, Christian and Satine from Moulin Rouge, Harry and Sally from When Harry Met Sally, Aditi and Hemant from Monsoon Wedding, Amelie and Nino from Amelie, nearly every couple in Love Actually, the eternal couple through all of time and multiple incarnations in Cloud Atlas, and, last, but never least, Wesley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride. I suppose I should add in Lizzy and Darcy as well as Jane and Rochester now. They have, after all, passed the test of time as couples...200 or so years and all.
You'll likely notice all of these are from plays and movies. That's not accidental. I generally find love stories in fiction to be tedious and contrived. It's far too easy to write love stories with too much or too little pining or longing or any other emotion. It's a rare novel writer that can hit the nail on the head in this regard. In a movie though, the emotions are rarely overwrought. An actor or director can immediately sense when the scene is wrong because of too much or too little emotion or expression. There are filters there to ensure a pretty decent product. Writing...it's easy to screw up. When I wrote The Reliquary I was super conscious of this fact and took great mental pains to keep Simon and Cassie's love story well balanced with what was going on around them.
So why these happy few? Well, perhaps calling them a "happy few" is a little misleading. The above couples are what I like to call "difficult" love stories. There is always some truly difficult impediment to their love. Many of them have nearly fatal flaws in their personalities that would likely keep them apart, or society, or some force outside their own control. Why do I like them so much? It's hard to pin down all the reasons, however one reason, for certain, is that their love is earned. Whether they have to get over their own pride, strive through deadly circumstances, these couples earn their love every step of the way. I recently realized that this very reason is why I love Disney's Beauty and the Beast. In the land of Disney films, and most fairy tales in general, the Prince happens upon the fair maiden at just the right moment and kind of gallantly stumble into a marriage with the fair maiden. The fair maiden doesn't ask many questions, something magical happens to save them and they live happily ever after. Beauty and the Beast is strange in this regard because Beast has to actually change for the better, and Belle accepts him in his full on bestial form. This is a couple that sees, full in the face, their own flaws and draws together eyes wide open.
And this, above most things, is precisely while I love Jane Eyre.
I had mixed emotions when Rochester finally reveals to Jane that the whole "Miss Ingram Affair" was a mere ruse. Cheap move, Bronte. Again, this device is used in multiple Harlequin romance novels to this day. To see it in its "classical" form was difficult. Readers everywhere must have gasped and thought it clever at the time. To modern audiences I wonder if it comes off as cruel. But, with pretense and deceptions cast off, the happy couple begins to speak of their love for one another...and again, as with Pride and Prejudice, it sounds so much like my own experience with my wife.
"and wherever you are is my home - my only home."
Oh my goodness, talk about a novel speaking my very heart. 200 years later I have said this very line without ever having read it. It is so true to my very experience.
I couldn't read the section regarding the day after Rochester's proposal without thinking of the Vigilante's of Love song Sweetness and Light. Bill Mallonee sings a very "difficult" love song and says "Love makes us better than we really are/Sometimes it happens over night". Jane's very regard for herself changes with the morning.
"While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain:" As if she had ever actually been plain to look at. Had she been plain would have Miss Ingram been so venomous towards her?
Bronte so repeats my own heart when Rochester declares, "...all the ground I have wandered over shall be retrodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's food shall step also." I always thought this was a very strange desire that I alone possessed. Once I asked some fellow married young men if they had the same and they replied unanimously "Heck no. I'd never want to take her to my old hometown. Too many stories she doesn't need to hear and people I'd rather her not hear them from." Somehow I feel like every place I take my wife to "redeems" it somehow. I always wish that somehow knew her when I was younger; that we could run in the same fields and forests when we were 9 or 12. Taking her to those places gives me a sense that I'm weaving her into my past, sharing more of my story with her than just my present and future. Sure there are people with stories to tell and things I'd on the one hand rather she not know. On the other hand, I tend to believe that a clearer picture of me is a far better thing. Many of those things I did when I was a "stupid teenager" and she's rational enough a human being to take that into account.
Rochester does an excellent job of proving himself to not be at all the idiot I nearly took him for at the end of the last blog post.
"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts - when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break...I am ever tender and true."
This is clearly not a man who is messing about. Well, except to enflame Jane with a little jealousy.
Jane and Rochester are clearly a couple on the same page and devoting themselves together for solid reasons.
"After all, a single morning's interruption will not matter much," said he, "when I mean shortly to claim you- your thoughts, conversation and company - for life."
Single ladies, if you're paying attention at all, that is the right answer. That is the only answer when you ask a man why he wants to be with you or marry you. If he says "aw, baby. I just wanna have fun with you" kick him to the curb. As I've mentioned before "it all wrinkles and sags". In the nursing home all that will remain are those three: your thoughts, conversation and company. If he's not interested in that, if he tells you that you talk to much, if he says you ramble, or that you talk about stupid stuff then he isn't worthy of you. The man who is worthy of you loves the way you ramble, wants to hear you talk more, and is willing to engage with you in a conversation about stupid stuff. One of the great reasons (of many) that I love being with my wife is because I have no idea what she's going to say next. She isn't random, outrageous or anything like that. It's just that I know she, like myself, is constantly evolving her opinions and thoughts. I love the way her mind works and often her own thoughts and opinions shift and alter my own. It's always a delight to talk to her, as a result. Now if the kids could just stop interrupting every fifth syllable I'd be particularly grateful.
Now, single men, if you're paying attention at all, find a girl like Jane. Honestly, I have nothing but the utmost respect and adoration for Jane at this point. If she happened to be at a party, not that she would but by force, she would be the one out of all that I would want to strike up a conversation with. Why? Out of so many reason, primarily because there is so little pretense with her. She is so solidly who she is and cannot be anything else. Honesty and consistency are high virtues in my book and they seem to be at the very core of who she is. I love how she refuses to be anything but the governess she has been for the month before the wedding. It certainly must have driven Rochester mad with desire, but that is precisely who and how she is. When Rochester takes her to town and buys her silks and jewels she states, "...the more he bought my, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation." When Rochester protests she says, "Do you remember what you said of Celine Varens? - of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Celine Varens...I''ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but...your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit."
Single men, that's the right answer. If she wants for bigger and better things and withholds affection or uses it to get what she wants? Kick her to the curb. If she complains that you don't take her out to dinner enough or treat her like a princess (with money) then get rid of her quickly. If she has Tiffany taste on a Walmart budget then get OUT. Again, one of the ways I knew my wife was The One was because sitting down to a movie we'd seen 5 times before while eating pre-cooked frozen chicken and boxed mashed potatoes was just as good to us as eating at a fancy restaurant or hitting the dance club. In fact, most days it seemed like more fun because we could do it in our comfy pajamas.
Now, the shock of the Crazy Lady in the attic didn't come quite as a shock due to my sister, aka "Our Lady of Significant Spoilers". I can't think of a scarier moment than Jane waking to her going through Jane's things. *shiver* I watch horror films fairly regularly and that was a scarier image than much that I've seen.
I purposely waited all day before I read the "wedding" chapter. Everything was going so well and was so happy for Jane. I couldn't help but put some temporal distance between that and what I was certain would be a crushing disappointment. Somehow I felt I was respecting the character of Jane that resides in my head and hasn't lived through this before.
As I've mentioned before, I am fairly shocked at how much reading these two novels feels like a homecoming for me. I was telling my wife that it's like when you go to a family reunion and meet cousins that you really don't know at all. Your parents tell you to run off an play together. You begrudgingly go play "kick the can" in the back yard, but then you find out your cousins are all awesome people with so much in common with you though you've never met before. I hope that it's a feeling that continues throughout.
Pax,
W
Friday, February 6, 2015
En Flambe (Chapter 16-20)
It really has been quite a week. I'm not sure where the time went, but it was all I could do to catch a page or two here and there. However, what a few chapters it was, indeed.
Last week I left off with Rochester nearly burned in his bed and then, as he would tell it, nearly drowned by Jane. Supposedly this was all the doing of the strange Grace Poole. I was talking with my sister about how dark and the book is when she responded, "Yeah, well, that'll happen when you've got a crazy person locked away in the attic." ...uh...SPOILERS! Hello!? I then told her Rosebud is a sled, the Island in LOST is a sort of purgatory, John Galt is a guy who has quit the world and stolen every smart person to his personal refuge, and the chick in The Crying Game is actually a dude! I didn't really, but now I have. So there.
Overall the thing that struck me about these 5 chapters is 1) how much there is to admire and 2) how much there is to despise.
Rochester leaves Thornfield after the "en flambe" incident without a word to Jane. Jane finds out about the lovely Miss Ingram and how she is admired by all, and particularly Rochester.
At this point Jane does something remarkable for a fictional female character. She doesn't cry. She doesn't pine. Jane instead engages in what is actually a fairly healthy exercise of self discipline. She reprimands herself for thinking too highly of her relationship with her employer, and that any hope could be found there for love to blossom. In an effort to further see and accept reality she turns to art and creates a picture of her ideal vision of how Blanche Ingram looks based on Mrs. Fairfax's description of her.
Of the exercise she states:
"Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus force my feelings to submit; thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm; which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally."
And then we meet Blanche Ingram.
I've labored all day trying to figure out how I could explain my feelings in regard to Miss Ingram in a manner that wouldn't be taken as "inflammatory". I'm not sure I've even figured it out as of this moment, so I'm just going to come out and say it.
Miss Ingram is everything I despise in a woman.
Now, I know the climate of this current culture is given to the notion that a woman is only called a b*$ch when she acts in exactly the same manner as a man. One could argue that Miss Ingram is just as grumpy, just as sardonic, and just as forceful as Rochester. You could look at their behavior as extremely similar...however you cannot say it is the same. For all of Rochester's perceived "brutishness" he is not cruel, and cruelty is something I have never been able to tolerate well.
One of the great mysteries of gender is that the human male can have a disagreement with another male, come to angry words, even to full on blows, and then go buy each other a beer. You can even see this in little boys...minus the beer, of course. Females are a whole different category. Ladies...I don't know where you learned to do this, or who told you it was OK, but you girls can be downright vicious and cruel to one another. Boys will push and shove on the playground, but girls learn about exacting revenge through social exclusion, through rumor, through verbal intimidation and man girls learn how to cut with words early on. On top of that I've never seen someone hold on to a grudge the way women can. I know a woman who to this very day refuses to go to a social function if this other woman was invited because of something that happened in the 3rd grade. She still hates her.
When Miss Ingram shows up, in all her radiant beauty and perfection, the minute she looks down and mockingly refers to Adele as a "little puppet", I knew everything I would ever need to about her. These type of women get under my skin, and especially in fiction. In real life I can avoid them, or if I'm forced to endure their company I can have my wife, my refuge, by my side. I'm not sure why they bother me so much. Even now I feel a fire in my stomach and want to launch into ill advised diatribes over these toxic females whose only freaking virtue is their beauty, and how I've observed that the more typically beautiful a woman is the more certainly toxic she is because she's never had to work on her personality, and so very much more. Fortunately Jane indicts Miss Ingram (and women like her...AHEM Lydia Bennett) far more well than I ever could be able. Before we get to that, however, I should bring up Jane's return of feeling for Rochester.
When her feelings of love for Rochester return, as she gazes upon him interacting with his retinue of other wealthy folk, she says it all so very well.
"I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony; a pleasure like what a thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless."
This "sentence", or whatever is the proper term for something with that many semicolons, has been written and rewriting in different forms and by lesser writers ever since. It's in every Harlequin romance novel, it was the mode which pervaded the very being of the "Twilight" books. "Oh, I love him, but I know it's wrong, but I don't care, but I'll just get hurt again." I don't believe it's ever been said, however, by more worthy a heroine about more honorable a man. The sentiment these days is wasted on trashy novel heroes and female characters who end it with "but take me anyway". So far, at least, Jane hasn't crossed a line and has more dignity for herself. What she sees is not that he's some dangerous handsome rogue who might want to manhandle her "virtue". She sees, instead, who he actually is. This isn't some flight of "fancy" this is like calling out to like.
"'He is not to them what he is to me,' I thought: 'He is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine - I am sure he is - I feel akin to him - I understand the language of his countenance and movements; though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him."
It's not "He's so dreamy, dangerous, and exciting". She's saying that there is an affinity where without speaking they understand each other.
Jane describes Miss Ingram as a lady, "who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed" and that sums up her and those like her who bother me. They are scornful. Full of scorn. We don't seem to value that word "scorn" much anymore. Scorn: The feeling or belief that someone or something is worthless or despicable. I've seen men marry these "scornful" girls. I see them at couples functions, and the men are just miserable. No wonder they turn off, tune out, and find things to do elsewhere than with their wives. Why? Because eventually they become the target of scorn. Eventually she becomes something to endure, rather than a joy. Personally, I feel like I dodged a freaking bullet when I found my wife. She is overall a joy, a refuge, and I can't wait for the kids to turn 18 and go off to college because that means I get to focus that time and energy with her. Mark that. I said "get to", as in it's a privilege I'm looking forward to. If I had a scornful wife...man I can't even imagine. I'd fear being alone with her.
So, how does Jane feel about the man she loves being so affectionate and "intended" for such a heinous...well...you know...?
"Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling...She was very showy, but she was not genuine."
Heck...yeah!
"she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, (sick burn) her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her."
Ouch.
She then considers why some man would what such a wife and says there must be reasons men have that she can't understand,
"I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husbands's own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act."
This is the difference, in my mind, between the "men" and the "boys" is that choice right there. Miss Ingram is a beautiful structure. Unfortunately, she happens to be a particularly lovely crypt full of death, venom, and rot. Why would you choose that? Well, pretty goes a long way. But here is the hard truth I try to tell young men blinded by beauty: "Eventually everything wrinkles and sags". Once time has ravaged it, what have you got? Go into a nursing home and have a good long look. If she's launching epithets and saying "I must have my will!" or "do my bidding" now...that sort of thing doesn't stop with age.
So, the gypsy comes, tells the fortunes of the others and then demands to see Miss Eyre.
For me this was one of the most wonderful pieces in the book. Miss Bronte has a knack for creating jewels of scenes connected together by narrative as the chain between. Jane's guarded logical mind is quite a delight for me. The whole scene was beautiful described and I particularly loved how the gypsy dispensed with the normal palm reading once she realized that Jane was not going to be as easily deceived. Many things are revealed and many things understood. And it becomes doubly worse when it is revealed that the gypsy is actually Rochester in disguise. He KNOWS that Miss Ingram doesn't love "his person, but rather his purse" and yet later in the garden he sits with Jane, his hand in hers, Jane (and the reader) all expecting for him to declare love, and yet he declares his love for Miss Ingram. SHE is the "second chance" that he's been seeking? His "redemption"?
GAH! I'm all caught up in a romance novel! It was snuck in as a "classic", but now I'm getting all "fluttery" over "Will he? Won't he? Oh, no, he's an idiot. Oh, wait, maybe Jane will get what she truly deserves in they'll be in a warm rainbow of happiness, puppies, and lemonade sunshine! Nope. He's an idiot. Wait, he can't be a COMPLETE idiot. Oh, yes he can. But wait!"
Gah!
Pax,
W
Last week I left off with Rochester nearly burned in his bed and then, as he would tell it, nearly drowned by Jane. Supposedly this was all the doing of the strange Grace Poole. I was talking with my sister about how dark and the book is when she responded, "Yeah, well, that'll happen when you've got a crazy person locked away in the attic." ...uh...SPOILERS! Hello!? I then told her Rosebud is a sled, the Island in LOST is a sort of purgatory, John Galt is a guy who has quit the world and stolen every smart person to his personal refuge, and the chick in The Crying Game is actually a dude! I didn't really, but now I have. So there.
Overall the thing that struck me about these 5 chapters is 1) how much there is to admire and 2) how much there is to despise.
Rochester leaves Thornfield after the "en flambe" incident without a word to Jane. Jane finds out about the lovely Miss Ingram and how she is admired by all, and particularly Rochester.
At this point Jane does something remarkable for a fictional female character. She doesn't cry. She doesn't pine. Jane instead engages in what is actually a fairly healthy exercise of self discipline. She reprimands herself for thinking too highly of her relationship with her employer, and that any hope could be found there for love to blossom. In an effort to further see and accept reality she turns to art and creates a picture of her ideal vision of how Blanche Ingram looks based on Mrs. Fairfax's description of her.
Of the exercise she states:
"Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus force my feelings to submit; thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm; which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally."
And then we meet Blanche Ingram.
I've labored all day trying to figure out how I could explain my feelings in regard to Miss Ingram in a manner that wouldn't be taken as "inflammatory". I'm not sure I've even figured it out as of this moment, so I'm just going to come out and say it.
Miss Ingram is everything I despise in a woman.
Now, I know the climate of this current culture is given to the notion that a woman is only called a b*$ch when she acts in exactly the same manner as a man. One could argue that Miss Ingram is just as grumpy, just as sardonic, and just as forceful as Rochester. You could look at their behavior as extremely similar...however you cannot say it is the same. For all of Rochester's perceived "brutishness" he is not cruel, and cruelty is something I have never been able to tolerate well.
One of the great mysteries of gender is that the human male can have a disagreement with another male, come to angry words, even to full on blows, and then go buy each other a beer. You can even see this in little boys...minus the beer, of course. Females are a whole different category. Ladies...I don't know where you learned to do this, or who told you it was OK, but you girls can be downright vicious and cruel to one another. Boys will push and shove on the playground, but girls learn about exacting revenge through social exclusion, through rumor, through verbal intimidation and man girls learn how to cut with words early on. On top of that I've never seen someone hold on to a grudge the way women can. I know a woman who to this very day refuses to go to a social function if this other woman was invited because of something that happened in the 3rd grade. She still hates her.
When Miss Ingram shows up, in all her radiant beauty and perfection, the minute she looks down and mockingly refers to Adele as a "little puppet", I knew everything I would ever need to about her. These type of women get under my skin, and especially in fiction. In real life I can avoid them, or if I'm forced to endure their company I can have my wife, my refuge, by my side. I'm not sure why they bother me so much. Even now I feel a fire in my stomach and want to launch into ill advised diatribes over these toxic females whose only freaking virtue is their beauty, and how I've observed that the more typically beautiful a woman is the more certainly toxic she is because she's never had to work on her personality, and so very much more. Fortunately Jane indicts Miss Ingram (and women like her...AHEM Lydia Bennett) far more well than I ever could be able. Before we get to that, however, I should bring up Jane's return of feeling for Rochester.
When her feelings of love for Rochester return, as she gazes upon him interacting with his retinue of other wealthy folk, she says it all so very well.
"I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony; a pleasure like what a thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless."
This "sentence", or whatever is the proper term for something with that many semicolons, has been written and rewriting in different forms and by lesser writers ever since. It's in every Harlequin romance novel, it was the mode which pervaded the very being of the "Twilight" books. "Oh, I love him, but I know it's wrong, but I don't care, but I'll just get hurt again." I don't believe it's ever been said, however, by more worthy a heroine about more honorable a man. The sentiment these days is wasted on trashy novel heroes and female characters who end it with "but take me anyway". So far, at least, Jane hasn't crossed a line and has more dignity for herself. What she sees is not that he's some dangerous handsome rogue who might want to manhandle her "virtue". She sees, instead, who he actually is. This isn't some flight of "fancy" this is like calling out to like.
"'He is not to them what he is to me,' I thought: 'He is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine - I am sure he is - I feel akin to him - I understand the language of his countenance and movements; though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him."
It's not "He's so dreamy, dangerous, and exciting". She's saying that there is an affinity where without speaking they understand each other.
Jane describes Miss Ingram as a lady, "who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed" and that sums up her and those like her who bother me. They are scornful. Full of scorn. We don't seem to value that word "scorn" much anymore. Scorn: The feeling or belief that someone or something is worthless or despicable. I've seen men marry these "scornful" girls. I see them at couples functions, and the men are just miserable. No wonder they turn off, tune out, and find things to do elsewhere than with their wives. Why? Because eventually they become the target of scorn. Eventually she becomes something to endure, rather than a joy. Personally, I feel like I dodged a freaking bullet when I found my wife. She is overall a joy, a refuge, and I can't wait for the kids to turn 18 and go off to college because that means I get to focus that time and energy with her. Mark that. I said "get to", as in it's a privilege I'm looking forward to. If I had a scornful wife...man I can't even imagine. I'd fear being alone with her.
So, how does Jane feel about the man she loves being so affectionate and "intended" for such a heinous...well...you know...?
"Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling...She was very showy, but she was not genuine."
Heck...yeah!
"she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, (sick burn) her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her."
Ouch.
She then considers why some man would what such a wife and says there must be reasons men have that she can't understand,
"I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husbands's own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act."
This is the difference, in my mind, between the "men" and the "boys" is that choice right there. Miss Ingram is a beautiful structure. Unfortunately, she happens to be a particularly lovely crypt full of death, venom, and rot. Why would you choose that? Well, pretty goes a long way. But here is the hard truth I try to tell young men blinded by beauty: "Eventually everything wrinkles and sags". Once time has ravaged it, what have you got? Go into a nursing home and have a good long look. If she's launching epithets and saying "I must have my will!" or "do my bidding" now...that sort of thing doesn't stop with age.
So, the gypsy comes, tells the fortunes of the others and then demands to see Miss Eyre.
For me this was one of the most wonderful pieces in the book. Miss Bronte has a knack for creating jewels of scenes connected together by narrative as the chain between. Jane's guarded logical mind is quite a delight for me. The whole scene was beautiful described and I particularly loved how the gypsy dispensed with the normal palm reading once she realized that Jane was not going to be as easily deceived. Many things are revealed and many things understood. And it becomes doubly worse when it is revealed that the gypsy is actually Rochester in disguise. He KNOWS that Miss Ingram doesn't love "his person, but rather his purse" and yet later in the garden he sits with Jane, his hand in hers, Jane (and the reader) all expecting for him to declare love, and yet he declares his love for Miss Ingram. SHE is the "second chance" that he's been seeking? His "redemption"?
GAH! I'm all caught up in a romance novel! It was snuck in as a "classic", but now I'm getting all "fluttery" over "Will he? Won't he? Oh, no, he's an idiot. Oh, wait, maybe Jane will get what she truly deserves in they'll be in a warm rainbow of happiness, puppies, and lemonade sunshine! Nope. He's an idiot. Wait, he can't be a COMPLETE idiot. Oh, yes he can. But wait!"
Gah!
Pax,
W
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