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
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