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
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