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
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Monday, February 16, 2015
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
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Darkness and Questions of Faith (Jane Eyre Chapters 1-8)
I was initially struck by how much thicker of a book Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is to Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't so much that I didn't realize that there would be some thick books in this series of 100BYSRBYD, but it did give me pause. Had I chosen to I could have blown through Pride and Prejudice in a week. Instead I wanted to take the time to ruminate on it and pace myself so I didn't burn out. Jane Eyre's girthiness made me realize that this project is going to probably take two years at minimum, but more likely 3 or more. Surprisingly that doesn't bother me.
What does bother me is knowing that Tolstoy's War and Peace is coming down the pike and it's even bigger than this book. I literally used that book as a doorstop back when I tried to hork it down after high school. Don't ask me why. My friends were in college, I was working as a grocery bagger and had little mental stimulation so I was feeling bad about myself and...yeah. I got 4 pages in and my brain went numb. It was a particularly warm summer for Alaska and the door to my room had to be kept open somehow. It was either going to be a $9.99 paperweight or a doorstop. I could have used it as a meat tenderizing mallet, now that I think on it.
So...Jane Eyre intimidated me a little bit upon pulling the book from it's Amazon.com box.
The first thing I noticed, when I finally plucked up the courage to begin ingesting the text, was "Holy Carp, this book starts out DARK." By comparison Pride and Prejudice is a ditzy, floofy summer beach read. Seriously, from here on out we'll determine a books darkness and/or heaviness of subject matter on the Bronte/Austen Scale (tm) (Patent Pending). Granted my knowledge of the classics isn't as vast as others, but ,bloody hell, it can't get much more bleak than this. Even Dickens comes off marginally lighter.
The darkness begins at Gateshead with "leafless shrubbery...cold winter wind...sombre clouds...penetrating rain..." Essentially "It was a dark and stormy night" for the literary set. This pall is cast over the whole first 8 chapters and never lets up on the life of the eponymous Jane, who is an orphan sent to live with her uncle who dies soon after and leaves her with an aunt and three cousin who despise her. She is very conscious of her "physical inferiority" to them. Honestly, I thought the Dursleys from Harry Potter were the worst most despicable family in all of fiction. Many people state that the terrible muggle family was based on the horrible families portrayed in the works of Roald Dahl. Other people claim they are Dickensian in origin. I submit that it is here, the the heinous Reed family, that we find a more likely inspiration.
Jane is physically abused by the eldest boy, detested by the sisters, and considered the source of all problems in the house by Mrs. Reed. Within the young Jane lies the heart of a lion, however, that meets the injustices head on with equal ferocity though it gets her in even more trouble. She develops a distinct sense of independence and is fine with being alone and despised...up to a point, naturally. All want to be loved and appreciated at some point and she wonders why all hate her.
She gets sent to "The Red Room" as punishment one night and has a fit that I'm not sure I understand. It's unclear whether what she sees is the result of her mind playing tricks on her or actual events amplified with meaning and dread through the mind of a child.
"Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not out to express the result of the process in words."
Aunt Reed decides she is too much trouble to keep and an annoyance to her household at best and decides to find a school to send her off to. A man appears named Mr. Brocklehurst who is the patron of Lowood. Aunt Reed, of course, tells him that Jane is a liar and one of the worst sinners she has ever seen in her life. And here is where I being to lose my cool.
I have, what has been called, an "overdeveloped sense of justice". I see how things could be and should be rather than things as they are. Little perceived injustices cause me anxiety and the great injustices of the world give me fits. I've gotten a lot better with age but there was a time where I would think an American Feminist is an idiot and lacked the courage of his/her convictions because they were spending time, energy, and resources in vast amounts for something like protesting for the legal right to breastfeed in public as if that's the greatest threat to women's rights when people within our own country and elsewhere in the world are performing genital mutilation. I still am bothered by the fact that people want to overturn a minor "evil" rather than create resistance for a major evil. There is a better chance for success against a minor evil and success makes us feel like we actually accomplished something, no matter how petty it is, while a greater evil threatens without. Here, I had forgotten the 200 year old notion that the rich and "genteel" were always considered morally right and beyond reproach while the poor were obviously poor because they were sinners and needed to have their souls purified by abuse. (not exactly stated as such...but I trust my meaning is understood).
All that to say, I felt the creeping anxiety and white hot fury of "justice" once again throughout this novel. I cheered Jane as she took these injustices head on. My heart raced and my soul felt the "righteousness" of it burn within me. I mean, come on, who can't cheer at this: (between Jane and Mr. Brocklehurst with the later beginning)
"Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire"
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die."
I mean, that is just a perfect rejoinder that can't help but get a "Go girl!" from someone in the reading audience. When she finally lets loose and rips into Aunt Reed with complete honesty and accuracy I bloody well cheered while reading in bed and that's not something I'm wont to do. My cheering did not last very long, however.
We transition to Lowood and meet the terrible teachers, but for Miss Temple, and are introduced to the horrid conditions there. We are also introduced to Helen, a bright little ray of sunshine who seems to be the opposite to Jane in outlook. While Jane will fight back to those who would punish her, Helen accepts the abuse and points out where the individual was right to correct her. Jane confronts her on this point.
"But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved."
"Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine; but Christians and civilised nations disown it."
The notation I made next to this section is "What?!?!"
(Here is where I make a disclaimer. What follows is steeped in Christian thinking and, as such, may be completely illogical to those who are not Christians. It is written by a Christian struggling with his faith and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and is meant for an audience on a similar path. If you continue...you have been advised. I do not expect those outside of the Christian faith to understand, agree, or feel that it applies to them.)
I immediately rejected it as two century old ridiculous claptrap and fell into the fault of regarding our more modern age as so much more "enlightened" on this subject. I found myself oh so very conflicted with this notion that the abusers should go unchallenged, the perpetrators of such horrible treatment should be just allowed to continue, that this book was advocating that these children should just "take it" and accept the system as is.
And then Helen pops off with a quote from Jesus, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to those who hate you and despitefully use you."
Well...crap...
When Mr. Brocklehurst comes to the school and says that the children are better off being forced to eat burnt gruel or starve, should have their hair cut short to protect against vanity, and they need only ever wear plain dresses and should receive no comforts at all for the betterment of their souls...when Miss Temple says nothing but nearly laughs at the ridiculous man as his wife and daughters walk in plump, hair beautifully curled, and wearing silks and satins with ridiculous hats, I could only say, "What the freaking heck! Here is a clearly terrible, wicked, inconsistent, hypocritical A-hole! Why is nobody pointing out the hypocrisy to him and putting him in his place?!?!" The darkness and misapplication of scripture is all around and no one does ANYTHING to push against it. And then I remember further words of Christ:
"...do not resist and evil man..." Matthew 5:39
It goes against every justice and consistency loving fiber in my body. I want to smack this man who is doing this to these children. I want to force him to see what he is doing in the light of the same Bible he's using to support their mistreatment. I want him to blatantly admit his own hypocrisy and...dangit...that's not following what my Lord and Savior says to do. It feels SO wrong, but there's a still small space in me that sees that the Lord has called most of us to be Miss Temples and Helens...providing light in the darkness and rest and encouragement for the souls of the weary and mistreated.
I still don't like it. I'm still not fully convinced...but I see the upside down nature of everything Jesus tells us. To those not in the faith it sounds like insanity and enabling the abusers. But I can't deny the spirit of it just the same.
*sigh*
I have a feeling this is going to be quite a soul searching journey, this novel.
Pax,
W
What does bother me is knowing that Tolstoy's War and Peace is coming down the pike and it's even bigger than this book. I literally used that book as a doorstop back when I tried to hork it down after high school. Don't ask me why. My friends were in college, I was working as a grocery bagger and had little mental stimulation so I was feeling bad about myself and...yeah. I got 4 pages in and my brain went numb. It was a particularly warm summer for Alaska and the door to my room had to be kept open somehow. It was either going to be a $9.99 paperweight or a doorstop. I could have used it as a meat tenderizing mallet, now that I think on it.
So...Jane Eyre intimidated me a little bit upon pulling the book from it's Amazon.com box.
The first thing I noticed, when I finally plucked up the courage to begin ingesting the text, was "Holy Carp, this book starts out DARK." By comparison Pride and Prejudice is a ditzy, floofy summer beach read. Seriously, from here on out we'll determine a books darkness and/or heaviness of subject matter on the Bronte/Austen Scale (tm) (Patent Pending). Granted my knowledge of the classics isn't as vast as others, but ,bloody hell, it can't get much more bleak than this. Even Dickens comes off marginally lighter.
The darkness begins at Gateshead with "leafless shrubbery...cold winter wind...sombre clouds...penetrating rain..." Essentially "It was a dark and stormy night" for the literary set. This pall is cast over the whole first 8 chapters and never lets up on the life of the eponymous Jane, who is an orphan sent to live with her uncle who dies soon after and leaves her with an aunt and three cousin who despise her. She is very conscious of her "physical inferiority" to them. Honestly, I thought the Dursleys from Harry Potter were the worst most despicable family in all of fiction. Many people state that the terrible muggle family was based on the horrible families portrayed in the works of Roald Dahl. Other people claim they are Dickensian in origin. I submit that it is here, the the heinous Reed family, that we find a more likely inspiration.
Jane is physically abused by the eldest boy, detested by the sisters, and considered the source of all problems in the house by Mrs. Reed. Within the young Jane lies the heart of a lion, however, that meets the injustices head on with equal ferocity though it gets her in even more trouble. She develops a distinct sense of independence and is fine with being alone and despised...up to a point, naturally. All want to be loved and appreciated at some point and she wonders why all hate her.
She gets sent to "The Red Room" as punishment one night and has a fit that I'm not sure I understand. It's unclear whether what she sees is the result of her mind playing tricks on her or actual events amplified with meaning and dread through the mind of a child.
"Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not out to express the result of the process in words."
Aunt Reed decides she is too much trouble to keep and an annoyance to her household at best and decides to find a school to send her off to. A man appears named Mr. Brocklehurst who is the patron of Lowood. Aunt Reed, of course, tells him that Jane is a liar and one of the worst sinners she has ever seen in her life. And here is where I being to lose my cool.
I have, what has been called, an "overdeveloped sense of justice". I see how things could be and should be rather than things as they are. Little perceived injustices cause me anxiety and the great injustices of the world give me fits. I've gotten a lot better with age but there was a time where I would think an American Feminist is an idiot and lacked the courage of his/her convictions because they were spending time, energy, and resources in vast amounts for something like protesting for the legal right to breastfeed in public as if that's the greatest threat to women's rights when people within our own country and elsewhere in the world are performing genital mutilation. I still am bothered by the fact that people want to overturn a minor "evil" rather than create resistance for a major evil. There is a better chance for success against a minor evil and success makes us feel like we actually accomplished something, no matter how petty it is, while a greater evil threatens without. Here, I had forgotten the 200 year old notion that the rich and "genteel" were always considered morally right and beyond reproach while the poor were obviously poor because they were sinners and needed to have their souls purified by abuse. (not exactly stated as such...but I trust my meaning is understood).
All that to say, I felt the creeping anxiety and white hot fury of "justice" once again throughout this novel. I cheered Jane as she took these injustices head on. My heart raced and my soul felt the "righteousness" of it burn within me. I mean, come on, who can't cheer at this: (between Jane and Mr. Brocklehurst with the later beginning)
"Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire"
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: "I must keep in good health and not die."
I mean, that is just a perfect rejoinder that can't help but get a "Go girl!" from someone in the reading audience. When she finally lets loose and rips into Aunt Reed with complete honesty and accuracy I bloody well cheered while reading in bed and that's not something I'm wont to do. My cheering did not last very long, however.
We transition to Lowood and meet the terrible teachers, but for Miss Temple, and are introduced to the horrid conditions there. We are also introduced to Helen, a bright little ray of sunshine who seems to be the opposite to Jane in outlook. While Jane will fight back to those who would punish her, Helen accepts the abuse and points out where the individual was right to correct her. Jane confronts her on this point.
"But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved."
"Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine; but Christians and civilised nations disown it."
The notation I made next to this section is "What?!?!"
(Here is where I make a disclaimer. What follows is steeped in Christian thinking and, as such, may be completely illogical to those who are not Christians. It is written by a Christian struggling with his faith and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and is meant for an audience on a similar path. If you continue...you have been advised. I do not expect those outside of the Christian faith to understand, agree, or feel that it applies to them.)
I immediately rejected it as two century old ridiculous claptrap and fell into the fault of regarding our more modern age as so much more "enlightened" on this subject. I found myself oh so very conflicted with this notion that the abusers should go unchallenged, the perpetrators of such horrible treatment should be just allowed to continue, that this book was advocating that these children should just "take it" and accept the system as is.
And then Helen pops off with a quote from Jesus, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to those who hate you and despitefully use you."
Well...crap...
When Mr. Brocklehurst comes to the school and says that the children are better off being forced to eat burnt gruel or starve, should have their hair cut short to protect against vanity, and they need only ever wear plain dresses and should receive no comforts at all for the betterment of their souls...when Miss Temple says nothing but nearly laughs at the ridiculous man as his wife and daughters walk in plump, hair beautifully curled, and wearing silks and satins with ridiculous hats, I could only say, "What the freaking heck! Here is a clearly terrible, wicked, inconsistent, hypocritical A-hole! Why is nobody pointing out the hypocrisy to him and putting him in his place?!?!" The darkness and misapplication of scripture is all around and no one does ANYTHING to push against it. And then I remember further words of Christ:
"...do not resist and evil man..." Matthew 5:39
It goes against every justice and consistency loving fiber in my body. I want to smack this man who is doing this to these children. I want to force him to see what he is doing in the light of the same Bible he's using to support their mistreatment. I want him to blatantly admit his own hypocrisy and...dangit...that's not following what my Lord and Savior says to do. It feels SO wrong, but there's a still small space in me that sees that the Lord has called most of us to be Miss Temples and Helens...providing light in the darkness and rest and encouragement for the souls of the weary and mistreated.
I still don't like it. I'm still not fully convinced...but I see the upside down nature of everything Jesus tells us. To those not in the faith it sounds like insanity and enabling the abusers. But I can't deny the spirit of it just the same.
*sigh*
I have a feeling this is going to be quite a soul searching journey, this novel.
Pax,
W
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