and on to the next Bronte.

[fox]

Things I knew about Jane Eyre before I read it:

• who was living in the attic
  
• fire bad
  
• "Reader, I married him."

Things I didn't know but saw coming about a thousand words before Jane did

• that Rochester was the gypsy fortune-teller
  
• that the Rivers kids were Jane's long-lost cousins

All in all, I liked it (and now I will have less guilt about going to see the movie, which I think I will do on Saturday). But I did continue to think, as I thought after the first half-dozen chapters, that it was All A Bit Much. Sign of the times, I suppose? Also, I keep hearing things about this being all full of the feminism, and I have to say I'm not sure I saw it?, but maybe I'm looking for the wrong things. I did applaud Jane's refusal to marry Rivers because she knew he didn't actually love her; but her general doormattery, refusal to marry Rivers notwithstanding, made it hard for me to see her as a feminist icon. (Okay, I also see where she was more satisfied with Rochester when she could be of some practical use in the relationship instead of just living off his millions. So okay: two things.)


I've now read one chapter of Wuthering Heights, and so far I think the narrator is even more of a jackass than he wants us to believe Heathcliff is. Are we supposed to find Lockwood sympathetic at all?

Comments

[alpheratz]

I don't think we're supposed to find anyone in Wuthering Heights sympathetic. *hates that book*

I do love Jane Eyre, though. It's pretty awesome that Rochester really respects her and values her as an equal despite their power imbalance, and that she didn't stand for it when he lied to her. She basically refused pretty significant male pressure twice - from him and from St. John - even though it would have made her life about a thousand times easier to just give in. Yeah, I think Jane's excellent.

I haven't seen the new movie yet, partly because the 2006 miniseries is such perfection to me that I don't want different imagery in my head just yet.

[laurajv]

Jane I've always found to be one of those people who is so wholly rooted in *herself* that pressure brought to bear on her meets the proverbial immovable object. Her aunt and her school had no better luck than those two men did.

[alpheratz]

That is a very good point.

[laurajv]

I've always liked that about her. There's nothing you could do to her that would make her not-Jane, no way to force her to betray herself. (In a way, the narrator of du Maurier's "Rebecca" is almost Jane's opposite; her self is so weak that she can be pushed in almost any direction by the manipulative people who surround her, and her namelessness only seems to underscore that no one, really, knows who this woman is -- not even she knows that. Jane would have up and turned Max de Winter into the po-po, you know she would.)

[cannonsatdawn]

Are we supposed to find Lockwood sympathetic at all?

Not AFAIK - the man is presented as an intensely repressed snob and more or less a laughing stock. Fortunately his narration gives way very soon to that of Nelly, who is awesome.

I love Wuthering Heights.

[afrikate]

I finished Jane Eyre recently and basically felt the only purpose for St. John was to make me hate him so much that by the time Jane goes back to Rochester, I'm close to applauding. Sadly, with Wuthering Heights I hated everyone. EVERYONE. I think I might have thrown the book across the room. Apparently Anne Bronte wasn't quite so crazy and had better taste in men thank her sisters, though I haven't tried her novel yet.

[fox]

That is my understanding as well - or, more like, Anne's characters are badly-behaved, but the narrator knows this. I'm saving her for last, but I haven't decided which of her books to read (or if I think I can face them both).

[laurajv]

I really liked "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", although I have *never* forgiven the narrator for his assholery to the eponymous character.

[kcobweb]

I agree about St John - and I've always felt that Anne is unjustly ignored in favor of her sisters. Also: this.

[antisoppist]

Wuthering Heights is better if you think of it as a book about property and land ownership and class rather than lurve story of the century. Lockwood is an unreliable narrator and you don't have to like him, although I do feel quite sorry for him landing in the middle of all these bloody people. I did it at school and much preferred the other novel set text, which was Persuasion.