Ok, this is going to be very long, but my thouhts ran away with me
Oh, you...Originally Posted by L.M. The Third
Perspicacious basically means "discerning" or "penetratingly perceptive". So actually eagle-eyed works too.
[QUOTE=L.M. The Third;1109738]That must've been annoying, but kinda funny too. Glad you've got a new one now.[/QUOTE
Haha, yes it was quite funny, actually. My husband and I were actually getting off the bus from Prague at the station of Nürnberg to get on a train home. and we had about five minutes because it was rushhour - still on time though. My husband grabs the laptop bag with two bottles of drink: one desert wine and one quite expensive Armenian cognac (Ararat, it is so good that the French are now buying the vineyards! You should try it). As he is getting down the stairs (we were at the top floor of the double-decker bus), he drops the bag because he was in a hurry and hadn’t really got hold of it properly. It starts leaking and my husband has a quick look and finds that the bottle of desert wine has lost its bottom, but there is no time to really deal with it as there were only about five minutes before the train. It was about 5 o'clock and we still had a scheduled 6 hours of travel before us... Anyway, so there we go through this big station with a bag dripping with red liquid, onto the train (only made it by one minute), into a carpeted compartment, stinking of portwine
Funny story though
So now for serious:
Oh I agree. Very intelligent woman. Although the idea that God had determined the order of things was still quite prevalent in the days before Darwin. It's quite strange: on the one side the rich were the rich and the poor the poor, but the rich were supposed to help the poor. Questioning the very make-up of society was ungodly, but helping to relieve God's order was not.For us that is profoundly strange. After Darwin had filtered through the philosophy of the rich-poor, sane-mad etc. became even worse though: the poor were just useless and they could not be helped anyway (survival of the fittest). Of course that is a total misrepresentation of Darwin who was aiming for the common ancestor, but that misinterpretation led to the mad being abandoned and the poor and criminals being classified as doomed (in physiognomy and phrenology). I don't know what was better: the tireless philanthropists which Rochester seems to despise (mind you, the workhouses did not work out so well although they were meant as a good thing) or later...
Those who did impute anti-Christianness to Jane Eyre I think were mainly motivated by fear of the Chartist movement which was threatening revolution, all over Europe in fact. They saw the order they knew crumble and were afraid of what those clueless people were going to do. In view of the French Revolution, I think their fear was justified. I wouldn't have wanted to lose my head over something like that... The Restoration had proved ineffective and had led to the barricades in Paris Hugo writes about in Les Misérables. They kicked out the king, I think it was Louis-Philippe, and then kicked out the first president (a Bonaparte) who crowned himself emperor. Not the original Bonaparte, though, but Napoleon III (I believe it was). It was quite a volatile age and casting doubt on the order was deemed dangerous, particularly in the year 1847 (when JE was published) the so-called year of revolution in Europe.
But it is commendable that she did actually question the 'order' because it shows intelligence. The question 'why' is always more daunting than 'how', ‘who’ or 'when'.
Quakerism has also been addressed in these terms and there is such a vast amount of interpretations of the Christian religion (as of other religions of course) that the point could be made that the answers to those questions depend on your religious point of view (and necessarily on the Christian wing you belong to). As you say, St Paul is often blamed for inequality. It is strange that he is never quoted as an excuse for Christian women to cover up, because I think in his first letter to the Corinthians he says that man is the head of woman, but goes on to state that a woman should cover her modesty. The first is often quoted to validate male dominance (the Jehova’s Witnesses for example) where the second is not really quoted. It would be unacceptable at any rate. All those who claim on the basis of bible verses fail to take into account the historical and maybe symbolic context. The Quakers for example were champions of women’s rights, although they were deeply religious. They also acknowledged that love in marriage could be passionate (from both sides). From their vow of honesty they were also responsible for displaying prices on their goods, for example, as some of the first shop-keepers to do so. Maybe it’s a bit like the ‘passion’ evangelical and born-again Christians allegedly feel. I find that a bit strange, but if the love of God rules your life (and indeed it should for them) then it cannot be condoned that a man may grieve his wife and betray his sacred wedding vows to her (and God, may we add), ignore the commandment that one should not commit adultery and still be seen as honourable to society… However, it is probably the case that practices cloud any morality there is. If people wish to keep money, they cannot afford to marry a person without and thus they are limited. The stable boy, however beautiful and loving, is not an option, so they marry in spite of their own inclination and the marriage break down. But as ‘what God hath joined, no man shall put asunder’, both partners are stuck in a (possible bad, otherwise indifferent) marriage and what does one do to stay sane? Victorian morality is quite rich (read sarcastically), richer than Georgian. In Georgian times as long as you had provided an heir, you could sleep around, provided it was done discretely (flaunting yourself like Lydia was not really deemed a virtue). In Victorian times, with the virgin Queen and her wonderfully looking and intelligent Biedermeier husband, there was none of that, apart from of course for men. Women were divorced. If you were stuck in such a loveless marriage, you should have had an iron will or otherwise you went mad… Certainly if you knew your husband had been out shagging again. At least the Georgians were straight about it.
No, no, that is a good point. You may be right there. The one does not rule out the other . The nasty Catholic idea that one can pay for his sins by expiation indeed should not qualify one to go to heaven… As far as I know, in Catholic religion (I grew up Catholic, but not really too religious and devoted – my grandparents were but those who I was closest to died too early) God forgives if you are sincerely sorry. However, I know the Vatican still provides indulgences (as apparently they are called in English - I know of someone who got one for her and her father, nice document), but they were converted into sincerer documents in the 16th century. Catholics, compared to really pious Protestants are still quite materially oriented. So I can understand why Brontë would have been horrified, but she may have jumped to conclusions. Maybe it is a too modern approach, but I don’t think that it was ever considered alright to go and confess, then pray and then get on with drinking, smoking, fool around with women and do the same thing all over again the following week. Although many did it and then got absolution on their death bed… Essentially the idea that God forgives if you sincerely regret, even if you really do not deserve it (like Rochester), is present in both.
The distinction between Catholic good works and English good works (and by extension protestant good works – I don’t know how it is in the Netherlands or Germany for example) is also maybe to do with the Anglo-Saxon idea of what a rich person should do. The Anglo-Saxon kings or whatever they were had a duty to supply their people with food, drink and housing to show their wealth (and to keep their alliance). Famously, in Waverley the Scottish lord Waverley stays with provides a big feast nearly every night because it is his Germanic duty. Similarly, in Lost in Austen Darcy declares that it is his duty to give money to the poor. In this way, it is the duty of the rich, that if they are rich, to let other people also enjoy their riches. A rich person should not feel guilty that he is rich, he should use his money not to enjoy it for himself alone (of course also), but to let other people enjoy it too. Hence the great works of philanthropy in England. Not only Quakers (of which the Rowntree foundation is still a major force nowadays), but also normal rich Englishmen built villages in order to improve the condition of the poor and even tried tireless to explain to them how to keep things clean out of pure zeal. This way of looking at things is still visible in this day and age. Over the Channel it is a kind of obligation to do good if you are rich. On the other hand, Catholics on the continent could not deal with God’s order and tried to tell themselves that God had wanted it thus, but started to compensate for the ‘sin’ by doing charity work. They did a lot less personally than the church who was the main supplier of charity works. Most of the time, ‘good works’ would constitute of giving money to others for poor relief. In that way, maybe Rochester spent too long in France in order to personally care about his tenants, staff and estate?
I will have t look into that, but I also did research Helen’s name in connection with the four elements and ether, Jane’s journey as a quest almost for the ideal balance of air (intellect), fire (passion), earth (body/material) and water (emotion/feeling). Indeed she teaches Jane to think her own thoughts, in spite of what goes on around her or what other people do to her.
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) and there was a divide between middle class landed gentry (like Rochester and Darcy) and landed aristocracy (like young Ingram), the divide was less than on the continent. Maybe because of protestant fluidity. A lady like Blanche Ingram had to marry a Rochester not to sink into poverty and that had already been done or ages. Although her connections were what people were after, it would not have been really 'shameful' for her to have a middle class husband, provided he fit his role and he was of the long-standing sort (not a guy like Pip in Great Expectations). The divide fizzled out that way, becausz there were a lot of 'mixed' people like Darcy. In France, I believe, you had more of such a divide. In Belgium where I come from, aristos used to marry aristos and would never sink to middle class, even though they were impoverished and the 'pool' of rich aristos got smaller and smaller. I mean, the upcoming king is the very first who married low aristocracy (and it is still aristocracy!). They called her 'a commoner'. After WWII there was a big riot in Belgium (literally) because during the war, the king who was widowed (his wife, Swedish princess Astrid died, it had been love match; she was killed in a car accident in Switzerland by her husband who was at the wheel) had made the daughter of a governor pregnant and had married her without the parliament's permission. The governor was high middle class and member of parliament. The king had to abdicate... There is no-one in the Belgian royal family that can be compared to a Mary of Denmark or Maxima of the Netherlands, Kate of the UK or Laetizia of Spain... I think you got redeemed as a middle class person if you got a title. But where upward mobility in the UK could take you from the debtors' prison or even the workhouse to the table of the Prime Minister in one generation (provided you got to know the right people and you had brains), you couldn't do that on the continent. I think that is why mobility worked in the UK: minds were less material. Catholics are rule people: you do that, but not that. Prostestants are more fluid. 
