How many of you are obsessed with Jane Eyre?

Ok, this is going to be very long, but my thouhts ran away with me :)

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Originally Posted by L.M. The Third

Perspicacious basically means "discerning" or "penetratingly perceptive". So actually eagle-eyed works too. ;)

Oh, you... :cornut:

[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 :lol:, onto the train (only made it by one minute), into a carpeted compartment, stinking of portwine :lol:. I was so embarrassed I told the people behind us that my husband wasn't exactly an alcoholic, but that we had had an accident... Anyway, so my husband gets into the bathroom, splatters the whole thing with wine so it looks as if someone has committed a murder in it... Then the guard comes whom I have to tell that my hubby is dealing with a broken bottle of wine in the bathroom and that he has the tickets :lol:. As the guard comes back, he looks into the bathroom and is so appalled that he locks it because it couldn’t receive any peeing passengers really (Germans are very meticulous - wasn't angry though) and thus we ended up with my hubby's laptop's screen stained red from port wine and the charger on the blink. We bought a new charger and the laptop itself is surprisingly still working...
Funny story though :lol: particularly in the train :lol: Germans are so nice. :)

So now for serious:

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Originally Posted by L.M. The Third

Absolutely. Though I think Charlotte Bronte went beyond just being the good curate's daughter and explored questions that still engage Christians today.
One of the first reviewers of JE wrote, “The autobiography of Jane Eyre is pre-eminently an anti-Christian composition. There is throughout it a murmuring against the comforts of the rich and against the privations of the poor which.. is a murmuring against God's appointment.” I would argue exactly the opposite. I'm convinced that JE is pre-eminently a Christian composition, in which the curate's daughter attempts to reconcile the Christian principle of self-sacrifice with the equally Christian principles of freedom and equality.

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. :confused: 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'.

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Originally Posted by L.M. The Third

The book's main Christian message is not one about how to be saved. (Indeed, though I am convinced that the fiercely anti-Catholic author of Villette included a theme on Protestant vs. Catholic redemption, the overall theology is strongly Universalist.) No, the Christianity of Jane Eyre addresses practical questions that still engage Christians today. Questions like, “Do I have to give up my autonomy to be Christian?” “What is a woman's place?” “Does Christianity prohibit or require equality in marriage ?” “Can a Christian woman have sexual desires?” And, of course, “Did God really ordain class hierarchy?”

(Okay, so maybe most of those were problems unique to Victorians, but there's a tendency within conservative Christianity, which I grew up in, to deny women equality [because of what I consider misreadings of the apostle Paul]. And JE so intelligently deals with the actual sin of Victorian attitudes that elevated men and denigrated women, that I consider JE the book that made me a Christian feminist.)

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.

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Originally Posted by L.M. The Third

I don't mean to contradict, because I really do see your point here, but I would have argued for its Protestantism from the fact that Rochester can not reform through "good intentions" and "paving hell with energy", i.e. "good works". He has reared Adelle on the "Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins by one good work." While the word "conversion" may be a little too Evangelical for what Bronte herself would have believed, it is only through submission to providence and unearned forgiveness that Rochester is redeemed. (But maybe I'm underestimating the emphasis on grace - unmerited favor - within Catholic theology, since I'm Protestant.)

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 :D). 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?

Quote:

Originally Posted by L.M. The Third

Hm, care to elaborate on the significance of Venus? Somewhat in the same line, I researched the meaning of the name Helen on a hunch and these are some of the meanings: "light or bright", "torch", "moon", "sun ray, shining light". Which makes perfect sense, since she's the one who teaches Jane about self-respect (which we see when she leaves Rochester) and forgiveness (and she has to forgive not only Aunt Reed, but St. John and Rochester as well, for how they try to control her).

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.

I adore Jane Eyre!!! My favorite part? It's too difficult, because I love almost every part of it... almost, because I find St. John's part a bit annoying... but I especially like the gypsy scene (too humorous!! ;)) and, of course, the marriage proposal! One of the most beautiful thing in this book is, in my opinion, the wonderful romanticism that is never tiresome or sugary!

Now this is a truly shamefully late reply. My excuse is that I've been distracted by blogging lately. I have to get back into the habit of visiting Litnet regularly, so I don't keep dragging conversations out or missing interesting threads.

ROFL at your wine experience! Thanks for sharing.

Yes, I think you're right about the fear of revolution. Although one could argue that Evangelicalism and upward mobilization (such as that in Jane Eyre or Great Expectations) helped prevent revolution in England, that might have been inevitable if the divide between the common laborers and the aristocracy had not started to crumble. I'll definitely have to research what was going on in Europe in 1847.

Kiki, your thoughts on Quakerism are fascinating and definitely something I'll have to research more on. I was thinking about the 2006 adaptation today (which in many ways I'm appalled by). But it did highlight (through its musical theme, etc) the 19th century idea that Bertha's madness was inextricable from her sexual appetites. (Of course, it seems that madness due to sexuality was more possible for women than for men. ;) Yet Jane (who as Gilbert and Gubar have pointed out is in some ways Bertha's double) is also a highly sensual person and the film shows that too - although in anachronistic ways. What the film failed to do was present that reconciliation of sexuality with reason and conscience that the book achieves, which may well owe something to the understandings in Quakerism or Judaism.

Btw, I think you may be interested in my review of the newest adaptation here.

the laptop :lol: and it is still working despite all the predictions of doom from other people.

No problem for the late reply, I have been stuck in a discussion on 'is Hitler to be called "evil" or not'...

Anyway...

Upward mobility was certainly a great redeeming fact in Victorian times. It has been researched that nowadays, upward mobility is less than during the 19th century. And that's saying something. Although I think if people were middle class (could afford some small pleasures and could eat properly) they were already satisfied. They did not necessarily have to sit in parliament in the House of Lords... I think although people with a profession were despised by the aristocracy (in Edwardian times around the turn of the century it was not fashionable amongst the landed gentry to refer to Saturday and Sunday as 'the weekend' because it implied that one had a working week :rolleyes:) 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.

I think Dickens's Barnaby Rudge addreses this issue of revolution. I have never read him (seen the last BBC adaptation of Great Expectations) because I don't like his style, but I have come across Barnaby Rudge in conjunction with the Chartist movement and the year of revolution. I think that was 1847 or otherwise 1848, but it won't have made much of a difference in people's minds anyway.

Actually the 2006 adaptation was the reason why I read Jane Eyre in the first place. At the time, another Belgian channel with less money put on the 1996 one (or 1997) with Ciaran Hinds. I had seen it before when I was a teenager, but at the time I was so puzzled at the sheer difference that I decided to investigate. And that's how I came to this forum...

It did make Bertha's madness relative to her sexuality, which is a valid claim, historically, but indeed, as you say, it did not go the whole hog when it came to that theme. The adaptation stopped short in a number of places, I can recall, but not in detail. I mean, by all means make the woman passionate, and make him passionate as well, but don't betray the character by letting her lose her reason. It seems that they saw certain themes, but failed to carry them on somehow. A flaw also present in Emma.

I am obsessed with Jane Eyre. Favorite parts, too many... probably the moment when she decides to leave Rochester ("...there I plant my foot.") most powerful chapters to me are her roaming around moors, almost starved before being rescued.

I'm obsessed with JANE EYRE! What a great story, and character!