ALT.SF4M

  Jane Eyre

   • j********o@***.com
     18/12/2000 04:22:022 UTC

     I've seen and enjoyed two TV adaptations of the book (I must confess to
     a crush

     on little Miss Jane) and have finally gotten around to the book, of
     which my

     mother's 1947 Book of the Month Club folio edition sat on the bookshelfs
     mere

     steps away from my computer. (One may view this as a further gratuitious

     insight upon my better-off-hidden "Bridget Jones' Diary"-reading
     sensitive guy

     facet.) I relished the book: it's quite modern and engaging and
     irresistable

     to a hopeless romantic sap like myself (I miss its presence at my
     bed-side).

     The language and outlook of the book resonate deeply to my conflicted

     half-cynic/half-poet soul (I also find myself affecting its manner of

     expression). Knowing the story beforehand actually improves it, as one
     can

     understand Mr. Rochester's cryptic (indeed, calculated) actions and
     mysterious

     motivations. It's also just a good, engaging tale, with an engaging

     narratress.

     The book drags in the first fifth, which details Jane's childhood -
     indeed, I

     can recommend skipping those nine chapters, as they are not essential to
     the

     story that follows. The fact that the Foreword praises "Vanity Fair" may

     suggest that the chapters set in the impoverished orphanage may be
     intended

     chiefly as social commentary or satire, but they do suggest the origin
     of the

     deep vulnerabilities in Jane's otherwise forceful adult personality.
     There is

     a psychological continuity of a feisty solitary spirit who grows
     addicted to

     each new taste of attention and affection: she begins as an abandoned,

     maltreated child who seeks only solitude, then, getting her first taste
     of

     friendship, fears estrangement, then, the independent woman who finds
     herself

     falling in love despite all sense, terrified of humiliation, rejection,
     and the

     heartbreak she sees as inevitable, and finally, the acolyte seduced by

     religious passion.

     The TV adaptations wisely skip the preparatory biographical chapters,
     but get

     the character of Jane wrong. Perhaps in order to convey a sense of her
     earlier

     difficulties, or a foreshadowing of her later emotional susceptability,
     Jane is

     portrayed as quite mousy, when in fact, at the point in her life when
     she sets

     out on her own, she does so on a whim, with a spirit of adventure. She's

     reserved in manner but fierce in her propriety (I like a woman who is
     spunky

     yet demure!). Perhaps the visual medium is the problem, as it deprives
     us of

     Jane's first-person narration: she says much less than she thinks, and
     has a

     strong sense of herself. Of course, it is her paradoxical vulnerability
     that

     makes her lovable - literally, able to love and be loved. Without it,
     she

     might wind up like her step-sister who grows into a severe, inflexible
     woman

     and becomes a nun to escape the nuisances of everyday life and risks of

     emotional involvement. Fortunately for the reader, Jane's but eighteen
     and her

     defenses are incomplete.

     It is of course Mr. Rochester that needs to be humbled for there to be a
     chance

     at a permanent, mutual love, but the story well illustrates Pascal's
     Dilemma,

     that emotional involvement brings the risk of hurt, yet the only hope of

     happiness. Pascal endorsed courage, while most of us, like Jane,
     discover that

     resistance is futile - the hurt comes with or without the hope, and only
     the

     latter can lend meaning to the former. Jane, Rochester's sturdy Little
     Lamb,

     may count herself lucky that her cautious mind and reckless heart
     together

     steered the narrow between self-sacrifice and invulnerability, martyrdom
     and

     hermitage. I especially enjoyed the chapters when Jane is squirming to
     escape

     her burgeoning feelings, and setting all her reason against them. Only
     in the

     moment when her doubts are realized and her hopes demolished can she
     finally

     fully admit the truth of her adoration (to quote David Letterman, "I've
     been

     the mayor of *that* town!").

     She is a cutie: modest yet fiesty, pliable but strong, plain yet
     exceptional.

     I think I enjoyed the book for the same reasons as I did "Bridget Jones'

     Diary:" starved of female intimacy as I am, it offers the theoretical

     reassurance that (suitable, in both senses) women have feelings too, can
     need

     as well as reject, feel pain as well as inflict it!

     Gorno