Jane Eyre

i always thought rochester regaining his sight was a bit of a weakness of the book. if his blindness is his punishment, does it mean he is somehow saved by marriage & father hood, or is it just a nod towards typical victorian romance? (pretty chiclit, alot of it)
doesn't his blindness kind of inversely symbolise his clairyt of thought. when he's at his most powerful, he attempts bigamy - defying even god's laws, but he is brought low & 'sees' things as they really are. he sees himself for a sinner & in need of an angel (jayne) to redeem him? once he has 'seen the light' he starts to regain phyiscal sight. it's part of the gothic trad - the contrast between dark & light, physical & spiritual ability to see the truth.

love th idea of JE (book) being a passive aggressive attack on vic middle classes!

Jane Eyre isn't subservient at all. If there ever was a book about a woman striking out on her own and asserting herself, this is the one.

I loved this book when I was at school (maybe I was introduced to it too young, who knows) after watching the Tim Dalton version.

This thread has been fascinating, how do you all "know" so much?

I want to read Villette now too!

LOL Heated I'm like that too!

have read. too hard for me i am afraid :-( off to bed, and prob will start to reread JE tomorrow...

Ok have not read whole thread (will do so now!) but Jane Eyre is my hero, i love the book, i love her, and i reread it at least once a year.

she is basically just an incredibly sexual being- and the whole book pulsates with it. the story is so far fetched it makes you laugh, and yet the feelings so believable... pure magic!

This thread caught my attention because just coincidentally have just re-read Jasper Fforde's Eyre Affair.

Attractive yet flawed male character of noble birth saved by impoverished but morally upright heroine is a remarkably successful plot formula. I can remember devouring books of this ilk as a teenager, lol-ing at Richardson's Pamela(wanted to see if the 1st book acclaimed a novel was any good - it isn't) and feeling compelled to boo hiss pantomime-stylee at Mrs Norris' cruel persecution of the noble, silent suffering Fanny Price (Edmund distinctly lacking in the hero dept), but Jane Eyre distinctly has an erotic frisson I agree.

The problem with this thread is I read one informed lit crit post and agree, then read a conflicting one and agree with that too!

Yes, she does sometimes assert herself in that way, but I don't think the fact that she retains a physical abilility - sight - when he does not is enough to alter the relationship. She says she loves him more when she can be really useful to him - in fact she is almost his nurse, he remains in many ways her master.

She lets him put her on his knee! Though actually I know tons of women would like Rochester to put them on his knee .

But Jane isn't always subservient. She runs away rather than submit to Rochester. She refuses to marry StJohn. At the end, when she finds Rochester again, she's financially independent and its he who is dependent on her - emotionally and physically.

Brocklehurst

Re. passive aggressive I've never really thought about that in relation to JE and have to give it some thought but I just wanted to contribute something on the revenging / avenging lord etc. It's something that's always bothered me, the inequality between Jane and Rochester and the idea of marrying the master as being the ultimate achievement for a female (of course I appreciate that society was male-dominated, but CB herself was living refutation of this).

The impression is that she, Jane, gains financial independence, and therefore autonomy, through work, but actually she just lurches from master to master - even as a child, her original punishment is for striking the young master, then of course the horrors of the school governor whose name escapes me, then Rochester, St John Rivers, Rochester again. Now my reading of philosophy is not exactly current, and I share others' baby brain at the moment, but I think I am right in saying that it was Hegel who put it that a master can only be dominant while a slave is always subservient (yes obviously the roles are like this, but the point being that the people cannot have any other role). I just don't like the idea that Jane is always subservient.

Oh I don't think I put that very well but you can't spend all that time typing a post and then discard it.

Just found this thread... the Threadworm's analysis is lost on me because my introduction to Jane Eyre was via BBC ... the one many moons ago with Sorcha Cusack and the glorious if anachronistic strains of Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for strings swelling in the background... lost my heart to Rochester and had to read the book greedily ahead of the serialisation.

Ahh, those were the days. And that's what makes Bronte so good - it inspires feeling in the reader.

I loved Vilette when I got to it... couldn't understand why it wasn't more popular... till I got to the end. Arggghhh that is just such an incredible let-down whichever way you look at it... but won't say more as would spoil for anyone who hasn't read it (it def. is worth reading!)

I checked the thread to see if ipanema had confessed to a jealousy-inducing lust for Mr Rochester. Not so, so DH is castigating us as w*nkerish? I will light a match in his attic.

Seriously, I hope you are ok?

(a) Celia2, that is very far from irrelevant and indeed belongs, drily, in an Alan Bennett journal entry.

(b) Ipgirl, why? Is he squishing in the literary department? Not on, if so.

Truly? Hard time how?

Have to go to Tesco now.

NO, it is more that the story (rather than she herself) achieves a satisfactiory conclusion in her fluorishing despite abusers. That is a kind of vengeance. Admittedly it is located in the story and in the readers' satisfaction rather than in the woman JE.

She's not looking for vengeance though.

Oh, ipanema, you should read the whole philosophers'-hair/ladygarden thread in Other Subjects.

I suppose it is that she is powerless and wronged and, unable to avenge herself actively, she is dependant on an alliance with a powerful man to secure a sense of vengeance. She has strength vicariously and then the story revels in taming that strength to her control (R.'s blindmess)

I don't think pass agg is actually the right term for what I had in mind, though, because it is a character attribute, and her weakness is more of a structural thing: in herself she is strong. (This possibly also tells against the whole slave morality thing I suppose)

I feel just the same. It is sad really, but it is life.