Jane Eyre

What do people mean by calling Jane Eyre passive aggressive? In what way?

Don't say that. It makes me feel like a wanker. It's all pretty straightforward really: I never got to grips which the N dude much.

I like Genealogy too, Zen. I seem to remember thinking really very highly of it at one point, as offering an account of morality which secured its objective truth even while it acknowledged pyschological underpinnings and the reality of moral evolution. But I can't remember anything properly now.

And re Kant, yes, I think Kant is for Neitzsche just a philosophical restatement of slave morality: moral duty as something other than and abnegatory of the will, etc.

And re Neitzsche being a pants writer compared to Bronte, I'm sure he was, and I would have preferred him if he had written 'straight' philosophy instead of all the tricksy aphoristic stuff.

Ive always found it interesting that Jane rejects the idea of freedom. (poss would have been too 'out there' for the time?) she instead opts for 'a new servitude' Yet it really seems that she is crying for freedom from the restrictions of her place in society. She develops the strength to cope with the restrictions rather than the strength to throw them off.
Re: gothic resonance, well that's a very Bronte thing isn't it? Although not as marked in JE as in Wuthering Heights.

I love the passive-aggressive interpretation of Jane Eyre.

May I suggest that you could extend it from Jane Eyre, the character, to Jane Eyre, the book?

Governesses were like nannies/au pairs x 100 in Victorian England and were in a similarly sexually worrying situation within the family home. Jane Eyre is a story about a governess coming into a home and marrying the, married, head of the household.

Jane Eyre, the book sneaks into the home, offering a story of romance and in actual fact wreaking anxiety and havoc upon the middle-class readers.

Jane Eyre is one of those books that people have felt compelled to re-write again and again. I just watched "Rebecca" on T. V. and the parallels are striking. Daphne du Maurier turns the hints of women-women relationships up to 11 and her Rochester is a murderer, not just a bigamist and a control-freak with dodgy sexual tastes.

I've always thought that this is why Rochester is maimed at the end. In all seriousness, you could not have her marrying someone like that. Yes, she can get turned on by his weird and abusive power, but marrying? A bit of a no-no. So he has to be reined in. then she gets to be in control. In a spooky, Misery-like way.

By the way, I love The Genealogy of Morality. I always think Nietzsche was saying "OK, I see your modern interpretation of Jesus, with its Hegelian-Darwinian evolutionist theory of Christian morality as the highest expression of human civilisation, and I show you ... my arse!!" Then he moons at Strauss and all the Bibilical critics.

Though that's obviously a simplification.

I suspect he's also running up behind Kant, kiccking him on the bum, knicking his shoes and running away. But I don't know enough about Kant to say for sure if this is true ... .

That's a direct lure for anyone to enlighten me. I'd love to know.

I've just followed that up MrsW! - love the evolution from the Men's Movement ... Am tempted to follow up further, indeed.

many thanks - and at the risk of being poncy can i note that it accords with our experience to date. and, if you ever get the chance I strongly recommend Richard Olivier's workshop on Julius Caesar and influencing/negotiating (office politics) - we had it as one of the options on a work awayday and it was excellent.

I am currently reading H G Wells Ann Veronica - it is fantastic... but...I wish I had read it 10 years ago!

sorry for that (double, even) overload

Shakespeare - really? I was having a tease at my own ponciness there ... here's a selection, anyway ...

Nothing before age 5, and then an outdoor Midsummer Night's Dream, done with magically lovely fairies and OTT pantomime-like mechanicals. (Regent's Park did us proud here.)

Some of the comedies (& poss romances) can work between 5 and 10 - ds loved Twelfth Night at 7, but he went with school and according to teacher he was the only one in the entire theatre who was actually getting it. I think he'd get some of The Tempest too, specially if the music were done well. But you'd have to be careful, because that's the age when off-putting could get fixed.

Then, between 10 and 14 (depending on how gothic a child you have), a super-atmospheric Macbeth. I saw a flyer once for a promenade version, done at night by lamplight, through one of those Georgian-or-earlier folly mansions whose construction was never finished. Can you think of anything better? (The Japanese Macbeth - Ninagawa - at the Edinburgh Festival, decades ago, was wonderful for that too, but given that it was all in Japanese, maybe ahem a bit much for a 10yo).

Romeo & Juliet, obviously, is for teenagers being tossed about in their first agonized crush, and thinking that their parents can't possibly get it.

Coriolanus is for early-twenties, when you think that you're out to get the world, and that your parents can't possibly get it and it's basically all their fault.

Titus Andronicus also twenties-ish, when you really enjoy a fabulous communal camp guignol.

The Sonnets (which I'm indulging in at the moment) are for thirties/forties - there's clearly a decade-plus age gap between Mr W.H. (who's not an adolescent) and the Poet.

Ant & Cleo has to be middle-age, doesn't it? (Sob)

I'm not sure about Lear.

I haven't re-read the other Roman plays, or the histories, for ages. I should really. But the above is enough, isn't it?!

Shakespeare - really? I was having a tease at my own ponciness there ... here's a selection, anyway ...

Nothing before age 5, and then an outdoor Midsummer Night's Dream, done with magically lovely fairies and OTT pantomime-like mechanicals. (Regent's Park did us proud here.)

Some of the comedies (& poss romances) can work between 5 and 10 - ds loved Twelfth Night at 7, but he went with school and according to teacher he was the only one in the entire theatre who was actually getting it. I think he'd get some of The Tempest too, specially if the music were done well. But you'd have to be careful, because that's the age when off-putting could get fixed.

Then, between 10 and 14 (depending on how gothic a child you have), a super-atmospheric Macbeth. I saw a flyer once for a promenade version, done at night by lamplight, through one of those Georgian-or-earlier folly mansions whose construction was never finished. Can you think of anything better? (The Japanese Macbeth - Ninagawa - at the Edinburgh Festival, decades ago, was wonderful for that too, but given that it was all in Japanese, maybe ahem a bit much for a 10yo).

Romeo & Juliet, obviously, is for teenagers being tossed about in their first agonized crush, and thinking that their parents can't possibly get it.

Coriolanus is for early-twenties, when you think that you're out to get the world, and that your parents can't possibly get it and it's basically all their fault.

Titus Andronicus also twenties-ish, when you really enjoy a fabulous camp guignol.

The Sonnets (which I'm indulging in at the moment) are for thirties/forties - there's clearly a decade-plus age gap between Mr W.H. (who's not an adolescent) and the Poet.

I'm not sure about Lear.

I haven't re-read the other Roman plays, or the histories, for ages. I should really. But the above is enough, isn't it?!

it is interesting isn't it as to what is the right age to read particular books - when i think back the books i have had the strongest emotional response to have been the ones i read at the "right" time and i would do all i could to give that experience to my children.

i'm sorry i'm too lazy to search the archive so could you give me a potted summary of the shakespeare debate? my experience as a child was that it was boring (with the exception of merchant of venice which was brilliantly taught by the best english teacher i ever had) - we have introduced the children to it at an early stage but concentrated on open air performances in college gardens (where fidgeting and running around is not just tolerated but quite acceptable behaviour) and now, at the Globe, which has made an amazing impact on them.

oh, MrsW, this is such a hobbyhorse of mine! (see posts passim on what age for what Shakespeare etc., with specific reference to Coriolanus(?!)) Perhaps it's an idea for a thread of its own?

Current instance of my own: dd (who was 8 in October, and a very warm-hearted, family-fond little person) was given Little Women for Christmas, and she's deep in it, but not anywhere near the Meg Thing yet, and I am wondering whether to accidentally mislay the book before she gets there.

Hi Bink - I'm interested in your comment that you read this "too early" - I also have a very strong emotional response to the childhood element which I have always put down to first reading it when I was too young to understand the adult Jane story.

I have similar experiences regarding Jane Austen as well - the one I never read young is the one that I like best and I'm sure it's because much of the impact of her writing went over my head when I first read it.

As a result I've deliberatly dissuaded my 14 year old from reading any bronte or austen or hardy because I think she'll get far more out of them when she is more emotionally mature. As a result we are all in the depths of "Twilight" et seq.

I was thinking more about the Red Room and the monstrous lolling aunt this morning (nothing whatsoever to do with having shockingly overslept, Ho no) - it is interesting to me that whereas all you other posters are focussed on the Rochester bits, and the adult emotional/erotic charges there, the bit that really resonates for me is Jane as a child, just up to and around the school.

Perhaps this has to do with when I first read it, which was probably "too early".

Or perhaps it's because (thinking more about the fairy tale parallels idea) I find those bits even more vividly symbolic - the monstrous aunt is a fabulous take on Cinderella's stepmother - or just about any of those toxic parent folk archetypes. And Jane's Serves-You-Right martyrdom of the Red Room is very much a child's fantasy of how to make their (toxic or otherwise) parent SORRY.

Can't immediately think of a folk-tale analogy for that last bit, except for my own (occasional) self-absorbed sulky fantasies as a child. [Pout emoticon]

Bink, that is a corker- The Gertrude Moment...I wish I could pinch that!

Very interesting discussion- wish I could add to it but am v rusty, but you have inspired me to go back to the text, thanks guys!

not sure I completely agree with the idea of Rochester as her revenging lord - she returns to him as a woman of means not as a victim.

I hadn't thought of the blindness as some sort of punishment before - do you read anything into the final comments which suggest his sight is partially restored following the birth of their child?

Universality, yes indeed I agree - hence Jung - you know, Bettelheim and that.

Ip'girl - on feeling Lear as one's peer, a story (not really a reading story but an actress story): actress friend-of-friend met producer by chance. "Ah!" he cries, "I was thinking of you. We're casting Hamlet." Actress's eyes light up with excitement of Ophelia, and then notices producer's wary expression. It dawns on her. He doesn't want her for Ophelia.

Mate who told me this & I now refer to The Gertrude Moment.

It does seem appealing to draw Freud in, especially because of the ambivalence displayed in blinding (castrating, crucifying) the loved object. And because the peaceful co-existence of opposites (Jane's strength and weakness, e.g.) is something that Freud handles well.

I'm not sure that a visceral psychological interpretation needs to make the reading of JE just limited to the author's psychology, though. It resonates with universal psychological themes (the Neitzschean account is essentially a psychological one) -- just as fairy stories do.