Sunday Night Journal

It rained torrents this weekend. The rivers swelled. Basements (not ours, thank god) flooded. Our backyard became a swimming pool, and the little grass seeds, so carefully planted by Steve last weekend, floated downstream to the Murray's house. They're always taking our stuff.

With the rain and the wind battering the house, it seemed like a good time to pick up Jane Eyre again. It took little imagination to transport me to the moors of England.

As I folded back the first page Friday night, heavily underlined with college notes on the margin (Jane = elf), a white van sped through Pennsylvania. The van was filled with half a dozen guys from Cleveland and equipped with a Sony Playstation to amuse them on their drive. Eric was getting married and needed a proper bachelor party in New York City.

I put down the book to watch Garden State with the hubby. It took me awhile to get over the fact that Natalie Portman has no ear lobes. The movie was amusing, but had the familiar indy flick formula. Quirky girl bewitches well meaning sap and together then have a one night adventure where they meet a series of quirky people. The well meaning sap is forever changed. Something Wild. After Hours.

Saturday morning, Steve took the first bus to New York to meet the Cleveland boys at his old apartment on 146th Street. He had a day to regress at Tiny and Jeff's place with his buddies that he's known since kindergarten. Guys never make any good friends after first grade. In the evening, they went down to the Village to watch the Pipes and Drum parade where kilted bagpipers marched through the rainy streets honoring William Wallace. Later, they retired to a pub on Ludlow Street where Steve observed that all the hip young guys were drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon. Steve commented that ironic drinking was stupid.

While Steve regressed, I read and semi-supervised my children.

Bronte has some great thoughts on marriage and money. Before Jane learns of the crazy wife in the attic, she is hesitant to marry Mr. Rochester, because she is so much poorer than he. She worries that without her own finances, she will be forever his inferior. She doesn't want to take his gifts of jewelry and silk dresses. By accepting his charities, she fears that she will be a slave or a mistress, rather than an equal. Though all souls are equal, as her friend Helen Burns tells her, Jane is smart enough to know that money buys a lot of equality.

The van deposited Steve back at home Sunday at noon. Steve set back the clocks because setting back the clock is a male linked gene. Half an hour later, I took the bus into New York for my day off with friends. Both Steve and I needed a break, but it's just easier to tag team relief efforts with the kids at this age.

I wandered around SoHo with Margie and Susan window shopping and breaking for burgers and Bass. No Pabst Blue Ribbon for me, either.

On the way home, I had an hour to kill in the bus station. I glanced at magazine covers in a kiosk and continued my book in Au Bon Pain.

Jane Eyre is a character that seems trapped in her time. Smart, proud, plain. There aren't too many smart women on the covers of magazines today. The morons who grimace on the covers are Jessica Simpson and her buffoonish sister, Britney Spears, Christina Aguillera, Julia Roberts. No presidents of the debate team are they.

I would like to write more about the feminist undercurrents in Jane Eyre, but I really want to get back to it. Jane has escaped the loving clutches of the Mr. Rochester who nearly married her unlawfully, and she has run away to a far away town where is destitute and starving. Good stuff.

Comments

[Kristen]

Oh, that's one of my very favorite books. I read it in high school and again in college. I wonder if I would view it differently reading it as a mother/adult? I remember re-reading the Great Gatsby last year and it was like a completely different book to me.

We got Garden State from netflix last weekend. I liked it enough, but I have developed an odd obsession to double check the latch on my dishwasher every time I walk by. That can't be healthy.

[Anne]

Guys never make any good friends after first grade. Ha.

[Jen]

Last weekend at a party I met a wine & beer broker who highly recommended Pabst Blue Ribbon. He said, "PBR wins tons of awards. They just don't spend much money on advertising and so their brand is considered low-class. You should give it a try before you dismiss it." So maybe it wasn't ironic drinking?

[Kai Jones]

Everyone in Jane's life sees her as an object with which to fulfill their own dreams. And when she doesn't cooperate, they get angry and punish her.

[Amy]

Oooh, Jane Eyre is one of my very favorites! I look forward to hearing more of your musings about it...and will have to dig up my copy to revisit it!

[Samatha]

When you are done with Jane Eyre, read (or reread) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Meet the madwoman before she was mad!

[Patty]

I just had to comment about your love of Jane Eyre.
I, like many other feminists, love Jane for lots of reasons. I spent 2 years writing a dissertation on Jane Eyre.

My dissertation pointed out that Jane the white, English woman takes her rightful place at Rochester's (maimed) side only when the "dark" and "otherized" woman is dead. In other words, she is playing out a familiar colonial relationship *and* my dissertation explores how postcoloinal female writers are haunted by this and their fiction (J. Kincaid, M. Cliff, etc.) reflects an ambivalent relationshiop with Jane. They want to be just like her, but their dark skin means they can never really "live out" her promise internally or externally. She is forever a figure of a white English woman who is also a figure of imperialism. Outspoken and independent as she likes to be, she only triumps on the back of the "colored" woman.

Anyway, not to get "too academic" but I had to chime in as a feminist scholar who has spent a long time reading the book and reflecting on the power dynamics in it. A classic, fantastic novel but certainly a novel of its times in that it supports the colonial and socioeconomic dynamics and biases of its era.

[Laura]

Interesting, Patty, but I'm not sure that I agree that Jane Eyre is all about the triumph of the white woman.

Mr. Rochester marries Bertha Mason. This is perhaps the first interracial marriage in literature although Bronte doesn't make much of this point. Both Jane and Edward are also repeated described as "dark." Though Bertha's family deceived him about the family history with insanity, he treats her well. He doesn't put her in an institution, but instead takes care of her in his own home at risk to his own life. He treats her as well as he treats other women in his path, the French lover and Blanche.

Jane's obstacle to happiness with Edward are many, not just the crazy lady in the attic. There's their differences in birth and status, the competition with other women, and Jane's own rigid morality. Jane doesn't stamp down Bertha. Bertha destroys herself.

Even if this book is a product of its time (and what book isn't), the feminist messages still hold true. The role of money in marriage was just discussed on this blog last week. It's too bad to throw out the strong theme of independence and the strength of women, because Jane is white. I think that all women should find value in those messages.