let's put a dancing bear...ON ICE!
2004-10-11

I was shocked by something that G. said a few days ago - no, not that she wants to become a nun. No, it's something even more shocking. G. doesn't like Jane Eyre!

It's impossible, right? Every literate person on this earth loves Jane Eyre, right? It's one of those books that nobody hates. I've found people who hate Wuthering Heights, because they think the book glorifies freaky obsessive love. But no Jane Eyre haters. Until now.

Still, I trust G.'s literary opinion, so while I was in my old bedroom this weekend rummaging through my college book collection and came across a copy, I decided to flip through it.

It's really something of a plain girl's fantasy, isn't it? The whole appeal of the book is that Jane has absolutely nothing that makes her personally appealing - she's plain, she's shy, and she's poor - and yet somehow she ends up with her man and her house and not in broiling hot India with her fundie cousin. What always got me wasn't the fact that Rochester locked his wife up in the attic (well, that got to me as well) but - this guy is rich and can do as he pleases. Why is he then courting a type of woman that he claims later to totally despise? Of course, later he claims to have been testing Jane, but why bother? I always liked the explanation that he didn't drop Blanche Ingram, but that Blanche heard a rumor that there was a madwoman running round the house and ran. Then Rochester goes for what he can get - fortunately for Jane, not only is his deception revealed but in the process he gets horribly burned, so if he tries to sneak up and Bluebeard her she'll have the jump on him. I'm terribly cynical about people's domestic arrangements.

Anyway, I plan to rewrite Jane Eyre, but I can't do space as it's already been done. Suggestions are welcome, but if I get any (unlikely) I plan to ignore them in favor of my original idea of Jane Eyre on Ice. It's geeeeenius!