Read many times, but reread this year

This is a bit of an indulgent gothic feeling book for early autumn.

I know this is a bit of heresy… but I do have irritations with it too. Jane Eyre/Charlotte Bronte writes her own report card throughout. She doesn’t ever have a bad thought or do a wrong thing. I find it a bit maddening at times. She puts a spin on her own narrative to assure us that she is a little bit perfect. Bad stuff happens to her, but she rises above it all, moral, pure and sensibly strong. Definitely ‘unreliable narrator’ syndrome methinks.

Charlotte Bronte (in her real life) had a ‘deep attachment’ to the married proprietor of a boarding school in France. It appears to have been unrequited, at least in the end. Charlotte wrote many letters to him after returning to England that never appear to have been answered. Jane Eyre feels a bit like Charlottes daydream of a different end to that relationship. Of course I should be wary of attributing biography of authors to novels written by them, but life experience creeps in in subtle ways probably.

Anyway, I enjoy reading this and will again but I just wish Jane Eyre would sometimes swear, or say a bad thing about someone, spit, or just get it all wrong…. and admit it. If we are talking all things Bronte, give me Cathy, Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights any day.

Of course there is the whole ‘mad woman in the attic’ story in Jane Eyre. Too big a subject to discuss here (wider than the Sargasso Sea!).