Review: Jane Eyre
Feb. 5th, 2009 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebAs I noted before, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is surprisingly gripping for a book from the mid 1800's. There were many surprises and a lot of suspense.
It's also a horror tale. You've got some sort of mysterious evil presence and also a fortune teller. Not to mention some really scary bad guys.
It's also a romance, in that period when romance (or at least marriage) was of supreme importance, which makes it all the more exciting. It reminded me of Jane Austin and Georgette Heyer romances in that way: two weirdos go together nicely. My favorite part is that it explains perfectly why the right guy was the right choice in a way that is easy to generalize, basically the same moral as in Accidental Tourist: Pick someone it is easy to be with and around whom you like yourself.
It's also kind of an odd slow-motion thriller due to the sort of slow-action weapons in use such as verbal abuse, burnt gruel, and religious sermons. There are these long races against time such as whether someone will be able to escape starvation and whether one person will happen to outlive another.
The sentences are well crafted, the reasoning behind what the narrator does is perfectly clear, reality really jumps out, and the author even made me laugh out loud a few times.
The thing is, it's just so depressing. The good news is generally mixed with the bad news, sort of like how in the 1940s World War II came along to end the Great Depression. Yea? And the bad news is pretty much just bad news. At first I thought I could recommend just skipping the first nine chapters if you don't like seemingly hopelessly depressing scenarios, but, well, there's really no escape. (Still, if you don't like the first few chapters, do skip to chapter 10 and read that and chapter 11 before giving up.)
The fact that the story is written in the past tense implies that the narrator, at least, manages to survive whatever terrible experiences you're reading about at the time. Though who knows if she's writing it from her deathbed at age 23 with her pencil in her teeth because her hands don't work?
All in all, it was riveting and I didn't want to put it down, though there were several passages I didn't want to be happening. I had definite opinions about what our narrator should be doing at various points and was always curious to see what she would do and what would happen next. It was fun going back and forth between thinking she might be dumb and thinking she might just have very few choices in that particular culture.
However, I don't think I will be reading this book again. I think it will stick with me much better than most books, but I don't need to experience it again (sort of like "Saving Private Ryan"). Yes, it's good, but there's too much unpleasantness for my taste. Four stars out of five.
Warning: I'm not going to be so careful about spoilers in any comments.
It's also a horror tale. You've got some sort of mysterious evil presence and also a fortune teller. Not to mention some really scary bad guys.
It's also a romance, in that period when romance (or at least marriage) was of supreme importance, which makes it all the more exciting. It reminded me of Jane Austin and Georgette Heyer romances in that way: two weirdos go together nicely. My favorite part is that it explains perfectly why the right guy was the right choice in a way that is easy to generalize, basically the same moral as in Accidental Tourist: Pick someone it is easy to be with and around whom you like yourself.
It's also kind of an odd slow-motion thriller due to the sort of slow-action weapons in use such as verbal abuse, burnt gruel, and religious sermons. There are these long races against time such as whether someone will be able to escape starvation and whether one person will happen to outlive another.
The sentences are well crafted, the reasoning behind what the narrator does is perfectly clear, reality really jumps out, and the author even made me laugh out loud a few times.
The thing is, it's just so depressing. The good news is generally mixed with the bad news, sort of like how in the 1940s World War II came along to end the Great Depression. Yea? And the bad news is pretty much just bad news. At first I thought I could recommend just skipping the first nine chapters if you don't like seemingly hopelessly depressing scenarios, but, well, there's really no escape. (Still, if you don't like the first few chapters, do skip to chapter 10 and read that and chapter 11 before giving up.)
The fact that the story is written in the past tense implies that the narrator, at least, manages to survive whatever terrible experiences you're reading about at the time. Though who knows if she's writing it from her deathbed at age 23 with her pencil in her teeth because her hands don't work?
All in all, it was riveting and I didn't want to put it down, though there were several passages I didn't want to be happening. I had definite opinions about what our narrator should be doing at various points and was always curious to see what she would do and what would happen next. It was fun going back and forth between thinking she might be dumb and thinking she might just have very few choices in that particular culture.
However, I don't think I will be reading this book again. I think it will stick with me much better than most books, but I don't need to experience it again (sort of like "Saving Private Ryan"). Yes, it's good, but there's too much unpleasantness for my taste. Four stars out of five.
Warning: I'm not going to be so careful about spoilers in any comments.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-02-06 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-02-06 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-02-06 08:10 pm (UTC)Could you give some examples of the points in which you had definite opinions about what our narrator should be doing? You make it sound like your opinion differed greatly from what she was actually doing.
In some ways Jane Eyre describes why I hated being a child better than I ever managed to express. Childhood is all about being completely in the power of other people, sometimes stupid, unsympathetic, or even mean people.
no subject
on 2009-02-07 04:51 pm (UTC)Then there were other times like when they were served that burnt gruel and I wanted her to try harder to eat it because she wasn't getting enough food.
I harassed Robin about your last paragraph, but he assured me that everyone in the family liked you and was nice to you. However, before you got into that good school, he said school did suck, especially the bus rides.
The worst were the mean people who thought they were being nice or at least thought/knew/rationalized they were doing the right thing. Like the schoolmaster who acted like it was for their own good that they lived on very little, though his own daughters apparently were not in need of character development. And that horrible preacher, who probably really was a good man or at least often acted just like one, but not for Jane. No amount of explaining could snap them out of their brainwashing.
no subject
on 2009-02-07 07:51 pm (UTC)