I love it when books show up in books, when books play a huge part in a character’s life. Kind of like movies-in-movies. In keeping with the Iranian theme here from last week here’s a post I wrote I about people in movies watching movies, using Leila as an example.
Early on in Jane Eyre
So she asks for Gulliver’s Travels. I love this section because it shows how books can seemingly change, depending on your mental state or phase-of-life when you read them. It’s a perfect description of that phenomenon.
I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wallnooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas Lilliput and Brobdingnag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the cornfields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hands – when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find – all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table beside the untasted tart.
Recommended if you don’t know it: John Kessel’s “Gulliver at Home,” in his collection *The Pure Product,* as Mrs. Gulliver reflects on her husband after his return from his voyages.
Charlotte Bronte’s lovely passage makes me wonder if there are ever times when the least popular section of the novel — the third, with the voyage to Laputa and other places — could ever become somebody’s favorite.
Who says you can’t get sunbeams out of cucumbers?
Way to go, Charlotte.
Do you like Haruki Murakami? This is one of the reasons why I enjoy his novels.
Peter – I am not familiar, no – tell me more. Lots of book-readers in them?
AS Byatt is another author who weaves in what books the characters are reading in a way that just feels so true to me (as a huge reader myself). Book-reading isn’t a HOBBY to such people. It’s a way of LIFE. I like an author who can capture that.
I guess my feeling about Gulliver’s Travels is that it was always a frightening nasty kind of tale (except for that glorious floating island world – now that’s a world I want to live in) – I was always scared of those giants, and those tiny people. But I love Jane Eyre’s description here, of how the book suddenly seemed different to her, after a particularly cruel punishment.
For Murakami, yes, writers and readers. I’ve only read a handful so far, but would easily recommend “Norwegian Wood” to start, and yes, the title is taken from THAT song.
Peter – cool, thanks for the rec!
I have only read Jane Eyre once, in 8th grade, and I hated it but only because I was such a bad, disinterested reader then (at least when it came to school books; if I’d just read it for me I’d have paid more attention). I can remember some of my reasons for disliking it and they’re so embarrassingly simple I’m too ashamed to even mention them. Since I’m reading back-up books during Ulysses, I think I’ll make Jane Eyre my next one after I finish re-reading Pride & Prejudice so I can prep for the movie.
The fact that Gulliver’s Travels is brought up in it — seriously, I don’t remember that AT ALL — makes me more eager to give the book a second go.
Jake – This is one of my favorite books – I have a hard time even saying why, but I know it has something to do with how subjective it is, how UN-domestic, how WILD. This is a crazy unconventional book, quite scary at times, with madness flickering on the edge of it – sometimes taking center stage.
I love the character of Jane – so cruelly treated, so beyond the pale in terms of protection, but with an iron will – I love the character of Mr. Rochester even more – but I’ll save more of my thoughts for my review of the movie.
In other words – there’s a real supernatural aspect to the book that really isn’t addressed all that often, or even noticed, really – because people seem so hellbent on lumping Bronte together with Jane Austen – but except for their sex and their shared timeframe, I don’t see the connection at all. You would NEVER find a “Jane Eyre” stroll into a Jane Austen story. Mr. Rochester in Pride and Prejudice? With that whole deceitful BIZARRE cross-dressing incident? Really? And don’t even get me started on Emily Bronte and her wild-ness.
These women were writing creepy almost supernaturally infused ghost-slash-love stories which really can’t be compared to anything else. They still stand alone.
Jane Eyre is a weird WEIRD book. hahaha I realize that, anew, every time I read it. I keep expecting Jane Austen’s world, of carriages clopping on cobblestones, and tea cups on china plates … and instead I get wind and rain battering the stone roofs and howls of madness through the midnight hours.
Anyway, I am tearing through it yet again. Look forward to hearing what you think when you re-visit it!
That scene where Mr. Rochester dresses up in drag and pretends to tell people’s fortunes…what?!? I love that scene because it is so nuts and it also gives us a new side to Rochester. Like, okay, he’s not just this imposing stony lord of the manor type. He’s as deranged and playful and odd as Jane “I won’t go to Hell because I won’t ever die” Eyre herself.
I’ve read Jane Eyre maybe 5 times at this stage and it still affects me. Is there anything scarier than that first sight of Bertha Mason running manically around the attic room, while Grace Poole silently knits in her chair? And the scene where the blind Rochester feels Jane’s face is still so moving to me. I cry every time. It’s so erotic as well! He won’t accept that it’s her by her voice, he has to literally run his hands over her body.
Right – he is a total WEIRDO. Not just an angsty lonely lord, or an imposing figure – but obsessed with her – her spirit – enough that he would pull that stunt in his own house. Insane!!
There are so many scenes that kill me. The one where Jane hears the cries at night in the house and goes to investigate. The one where she totally NAILS Mrs. Reed early on, impressing upon her that she has not kept her promise to her dead husband. The reaction of Mrs. Reed is chilling. And then that last sequence, with the space-time continuum bending …
This book is not a conventional love story. It is the opposite of domestic. It is OUT THERE.
Love it!!!
Yes, Jane Eyre is a delightfully weird book. I look forward to reading what you thought of the new movie version (which I saw tonight), especially since my viewing was disturbed by two talkative teenage girls who, at one point, I wanted to lock in an attic.
(By the way, that point came when they wondered if the book was free on Kindle. Go buy the paperback, you ungrateful technology junkies! And then buy the app that makes you shut the hell up in the theater. Sorry, had to get it out :-))
I love looking for books within books. Or in movies. Even TV shows (which is rarer but sometimes a brilliant example turns up).
I’ve avoided Jane Eyre for far too long since I was supposed to read it in high school–I can still remember the standard copy everyone got from the library. I’ll need to put it in my TBR stack…thanks for the push!
I just want to second the rec for Murakami. He’s one of my favorites!
There’s what looks to be a pretty great Jane Eyre event this Friday in New York, if anybody’s about! I’m wrestling with myself whether to bus it up from Boston to it. http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=154953637896082&index=1
Okay, that url was a fail.
Catherine – hahahaha Now what’s this now? What Jane Eyre event this Friday??
This! http://www.housingworks.org/events/detail/eyresses-the-journal-for-jane-eyre-enthusiasts-with-mike-albo-anna-cop/
Fantastic! I love that place – I don’t go there enough.
My review goes up today!!
So I’m about 120 pages into the book and I’m amazed at how much I don’t remember. The tone of this thing — GAH. It’s like Edgar Allen Poe’s Cinderella at the start. And my God, I could slap damn near everyone who’s appeared in this book so far. I was a bit amused, though, that when I read that passage where Brocklehurst comes to Gateshead I remembered instantly one part of it, where he describes the child who memorizes Psalms. He goes on about the kid opting to tell a Psalm rather than receive a gingerbread-nut, which always delights the adults so much that they give him two nuts for his piety. You just want to scream in his face, “YOU DON’T SEE THE CONNECTION THERE?”
And I loved the Gulliver’s Travels bit. She’s still too young to understand the satire — satire that she might appreciate, given the misanthropic tone of Swift and Jane’s (understandable, frankly) disdain of those around her, but she remembers the fairy tale aspect of the novel. Then she sees only someone who does not belong, drifting between people too small and too large for him. It so neatly reflects her and the conversation she has with Lloyd: with the rich Reeds, she is miserable and abused, but if she were to find her supposedly poor relatives and live with them, she would starve (plus, she’s been conditioned to view the poor as unworthy because the Reeds use it as ammo against her).
I still need to get to the actual Rochester/crazy wife in the attic bits to test what I feel about the novel as a whole, but I’m far more engrossed in Jane Eyre than I was in middle school.