Happy Birthday Jane Eyre

Today, in 1847, Jane Eyre was published. Certainly it’s one of my favorite novels, and what I love about it is how WEIRD it is. How openly unapologetically CREEPY. There’s no equivalent. People who lump Charlotte Bronte in with Jane Austen frankly cannot have read her very closely. Or cannot have read either author very closely. Because they’re both women they’re lumped together? Lazy literary analysis there. It doesn’t happen to male authors, either. It would be like assuming that because Faulker and Cervantes were both men, their books must be similar. Fitzgerald and Faulkner? Hawthorne and Joyce?

Would Jane Austen ever have her lead character cross-dress? As a gypsy? To TRICK his little employee to divulge her intimate thoughts? Would there be an insane woman locked in an attic? Would there be a moment when one character psychically calls to the other – across a great distance – and the other character hears it? (Interesting – I read a couple of reviews of the most recent Pride and Prejudice film with Keira Knightley – and a couple of the reviewers mentioned that the filmmaker was trying to ‘Bronte up’ Jane Austen. The gloomy moors, the feeling of wild nature on the outskirts, tramping along in the cold damp air, etc. NONE of this is part of the Jane Austen mood – ever. Hers is strictly an INDOOR type of literature – so there’s a widespread conflation of the two authors which is not appropriate.) Jane Eyre is gloomy, gothic, sexy, passionate, violent, and – in the end – unbelievably romantic. But the romance in this book is barely civilized. Not quite as uncivilized as in Wuthering Heights – but pretty much outside the scope of respectable society. Which is one of the reasons why I love it so. I am barely civilized myself.

In honor of the publication date of that book – I thought I’d post something that I’ve posted before – but I just adore it, so here it is again.

This is a letter Charlotte wrote to a good friend. The friend had written to her, asking her for a recommended reading list. Here is Charlotte’s reply. For some reason, this letter completely delights me. I have it copied out and up on my bulletin board at home. I just love it:

“You ask me to recommend you some books for your perusal. I will do so in as few words as I can. If you like poetry, let it be first-rate; Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (if you will, though I don’t admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey. Now don’t be startled at the names of Shakespeare and Byron. Both these were great men, and their works are like themselves. You will know how to choose the good, and to avoid the evil; the finest passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting; you will never wish to read them over twice. Omit the comedies of Shakespeare and the Don Juan, perhaps the Cain, of Byron, though the latter is a magnificent poem, and read the rest fearlessly; that must indeed be a depraved mind which can gather evil from Henry VIII, from Richard III, from Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Julius Caesar. Scott’s sweet, wild, romantic poetry can do you no harm. Nor can Wordsworth’s, nor Campbell’s, nor Southey’s — the greatest part at least of his; some is certainly objectionable. For history, read Hume, Rollin, and the Universal History, if you can; I never did. For fiction, read Scott alone; all novels after his are worthless. For biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron, Wolfe’s Remains. For natural history, read Bewick and Audobon, and Goldsmith, and White’s History of Selborne. For divinity, your brother will advise you there. I can only say, adhere to standard authors, and avoid novelty.”

Absolutely marvelous.