...Or, if you remember what you thought it was about before you read it.
Those of you who have not read Jane Eyre, nor seen the movie, could you summarize in the comments for me what you think the book is about... with specifics regarding plot... and what your occupation is? And how/what other Victorian literature you have read instead?
I realize this is a weird request, but it's research for a book. I promise.
When I asked my husband the question, he said, "It's about women. And there's yammering. Because they can't marry who they want to marry." He's a computer guy. I couldn't even guess what Victorian literature he's read, but I'd suspect it's like one work of Dickens forced on him in school.
Those of you who have not read Jane Eyre, nor seen the movie, could you summarize in the comments for me what you think the book is about... with specifics regarding plot... and what your occupation is? And how/what other Victorian literature you have read instead?
I realize this is a weird request, but it's research for a book. I promise.
When I asked my husband the question, he said, "It's about women. And there's yammering. Because they can't marry who they want to marry." He's a computer guy. I couldn't even guess what Victorian literature he's read, but I'd suspect it's like one work of Dickens forced on him in school.
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Comments
-Jane Eyre invokes thoughts of Jane Austen (for whatever reason, I realize she didn't write it).
-I hate Jane Austen. She is basically the Harlequin novel of her time.
-Its friends/sisters/whatever fighting over men who mostly stand around looking nice, and otherwise have no personality or redeeming qualities.
-It is raunchy. Much more raunchy than is appropriate for the time.
-And very drawn out. Often with Much ado About Nothing or Comedy of Errors. (both things which can get on my nerves.)
Sorry. Its what I think. (shrug) This is without googling it, which I am about to go do.
(I do like Dickens, though. More tragic and suffering.) Mostly, I like mysteries, current literature, or the occasional 30-something crap (good beach reading). So take my thoughts for what it is worth to you.
*looks up the Wikipedia article* Heh. I only knew that much because I looked up the plot summary a year or two ago. Before that I knew nothing.
I'm a copy editor of physics articles.
I had to look up "victorian literature" because I do not carry around a list in my head (I haven't had a literature class since high school!). I've read various Dickens (Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, both for school, and I've seen A Christmas Carol a zillion times) and George Eliot's Silas Marner which I don't remember at all. And some children's stuff (Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter, Kipling).
(my God. I'm horribly under-read, aren't I?)
Frankly, I preferred the poetry of the era. Oh, and Lewis Carrol. I read and researched the Alice books like crazy.
As far as Jane Eyre, specifically, everything I know about the book comes from Jasper Fforde. :)
Jane is an orphan who becomes a nanny to the daughter of R~; he's gruff and mean and prone to attacks from his crazy wife in the attic. Of course, Jane doesn't know about that until she and R~ are in love and almost married, at which point she runs off, nearly to India with a minister of some sort. The crazy wife tries to burn R~ and destroys the mansion, but then Jane comes back and they live happily ever after.
Sure, Americans count, I guess... :)
Not bad on the plot points, either, though, I'm sure Mr. Fforde helped.
Um. Isn't it about some impoverished woman who goes to work as a governess for some guy and falls in love with him? But then he has a crazy ex-wife locked up in the attic. And then she leaves, the house burns down, but she comes back and he'd mangled but she loves him anyway? The end? Am I even close?
I always thought Jane Eyre was a romantic kinda story about a lonely intelligent girl living on the moors or something like that, with her sisters. And they amused themselves by making up stuff together.
But now that I've said that, I'm pretty sure that I've conflated the plot with that of "Little Women"... Oh dear.
Well, you know sort of what my "occupation" history has looked like, right? I was a low-budget college teacher at Schoolcraft in the early 90's after I got my M.A. in Literature.
Then Momoko dragged me to Boston, where I worked a few lousy construction jobs for abusive bosses, then did some trashpicking, auditioned for some rock bands, and finally became a jobless shut-in with cats as my only friends and at that time wrote my only published story...
Uh-- to speed a up a boring story:
I had a few more weird jobs while my mah and I were getting http://www.neko-chan.com up and running in the late 90's, then when we moved back to Ann Arbor I had my first non-lousy construction job where I actually was treated as a human being and got my first taste of self esteem in 40 years.
I was laid off last year, but I got to keep the self esteem, and anyway http://www.neko-chan.com is doing more biz now so my mah needs me working at it full time now, so I don't have to get any more lead poisoning, lung or brain damage. Though I miss my painting friends.
H.P. Lovecraft
Algernon Blackwood
Arthur Machen
Thomas DeQuincy
Edgar Allen Poe
Robert Louis Stevenson
Bram Stoker
William Butler Yeats
You might be surprised by Jane Eyre. It was considered crude at the time because it was not very mannered. The choices Jane makes are more morally driven than code-of-conduct/societally driven, too.
I love Victorian novels. I eat them like buttery snacks, devour them like dirty dirty soap operas.
that said, is the movie any good?
Of the ones on this list:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/janeeyre/history.shtml
The 1983 one made me doubt my reading of the book. How could something so dull be made from something so awesome? Plus, there's this big distracting zit on Jane's face through most of the Moor House scenes plus some others, so it broke my suspension of disbelief because you could track when they filmed things by the size of the zit.
The 1973 is supposedly the most faithful adaptation and the best-loved by Jane Eyre fans. I'm half-way through it. It's all right. You know how the 1996 Pride and Prejudice was both faithful and fully awesome? This is faithful and only about half awesome. So far... I need to finish watching it.
The 1963 one didn't particularly impress. I watched it a long time ago, though.
Now, the 2006 version (http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/janeeyre/) is not very faithful in many ways, but I think it may be the most successful adaptation. I prefer to judge movie adaptations of classics in regard to how much they bring the spirit through of the original to a modern audience. Like Baz Luhrman's version of Romeo and Juliet... I thought my reaction at the end of that was probably the same reaction that Shakespeare's original audience had: OMFG, Shakespeare, you suck for making me feel this bad, OMFG, you're amazing.
So, in terms of the 2006 version? I think that is the most successful adaptation by that definition.
Of the movie versions I've seen, I'm kinda eh on them all. Orson Welles has the best Rochester voice--well, duh. Ciaran Hinds and William Hurt are meh for Rochesters. My favorite young Jane is without a doubt Anna Paquin in the Zeffirelli version (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116684/).
Plain Jane Eyre is sent by her stingy aunt to a horrible school where her best friend dies of consumption thereby starting the story in the wrong place and using up several thousand unecessary words. She survives and as the story proper starts she gets a job as governess (on her own initiative) to Mr Rochester's niece (Adele?) at Thornfield Hall. She meets Rochester when she causes his horse to shy and pitch him off. They make an instant bad first impression on each other, but gradually discover there is a meeting of minds despite Rochester being a bully and a liar and not terribly handsome, not to mention dallying with a flirty piece of muslin-wrapped, brain-free eyecandy. There's a visit to Jane's dying aunt (more wasted words) and a few kefuffles in the night, but I can't remember the order. Footsteps in the corridor, Rochester's room set on fire (Jane to the rescue) and a visitor who is mysteriously injured by a passing vampire (or someone with teeth) in the sekrit attic. Jane once more saves Rochester's butt by playing nusemaid until the doctor arrives. Rochester proposes to Jane. At the wedding someone (a lawyer? or Mr Vampirevictim himself?) turns up as Mr Just Impediment because of Wife Number One who is Mad Woman In The Attic. Despite thinking Rochester is sex on two legs, Jane's too hidebound to grab him with both hands and elope without benefit of clergy (as he wants to do), so she wimps out and flees, miraculously getting found in the middle of a moor by a very boring set of religious fundies who just coincidentally turn out to be cousins she didn't know she had. (Yeah, try slipping that past an editor these days!!!) Cousin StJohn persuades her to go a-praying and a-misionarying with him, but luckily she wakes up and smells the testosterone before she has her bags properly packed. She has a change of heart and decides she will jump the broom with Rochester after all, but on returning to Thornfield discovers Mad Woman has burned it down, killed herself and blinded and crippled Rochester who was daft enough to go walkabout on the rooftop. As karmic justice for dallying Jane gets a semicastrated version of Rochester, blind and dependent and not at all the man she fell in love with, but that seems to me enough because: Reader, she married him!
Other old stuff I recall dates from school: Dickens (Hard Times, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol) Hardy: Return of the Native; Jude-the-so-obscure-I-can-remember-a-thi
My list is woefully short. Does having a complete set of Dickens count for anything even if I haven't read them? (The binding is pretty.)
Funnily enough I was intending to re-read Jane Eyre after reading The Eye Affair.
I thought it was Wuthering Heights (which I also haven't read) until a glance at Wikipedia showed me that I know absolutely nothing about it.
So basically, I thought Jane Eyre was about some unrequited love story where he or she isn't good enough so they go away and come back but by that time, the other person is married off or some shit and they die tragically.
See, I know nothing about it.
I read Pride and Prejudice and some Dickens excerpts in junior high. The only thing of Dickens' that I've read completely is A Christmas Carol which I adore.
I've read Lewis Caroll's Alice books. They're wonderful.