One of the nifty things about being friend with Lady Pole, among myriads, is her excellent taste in literature, and her openness about discussing books.  So a little while ago, we came up with the idea of a book discussion here at the Free For All where we could air our real views about some of those “classic” books that everyone is “supposed to read”…and supposed to value/treasure/enjoy. 

The truth of the matter is that even when two people read the same book…no two people read the same book.  They bring their lives with them into the text, and that totally influences how they perceive, digest, and remember the book.  And this was something Lady Pole and I discovered as we chatted about some of those classics that we had encountered in our lives.  So here is a much more mature, adultish version of that discussion for you to enjoy.  While we are very pleased with our own opinions, what we really hope you, dear readers, take away from these discussions is the realization that: 1) Reading “classics” can be really fun and meaningful and significant (that’s part of what makes them “classics” after all!), 2) That you are under no obligation whatsoever to enjoy the classics that you read, as you’ll soon see, and 3) That your own story is critically important to how you read any book.  So here is our chat–we sincerely hope it encourages you to have a conversation of your own!

Arabella: I first discovered Jane thanks to the fortunate combination of a summer reading list and a family vacation gone awry.  I was heading into my freshman year of high school, my father had business in Italy, and my mother and I tagged along to enjoy the culture and the atmosphere….it turned out we were in something of an industrial area without a ton to do, and few transportation options.  So I spent a good deal of that vacation plowing through the list of books I had been provided by my new high school.  We could choose three off a pretty long list, so I chose The Picture of Dorian Gray, Jane Eyre, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which made for a very interesting trip, at least literarily speaking…And I think being somewhat alone with Jane on that trip made my reading of her story that much more intense.

Lady Pole: I was embarrassingly late to the game on this book. As in, I finished it this summer, having gone my entire life so far without having this classic in my repertoire. I’ve had a beautiful leather(ish)-bound copy compiled with Bronte’s sisters’ works on my shelf since high school (having gone through an intense classics phase after my encounter with Pride and Prejudice) and Waldenbooks (remember them?) was nice enough to fuel my newfound passion with beautifully bound discount classics that looked just beautiful on my shelf. And that’s where my copy of Jane Eyre stayed for a disconcerting number of years. Having seen a poster from the delightfully named project Recovering the Classics (http://recoveringtheclassics.com/) with the quote: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will” from said classic, I fell in love with the quote, grew covetous of the poster and was determined to read the book to which this fantastic quote belonged.

Arabella: I had been told by a number of educators in my life that I had to read Jane Eyre, but while I was excited to make them happy, I was also expected something of a 19th-century moralistic slog, like a number of other books I had been assigned to read over the years (I’m looking at you, Little Dorrit).  And, I’ll admit, the early part of the book was much of what I had been expecting, particularly the scenes at Lowood School, where there is a considerable amount of discussion about being good and virtuous…but then, I realized that something very different way happening here.  Jane wasn’t terribly interested in learning how to behave.  Or to please others.  She had a moral compass that was far stronger and far more discerning than that.  And it meant that her story was going to be vastly different from what I had expected.  And by the time she left Lowood to take up residence at Thornfield Hall, I loved seeing the world through her eyes.  Especially, I loved how honest she was.  I remember very distinctly a chapter opening when Jane admitted she loved Rochester, even though she knew she could never do anything about it because of the huge differences in power and class that stood between them.  She didn’t downplay her feelings, or deny them to make things easier, which made her a startling voice in literature, even as a twentieth century reader.  I myself had (have) an enormous crush on Rochester, so the parts of the book without him were a bit of a challenge for me then (though not so much now), but, like Lady Pole, I thought their reunion was perfect and satisfying and wonderful.

Lady Pole: I tried to read this book a few years ago. I have had wonderful discussions with Arabella about digging into a dense, rich book in the wintertime and felt Jane Eyre was to be that winter’s book. I started it. I enjoyed it. I put it down. I didn’t pick it back up again. If you press me for the reason why I didn’t finish it I really couldn’t give you one. My best guess is that I had a moment where I turned into Dug from Up and another book (or my Netflix queue, or something) caught my eye and… squirrel! That was it. The lovely ribbon bookmark that came stitched into my edition was still in the same place where I left it, but I’m happy to say that Jane, ever the stalwart heroine welcomed me back to that place and guided me on through the rest of the book. This time, there was no stopping me. I can’t tell you how fascinating I found Jane. I didn’t always agree with her choices (I guess I have more human foibles in me than her; let’s just say the story would have been much shorter had I been in her shoes…), but I’ve yet to come across a literary heroine that I respect as much. Bronte didn’t take the easy way out; Jane didn’t have the looks, money or other Victorian qualities that would make a heroine successful, but she had her morals, her own brand of plucky perseverance, and a willingness to withstand multiple hardships fairly stoically and this, to me, made her one of the best heroines I’ve read in a long time. Yes, there was a certain amount of deus-ex-machina in the ending, but nothing seemed out of character for Jane and, even though much of her late fortune came seemingly out of nowhere, it still felt as though she earned it, making the ending ultimately very satisfying. Oh, and the marriage proposal scene easily ranks as my favorite of all time in literature (and that includes both proposals in Pride and Prejudice).

Arabella: I knew nothing about this book going into it, except for the fact that it caused a big scandal upon its release because it advocated for an independent woman, and for a moral, fundamental good over social “goods” and “evils”.  But I never expected to find such a frank, self-confident, and marvelous heroine in its pages, or a love story that still strikes me as a wholly unique one, even today.  Since then, I’ve seen a number of adaptations of the book, none of which do it real justice, though the one with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens comes pretty close, especially in terms of Jane’s whole story.

Lady Pole: Though I hadn’t seen any movie interpretations of this book, I was well familiar with the “madwoman in the attic” trope that stemmed from this story. I also knew that this book had a Gothic tone to it, which is something I’ve gravitated towards since my childhood reading, making my late arrival to actually reading this book that much more puzzling. Aside from knowing it was one of Arabella’s favorite books of all time, I new scant little else about it.

Arabella: As someone who feels very strongly about portraying equitable and honest relationships in romance I have to admit, in an attempt to be an adult here, that Rochester is a lying ass who treats his ward despicably (see the cartoon below).  And in any other hands than Charlotte Bronte’s, I think I would hate him.  But I also have to admit that she does such remarkable job showing his torment, and the trap in which society (again, with it’s ideas of “good” and “evil”) has caught him and Bertha, that I still sympathize with him..and still love him (if Jane can admit it, so can I).   I also love their relationship because Jane doesn’t tolerate any of his emo nonsense, chipping away at his woe-is-me veneer until we get to see that there is a decent man with a surprising sense of humor underneath.  I’ve also learned to feel a lot more towards St. John than I ever did as a younger reader.  I hate love triangles, and was so terrified that Jane was going to forsake herself and run off with him that I hated him on sight and sound.  But now I can see what Bronte was doing in creating his character, and showing how trying to be “good” can literally kill you, while following that higher sense of right and wrong can be your true salvation–and I try to feel for him the way Jane did.  It’s a work in progress.

Lady Pole: Considering that these reflections are all recent because I’ve only just read the book, let me just add that the Jane Eyre poster from Recovering the Classics now hangs on my office wall, nestled comfortably among posters of other favorite classics. I think that pretty much sums it up.

 

First Impressions
Lady Pole: I fell in love. This was one of the first classics I read on my own that wasn’t part of assigned reading, so that may have also heightened my enjoyment of the text, but for me, Elizabeth Bennet was the be-all-end-all of literary heroines. In a lot of ways, she still is. She is flawed, but strong. Level-headed and yet somehow headstrong at the same time. She wants love and she wants it on her own terms. She was exactly what my teenaged-self was looking for at the time and continues to be a pretty high standard for my adult self when it comes to literary heroines by comparison. I also enjoyed Austen’s writing-style.  The comedy of manners remains as one of my favorite types of books to read and Austen’s wit is a large part of why this book resonated with me.

Arabella: It took me a really, really long time to get into this book.  I think some of that had to do with end-of-the-semester burnout, but I also think that Austen’s writing style and I just didn’t (and still don’t, to a large extent) get along.  I appreciate her arch observations immensely, but I really didn’t enjoy her technique of stating characters’ opinions as if they were fact, as in the opening line of the book (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”).  I felt it put distance between me and the characters, which made it difficult to really get to know them.  I also had a hard time liking Elizabeth…what stood out to me was how much she derided other women in the book, which is something Miss Bingley notes.  She cares for Jane, who is very quiet, and Georgiana, who is very quiet, but is very scornful of all the other women around her–which made me think that she wouldn’t like me very much (and since I really appreciated her strength, this made me sad).  As we see throughout the book, her kneejerk reactions are often wrong (Wickham, Darcy…), which she sort-of realizes at the end, but not in so thorough a manner as I was hoping to see.

 

Outside Influences
Lady Pole: I went into my first reading fairly uninfluenced, which is rare for me with a classic. I have since read this book numerous times, including during a freshman English class in college with one of my favorite professors, where I learned just how funny Austen could really be (particularly through Mr. Collins’ absurdities) and on a cruise where it was a refreshing change to visit an old favorite after reading about the ill-fated cruise passengers in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos. I know what everyone is probably thinking at this point: what about the BBC adaptation with Colin Firth??? That adaptation made me love Mr. Darcy. I had my trepidations about the character even after Lizzy got her happily ever after with him, but Firth brought a level of tenderness and depth to Mr. Darcy that went previously unnoticed by me in the text. Pride and Prejudice also helped me appreciate the humor of Bridget Jones’s Diary (book and movie, though less so the sequels), which in turn helped me to appreciate re-imaginings of classic texts more.

Arabella: I had seen the BBC adaptation before reading the book, and I think I was looking for the same level of accessibility in the text, which, as I mentioned, I certainly didn’t find.  But it did help me understand some of the subtext in the book that I wasn’t getting from Austen’s narrative.  The group of historical re-enactors that I worked with also had constant debates over the immortal “Darcy or Rochester” question, which meant I was definitely holding Darcy to a much higher standard than I think I otherwise might have done.

Arabella: I have really come to appreciate over the years what Austen was doing with her writing, and compare her in many ways to Oscar Wilde, at least in terms of her gentle, but unrepentant criticisms of society.  And, in that sense, I can appreciate her.  But I still haven’t been able to lose myself in her stories (except for Persuasion.  I did actually enjoy that one).  I still find her writing style too much for me, overall.  I also think that, when it comes to “classics”, I tend to enjoy later 19th-century works that challenge and scandalize, rather than tease, which is a matter for another discussion, I think….