What I said then:
Because I should, I suppose. (side note --- sheesh, can you sense my reluctance?)
What I say now:
Fucking Jane Eyre.
Okay, before I start ripping into an acknowledged classic, I should at least own up to the fact that it was absolutely the wrong book at the wrong time. I doubt I'd have loved it no matter when I read it, but coming at the height of my Christmas-retail-insanity inspired snarkiness, I don't think I'm going to give it a very fair hearing. So please, take all these criticisms with a grain of salt, I'm almost certainly gonna bag it way more than it deserves.
So Jane, the titular character, is an orphan who's looked after by her mean aunt. Then she gets sent to a badly run school where her best friend dies. Then we skip ahead about eight years, and Jane leaves the school to become a governess, working for the mysterious, brooding Mr. Rochester. She falls in love with him. But (gasp!) Mr. Rochester has a dark secret that will keep them apart. Etcetera, etcetera. I bet you can't guess how it ends.
The novel is written in the first person, from Jane's point-of-view. Unfortunately, I found Jane to be a very dull character. She is, in her own quiet way, entirely good ... which is a fact that doesn't really lend itself to a dramatic narrative. While Jane has many obstacles placed in front of her, it's utterly predictable how she'll react to all of them, because she's entirely good. She has no inner turmoil, no personal demons to face, because she's entirely good. She's boring as hell, because she's entirely good.
Mr. Rochester, on the other hand, is kind of a prick. Sarcastic and mean, there's never any hint of a reason why Jane should fall in love with him (except for the fact that he's the only adult male she's ever had any prolonged contact with). Jane herself goes out of her way to inform us that he's ugly, ill-tempered, callous and cruel. So, to me, the entire 'romance' was without foundation, and therefore hopelessly compromised. I could feel nothing for either of them, because I couldn't see any reason why they'd feel anything for each other.
Huge chunks of the book have no bearing on the rest of the story. There's a very long sequence at the beginning with Jane as a young girl, first at her aunt's house and then at school. This takes up nearly a quarter of the book, yet has no real bearing on the movement of the narrative. In my edition, (spoilers ahead) Jane and Rochester attempt to be married for the first time on page 380. That could easily have been page 80, for all the import that the early scenes had on what followed.
Also, there's a 'mad' character. And I know Bronte was writing before the whole science of psychology even existed, but her treatment of insanity was unsympathetic and inane. It really annoyed the hell out of me.
And THEN, if all that wasn't enough to piss me off, about three-quarters of the way in to the novel, the whole story turns on a narrative coincidence so preposterous, so ridiculous, so unlikely, so ... well ... so fucking STUPID, that I consider it an unforgivable sin on the part of the writer. It was so dumb it actually made me laugh aloud. And if Jane Eyre hadn't lost me yet, it sure did then.
Ugh, I'm going to go read some sci-fi to get this stain out of my brain.
Yours in frustration, JC
about to read: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
books to go: 115
No comments:
Post a Comment