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Feb. 22nd, 2023 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseWhy do I think I need to write about Jane Eyre? Because, when I was a young creature living an isolated life in a benighted part of the world, struggling under sexism and a rising tide of renewed religious fundamentalism, Jane Eyre spoke to me of freedom in a voice I could not ignore. Would I have left home at eighteen, as it was essential for me to do, without the example of Jane, small, poor, and plain, going before me all alone?
If I hadn't left home, I would not have become as educated, complex, and self-actualized as I have done. I would have borne more children, read fewer books, and, I suspect, remained provincial, despite my best intentions otherwise. I needed Jane to spur me on.
Why Jane Eyre, in particular, when it was far from the only book that inspired me? For one thing, because I feel it is misunderstood, and so not fully accessed, by too many readers. I see people writing about reading Jane Eyre, and they're not going wild. And yes, of course, tastes differ. It's fine for us to go wild about different things. But people act like this book is a smooth stone, an impenetrable surface with unclear import, and -- to me, it never, ever was. If, in writing clearly about what this book meant to me, and did to me, I can open up a window on what's inside it, that, to me, seems like a worthwhile end.
It is not because the novel is the most important, the most feminist, or because of any particular historical import. It does signify, though it is not the point, that it is a book written by a young woman who never wanted to be an eldest daughter, but became one, who lived apart with her strange siblings and struggled with sexism and sex after earning her fame. The Brontes helped give each other the courage to write out strange, true things, although Charlotte later tried to polish off some of their collective rough edges and sanitize them somewhat for the wider public. They were all dead then but her, though, and what a thing that is to be true, too!
If there is a reason I can articulate why I must write to you about this book, it's because it addresses so many of the anxieties that stirred me in youth, and still do, particular to the situation of my assigned and understood sex/gender, webbed together in a way that shows core interconnections that remain active and present today. So I'm going to keep trying to write about Jane Eyre, and we'll see if I still now how to compose extended works of literary analysis.
If I hadn't left home, I would not have become as educated, complex, and self-actualized as I have done. I would have borne more children, read fewer books, and, I suspect, remained provincial, despite my best intentions otherwise. I needed Jane to spur me on.
Why Jane Eyre, in particular, when it was far from the only book that inspired me? For one thing, because I feel it is misunderstood, and so not fully accessed, by too many readers. I see people writing about reading Jane Eyre, and they're not going wild. And yes, of course, tastes differ. It's fine for us to go wild about different things. But people act like this book is a smooth stone, an impenetrable surface with unclear import, and -- to me, it never, ever was. If, in writing clearly about what this book meant to me, and did to me, I can open up a window on what's inside it, that, to me, seems like a worthwhile end.
It is not because the novel is the most important, the most feminist, or because of any particular historical import. It does signify, though it is not the point, that it is a book written by a young woman who never wanted to be an eldest daughter, but became one, who lived apart with her strange siblings and struggled with sexism and sex after earning her fame. The Brontes helped give each other the courage to write out strange, true things, although Charlotte later tried to polish off some of their collective rough edges and sanitize them somewhat for the wider public. They were all dead then but her, though, and what a thing that is to be true, too!
If there is a reason I can articulate why I must write to you about this book, it's because it addresses so many of the anxieties that stirred me in youth, and still do, particular to the situation of my assigned and understood sex/gender, webbed together in a way that shows core interconnections that remain active and present today. So I'm going to keep trying to write about Jane Eyre, and we'll see if I still now how to compose extended works of literary analysis.
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Date: 2023-02-22 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-23 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-23 03:25 pm (UTC)I would love to read them!
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Date: 2023-03-08 03:39 am (UTC)