Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Part II

I have read this book so many times since I was a kid that reading it now was like taking a tour bus through a well known city. First stop, The Red Room. Second Stop: Helen Burns’ Deathbed. Third Stop: Mr. Rochester Falling Off His Horse. No surprises yet the narrative was completely absorbing. (Apparently that’s what they mean by masterpiece.) There’s something primal about the larger than life characters and there’s something primal about the setting, both appealing to something just beneath our logical mind.

I had forgotten how shocking, how full of “adult content” Jane Eyre is. Jane never denies her love for the married man, though she rejects living with him.  This time, I saw the “Come away with me, Jane” scene as a real conflict. She almost goes with him to France, obliterating her position in society, not so much because it will make her happy, but because she’s afraid Rochester’s going to kill himself, or worse yet, lead a life of meaningless carousing. She and Rochester consider seriously the point that she has no relative to offend by living with him. (Which was a key plot point of Pride and Prejudice)

At times it seems like this novel is a brief in favor of no fault divorce, and it’s humorous how quickly she hightails it to Ferndean once she finds out Bertha jumped off the battlements and is permanently out of the picture.

This time, for me, the ”Come away with me to India” scene, had conflict as well. She likes it when Mr. Rochester bosses her around, because he loves the real Jane, the passionate contrary Jane, but she recognizes that her obedience to St. John’s bossiness would take a level of self control that would kill her. He’s no fan of the real Jane. He, like practically every other element in this novel, wants to suppress the real Jane.

My only quibble with the plot is Grace Poole conveniently being an alcoholic. Mr. Rochester apparently wants to take good care of his wife, but then he hires somebody who would get fired in about 2 weeks. I mean, how many times does Bertha steal the keys – seven or eight times?

I’ve almost talked myself into reading it again.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, Part I

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A series of humiliations lead to an orgasm of happiness

This is the second book in my project of Rereading the Classics and this novel inspired so many thoughts in me, I must break them into two weekly chunks. Here’s Part One.

I found this book under the Christmas tree when I was seven years old and for many years after that I only read and reread on the Gateshead and Lowood parts, the passionate little girl imprisoned by the rules part. I didn’t really understand Mr. Rochester and I found (and I think most people do) St. John Rivers to be an intolerable priss. I couldn’t understand at all why Jane would even contemplate his proposal.

Over the years, I have read Jane Eyre several times, and while loving it, found the novel ultimately deeply flawed because for me the story fell apart at the end because of the ridiculousness of the plot. This time I approached it without any preconceived ideas about realism. In no way is the final third of the book realistic – in fact the entire novel is a fairy tale wish fulfillment that was completely satisfying.

The passionate characters play out their memorable scenes against gigantic backdrops – the settings are almost as important as the characters. Jane and Rochester meet at twilight on the moor, each thinking the other a supernatural creature. Like Elizabeth and Darcy they immediately “go at it”. With dialogue that is. The man with direct questioning, the woman responding like a sybll. After Jane saves him from a burning bed, they both realize they are in love.  

Thornfield is a house filled with several varieties of womanhood – the flirtatious little girl, the calm elderly housekeeper. The madwoman in the attic. And Jane, the sensible helper. What will she chose? What role will she play?

Next week, Part II

Her First American by Lore Segal

A greenhorn encounters America


Someone recommended this, saying I would like it. She was a little wrong as I loved it. The story is at once a sweet reminiscence of an earlier time and, at the same time, a terribly ambitious analysis of America in the 1950's. It’s a comic novel about the Holocaust and U.S. race relations. It succeeds, I think, because these tragic issues are described on the slant. The important things – the destroyed lives in the wake of Nazism,the interracial love dynamics, the subordinate position of blacks in American society, the beginning and the end of the love affair, are never addressed head on. Therefore the immensity of the tragic issues doesn’t overwhelm the writing and sentimentality is avoided. But the reader can feel and clearly understand the emotional consequences of history on people’s lives, even as the reader is laughing at the heroine's comic misunderstandings.

Our immigrant young heroine, Ilka Weissnix, is 21, determined to make a life for herself in a new country. Something happened back there in Vienna - it’s never fully addressed, but she is always expressing her envy/approval of American family groups, American friendship groups. People who have histories.

In a wonderful scene out West, she meets Carter Bayoux. The reader knows he’s black, but Ilka doesn’t until several chapters in. He introduces her to America, and to herself. He’s an intellectual with a drinking problem and a despair problem (and it seems also a woman problem), taking frequent trips to the “bughouse” and drinking bottles of bourbon and talking talking talking. He’s awful, completely unsuitable for Ilka, and wonderful at the same time.

Ilka’s mother is missing, which creates great sympathy among the Americans, who are almost uniformly depicted sympathetically. And the character of the cousin Fishgoppel who is her benefactor is wonderfully done. The scene where Ilka and her mother return to Vienna at the very end of the novel is truly heartbreaking and funny at the same time.

The dialogue is amazing and really brings the characters to life. Bucky Bailey’s call in radio show would drive anyone mad. The most interesting and sustained scene is the summer rental in Connecticut with the four couples. A tour de force.

Cleaning Nabokov's House by Leslie Daniels

Opening a whorehouse builds confidence

This is a comic novel about Barb Barrett, a beaten down woman who has a mild nervous breakdown when her husband scolds her one too many times about how to load the dishwasher. Somewhat implausibly, she loses everything, including custody of her beloved children. “Somewhat implausibly” could be the watchword of the entire book, even though I enjoyed this novel greatly, held together as it was by Barb’s appealing first person narration. The book is genuinely funny and consistently engaging.

It’s about a woman finding herself, regaining her dignity and losing her passivity. The biggest problem, however, is the whimsical bifurcated plot. The story starts moving from its piteous though funny beginning once Barb rents Nabokov’s house, and reaches into a drawer to find -- a novel handwritten on index cards. And our mystery begins. Or does it? Publishing a lost Nabokov novel seems to be what the story is about, but rather quickly that doesn’t pan out so Barb effortlessly switches (though maybe not the reader) to the whorehouse with male whores idea.  Women flock to the house, somewhat implausibly,in this conservative upstate town.

Barb’s adventures are definitely quirky, though the love interest, the ex-husband and even the kids are a little too unsurprising. The minor characters, however, are completely original. Also, the idea that perhaps a whorehouse is not like a nail salon, and may have seriously corrosive effects on the marriages of its patrons, is completely glided over.

I really enjoyed it.

The Cookbook Collecter by Allegra Goodman

What is wealth?

This was a disappointment, even more so because I sensed the broken columns of a truly satisfying novel littering these pages. I admire the ambition to write about 9/11 and the dot com bust and the real estate bust and the recently evolving roles of husband and wife. The problem was that our two sister heroines, Emily and Jess Bach, one an ambitious gogetter, one a dreamy philosopher, are thoroughly nice inside, noble in fact, and nice and noble, absenting any internal conflict, lacks dramatic tension and is boring. Also, I was a little bothered that the privilege of these elite people did not warrant comment. Who lives like this? Who lives like this and never questions their good luck?

The last 75 percent of the book was a chore to read as I didn’t care about the main characters and there were pages and pages, like Freedom  or that Lionel Shriver bookwhere characters just kept talking about current events or software like it was an endless episode of Meet the Press.

I don’t want to go on about the problems – among which is that the cookbooks only show up in the middle and the intriguing cookbook collector himself is far too underutilized. The East Coast West Coast Orthodox family was another fruitful sidetrack that bore exploring.

There is some very nice writing here and an excellent scene of some environmentalists saving a redwood and our girl Jess up there in the top of the tree with a fear of heights. Now that’s conflict!

Going Down by Jennifer Belle

Always something to laugh at when you’re a hooker in the big city

 A friend of mine suggested I read this and I like her too much to say, Don't you know I don't read genre novels? But this wasn’t a cliché genre novel – this was a assortment of flash fiction about a young New Yorker, Bennington Bloom, who blithely gets a job as a prostitute, and her adventures in the absurdity of New York. Much of it was hilarious. The hooker set up is just that, merely a hook to hang an assortment of sharply well written little scenes. Most of the stories don’t really have to do with prostitution. A true novel about prostitution needs to address the unbridgeable gulf between the sexes or the amoral capitalistic ethos or what is the deal with that Madonna/whore thing. I’m not sure that this book does. What I learned was – wow the receptionists in brothels are real bitches.

So the book I read last week was about a nineteen year old who can’t stop herself from letting people know she’s smarter than they are. Bennington Bloom has the same problem. She’s a girl rejected by her father and decides, without a lot of reflection, to join an escort service in order to pay for her sophomore year at NYU. Because the novel is episodic, the reader does not get a sense of any tension building, but is still entertained by the sprightly sarcastic prose . Near the end of the book, a boyfriend is injected so we get some conflict otherwise there seems no reason why Bennington could not have continued sex work. Apart from the police raids.

 The epigraph from Alice in Wonderland is fitting but I think Alice cogitates a bit more on her situation. All this same, this was a very enjoyable read.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Second chances are wonderful.

This is the first book in my project of Rereading the Classics.

This novel is a machine of ingenious plotting . Nothing is wasted -- not a sneeze or ribbon purchase. Carriages are always pulling up and gossipy people excitedly disembarking, moving the story along.

The impetus to the plot is that Bennet sisters need husbands. And, Mrs. Bennet, their ignorant pushy lively mother, is both the strongest force for this, as well as one of the strongest obstacles. At least she always understands what’s at stake.

The book is a serious of scenes and locations in which our hero Mr. Darcy and our heroine Elizabeth, who have a bad first meeting, are constantly thrown into contact with each other. The plot is woven so skillfully into the story that the reader doesn’t question why three men, Mr. Bingley, Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham, who are all connected to Mr. Darcy, then become intimately connected with Elizabeth, do not know each other. Mr. Bingley introduces her to him, Mr. Collins provides an opportunity to meet him again, and Mr. Wickham gives Darcy the chance to do Elizabeth a really huge favor.

The characterization is also perfect, leaking down to every minor character. The dialogue fleshes out the characters, for there really is not any description. If Jane Austen were alive today, she’d be writing for television.

Darcy thinks he’s better than everybody else and Elizabeth is too eager to let everybody know she thinks they’re absurd. These weaknesses are the flip side of their strengths.

The place names are great, Longbourn, Meryton, Netherfield Park, Rosings and them of course, the pinnacle, Pemberley. I think if you read a hundred throwaway romance books, you would recognize the connections to this book.