Enter Mr Rochester

[poliphilo]

The first thing he does is fall off his horse. It's a Don Quixote moment. In the movie- as I remember- it's the apparition of Jane in the darkening lane that makes the horse shy and rear. Ooh gothick!. In the book the horse trots past Jane without incident, then slips on ice. Bump, He comes off. And swears a lot.

Bronte knows how to mix it up. A romantic setting, twilight, the rising moon, intimations of the supernatural. is the dog a gytrash? is the horse a gytrash? Then whoopsadaisy-  there's a man down. Is he badly hurt? Naah, it's just a sprain. .

Bronte breaks down even as she builds up. She adores the gothick. She thinks the gothick is silly. She blends gothickism and silliness into a smooth even paste.

Mr Rochester takes the book over. It used to be Jane's book; now it's his. He lounges and declaims- with his foot up on a stool because of the sprain.  He's very romantic, very Yorkshire- half Lord Byron, half Geoff Boycott. He balloons with magnificently wordy self-contempt- and cool Jane slips under his guard with a hat-pin. No wonder he falls in love.

One expects a Victorian novelist to be coy. I don't know why but it's a prejudice we've been encouraged in. Some of them are coy- Dickens for instance; he never saw a prossie he couldn't find a euphemism for. He hates the evangelicals but he's been infected with their cant. Bronte ain't that way; she grew up in a vicarage so she's worldly-wise; she calls a French mistress a French mistress and no beating about the bush. The story of Rochester's Parisian amour is as tough minded as anything in Balzac. She's frank, she's sensual, she's withering. She has none of the Victorian whimsy about children either. Adele is nothing special, not very bright. If it were now she'd be dressing up as a Disney princess. The child is mother to the woman- nice kid; don't expect too much of her; her Daddy certainly doesn't. If this was Dickens (again) Rochester would be in awful trouble for this attitude of his. Bronte and Jane are far too sensible for that.

Here comes the madwoman. Demonic laughter at the keyhole. So far so ghastly. Now Mr Rochester is on fire! O no! So Jane puts him out with a jug full of water.  Mr Darcy wet shirt moment! Mr Rochester forbids Jane to look. Does he have a boner? "Don't leave me Jane". "Sorry but I have to." Firm manly handshake. Oh, but this is wonderful stuff.....

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

My favourite version is the 1995 one with Ciarán Hinds as Rochester and Samantha Morton as Jane. Morton absolutely nails it, really distils what it is makes Jane what she is. In essence Jane Eyre is the forerunner of Commander Data and all the emotionally dysfunctioned characters in scifi. She even says it herself in the novel - "Do you think I am an automaton?"

Her replies are mechanical and spare; she doesn't understand the nuances, having a laser eye for the truth instead. The non-committal, droidlike nature of her answers (betraying a deprived childhood, a state Morton knew a lot about) only makes Rochester all the more determined to break her down. Samantha Morton is the only Jane I know who deeply, instinctively gets that.

Hinds as Rochester is a bit overacted - he could ease off on the shouting - but has the packed intensity of the character in the novel and his large presence. His presence is very sensual and powerful, making it clear why Jane tends to adopt "shields up" in his presence.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't been reading Jane that way, but I think you're onto something.

I'll look out for that line about her being an automaton.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Trust me, you won't miss it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If it weren't for the lushness of the prose, you could sometimes mistake Bronte for a modern. So here she is writing about robots and it's the 1840s. Remarkable woman!